Photo by Jenny Tzanakos

Rona Altrows writes fiction, essays and plays. Key In Lock is her second collection of short fiction. Her earlier book, A Run On Hose, won the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction. Her work has been published in Other Voices, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review and many other Canadian magazines. Altrows will serve as the Calgary Writer In Residence, Canadian Authors Association, Alberta Branch from fall 2010 to spring 2011. She is a past Writer in Residence for the Calgary Public Library and for the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society. A firm believer in supporting her fellow writers, she, along with Lori Hahnel, co-created and co-organizes an annual celebration of the writing process called Writing In The Works. Altrows teaches creative writing workshops and edits works of fiction and non-fiction. She and Naomi K. Lewis are currently compiling an anthology on shyness.

J. J. Steinfeld is

a fiction writer, poet, and playwright who lives on Prince Edward Island. He has published two novels, Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (Pottersfield Press) and Word Burials (Crossing Chaos Enigmatic Ink), nine short story collections, the previous three by Gaspereau Press — Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized?, Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown, and Would You Hide Me? — and two poetry collections, An Affection for Precipices (Serengeti Press) and Misshapenness (Ekstasis Editions), along with two short-fiction chapbooks by Mercutio Press, Curiosity to Satisfy and Fear to Placate and Not a Second More, Not a Second Less, and two poetry chapbooks, Existence Is a Hoax, a Woman in Fishnet Stockings Told Me When I Was Twenty (Cubicle Press) and Where War Finds You (HMS Press).

Over 200 of his short stories and nearly 400 of his poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals internationally, and over 40 of his one-act and full-length plays have been performed in Canada and the United States, including the full-length plays Acting Violently, The Franz Kafka Therapy Session, and The Golden Age of Monsters, and [many] one-act plays….

(taken from http://www.ditchpoetry.com/jjsteinfeld.htm)

When I saw that Notes for Monday, Recliner Books’ first release, was number ten on Calgary’s best-seller list, I was elated.

Writing In The Works 3

Back for a third great year!

Five Calgary writers read from
• books in progress
• books coming out soon
• books on the prowl for publishers

Readings by
Faye Reineberg Holt
Elaine Morin
Jane Cawthorne
Donna Sales
Judith Galbraith

Emcee – Rona Altrows

Thursday, May 20th
7:00 to 8:30 p.m.
Memorial Park Library
1221- 2nd Street S.W.
Calgary

Free event

RSVP on the Facebook page: http://is.gd/bCyjJ

"It was here a second ago!"

A big thank-you to everyone who submitted to the contest. Unfortunately we did not receive enough submissions to make the contest viable. To those of you who did submit to the contest; your manuscript will now be considered for publication.

Why are people willing to spend a fortune on a device (ipod, kindle, etc.) but refuse to spend anything on content (music, ebooks, etc.)?

There are many potential answers.

1. Gadgets are marketed more effectively.
2. Intellectual property can be shared more easily. You could copy a song for a friend but you couldn’t copy a computer.
3. A gadget is reusable until it breaks but a book, or even a song, has a much more limited life.
4. Content is (sometimes) improperly priced so it becomes more convenient to download than to purchase.

These are just the top four answers that come to mind after thinking about it after I posed the question on Thursday night. What lessons can content producers and content providers learn from those answers? The music industry and the movie industry has already gone through a lot of what the publishing industry is facing and I think the experience of the music industry is especially relevant to books so I will focus my attention on the lessons learned from the mp3 revolution.

Let’s look at each answer respectively and see how it relates to ebooks.

1. Gadgets are marketed more effectively.
   1. For two reasons I believe this will always be the case. First of all there are fewer platforms (gadgets) than there will be content. Second of all, gadgets cost a lot more so there is a lot more capital available for advertising. Consider the average cost of an ipod right now. You could pay as little as $62.99 for an ipod shuffle or as much as $395.99 for an ipod touch, putting the average cost at $229.49. What is the average cost of a book? ~$15.00? Now I know what you are thinking, what are the margins for an ipod compared with a book. I thought about going into a long, drawn out discussion about the margins of a book, but suffice it to say; margins are measured in percentages and are likely ~40% for both the book and the ipod (for the sake of argument, though book margins are far from universal and Apple generally achieves higher than average margins on their products.) When you consider that Apple has sold approximately 250 million ipods and 40 million iphones, you can imagine a substantial marketing budget. So for those two reasons, gadgets will always be marketed more effectively than the content they deliver. But keep in mind, when evading a bear you don’t have to outrun the beast, only the person beside you.
2. Intellectual property can be shared more easily. You could copy a song for a friend but you couldn’t copy a computer.
3. A gadget is reusable until it breaks but a book, or even a song, has a much more limited life.
   1. I think the answer for number 2 and for number 3 is the same, so I will address them both simultaneously. There isn’t much anyone can do about this, you can go down the DRM path, but Orwellian DRM protection will result in a backlash. Instead of fighting with your potential customers, authors and publishers need to produce the highest quality story, as well as story-telling, editing, formatting, and marketing of their content. If you can’t convince people to buy your product (and you’ve priced it properly–that is an important caveat) then that’s your fault, not theirs.
4. Content is (sometimes) improperly priced so it becomes more convenient to download than to purchase.
   1. This is a job for publishers, and I think we have two choices: change our prices or change how the public view our prices. When someone goes to Amazon.ca and purchases an ebook for $10.00–actually, I just tried to do that right now. You can’t buy an ebook from amazon.ca, you have to visit amazon.com for the “Kindle Books” section. In any event, if someone goes to amazon.com and buys an ebook for $10.00 many of them believe that all of it goes directly into the publisher’s pocket. Whose fault is that? If a publisher can’t explain their prices…I think you know where I am going with this. If a publisher can’t convey why they charge what they charge then the prices need to reflect that inability. Another problem with convenience and prices: there isn’t an itunes for ebooks…yet.

In conclusion, I think the lessons we publishers need to learn from the lessons of digital music and digital movies are:

1. Quality. Start with the best product possible.
2. Transparency. Today customers can interact with companies much more easily than they ever have before, and if you choose not to join in these discussion, your customers will think you are hiding something.
3. Marketing. Market your quality product. This is a whole discussion in and of itself, especially for a small press in Canada.
4. Availability. Make your product available to as many people as possible.

Please, join in the discussion, we welcome your comments. Thanks for reading.

Here is a transcript of my speech:

How many manuscripts get accepted each year? I wasn’t able to find a definitive answer from an irreproachable source, but a few places seemed to agree that about two percent of submitted manuscripts are published. I suggested this number to my fellow panelists and they agreed that figure sounded a bit optimistic. So they are probably right, but let’s be optimistic today.

Each year approximately ten thousand books are published each year. If this two percent figure is correct, that would mean that five hundred thousand manuscripts are submitted every year in Canada alone. With the median earnings of authors and writers sitting at almost $25,000—$2,000 lower than the national median—I think it is fair to place writing ambitions among the most competitive fields for the lowest pay.

Today I want to talk about refining your manuscript so you get the upper hand on the other near half-million manuscripts that will be submitted alongside your own. While I can’t promise a magic formula that will guarantee publication, I can at least place some meaningful questions in front of you. The first of which: is my manuscript in the top two percent of work submitted this year? If the answer is a definite yes, then you can doze off until Sarah from Freehand Books speaks after me. If the answer is no or maybe, then let’s see where this questioning gets us.

I believe competition is a good thing. I think it tests and refines our capabilities. However, competition is a complex beast and it doesn’t always make things better. For instance, I think it is a great mechanism for sports but perhaps not so great for politics. In ninety-five years the world record for the one hundred metre sprint has been sped up by more than one second. In a sport decided by hundreds of a second, that improvement is more than impressive. The forty-fourth Super Bowl will take place tomorrow afternoon, wouldn’t it be interesting to see the fastest runner from tomorrow’s game race the fastest runner from the first Super Bowl forty-four years ago?

Whether or not competition has made literature better or worse is an interesting question, but—I think— immaterial to today’s discussion. If submitting a manuscript became twice as competitive, would you still work on and submit your work to publishers? I think so. In fact, I would be interested to know how many writers consider how competitive publishing is before they submit. In any event, today I would like to talk to you about three things: first—the elements of a strong manuscript, second—an often overlooked step in preparing your work for submission, and third—my personal advice to making your manuscript stand out against the crowd.

There are many things that make a manuscript strong, but today I want to focus on four elements of a great manuscript.

Let’s start with the most important part of a manuscript. Impeccable story-telling. I wish there were a clearer, more definitive word I could have used to describe story-telling, but I’m afraid the most essential element of a great manuscript is also the most enigmatic. While there are no magic tricks to getting published that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be magic in your manuscript.

Once you have an impeccably-told story, the second most important aspect of your manuscript is the strength of the story itself. This might seem counter-intuitive, but I believe that excellent story-telling can save a mediocre story just as an excellent melody can save mediocre song-lyrics. Some—but not many—stories write themselves: the story is so good that it doesn’t matter how you tell it. For most stories, however, it is how you tell the story that engages the reader more than what you tell them.

The third aspect of a great manuscript is credibility. It might seem like a small thing, and I wouldn’t worry about it a great deal in first or second drafts, but making your manuscript believable—passing the BS sniff test—is a refinement with large dividends. Keep in mind how incredulous submission editors must be after reading hundreds of manuscripts each year. Even a great story with impeccable story-telling could be sunk by a jaded submission editor who didn’t believe that part about all-you-can-eat buffets in the American Civil War. So make your story believable, even to manuscript-worn submission editors and your readers will eat up every word you write.

The fourth attribute of a complete and competitive manuscript is a clear and direct message. A full-length novel starts at about fifty thousand words. You might think, “Those are a lot of words, who cares if I waste a couple here and there?” You could be right, perhaps a few wasted words aren’t that important, but in a field as competitive as book publishing, every word matters. By the time your manuscript gets to the editor, every word that she removes from your work should cut you deep into your heart, because you already considered cutting that word, but kept it because you were certain it was essential to the work.

Which brings me to my next point about manuscript preparation. Everyone has a different process while preparing their manuscript—some people use an outline, others wing it—but ultimately, every writer ends up in a similar spot: after many hours of writing, editing, probably quite a bit of coffee and hopefully not too much wine, the writer has progressed a manuscript as far as they can by themselves. What do they do next? Submit it to a publisher and watch the six-digit offers pour in? While that would be nice, perhaps I can suggest one more step before sending your work into the world.

Now, I’m not sure how you view the difference between preparing your work in the comfort and privacy of your own home and sending it to publisher for consideration, but I look at it as the difference between singing in the shower and auditioning for Canadian Idol. You might be an excellent shower-singer, but Simon Cowell might disagree. This is what makes writers among the bravest artists out there.

So what do I propose before you submit your work? Let’s say you’ve completed a manuscript. After almost a dozen rounds of revisions, you’ve taken the work as far as you can. Should you submit it? Allow me to suggest one more step: find someone with a critical eye and an honest tongue and do whatever it takes to get them to rip your work to pieces. I know this may sound frightening, but, when you think about it, what is the worst thing someone can say about your writing? If they say, “I hated it. Your book is the biggest piece of garbage I have ever read.” You can at least ask “why?” But if they say, “I loved it, it was perfect, I wouldn’t change a word.” Where do you go from there? What changes can you make?

To their credit, they think that’s what you want to hear and they don’t want to hurt your feelings. They don’t realize they are telling you the worst thing they could, they think it is the kindest thing they could tell you.

In searching for the right critical eye and honest tongue, you might be lucky enough to have a friend who will give you the opinion your work needs for the price of a cup of coffee and an hour of conversation. If you are not so fortunate, you have three options: hire an editor, join a critiquing group, or schedule an appointment with a writer in residence.

Should you choose to hire an editor, I would start with local writers, check their websites and see if they offer editing services. The bonus with published, local authors is they could recommend your manuscript to their publisher if they like your work. If you can’t find a local author to edit your work, I would try the Editor’s Association of Canada—their website is www.editors.ca –they have a section of their site that will refer you to qualified editors.

If you prefer the critiquing group, there are a number of options. Continuing Education through the U of C offers such a group, and the Writers Guild of Alberta has a critique group that meets on the first and third Thursday of each month at 7:00-9:00 PM at the Indigo of Signal Hill.

An often overlooked resource, however, is an appointment with a writer in residence. There are four writer in residence programs in Calgary and you can usually get a session free of charge. The U of C, the Calgary Public Library, the Alexandria Writing Centre, and the Canadian Author’s Association of Alberta, all offer a writer in residence program with excellent, and highly qualified writers ready and waiting to review a chapter or two of your work and then point you in the right direction.

Whichever path you choose, once you feel you’ve taken your manuscript as far as you can by yourself, you need to start looking for people who will offer you constructive criticism on your work. As much as you may want reassurance that what you’ve written is good, consider the effort involved and the value of someone telling you how they believe your story could be better.

If you’ll permit me, I’d like to close with four of my own bits of advice that I believe will make your manuscript better.

1) Avoid unnecessary and inaccurate words.

1. If you choose to employ the word “random”, I implore you to ask yourself two questions: is the action you are describing truly random? If so, is there no better word—perhaps one that is less abused—that you could use? Say, for instance, you were describing the decision making process of one of your characters, wouldn’t “thoughtless” or “mindless” be more meaningful and show greater effort to your reader than “random”?
2. And what about the word “literally”? Is your writing so unclear that you must indicate when you are being literal and when you are being figurative or metaphorical? Having read many submissions, I think the difference is usually quite clearly defined. So, if your intentions are clear—and this goes for more than just the word “literally”—then trust your reader to understand you. I find that the word “literally” is usually used as a false emphasis. For example, “He literally ate him alive right there on the salesroom floor!” When the actually events would be described as, “He literally yelled at him for a while right there on the salesroom floor!”

2)Don’t take shortcuts: if you can’t describe it, either rewrite it until you can or scrap it.

3)Don’t say in ten words what you could have said in five.

1. For instance, “incredibly interesting” could be “enthralling”
2. “Very dangerous” could be “treacherous”.

4)Get your best work in early.

1. We spoke earlier about competition, not only is your manuscript competing with hundreds of thousands of other manuscripts, your book will compete with millions of hours of television, movies, sports games, video games, board games, performing arts, social outings, and many more forms of entertainment which have become more accessible and appealing over the years—almost all of them are easier in every way than reading a book.
   We, as publishers and authors, need to give our readers a reason to pick up and keep reading a book. We fight against an alluring and effortless tide. Books need to be rewarding and entertaining, while TV only needs to be present.
   I believe you need to reward your reader quickly. Make them glad they picked up your book in the first ten pages—the first page if you are able. One of the best examples of rewarding your readers early is Wayson Choy’s, the Jade Peony. In it, Mr. Choy quickly brings the reader deep into his literary world and enchants them with perfectly told tales.

In conclusion, there are many aspects of a great manuscript, but if I could leave you with one thought, it would be: once you’ve brought your manuscript as far as you can, find a qualified reader who will tear your work apart. Because after you’ve rebuilt the story, it will be much stronger than it was before and ready to compete with the best stories out there.

John Ballem and Recliner Books entered into a publishing agreement for Mr. Ballem’s thirteenth novel in mid-December last year. We at Recliner Books were very sad to learn of his passing on January 9, 2010 and it is with great solemnity and respect that we will continue work on the manuscript which will be published April 1, 2010. The novel will be titled Murder on the Bow and, like many of his novels, is set in Calgary.

As more information becomes available I will post it on this website.

For those of you who didn’t know John, here is an article from the Globe and Mail: Calgary lawyer wrote mysteries and books about oil and gas

In my opinion, this kind of writing is fine for first and second drafts, it is a scenic placeholder left there with the intention of describing the character and setting in greater detail.

However, if this kind of writing remains through all of the drafts until your manuscript reaches my desk, this sentence structure will leap off the page and poke me in the eye. That is not to say it will injure your reader in parallel fashion, because this is one of my pet peeves, but it will do your reader (and your story) a great injustice.

Because what does a handsome man look like? What makes an expensive suit, other than the price tag? What does an expensive suit feel like, what fabric was used, what pattern, how does it sit on your character’s body? What makes that couch so damn comfortable? Would I find it comfortable or just the handsome man sitting on it?

See what kind of problems can arise when scenic placeholders survive all the way to your (beloved) reader? It leaves them with more questions than answers.

In my view, the purpose of literature is to communicate feelings, situations, and experiences; not raise trivial questions about itself.