What Cupcake Wars Taught Me About Getting Published

I am a self-professed Cupcake Wars junkie. I love the inventive combinations: applesauce cake with cinnamon goat cheese frosting, double-shot mocha latte with espresso cream filling and chocolate frosting, salted caramel cake with pecan coconut brittle crumble and caramel Swiss buttercream. I would happily devour them all.

Each show, for those unfamiliar, begins with four bakers. After two elimination rounds, two finalists duke it out in a bake-off that requires them to produce 1,000 cupcakes in 90 minutes and shelve them on a display of their design, executed by one of two bearded, flannel-clad carpenters. They also get four baking assistants.

When the winner is announced, the audience is generally treated to a tearful acceptance speech. "I've worked so hard to get here. It's so nice to have that recognized."

Right. And what about the other contestants? Did they not work hard, too? Could we not acknowledge that in some way?

Writers are in constant competition. I'm not talking here about actual writing competitions. I'm talking about the competition for agents, editors, reviews, publicity budgets, shelf space, and sales. 

Most of us are aware that we're competing for agents and editors, but might not be aware that, once we have representation and a signed contract, we're in competition for the rest. There are elimination rounds, and most of us won't win. In publishing, winning means national advertising, a book tour, a major online publicity campaign, lots of social media outreach, a floor display, and wide galley distribution. By your publisher. 

The non-winners must do our own publicity and, no matter how hard an author promotes her own work, very few can compete with the marketing muscle of a major publisher.

It's usually clear long before the judges decide, who’s going to win Cupcake Wars. It’s less clear which book will be chosen as the winner of a big publicity campaign. Obviously, one that is expected to earn a big return, but which one's that? Not even publishers know for certain. 

What is certain is that a quiet book without an obvious “commercial hook” doesn’t necessarily take less time or thought to write than one with the potential to be an international best seller. Most authors bring their best game to every book: an original combination of ingredients, quality workmanship, a few fanciful twists, reduced fat... They work very hard and give it their all.

Clearly, not everyone can be declared the winner in Cupcake Wars, nor in publishing. There is only so much space on the dwindling supply of bookshelves, only so many readers divided by the dollars they’re willing to spend, divided by the hours they’ll devote to reading. 

Here’s what watching Cupcake Wars has taught me: Acknowledge the journey. To all you writers, bakers, and everyone else out there who’s worked hard to deliver a great product and wasn’t declared a “winner.” Congratulations on a job well done. Thank you for your effort, time, and dedication. You are a winner.

Is the Right Writer Writing?

(This post was originally published on the blog Live to Write, Write to Live.)

I tell people it took me between two and fifty years to write my first book, Her Sister's Shadow. The manuscript itself took two years, but I’d been gathering stories and getting to know my characters (the book was inspired by my mother and her sisters) for most of my life. What might it take to drive sisters apart, I mused, as I listened for years my mother talk about her childhood on the South Shore of Boston, in a weather-shingled house overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. And what might it take to bring them back together? Her Sister’s Shadow was published in 2011.

Then it was time to write another manuscript. What, I wondered, as I sat, fingers tensed, staring at a blank computer screen, could I write about? “You’ve used up every one of your good stories,” I heard myself say. “You’ve exploited every single foible a character could possibly possess and exhausted every topic of interest to anyone. (And all the good lines, too.) And, by the way, you don’t have another fifty years to come up with more.”

                         

My fingers began to cramp; the page remained blank. “It was all a big mistake, that first novel. Eventually someone will figure that out. Not a chance you can write another one.”                                                                                          

Who Asked You, Anyway?

This wasn’t writer’s b--ck (that which must not be named). It was that the wrong writer was trying to write the first draft. Every author needs an internal editor. This persona is as important to subsequent drafts as a copy editor is to the final one. Just don’t let her “help” with the first draft. They say that writing is revising. But first you’ve got to get something down on paper. It’s a bitch to revise a blank page.

Have Fun for Heaven’s Sake

For the first draft, you need to employ your generative side. Invite your kid-self to climb up on your lap and bang away at the keys. Give her plain white paper and colored markers and watch her mind-map her way to a plot. Supply her with colored index cards and see how quickly scenes present themselves. (Pink for romance, green for adventure, blue for drama. Why not?)

                 

Strew your desktop and office with toys, open the windows and listen to birds, take her for a walk down a city street or out into nature (maybe in the rain, why not!) and see what she sees, take her out for ice cream or to a movie, and listen to what she hears. Let her mind roam free. Start transcribing.

Later you will be grateful when that voice says, “That “fabulous” metaphor that you forced into a sentence on page 212, and then shaped into that really awkward scene? Take it out. It doesn’t work. Yes, the whole thing. Out. It. Doesn’t. Work. (Any more than Aunt Betty’s old armoire belongs in the dining room, where it’s blocking half of one window, by the way. Get rid of that, too, while you’re at it.”)

But for now, ignore her. Instead, sail blissfully through your first draft, your mind as open as a summer day. Be a kid, have fun. There’ll be plenty of time to grow up later.

Katharine Britton’s second novel, Little Island, came out in 2013. She is having fun with her third. Visit her website www.katharinebritton.com

Turning Words into Conversations

All my life I’ve enjoyed stringing words together and watching what appears on the page. While, initially, the writing process is solitary, at some point you bring in readers. Some authors do this early on: members of their writing groups read ten to fifteen pages every few weeks throughout the gestation period. Others, like me, wait until the whole manuscript is finished before handing it off to a few trusted readers. We then wait, anxiously, for their feedback. It’s not unlike sending your child off to school for the first time. Will others like her? Will he behave? Is she as delightful and precocious as I think? (Yes, yes, and no.)

You ask for feedback and, guess what? Your readers give it. Thus begins the first of many conversations you, the author, will have about your manuscript. A manuscript that is no longer entirely yours once you open the door and invite others in. “I liked this part.” “I found this part (the same part) kind of boring.” “Loved the protagonist.” “I just couldn’t relate to the protagonist.”

And so you turn to the solitary task of revising, but the writing feels different now because others have read your words and been moved by them (for better or worse). A conversation that you previously had just with yourself now has other people listening in.

Then you send the manuscript to your agent (or an agent, or many agents) and the conversation grows. The agent sends it to an editor. The conversation grows even more. That editor buys the manuscript, and the conversation grows again, and now it’s no longer just about the story. It’s about marketing and cover art and blurbs and reviews and marketing.

Soon publicists become involved and managing editors and copy editors. And the marketing department is still weighing in via your editor. And then you’re talking to booksellers and bloggers and media people. Once the book is published you again hear from readers. These are not all family and friends (although some, maybe a lot, will be). They won’t all like your book. But, if you’re hearing from them, through email or reviews or in person, they were moved by your words and are now part of the conversation.

A whole little industry evolves around your manuscript. A manuscript that started with you, alone at your desk, coming up with an idea, writing down that first word, and then the 80,000 or so that followed.

Writing is a kind of alchemy. Authors assemble letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs… And, in doing so, create emotion and conversation. What an amazing process that I’m blessed to be part of.

With that, I hope you’ll leave a comment about this post, or books that moved you to contact an author or write a review, or any other topic that seems relevant.

When Writing is Like Gardening

Each spring in Vermont I shuttle from garden center to garden center, buying plants to fill what appear to be holes in my garden. I fill pots and window boxes with Moo-Do and pile in as much color as possible. (Impatiens do the trick with, really, very little effort on my part.) Gerananium, angelonia, lavender... go into pots. Lettuce, basil, and bean seeds land, inexpertly, in four, 3X3 foot raised beds. Cherry tomatoes live in large pots on the patio. I water, fertilize, and anticipate. 

For weeks, it seems, not much happens. Then I forget to check on things for a few days and when I go back, those holes in the garden turn out to have been the spaces the plants needed when they grew to full size. Lilies now overshadow iris, echinacea fight for space and light, the phlox has marched right over the sedum, and monarda has insinuated itself everywhere. Out in the vegetable patch, the basil has gone to seed, and the deer ate half the lettuce. Okay, so maybe my absence was slightly longer than a few days, but still. 

Novels, if you leave them alone for too long, will also run amok. When life first calls me away from a new manuscript I'm working on, I experience acute separation anxiety. I long for those relationships I've come to rely on and the characters who've kept me company for months. Plots often unfold as I go along, so writing a novel engenders almost as much eager anticipation as reading one. What will he say the next time they meet? When will she discover the girl's true identity? It's like a thirst for knowledge. 

By day three, my anxiety becomes nostalgia for friends fondly remembered. By day ten I have trouble recalling characters' names. By day fouteen I am afraid to go back. Much as I am when I haven't visited my garden in two weeks. (See note above.)

My initial reaction when faced with my garden in mid-July, after a two-week hiatus, if the weather has been (as it was this summer) very wet is panic. "This garden looks terrible!" I say to anyone who'll listen. "What was I thinking planting all those lilies?" Those lilies looked so petite and perky in June! They now bristle with unadorned stems, their foliage sags, spent blossoms litter the ground. "Off with their heads!" I want to start pulling plants immediately, despite the fact that it is 90 degrees and digging them up will, truly, leave some holes in my garden.

Gardening is a process. So is writing. It is a love of the process-as much as, or more than-the outcome, that gardeners and writers must learn to cultivate. There are days, even weeks, when my garden looks great. And days and weeks when it doesn't. The same is true with a new manuscript-or even one well into a fourth or fifth draft. Moderation is the key. Putting in too much material, too early, tempting as it is, isn't good in either medium. Impulsivity rarely pays off: whacking out huge sections of a book or garden now often leads to regret later. Better to pull weeds, edge, take notes, contemplate, watch, wait. Just don't leave it alone for too long.

Part II - The Road to Publication: Learning When to Breathe (without hyperventilating)

For much of my life, I heard stories from my mother about her family and their house on Boston’s South Shore. One story, about the death of one of her three sisters, caught and held my attention. Not wanting simply to retell my mother’s story, I began to write a novel about two estranged sisters who reunite in their childhood home. For this story my primary question was: What would drive sisters apart? And then, what might bring them back together? My theme was forgiveness. 

I hadn’t the slightest idea how to write a novel when I started (nor, by the way, do I have any sisters), but I wrote character studies, backstory, and dozens of disconnected scenes; I drew floor plans of the house and diagrams of the yard; I covered index cards with birthdates, anniversaries, and other important demographics. I was greedy and impatient. I wanted not only to write, but to publish, a novel. 

My characters talked quite freely, venting their resentments, explaining their side of the rift, detailing what they did, and did not, approve of in their sibling. And, would, if I did not visit them for long periods of time, turn those invectives on me. But, while my characters would talk and muse endlessly, what they would not do was get up off the couch and leave the house. I had reams of material, very little of it forward moving. It was not a cohesive whole. I was missing the plot. 

After a few years I lost faith, abandoned the project, sighed deeply, put the manuscript in a drawer, got married, built a house, pursued my career, bought a dog. But the story refused to lie dormant in that drawer. So when I had an opportunity to enroll in a Master’s program with a concentration in creative writing, I took it. Perhaps, I thought, someone will teach me how to write a novel. That was just over ten years ago. 

I took fiction, and wrote a story about a hairdresser. My professor asked if I’d ever been one. I have not. He said, “Write something else,” and gave me a B. I decided that I was not destined to be a fiction writer and took screenwriting, although I’d never read a screenplay and couldn’t name even one prominent screenwriter. Our assignment was to write a 120-page script. We had ten weeks. I thought immediately of my two sisters, languishing in the bottom drawer of my desk, searching for a reason to leave the house. Screenplays require action, dialogue, and a minimum of description. They have no vehicle for interior monologue. Just what my two chatty, thoughtful ladies, ensconced on the sofa, in their rambling childhood home, needed. My professor loved it. And I had uncovered my plot. 

Meanwhile, I had written another novel. When I thought the manuscript was ready, I sent it out to a half a dozen agents. One by one I filed their rejection letters (often hand-written on my query letter) took a deep breath, and sent the manuscript out to six more. One agent finally agreed to take me on. I reached for a paper bag into which I could breathe, so as not to pass out from hyperventilating. 

She started sending my manuscript out to editors at publishing houses, and I held my breath, awaiting their replies. They came in, rejections, five at a time, and my agent would send it out to another five. Twenty-five editors eventually rejected it. 

We were at around rejection number twenty-three when I completed HER SISTER’S SHADOW and sent it to my agent. The third editor who received it, liked it, but wanted the characters younger and one of them nicer. I took deep, centering breaths, made those revisions, and we had an offer. Again the hyperventilating. I'd done it!

The book sold reasonably well (the new phenomenal, says my editor), well enough that she wanted to see another. So I wrote one. Quickly, impatiently, greedily, confident that I now knew how, and sent it to my agent in February, my breath held, waiting for her glowing report. She finally read it in April, by which time I had nearly passed out. (See past blog entry, "Waiting.")

I exhaled, took a deep breath, and began the revisions she recommended. I made them at a dead sprint, breathing hard, not wanting to delay the process, and she sent it on to my editor. According to our contract, the editor had 30 days to read it. Again I waited, breath held. At day #29.5 she got back to us. "Liked it a lot," she said, but wanted me to tell the story from a different character's point-of-view. "Could you revise, say, the first 100 pages, and resubmit?" she asked.

“Sure,” I said, after a few calming breaths, “No problem.” The word submission, beginning to take on an altogether more sinister meaning.

I made the changes; she bought the book.

I am ecstatic. But, here's the thing, publishing a novel is like granting strangers custody of your child while you retain only visitation rights. With luck, your child's new custodians will be loving, but no one will ever love your book, or your characters, the way you do. 

So, if your dream is to publish a book, as mine was, then pursue that dream with gusto and prepare for a ride that is alternately exciting, frustrating, heady, and discouraging, and will, at times, take your breath away. Take the time, now, to appreciate your characters, while they are still all yours. Wake up each morning eager to see what pranks they've been up to overnight, and what new adventures they will take you on. Love the writing part and keep writing as you wait, patiently and without expectation, for agents and editors to get back to you. And, through it all, don't forget to breathe.

Writing: The Art of Learning When to Breathe

I like sentences. I like words. I have always liked stringing words into sentences, and then shuffling them around to see how the meaning changes. There is a spiritual component to writing. Stringing enough words together to create a novel that someone will want to buy is an act of faith. 

The English word "spirit" comes from the Latin spiritus, meaning "breath," and so I decided to subtitle this piece, The Art of Learning When to Breathe, because learning when to breathe was perhaps the most important spiritual lesson I have learned since pursuing a career in writing.

Anne Lindbergh describes the writing process so poetically in "Gift from the Sea." She says that when one sits down to write, one must wait to see what “chance treasures the easy unconscious rollers of the mind might toss up.” Neither the sea (nor the page) reward those “who are too anxious, too greedy, too impatient.” This is wise advice. Writing, perhaps particularly a novel because of its length and complexity, requires enormous patience and faith, many inhalations and exhalations.

Unlike Ms Lindbergh, who exhorts one not to dig, I feel one has to dig when writing a novel. Like an archaeologist, the writer must excavate the story, often buried beneath piles of rubble. First, the writer must uncover and identify the theme: What is this story about? What does it strive to say? The theme is like the crucible, the point of the writing crusade. It holds everything. Then, the writer has to identify where the story took place, who populated that place, and whose story it really is. Little by little, answers reveal themselves as the writer sifts through the sand: what happened in that place, on that particular day, to those particular people: the day of the story’s climax? What led up to it: the day the story really began?

The writer keeps digging, always asking, why, why, why? And then waiting patiently, with faith, for the answers. When they come, one writes and writes and hopes the pieces will fit together. They won’t. The writer then inserts that sensational snippet of conversation overheard one day in a diner, the odd outfit seen at an airport, hoping they will fit. They don’t. But the writer keeps digging and assembling, knowing that the fit is bad, because this is the first draft, and it is easier to revise 300 pages of ill-fitting dross than 300 blank ones.

After months, or years, the writer eventually types The End. They look very final, those two blunt words. The dock at the end of a long sea voyage that one is relieved to see, but also sorry, being somewhat nostalgic for the journey now ending.

But the journey is far from ending. One has only completed the first draft, after all, and must continue, with patience and faith and soft breaths, to blow away more silt from around the bricks and bones that one has uncovered in the rubble and assemble them into a cohesive whole, always patiently waiting to see what one has uncovered. It is a revelation. Writing can be supremely spiritual, but, as I look forward to the release of my second novel, I must say that publishing a novel feels, at times, more like running a steeplechase than engaging in a pilgrimage.

Next post: The Road to Publication: Trying Not to Hyperventilate

Waiting in Vermont

Writers do a lot of this. We wait for inspiration for stories and for characters' names. We wait for the perfect word, for word from the readers of our early drafts, from agents, editors, publicists, and events coordinators. We wait for cover art, galleys, and books, for reviews and profiles, for invitations from book clubs and from talk show hosts. We can wait a very long time for those.

And while we wait, we pretend we're not waiting and plant lettuce, and then we wait for the sun to come out, and then for the rain, and then again for the sun, so we can walk our dog, while we wait, impatiently, for the seeds to poke up through the soil. 

We wait for the dog to do her "business" and for other dogs to show up to play.

We wait for teaching jobs and freelance assignments and for the coffee to brew.

We wait for emails, phone calls, contracts, and for the contractor to start renovating our bathroom, so we can pretend we're busy and not waiting for emails and phone calls and inspiration.

And then, while our backs are turned, the lettuce seeds turn into pale green rows.

We watch our perennials broaden and wait for them to bloom, wishing each blossom would wait just a little longer before it died. We wait for the Farmer's Market to open. We wait, uneasily, for the season's first black flies.

We wait for local strawberries, tomatoes, basil, raspberries, blueberries, and corn. We harvest our lettuce while we wait, wishing that word from others and inspiration were as easy to come by.

That Second Manuscript

My first novel was published in June of 2011. I tell people it took between two and fifty years to write. The manuscript itself took two years, but I had been gestating the story for most of my life, as I listened to stories my mother told of growing up in a large family on the South Shore of Boston, in a weathered-shingled house overlooking a cove. I imagined what it would be like to have sisters, and then, what it might take to drive them apart and what might bring them back together. 

"Her Sister's Shadow" had deep roots and many branches: a mature tree, you might say, before it was reduced to pulp and sandwiched between two covers. I carried the story around with me for years, while I attempted to write it first as a novel (unsuccessfully, as I had characters but no plot) and then as a screenplay for a graduate program. (Screenplays are perfect vehicles for characters in search of a plot.) I loved my story, my characters, the setting... When it was being turned from a manuscript into novel, I loved the cover art and the revision process, and I have loved doing readings at bookstores and discussing my book with book clubs. 

And then it was time to start that second manuscript. 

What, I wondered, as I sat, pen in hand, staring at a blank sheet of paper, was left for me to write about? I had used up every one of the stories, character foibles, and interesting conversations I had heard or dreamed up over my lifetime, and I didn't have another fifty years to capture more. I have an agent and an editor who, while perhaps not begging for another novel, are hoping to see one. 

It turns out that writing a second novel is a bit like applying for your first real job. Not the job that your parents or friends helped you get, but the one you got all by yourself. 

My first job, which my father got for me, was as a collator at a printing company. Everyone in the office joked that I should have been paid by the mile, as my job often required me to walk around and around a table, collating pads of numbered invoices. I was thirteen. (Very Dickensian, no?) At fifteen, I took myself down to a local diner and applied to be a waitress. I was apprehensive, but knew (because I'd done it before) that I could show-up on time and do the work required. They hired me. 

I took the same approach with my second manuscript: I showed-up, on time, every day, and did the work required. I figured out where the story was set, who was involved, what they wanted, and what or who was standing in their way. It took most of a year, but I now have a second manuscript. It's still in draft form, but I think it just might take root. 

So, be bold, show up on time, and do what's required.

Sisters and Writing What You Know

(I wrote this for a guest spot on Teresasreadingcorner blog.) 

Readers often assume that novels are, at least in part, autobiographical, perhaps because writing instructors through the ages have compelled writers to “write what they know,” i.e., their own lives. I once wrote a short story about a hairdresser. My professor asked me if I’d ever been one. I have not. “Write about something else,” he snapped. While I’ve never been a hairdresser, I’ve certainly been to a hairdresser⎯on more than one occasion. I decided that qualified and wrote the story. I thought it came out pretty well. Now I have written a novel about sisters. Ask me if I have sisters. I do not. Not even one. 

So why did I choose to write about sisters when I don’t have one? Because the subject interests me. I am a sister (I have a brother) and I know lots of women who have them. My mother had three (and two brothers). It was her relationship with her youngest sister (younger by sixteen years) that served as the basis for the main characters in my novel. At times my mother and aunt seemed like the most intimate of friends, at other times, because of the age difference, almost like mother and daughter. There were also times when they seemed like rivals, although I wasn’t clear what the rivalry was about. Watching them, I began to wonder what it might take to drive sisters apart (my characters have been estranged for forty years) and what it might take to bring them back together. 

Sisters have a shared childhood history, even when their childhoods (as was the case for my aunt and mother) aren’t shared. This shared history forges a bond stronger than even the closest friendship. As one friend (who has a sister) told me, “your sister knows about your childhood traumas better than anyone.” But, I argued, you can say that about all siblings. She thought a moment and said, “With sisters there’s more competition.” 

Ah, competition. This had the ring of truth to it. This is what I saw between my mother and aunt. I felt a certain amount of competition with my brother, but he was bigger, older and, well, a boy; we were on different journeys. Same sex siblings are on the same journey. I think my aunt chose to give up rather than compete with my mother, but I think the challenge was always there, and I’m not sure she was always happy with her decision. 

Writers don’t have to stick to “what they know,” because writers draw their material, not only from observation, but also from imagination and investigation. I got to observe, investigate, and imagine what it’s like to have a sister. If you read HER SISTER’S SHADOW, please leave a comment below, or email me at Katharine@katharinebritton.com and let me know if I got it right.