Marion Roach Smith

How did you become a writer? My family is crazy with writers. My father was a sportswriter. My mother was the society editor of a newspaper. They actually met in the press box of a New York racetrack and, not surprisingly, gave birth to two writers, my sister and me. I am married to the editor of a newspaper.

Right out of college, I got a job as a copyboy at The New York Times. They had yet to transition to the word “copygirl.” Copyboy jobs were entry-level jobs that are now gone for the most part, and involved running (in heels) from desk to desk, carrying copy until 2:45 AM.

Eventually, I wrote a piece that appeared in The New York Times Magazine. I was 26. The piece was the first, first-person account of Alzheimer’s disease, appearing at a time when nearly no one --- including the editor to whom I first pitched it -- had heard of the illness. My mother was the patient. She was 51 and was losing her mind in handfuls.

The story caused an enormous stir. Within the first week alone, I ended up on the Today show, got an agent, was offered a book contract, and received thousands of letters from families who had no idea that others were suffering as they were.

It was an extraordinary response, and one that taught me the power of a fine magazine and what it can do toward social change.

Name your writing influences. As a kid I read Mad magazine and Emily Dickinson in pretty much equal measure, lots of novels, and The New Yorker. I think what that says is that I like to read over my head. I still do, right now reading The Marriage Plot, the most recent novel by Jeffrey Eugenidies. He’s much smarter than I am, but utterly accessible.

I teach writing, and tell my students to read reviews in good newspapers. Book reviews will lift you off the mere plot and help you think about what books are about. Maybe everybody but me knows this, but I find myself amazed pretty much daily at what I learn about life, dilemmas and good old-fashioned wonder from a well done New York Times theater review. I read them for plays I know I will never see. They are an education in thinking.

Where and when do you write? Early in the morning, as soon as the family is off for the day, and while they are asleep on weekend mornings is my best time to write. We live in an old barn that was converted into a house. My office is up at the peak in the roof. It’s my very own place. It wasn’t always like this. It took me a long time to get here, I promise, but I love it every time I get to come through that door to my office. 

Writers must be able to write wherever they are, whenever they can. My writing life is positively luxurious compared to what it once was.

“You’ve you got earn the right to write,” is a phrase I sometimes tell my students, and what I mean is you cannot hold your family or friends hostage by quitting your job and demanding to be allowed to write. Some of my students only have 45 minutes each day on the bus to write. They write. Nearly everyone in my classes has other jobs.

I encourage them to find one time, every day to write.

What are you working on now? I’m looking for a new book. It will be my fifth. In the search, I’m seeing everyone I can, asking them what they are thinking about, getting myself into the bowels of the local historical society and library, reading, reading, reading, going into archives and looking at photographs, watching lots of movies, catching up on contemporary fiction, in all, feeding my head.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? There is no such thing, despite being immortalized in story, no fewer than 33 movies, and as the threat lurking behind every time-sucking exercise and writing prompt. And if you don’t have writer’s block from prompts and exercises, you will. Give them up, do some research when you don’t know what to write next, and write.  

The inability to move forward melts when you open a reference book. Don’t believe me? Veteran’s Day is a yearly event, and I’ve never met anyone who does not have some response to war. You could write up yours for your local newspaper, or local radio station. Begin by looking up “courage,” “valor,” or “veteran” in the dictionary; read quotes on it in Bartlett’s, or paw through Roget’s Thesaurus, and the piece will split wide open.

Determined to get that letter to your daughter finished this year in time for her birthday, or that anniversary gift written for your spouse? Both are great intents. So get out the family photo album, plant it on your desk, and use it like the reference book it is. Literally refer to it, and write about what you see.

Other, deeply personal books work as well, including diaries, recipe files, and, of course, school yearbooks.

Research is also other people, since no one invested in your success will permit you to not write. For this, I have Margaret, my older sister. Both writers, neither one of us lets the other stay blocked for more than a few moments.

What’s your advice to new writers? Be hospitable to the work. It’s harder than it sounds. Don’t do your writing at the same place you do your taxes. Carry a notebook. Keep an index card on you at all times. Write things down right after they happen, and then think about what took place.

Read. Read. Read.

Write with intent. It’s a phrase I use all the time. If you want to write an essay for public radio, study the form, pick a date some months from now, work on your tale, rewrite it dozens of times, and submit it on time.

Avoid the temptation to use writing prompts and exercises. Instead, write with intent – a letter home, the biography of your marriage as a gift for your spouse, an essay for your child’s birthday, a personal tale for NPR, an op-ed for your local newspaper. Stop practicing.

Write.

We’re waiting to read you.

BIO: I am a writer, teacher and community volunteer. The author of four books, I most recently published The Memoir Project, A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text on Writing & Life (Grand Central, 2011). I worked for The New York Times and have been a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. My magazine publications include The New York Times Magazine, Prevention, The Daily News, Vogue, Newsday, Good Housekeeping, Discover, and Martha Stewart Living. Since 1998, I have taught classes in writing memoir. You can read more at www.marionroach.com. 

Bill Walsh

How did you become a writer? I'm a newspaper journalist from way back, including a brief stint as a reporter, but I became an author through my career as an editor, with an assist from the Web. In 1993, when nobody had ever heard of the Web, I met my future wife talking about tennis on an online service called Prodigy. A couple of years later, when we got these newfangled "Internet" accounts, we decided to try our hand at creating Web sites, and she called dibs on tennis. So I had to come up with something, and I thought about the style notes I was always crafting -- for the desk I was running then, at the Washington Times, and even a decade earlier at my college paper in Tucson. So I started the Crusty Old Slot Man's Copy-Editing Peeve Page, which became The Slot, and from the get-go my goal for the Web site was to get a book deal. I came very close to signing with a book "packager" -- not vanity publishing or self-publishing, but not quite traditional publishing either -- but stopped myself and thought, no, if I can do it this way, I can do it the right way. So I bought a directory of literary agents and I found a good one and she found some interest, and I distilled a decade or two of idiosyncratic rants on usage and style into the raw material for "Lapsing Into a Comma."

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). There must be a genetic component to my writing. My father's father, who died long before I was born, was a sportswriter in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, and my dad, though he never went to college, was an expert speller and a big word guy. Maybe it's the Irish in us. My mom has a way with words herself. My two younger brothers went into journalism -- not only journalism, but copy editing. I set a bad example. The youngest, Kenneth, is a prolific blogger who just wrote a collection of memoir-ish essays. He'll be outselling me in no time. The middle brother, Terence, is very talented as well: He regularly produces bright, thoughtful columns explaining the editing process to readers of his newspaper, and I hope he'll try his hand at something bigger.

My freshman-English professor at the University of Arizona -- Richard Ames, who was visiting from the University of Wyoming -- was a big influence. I've always had a flair for writing, but up till then I tended toward the showoff-y, throwing in big words whenever I could, and he taught me the value of simplicity. I'm not sure I have any particular influences among big-time writers, but I draw inspiration from virtually every book I read. Bill Bryson's travel books are high on my list, for the deftly wielded humor and the attitude. Nicholson Baker, especially "The Mezzanine" and "Room Temperature," for the detail. I delved into the world of John Updike, Baker's idol, relatively late in life, but the "Rabbit" series blew me away. As a writer, I look at those books the same way I look at Roger Federer matches from my club-level perspective as a tennis player. As in: Yeah, there's something I'll never be able to come close to doing.

When and where do you write? When I have writing to do, I set the alarm clock. I don't have the luxury of being a full-time writer, but I do have the luxury of a day job that takes place at night. So instead of getting up at 10 and puttering about until I hop on my bike to head to work at 2 or 2:30, I get up at 8 and go downstairs to my desk (my office is technically a dining room, but we're not the dining-room types) and try, try, try to do one or two or six hours of typing.

What are you working on now?  I just finished my third book, which I've titled "Yes, I Could Care Less," and so I'm back to sleeping in for now. I'm not sure there's another language-usage book in me, but I've said that before, so who knows? I do have sort of half a manuscript in an altogether different genre sitting around, about my teenage flirtation with boxing, and I do hope to flesh that out and shop it around someday.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I'm not sure I've ever suffered from writer's block in the traditional sense, unless you could call the drastic drop in my blogging output a huge example of it. For better or worse, I write on my own terms, and I'm blaming Twitter for the tragic decline in my attention span. What I did suffer from a lot in the past year was organizational block. I had snippets that needed transitions, and Part B didn't really fit between Parts A and C, and so the final two months or so before my manuscript deadline were like doing a huge jigsaw puzzle. It's the sort of thing where the answer seems obvious once you've found it, but the finding part is just a nightmare.

What’s your advice to new writers? New writers would do well to remember something I need to keep reminding myself: You can do whatever you want. There are traditional forms and structures and genres and outlets that you really should learn and know and prove a certain competence with, but beyond that the really good stuff is often in newly invented forms and structures and genres, or strange interweavings of the old ones. If I may use a tennis analogy, which I do way too often, I think back to hearing good ol' Stan Smith trying his hand at color commentary in the late 1980s, doing his monotone impersonation of the monotone sportscaster he assumed he was supposed to be. Just painful. And then I think of his fellow ex-jocks Mary Carillo and John McEnroe and, for one magical night in the U.S. Open booth, Andre Agassi -- how Mary and John and Andre mastered the art of just being themselves. You don't need to be a tennis fan to get that point: Be good, but be yourself.

Bio: Bill Walsh is a copy editor at The Washington Post and a 30-year veteran of newspaper journalism. After graduating from the University of Arizona journalism program in 1984, he worked as a reporter, copy editor and page designer at the Phoenix Gazette and as a copy editor and occasional page designer at the Washington Times. In 1997 he joined the Post, where he started as a page designer and copy editor and has held various copy-chief positions. He has written three books on language: "Lapsing Into a Comma" (2000), "The Elephants of Style" (2004) and "Yes, I Could Care Less" (coming soon). He has run The Slot: A Spot for Copy Editors, www.theslot.com, on the Web since 1995 and offers 140-characters-or-less usage commentary on Twitter as @TheSlot. He lives in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with his wife, Jacqueline Dupree.

Bob Tzudiker

How did you become a writer? Pure carelessness and a fear of ending up working with hot tar (my nightmare career would be in roofing). I started as an actor, but always suspected I should be writing. I successfully procrastinated for some years, then started writing plays at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, LA. My future wife introduced me to an informal writing group. We teamed up shortly after. Her desire to finish things combined with my love for starting them turned out to be a nice combination.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Sophocles, Montaigne, Saki and Joseph Heller. Oh, and Mr. Clark in tenth grade at Derryfield School in NH was a vicious critic of paragraph structure. He thought me talentless, which I thought rude.

When and where do you write? I work in a home office – a converted garage space in the Hollywood Hills with an excellent view of hummingbirds and squirrels. I’m in there almost all day.  I used to be most productive in the morning, after a walk and breakfast. But that golden time seems to have shifted to the late afternoon.

What are you working on now? I’m working on a novel and a screenplay idea. Novels have more words than screenplays, I’ve discovered.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? It took me quite a while to write this sentence. Yes, I have had terrible times facing writing, and even backed away from it for extended periods. But I always assumed I would return.

What’s your advice to new writers? Writing requires nothing but time and a willingness to feel like a fool for much of that time. You know those nameless monsters in horror films? They’re hiding behind your screen and you’d better type words over them or they’ll come out and get you. If that image doesn’t help you, I can supply others. Use every possible trick and strategy to get out of your own way and write.

Bio: I moved around a lot as a child, spending no more than two years per school in Boston, Germany, France, New Hampshire and northern Virginia. I got a liberal arts BA from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. I worked as an actor in summer stock, New York, Santa Fe and Los Angeles. After I teamed up with Noni White, we wrote a spec screenplay that got some attention. Our first feature pitch and studio job was “Newsies.” Just before they started shooting “Newsies” we sold that first spec script and then split our time between live-action features and animation. We contributed to “The Lion King,” shared screenplay credit on “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” Anastasia,” “Tarzan” (and its sequel) and “102 Dalmatians.” Twenty years after the film “Newsies” was released, it became a Broadway hit.

Kawasaki on Self-Publishing

Why did you decide to self-publish in the first place? A few years ago the publisher of Enchantment could not handle an order for 500 ebook versions. It passed the sale to Apple, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. These online resellers told the buyer that she had to purchase copies one at a time. She had 500 charges on her credit card. I couldn't believe that this sale was made this way. That was my tipping point. 

APE is your first collaboration. Why now? Up until now, I knew—or at least thought I knew—everything I needed for the books I wrote. APE was the first time that I simply did not have the requisite knowledge—specifically, the technical aspects of publishing a book. At least I knew what I didn't know!

What are the advantages and disadvantages of self-publishing? First, the disadvantages: you don't get a large advance, you have to find and compensate all the vendors that you need such as editors, designers, and marketers. A traditional publisher takes care of most of the details for you. The advantages of self-publishing—or what I call "artisanal publishing"--is that you can control the total process including the content, design, and marketing. This also means you bear greater responsibility, however. As an artisanal publisher, you also make more money per copies. For example, you can make as much as 70 percent of the selling price of ebooks. For example, on a $10 ebook, you could made $7. This is several times what you'd make on the same ebook through a traditional publisher.

What’s your advice to writers in search of editorial services like copy editing and book design? Your question pre-supposes the most important issue: that the author has decided to seek professional editing and design help. That's the hard step. The way to find competent people for these task is to ask around. You'll find that authors are happy to help you because they like to send business to freelancers--so that the freelancers will do better work for them. Some rough numbers for price: content editing  $1,000; copy editing $1,000; and cover design $1,000. We do have a way to help you find a good copy editor. Our copy editor created a copy editor's test that you can download from APEthebook.com.

What are the basics of cover design for ebook self-publishers? Some people believe that cover design for ebooks isn't important because people won't be picking up books in stores. Nothing is further from the truth. The context of the display of your ebook is that it's on a Amazon page next to ten other ebooks, and all the covers are the size of a postage stamp. People can't pick up the book, turn it over to read the back-cover copy or open the book to read the flap copy. This means your cover has to be so compelling that people will click on it. Thus, you need a simple design with a simple and big font that reduces well. 

What do you say to writers who complain that they have neither the ability nor the desire to promote themselves? Keep your day job or move back in with your parents. Artisanal publishing is hard: writing, publishing, and marketing. Each is necessary. And writing and marketing are done in parallel. Do you think that artisanal brewing, baking, or winemaking is easy? I don't. It's probably easier to work for Anheuser-Busch than starting your own brewery.

Talk about the various pricing strategies for ebooks. Current wisdom is $.99 for a first-time author of adult fiction, $2.99 for follow on books, and $9.99 for non-fiction. The thing is that we're making this up as we go along. The beauty, though, of artisanal publishing—particularly of ebooks—is that you can easily and quickly change your prices to test price points. Pricing is an art—or getting lucky. It's certainly not a science. 

Once and for all, please explain “platform” and “guerrilla marketing” and how to use them to sell books. The key to book marketing is realizing what people use as a proxy for reading a book to determine its quality. In the old days, the proxy was the imprint. If Random or Penguin published a book, it must be good. Today, few people know or care who the publisher is. Now people look at the number of stars of a book's rating and read a few reviews, or they depend on what people in their social ecosphere say about it. 

If you buy this theory, then building a platform is of paramount importance. With a platform, you can spread the word about your book and ask people to read it in advance in order to review it as soon as it ships. Members of your platform will also spread the word for you. Check this collection of reviews of APE: http://amzn.to/T37r5x. This wasn't an accident. 

What’s your outlook for the future of ebooks? For self-publishing? For traditional publishing? Ebooks are about 10% of total book sales today. I don't think printed books will go away in the next ten years or so—I can't imagine a satisfying ebook version of Annie Leibovitz photographs. However, I'll bet that in ten years, ebooks are 90% of total book sales. This is especially true if the FAA removes the restrictions about reading tablets while planes take off and land. 

There will still be a role for traditional publishers because celebrities don't have the time, expertise, or inclination to self-publish a book. Also, traditional publishers and Amazon Encore will use the artisanal-publishing community as a proving ground and then snap up the cream of the crop. 

Still, the fundamental challenge of traditional publishing is to add value in a world where an author can hire many of the same people to edit and design their book that a traditional publisher would have used; where authors don't need a distribution pipeline to get dead trees to bookstores because they can use CreateSpace and Lightning Source to print on demand and distribute; and where people don't care about a book's imprint as much as its star rating and reviews.

How is APE doing three weeks after publication? The results are promising, but not good enough to declare victory. Big numbers will occur only if APE helps catalyze an artisanal-publishing revolution where people who would have never written a book now do so just like Pagemaker catalyzed the desktop publishing revolution. 

What’s next for Guy Kawasaki? Asking me this three weeks after APE shipped is like asking a woman who gave birth three weeks ago when she's going to have another baby. I'm still breastfeeding APE and trying to get it to sleep at night. I'm not thinking about the next thing yet. 

Here is more information about the book and some resources that you can use:

Name: APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur--How to Publish a Book (ISBN 978-0-9885231-1-1) 

Bios, picture, and cover: http://apethebook.com/bookassets/

Website: http://apethebook.com/

SPIT (Self-Publishing Intelligence test):

http://electricpulp.com/guykawasaki/ape/ 

Badges: http://apethebook.com/badges/

Sandra Gulland

How did you become a writer? I grew up loving books, and always wanted to "make one." On the way I worked in a variety of occupations that had to do with book publishing. I was a typesetter (back in the day), a ghost writer, an editor. I dreamt of owning a bookstore, but wisely realized it would be the wrong vocation for me because I couldn't bear the thought of selling a book, seeing it go out the door. 

I had always intended to write a novel, but it wasn't until I turned 40 that I got serious about it. I was working as an editor at the time, and happened to read a self-help book that advised one to imagine the words on one's tombstone. The words that flashed before me were: "She never got around to it." I didn't want that to be me, and so I began writing every day.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). Being entranced by fine writing, over and over and over, is key to developing an "ear" for prose. One novel in particular influenced me: "A Walk with Love and Death" by Hans Koning. Each sentence of that novel is spare and beautifully simple.

When I became serious about writing, I bought a stack of books on how to go about it. "A Writer's Time" by Ken Atchity was particularly helpful, giving simple-to-follow instructions. Writing a novel is such an unmanageable task, it helps to begin with a stack of index cards: something tangible. 

I continue to turn to my shelf of books on writing at various stages of the process. I have over 75 such books now (!), and I have learned something from each of them. 

Janette Turner Hospital and Jane Urquhart, fine writers and teachers, were extremely helpful at key moments. 

When and where do you write? I begin writing first thing in the morning, and I usually turn to other tasks in the afternoon. I rise early, so by noon I will have put in a full day. I work in a room that's my designated office space. I will sit at a desk, or on a couch, or stretched out on a twin bed, always with my laptop computer. 

I am fairly mechanical in my method: I keep a small diary in which I write down the time, and the number of words in the manuscript. Then I commit to a certain number of words for that day. I do not permit myself to call it a day until I've reached my goal. Usually I will fly over, and award myself with silly stars. 

What are you working on now? I am working on two novels right now. One I've been writing for over 4 years, and it's close to being finished. The working title is IN THE SERVICE OF THE SHADOW QUEEN. It's a historical novel set during the reign Louis XIV, the Sun King, and involves the theatrical, magical and courtly worlds of the time. It's to be published in the spring of 2014. The other I've yet to begin, but I'm thinking about it a lot. (Yes, I have a stack of index cards.) It will be a Young Adult novel about Hortense de Beauharnais, Josephine Bonaparte's daughter. 

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Never!

What’s your advice to new writers? In a word: persevere. Collect rejection letters. Keep going. Never give up.

Bio: Sandra Gulland is the author of four internationally-published historical novels: The Josephine B. Trilogy and Mistress of the Sun. A TV mini-series based on the Trilogy is in the works. Sandra has recently launched an e-book publishing venture—Sandra Gulland INK—in order to ensure that her novels continue to be available to readers worldwide. She and her husband live half the year in rural Ontario, Canada, and half in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. For information about the author, her work and INK publications, see her website: www.SandraGulland.com. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.