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Last week Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, appeared on The Daily Show.  Below you can watch her interview with Jon Stewart.  Then scroll down and read the top three questions everyone has been asking her since her appearance.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Jennifer Burns
www.thedailyshow.com
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1. Is Jon Stewart as short as they say? I met Jon a few minutes before the show started in the “Green Room,” which is where guests wait before going on air. Basically, so many people told me he was so short that I was expecting a midget to walk in the door. Compared to that preconception, Stewart is not that short! I certainly think I’m taller than him, but his stature didn’t really make an impression. What struck me instead was how quick and smart he is, with an immediate rapid fire patter and stream of jokes. I was also surprised at how he looked different in real life than on TV. There are subtle distortions to the face on camera and in person he was leaner with more defined features. He has mesmerizing blue eyes which I focused on during the interview so I could keep up with what he was saying!

2. What does Jon Stewart say to you after the interview is over and the cameras are still rolling? I wish I could remember! I have no recollection of our last exchange, it was probably some basic thank you’s or pleasantry, and I think he probably helped me step off the stage. By the time I exited the set, I had completely forgotten what we talked about – it must have been a psychological reaction to the high pressure of the situation. Our conversation came back to me in great detail when I watched the show later that evening.

3. Are you mad he plumped the books of two Daily Show staffers at the end of the show? Not at all! It was a huge honor to be chosen for the show and has exposed my book to a wide and enthusiastic audience who might not have heard of it otherwise. There’s nothing like TV for legitimating intellectual production! Seriously, I appreciate that Jon Stewart is both a consummate entertainer and a really smart guy who values books and ideas, and I think his ability to blend humor and serious discussion is a great gift to contemporary America.

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Where do you get your ideas?

I guess all creative types get this question, to such an extent that it’s become a cliché. Kids don’t know it’s a cliché, though, so I try to answer it as best I can: I get my ideas in the same way you get yours–they’re a product of everything I’ve ever seen and heard and thought and felt. They’re influenced by books I read, things I watch, conversations I’ve had or even just overheard. I think the trick is not in worrying about your next idea so much as just having your arms open to it when it arrives. It’ll come around the mountain when it comes.

I believe there are unspoken questions that people are really asking when they ask “Where do you get your ideas,” however. I think the adults in particular are usually asking, “How come you can write a book and I can’t?”

Usually the answer is simply, “Because I’ve tried and you haven’t.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been approached by people who want to know how they can become a writer for kids too, and I ask,

“What have you written?”

and they answer,

“Nothing yet,”

and I have to tell them

“Well, try writing a little more than that.”

To those who have already tried to write and think they’ve failed, you might be interested to know that I didn’t finish the first story I tried to write either, or even the fifteenth. Maybe that’ll help, I don’t know.

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Can I get you a water?

No. Thank you, but no. This is my fault–I have a bottle of water already, and I should have put it in plain view. I understand from past appearances that if I don’t put my water in plain view you or someone else on your staff will continue to offer me some every couple of minutes until I either leave or say yes. You’re just trying to be hospitable, I know. You want to do something for me. An author in your library/bookstore/school is an apparition that’s equal parts magical and awkward, like a whale on a beach. And, like a beached whale, I am presumed to be vulnerable and in need of constant hydration.

I didn’t like how much bottled water I was drinking, so I bought this reusable bottle. Yes, it is shaped like a flask but no, it’s still water. The flask shape just happens to fit the pouches of my bag and if necessary, of course, my hip pocket. But isn’t it playful? Seeing this flask out in the open and so close to your children? It says that I’m one of you, that I do not spend every moment of my days in a child’s garden of verses–that I’m less Fred Rogers and more Shel Silverstein, but without all the whoring.

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Is there anything special you need during your visit?

I’m usually thankful for an easel and a big pad of paper. If the event in question is the sort of thing at which I could show slides, I like to have a digital projector on hand. Sometimes I’m asked about less practical things, however. Sometimes I’m asked if I have any sort of weird, non-negotiable contract riders like a certain thread count to my hotel sheets or a single ostrich feather for book-signing.

I got on this topic once with a library that was hosting me for a reading and signing on Dr. Seuss’s birthday. I no longer remember if I was just trying to be funny and broached the subject on my own, or if maybe the library started it by asking if I needed a bowl of all-green M&Ms or a bowl of everything but green M&Ms or whatever. How did green M&Ms become the yardstick of celebrity dressing-room excess? I Google it and find the legend attributed to Van Halen on one website and Aerosmith on another. Probably neither is true. Anyway, to the library I believe I answered that color was immaterial but that I wanted M&Ms with the “m” on each candy to be replaced with the Greek letter “pi”, and also a dozen live doves.

These kinds of events are generally booked weeks or even months in advance, so by the evening of Dr. Seuss’s birthday I’d forgotten all about the conversation. They anticipated this and had a copy of our last email exchange attached to the bags of custom M&Ms they gave me. It seems Mars Incorporated could not, at the time, put the letter “pi” on an M&M, but they could print “3.14…” They could print it on each and every green oblate spheroid.

It was all a very nice gesture, but it made me sensitive to where these sorts of careless jokes can lead. So now I just ask for the doves.

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Just setting this out there as a matter of policy, and to save said authors, publishers, and publicists the time:Occasionally I receive e-mails from kind authors, publishers, or publicists, asking me to review or feature a book on my blog. As much as I appreciate the interest, my reading and blog-writing time is already occupied with projects I've edited or read for my personal pleasure, and as a

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All week on the OUPblog we will be celebrating the Lincoln Bicentennial.  Be sure to read Jennifer Weber’s post on how Lincoln almost failed, the excerpt from James M. McPherson’s Abraham Lincoln, and Craig L. Symonds post on how Lincoln and his leadership are reflected in our current President. In the original piece below Allen Guelzo, author of Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction, answers some FAQs about Lincoln.  You can read part one here and part two here.

OUPblog: More than one observer has noted that the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free any enslaved people in the very territory controlled by Lincoln’s government. What then is its lasting importance?

Allen Guelzo: This is probably the most-frequently-repeated howler in American history, and no one who thinks twice about will ever believe they said it.

The question refers to an apparent oddity in the Emancipation Proclamation – Lincoln freed the slaves in the Confederate States, but did not free the slaves of the four border states which remained loyal to the Union or the slaves in the Southern areas which had been re-occupied by federal forces. So, Lincoln frees slaves where he can’t control them, and neglects to free them where he can. Right? Wrong.

We live under a Constitution which does not give Presidents plenary powers to do anything they like. Only in time of war or rebellion does the Constitution even surrender control of the armed forces to the President, and the “war powers” which the Constitution confers on the President are almost the only discretionary powers he has.

It was under the rubric of those “war powers” that Lincoln issued, and could only have issued, an Emancipation Proclamation. And since those four border states, and the occupied districts of the South, were not at war with the United States, or in rebellion against it any more, Lincoln had no “war power” authority to free any slaves there. If he had tried, slaveowners would have made a bee-line for the federal courts. And at the top of the federal judiciary, itching for a chance to strike down emancipation for good, sat Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision. Lincoln might have had the military power to free slaves in those places, but not the legal authority.

By the same token, Lincoln declares the slaves of the Confederacy free because, even though he lacks the military power at that moment to enforce his proclamation, he retained the legal authority to do so. Lincoln had never recognized the Confederacy as a valid government. In his eyes, it was an insurrection against the existing forms of constitutional government, and as such, it came directly under the weight of his “war powers.” He might not have been able to enforce the Proclamation at once, but that’s very different from saying he had no authority to free the slaves there. Having the authority, it was only a matter of time and events before the enforcement, in the form of the Union Army, caught up with the authority and liberated the ex-slaves from their masters. Many of those slaves saw the distinction clearly enough that they began running away in droves to the Union lines, where they knew that the Army would at once recognize their freedom. Together, Lincoln and the slaves made the Proclamation in reality what it already was in law. But the reality would never have happened without the law.

At Gettysburg, Lincoln called on the nation to remember the war dead by a re-dedication to “unfinished work.” What is unfinished today? The unfinished work he was talking about at Gettysburg was the war itself, which he realized had to be won if the principle of government of the people was to be vindicated. If there was a sense in which he looked beyond that, it was to the larger goal of bringing opportunity for self-advancement and self-improvement to as many as possible. For Lincoln, the promise of the Declaration (that “proposition” that all men are created equal) was realized best when an open and democratic society gave to everyone the freedom to climb as far as talent and ambition could take them – as he himself had. Frederick Douglass, the black abolitionist, once wrote that Lincoln “was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color.” Douglass attributed Lincoln’s lack of racial bias to Lincoln’s sympathy with Douglass’s struggle and the “similarity with which I had fought my way up, we both starting at the lowest round of the ladder.” I confess, having also started on that “lowest round,” that this is what fascinates me most about Lincoln, too.

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I’ve gone both ways on this question in the past, but I thought about it a little more over the last week, and I’ve decided: Yes. Yes, you do. Because, as Maxwell Perkins said, "You can't know a book until you come to the end of it, and then all the rest must be modified to fit that"; and because what you want to send, and what I want to see, is your very best work—a draft you’ve completed,

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Yesterday, Niko Pfund, OUP’s academic and trade Publisher, answered some questions he is often asked. Today he is back for round two.

Having worked at both a midsized press (NYU) and the world’s largest university press (OUP), and with experience as both an editor and a manager, Niko Pfund is currently Vice President and Publisher of the Academic and Trade division of Oxford University Press in New York. He began his career at Oxford, as an editorial assistant in law and social science, moved to New York University Press in 1990 where he was an editor and then editor in chief before becoming director in 1996. He has been back at Oxford since the summer of 2000.

3. How do you decide what to publish and what not to publish?”

Oxford, like other university presses, has a rigorous review process through which we vet all prospective publications. If you e-mail a proposal to an OUP editor, here’s what happens to it:

1. The editor will review your proposal upon receipt, based on subject, originality, presentation, writing style, market considerations, author track record, and suitability for the Oxford list. It’s important to note that most projects never make it past this stage.
2. If the editor concludes that the project might be appropriate for OUP, we will conduct a more thorough in-house review, to ascertain whether we want to solicit outside reviews.
3. Every project Oxford signs up must have received positive evaluations from scholars who have no direct connection to the author and must also be approved by the delegates of the press. The delegates are a scholarly board composed of top scholars in their field, whose responsibility is it to shepherd our publications in their area of expertise, working closely with the editors to develop our publishing program by attracting the best books and authors.
4. Once a project has passed this review process (a process which can take days or weeks, depending on the length of the materials under review and the speed with which our reviewers can evaluate the project), we convene an editorial meeting during which all different parts of the press—editorial, marketing, sales, and publicity—get together to discuss its publishing prospects. If a book gets approved at this editorial meeting, we then make the author a formal offer of publication.

Being on the receiving end of unsolicited book submissions gives you an interesting perspective from which to view certain human tendencies. While the majority of proposals we receive represent serious and important work, perhaps the most frequently received type of unpublishable submission is the “save the world” manuscript. This can take the form of a professionally presented work that follows that standard submission protocol to the scribbled ravings of what is clearly a fevered mind finding release on whatever writing surface presented itself at the given moment. Regardless of the presentation, however, most of these proposals put forward a unifying theory intended to a) end all war, b) protect the environment, c) assist the reader in reaching a higher, or even supreme, level of consciousness, or d) all of the above. These tend not to make it very far, alas….

4. “Do you really read all those books?”

Well, no.

OUP publishes several hundred books a year, in addition to the several hundred we also acquire in any given year, and so an important part of my job is knowing when to read and knowing when to review. I review many more books than I read, but I probably spend 3-4 hours a day reading proposals, sample chapters, and finished books.

5. “When do you find time to read? What do you read for pleasure?”

Any time and everywhere. A few years back, Lingua Franca, the now-defunct chronicler of academic life, included in its ad kit a line that claimed that “83% of Lingua Franca readers describe it as `torture’ to be on any form of public transportation without something to read.” I’m not sure I’ve got the percentage right but that whole notion resonated with me in the way the best slice-of-life observations do.

On the average day, I’ll get up around 6, spend 30-45 minutes e-mailing and/or reading newspapers online before my children are awake. I’ll read the (cumbersome paper edition of the) New York Times on the subway on the way to work. I read very little in a sustained way at work because I spend most of the day either in meetings or talking to people or e-mailing. On the way home, I’ll normally read proposals or sample chapters, and then, once the kids are in bed, work for a couple of hours, most of which entails reading of some kind.

I’m never not reading a book for pleasure because that depresses me. When our children were very young, there were periods of time when I was so tired I wasn’t able to read in a sustained way, but even then I really tried to discipline myself to keep reading, in the same way and for the same reason that I wanted to keep exercising.

As for what I read, I subscribe to a lot of magazines—The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Observer, Harpers, The Atlantic, Sports Illustrated, The Economist, The Week, Wired, Fast Company, and Rolling Stone—both because I like reading them and because they give me book ideas. One of the most enjoyable aspects of my job is that my work life and my interests dovetail well, so I don’t have these hard-and-fast categories of Work and Non-Work.

When it comes to books, I read mostly fiction for pleasure, given that all of what I read for work is non-fiction. I’ll read pretty much anything by certain authors (Kazuo Ishiguro, Barry Unsworth, Michael Chabon, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Ian McEwan, J.M. Coetzee, Iain Banks, Richard Ford, Richard Price, and new Philip Roth come to mind. Other writers I consistently enjoy are Margaret Atwood, Italo Calvino, T. C. Boyle, John Irving, Barbara Kingsolver, Willa Cather, Ellen Gilchrist, and Alice Hoffman). Two recent novels I really enjoyed were Junot Diaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which was absolutely terrific, and Thomas Mullen’s The Last Town on Earth, a fictionalized retelling of the self-imposed quarantine of a Northwestern town in response to the Spanish influenza. And Joshua Ferris’ And Then We Came to the End felt like a gimmick work novel to me for the first 100 or so pages, but then really developed a heart.

In terms of non-fiction, I’m a sucker for strong narrative history (Simon Winchester, Erik Larson, Mark Kurlansky), especially if it involves a disaster or a particularly dramatic phenomenon, and I do like Bill Bryson.

Several years ago, after a streak of particularly good books, I decided that life’s too short never to have a very good book lined up next and so went on a tear in the Oxford Waterstone’s and bought about 25 books that I’d been meaning to read or about which I’d heard good things. Hands down, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Now I have a small library of crisp, new books, all of which I want to read, at my disposal at any time, and it’s absolutely luxurious.

I read a lot with my kids (recently Jim the Boy, which I highly recommend, and an advance reading copy of the reissue of The Greatest Things Since Sliced Bread) and my eldest and I are moving from young fantasy over into more scifi territory, having read Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine Castle.

This is a completely predictable and obvious thing for a publisher to say but there are very few things that make me more happy than the sight of one of my children, curled up on the sofa, absorbed in a book.

That seems a fitting note on which to end.

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A Bonny Glen reader wrote me with a whole bunch of really good questions. Actually, I’ve had several emails come in recently with suggestions for topics or questions to answer. I’ll be tackling some of those in the days and weeks to come. But this is a lazy Saturday morning so I’m starting with the easy one.

Can I ask how you pronounce Lissa? It is like the second half of Melissa or the name Lisa?

Like the second half of Melissa. If you want the whole scoop on my name, it goes like this. Melissa Wiley is, as you know, my pen name. But the Melissa part is real. My middle name is Anne-with-an-e and that e was always very important to me as a child, so that when I first read Anne of Green Gables at age eleven, I loved her instantly and devotedly from the moment she made the big deal about having her name spelled correctly even in people’s minds.

When I got married, I kept Anne as my middle name instead of making my maiden name my new middle name as many women do. But I love my maiden name, Brannon, too.

When I was growing up, my family had two names for me. (They still do.) Well, three names if you count Melissa, which was only used when I was in trouble, usually in company with Anne. My official first name with the family has always been Missy. I am still Missy to my parents and sisters (Merry and Molly) and cousins and some of my high-school friends. And that’s fine; Missy is a comfy and friendly name, I think.

But at home, growing up, I was always Lissa too. Casually, unofficially, in a “Lissa, dinner’s ready!” kind of way. My parents would introduce me as Missy (and that’s how I signed my papers in school, and what teachers called me), but when they were just speaking offhandedly, affectionately, they usually said Lissa. So I loved that name too.

And by the end of senior year, I was tired, for a while, of being ‘little Missy.’ (I have always been the shrimpiest one in the class.) I kept meeting people with dogs named Missy. (I actually had a dog named Missy myself, when I was a baby. She was named Missy before my parents got her, and she was older than I was. They changed her name to Sissy. She was a dear little doggie.) Missy felt like a little girl’s name, and some of my drama club friends had picked up on Lissa from hearing my parents say it, so when I went to college I just introduced myself as Lissa, not Missy. And it stuck. I met Scott in college, so that’s the name he’s always known me by.

But actually he almost never calls me Lissa. He calls me L, and so do his brothers. If you’ve known me online long enough to remember my old “[email protected]” address, you might know that “tisell” meant ’tis L.

One thing about “Lissa” is that lots of people mis-hear it as “Lisa,” so in recent years I have introduced myself more and more as just Melissa. But it really throws me when people call me that in person. I jump, because that’s still the “teacher is mad at me” name.

Another high-school friend nicknamed me “Misery” as a joke because I don’t tend to be a miserable sort of person. And it became the stuff of high-school legend one day when that friend offered me a ride home from school, and I was walking with another friend who was kind of an endearingly arrogant guy, and he assumed the invitation extended to him, and the car-driving friend informed him curtly that no it did not. And he said, “Aw, come on, you know Misery loves company!”

She gave him a ride.

It’s true, too; I do love company.

I get a lot of letters addressed to Mrs. Wiley. Once, at a conference where I was a speaker, the organizers gave Scott a nametag too: “Scott Wiley.” That made us laugh and laugh. Sometimes if he forgets to do something and I ask him about it, he says, “Go ask Mr. Wiley.”

Most of my friends’ children call me Mrs. Peterson. I am still young enough, at age 39 and coming up on 14 years of marriage, that it feels funny to be called that. In Virginia most kids called me “Miss Lissa,” and Scott was “Mister Scott,” which cracked me up and generated a lot of Star Trek jokes on my part. Alice’s kids call me Lissa and mine call her Alice.

Here in San Diego, people startle when they hear that my husband’s name is Scott Peterson. That name will forever be linked to the wife-and-baby murderer, here and in lots of other places. But my Scott Peterson’s name was in print long before that guy started making headlines. There’s a Scott Peterson who writes books about Rwanda, too, and one who works in film production at Warner Brothers. If you see his name in movie credits, that’s not my guy. (Although his name does come up on a computer screen in the Batcave in the first Batman animated movie, and that’s a reference to my Scott.) If it’s in a comic book, that’s my beloved Mr. Wiley.

Wiley was the first name of my great-great-great-great- I-can’t-remember-if-it’s-four-or-five-greats-grandfather, Wiley Tyler, who died in a Confederate prison camp. He was an Alabaman himself, and there’s a big story there, but I’m saving it for a novel. When HarperCollins asked me to choose a pen name beginning with W so booksellers wouldn’t be so confused about where to shelve my Little House books (Roger MacBride’s books gave them fits—shelve them with Laura’s books because they’re sequels? or shelve them under M for MacBride?), I chose Wiley in honor of my fine old ancestor, so that my pen name would be a family name too.

Although I quite liked Alice’s suggestion at the time that I choose “Willard” as an homage to Betsy’s sweetheart, Joe Willard, from the Betsy-Tacy books.

I once published a poem (and won a literary award for it) under my maiden name, Melissa Brannon. I’ve published lots of things under my married name, Melissa Peterson. Scott and I collaborated on a beginning reader science book about ants once, and we used our middle names as a psuedonym: Anne James.

There you go, more than you ever wanted to know about my name. My names. All of ’em.

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A reader asks:

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I'm going to be lazy and repost some of the Q&As from my teenlitauthors stint this past week in lieu of any original writing. When you receive a requested noncontractual revision from an author, what is your process for reading it? How many revisions will you go through before you let something go? When do you judge it ready to take the next step? When I like a manuscript a lot, I often (even

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A recent email asks a question that has come up several times in the past: 

I sent you two manuscripts/books, one to consider as a sample for work-for-hire possibilities, and one to consider as an original work. I got one rejection letter. Was it for one, the other, or both?

Often these questions come because someone has sent a multi-purpose package, wherein they've got a full manuscript (not the first three chapters of a manuscript as outlined in our submission guidelines) plus several other items for consideration, then say "please consider this for both work-for-hire and as an original." Then they include one SASE for the whole huge package (if they include an SASE at all, which is another subject that our associate editor has asked me to cover and which I'll do in a separate post).

The confusion of "which was it??" then arises because you get one rejection letter, saying nothing about which was rejected. 

The simplest way around this confusion is that if you're going to send several items, be sure to send them in separate packages with a separate SASE, noting on the envelope which project the envelope was related to. That way there won't be any question about whether one part was passed on to another editor while the other part was rejected. That's good advice even if you only send one project to each publisher at a time. 

However, still make sure that the submission follows the submission guidelines. If a writer sends a whole huge package including a full manuscript, it indicates at least on the surface that they probably haven't read our submission guidelines (or they think they don't have to follow the rules), and it's much more likely that if one part is rejected, the package as a whole is rejected. 

Really, the editor reading submissions doesn't have time to parse out huge packages. She's screening for potential at that point, which is why we specifically ask that writers only submit the first three chapters and a synopsis. It's an avalanche of paper to get unsolicited submissions at any time, but when writers send one or several full unsolicited manuscripts at once, that gets overwhelming. We'll ask for more if we want to read more.

The next simplest solution is to be sure to only send one project at a time. It will really reduce both your headache and ours. If we like your work, you can mention, "hey, I've got this other project too. Would you be interested in seeing it?" and then we can decide at that time. If we reject it, you'll be ready with a newly polished next project that might work out better.

Now, if you've followed all those directions and have just noted on your cover letter that you'd like your original sample to also be considered for our shared-world series, great! You're doing well. But you'll still only get one rejection letter if we don't feel like your work is a good fit for us at the time.

Here's how it works if we think someone fits an existing shared-world series: If we decide from your sample that your writing style works for a particular series, and the timing is right and we're looking for authors at that time, then an editor will note in the letter that while the sample isn't something we'd be interested in acquiring, we like your style enough that we'll keep your sample on file for shared-world possibilities. I'll announce right now, though, that our soon-to-be-updated submissions guidelines state that we are not currently looking widely for new shared-world authors at this time, and I'm not keeping too many submissions like that on file right now.

Otherwise, I'm afraid that a no is a no. If you don't hear anything besides no, keep writing, keep improving, and keep looking for other venues to place that work.



___________________________________________

And just to reiterate:

Due to the number of submissions we receive, there's simply no way to give personal feedback on every submission as to reasons we might not be interested . It could be any number of things, but what it boils down to is that it wasn't the right fit for us at this time (see my 8-post series starting with this one about the relationship between an author and editor for more on that subject).

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Let's talk about what constitutes "requested" material. I've had it happen numerous times where someone will send me an email here and ask a question about a submission. I try to answer most of those questions on this blog in a general way that will benefit a number of readers, and I think it's worth it to get these questions out to a wider audience to leave that email address up there. I hope this also helps the person asking the question.

Sometimes, though, I'll get an email that says, "Can I send you something?" giving me the details that really constitute a query, and I point the person to the submission guidelines. (Though sometimes I wonder how they found the email address right under my bio saying "Go here for our submission guidelines" and didn't seem to see that link.) And sometimes we'll get snail mail queries with just the query letter, so we do the same thing--send a standard "here are the submission guidelines" letter, pointing out that if they don't include a writing sample, we can't consider the submission.

In either case, the response pointing the writer to the submission guidelines is not a "request" for their material. "Requested material" means that I've specifically said to the writer, "I liked your sample. Please send the full manuscript." Anything else before that point is politely asking the person to follow the directions for submitting.

I don't request so much material that I don't remember what I've requested, so writing "requested" on an envelope of material I didn't request just makes me question if you know how to find our submission guidelines and follow the directions.

I understand that some publishers ask for just a query, and some for samples, and some for full manuscripts, and it can get confusing.  

But the directions are out there on how each publisher prefers to receive submissions, and they're for the writer's benefit--if I don't have a writing sample, no synopsis is going to make me know whether I want to say yes or no. So if I said I'd take just queries for unagented submissions I'd have added a burdensome step for my submissions reading. That's just how we prefer it.

By following the guidelines a publisher provides, you make sure your writing will stand out, and that's what's most important.

And for good measure, our submission guidelines are here.

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Friday afternoon as I was going through my submissions pile I found a few things to share with you to watch out for in your own submissions. 

Mostly what I see at this point are the better submissions. Everybody follows the directions with a cover letter, a three-chapter sample (though some aren't clear on the idea of three chapters being three chapters from the beginning of the same book, even if you're sending a writing sample for a shared world series), and most everyone includes a good synopsis/outline of the proposed book. In other words, by the time it reaches me, most everyone has read the submissions guidelines.

So the next question I ask as I'm reading is whether I'm caught by the writing and the story. Those are two different things--how good a storyteller is the author? is one question, and how good a writer is the author? is a different question entirely. So you might say that my next question is actually two questions, because I'm looking at both storytelling and style. 

Boggy beginnings

Something I noticed in the submissions I rejected was that the story doesn't get going fast enough. You have three chapters to hook me, but if the first few pages don't get me, you have a tougher job. Why are you starting the story where you're starting it? Sometimes I'll browse back through the sample and find that if the writer had started the story in chapter 2 or 3 it would have been better. Usually, though, the whole sample is bogged down by things the writer believes necessary, such as the introduction of minor characters, which might be better off elsewhere to allow the story to start.

There's a fine balance between telling too much and not telling enough in the beginning of a story. The reader needs to feel involved and needs to know what's going on. But they don't need to know all a character's feelings about their father in an exposition paragraph that stops the action. 

And the action is what you want to focus on. Don't use an old Nancy Drew book for your example of how to start a book, even a sequel, for instance. Too many pages of "Nancy had blonde hair, George was the tomboy, and Bess was a little plump," and not enough of the mystery! I loved Nancy Drew as much as the next girl, but I skipped those pages and went straight on to the action. 

Then when there are details that the reader absolutely must know, make sure to include that information without breaking the action. 

A bad example:

Jennifer watched her brother walk in the room. He had blond hair, and was much taller than she was. He was a good brother. He was three years older than her. He was a kind person who always was there for her.

Instead:

"Could you pass the towel?" Jennifer asked.

"Here, let me get that," her brother said, taking the wet dish from her hand. "You sit down. It's been a long day." Brian always did that sort of thing, noticing when she couldn't take the drama anymore. 

Do you see the difference? Give the characters actions. To use a cliche, show, don't tell, but give them something to do if you have something you want to show--and if you want to include it, it has to be in service to the story.

I've been to conferences where people ask me if the three chapter sample has to be the first three. They say, "But chapters 4, 10, and 11 are the best ones!" My answer to them is that if their instinct is to show me chapter 4, they need to reconsider why they want to show me chapter 4 and where the story really begins.

Wordsmithing

The second question, how good a writer are they? refers to the writer's style. There are submissions that I look at and think, "This is okay," in a perfunctory way--the writer can string a sentence together correctly, and has a good grasp on action and storytelling. But then there are submissions where the writer has all these things, and then there is something more. That something more is voice. 

How well do you get into the character's head? (In the story, not necessarily in your own head! Though that works well for some of the writers I know.) How well can you evoke their emotions, their relationships? The storytelling, which we talked about above, is what moves the plot along, gives the right pacing, but the voice is what lets us explore this character's inner and outer world. 

Personally, I don't go for sentences that are so beautifully crafted that you can barely decifer the story--I want sentence craft that serves the story, because the story does always come first. But what makes each story unique is the voice, the characterization, the author's ability to create the desired mood.

Now, that isn't really "wordsmithing" in the "craft a beautiful sentence" sense, but I think they're related. Thoughts?

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Today's final post is a morality tale. It is a tale of an annoyed editor and a newby writer who should have known better.

The setting: Editor is cleaning out her office. There comes a time when "organized disorder" becomes plain old disorder and you have to do something about it. It's been over a year since the move to the new building, and she has decided that it's about time to organize the files before they rise up and eat her alive.

Between juggling (literally) files and juggling (metaphorically) all the other duties of her day, including people stopping by her cube numerous times an hour to ask her questions, and colleague yelling over the wall to tell her to check her email to answer more questions, Editor is feeling kind of frazzled, but triumphant. She will conquer this organizational nightmare, and she has the label maker to make it happen.

The phone rings.

E.: Hello?

Newby Writer: <Announces name. No greeting.>

E.: . . . Yes? How can I help you?

N.W.: I sent you an email yesterday.

E.: You did?

N.W.: Yes, why didn't you write me back? Or answer my voicemail?

S.E.: . . .

N.W.: Well, like I said in the email, I've got the next best thing in children's literature right here, and true to my word, I'm going to call you every day until you give me an answer.

E.: Have you looked up our submissions guidelines? You're welcome to submit, but you need to follow those guidelines.

N.W.: No. Here's what you're going to do. I'm sending you a postcard today with my idea, and you can check off whether you want to sign me up.

E.: <puzzled look, can't get a word in edgewise>

N.W.: I went through all that before. I found a publisher, and they signed me up and sat on my book for a year. A year! And didn't do anything with it. So my brother drew up a letter of disillusion and I fired them. I'm never going through that again.

E.: Well, pretty much the only way to get published through us is to read the guidelines and then follow them. If I get your submission I'll give it careful consideration, just like every other submission. Thanks for calling, have a nice day! <click>

There are several things wrong with this scenario, number one being the fact that the author thought he could "fire" a publisher. It's unclear whether he was actually under contract with a reputable trade publisher, but from the context it doesn't really sound like he was.

Problem number two is that the author is showing right off that he's not an easy-going, professional guy to work with. Even if you have the most amazing, stunning ideas, if the editor can't stand you, there's a big chance she might pass, because such an author isn't going to take editorial direction very well. And don't get me started on the phrase, "Here's what you're going to do."

Problem number three is the obvious: he called. Even if you must call, perhaps it might be a good idea to be polite. But as you can probably imagine, if you catch an editor in a bad moment--such as when she's got a million things going on, which would be pretty much every day--she's going to be much less likely to be patient.

That said, the polite inquiries I get from time to time requesting information about an author's submission are welcome. Certainly if you haven't heard from me after a couple months you have every right to ping me--via email or snail mail--and check in on the status of your submission. I'm afraid I've been quite swamped since Christmastime and manuscripts I thought I'd get to several months ago have been languishing in the to-read pile, sadly neglected and--to use a phrase tltrent just used the other day regarding silver and china--taunting me, giving me extreme guilt complexes. We've been slowly catching up on the backlog, don't worry! And I'll usually respond with a thanks for keeping in touch and for the polite reminder.

But (and I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but this is for posterity) calling is probably not your best option.


*Though this is a true story, this did not happen to me.

 

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Recently, several people have been asking variations of the same question about agented submissions, so I thought I'd address it here as a frequently asked question.

How do I get my agent in touch with you in regards to submitting a fantasy MG series of mine. Would he send to the slushpile? The reason I ask is that he is currently pitching to editors and I’m very interested in working with Mirrorstone and yourself.

That's great! I'm always open to new authors, whether agented or not. Agents aren't submitting to the slush pile per se--it just happens that we prefer mail submissions for logistical reasons, from both authors directly and from agents.

I think I've mentioned before that Mirrorstone is a very small imprint. I mean really small. In the editorial department there's me (the associate editor), the senior editor, and part of the time of an assistant editor. So don't worry--if something is addressed to me it ends up in my lap and I'll be able to tell right away that it's an agent.

You can find details on how we like to receive submissions at our submissions guidelines. The most important thing for an agent to know, of course, is that the address is P.O. Box 707, Renton, WA 98057-0707, sent to my attention.

However, if your agent has more specific questions, he's welcome to email us at mirrorstone [at] wizards [dot] com. We just prefer not to receive submissions at that address.

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I think it appropriate that the book I will review today will be Jane  Yolen's Take Joy, due to all the joy I've been taking in my new camera over the weekend. I've been finding the joy again in my photography that I've been delaying for so long because film has become such an encumbrance that I end up saving rolls of film for months--my latest batch included shots from San Diego Comic-Con last July, a trip I took last August, several rolls from my Christmas travels, as well as a variety of smaller events in the last six months--and by the time I get to see them again, the pictures have little meaning. I didn't play with pictures as much as I used to when in photography classes because I don't have the time to play in the darkroom making the exposure perfect (though how tempting it has been over the years to find a place I can build a darkroom, especially this last year because my uncle offered me his enlarger....).

Getting the digital camera, even in the first few days of use, has given me back that joy. I'm starting to remember the way I used to play with angles and lighting and the strange subjects I used to seek out. I have done a little of that playing with my camera phone, but that's more of a toy than a passion--when you're dealing with a 2 MP camera, there's only so much art you can create.

(I have a point, really I do.)

This is an important process to me, because I occasionally do a freelance article here and there, a wedding here and there, that kind of thing. I'm taking some pictures for our kickboxing teacher in a couple weeks to help him promote his new dojo. But I'd been feeling lately that I was losinig my chops. All my pictures ended up coming out the same--lots of flash burn, standard compositions, nothing out of the ordinary that gives you that wow factor. Competent, but not excellent. Even the pictures I posted in the last few days reflect those ways of seeing, though I love the salt shaker post because it's something different, something new I tried after learning a few things about indoor lighting (the bane of my photographic existence).

So, what does this have to do with writing and with Jane Yolen's book in particular? 

The whole book is about that discovery process, giving writers permission to find that joy that I have been rediscovering in my photography. In the first chapter Yolen quotes Gene Fowler, "'Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead'" and immediately refutes him: "I suggest you learn to write not with blood and fear, but with joy." She says to forget about publishing, because it's out of your hands, and to focus on the joy of your craft--of writing a story well, of really digging in and living in the story.

A very good premise. I mean, after all, why write if you don't find joy in it? I write. I think I've said it before here. I have a story, a retelling of a Scottish fairy tale, that I've been working on since my last year at BYU, in 2001. It's gone through many renditions, and the most I've ever finished was a novellette for a folklore class in grad school. Then I threw out the entire setting and decided to change it all around, and have gotten all of 10,000 words written since then in the new setting. 

Why haven't I finished it? Because while it brings me joy to live in that story, it doesn't bring me enough joy to make it worth my time to write every night after doing a very similar activity at work every day. I fully admit I may never be a published fiction writer (I am a published non-fiction freelance writer over and over, but that's a different market), and that's enough for me to find the little joys in the little bits of writing I do from time to time because publication isn't important to me--what's important to me is the story in my imagination. 

And mostly because I find that same kind of joy in being an editor to far better books than I could probably write right now.

For those who don't have that push-pull of using up that creative energy before you can set pen to paper (metaphorically speaking), Yolen's book will have much fodder for the imagination. 

Though I must say that the whole numinous "the mystery of fiction," "the mystery of the writing process," bleh. Don't make it all mysterious, as if someone with a little talent and a lot of effort can't figure it out. There's nothing mysterious about the combination of putting in the time to do something you love so that you can develop the inborn talent you have into something better. It's work, but if you find joy in it, it's time well spent, in my opinion. 

But that may just be my practical Midwestern upbringing coming into play. Doesn't mean that there isn't mystery in the art, and if that motivates you to seek joy in creating art, whatever your art is, more power to you.

Back to Take Joy--as you have probably already guessed, this isn't so much a review as a disjointed essay borne from a few ideas I've plucked from its pages--Yolen says that "These stories grace our actual lives with their fictional realities. Like angels they lift us above the hurrying world." I really like that idea. I don't know if I can recapture what it is that caught me about that particular passage, but I'll try.

As I was driving home the other night a program on NPR caught my attention. It was a Romanian professor by the name of Kodrescu (spelling? who knows?) who was speaking about the power of memories, how we create memories that didn't actually happen and turn them to pedagogical uses, how we change memory to fantasy because sometimes fantasy feels more real than the reality it is trying to reflect. 

How to express this? That talk really said something to me the other night, but now it's slipping from my mind, and I can barely even remember who the speaker was at this point. 

At any rate, I think what I'm trying to say is that sometimes in fiction we find more truth than we do in the reality we're seeking to interpret. I've said this before about fantasy, about its wonderful metaphorical magic. We can talk about struggles, the epic battle between good and evil, the shades of gray, the variety of human existence, in so many ways in fantasy that we can't do as well in realism sometimes because of the power the metaphor gives us--the power that the fictional, the fantasy (meaning the numinous, the fantastic, as well as simply the fantasy of making up a story), give us to assign multiple meanings and to interpret and reinterpret.

That the stories can "grace our actual lives with their fictional realities" can mean so many things, and I'm losing the ability to express what I'm trying to say.

At any rate, the book is a good read, and I think nonwriters as well as writers can benefit from the idea of taking joy in the art you pursue--remembering why you do what you do.

Of course, writers will get even more out of it, because she's got some solid advice for writers in there about taking rejection well, the elements of a good story (beyond a simple anecdote to a fully drawn drama), finding your voice, even a whole section dedicated to specific practical advice. I love the little interludes, the little bits of wisdom between chapters. One such, before chapter 5, is especially apropos for anyone who writes historical fiction, fantasy, or other genres that require lots of research:

For a writer, nothing is lost. Research once done can be used again and again, a kind of marvel of recycling. As writers we need to be shameless about thieving from ourselves. 

For example, I did two books on the Shakers--a nonfiction book called Simple Gifts and a novel, The Gift of Sarah Barker. And it is no coincidence that the round barn I discovered in my historical research, I then used as a piece of setting in the Sarah Barker book. It later found its way into my young adult science fiction novel, Dragon's Blood.

Good research swims upstream where it can spawn. (p. 41)

So there you have it, as one of hopefully a lot of writing book recommendations here at Stacy Whitman's Grimoire, couched in an essay on finding my photography chops again. Check out the book--you might find some gems that help you find joy in your own writing.

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I'm finally answering one of the questions you guys asked! jjsass wrote:

Waving from France!

I was wondering why you didn't accept e-mail submissions at Mirrorstone? 

It seems to me that a publisher of science fiction and fantasy would be more attuned to the ecological aspects of e-mail submissions - no ruining the ozone layer with planes carrying mail, no trees destroyed for paper, no chemical companies polluting the water for ink, no garbage to burn...

At any rate, that's my question!
:-)

That's a very good question, especially from someone writing from a country far across the ocean. I'm very impressed with how Wizards--and pretty much the whole Seattle area--is very concerned about trying to protect the environment. And while I'd love to start taking email submissions for the sake of the environment--your point about airplanes carrying the mail and using jet fuel is important, because it's certainly not just the paper--the truth is that it's just plain hard on the eyes to read submissions on screen. I do a lot of work on the computer daily, but there's only so much I can do before my eyes just give up.

Do you read novels electronically? It's a similar situation. Especially for manuscript-length submissions, it's extremely fatiguing to try to read for long periods of time on screen. I love reading blogs, email, that kind of thing, but people's attention span on screen is much, much shorter than you want someone to have when reading a book--and you want an editor to feel comfortable enough to want to devote her time to your submission, whether it be 3 chapters or a whole requested manuscript.

The next option would be for us to take email submissions, but then to print them out on our end so they're more mobile. Most of us don't sit at our computers to read submissions--if I do it in the office, I'm shutting myself away in a conference room so I can have more quiet for reading, but usually I take them home to read at night; most of my colleagues do the same.... though I don't live in New York, so I don't have a train ride home to read on. (And speaking of the environment, how I wish I did! I really miss living on a great public transportation system!)

Sometimes we'll have a slush-reading party where we all gather in a conference room to read and discuss submissions, and it's much easier to pass submissions from one editor to another with comments written right on the submission--we reference the paper, hand it back and forth, discuss face to face. 

If we printed them out so we could cart them around, that becomes our cost for paper and toner, rather than that of the submitter. That can really add up with the thousands of submissions we get each year. 

So it''s mainly logistics, though partly cost. Perhaps one day when the computer reading tablet becomes affordable (I've heard of some advances in the technology and pricing, but never seen them in person), and they design such a tablet in a way that doesn't fatigue the eyes more than a piece of paper, it'll change. But right now, logistics really require hard copies through the early process, especially in the decision making phase.


To sum up, we're doing a little bit for the environment, and always looking for ways we can do better, but the technology for reading on screen has a way to go before it'll really be ready for what the publishing industry needs, and speaking in specifics, what Mirrorstone needs. And we of course have to deal with the equipment we have on hand, and none of us has those nifty tablets I spoke of above. :)

The caveat: I think jjsass is probably asking from the perspective of living in another country. I'm sure it's frustrating to have to worry about the cost of postage, the long turnaround time, and all the other hassles of doing business from another country, which is compounded by figuring out how to do the international reply coupon for the SASE, etc.

I completely sympathize. For me personally, as long as you know for sure that your email address is valid and will remain so for several years (just in case--for example, my friend Brandon's book was finally picked up a year and a half after he'd submitted it to an editor at Tor, and his now-editor had to do some major sleuthing to find him, because his phone number, address, and email had all changed by that time!)--as long as you know for sure it is typed correctly on your submission (and on every place it appears on your submission), you can forego the SASE.* (Hm, that's a lot of italics, but I wanted to be sure to emphasize all the qualifications I'm putting on that...)

That's JUST for international submissions, if that makes your life a little easier. As a general rule, especially for domestic situations, the SASE isn't just for rejections--it's an insurance policy in case you have a typo in your email address, or your phone number changes, etc. (again, ref. Brandon's experience). Sometimes it might be the only way an editor has to get a hold of you for one reason or another, with good news. And most editors aren't the kinds of detectives that Moshe is, and will just end up tossing your submission if they can't find you.

But the SASE exception I noted above is just me. It's much much better just to follow the guidelines if you don't know if an editor is okay with that.

*And if an editor likes your submission enough to overlook working with you across huge time zone differences and international boundaries, you can probably expect to do much of your correspondence after the initial submission via email for more logistical reasons.

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I got an email today that made me realize that I really do get asked a number of questions that would be best served to answer in public, as I get these questions periodically in various permutations.

So, I'm starting an infrequent series today I'll be labelling in the tags as FAQs. Here we go with #1, with of course identifying information removed.

My novel, the first of a proposed 7-book chapter series, uses children as the lead characters in a detailed fantasy world. It floats between the line of the more adult Wizards of the Coast readers, and the younger Mirrorstone audience. Categorically, it can belong to either, and maybe even both.

With that said, since the protagonists are children (and the wording is at the 7th grade level), would it be more prudent to submit it to Mirrorstone, or to Wizards? Is it possible to submit it to both imprints?

I just wanted to make sure I submitted it to the appropriate imprint. I wrote this initially as a young reader's book, and the tone and verbiage corresponds to that age. But its detail and rich character development is making me wonder a bit.

There are a lot of good questions in here that a lot of aspiring authors would be interested in. Editors use very specific definitions for different types of books, and knowing what those definitions are and how to use them will make your query letters stand out.

When someone says to a children's book editor that they have a chapter book series they'd like to propose, the editor thinks "early reader" for kids who have just learned to read, generally ages 6-8. Think Time Spies or Magic Treehouse or Junie B. Jones or Spiderwick.

So if a prospective author sends me a proposal for a "chapter book series" written at a seventh-grade level, I'll question if they know just who their audience is.

So, let's get some clear definitions of the terms we use, so that everyone will be on the same page. Since I work with fiction, I'm just going to refer to novels, but this applies to nonfiction, anthologies, short stories, and other categories as well.

Chapter book--ages 6-8, a short story written with care taken for vocabulary, generally printed in a larger font and containing several illustrations. Not as dependent on illustrations as a picture book, but still quite a few. Broken up into short chapters to help new readers get used to the format of a regular novel, compared to the more word-sparse picture book.

Middle grade--novels written for ages 8-12. Pretty much anything in the young readers section at the bookstore--Harry Potter (Sorcerer's Stone, at least), Charlotte's Web, all those longer storybooks generally are considered middle grade, aimed at kids who are fluent independent readers who like a longer story. Genres abound in this section--mystery, realism, fantasy, science fiction, and many crossovers between classifications.

Young adult, or YA--novels written for teens ages 12-18. Again, pretty much anything in the bookstore in the teen section. You'll probably notice some crossover between stuff written for the older middle grade crowd and the younger YA crowd--Harry Potter is a great example of how the maturity level of the intended reader increases as the series is published--and some books are shelved in both sections. Again, genres in this category abound--fantasy especially is hot right now. And you'll also notice that some books in the teen section have once been published for adults. Lord of the Rings, for example, is published in many versions, one of which you'll find in the teen section. A lot of crossover between the older YA crowd and books published for adults, because teens tend to "read up," meaning that they read books meant for a slightly older audience. Great examples of YA fantasy include Holly Black's Tithe, Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty, most books by Tamora Pierce, the Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix, Shannon Hale's Goose Girl, and Charles de Lint's The Blue Girl. There are so many more out there, too. And Hallowmere, the first volume of which, In the Serpent's Coils by Tiffany Trent, will debut next fall, will be the first YA series to be published by Mirrorstone.

If you've written a story you think will appeal to teens, by all means, it's something to propose to Mirrorstone. And don't shy away from rich characterization and detail! The best YA writers use both (read Robin McKinley!)--plot is important, but should grow from great characters and their motivations. Generally, plots for younger readers (and here I mean anything under 18) tend to be more linear than plots in books for adults, but even so, that's just a generalization. Twists and turns are welcome, and we actively seek characters we want to care about.

The best way to judge whether it would appeal to Mirrorstone as opposed to Wizards of the Coast, which is our imprint for adults, is to go into a bookstore's teen section and see what's on the shelf. If your book would fit in better in the teen section than the fantasy section of the bookstore, then you know you're targeting Mirrorstone. If you'd rather see it in the fantasy section for adults, then the WotC imprint is probably a better fit.

That said, you have to be aware that the WotC imprint is only open for submissions from Sept. to Dec. every year, and is looking for very specific kinds of books. Follow the guidelines with exactness, and don't submit anything unless the website says that they're open for submissions. Do not submit to both imprints at once. It's much less confusing that way.

Now, if you're still not sure whether your book should be for teens or adults, the next thing to do is to get together with a critique group or other group of people familiar with children's literature, YA specifically. Contact your local chapter of SCBWI to find a critique group, or take a class in children's literature, or go to a writing conference. If you want to write for a market, you need to be informed within the market, so however you learn, do your research before pitching your manuscript.

If you don't know where your manuscript fits, it'll be that much harder for me to know if it's right for us. The manuscripts that stand out, in addition to the number one criteria of being well-crafted, are written by authors who know the children's book market and how it differs from the adult market.

Good luck!

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