An Evening in the Life of a Debut Novelist

6:17 P.M.
This is going to be a great bookstore visit. I know this because they set me up with a local newspaper interview the same week, to help promote the event. And they sent me detailed instructions about where to park my car. With that sort of planning, this is going to be just the sort of place to beat the odds, right? They'll have a bunch of readers who show up for an author they've never heard of. They'll reach out to a secret stash of people who have nothing better to do on a Thursday night, and 15 spare dollars, and an interest in comedy, motherhood and organic food.

6:44 P.M.
I find the parking garage with no trouble. That's an omen! And parking is free after 5pm. I love this town. The bookstore looks cute. There's a big EAT. SLEEP. READ. poster in the front window.

6:44 P.M. + 1 second
Because I am a debut novelist at the tail end of her regional book tour, by the time I push open the door, I have already counted the number of people in the store. There are two, a man and a woman. He is behind the counter. She is replacing a book on the shelf. And because I am a vulnerable debut novelist who does this often, I can tell just from the incline of her head that she too works in the store.

I am the only person here who is not on the payroll. My event is scheduled for 16 minutes from now. There is an armchair at the front of the store, and twenty or so perfectly empty folding chairs set up in front of it.

I keep my cool, though. He comes out from behind the counter and we exchange warm pleasantries. "We have you set up in the front," he says.

"Great!" I say, as though I hadn't spotted that little ghost town already. We continue the charade, including the part where he brings me a bottle of water to soothe my throat as I address the crowd, and I thank him.

The bell on the door tinkles, and a young woman walks in. Too young, probably. My eyes go back to the New Fiction table. I'm not going to stare at her. Sure enough, while I'm pondering cover art as if I'd driven seventy miles to do exactly that, I hear her ask about a book. She's taking a course on Science Fiction, and there is a title she can't find in the library.

6:50 P.M.
As the minutes tick by, they chat about the Martian Chronicles.

6:53 P.M.
I'm doing a pantomime entitled Uninterested Shopper. There are authors who might reach for a copy of their own novel, stop the young lady, and engage her in conversation. But I am not one of those people. So she slips by me, toward the cookbooks.

And then... she drops her jacket onto one of the empty folding chairs.

When I have run out of New Fiction to examine, I walk over to the comfy armchair that this bookstore has provided in lieu of a podium. And when she tires of cookery, I ask her what else she's reading for the Sci-Fic course. And it turns out that we both like William Gibson! No way!

And just like that I relax. She sits on her chair and I'm in mine, and we're talking about an author we've both read. I've stopped panicking, so I don't notice right away that a couple has entered the store. They sit down too. And then another couple, and then a woman about my age. And then a few more.

7:00 P.M.
There is a small audience of ten. And what an audience! They are all interested in the topic of my book, and surprisingly not a single one is A) a blood relative B) someone I have ever met before or C) expecting to discuss Julia Child. (Catchy titles have their perils. Trust me here.)

I give my stump speech, and read a very short passage, and loop a quirky news story from last week into my presentation. Everyone in the small group nods along with me about the peculiarities of food advertising. Actually, there's one woman that doesn't make good eye contact at all, and I entertain the thought that she's wandered into the wrong event by accident, but is too shy to leave. But overall, it's a great discussion. One of the men has only eaten organic his whole life, and then he tells us he's over 80, and it's kind of a shock. We all stare admiringly. I should hire this guy to promote my book.

And during the Q&A, someone even asks me to talk about my cookbook. And when it's over, two of the women find the cookbook on the shelves and buy it, as well as buying the novel. I fight off the urge to hug them.

8:00 P.M.
I sign books, I thank people for coming. That silent woman? When the others leave, she comes to sit on a chair in the little front row. In a low voice, she very carefully asks me some questions about how long it took me to write the book, and about my process. She isn't in the wrong place at all--she's just too shy to ask her questions in front of others.

8:20 P.M.
They've gone now. The population of the store is down to two again, just the bookseller and me. There are two big piles of books left over, and he puts half of them down in front of me to sign. We both pretend that we don't know the other half will go into a box and go back to the publisher within weeks if not days.

"I always tell authors about the time Dan Brown came here."

"Oh?" I ask, signing another copy with my lucky green pen.

"We only got one customer."

I hand back the last signed copy. "Really? Why?"

"This was before Da Vinci Code." He winks. "See, you had ten times his audience."


This post originally appeared on Blurb is a Verb, the authorship blog. For more posts about how to pull off bookstore events, click here.

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

Why I Use Scrivener

Scrivener is a word processing program for writers of book length work and screenplays. The first time a writer friend told me to try it, I deferred. After all, why would I want to use a strange bit of software when the rest of the world is using Word? The idea seemed to fall into the category of: why buy problems when they’re giving them away for free?

But there was a quote on the Scrivener website which kept niggling at me. “Scrivener is the first and only word processing program designed specifically for the messy, non-linear way writers really work.”

To write a novel is to take an unruly pile of ideas and stretch them into something sleek and linear. And here was a hint from the universe that it was normal to struggle, but that there might be a better weapon for the fight.

To acquaint myself with Scrivener, I watched a single YouTube video by the developer. (The amusing “novel” he uses for his example is worth the price of admission alone. I'll say only that a giant squid figures into the plot.) That gave me enough familiarity to become a novice user.

(Note: I use the Windows version of Scrivener, and the program was originally written for Mac. In fact, the Mac version has a few more features, about which I know nothing.)

Scrivener works like a very customizable master document (called the “binder”) with sub-documents  Sub-documents can be pieces of your manuscript or notes for your project. And these can be moved, grouped or nested as often as you wish. The pictured example is divided into sections by geographical location. The first section is labeled “Orlando, Florida.” But at any moment, a user can reorder chapters by dragging them around. Clicking on any of the chapters in the list on the left side of the screen will bring up that chapter in the document editor.

This is bulletin board mode. The chapter list is always there on the left. But the bulletin board alternates with a text editor or outline view. The user clicks on one of the choices visible in the upper right corner to toggle among them.

To see the novel as a continuous beast, one merely clicks on “manuscript” at the top, and there it is. But I never do that, because I’ve become enamored with jumping from chapter to chapter. You can see from my screenshot that I’ve given them all names. Scrivener understands that you may want to nickname chapters without those tags appearing in the final document.

The setup saves time in many ways. While writing, say, chapter four, I might include a detail which requires that I change earlier facts. With Scrivener, I don’t have to make a note to myself or lose my place. I can hop back to the earlier fact, fix it, and then click on chapter four again. When I do, I find myself at precisely the same place in the subdocument as I was when I left.

Also, there’s much less cutting and pasting when you can rearrange chapters at will.

When sub-documents are infinitely flexible, you can write text without even guessing where it will end up. I keep a folder called "for later." In that folder there are scenes and mini scenes which I hope to successfully fit into the book's chronology, but haven't yet. Before Scrivener, I would write all my "notes for later" in another computer file or in a notebook, and then often lose them. I don't lose ideas anymore, because everything pertaining to the project is in the binder. (Or it's in the notebook in my glove compartment. Until Scrivener is built into the steering column, that's one bug that won't get fixed.)

Outlining is another boon. The outline overlies the document. At any moment you can switch to outline view. Your chapters populate automatically, and there’s space to write yourself a description. I’ve used this to remind myself of what I’ve already written, or to remind myself of how I want a chapter to shape up. You can also color code scenes or chapters in outline mode (useful for multiple POV works) or label them any way you want. The software suggests “preliminary draft” “final draft” etc. But you can make your own labels.

The third view is bulletin board (shown above). Your outline text will appear there as well.

And I’m no longer afraid of using an unfamiliar file type to store my work, because that’s not what happens. Scrivener stores all of your subdocuments as .rtf (rich text) files, and then stitches them together when you want to see the whole manuscript at once, or when you choose to “compile” it into a document to be read in other software.

Each night when I’m finished working I “compile” my Scrivener manuscript into a new Microsoft Word doc. This takes about three keystrokes, and helps me remember to backup my work.

Learning Curve

It took me awhile to learn to navigate between outlining and text editor modes. And the art of compiling what you see in the text editor into a Word .doc precisely as you wish takes a bit of study. But the documentation is excellent, and the small group of people who work on Scrivener are as helpful as can be.

The retail price of Scrivener is $40. (By the way, I receive no benefit for writing about this product. I'm preaching from the choir loft on this one.) I paid a bit less because I took advantage of the NaNoWriMo discount. The software has a "household" licence, which means that for one price I have the software on both my laptop and our kitchen machine.

I tried the free trial version first. It contains the full program, but expires after thirty days. If it's any clue to how helpful I found the software, you should know that I paid for mine when there were still twenty six days left on my trial.

Happy scrivening!

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

Knitting a Book is Like Writing a Sweater

By Sarah Pinneo | @SarahPinneo

November at my house is all about writing and knitting. The writing bit might be obvious—I’m trying NaNoWriMo again. The knitting is in response to a beautiful crafts fair that my children’s school holds the first week of December. The parents contribute handmade items, we give them all a you-are-shopping-at-a-fundraiser price tags, and the proceeds benefit the school.

In theory this combination of activities should work well. I can think about my NaNo book while I knit. To knit means to take a linear thing—a string—and twist it around and over itself until it becomes a multidimensional piece of art. To write a novel is to do just the opposite. You begin with a beautiful, colorful mess of ideas and emotions, and tease out a linear thing—a string of words in black and white—which best captures its essence.

In practice, I work myself into a lather every November, trying to meet both deadlines. (And both activities make a girl prone to repetitive stress injury. Bummer.) But it turns out that one exercise has given me a lot of perspective on the other. If you’ve never knit before, you should know that any knitting project begins looking awful. The first row of stitches cast on to the needle looks like little more than a snarl of yarn.

Good grief, I always think. How will this ever amount to anything? Maybe I should have chosen a different project. I’ve never seen a less promising start to anything.

A few rows in, things still don’t look better. The only difference is that now I’ve sunk a fair amount of time into something that still underwhelms. All the other knitted toys are going to point and laugh, I imagine. I could just stop now and forget the whole thing.

Veteran knitters learn that any project imprisoned on the needles will always look wrong. It’s only when you spend the time to compose the bulk of an object (or a story) that you can see what you’ve accomplished. And now I understand that NaNoWriMo is trying to teach me the same thing. It isn’t enough to sit admiring the idea for a novel. They all look beautiful when they’re still in your head. You have to grab that wooly pile of inspiration and yank out the beginning of the thread. Chances are you’ll start in the wrong place, and have to rethink that beginning later. (The un-doing of a knitting project is called “frogging.” Nobody has ever been able to tell me why.) This violent beginning will also create more than a couple of knots in your story, and you may not notice them immediately. But at least you will have begun.

This past year I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to figure out which of my many ideas is the most likely to succeed. I’ve made notes for several different projects, falling in love with first one and then another. But that way lies the abyss, because only by knitting well into the heart of things can an idea be given its due.

I had the pleasure of working with an architect on a renovation several years ago. She would often show me a plan, adding “but it still needs to be proved out.” And fiction is just the same. Only by plowing ahead can I nail down the truth. Is there sufficient conflict? Is there enough at stake? Is this character someone that I want to spend fifty or eighty thousand words with?

I will never be the ideal NaNoWriMo writer, because I love to revise as I go. There may be no little “winner!” badge next to my name. But I can still absorb the lessons that NaNo teaches, and feel pleased with my progress. And hey—I made a fish.

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

Learning to Love the Pitch

By Sarah Pinneo | @SarahPinneo

I have often pondered the question of why QueryTracker is so effective at bringing writers together as a community. My favorite theory is that the querying process is a career bottleneck which forces everyone to learn a new and uncomfortable skill. When I recommend QueryTracker to people I meet, I often refer to it as a friendly "writers' ghetto." It's a place where whining about the query process is accepted, even encouraged. We encourage each other, we share information, we comfort those who hit road blocks. We gently steer first draft queries toward greatness, and we pass out tissues to those who bemoan the impossibility of compressing the nuance and greatness of their work into two solid paragraphs.

And while everyone deserves an occasional wallow, my opinion about the painfulness of query writing has evolved. A few years ago, as I strolled up a New York City avenue with my dear friend Abbey, she gave me a crumb of advice she’d once received during her formative years as an actress. And Abbey’s wisdom entirely changed my opinion about querying.

“Listen, kid,” she had been told. “If you want to be an actor, you’d better love auditioning. Because that’s what 90% of successful working actors do with most of their days—they audition. They wait in line. And then they get up in front of strangers and perform with a smile, and then they do it again the next day.”

The truth of it hit me like a wobbly stack of unsold manuscripts. Authors are in precisely the same boat. Pitching is a part of every writer’s life. And it doesn't go away once you land an agent.

Eventually I got my wish. By querying (and querying, and querying) I landed a terrific agent who sold my debut novel. Cue the champagne and streamers. But then last year we agonized together over the catalog copy. Later, the back cover copy. Then, I pitched other authors for blurbs to bedeck my shiny new cover. I pitched book bloggers who agreed to review it. And then? I wrote to every bookseller I've ever known, I pitched media outlets who might cover me.

I’m sure you've spotted the theme by now. The querying never stops. But—and it was a big surprise—I finally began to enjoy it.

Perhaps I shouldn't mention that I also enjoy preparing my own taxes. But my reasoning is the same. Who wouldn't want to devote a little extra time to really getting that right? In the same way that an accountant couldn't possibly care as much as I do about my bottom line, nobody knows my work as well as I do.

Which is just as well, because the pitching never ends. Having one success doesn't mean you’ll never write another pitch. If your agent believes your next book could be part of a two or three book deal, you’re going to have to write a few punchy paragraphs about the next books in the series.

Pitching, like taxes, is part of (the publishing) life. This is something your agent understands too. The first time your agent reads your pitch, she’s also writing her own in her head. Ditto your editor--she's going to have to sell your book to the acquisition meeting, and then later to her sales force. Agents and Editors are query writing professionals. If they can do it, so can you.

So we might as well stop hating pitching, and start to see it for the lifeblood that it is. A query, like an audition, is not an obligation, it's a chance to impress. So step up on that stage and give them your best Hamlet. To read or not to read. That is the question.

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

Jillian Medoff: From Flattened to Fabulous

By Sarah Pinneo | @SarahPinneo

If you stick around the Query Tracker community long enough, you’ll hear many a story of dogged persistence and eventual triumph. For authors, these stories are like good food and strong drink; they sustain us, sometimes make us drunk with their power. Last week I heard an incredible author’s story that just needed to be shared.

Author Jillian Medoff got her big break before Query Tracker ever came online. In 1997, her first novel HUNGER POINT was published to great acclaim, which was followed by huge sales in 2003 when it was made into a Lifetime movie. Fabulous, right? And in 2002, her second novel was published.

“And it flopped,” Medoff told me. "It had great reviews... and lousy sales."

Nevertheless, she spent six years writing another, more literary book. This was the one “that I deemed a Masterpiece,” says Medoff. “I believed in the book so deeply, I genuinely thought it would change my life. It had multiple points of view, it went back and forth in time. It revealed truths about the human condition.”

And it didn’t sell to a publisher.

“Although my work had been rejected countless times before, this rejection flattened me. For weeks I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t write; I could barely read. I was ashamed of my failure.”

But also, Medoff was ashamed of her sorrow. “It was just a book, after all—and my hubris.”

So for a time, Medoff gave up.

“The truth about writing fiction is that nobody asks you to write, and no one cares if you do. In fact, it often feels as though people are actively arguing against it.” Ouch. Truer words were never spoken.

So why did she start writing again in the end? “Because the world is an absurd, chaotic place,” says Medoff. “And my books help me make sense of it.”

The book she wrote next was fueled by the rage that this experience had inflicted upon her. “I was bitterly angry that my career as a published novelist was over, and more important, that it wasn’t my choice.”

The result was I COULDN’T LOVE YOU MORE (Grand Central / 2012). Vanity Fair calls it “daringly sympathetic,” and People magazine wrote that it was “dazzling” and “hilarious and heartwrenching.” “A gripping story of choices and second chances,” says the Examiner. And there’s a big blurb from Jodi Picoult on the front cover.

This story gave me chills, because we’ve all had that rage. Sometimes things look grim, and quitting seems like the best option. It takes a strong writer to conclude that failure doesn’t have to be permanent. Somehow Jillian Medoff proved that failure is only one stop on the train. And even if you step off there once in awhile, there is always a way to step back on again.

Says Medoff: "I am a working artist. While it's true that I have been published, it's also true that as a working artist, I am rejected in one way or another every single day of my life. I've seen the highest highs and lowest lows, but my failures are as important to my career as my successes; maybe they're even more important. In the end, I hope to one day have a body of work that will reflect how I've matured as a writer. I think it's the best I can hope for; that is, to do work I'm proud of. Everything else—publishing, great reviews, money—is the luck of the draw. To give up, though, ensures that you'll never get lucky."

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

How to Ask for a Blurb (Even When You’re Intimidated)

By Sarah Pinneo | @SarahPinneo

Asking an author to blurb your book takes guts, and for good reason. When you ask for a blurb, you’re asking another person to shine a little of his or her credibility down on you. By definition, you’ll most often ask writers who are (at least for now) more well-known than you are.

It’s perfectly rational to find the prospect more stressful than, say, oral surgery.

But the book publicity process will prove, over time, that many worthy things are initially terrifying. Asking for blurbs is one of the very first book publicity acts you’ll perform, which doesn’t make things any easier. But there are a few things you can do to make the process less intimidating.

1. Polish Your Pitch. Remember that query you worked so hard to write? Dust it off. In your request, you should be no less professional and forthcoming about your manuscript than you would be in a query. Never be vague, even if you know the author well. Make it easy for him or her to say “sure, I’ll read it,” by writing a request that is polished, professional and complete.

2. Make The Connection Obvious. Is your manuscript in the romantic suspense genre, just like the author’s? Say so right up front. Did you sit next to her at a conference luncheon? Mention that too. If you can’t state clearly why you’re asking this author specifically, perhaps you should rethink the request. A true connection between their work and your book is the most promising ingredient in blurb matchmaking success.

3. Be Clear About Your Needs. Before you pick up the phone, or fire off an email, make sure you can supply the blurber with all the relevant information. You’ll need to say in what format the manuscript will arrive (loose pages? Bound galley?). Most importantly, you’ll need to give a firm deadline. If you’re not prepared with these details, you’re making it easy for the author to say “no.”

4. Think Big, But Ask a Small Question First. If you’re too intimidated to ask a famous author directly for a blurb, there is a less terrifying way to broach the topic. This method works especially well if you happen to meet the author in person. Try starting with: “O famous one,  can you tell me your parameters for blurbing new books?” That question will break the ice, allowing you to broach the subject without asking the author to make a snap decision about your book’s worthiness. Besides, successful authors who receive frequent requests may have already made some rules about how they’d like to receive manuscripts, and what deadlines they can meet. The better you can tailor your request to the author’s expectations, the easier it will be to hear a “yes.”

5. When You Hear “No,” Ask Someone Else. Authors cannot say yes to everyone. They have deadlines and obligations, just like you. Nobody likes to hear “no,” but everybody hears it sometimes. The best medicine is to try again.

6. Feel Free to Admit Your Fear. It’s okay to tell an author, “I’ve never had to ask this question before, but I was wondering…” Even bestselling authors will remember their early, vulnerable days. Also, ask yourself how you’ll feel in five years when a newbie author approaches you for a blurb. You’ll be flattered, right? Chances are, the author you’re soliciting is flattered, too.

7. Show Your Appreciation. When an author provides you with a blurb, write a thank you note, on paper, just the way your mother taught you when you were eight. Buy a copy of that author’s book, too. “I just gave your latest book to my sister in law,” is a fine sentence to include in your thanks. Then, think about thanking the author again on publication day. When Julia’s Child hit bookstore shelves, I sent a finished copy of the book and a jar of dark chocolate peanut butter to each of my blurbers. Not only did I want to show my thanks, the timing of my gift helped to remind them that a tweet or a Facebook “share” of the book would not go amiss.

For further reading about blurb requests, see: Daphne Uviller’s “To Ask for a Blurb is to Feel Like a Turd.” See also Carolyn Roy-Bornstein’s “When the Blurb is on the Other Foot.”

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.