The unrelenting toil of aspiring writers and their great courage and persistence was laid bare at an inspiring event entitled From Manuscript to Publication: A Quattro/ Guernica Forum. Quattro Book publisher John Calabro headed a panel with five, first-time, hot-off-the-press authors – Bianca Lakoseljac, Amela Marin, Suzanne Robertson, Paul Seesequasis and Vanessa Smith.
Calabro ran a well-structured show where he led us, step by step and author by author, through the different stages – inspiration and writing, marketing aka finding a publisher, working with the editor of the publishing house, collaborating on a cover design, and finally, promoting the book.
As a wanna-be published writer with a manuscript, I was all ears. The panel deepened my knowledge of some of the how-tos and put faces and voices on a difficult process.
My question from day before about whether a writer needed a nurturing community got a resounding yes from the five authors. Some found support at creative writing courses and workshops, some through critiquing groups, others depended on a handful of trusted readers, and one seemed to have done it almost all by herself.
Developing your voice was seen as very important by all the authors. Equally important was being open to critical feedback, particularly from your editor. All five authors were happy with their editors, though Calabro introduced the subject by describing some editor-author relationships as horror stories.
Regarding promotion, Lakoseljac suggested personalizing the book by going to meet bookstore owners and libraries and asking to read at these venues, while Smith stressed how cheap it was to use social media like websites and blogs. Seesequasis said that if the book had a particular niche, one way to go international was to recommend it as a course book to professors.
As for making money, forget it. This is a labour of love! The real rewards are having readers beyond your immediate family.
Amelia Marin had some good advice for the perfectionists: Think of the project in terms of “this is the best book I can write here and now.” Amen.
Veena Gokhale is a Montreal-based communications consultant. She has published a variety of non fiction and fiction.
The 13th annual Blue Met Festival Metropolis Bleu continues through May 1, 2011, at the Holiday Inn Select centre-ville (in Chinatown). For more information visit www.metropolisbleu.org
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Stories in the Sky with Diamonds
THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 6PM. En route to the Blue Met to see Little Gems: The Art of the Short Story, I thought about the triple gems of Buddhism – the Buddha, the dharma (teachings) and the sangha (community). Just as Buddhists base their practice on these three elements, could authors too build their writing lives around a mentor, a learning process, and a community? Perhaps I’ll pose this question at the event, I told myself.
The suite of talented writers consisted of Judy Fong Bates, H. Nigel Thomas, Alice Zorn, and Alex Epstein. Thomas and Zorn live in Montreal, Epstein comes from Israel, and Bates lives on a farm outside Toronto.
They all read stories that featured immigrants of one kind or another. Bates and Thomas’ stories were both about immigrant parents’ ambitions for their children. Bates explored the competition between two Chinese Canadian mothers, while Thomas highlighted the issue of fragmented families, focussing on a Jamaican domestic in Canada who leaves behind a son in her home country.
Zorn read from a collection of shorts and from her just released novel, Arrhythmia, which consists of five connected stories. Both her readings involved relatives from abroad visiting family who were not too comfortable with the idea.
Epstein writes very short shorts of just a few lines each. He is the kind of writer who makes your head spin, in a good way. He must toss them off quickly, I thought, feeling a little envious. But the Q&A that followed revealed that he works from 8 am to 8 pm on his pieces.
I didn’t get to ask the question I left home with, but I did ask about the writing process. Thomas said that his particular story was based on his observations as a high school teacher in Montreal in the 1970s. Bates described herself as an “inefficient writer” who starts at perhaps 50 words a day, gathering considerable speed as she gets more immersed in the project. Zorn often knows “the end” and works towards it. Ultimately, the stories emerged over years and were rewritten quite a few times.
As I was leaving I spied a very long lineup to see Bernhard Schlink, author of The Reader. No doubt you’ve heard of the film, based on his novel by the same name, if not seen it.
Why, I wondered, was the short story not more popular? You would readers to push short story collections to the top of bestseller lists in this age of short attention spans and 140 character tweets. Maybe what this great literary form needs is better marketing.
I stepped out of Hotel Holiday Inn Select to a luminous evening sky. The sparkle of the stories seemed to be reflected out into the world and I felt illuminated by a serene radiance.
Veena Gokhale is a Montreal-based communications consultant. She has published a variety of non fiction and fiction.
The 13th annual Blue Met Festival Metropolis Bleu continues through May 1, 2011, at the Holiday Inn Select centre-ville (in Chinatown). For more information visit www.metropolisbleu.org
