Write Nonfiction in November

I’d like to introduce you to my first guest blogger, my colleague Vicki Weiland, a freelance developmental editor and speaker working in the San Francisco Bay area and specializing in business, fine arts, and history.  In addition, Vicki serves as a board member of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association and the Women’s National Book Association-SF/Bay Area. I asked Vicki if she could write a blog for Write Nonfiction in November about her pet editing peeves. Last year I wrote about mine, so I thought it would be nice to have another editor’s perspective. However, she told me she didn’t really have any pet editing peeves. Then this blog showed up, followed by another which dovetailed so well that rather than make you wait until tomorrow to read the second one, I’ve decided to simply run both of them together as one long blog. That way you get all Vicki’s great information at once.

You won’t have to wonder for long why I chose to feature Vicki as my first guest blogger. If any of you are perpetual “talkers” rather than writers, or if you are having a hard time getting started on your Write Nonfiction in November project — especially if it’s a book — this blog is for you. After reading Vicki’s words, you’ll have the tools you need to begin writing today. (And it’s only November 2, so you aren’t too far behind yet).

Vicki Weiland’s Four Questions to Help You Start Writing

By Vicki Weiland

Freelance Development Editor and Speaker

BAIPA and WNBA-SF/Bay Area Board Member

As with all of us who love writing and everything connected with it I also know the difficulty we all face, even daily, in actually tackling that page, rewriting that chapter, agonizing over that one word.  Yet, despite this, we all know that we have no choice—we are driven by an inner reservoir that impels us to keep on going; we must get the problem resolved!  We must get those words on paper!  Then there are those keenly precious moments when the words flow, when all that is deep within us comes to the surface, and the result is a page or pages of sheer delight and achievement.  All of the people in our lives know the signs.  They are patient when they are speaking with us and it is obvious that half our brain is focused on something other than what they are saying; they are infinitely kind when we say, “I’ll only be a little while longer . . .”  All of this goes with the ebb and flow of writing (and editing).  It is the river of our lives.  

Acknowledging all of the above, and the difficulties both internal and external that face all writers, this brings me to my pet peeve, albeit a bittersweet one.  My all-the-time pet peeve is the would-be writers who talk about writing every chance they get, sometimes for years and years on end . . . but who never, ever actually take that confessed desire and do anything about it.  I am referring to people who never cease to remind their listeners about “that book” they want to write, and who actually have concrete ideas and a great “pitch” for it!  I get hooked every time.  I catch the vision.  I sit up straighter.  I move closer to the edge of my chair, ready to encourage and help.  I come on board, “Tell me more.”  And then, it stops.  I can see it in their eyes, or rather in how they avoid my eyes.  It’s over for them.

I always feel sad and deflated, as much for me as for them.  As a developmental editor who works in tandem with a writer, I love ideas and I love the natural enthusiasm and vitality that comes from sharing ideas.  I love following a writer’s mind to see where these ideas might go.  It is stimulating and enjoyable.  It is creative.  And, at that moment, as the dream is being shared, everything is so alive with promise. 

And then, after that initial burst of euphoria and the accompanying gleam I see in their eyes once “the book” begins to take form (again), only to fizzle out (again), I can’t stop wondering, “What if . . . .” 

What if they really sat down and started to write?  What if they put their foot into the river?

So, because I believe there is a writing voice deep within,  just yearning to grab onto something that will pull it out of the abyss of wishful thinking, I always offer to send them “Vicki’s Four Questions.”©  I hope they will work like a set of pliers to pry open a valve just wide enough that some words will flow out onto the paper they are printed on.  Because I know, once they do, there will be no turning back! 

Do you want to start writing, but you are not sure where to begin? In all of the years I have been a nonfiction developmental editor I have discovered that all would-be writers actually do have a precise idea of what they want to say, why they want to say it, and how they would like their book to look and feel.  When it comes to starting the writing process, sometimes they just need a little help getting their feet wet. I’d like to offer you that help by asking you to try your hand at answering “Vicki’s Four Questions”©: 

1. What is your vision of the book?  (What are the three most important qualities, i.e., elegant, academic, thought-provoking, informative, authoritative, reflective, “change the world,” dramatic, etc.?)
2. What is the most important thing you want readers to have learned after they have read your book?
3. What would you most like readers to feel when they close your book?
4. What three words would you like most for a book reviewer to say about your book?

Happily, in addition to getting your creative energy flowing, each of these questions also has an overall editorial purpose that I hope will prove helpful:

• Question number one addresses your desired “author’s voice” and the overall “tone” you would like the book to convey.  
• Question number two provides the “focus” for the book, and it is also the backbone for developing an outline so as to incrementally educate and drive the reader through the content.
• Question number three is the “heart-line” that will flow throughout the book.  It is your heart-line, your deeply desired outcome for writing the book.
• Question number four motivates you to think about marketing—who your readers are and what would motivate them to buy your book.     

While I developed these questions for books, they can also be applied to an article or an essay.  This month, as you progress in the writing of your nonfiction piece, you might consider keeping your answers nearby so that you can look back on them regularly to see if you are still “on track.”  If not, you may want to begin to hone in on them again.  Or you may find that your original concept has changed and is crystallizing into something new.  If that is the case, then you may want to ask yourself the questions again.   

Most of all, I hope they will stimulate you to move ahead with your dream and to turn that dream into reality!  It is exciting to embark upon this adventure of writing, and to take what is in your head and heart and create a lasting piece of work. 

Happy November . . .  and “Write On!”

(If you have questions or comments for Vicki, please leave them in them by commenting on this blog. She will be checking the comments regularly and responding to them from here. Future guest bloggers may include their email address and website information to you can contact them directly.)

Yesterday someone asked me if they could post a blog about what they plan to write about this year during Write Nonfiction in November. I said, “Sure!” Let’s build some excitement and get people thinking about their ideas. I sent her off to compose her blog.  I want to extend the invitation to other readers out there eagerly waiting to get started with Write Nonfiction in November. If you can send me a short blog post on why you want to do Write Nonfiction in November and what you plan to write about before November 1 (which means in the next 30 hours or so if you are on PST), I’ll post it here tomorrow (Friday, October 31).

I have to confess, I’m not sure what I’m writing this year. Last year my goals was to write my booklet, The Priestess Practice, and that’s what I did. I was going to write another booklet this year – one I’ve been meaning to write for about 4 years now – that seems timely about how to move through fear. I know I could finish that in 30 days. However, then I thought maybe I should work on the full length version of my booklet The Kabbalah of Conscious Creation, which I’m trying to sell. (I have a new agent who has just agreed to read the proposal; I have decided not to use my old agent for this project.) I’m afraid I won’t be able to finish that project if I take it on, though. And then I’ll fail my own challenge. So, I’m still deciding.

By the way, I discovered today that NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has some rebels! (I had to get a new password – forgot mine – and sign in to check it out for myself.) Yes, NaNo Rebels, and they are writing nonfiction. I’ve let them know about what we are doing here, and I hope they join us. Another group calls themselves NaNo Nonfiction. I’ve let them know a nonfiction challenge exists as well. If they want to write 50,000 words and let the NaNoWriMo counter count it for them, more power to them.

Now that I’m logged in there, who know, I might use the counter, too, just for kicks. And I’ll surely post something in the forums again to send some people this way. I might even hold a write-in or two. So, if you are in the Bay Area (Northern CA), keep your eyes peeled for notifications. And, if any of you Nano Rebels or Nano Nonfiction people are reading this, “Welcome! Glad to have you aboard!

I’m back from my meeting with my agents. Actually, I only met with one; the other wasn’t feeling well. We went for a lovely lunch at a nice restaurant. He brought all the materials I had sent to him, and we ate and talked for almost two and a half hours.

We never really did discuss time lines, though. I think the gist of that subject basically came down to the fact that he said someone else said you need a five-year plan. I’ve been at this longer than five years, but I haven’t had a plan for that long. So, I guess the advice for nonfiction writers comes down to: Create a five-year promotional plan that gets you from where you are now to the top of a very large platform in that amount of time. At least, that’s what I took away from that little bit of our conversation.

I asked what I should be doing to develop a platform that would make it possible for him to market that one book project he sent me off to promote. He looked over my recent accomplishments and liked the fact that I’ve landed myself a spot as a regular guest on a podcast that has over 38,000 listeners per month. (I’ll be on nine or 10 shows in the next year!) He liked what I have been doing to promote myself on the Internet and was impressed (I think) with the growing amount of traffic to my web site. He suggested I do more of whatever I’ve been doing on that front (posting lots of articles to article directories), and that I get out and do much a lot more speaking. (Why was I not surprised?)

We looked at all of my recent work and projects, my old book proposals, my more current book proposals (including the one they didn’t get sold), and then discussed how they all fit together. Basically, we tried to see how we could fit them into a niche that would be uniquely mine. I know about niche craft, but it was nice to see how I could begin to take my booklets and some other book ideas I have and begin to place them all together into a similar form for the same market. My agent has been telling me for over a year that I have the unique opportunity to really take over a particular niche if I try, and I can see how I could begin to do that through really focused promotion. Actually, many of the nonfiction projects I’ve been working on do fit together into a niche, because they have come out of my efforts to promote one or two major projects. In the course of our conversation, I began to see how I could produce a line of booklets with corresponding courses, audio programs, and such. And he suggested I do just that – and go out and use that as the foundation for my efforts to increase the number of speaking engagements I have per year.

I had hoped to come away with a better idea of where to focus my attention – on this book or that one, but instead I came away with more ideas. Some of those ideas fit my niche and some don’t. You see, I write about Jewish spirituality primarily, and, more specifically, Jewish spirituality for women. However, I have some ideas and projects with a more secular nature. These stem from my focus on Judaism, but they apply to a broader audience. So, it becomes hard to know where to focus first. Do I build outward from my small market, or do I circle back from the larger one? It’s best to do the former, my agent and I agree, but some of my ideas, I believe, deserve a bigger audience.

And there are the other book ideas…the ones that fall totally outside the realm of my niche. The ones that I’m sure could be big sellers if only I could get my agent or another agent or a publisher to just take a chance on them. But, like so many other nonfiction writers, I’m left working on my platform, chipping away at that time line, knocking off one more item on my plan, crafting my niche, honing my ideas, and wondering when the time will be right, when my time will come.

It’s hard to play small when you really want to play big. And it’s hard to sit on the sidelines waiting for the coach (an agent or publisher) to tell you its time to get into the game when you really want to run onto the field now and show everyone that you can score a goal. In the game of nonfiction publishing, however, it seems that until you are a Barry Bonds, Michael Jordan, David Beckham, Payton Manning (or James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark, John Grisham, Danielle Steele, or Nicholas Sparks) – someone with a huge fan base, you’ll be sitting bench.

To end this blog on a positive note, I’d like to invite you all to purchase Elle Newmark’s novel, Bones of the Dead, at Amazon.com and then go to her party, which is still going strong, at www.bonesofthedead.com. Her promotion of her virtual book launch party got her seven (yes, seven) e-mails from agents and a contract from William Morris (with talk of foreign and movie rights) and made her novel an Amazon.com bestseller in two categories. She forevermore can call herself a bestselling author and her book a bestselling book. While you’re at the party, check out the party favors I’m offering. You can download my free Abracadabra! The Kabbalah of Conscious Creation Workbook. And e-mail me for a free recipe from my (hopefully) soon-to-be-published Jewish celebrity cookbook (it’s being considered by a publishing house right now). You also can help me get it published by preordering it; you’ll find out about that when you get your free recipe. And, last but not least, you can e-mail me for a coupon good for 20% off 5 hours of editing, writing, ghostwriting, and writing coaching services (a $75 value). Plus, there are lots of other great party favors being offered at the party. Anyway, what Elle accomplished serves as an inspiration to me. It doesn’t matter that she writes fiction; we nonfiction writers can take her lead and accomplish the same thing she did.

Last blog tomorrow….hope you’re finished with your project! If not, get writing. You don’t have much longer.

I want today to give nonfiction writers a pat on the back for taking what they know and putting it down on paper. I spend a lot of time editing books written by authors who have come up with a great idea of their own, fleshed it out and put it down on paper. They may have done a lot of research or learned from a variety of teachers, but in the end they came up with a new take on the information they were given. They had the wherewithal and the gumption to take their own “invention” and run with it in the form of a book. That book may have come out of the workshops they have been teaching or the lectures they have been giving, but in the end they took what they knew and wrote a book (and possibly some articles as well). They deserve credit for that – not just for the writing but for writing what they know.

I’m not saying that fiction writers don’t do research or conduct interview or put what they know down on paper. They do. My novel was inspired by a real-life event as well as a place I knew well. One of my favorite novelists started out as a researcher and bases her stories on extensive research, but in the end fiction writers make up their stories.

In journalism school, I was constantly told to “write what you know.” I think this represents great advice, but I believe a really good nonfiction writer can write about anything. If you are good at doing research and conducting interviews, you can learn any subject well enough to understand it so you can write about it. You can become the expert on whatever you are asked to write about.

During my career as a nonfiction writer, I’ve written about life insurance tax law, ascension, same-day surgery, stepfamily dynamics, laser surgery, business, celebrities, bird migration, corporate communications, employee relations, parenting issues, marriage, allergies, the death of a pet, Jewish spirituality, nature activities, corporate community relations, legal issues… You get the idea. I wasn’t an expert on most of these subjects when I began writing about them, but I was when I finished.

So, I say, write about what you know, or know about what you write. Either way, when you know something, write about it. And then commend your self for doing so, especially if it’s your idea and you’ve written a whole book on your own unique knowingness about something.