Meet the Instructor: Virginia Hartman

~ Interview by Tyler West


Virginia Hartman has taught writing at George Washington University, American University, and the Smithsonian, and has been teaching at The Writer's Center for the past 10 years. Her writing has been anthologized in Gravity Dancers: Even More Fiction by Washington Area Women (Paycock Press), and she is the co-editor, with Barbara Esstman, of a literary anthology called A More Perfect Union: Poems and Stories About the Modern Wedding(St. Martin’s Press). Virginia's next TWC workshop, Advanced Fiction, begins on March 25. In the interview below, Virginia explains the inspiration behind the course, and how her unique teaching approach will bolster seasoned writers' literary toolkits.


What was your motivation for teaching an "advanced workshop"? What sets this class apart from other fiction classes?

I had a few participants in my other workshops who were ready to take their fiction to the next level. They had taken several of my workshops and were improving all the time, so a more challenging session seemed inevitable for them. It surprised me, as well, how many other writers were enthusiastically ready for an advanced-level course.

The thing that sets the Advanced Fiction Workshop apart is that participants submit work before registering. This is not meant to create an exclusive club, but rather it's a way to assure that everyone is well-prepared before entering the room, and that everyone around the table has more or less the same amount of previous experience with fiction workshops. For this session starting on March 25, the deadline to submit pages is March 10.


How do writers know if they're ready for an advanced course?

If writing fiction is a consistent practice in your life, if you've received encouragement from previous workshop leaders, if your day doesn't seem complete if you haven't worked on a story, and most especially, if you've taken several fiction writing classes at The Writer's Center or elsewhere, you may be ready. The only way to know for sure is to send in your best five pages.

You require students to send a manuscript by March 10th, before the class starts. How does this pre-workshop requirement enhance the experience for students?

Here's the feedback I've received. Students are extremely gratified when they feel they're at the same level as their colleagues in the workshop. It usually means that the critiques they get on their work are thoughtful and considered. And because participants are reading complex and interesting fiction from their classmates, each person's ability to critique is sharpened. This then helps them look at their own fiction with a critical eye as they progress.


If you could ensure that students leave your class with one "writing takeaway," what would that be?

I'm very big on community. It's what The Writer's Center is about. And within my own teaching ethic, it's what I'll call my "prime directive." Because writing is so solitary, when we come together, we absolutely have to support and encourage one another. I always promote the idea that workshop participants keep meeting after the course ends, to carry forward the deadline-giving, the mutually supportive critiques, and in many cases, the friendships that have formed.


We just have to ask this question: what's your favorite piece of fiction and why?

That's sort of like asking which is my favorite child. So I'll skirt it and tell you instead what I've liked recently, and felt I could really learn from. I read The North Water, a novel by Ian McGuire, which is much more brutal than most fiction I read, and yet I couldn't put it down. I also sank my teeth into Michael Chabon's Moonglow, which is masterfully told, and Ann Patchett's Commonwealth, which I didn't think I was going to like at first, but she does such interesting things with structure that I found myself wanting to follow her crooked path. And I'm a little late to Mary Kay Zuravleff's Man Alive, which came out in 2014, but at times her style feels like Virginia Woolf has come back to life and is writing about a family in Bethesda. It was tasty. Every novel or short story I read makes me a better writer, and I encourage students to have a novel or a story collection on their night table at all times.

Click here for more information on the Advanced Fiction workshop. Each student is expected to send the instructor a manuscript of five pages by March 10, and the workshop itself begins on March 25. We hope to see you there!

Write, Revise, Research, Submit Rinse, Repeat!

~By Kathryn Brown Ramsperger

So it’s the beginning of a new year and you’re itching to make progress on your novel. You’re meeting your daily writing goals! Congrats! However, if you want to get published, you’ll have to keep up a certain pace after January. I suggest resolving to set aside an hour or two every day to write, revise, research, and submit. Here’s how I wrote my forthcoming novel, The Shores of Our Souls, which will be published by Touchpoint Press later this year:

Write More: You may not believe me, but it’s perfectly achievable to write a full novel in 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days—if you write every day. Even if it takes you three months to get your first draft, that’s amazing progress!  Even once you have your first draft, though, you have to keep writing as often as possible.

Revise More:  I had a critique group, a book club, and two developmental editors read my work. Each time we met, I used their feedback to revise my novel. My writing strengths are dialogue, detail, and characterization, and my weakness used to be the plot. Notice I said, “used to be,” that’s because I learned more about constructing the plot each time I revised. The more your work is read, the more your weakness will become your strengths. The more your writing improves, the better your chances of securing an agent and/or publisher.

Research More:  There is a cornucopia of resources online, in print, and in the community that can advise you on writing fiction. Use them. Ask questions. Take a class. You can research a scene, a method or technique, or facts to solidify your writing. You can also research how to submit and market your book.

Submit More: Once I completed my third draft, I began submitting my manuscript to agents. I also submitted stories to 25-30 literary journals every quarter.  Many agents wrote lovely words about my manuscript, but I submitted to over 200 agents before I found the right fit.  In fact, it was a guest blog that I wrote that caught the attention of my now agent—an agent who subsequently submitted my work to 197 publishers before it was accepted by Touchpoint.  All along the way, I saw sparks of interest from agents. This made my heart sing because a) it meant the publisher read my pages; and b) they liked my work enough not to send a standard rejection form letter. 

Rinse and Repeat!  If you knock on 50 doors selling vacuums, you’ll sell less than if you knock on 500. Publishing (good enough) fiction is a numbers game. I call my “rejections” my “permission slips to proceed.”  Every time I got a rejection, I sent a query to another publication—either a journal, an online magazine, or an agent. Agents look for a portfolio of fiction to show that you are a serious professional.  

Never give up! Don’t stop writing, researching markets, or submitting! Today’s authors are lucky to be able to send simultaneous submissions. Take advantage of this opportunity, and don’t worry too much about rejections.  If you take these steps, you’ll soon have a home for your book baby.

Kathryn Brown Ramsperger’s debut novel will be published by Touchpoint Press in summer 2017. You can read more about it at shoresofsouls.com, where you’ll also find information about Kathryn and her other writing, including her nonfiction, short stories, and blog. She’s also a creativity coach, and you can contact her at 301-503-5150.

A Little Luck Never Hurts My Career as a Book Author

A Little Luck Never Hurts: My Career as a Book Author
by Nevin Martell

Scoring a deal with a publishing house can sometimes seem impossible—at the very least fantastical—even if you’ve made it happen before. Even though I’ve written several books, I’m still surprised that any of them made it to the shelves. Happenstance and luck always seem to play a role.

My first effort, Dave Matthews Band: Music for the People, came about when a writer friend managed to sell a similarly styled biography on Oasis. I kept badgering him over gin and tonics until he introduced me to his agent and walked me through the process. A short while later, I found myself cashing an advance check. Basically, I starred in a publishing fairytale.

When that book sold well, the publisher called me to find out what music icon I wanted to tackle next. I narrowed down my options to this new little band called the Foo Fighters, and Beck, who was alt-rock’s golden child. Unfortunately, I chose the “Loser” singer. As I toiled away on my book, he proceeded to release increasingly experimental albums that sold progressively fewer copies. Meanwhile, the Foos became the biggest band in the world. Beck: The Art of Mutation sank like its namesake’s career and my publisher stopped calling. My career as a writer was stalled.

More than half a decade passed and I couldn’t come up with an idea that would stick to the wall. I still had an agent, but only technically. The only time we communicated was when he emailed to ensure that my royalty checks for the DMB book were going to the right address. It wasn’t a bad relationship; it just wasn’t one that productively moved my career forward.

After more than a few false starts, I started asking myself a simple question: What did I love so much that I would want to spend a year researching it and writing about it?

My epiphany came as I was reading an old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. The quirky adventures of the boy and his tiger got me to thinking: What the hell ever happened to their creator, Bill Watterson? After some quick research (ie. Googling), I realized Watterson was a true enigma. I drew up a one-page proposal in the hopes that someone would pay me to uncover the mystery.

I shared the concept with my agent, but he wasn’t interested. I was convinced it was a good idea, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to get it off the ground without representation. Around that time, I happened to be talking to an editor at Continuum Publishing about their 33 1/3 series, which focuses on esoteric and forgotten albums. He passed on my idea to do a book on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, but I decided to send him my proposal for my dream project on Bill Watterson anyway. He liked it and asked for a quick chapter outline. Soon enough, he was sending me a contract for what became Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip. Since my agent hadn’t been supportive of the idea, I decided to represent myself (with a little help from a friendly lawyer who looked over the paperwork). It all happened so fast that I had little time to consider my good fortune.

Now I’m putting together a proposal for my next project and I’ve got my fingers crossed. It takes a great idea, persistence, and a lot of hard work to get a book deal. But a little luck never hurts. ¶

This article was originally published in the summer 2012 Workshop & Event Guide.

**

Nevin Martell has been writing about food and culture for more than a decade and a half. His work has appeared in The Washington Post Express, DC Modern Luxury, Capitol File, Washington City Paper, Cheese Connoisseur, Restaurant Management, Men’s Health, and online at The Washington Post’s All You Can Eat blog. His books include Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip, Standing Small: A Celebration of 30 Years of the LEGO Minifigure, Dave Matthews Band: Music for the People, and Beck: The Art of Mutation. You can find him online at nevinmartell.com.

photo by: Danny Fowler (Martell)

Why it's Good that Joe the Plumber and Gov. Palin Publish Books

So Joe the Plumber (Sen. McCain's ploy to win over the working man during the election) apparently has a book coming out. Gov. Palin too. There's a long history of "non writers" writing books, novels, memoirs, and books of poetry for big sums of cash (celebrities, sports heroes, etc). Or how about that 9-year-old boy who wrote a "funny" little book on dating for his male friends at school? Now his book is being optioned for a film by Fox. Does that sound crazy? It does, because it is.


To show how far behind I was at age 9: I neither wrote books nor paid attention to girls (or cared to lecture to my friends on how to act around them). When I was 9 I was too busy thinking about baseball (the St. Louis Cardinals in particular) to give a darn about girls. Besides, girls didn't like me much then. Probably still don't.

Anyway, I doubt for most writers it's the cash advances these celebrauthors receive that's so galling to them: it's the fact that people who've never had to struggle at improving their craft as a writer are getting published at all, who've never sent dozens of stories/poems off to journals only to receive a wave of rejections in response. It seems unfair.

It is unfair, of course. But.

This Timothy Egan article was forwarded to me by a friend the other day. Though I agree with everything he writes and feel the same frustration over this trend, I'd like to say for the record that I am HAPPY that these people are getting books published. (Okay, happy's not the right word. Let's just say that I've made peace with it.)

You see, I'm just impressed that these "authors" or their handlers or whoever put them up to writing a book (even if they're ghostwritten) thought that a BOOK was the right medium to send their messages through. That these people are writing books and expecting people to read them means that books still matter. As everyone knows, The Industry is facing some serious issues. So it's good that people believe in books--maybe it'll help turn around The Industry? Of course, it could also mean that The Industry will consolidate around BIG name celebrauthors and expect to turn huge sales with each book. This is possible. But as long as the publishers use these books as sales weapons for their special titles, as Egan notes, the titles by the little guys and gals, the yous and mes, then I can live with it. Remember this one fact: Most publishers (at least I hope this is still true) got into publishing because they loved good books.

Keep writing your books and make sure they're as good as they can be. Eventually, yes eventually, you'll get them noticed by the right person if you're serious enough (and able to revise and improvise). I don't look forward to the day that celebrauthors and their staff turn a blind eye to "the book" and find some other means of getting their stories out. IF these kinds of books stop getting published, well....

Member Carollyne Hutter: Teens on my Mind

Writer and instructor Leslie Pietrzyk recently alerted me to one of her workshop participants, WC member Carollyne Hutter, and suggested that a post that Carollyne did for her wonderful blog, Work in Progress, might make a great fit for our Writer's Center blog. I agreed. As I'm coming to discover about Leslie, she knows what she's talking about.

Carollyne has recently written a YA novel. And in this post she discusses the genesis of that project (and beyond). At the end of her post you'll find her bio.
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When a baby is born, a parent usually gently rocks her or him and thinks about the road ahead—the baby’s first words, first steps, first day at kindergarten. With misty eyes, the parent will continue rocking peacefully and then freeze with dread: What to do when the baby becomes a teenager? “How will I survive living with a teenager?” the parent anguishes.

A few years ago, a teenager, Brigit, came to live with me, but she didn’t move into my house, she moved into my mind. I was looking out the window, pondering the difference between the U.S. and Germany, when I heard a teenage voice in my head complaining how difficult it was to move between the two countries. I tried to shake the voice out, like water after swimming, but Brigit’s voice kept bubbling up.

A couple of weeks later, I dropped in at the last minute at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) New York conference. When I went to register, they told me that only a few break-out sessions were available and they put me in teen writing.

Ben Schrank of Razorbill led the teen writing session, talking in a relaxed, conversational tone about writing a young-adult novel (YA). He eased some of my fears of writing a YA, such as how to deal with current teenage jargon (His advice: Don’t bother, by the time the novel comes out, the jargon will be out of date.)

Ben stressed the importance of putting humor in a YA. When he said that I knew I was hooked (I had wanted to use more humor in my writing) and that Brigit and I were going to live together for a while.

So after the conference, I let Brigit unpack and move in with me. I would like to say it all worked fine and it was wonderful having a sarcastic teenager living in my mind, but it wasn’t. Sometimes, I was so annoyed with Brigit—her fixation on clothes and appearance, her obsession with coolness, and her stubbornness were trying. I wrote quickly trying to get her out of my head.

As I wrote, I did come to understand her and feel a real sympathy for her—it’s a big move from Munich, Germany to Madison, Wisconsin. And it is tough being 14, struggling to feel grown-up and yet being dictated by her mother’s world.

When I had a good second draft of Brigit’s story, Homesick, I asked talented fiction writers I know to comment on parts or all of it (Deanna Carlyle, Bonny Becker, Rebecca Flowers, and Leslie). This led to a couple more rounds of revisions.

And then the moment came. I felt the story was ready. I humbly lay the manuscript at the feet of a delightful, but picky 14-year-old girl. I armed her with markers and asked her to comment on what worked and didn’t. Her simple words: “I love it,” when she finished reading the novel were for me the highest praise I could possible ever get.

Now Homesick is done and I am dealing with the publishing process, looking for an agent with whom I mesh. In the meantime, I’ve started on the next book. The other day two voices and two books came into my head. One was Brigit, explaining her story wasn’t done and she needed a sequel.

The other voice was talking about being a teenager and dealing with Washington politics. I wrote up the opening page for this new novel and read it to my mother. There was something strange about this voice. “It’s a boy voice,” my mother said. Oh, no! This is really going to take me into new foreign territories. Can I survive living with a teenage boy in my head?

Carollyne Hutter


About: For over a decade, Carollyne Hutter has been a freelance writer/editor in the Washington, DC area, specializing in international and environmental topics. Her website— http://www.hutterwriter.com/—will be up soon. Please visit the site to read Carollyne’s stories (including the opening chapters of Homesick), quirky essays, and nonfiction pieces. You can contact her at sayhi@hutterwriter.com.

The Future of the Newspaper

Here's an interesting article from Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley on the future of newspaper publishing--and how it can be saved. Anyone who loves reading print news would enjoy this, I think (or anyone who's just plain interested):

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/september-october-magazine/read-all-about-it-

Guest Blogger Charlie Jensen: LOCUSPOINT and internet publishing

Literary publishing has moved in new and interesting directions since the internet became a readily-available publishing tool. Much like the sudden advent of print publications in the 60s and again in the 90s when advances in printing made those efforts more cost-effective for small publishers, the internet has had a somewhat democracizing effect on the literary magazine biz. No longer beholden to prohibitive printing costs, writers and writing enthusiasts everywhere are putting on their editor/publisher hats and tossing their work into the ring.

One of the essential differences between online and print publishing is so simple, you may not have thought of it: binding.

Binding, as a concept, not only allows us to cohere items together, but it also dictates permanent sequencing and ordering of materials: while you can flip through the book any way you want, ultimately, the book itself will always be the same physical object.

The internet is not bound, or better to say it is infinitely bound--links can attach pages to each other in any number of ways. This is an opportunity to change the way we think about publishing.

While some people have enjoyed replicating the print journal model on the internet because it is more cost-effective, some editors are finding new ways to present work. No Tell Motel, for instance, uses a "residency" binding structure in publishing poets: five poems from a poet are published in a given week, with a new piece appearing each day so that the entire set are online on Friday. In this model, poets are "checking in" and "checking out" of No Tell Motel, but in the meantime, enriching the audience.

42opus "builds" its volumes and issues over time, posting a new piece every few days or so.

Born publishes multimedia collaborations between artists and writers, adapting literature with audio and visual elements to create entirely new works.

These are just a few examples of innovative publishing being done on the web--but more importantly, it could only be done on the web.

A few years ago, while attending the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in Austin, I had a big brainstorm. Since the internet is completely decentralized, but because poetry is so tied to communities, colleagues, and place, why not publish work on a place-by-place basis?

And so LOCUSPOINT was born. As "The place of poetry," it not only publishes work from a specific community or city, it also provides resources for people who want to get more involved in that place.

I hope you'll take some time to explore the innovative publishing happening on the internet and, better yet, embrace this new way or promoting writing!