Virginia Woolf's Golden Rule and my room of a writer's own

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

Office vibe has a huge impact on the quantity and quality of the work I deliver. My personal rules for max office efficacy:

1) Every object must earn its footprint. For me, that means everything in this room has to A) serve and purpose and B) make me happy. Utilitarian + Joy = worth it. And yes, art serves a purpose. If it's the right art. And the right dog is worth his weight in gold.

2) Nothing but work happens in the workspace. My most precious natural resources, time and space, are both limited. Word games, social media, and frittering are better done on the beach. 

3) I work at home; I do not live at work. The meta goal is a happy, healthy life. Be like the Ghostbusters: Don't cross the streams. 

"For my belief is that...if we have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting–room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky. too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down."

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Goodbye to magnificent Miss Ellie, mom of Susan G. Komen and Nancy G. Brinker

So sad to hear about the death of Miss Ellie Goodman, mom of the fabulous Goodman sisters, Susan G. Komen and Ambassador Nancy G. Brinker. It was a joy getting to know her while I was working on Nan's book, Promise Me. Miss Ellie was 90 years old then, still remarkably sharp, and one of the most authentically beautiful human beings I've ever known. 

Tough and direct, she'd seen her share of heartbreak, but there was not whiff of bitterness about her. She was joyful, generous and quick-witted, but also deeply pragmatic and very smart. Once you meet Miss Ellie in the pages of the book, you quickly understand why Suzy and Nancy grew up with a deeply ingrained sense of service to others and an unbreakable bond with one another.

From Promise Me:

Mom was beautiful and stylish, making the most of everything, even when there was little money to work with. Aunt Rose passed along an evening dress with a beautifully crafted pearl and rhinestone collar. The fancy gown was too big and not something mother had occasion to wear, but she snipped off the collar and sewed it onto a plain black dress Fritzi had made for her. And when that dress became faded and worn, Mommy snipped the collar off and sewed it onto the next generation. Old photographs show her blossoming into that collar. At first, on a girl of twelve, it seems a bit much, but by the time she was in her late teens, it looks elegant and proud. Instead of the collar glitzing her up, she’s the one making the old hand-me-down look like something special. 

… She understood the difference between service and servitude and wore her traditional role the same way she always wore the perfect shoes: she liked feeling comfortable, functional, and beautiful. Mom never questioned or denigrated the different choices made by other women, but this was her choice, and she never regretted it. An unquestionably liberated woman, my mother did exactly what she wanted to do…

A few months before my parents were married, Grandma Fritzi took ill with a kidney infection. A simple thing, these days: usually little more than an inconvenience. Ten minutes in the physician’s office. Ninety seconds at the pharmacy drive-through. Penicillin, the drug that would have saved her, was discovered quite by accident in 1928 and first tested on human subjects in 1939. In 1940, when Fritzi’s fever drove her to the hospital, that simple but effective remedy was in the pipeline and would be commonly available just a few years later—barely a breath in the scope of history. Meanwhile, sulfa drugs were all the rage, the most potent weapon there was against battlefield infection; soldiers were issued a powdered form in their first aid kits. But because of its low solubility, sulfanilamide tended to crystallize in the kidneys when taken internally. Fritzi’s doctor—drunk, Mother maintains to this day—accidentally gave Fritzi a toxic dose.

Poor Mommy crouched in the corner of the hospital room as her mother, this angel of mercy, died in twisting agony. It left her grief-stricken, infuriated, and radicalized. From that day forward, contrary to the “doctor’s orders” standard of the times, Mom was unfashionably fearless about questioning the judgments of God and doctors who think they’re God’s golf buddies…

"Artists lead. Hacks ask for a show of hands." (A blast from the past and peek at the new #SteveJobsmovie)

When a ghostwriter friend mentioned she was suffering from increasing pain in her hands (hazard of the profession), I told her, "I just posted something about that on BoxOcto last year." When I searched it out, my mind was blown a bit. It was actually posted in October of 2012.

Here's the post, followed by an update:

Gary sprained his hand last night at work, and it's swollen up like one of those old fashioned baseball mitts. For years I've always kept bags of frozen peas specifically for the purpose of icing my aching wrists, fingers and hands after hours of typing. I got one out, and it was frosted solid. I suddenly realized I haven't had to ice my hands since last Christmas when Gary gave me a MacBook Air.

I'm not one of those rabid Apple heads, but this was a profound improvement in my quality of life. There are times when my ghostwriting schedule forces me to crank out 3K words a day (and if you're a writer, you know that 3K good words means also typing 5K off-the-mark words that end up cut or reworked.) Many was the midnight hour that found me lying on the floor fighting tears of agony, my hands and forearms piled with the fruit of the Jolly Green Giant. 

The realization that it's been 10+ months since I had to plan for and facilitate that pain - it just blew me away. How did I not notice that? How was I not celebrating it every day? I suppose it's because the MacBook allows me to focus on (and celebrate) what I'm writing. The presence of pain is impossible to ignore; the absence of pain is something we take completely for granted. 

A hallmark of great technology: it disappears into its own functionality. Instead of cluttering and upstaging life, it provides a vehicle for it. Like a really good bass player (or a really good ghostwriter), it provides structure and soul without calling attention to itself.

UPDATE: My MacBook Air is still going strong, and I eventually hunted up a matching low impact keyboard for my desktop PC. Typing is virtually pain-free and dramatically faster. After switching to the MacBook Air, I actually started transcribing interviews in progress. It's super slim in the bag and quiet enough that it doesn't register on the digital recording, and I'm able to insert my own thoughts and questions on the fly rather than depend on my sieve-like memory.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, now it's October 2016, and I still have never had a problem with my 5-year-old MacBook Air. The battery life is not great anymore, so I may invest in a new battery. Other than that, it's still going strong. I've been using it twice as long as any other laptop I've ever owned, and I've used it ten times more -- which also makes it the cheapest laptop I've ever owned. After my PC died, I replaced it with an iMac, so my laptop, desktop, and phone now communicate seamlessly. Remember how I said "I'm not a rabid Apple-head" earlier? Yeah, well... praise God and pass the KoolAid.

And now for the trailer. Can't wait to see this movie, because anything written by Aaron Sorkin is pretty much a masterclass in dialogue and plotwerk. My motto for the foreseeable future: "Artists lead and hacks ask for a show of hands."

“My fear,” said Venus, “is that the discovery...

“My fear,” said Venus, “is that the discovery of the matrix will lure her even farther from reality.”


via Tumblr http://ift.tt/1InUWNg

#TheStruggleIsReal Why I’m Not Mad That You Didn’t Hire Me (Freelance editor Jerusha Rodgers on a millennial dilemma)

Today we hear from Jerusha Rodgers (aka "The Plot Whisperer") of Rabid Badger Editing in a post prompted by a conversation about agism in publishing, which I see from the perspective of a, um...let's say "experienced" author/book doctor in my 50s and she sees from the perspective of a fresh new face in her mid-20s. Ironically, yes, she had to explain to me about "the struggle is real."

Shortly after graduating, a friend of mine posted the greatest Facebook status ever: “I would love to reenact some the of the fantasies in Fifty Shades of Grey, specifically the one where she gets a full-time job straight out of college.”

With an economy that clings to safety (read: tradition and money) and a workforce and community that strives for advancement (read: cooler, more accessible stuff), applicants whose limited practical experience is backed up by open minds and inherent expertise in the use of technology often get left out of the running. It’s the struggle forcing many Millennials to create career paths instead of follow them.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a house where I was taught the value of what my mom calls “the tangible intangibles.” Did my year backpacking the world add a highly sought after internship or years of dutiful service at a publishing house to my resume? No. It left a discouraging gap in my renter’s history and an intimate knowledge of third world medicine. But it did teach me how to solve problems under pressure and in the face of complications. It made me find ways to bond with people whom, on the face of it, I had absolutely nothing in common. It changed the way I see opportunity and the way I define advancement. It made me realize that taking a business call at 3am Malaysian time is really not the end of the world; it’s just doing your job well, and that’s worth it. All of these are traits that employers want brought to their projects, but they want them to be learned from twenty years of climbing the corporate ladder. It’s not because there’s anything inherently better about it; it’s just that that’s how it’s been done in the past.

The problem with this line of thought is that the times, they are a-changin’. We no longer live in the world we did twenty years ago, and no one is better prepared to work in the current climate of technology and connectivity than the people who grew up in it. We have a different (read: better) understanding of how things work than what people can learn in an SEO class, but there isn’t a way to put that on your resume. There’s no spot to say, “My social media experience goes back to when you needed a college email address to sign into ‘The Facebook,’ and I knew what MySpace Angles were before there was a name for them.”

Artistic fields are always a gamble, so when the going gets tough, the bosses stop taking chances. They’re less open to “Well, no, I’ve never done that, but I know that I would excel in that project because of X, Y and Z,” because to them sounds like, “Hold my beer and watch this.” It’s totally understandable that employers are nervous to stick their necks (read: wallets) out for a newcomer, but the behind-the-scenes reality is that projects suffer for it. Newcomers push boundaries, bring fresh perspectives and incorporate an understanding of the technology-based world we live in that has taken a lifetime to learn.

And we can never explain why that’s better than twenty years of corporate experience, because if you don’t already know why, you’ll never understand. You’ll just have to hold our gluten-free craft beers and watch this.

The Art of Upscale Downsizing: 3 simple rules that transformed my new workspace

Last weekend, the Griz and I moved into our new quasi-retirement digs (read Aging Hippie Lakeside Love Grotto), between thunderstorms and flash flood warnings. As water continued to rise just a few hundred yards from our new place, the complex management sent out text messages warning residents to watch for snakes on the property, and in the spirit of encroaching apocalypse, I did something I've never done before: I made my office my first priority.

Typically, my office (or my cough "office" cough) has been the last room in the house to be finished. This time, my kids are grown, my life is my own, and the Griz is happy to share center stage with the work that keeps me happy and contributing to our solvency. This week I'm scheduled to dive into editing Orna Ross's forthcoming historical novel about W.B. Yeats and his paramour Maud Gonne. It's a beautiful, important book, and I wanted to be ready for it.

My new sunroom office in this one-bedroom apartment is just 8x10 feet--half the size of my upstairs office, with which I'd fought a major organizational/ housekeeping battle, in our old four-bedroom house. I was nervous about the drastic downsizing, but as I worked through the process, I made three simple rules, which turned out to be the three things I love most about my Woolfish "room of one's own":

1) Every object must earn its footprint. For me, that means everything in this room has to A) serve and purpose and B) make me happy. Utilitarian + Joy = worth it.

Making the cut: A Salvador Dali coffee table book doubles as a lap desk. A Dr. Seuss lunchbox that houses paperclips and pushpins. My great-grandma's kitschy plaster cat, now in charge of pens and highlighters. No longer happening: Furniture, wall art and tchotchkes that were nice to have and sometimes hard to let go of but didn't pass a test of archival value ("Will my kids really want this after I'm dead?") or serve a daily need.

Gorgeous thrift store china cabinet: no. Tiger oak chair rescued from a defunct VA hospital: yes. I could have made an argument for the usefulness of either one, but the chair earns that footprint. The cabinet served as a junk collector simply because it was there. No cabinet = no junk. Winning!

2) Nothing but work happens in the workspace. It occurred to me that my most precious natural resources, time and space, are both limited, and my mindset for one naturally influences my mindset for the other. This small square footage is premium real estate, and it's most valuable to me as clean, feng shui friendly floorspace. Cluttering it with plastic bins, file boxes and obsolete computer equipment detracts from the calm, creative vibe I'm striving for, and though a lot of that stuff is arguably work-related, it's not the work I'm working on now, so it doesn't earn a footprint in this space.

Same goes for time clutter. A while back, I declared a "Facebook only while standing" policy, which immediately made me more mindful of the time I was wasting there. I try to justify social network activity as "platforming", but in truth, 90% of that falls more accurately under "farting around". So no more magazines or leisure books on the desk, and no more games or aimless net surfing on the office computer. (Isn't that why God created smart phones?)

Old manuscripts, tax records, press archives, correspondence and keepsakes took up a huge amount of space in my old office and our over-spill storage unit. I invested in a NeatDesk scanner and opted into their whole system. I'm still working through the mass exodus of paper from the storage unit, but the bottom line is: everything that can be digital must be digital. And almost anything can be digital.

I'll admit, I cried letting go of my kids' school projects, which I'd been justifying as decor in my old office. I'm keeping a few framed pieces for the wall here, but everything else is being digitally archived. My plan is to compile a coffee table book for each kid, which will be equally feng shui friendly in their future homes.

3) I work at home; I do not live at work. In the past, when my office got out of control, I could close the door and keep the insanity to myself. My new sunroom office is open to the living room in our new apartment, so it has to jibe with the living room aesthetic, and that forced me to be more mindful of the way my work serves (or or doesn't serve) the greater goal: a happy, healthy home life with this man I love. My work tends to take over at times, and I've learned that allowing work to hog all my time, space and waking thought actually makes me less productive in the long run, because I get fried and don't allow myself to recharge.

While plotting books, I've always built out massive grids of sticky notes on the wall a la A Beautiful Mind. I had stacks of books that were sent to me for reviews and blurbs. I tacked up Max Parish and Ansel Adams calendar art and scrawled notes on corkboards. The purpose of all that (in my head) was part organization, part inspiration, and it worked for me in that space, but it's not what I want to look at when I'm sitting in my living room. Not working. (No, really, I'm not. Seriously! I really mean it this time!)

Going forward, I'll be organizing writing and ghostwriting projects with Scrivener, which allows me to integrate research, character notes, and chapter material. (Try it! You'll like it.) A Passion Planner satisfies my need to physically write things down and brilliantly brings all those random corkboards and creative impulses into an intelligent plan of daily, weekly and monthly actions that pragmatically serve my creative goals. Instead of keeping a file drawer for editing and ghostwriting clients, I'm streamlining editing and book doctor projects via a nifty online system called 17 Hats, which allows me to create typical work flows from first contact to client invoice.

So instead of a blizzard of flailing sticky notes, I now have one powerful, wall-wide work of art that genuinely does serve to inspire me and provides a super cool counterpoint to the more conventional living room art. I got this amazing canvas frame X-Men panel on Overstock.com for less than $100. (It's actually a room divider.) It comes from "The Dark Phoenix Saga", in which Jane Grey (now Phoenix) kicks the stone-cold keister of Emma Frost (aka the White Queen).

Her power is a song within her... a passion beyond human comprehension. She is more alive than she has ever been...

Just the right vibe for a fiercely focused and beautifully functional creative workspace.

That Moment When You Know You're Doing It Right (the greatest bad review I've ever gotten)

Mommy blogs and memoirs: Where do we draw the line when writing about our kids?

Just saw this excellent piece that appeared in the Atlantic two years ago: The Ethical Implications of Parents Writing About their Kids (Tips for spotting a problematic new genre: parental overshare) by Phoebe Maltz Bovy, who makes many valid points and has a name I would like to steal for a character in a novel.

With the ease of publishing a blog post or even a book these days, there's been a glut of confessional writing, and there's been some internet sturm und drang over this issue. (Do not say "mommmy wars." I will punch the next person who uses the term "mommy wars" or "women's fiction." Do not test me. I will punch you on the arm.)

The way the two sides have been presented reminds me of this amusing anecdote, which really is not about my kids, though they are in it, and they are naked:

When my son and daughter were toddler and infant, I gave my mother-in-law an adorable photo of them in the bathtub. In the photo, my mom is sitting on the closed toilet playing guitar, and the kids are in full song, suds flying everywhere. My mother-in-law pursed her lips, folded the photo in half and said, "I never took naked pictures of my kids. There's enough smut in the world."

Moral of the story: On the one hand, the concept of "overshare" partially depends on the audience; on the other, as the article says, parents are the first line of defense for a child's privacy.

When I wrote a memoir about being a young mommy with cancer (Bald in the Land of Big Hair, HarperCollins 2001), I agonized over what to say and not say about my kids. I had written the book I wished was available to me when I was sick. I hoped it would be a gift to the next young mom in the chemo lounger. But my kids had been through a rotten, rotten couple of years, and I didn't want to traumatize them any further. My husband and I made the difficult decision to hold back the movie rights when interest was expressed by Lifetime. I was in remission, but we were told not to hope for more than five years. We'd been bankrupted by my cancer treatment and needed the money desperately, but we didn't want to force our kids to live with a Hollywood version of our family after my death.

As it played out, I lived (GOFIGHTWIN CHEMO!), and my kids survived being characters in a bestselling memoir. They turned out great and regard me today with all the eye-rolling, long-suffering love most 20-somethings have for their mom. Over the years, I've published maybe 10% of the words I've written about my children. The other 90%, including a full-length memoir called Offspring, I've either destroyed or set aside for them to read after my death, when the decision to publish or not will be theirs. They are entitled to tell their own stories or to keep their experiences private, including the story about growing up with a writer mommy.

Here's the advice I give my ghostwriting clients on memoirs in general:

1) I have the right to tell my own story, but it's not right or reasonable for me to project subtext, motivation or intention on other people who figure in my story, and I can't control the filters readers bring to my work, so I have to consider how the story might land on the adorable-smut-in-the-world spectrum.

2) There's no such thing as a tell-all memoir, nor should there be. When making decisions about what to share and what to keep to yourself, do a cost/benefit analysis: Is telling this story going to cost you or someone you love more than it benefits the reader? It's not fair to tweak the truth in a memoir; if you open that door, you should be prepared to let the reader in, but you're not obligated to share everything. I believe strongly in the art of memoir as cosmic cartography: we each have a tiny piece of the map of human experience, and sharing those disparate fragments, we help others find their way through the same perilous territory. However...

3) Published memoirs should earn their footprint in the world. Why are you telling this story? Are you sharing something new, shining a light on something unexplored, potentially offering a great gift to someone who is lost and afraid or is writing a way for you to process the experience for yourself? Memoir writing is a powerful way to work through a traumatic experience or to find meaning in the grind of everyday life. But not everything that's written -- even if it's beautifully written and took hundreds of hours -- needs to be published. Maybe the gift of this memoir was in the writing.

Not trying to kick a hornets nest. Just my two cents on the topic. Apparently, writer/photographer Penny Guisinger will be doing a panel on this topic at AWP 2016. I suspect it will be well attended.

What We Really Are: What's changed about the way people view indie publishing?

Remember the "What they think we are/What we really are" meme trend back in 2011? Navigating the unmapped territory of self-publishing for the first time, flailing away at this new thing being called "platforming" (part of a whole new vocabulary that also included "meme" and "gamification"), I created this one for indie authors. I laughed out loud this morning when I saw it reposted on Facebook, partly because you never know where this sort of paper sailboat will end up, partly because it's been such a bullet train the past few years. It's good to stop once in a while and look out the window, surveying where we are and noting how far we've come.

What literary agents think we are
THEN: Agents were actively discouraging established authors from self-publishing and warning debut authors that it was the kiss of death, smacked of desperation, made you look like a loser.

NOW: There are a few luddites, but most agents have recognized that self-publishing--when it's done right--works hand-in-glove with a career in mainstream publishing for established authors who want to maintain creative control over their work and for emerging authors who want to hone their craft skills and build a foundational readership. I also see agents actively trawling for successful indies who might bring big bucks from a corporate publisher.

What old school publishers think we are
THEN: As a glut of 99 cent books gushed forth, gutting book prices and empowering Amazon with an insane amount of sway over the marketplace, corporate publishers were forced to wake up and smell the revolution. Everything we'd been told about the necessity for "gatekeepers" became moot as the gate was summarily torn off its hinges and tossed over a cliff. Still working with big publishing houses on ghostwriting projects, I saw palpable resentment toward "undeserving interlopers"--and palpable fear as the sea change brought a wave of layoffs, mergers and downsizing.

NOW: Again, luddites aside, publishers are looking to indies for potential projects that have already proven their market and can be produced at a lower cost because the book, in most cases, has already been professionally edited and the indie author is savvy in the ways of promotion. I always said that traditional and indie publishers could learn a lot from each other, but we'd have to move beyond a lack of respect that cut both ways. I do see that happening now on both sides. More important, I see the concept of "sides" becoming obsolete as more and more authors discover that, in the long view, the greatest creative and financial opportunities reside in a hybrid indie/trad career.

What Amazon thinks we are
THEN: Creating the world's most user-friendly, powerful portal for self-publishing authors was a brilliant keystone in Amazon's strategy to launch Kindle and change the way people buy books. They needed a massive number of books--quality optional--at rock bottom prices, and they initially set it up so that the rewards for authors were potentially huge. In true gold rush tradition, sporadic stories of big money fueled the fervor. There's never been a shortage of dreamers.

NOW: With the recent introduction of Kindle Unlimited, indies have gotten a taste of what the traditional publishers felt like three years ago. Indie incomes have plummeted. Amazon's own publishing imprints are on the rise, and the book deals they offer rarely, if ever, involve significant author advances. I've always likened Amazon to the sand worms in Frank Herbert's Dune. You try your best to scramble aboard and ride, but there's a strong chance you'll be gobbled up by the beast.

What readers think we are
THEN: My original thinking with the piñata was that readers would be pleasantly surprised by what's inside, but over the following year, a lot of my indie friends felt like they were being beaten with sticks. As bullies and trolls took over, Goodreads was like a bar I just didn't want to hang out in. It took a while to recognize that the loudest readers are not the ones who buy the most books and that the truly bookish readers were being overwhelmed by the tsunami of books coming at them online.

NOW: Things are improving on both sides of the discoverability equation. Authors are getting better at connecting with the right conversations and spreading the word about their books, avoiding overzealous hand-waving. Readers are connecting with authors in a whole new way, taking online reviews with a grain of salt and getting savvier about reading the Kindle sample before snapping up a cheap book. The marketplace is coming around to the idea that the price point on books should be roughly the same as the price point on a bottle of wine, and expectations for enjoyment can be raised and lowered accordingly. Most important, people are reading more than ever with decreasing awareness about who published a book or what genre it's supposed to fit into. The Harry Potter generation is coming of age, and they do love a good book.

What we think we are
THEN: You know how pirate rules are. More like guidelines. We were renegades with hearts of gold.

NOW: We're still the swashbucklers of the publishing world, but we've become better merchants. Now the indies who succeed are businesspersons with a healthy surviving streak of Jack Sparrow. One terrific trend with huge benefits for authors and great bargains for readers: the box set. Indie authors have the agility to band together for pop up projects like Outside the Box: Women Writing Women, which brings together seven bestselling, award winning and critically acclaimed authors in an anthology of seven full-length novels with a common thread--strong, idiosyncratic heroines--including my first novel, Crazy for Trying. (Here's Jane Friedman's blog about the experience.)

What we really are
THEN: From the beginning I always said indie publishing was like my Smart Car. All about agility and economy.

NOW: Indie publishing is still the Smart Car. What's changed is the publishing world around us. American car trends have moved away from the ridiculously outsized suburban assault vehicles of the '90s and 'Noughties, embracing electric and hybrid cars and small, super-efficient, super sexy little vehicles with high gas mileage and low overhead. Same goes for publishing. It's all about getting where you need to go.

'Scuse me while I call BS on this article about Creative Writing MFA programs

Several of my Facebook friends have recently shared Ryan Boudinot's recent article in The Stranger: "Things I can say about creative writing MFA programs now that I no longer teach one."

I understand why people praise him for his brave honesty, but if I'm to be equally candid, I gotta call BS on most of this, and I don't have time to post comments every time I see this thing, so here goes:

I’m not an MFA or MFA instructor; I’m a working author and ghostwriter whose resumé includes several NYT bestsellers, all the preferred critical kudos and thousands of hours as a book doctor and editor. I’m not rich or famous, but I’ve dedicated 20 years to the art of writing, and for most of that time, I've made an excellent living practicing the craft I love.

People like this guy do such a grave disservice to aspiring writers who invest thousands of dollars and years of their lives to learning the craft of writing.

First, Boudinot says: “The vast majority of my students were hardworking, thoughtful people devoted to improving their craft despite having nothing interesting to express and no interesting way to express it. My hope for them was that they would become better readers.”

Does that mean “nothing of interest” to him? Or does he feel qualified to judge what is or is not of interest to millions of other people? And if his hope for the “vast majority” of students is the modest wish for them to be better readers, they got ripped off and so did the passionate educator who could have filled this position.

Then there’s this ridiculous assertion: “If you didn't decide to take writing seriously by the time you were a teenager, you're probably not going to make it.”

While I was a teenager and 20-something, I was a talented dabbler, not a serious writer. I worked as a waitress, factory cog, busker, grocery checker and the person who scrubbed the floors and walls of the little private booths in a coin-operated porn theater. I hopped freights and smoked pot, played guitar, hitchhiked around the US, spent a couple years as an all-night disc jockey on an old-school album rock station, lived on a fire tower in the Northern California wilderness, married the love of my life and had two babies.

I started writing seriously while I was in chemo at age 32. My first novel was published by MacAdam-Cage when I was 35, and despite my being so inexcusably tardy to the party, I’ve since been published by Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Hyperion and Hachett. I also learned everything I could about indie publishing and launched my own digital imprint.

I believe my life experiences make me a better writer than I would have been if I’d devoted the first half of my life to academic circle-jerking. Many, many stellar authors—not just a few “notable exceptions”—came to the profession as fully grown ass folk.

I do agree with a few points made: you must read, you must write, and nobody loves a whiny memoir unless it’s beautifully written. I strongly agree with his assertion that you don’t need his help to get published, because he seems to know very little about publishing. And this is the crux of the problem. I can’t think of another professional field in which most educators have little or no working knowledge of the industry in which their students hope to make a living.

A creative writing program is useless if it isn't headed up by people who actually know something about the publishing industry, because one of the greatest challenges of writing life is the balance of art and commerce. Literary culture cannot thrive when artists are starved into submission or forced to choose between art and the welfare of their families. We should expect to be paid for our work like any other craftspeople, and that's not what aspiring writers are being taught in most MFA programs.

Last but not least, I wonder why the author, throughout this article, consistently raises examples of mediocre and bad students with female pronouns while the only “real deal” student mentioned is “that guy”?

Actually, that’s disingenuous; I don’t wonder why. I just wonder how much damage he did to the talented women authors who came to class hoping to learn about the art and craft of writing and came away with a bucket of sour academic grapes.

My publishing career as illustrated by my hair

This is me at the time of my first professional writing gig. In 1976, I was an 8th grade misfit at an academically boffo but ideologically stifling Evangelical school. Girls in my class consumed True Confessions Magazine every month. (Who loves porn more than Puritan's, right?) Reading the stories typically titled "My Father Sold Me" or "A Sophomore's Secret" or some such, I thought, "Heck, I can do that."

Because I knew virtually nothing about sex beyond the vague "pulsing" and "engorging" alluded to in True Confessions and the "manroot" physiology of my book-a-day Gothic romance novel habit, my erotic tragedies relied heavily on witty dialogue and lush descriptions of locations, current pop music and fast food.

For $1/page, I wrote customized stories starring a classmate and her made-to-order crush. In cases where the crush was a real boy who failed to live up to expectations, a brief epilogue featuring his untimely death could be had for a quarter. Word spread, and I expanded my business to a local roller skating rink, passing off the folded pages in the privacy of the grimy girls' bathroom like a drug dealer.

On the first day of 9th grade, I was ironing my hair on the ironing board and branded a broad stripe down the front of my nose. This pretty much set the tone for my high school years.

Here's me at the time I started writing my first novel, originally titled MacPeter's Midlife Crisis. I'd given up ironing my hair, and apparently, it was particularly humid the day this photo was taken.

In 1981, I was a late night DJ at a rock station in Helena, Montana, crazy in love with a brilliant but damaged Vietnam vet, and supplementing my income busking at bars and tourist attractions. The novel started as a script I intended to enter in a playwright competition. During my super-useful college career as a theatre major, part of my Stanislavsky acting training included writing character studies, and mine usually ran about 12 times the recommended length, spinning out elaborate backstory and imagining offstage scenes.

I was still reading a book a day, but had moved on to Tom Robbins, Irving Stone, Eudora Welty and all things Bronte. I worshiped authors, and it never occurred to me that I could have a book published. I was writing this story purely for the love of laying words in a row, and needless to say, it was about a late night DJ and the brilliant, damaged Vietnam vet with whom she was crazy in love.

Here's me when I started writing my second novel, Sugarland.

I was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1994, shortly after my husband and I moved to Houston with our two small children. After years of dabbling, I'd finished my first novel, now titled Last Chance Gulch, queried it to six dozen agents and publishers and collected six dozen rejections.

I had zero hope of ever being published, but in the crucible of chemo, I suddenly understood why I was writing: because I'm a writer. So I wrote.

I got my first book contract in 1996. Gary started shaving his head to be in solidarity with me during chemo. And no we're not on the same cricket team; the sweats were 3/$10 at Wallgreen's, and we were flat broke. And that's not a wig; my hair came back jet black and kinky a la Shaft.

The amazing Fred Ramey (now at Unbridled Books) pulled my first novel from the slush pile, masterfully edited it from a 124K word swampland to a lean, mean 93K word fiction machine, and literally saved my life.

Fred gets the credit for the most fitting book title of my career: Crazy For Trying. The advance was $4,000. We promptly took the kids to Disney World.

While Crazy For Trying was in the pipeline, I lost my remission and turned to adjunct therapies to supplement the chemo. Above my desk was posted Isaac Asimov's famous two-word answer to being asked what he would do if he knew he had one year to live: "Type faster!"

Here's me in Good Housekeeping Magazine in 2001, when they featured a Book Bonus excerpt from my memoir Bald in the Land of Big Hair, which got my name on the bestseller lists for the first time.

My second batch of regrown hair was straight and mostly gray, so I was a different shade of red almost every month. I was also exploring my new publishing career, which was wide open, because I'd stumbled into it with no preconceptions, expectations or plans. And nothing to fall back on.

Marjorie Braman, my fabulous editor at HarperCollins, encouraged me to write a syndicated newspaper column while I got busy on another novel. That led to an advice column for a national magazine.

In 2004, I was invited to do my first collaboration at Simon & Schuster, which led to a collaboration at Random House, which led to a whole lot of other stuff, but I did eventually finish my third novel, The Secret Sisters, which was pubbed by HarperCollins in 2006.

Ghostwriting was something I'd never really thought about until I started doing it, but these great stories came along, and I'm a writer, so I wrote them.

And here's me today. I've done more than a dozen books, several of them NYT bestsellers, and worked with fantastic editors at five of the Big 6. I've learned that publishing, like personal style, is a process of constant reinvention, adaptation and a whole lotta get over yourself.

The decision to indie pub my backlist ebooks and forthcoming fiction has opened a thrilling new chapter. I'm not leaving traditional publishing behind. I plan to work hand in hand with my agent and transition my indie pubbed ebooks to print deals with standing houses. But I've grown up a lot. I've been to the puppet show and seen the strings, as they say. I began my writing career delivering stories directly into the hands of readers, so indie publishing feels like coming full circle. On roller skates.

I've given up trying to color my hair dark. The few strands that aren't white are bleached blonde to blend in. The only thing that hasn't changed is that daily longing to find the right words, the compulsion to set them down on paper. And so I write.

On the topic of author headshots

Yesterday, Dr. KatPat raised some interesting questions about marketing oneself. Here's my two cents on the subtopic of author headshots:

First, while it may sound trite, be yourself. Middle-year mom, aging punker, chippy college girl, thirty-something preppy striver - whatever. Rock it. If that's who you are, it's a waste of time trying to market yourself as something else. Second, author headshots should be individualistic portraits as opposed to generic corporate photos or the malleable blank canvas you try to achieve with an actor's headshot. You're trying to look like an authentic human being, not a JC Penney catalog model. It's not an image that says "hire me"; it's an image that says "date me."

Consider these photos of Stephen King. First there's the Manager of the Month photo:

King might be able to get away with that, but for the rest of us, a stiffly staged author photo does not bode well for what readers hope will be welcoming, accessible, relatable prose to come. So you want to avoid anything quite as topsytastic as this:

But something like this, I think, is cool and character-driven:

And this is engaging and personal:

Here's Anita Shreve looking like she wants to be cast in an infomercial for a colon bacteria balancing supplement:

Here's Anita Shreve looking like someone who's inviting me to sit on her porch and enjoy a cup of tea and a great story:

One author who has consistently gorgeous photos: Jodi Picoult. This is a gorgeous woman, and she consistently has gorgeous author photos in which she comes off as warm, intelligent, witty and personable, which is exactly what her books are. It's about rockin' who you are, and she is Jodi mo'fo'ing Picoult, gorgeous chick and blockbusting author, and she appears to be enjoying herself.

As my wise daughter has told me many times: "You do you."

For some great nuts and bolts advice on getting a great headshot, check out Danielle LaPorte's White Hot Truth article on how to look hot in a photo.

One Indie Author's Journey to the Big 6 and Back Again (a publishing saga as illustrated by my hair)

1976: Hat Hair

This is me at the time of my first professional writing gig. In 1976, I was an 8th grade misfit at an academically boffo but ideologically stifling Evangelical school. Girls in my class consumed True Confessions Magazine every month. (Who loves porn more than Puritan's, right?) Reading the stories typically titled "My Father Sold Me" or "A Sophomore's Secret" or some such, I thought, "Heck, I can do that." Because I knew virtually nothing about sex beyond the vague "pulsing" and "engorging" alluded to in True Confessions and the "manroot" physiology of my book-a-day Gothic romance novel habit, my erotic tragedies relied heavily on witty dialogue and lush descriptions of locations, current pop music and fast food. For $1/page, I wrote customized stories starring a classmate and her made-to-order crush. In cases where the crush was a real boy who failed to live up to expectations, a brief epilogue featuring his untimely death could be had for a quarter. Word spread, and I expanded my business to a local roller skating rink, passing off the folded pages in the privacy of the grimy girls' bathroom like a drug dealer. On the first day of 9th grade, I was ironing my hair on the ironing board and branded a broad stripe down the front of my nose. This pretty much set the tone for my high school years.

1981: Hippie Busker

Here's me at the time I started writing my first novel, originally titled MacPeter's Midlife Crisis. I'd given up ironing my hair, and apparently, it was particularly humid the day this photo was taken. In 1981, I was a late night DJ at a rock station in Helena, Montana, crazy in love with a brilliant but damaged Vietnam vet, and supplementing my income busking at bars and tourist attractions. The novel started as a script I intended to enter in a playwright competition. During my super-useful college career as a theatre major, part of my Stanislavsky acting training included writing character studies, and mine usually ran about 12 times the recommended length, spinning out elaborate backstory and imagining offstage scenes. I was still reading a book a day, but had moved on to Tom Robbins, Irving Stone, Eudora Welty and all things Bronte. I worshiped authors, and it never occurred to me that I could have a book published. I was writing this story purely for the love of laying words in a row, and needless to say, it was about a late night DJ and the brilliant, damaged Vietnam vet with whom she was crazy in love.

1994: Bald is the new black

Here's me when I started writing my second novel, Sugarland. I was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1994, shortly after my husband and I moved to Houston with our two small children. After years of dabbling, I'd finished my first novel, now titled Last Chance Gulch, queried it to six dozen agents and publishers and collected six dozen rejections. I had zero hope of ever being published, but in the crucible of chemo, I suddenly understood why I was writing: because I'm a writer. So I wrote.

1996: Chemo-fro and Mr. Clean

Here's me when I got my first book contract in 1996. Gary started shaving his head to be in solidarity with me during chemo. And no we're not on the same cricket team; the sweats were 3/$10 at Wallgreen's, and we were flat broke. And that's not a wig; my hair came back jet black and kinky a la Shaft. The amazing Fred Ramey (now at Unbridled Books) pulled my first novel from the slush pile, masterfully edited it from a 124K word swampland to a lean, mean 93K word fiction machine, and literally saved my life. Fred gets the credit for the most fitting book title of my career: Crazy For Trying. The advance was $4,000. We promptly took the kids to Disney World. While Crazy For Trying was in the pipeline, I lost my remission and turned to adjunct therapies to supplement the chemo. Above my desk was posted Isaac Asimov's famous two-word answer to being asked what he would do if he knew he had one year to live: "Type faster!"

2004: Redhead with Redbone

Here's me in Good Housekeeping Magazine in 2001, when they featured a Book Bonus excerpt from my memoir Bald in the Land of Big Hair, which got my name on the bestseller lists for the first time. My second batch of regrown hair was straight and mostly gray, so I was a different shade of red almost every month. I was also exploring my new publishing career, which was wide open, because I'd stumbled into it with no preconceptions, expectations or plans. And nothing to fall back on. Marjorie Braman, my fabulous editor at HarperCollins, encouraged me to write a syndicated newspaper column while I got busy on another novel. That led to an advice column for a national magazine. In 2004, I was invited to do my first collaboration at Simon & Schuster, which led to a collaboration at Random House, which led to a whole lot of other stuff, but I did eventually finish my third novel, The Secret Sisters, which was pubbed by HarperCollins in 2006. Ghostwriting was something I'd never really thought about until I started doing it, but these great stories came along, and I'm a writer, so I wrote them.

2011: The American Blonde

And here's me in 2011. I've done more than a dozen books, several of them NYT bestsellers, and worked with fantastic editors at five of the Big 6. I've learned that publishing, like personal style, is a process of constant reinvention, adaptation and a whole lotta get over yourself. The decision to indie pub my backlist ebooks and forthcoming fiction has opened a thrilling new chapter. I'm not leaving traditional publishing behind. I plan to work hand in hand with my agent and transition my indie pubbed ebooks to print deals with standing houses.

But I've grown up a lot. I've been to the puppet show and seen the strings, as they say. I began my writing career delivering stories directly into the hands of readers, so indie publishing feels like coming full circle. On roller skates.

I've given up trying to color my hair dark. The few strands that aren't white are bleached blonde to blend in. The only thing that hasn't changed is that daily longing to find the right words, the compulsion to set them down on paper. And so I write.

UPDATE: Flash Forward to 2017: Mrs. Grey will see you now...