My Unbound Diary Part 2 – Crowdfunding a Book

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A Spool of Blue Thread, A Visit From The Goon Squad, agents, crowdfunding, In The Future Everyone Will Be Famous For Fifteen Minutes, literary agents, Olive Kitteridge, publishing, Rattle Tales, rejections, short stories, The Tenth of December, Trigger Warning, Unbound

It seems like a lot longer ago than a week since I wrote my first post on crowdfunding my short story collection. In The Future Everyone Will Be World Famous For Fifteen Minutes is now open for pledges on the Unbound Publishing site. I decided to publish with unbound because agents and publishers generally don’t go for short story collections – they don’t think that short stories are popular with readers. I think they are wrong. I think if you market it right they are very popular. Lots of best sellers are actually short story collections masquerading as traditional novels, Olive Kitteridge, A Spool Of Blue Thread, Welcome To The Goon Squad, I could go on. Then there are the ultra-popular collections like The Tenth of December or Trigger Warning. Suffice to say that in my experience people love short stories (I have blogged about this many times) and are just as willing to buy them as they are any other type of fiction. Anyway, until the traditional publishing industry wakes up to this potential, I am crowdfunding my book with Unbound.

On Sunday I made a video about the book to encourage people to pledge. Unbound recommend doing this as a way of drawing attention to the project.  It was a hilarious way to spend Mothers Day, I sat at the kitchen table (which, incidentally, inspired one of the stories) and my husband filmed on his phone while I read from a script written in big letters and held up beside him by my son, this is why my eyes keep drifting off to the right. I’m not great at reading from an autocue but I didn’t have time to memorise what I wanted to say. At one point we had to take a break because we were all laughing too much. It’s done now and it serves its purpose and I hope to have another more professional one made later.

I started to publicise the book on social media by sharing last week’s blog on Facebook and Twitter several times a day. Making sure to #crowdfunding and #shortstory and whatever else I could hang it on. I managed to gain 120 new Twitter followers and lots of lovely supportive comments on Facebook. I also made a postcard using a free stock image from Gratis Photography, a tip from my friend and co-tutor Bridget Whelan.

Unbound wanted me to come up with some pledge options, the standard ones are Patron (copy of the  e-book), Super Patron (copy of the e-book and name in the front) and Limited Edition Cover Art (my sister pledge for one of those!) but the author can add a few more. As I co-run Rattle Tales I am able to offer tickets for two to one of our shows with wine and as a tutor, editor and mentor I can offer services in these areas. Also on offer is a book group deal which includes up to ten copies of the book and an appearance by me at your bookgroup to discuss the book, tickets to the launch and many other rewards.

On Tuesday I got my first progress report from Unbound. Thanks to some very lovely friends, relatives and the editor of a journal who published on of the stories last year,  I was already 4% funded. Yesterday I set up a Facebook page for the book and invited all my friends to like it. Today I am 6% funded! A big THANKS to all of you. I’m beyond excited to be off on my crowdfunding journey but there’s a long way to go. I still need 121 pledges in the next 90 days or In The Future Everyone Will Be World Famous For Fifteen Minutes won’t get published at all. So please please pledge and if you can’t please please share the video.

I’ll be posting this time next week to let you know more about the project.

Publications Are Like Buses

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David Garnett, editing, Exeter University, Lady Into Fox, litereature, Michael Rosen, motherhood, Mrs. Fox, rejections, Riptide Journal, Sarah Hall, short stories, submissions, suburbs, Threshold's Short Story Forum, University of Chichester

Just checking in to say that I have had two things published this week This goes some way to making up for all the rejection in my ‘year of submitting to everything.’ My short story Grimaldi has been included in the fabulous Riptide Vol 10 – Imagining The Suburbs. It’s a nasty little tale about mental illness or actual demonic dragons (take your pick). In the foreword Michael Rosen says, ‘these fascinating stories and poems show a diversity that resists’ the picture of the suburbs as “one culture, one class, one type of house’. I am very proud to be part of a collection that resists monoculture!

I am also thrilled that Threshold’s Short Story Forum has printed my essay on Sarah Hall’s  BBCNSSA winner Mrs. Fox. I absolutely loved Hall’s story and wanted to find out about the controversy around it’s similarity to the novella Lady Into Fox. Both journals were an absolute pleasure to work with and it was a brilliant experience to see my work properly edited. I feel like a real grown up writer.

Feed Me – The Importance of Feedback

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authors, feedback, publishers, Rattle Tales, rejection letters, rejections, selection process, The Brunswick Hove, writers

Feedback. I can hear you groan from here. Feedback is that terrible entity writers both crave and loathe. It makes us better writers but it also makes us uncomfortably aware of our shortcomings. It’s a familiar scenario; you send off your story/poem/extract full of hope and good humour. You wait for weeks, months even, convinced that the recipient will be so blown away by your submission they will drop everything in deference to its brilliance and phone you immediately offering untold fame and fortune. Time passes and you forget, a little, but then one day, comes the ping on your inbox or the thud on your doormat and somehow you instinctively know what it is. It is the beginning of that terrible exchange that tells every writer at some point in their career that they are not as good as they think they are.

I’m always amazed how I know without looking that I’ve received a rejection. I suppose most good news is delivered by telephone but even so more often than not I’ll know a rejection before I open it. I wonder if this is because deep down there’s a bit of doubt there already, maybe I know what I submitted wasn’t as good as it could have been.

So, you open your email/letter and discover the bad news – you didn’t win that publishing deal/writer’s retreat/£15,000, you didn’t even get published in that online journal with a readership of around 50 people! And here’s the rub, your whole being screams that you want to know why and, at the same time, your whole being just wants to crawl under a duvet and wallow in self-pity. Knowing why is the last thing you want. In fact, whoever has judged you doesn’t know what they are talking about. They are in the wrong, not you, short-sighted imbeciles, wouldn’t know good writing if it bit them on the arse. That’s right isn’t it? Thinking like this means you can stay comfortable in your little cocoon of ignorance.  You like your little cocoon of ignorance don’t you? I know I used to.

Over the years this has changed for me. When someone rejects my work I am no longer content with just NO. No won’t do. These days I want to know WHY? And if people haven’t told me why I invariably get back to them and ask. Am I mad? Maybe, but let me tell you about my last two rejections (possibly too strong a word) and the feedback I got.

The first came just before Christmas. It was only a flash piece, so it hadn’t taken long to do, but it was a great idea and it had been edited and refined over several drafts. I got a standard rejection about a week later, just ‘no thanks try again later’. That morning I had a workshop with two people I trust implicitly and as luck would have it I had sent them my story in advance of the meeting. They were so positive about it (and believe me, if they didn’t like it they would say so) that it made me wonder what the reason for the rejection was. So, rather than feeling sorry for myself I got back to my rejector and asked for feedback. This is what I was sent:

Hi Erinna, 

I’m happy to give some feedback. 

In all honesty, it was a close call! The piece is beautifully written and has some startling images. We particularly liked this: “Planes fell from the skies, their impacted carcasses landing softly on downy runways, like so many bulging toothpaste tubes,” and the thought of the earth as a snowball was striking. 

However we thought the first paragraph was problematic. In the second, everything gets going – but the first seems too long. Would you consider cutting it?

There were also a few details that niggled – if everyone is dead, who is reporting on sky news (or is the idea that Sky News is the devil’s work)? 

Whilst the idea that this is being narrated by one of the devil’s minions is a good one, it took a couple of readings to register the full implications of the last paragraph. I wonder if there is a way to make the information here more immediate – or to plant the idea of the battle between heaven and hell earlier? 

If you felt like reworking the story we’d be keen to take another look. As I said, it was a close run thing.   

And do you know what? – they’re right! The first paragraph is too long and there should be a hint as to the narrator earlier. I’d actually taken out the bit about toothpaste tubes because in my opinion it doesn’t fit, but I don’t agree with them about Sky News – everyone knows who their boss is! But isn’t this better than no thanks try again later? See how much more productive a little bit of feedback is?Even if the feedback isn’t as positive as this is wouldn’t you rather know the truth than fear the worst, or even labour under the misconception that it’s good when it isn’t?

I had more feedback on another submission last week, I didn’t ask for it and was surprised to get it, but it was very welcome and, again, totally on the button. What I thought was a wonderfully clever allusion was actually ineffective corniness and needed to go, but I would never have known this had it not been pointed out to me. There was also the usual pep talk about not giving up, about it being a very close thing and please re-submit. Far from being negative it was enlightening and confidence boosting.

As a member of Rattle Tales I give a lot of feedback. Our selection process is very stringent, we all read everything and make notes on each piece then we discuss each one in detail before we make our selections. We don’t give feedback as standard but we offer it in our notification emails. If writers want to take us up on the offer the notes on the discussion are there ready to use. We probably get a 50/50 request rate.  I hope what we say helps. The thing is to give good feedback you have to have read the submission in detail and you have to know what good writing is if you don’t you shouldn’t be giving feedback in the first place. Also bear in mind that work is often rejected out of personal preference. At Rattle Tales we reject work which we don’t think will work in a live performance, the piece could be beautifully written, ground-breaking even, but if it doesn’t read aloud well we can’t take it. If you don’t ask for feedback you’ll not know why, you’ll assume it’s either rubbish or that we are philistines.

Some writers take it personally. We once had an email from someone, whose work we had rejected because it wasn’t a story, saying that if we ever felt brave enough to try something different we should get in touch with them. You could almost taste the bile on those words but, hopefully, if they really thought about what we’d said they would realise that we were right. If you receive feedback that really riles you put it aside for a couple of days then go back to it, read your writing with it in your mind and see if it’s right. If you still don’t agree fine, forget it and try somewhere else, it’s their loss.

These days I always ask for feedback, at the very least it ensures that the person rejecting my work has read it well enough to tell me why they didn’t want it.

The next Rattle Tales show is on Feb 20^th at The Brunswick Hove tickets available here.

 

More Thoughts On Writing Submissions

Tags

competitions, magazines, publishers, rejections, short stories

      

I feel I may have been a bit negative in my last post. My rant on the lack of respect given to writers sending off their short stories to magazines and competitions was written in haste. On reflection this is funny because it was inspired by a rejection written in haste. Last week I received an email rejection for two shorts from an e-mag just 25 minutes after submitting. The email was polite and I wasn’t expecting it as the submission guidelines said if my work wasn’t accepted I wouldn’t receive a reply. The stories I submitted weren’t written especially for submission but had successfully been submitted and performed by a theatre group a couple of years ago. The submission came from me looking over old files and trying to get unpublished stories out there, so it’s not like I spent hours crafting stories especially for them, nevertheless something in the nature of the rejection rankled i.e. the speed of it!

I just wanted to add that it’s not all gloom and doom. My last post was the most popular since my anti-jubilee rant. Ranting works in blog posts I’ve noticed. After reading it someone pointed out how positive some writing organisations are when rejecting work and how a good rejection can spur the writer on to better writing. Some rejections offer encouragement and insight above and beyond. So, based on my own notes and conversations with other writers, a name check here to good rejecters of short stories, manuscripts and competition entries:

Canongate, Curtis Brown, Fox Mason, Grit Lit, Liar’s League, Lucy Luck, McSweeney’s, Myriad Editions, Radio Four, Revenge Ink, Rogers Coleridge & Wright, Swamp, Succour, The Book Trust prizes and, of course, Rattle Tales.

There are many more I am sure (I hope!). All of the above offer insight into why you are being rejected and don’t just say ‘No Thanks’ or nothing at all. There is a worrying trend in total silence. I still can’t believe that major writing competitions, who ask for money from authors who submit to them, can’t email the results out to all who entered. So, magazine editors, competition administrators, agents and publishers, if those listed above can take the time to write in detail about why they are rejecting someone, you have no excuse to ignore a submission. A standard reply is acceptable (it takes about three seconds to email one) no one is so busy they can’t manage this simple courtesy.