jdlwhitehead

MILESTONE UNLOCKED!

I finished this draft of my current fiction project Looking for Home on Thursday night!

I fought so hard to get to that last page. I realized halfway through the chapter that I was writing that I needed to scrap a planned final chapter on this section because where I was happened to be a perfectly serviceable ending in and of itself and heaping even more bad fortune on the character might seem excessive.

So I wrote over 2,100 words Thanksgiving night. So far the manuscript is just under 300 pages with 78,697 words total. And getting to the last page really was a fight–I knew exactly what image I wanted to leave the reader with; I just had to wade through some setup to get there. The characters were in no hurry to finish talking. I kept thinking, “Really? Another page? Do you really need another page?” and the answer was “Yes.” Until it finally wasn’t any more, and I was done.

I looked it up–I started on this project almost right at a year ago. I queried and shopped it at the HOMEGROWN conference on the Coast in February of this year and already have a press that may be interested based on that pitch alone. So that’s exciting to think about.

But I’m trying not to think too far ahead. I’m going to take out some time to rest through Christmas, then I’ll review it in the New Year and rewrite, then let some readers take a look at it.

In the meantime, I’m going to try to do a little reading, keep up with this blog, and keep hustling to get events set up where I might get more sales here and there. And keeping you folks up to date on all of that.

Off to relax until I start back to work tomorrow. Happy reading!

Life and Times of an Indie Author

So on Tuesday, I wrote my contact at the bookstore I went to yesterday and asked if he had my books in stock. He said no. I thought “OK. They’re stuck in shipping again.”

On Wednesday, he wrote and asked if I was bringing books, a common arrangement for independent authors. I said no. So what finally came out as we talked is that he thought I was bringing them, and I thought he was ordering them. Oopsie.

But he had a workaround–could I pick up stock from another store and bring them? He would work it out with the store to pay them for the books, and I would just deliver them. So I gave him the contact for the store we had here in town. I didn’t know how many they might have, but something was better than nothing at all.

Soon he messaged me back with the done deal. I brought fifteen books to the signing. We sold eight, the bookstore kept two for their stock, and the bookstore here got five books back. I didn’t think I would sell fifteen because I’m not really well known where I went, but I did come close!

It was really a great bookstore, too–a pair of bookstore dogs, a variety of beverages, lots of books, and very welcoming staff. They made me and Bob feel at home. So he enjoyed himself as well.

Two people I know came–my MFA mate Allison, and my lifelong friend, Lorie, who lives in a small town south of where I signed. We’ve talked a lot over Facebook over the years, but it had been a very long time since I’d seen her. To inscribe the name of my lifetime friend in a book that I wrote was a very cool moment.

Lesson: Always be clear on the details! And have an alternate plan in your back pocket if you’re not!

Happy reading, everyone!

Writing Differently

I have been doing something very interesting. I am writing differently than usual.

I started off writing Looking for Home in the same style I did Hurricane Baby. A lot of immediate action, twists, and turns. And it was working for me because I was writing the end of the story, and it needed a rush to the climactic moment, and it was told by an impetuous sixteen-year-old girl, Cassie Beck.

When I began writing the beginning of the book, incidents that had happened eighteen years earlier, I still avoided much narrative–Carlton Dixon was also sixteen years old, learning how to grow into being a man in Tennessee in the late 1960s. A lot of his story was pretty action-packed as well because he rarely had room to think before he had to handle a situation. But towards the end, it turned somewhat more contemplative–more narration, more time in Carlton’s head with his thoughts about what was happening to him.

Then to bridge the two stories together, I worked on telling Merrilyn Beck’s story. Right away I encountered trouble==she was a well-brought-up girl, trained to make some up-and-coming young businessman, lawyer, or planter a fine wife. Instead she had fallen for Carlton Dixon, was pregnant with his child, and Carlton had been drafted into the Army. Merrilyn had also been molested at the hands of her father–an open secret in the family.

Merrilyn turned my tendency towards action on its head; she was a planner and a thinker. She considered her words and chose them carefully before she said them, even as young as she was at sixteen. The abuse had made it where she didn’t live in her body but in her mind, so that’s where most of the action was in her story.

I fought this. I wanted the story to be the same as the others. But once I finally figured all this out about Merrilyn, writing her story became much easier. So today’s lesson is to listen to your characters when they tell you who they are. Sometimes there are surprises.

Next Saturday I will be in Hattiesburg, MS at the Author Shoppe in the downtown area from 2:00-3:30 pm. Wish me well!

Nuts and Bolts

(I’m writing today because I’ll be at Book Mart and Cafe in Starkville, MS for much of the day tomorrow. Wish me well!)

I’ve spent the past few days doing some nuts-and-bolts work for my writing. I’ve called four local libraries to find out how to send them information about Hurricane Baby: Stories for library adoption, consideration for their book clubs, or scheduling an author talk in the new year.

I also went through NPR’s local podcast page to see if there were any book podcasts that looked interesting. I called five of those NPR affiliates and left messages; if I don’t hear anything within a week, I’ll call again and request emails for the decision makers. Being persistent is something I’m good at.

Last night and today I’ve been updating my website with new events, links, and videos for my readers’ perusal. I want to keep the content fresh and accessible. I checked all of my links to make sure they weren’t broken and led to the correct information. Just trying to stay ahead of any problems anyone might have accessing my materials.

Yep. Unglamorous, humdrum, and ordinary tasks. But I’ll never know what sales I may get that I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t kept up with it. Such is the life of a 21st century writer.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Louisiana Book Festival 2024

So us Madvillians went down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana this weekend for this event. It’s much like the Mississippi one, with panels, booksellers, food trucks, etc. We stayed at the hotel designated for the festival because we didn’t know what the parking situation would be, so we rode a shuttle service they had set up.

On the shuttle, we met a very pleasant man named Victor Dixen who spoke English with a French accent. He was dressed out in 17th century clothing with a tricorn hat and was also an author doing a panel–he said he writes vampire novels set in French history. He asked Bob to take some pictures of him on the steps of the capitol building, and we decided after we went and got me registered, we’d go to his panel since it was in the same room as mine.

It was a horror/dark fantasy panel, with Victor, another author that finished two incomplete novels left by George Romero, and two ladies, one who wrote a novel from the point-of-view of the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and another that constructed a bestiary of magical creatures. We couldn’t have picked a better one as far as Bob was concerned. He thoroughly enjoyed it. I also saw Ellen Ann Fentress, my thesis director, and introduced her to Bob.

Our panel was me plus three other authors published by Madville: Steve Yates, who I work with at my job; RJ Lee, an author from Oxford, and added in was Rod Davis from San Antonio. We had a very few people at our panel, but we plugged along and had a cool conversation about craft, etc. Very rewarding. And all the people who attended bought all four of our books, and Rod decided to buy books from us, the three Mississippi writers, which I thought was kind of him. We also signed a t-shirt for a lady collecting signatures as a gift for her daughter. So that was a warm, fuzzy feeling, too.

Next up is Starkville, Mississippi at the Book Mart and Cafe’s holiday open house event, the place where earlier, they didn’t receive my books in time. So I am looking forward to that next Sunday with a slate of other authors. And I hope to collaborate with this bookseller to have library events in Starkville and Louisville next year. So I’ve got a lot cooking for the new year already!

Check in next week and see how Starkville goes!

After the Debut

Hurricane Baby: Stories has been out for about two months now. So I thought I’d post a few things I’ve noticed going on in my head and my life since the debut, actually after I signed the deal in the first place.

A book deal will not fix you.

If you are looking for something to ease the doubt about your abilities, fill the God-shaped hole in your soul, or validate that you have a role to play in God’s plan for the universe, a book deal is not that thing.

Signing a book contract does feel really good for a while. But it will not quiet the voices in your head that say you’re a poser, a dilettante, a pretender. Someone you know will get a better deal. You may not be able to dive into another work right away. Someone you know will sell more than you do. And all of those things will combine to make you feel like an imposter again and you won’t understand why that is.

If selling the book to a publisher is hard, selling a book to the reading public is way harder.

You can schedule a signing, and it seems like everyone you know will message you telling why they can’t make it. The books may not arrive in time. You may not get invited to all the cool kids’ books conferences, and if you do, you may sell one book at that event. You may go weeks with no sales. And all the grinding, strategizing, networking, and peppy social media posts you do may do nothing to move the needle on sales at all. Selling books is hard, and no one told us or trained us in doing any of it.

Releasing your work out in the world is terrifying.

A few weeks after I got the news about selling the book, I was seized by terror. Surely something bad was about to happen to take the joy this achievement brought into my life. The first time I read aloud from the book at a conference, my voice shook so bad I didn’t know if I could finish.

When I found out it was open for pre-orders. I was giddy for two weeks, then realized–people I know are going to read this book. People I don’t know will read it. What if I get a bad review? What if someone comes up to me someday and says how much they hated it?

Don’t let your mind think about all that. It doesn’t take you anywhere nice.

And remember, other people will not care as much as you do. Surround yourself with writing friends who get it, but large swaths of people you know and consider friends will not remember to pre-order your book, or call you on release day, or leave a review on Amazon. All those people who have been living rent-free in your head all this time that you were going to prove something to? Pfft. They don’t care.

And that’s all right.

Why?

Because to me, letting people inside my head and my heart is a payoff in a league all its own. Watching someone I don’t know come up to me asking that I sign their book, where maybe they read an article or just heard the book mentioned in passing or picked it up because it had a cool cover, is a thrill right up there with the feeling I had when I held each of my daughters when they were first born. I made this. I did it. No other feeling quite like it.

Lull

So now I am already looking ahead to see where I can schedule events in the new year. I have one library event scheduled in early January and applications in to be in several large book events (HOMEGROWN, the Oxford Conference for the Book, and the Southern Literary Festival).

Other places I’ll be contacting are libraries in my county, some civics groups, and possibly some business groups. I’m trying to think outside the box a bit. The only thing that makes me hesitate in contacting these groups is that I don’t know if there will be an expectation for me to bring books to sell. I’ve avoided that because I do not have the requisite tax paperwork filled out to be able to do that. But I won’t know unless I ask! So we will see how that works out.

Otherwise, the writing is going really well. I am maybe 40-50 pages away from finishing this draft of Looking For Home, then I’ll work through another draft after the new year. I’m trying to decide when to let readers see it. I am thinking that since I already know some areas where I’m going add more material, I need to wait until I finish them. That’s probably what I’m going to do.

I was asked in a podcast the other day (here) how being a debut author felt right now. I said that it was like my regular life, but shinier. There’s a deep satisfaction in having set my mind to do this and then doing it, against all odds, in my circumstances as an older author selling a collection of stories (usually a hard sell in the book world), as an author no one had ever heard of. But I did it by the grace of God. And that’s something special.

Mississippi Library Association 2024, Natchez, MS

Hello! This week’s book event took me to Natchez MS for the Mississippi Library Association meeting. We arrived Wednesday afternoon because when we made the reservations, we weren’t sure when the panel was. Turns out it was at 3 p.m. the next afternoon. I went with my hype girl MJ, and we had the best time exploring all the shops Thursday morning. Then after lunch, we made our was to the convention center and did a little networking around with the librarians and vendors at the event.

Our panel was called “Diverse Southern Voices in Southern Literature”, and we all three certainly had diverse perspectives and approaches to our work, so it wasn’t a misnomer. We each talked about our books and asked ech other questions, then opened it to the floor. We had a decent crowd–maybe 10-15 people in the room. The signing part fell through, so that was sad. But no matter–onward we must go!

Fridy me and MJ just toured a couple of houses and ate some fabulous meals. MJ loves all things books and literature so she made the best travel companion for this. We drove back yesterday morning.

All in all, I think the event was worth going to, and I handed out my bookmarks for Hurricane Baby out all over town. And I actually added about a thousand words to the work-in-progress as well. A great trip all around!

Progress!

I finally feel like I have a handle on Merrilyn Beck, one of the two female main characters in Looking for Home. I’ve been writing steadily for about a week now. I usually don’t write over 500 words at a time, so progress is a little slower than I like. But it’s finally become fun again! How did this happen?

First I had to do some serious mental gymnastics to convince myself that choices I made that turned out to be wrong for the manuscript were not a crisis now and wouldn’t be a crisis in the future. I have to get words on the page before I can decide if they’re the correct words or not. I can’t fix what’s not there.

Then I really let myself live in Merrilyn’s head for a while. How would she react to the events I had planned for her in the book? What could her possible reactions be? What did those reactions and feelings say about her character?

Finally I convinced myself that ultimately, I was in control of what happened in the book right now, and I know what I’m doing. I know how to write; I know how to tell stories; I know how to craft a narrative. (It’s not always true; the characters often surprise me and carry the action in another direction!) But I told myself I know these characters now and could follow the path I had envisioned.

So that’s what’s been working for me this week. Tune in next week and see how my Natchez event goes next Thursday!

Perfectionism

Anne Lamott says that perfectionism is the voice of the oppresssor. As long as you have tied yourself up in knots over the perfect choice, what happens? No choice gets made, nothing happens, and no actions are taken.

I’m close to the end of my work in progress. I’ve done about 220 pages since the end of November last year. but these last 80 are proving to be the very devil. Because I want to get it Right when I should be concerned with getting it DOWN. Plenty of time to go back and fix what might be wrong. But right now is the time to get it done.

So wish me well as I try to break the vise that perfectionism has had on my writing. Happy reading!