July 2021 - The Unschool for Writers Newsletter

A hammock and a book—my favourite place to be on a hot July day— (I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith—a perennial fave)

Welcome!

I am excited about this newsletter! There is so much in it, it almost needs a TOC.

Starting with the closer, and not to miss (so scroll down, if short on time)—a Q&A with John Jantunen—a significant follow-up to my post about Finding a Literary Agent!

And the usual, in the usual line-up (going for consistency here):

—monthly exercise/prompt

—notes on forthcoming posts

—June post summaries

—the Q&A with John

—end notes

July 2021 Exercise/Prompt

As promised in my post about The Hyphen, this July exercise/prompt is concerned with the goal of “seeing anew.”

Strong writing is seeing the familiar in a new way.

When reading strong writing there’s that pleasure-shock of recognition: that sense of “I knew that, but didn’t think to articulate it that way.” (Does “pleasure-shock” bring this idea to life?)

My sons, growing up and learning language, often amazed me with their fresh descriptions. Once, a son described a yawn as a hockey net, and I had to laugh aloud—yes, I could see it. I knew those yawns.

While this exercise does not have to use hyphenated words, often such compound phrasing does create new ways to envision an image or absorb a thought… and letting the hyphen into your head as a “tool” can bring about something unexpected.

Some examples from my WIPs:

—his own sense of burst-dam relief caught him

—little stinkers who take one-more-thing too long

—His son knelt on the floor, feeling under the bed for those old-man corduroy slippers

—They stood, well-pirated, and… (talking about Halloween costuming here!)

—Win-over ingratiating Ron, was how Frank had always seen him

—Street people, circling the scene, so many backs bent with sleeping-in-the-cold bones

—Today the world felt clean-slated

From Caroline Adderson’s A Russian Sister:

—nature… ice tasselled all the telegraph lines

—she fell into a fugue of irrational fondness for this man who could weep with such tea-spilling force

—the clouds were stained like Easter eggs boiled in beetroot

—Poor Olga. Her intelligence made her lonely, and loneliness made her prickly. Masha’s artichoke friend. (My emphasis—I love how “artichoke friend” evokes!)

And from Zadie Smith’s, On Beauty:

note the creating of one’s own word — not hyphenated phrasing, but —

—Jerome, in all his gloomy Jeromeity, had joined them

—They caught up with each other… leaving long, cosy gaps of silence

We, readers, know those long and cosy gaps—instant recognition! In this last case, sometimes the most straightforward little words evoke so well.

Ultimately, it’s about the right word at the right time, or the right combination of words, both in meaning and in sound.

Try for some of your own. You might want to even look at your own WIP (work-in-progress) and underline some bits of description that seem to you to be stale... maybe they are words you reach for too frequently. Or maybe, as you write, you don’t stop the flow—maybe instead you colour the text or code it in some way so that you know you want to return to add something more to it. You want to see/hear/feel it anew. So take such pieces, and try them a number of fresh ways… and post, please!

As for hyphenated compounds: don’t go too far with this. It really is a flavour. You don’t make waffles with cinnamon flavoured with flour. This is definitely the cinnamon.

Forthcoming posts - what I’m working on

Some of what I’m working on for the month of July: a piece about using printed calendar pages while planning and processing the writing of a novel. It’s all a giant muddle without.

Also, a subscriber asked about writing connected short stories—how to create the connections in a way that seems natural, so that each story can build, and the reader does not feel as if they are missing anything they need to know. (And not getting hit with TMI.)

The monthly grammar/punctuation piece will be about n and m dashes. And another post on books on writing.

And more!

Do let me know if you have a question you’d like to see addressed.

email: alison@alisonacheson.com

June posts - summaries

I posted a total of three pieces about the creating of picturebooks, one of the most (if not the most) challenging of forms.

The first post, 1+1=3: the Equation of Picturebook Writing, has all the basics of this form of weiting, and the second, Picture Book Writing and Dummy-making, is about using the creating of a dummy (mock-up) of a picturebook to work through the process. The third piece, Don’t Let Yourself Go to the Doggerel! looks at “accentual verse,” which can be the go-to of picturebook writing for those new to the form. (Though there are elements to this that, once you know, you might decide poetic prose is a stronger choice.)

I added to the “Foundations” series, with a post on working with a process journal as you work on a project and/or to observe the growth of your writing.

For the “Writing Books” series, I added a review of “beginner” books,though advanced writers can find something of use in them—a reminder or a forgotten challenge.

The grammar/punctuation piece featured The Hyphen. Even if you think you know all there is to know about the lowly hyphen, take a look.

Is It a Short Story or a Novel might help you figure out what that mess of ideas might be… at the end of the day. Or the beginning.

And our mid-month piece looked at mental and emotional health and the writer, altogether a sizable issue for many, or even for some times in our lives.

As always, keep an eye out for when I post the “discussion thread” for the month’s exercise/prompt. We had some lengthy stories posted, and it was good to see the responses to the work you(s) came up with!

Question & Answer with John Jantunen

Early in June, John Jantunen posted a comment in response to the piece I posted on finding a literary agent. I sent him a note to ask if he would share his experiences in publishing without an agent, and he agreed… so I sent along some questions.

I believe you will find the back-and-forth interesting and educating.

First, John’s Linked-In comment:

Over the past 20 years I’ve written a dozen scripts, twenty-odd children’s books and seven novels,* and have followed the steps you’ve outlined without ever finding an agent willing to represent me. Prevailing wisdom would suggest that such is my fault (i.e. my writing isn’t commercial enough) though my experience would suggest that there’s a Catch-22 at play in this country’s arts culture whereby it’s practically impossible for someone from the lower echelons of Canadian society to get an agent without prior success (regardless of any individual manuscripts merits) and it’s equally unlikely that someone from the lower echelons can achieve the requisite success without an agent. Just one means amongst the multitude, I might add, employed by the prevailing arts culture in this country to further relegate us, “The Poor,” to the margins (entrenched bias at the Canada Council would be another).

*Four of which have been published by ECW Press, with two more forthcoming from the same in 2022 & 2023 (numbers 1 and 3 garnered me three award nominations between them).

And then our sharing of Q&A:

AA: At this point in time, in your writing life, do you feel an agent is necessary?

JJ: I feel an agent is a necessity more than ever for a couple reasons. 1) I have a wealth of screenplays and unpublished material (mainly children’s books) which I haven’t been able to sell and likely will never be able to sell without an agent. 2) I am currently writing at a rate which exceeds ECW Press’s capacity to publish. Savage Gerry was just released in April and since finishing it I’ve already completed two additional novels (In For A Dime and Mason’s Jar). In the best of all worlds, they’ll be published in the spring of 2022 and 2023 respectively, which means ECW won’t be able to publish my next book until 2024, at the earliest. While I’ve had nothing but a positive experience with ECW, and plan to continue publishing with them as long as they’ll have me, it seems to me that I am presented with an opportunity to raise my profile as an author by writing another novel with the intention of selling it to a different publisher. I have a wealth of ideas for what this novel might be and an agent would be invaluable in both advising me on which would be the most “commercial” of these ideas and securing a possible advance so that I don’t have to write it on spec (as I’ve been doing with ECW).

AA: If you were just starting out… would that change your answer to the above question?

JJ: It’s an interesting question and one I’ve actually thought quite a lot about over the past few years owing, mainly, to a conversation I once had with author Thomas King (I often ran into him when I lived in Guelph, mostly while I was out for a walk, and he was always generous enough to spend a few moments chatting). When I told Mr. King that I’d just been offered a three book deal with ECW Press (for Cipher, A Desolate Splendor and No Quarter), he told me that it’d be a mistake if I signed it. His reasoning was that doing so would mean I’d never be able to get an agent and would thus never be able to sell a book to a larger publisher house (i.e. where the real money is). While, again, my experience with ECW has been extremely positive (especially in regards to the relationship I’ve established with my editor Emily Schultz) and I doubt there’s a publisher in the country aside from Jack David who would have given me the same latitude, and encouragement, to develop into the writer I have, time has proven Mr. King’s warning all too prophetic. In the years since, I have often wondered if my financial prospects as an author would have been better served if I’d taken his advice, though doing so would have effectively meant that Cipher would still be languishing on my computer and I’d never have had the wherewithal to write the five books I have since (an experience I wouldn’t give up for the world). It’s a conundrum all right.

AA: The idea that some degree of success will capture the eye of a publisher and/or an editor – that Catch-22 — do you agree with that? Or…?

JJ: I agree whole-heartedly, and I’ve witnessed it over and over again. Leaving aside the fact that taking a graduate degree in a creative writing — the easiest path to securing an agent for a fledgling writer in this country — is a luxury well out of reach of low income students who are already saddled with enormous student debts accrued during their undergraduate studies (often, as I was, while working a full time job), it’s immeasurably easier to get an agent or attract a publisher/editor if you’ve already attained success in another field (such as medicine, law or education). Status definitely plays a role (literary culture is, by its very nature, extremely elitist) but mostly, I think, it’s simply a matter of finances. Doctors, lawyers and teachers generally have sufficient discretionary income to self promote while “starving artists” have little or none. This means that an agent can count on the former to invest in their own success so representing them just makes good business sense. For instance, when the debut novel by a writer-friend in Guelph, who is also a lawyer, was nominated for a Governor General’s award his agent immediately arranged for him to participate in an event at The Banff Centre. There was no question as to whether he could afford to fly out there on short notice — of course he could — where for me to afford such a luxury would have been contingent on the OAC or the Canada Council providing me with a travel grant (as they both did, I might add, so I could fly down to Dallas when No Quarter was nominated for a Shamus Award). And I’ll always remember the first time I ever met with an agent. A friend of mine arranged the meeting at a swank Vancouver eatery while he was interning under film producer Raymond Massey and director Mort Ransen. I was 25 at the time and paying $600/month in student loans on top of $300 dollars in child support and though I was working full time at a post production facility my paycheque barely left enough money for rent/groceries, much less a decent suit, which is to say I made a pretty poor first impression. Then when the menus arrived, I was rather dismayed to discover that the only thing I could afford was coffee (at $5 a cup with no free refills) which made for a pretty awkward hour, since my stomach was rumbling the entire time the agent ate, even as I kept insisting that I wasn’t hungry. Obviously, I never heard back from him.

AA: How necessary is a “platform” as an author with an agent, and without?

JJ: With so little money being spent on marketing books by independent presses, having a “platform” from which to promote one’s books is becoming increasingly important. When I think of a few of the more recent titles which have been successful at ECW, most of these authors seem to have indeed had a platform from which to successfully market their books. Waubgeshig Rice, for example, was working as a host on the CBC when Moon Over Crusted Snow was released and I’m sure that was a major contributing factor in the book selling in excess of 50,000 copies while Seth Klein has recently become the lead at The Suzuki Foundation’s Climate Emergency Unit which no doubt is driving sales of his The Good War (the fact that his sister is Naomi Klein probably doesn’t hurt either). This has created a real challenge for those authors without the good fortune of having such a ready made platform available to us and the end result is that it further increases the already substantial gap between successful authors (i.e. those able to make a living as an author) and unsuccessful authors (i.e. those who still have to work a day job to afford to write). This has created an ever-constricting feedback loop whereby success breeds success and everyone else is left to fight over increasingly meagre scraps, with those on the very bottom rungs basically left with nothing at all (just like in the 2019 horror film The Platform, now that I think of it). What’s most troubling to me though is that the Canada Council, which is in the perfect position to provide funding for those artists on the lower echelons, basically replicates these conditions by directing much of their funding towards already successful authors which in turn makes it increasingly difficult for those who actually need the money to produce their work to get a grant.

AA: How do you see the role of “luck”?

JJ: Luck certainly played a role in getting Cipher published (see below) but I think being ready and able to seize any opportunity which might present itself is much more important, since that’s something one has at least a modicum of control over.

AA: Can you share the story of how you published one of your books?

JJ: Cipher, my second novel, was a Hail Mary throw (which is why football plays such an integral role in it). Quite frankly, after writing over a dozen scripts, twenty odd short stories, twenty children’s books and a previous literary novel without being able to sell any of them I’d given up on the prospect that I’d ever be able to make a go of it as an author. I specifically wrote Cipher as a mystery novel (basing its narrative in part on Graham Greene’s The Third Man) because I thought that might be my best chance at getting published. A friend from my Vancouver days was working at D&M and in 2011 she was able to get the manuscript to editor Chris Labonte. He called it “one of the strongest manuscripts I’ve seen in years” but said they weren’t in a position to take on any new projects (they’d, in fact, filed for bankruptcy a short time later). He then assured me that I should have no problem finding a publisher which was a big boost and got me through the inevitable round of rejections after I sent it to almost every independent press in Canada and to most of our literary agencies as well. It just so happened then that in 2012 I learned that The Mystery Writers Super Tour (comprised of Ian Hamilton, Hilary Davidson, Robin Spano and Robert Rotenberg) was making a stop at The Guelph Public Library. I figured I might as well go and check out what they had to say and was quite encouraged when author Robin Spano spoke about the positive experience she’d had publishing with Toronto-based ECW Press (a publisher which somehow hadn’t even made it onto my radar). I spent a couple weeks revising during which time I was further encouraged when I read an interview with publisher Jack David in which he said he founded ECW Press to “shit disturb”, my own often-touted goal as an author (it’s not for nothing, for example, that the theme song I chose for Savage Gerry was Trooper’s “Raise A Little Hell”). I sent publisher Jack David a query letter along with the first two chapters on a Wednesday. He responded the very next morning asking for the full manuscript and then emailed me the next Monday to invite me out to lunch. And that, as they say, was that. What I didn’t know at the time, and wouldn’t find out until Jack paid us a visit in Guelph, was that we were then living a half a block from the house where Jack lived when he was at the University of Guelph in the early seventies and which was, in fact, the very house in which he’d originally founded ECW Press. Before he left for Toronto, Jack took a little scrub tree from the back yard and planted it in the front. The tree had become a goliath in the meanwhile and when he came to visit us, he’d park his vehicle under its shade and it became a private joke that I was a secondary consideration when he was really just coming to visit it.

AA: A huge thank you to John for sharing his knowledge and experience with us. He’s given us/me a lot to think about.

Do check out his site:

https://www.canneryrowpress.com/

photo: John Jantunen (and courtesy of), in Laurier Woods Conservation Area in North Bay

End note

Again, “Thank you!” to those of you who have become paid subscribers. It’s the only way I can continue to do this. Please share with other writers you know (and if a friend subscribes, do let me know, and I’ll happily add another month to your own subscription.)

It’s a pleasure to build and grow The Unschool, and I am enjoying your comments, feedback, questions, and suggestions.

Bring ’em on!

Peace—

Alison

alison@alisonacheson.com