For authors

Last summer a bright spot during the pandemic was the call for submissions to a new anthology being created by London author Rosemary Boyd. I had been wanting to be part of an anthology to add to my publishing kudos and jumped at this chance.

A couple of years earlier, however, I had turned down a request to be part of another writer’s dream and that had left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. The person who contacted me wanted me to write a section of a book about women hanged in Ontario, specifically the part about someone right here in my home town.

I was really excited to research this history but the more I asked him about the project, the less enthused I became. He was going to edit my work, a seemingly good idea, but then I asked for his writing credits. He gave me none. I asked for written details of exactly what he expected and what my part of the book’s proceeds would be. He wanted to have complete control over my work and he would not pay me or the other contributing writers a nickel for what looked like a lot of work with no say in anything.

I declined.

With my fifth book on its way to publication, I had a full plate and was happy. Then Rosemary’s call came out for submissions and my interest in an anthology was resurrected. I particularly liked that I knew Rosemary to be honest and fair. The 101 contributors each wrote something short. I wrote about the pandemic being a time for reflections and my thoughts during that time. My essay turned out to be about my amazing mother and her tremendous effect on my life.

Rosemary’s book is called 101 Things to Ponder During a Pandemic. You can contact her for a copy by replying to this post and I’ll forward your email to her. Here is the book on Goodreads.

5 Reasons to be Featured in an Anthology

1. An anthology puts your work alongside that of many other writers and helps find new audiences for you.

2. You have a chance to work with other editors and learn from them. I was interested to see the mid-section of 101 Things… for its unique method of displaying one writer’s thoughts.

3. You have the chance to read other authors in small pieces, always adding to your own writing knowledge and experience.

4. This gives a writer a fresh outlet while not using up too much of her time. When you consider my books often take two years, a week to write the required piece, edit, proof, rethink it and finally submit it is not too bad a time investment.

5. Being part of a much larger work helps a writer hone those skills of working with others and having respect for others’ work. Getting lost in our own work and not keeping up with other writers’ publications could be very limiting. As John Donne said we are part of the whole. “No [one] is an island.”

With the flood of authors and would-be authors rushing to get their works published these days, I hope this interview I did will help each and every one of you. Beth Cougler Blom has recently published her how-to book Design to Engage  using Friesen Press. Here she and I talk about her writing journey with particular emphasis on working with Friesen.

You will need about 40 minutes to view this so pour your favourite libation, get comfortable in your chair and click to learn and be entertained. By the way Beth is my daughter so you will get an intimate view of one of our wonderful talks.

Last weekend showed our Ontario winter to tremendous advantage, and my husband and I took a (safe) drive to St. Jacob’s on the Saturday and another to soak up the sun along Lake Huron at Goderich on the Sunday. The brilliant blue sky with a few wispy white clouds showed off the snow at its best. My favourite time–snow on all the fields and bare roads. I didn’t even wear my boots!

Life is often like that. You have to search out the best parts. My father used to say he never turned down a wrong road without finding something amazing at the end of it. Of course, the glint in his eye usually led his adult children to wonder just what he had done on those isolated roads!

Now, in our writing we have to help our readers get hooked right from the beginning. How do we mimic the appeal of the photo above in our first lines?

Dickens was a master with his opening to A Tale of Two Cities. So much so that almost everyone remembers the first words of his first line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”

I love a great opening to a book and have worked hard on the openings to all of my books, even my creative non-fiction book, The Man Behind the Marathons. I hone the words until readers will be hooked with the first words and fully engaged by the bottom of the first page. I worked so hard on The Loyalist’s Wife, first in the Loyalist series, that I still have the opening on the edge of my tongue. “John watched his smiling Lucinda carry the pail of water into the cabin and thought how lucky he was to have fallen for her.”

What did I achieve in that sentence?

1. I gave her an old-fashioned name to suit the period.

2. I set the scene. They live in a cabin and she is carrying water.

3. I touched on character. Lucinda is a happy person. John appreciates her.

4. I set the tone as positive and upbeat.

5. I allowed the reader to wonder. Why does John think he is lucky to have found Lucinda?

After I described Lucy in the second paragraph I ended that paragraph with “He longed to stretch out the happy moment.” The suggestion is that something unhappy is coming.

These are some of the ways that writers use to grab our interest and to hang on to it. I am currently almost finished rereading Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour which novel I wrote about some weeks ago. Here is Sharon’s first line: “Richard did not become frightened until darkness began to settle over the woods.“ This is our introduction to the child who became the Yorkist king, Richard III, and who has been so maligned because of Shakespeare’s imaginative but not factual rendering of him.

Penman uses the word ‘frightened’ and immediately we know something is up. Then ‘darkness’ appears. Next ‘woods’. She builds the emotion in us bit by bit. “In the fading light, the trees began to take on unfamiliar and menacing shapes.”

Like bricklayers piling up one row after another to create a finished wall, good authors use their words to elicit emotion and interest. It’s how we humans are wired and ties directly to our innate sense of danger. Should we take flight? Should the main character run? What is happening?

So the next time you are wearing your author hat, think of what one of my beta readers said about her reading habits: “I’m an impatient reader. If my interest isn’t piqued right from the get-go, I simply don’t continue reading the book…” Elaine B You’ll be glad you did.