Mary Kay Andrews

So You Wanna Write a Book

Because I’ve had 16 (soon to be 17) novels published, people believe I’m an expert on getting published. Sadly, I’m only a semi-expert–and only on the topic of getting ME published. But I get emails, and I’m asked to teach, or lecture on the topic, and I rarely go to a cocktail party without having somebody pull me aside and whisper (I’ve got this great idea for a book…).

So I thought I’d put my thoughts on the topic in a post, and maybe kind readers will forward it to their book writing buddies, instead of asking me to read their book writing buddies’ manuscripts. And for the record–1.No. I don’t read other people’s manuscripts. Ever. I barely have time to write my own books, let alone read other people’s. I’m not an editor or an agent. My tastes are my own, and not reflective of the book publishing industry. 2. No. I’m not a book doctor. See above. 3.Yes. A person can make a living writing books. However, I have no idea whether you or your friend can make a living as an author.

So…You have an idea for a book. Is it a book? Is your idea fiction or non-fiction? That’s the first question to ask yourself. If it’s non-fiction, why would a publisher buy such a book? What makes it such a great idea? Has anybody else written on this topic? If so, can you do it better, fresher, smarter? What are your credentials for writing about this non-fiction topic? These are the questions you ask yourself, and which any editor or agent would ask you before ever considering taking a look at your idea. Do your market research. Go to the library, bookstore, internet, to find out what’s been written on the topic, and how recently. Read the competiton, so you’ll understand how your book can be different. You’ll also want to know if that book was considered a success. You can check its Amazon sales ranking, as one measure of success, or ask others who are experts in the field if the competition books did well. Don’t assume an editor or agent will do this. This is YOUR job.

If your idea is for a novel, figure out what kind of novel you want to write, or have written. Is it literary fiction?–i.e. the kind of book Oprah picks for her book club? Is it genre–meaning, is it an identifiable category like mystery, romance, thriller, sci-fi, fanstasy, action-adventure, ect. If you are writing for children, you’ll want to educate yourself about how children’s books are published and sold.

Again, market research. What kind of books do you like, and want to publish? Read those. Figure out how they are structured, who publishes them, and who writes them. Make yourself an expert on the kind of book you want to write. How long are those novels? Hint: NOBODY wants to read your 800-page romance/fantasy/thriller. Unless you happen to be the next J.K. Rowling. Educate yourself about the conventions of genres by reading books on the topic. Libraries usually have great books about writing. You can also usually join genre writer’s groups, like Romance Writers of America, Sisters in Crime (mystery), ect., many of which have helpful publications or meetings with published authors as speakers.

Write the damned book. Give yourself a deadline. I was working fulltime as a reporter for The Atlanta Constitution, and raising two young children when I wrote my first two mysteries. If you want to write badly enough, you’ll find the time. I gave up watching television on weeknights. I gave myself a year to write that first book, and when I was approaching the year deadline, I took my last two weeks of vacation to stay home and finish the book. Try to come up with a workable writing schedule. Mine was to write a chapter a week. I still give myself page and chapter quotas when I’m working on a book. Study plot and structure. Beginning, middle, end. If your mind works that way, outline your novel. Or at least try to write a synopsis of what happens. You don’t have to have an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop to figure out how modern fiction is written. You just have to figure out how story works. Story, by Robert McKee, is helpful for this–if very detailed and overly analytical. I took McKee’s Story workshop in New York years ago, hoping it would help me write a screenplay. I never did write the screenplay, but it was very helpful in thinking about structure. Get help if you need it. Join a writer’s group, either online or in your community. Start your own if one doesn’t exist. Attend a writer’s workshop, or take a writing class through an evening adult ed program. Local colleges offer these, as do organizations throughout the country. You’ll want a workshop or writing class that features published authors as teachers/lecturers. If it’s a workshop offering manuscript consultations, you’ll want one with New York editors and agents as presenters or lecturers. I attended the Antioch Writer’s Workshop nearly twenty years ago when Sue Grafton was teaching mystery writing, solely because the workshop advertised manuscript conferences with Sue Grafton. My experience was priceless. Three months later, I had my first book contract. That doesn’t mean you’ll have the same experience, but it does happen.

Yes, writing is hard work. Have you ever done anything worthwhile that wasn’t hard? No whining! If the writing isn’t going well, keep going anyway. The object is to finish the damned book. You can always go back and polish and edit. But you can’t polish what you ain’t written. So push through the pain and get to the finish-line. Read Ann LaMott’s invaluable book BIRD BY BIRD. Keep it on your nightstand, or by your computer. I do.

When you have finished your book–and not before you are convinced it is the best book you could possibly write– then you are ready to try to sell it. Unless you truly are the next J.K. Rowling, or Candace Bushnell (SEX AND THE CITY), nobody in New York gives a rat’s ass about your IDEA or FRAGMENT. Yes, dears, you do have to write the WHOLE book before you sell it. Usually. Unless you’re the exception to the rule. Maybe you are, but I doubt it. Now you go back and do more market research. Who is publishing books like yours? Are they currently buying? What agents represent authors like you? Check the acknowledgement page on novels you like, lots of times they thank their agent and or editor. Check The Writer’s Market, which should be available at your local library for listings of agents and editors, but make sure you’re reading the most current market guide available.

While you’re studying Writer’s Market, make sure you understand manuscript mechanics. By this, I mean formatting, ect. Once your manuscript is clean and properly formatted, you’re ready to start submitting. Again, go back to the library to check out reference books about marketing a book to find out how to write query letters. Good luck!

The Fixer-Upper: Stick a fork in me—I’m DONE!

I am beyond thrilled and amazed to announce that I finished THE FIXER-UPPER at 4:55 p.m. EDT today. Yayayayayay! As has been my tradition upon finishing a book–and this is my 18th time–I toasted myself with some favorite treats. Usually, I wash my celebratory Reese’s down with Wink, the delightful grapefruit soda of my youth. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack the bottle of Wink I’ve been hoarding since spring, for the trip to Tybee. The Wathen’s Kentucky Bourbon made a tasty substitute, but it just ain’t Wink.
Tragically, you can no longer buy Wink in Georgia, because I guess they don’t have a distributor down here. I bought my bottle of Wink back in the spring, when I was on my writing retreat at Holden Beach with the Inksters. Anyway, here’s to me! Technically, of course, I’m far from finished with THE FIXER UPPER. The manuscript you see in the photo here is not a pretty thing. It is a bloated disgusting mess at this point, full of pointless meanderings, shoddy grammar, nonexistent punctuation and worse. Fortunately, I have the honor of having an amazing editor at HarperCollins, who is even now sharpening her red pencil in preparation for whipping this beast into shape. Here’s to Carolyn! Burp. Excuse me. That’s the bourbon talking, not me. Soon Carolyn will have me slaving away over revisions, slashing thru the excess and the absurd. And then comes the fun part. We figure out zingy candy colors for the jacket. We finalize the jacket art and talk about marketing this puppy. And I get about 27 minutes off, until I start all over again on a new book. Oh the horror! Oh the sublime, blessed joy of making a living off what you love to do. Thank you, dear readers, for making it all possible.

A bump in the road

There I was, writing along, singing a song—well, not actually singing–but I was cranking out the pages. And then, to paraphrase Dr. Seuss. Bump! How that bump made me jump! And I’m so close to the end, too. I’m at a plotting impasse. I’ve called my editor for an emergency consult, so hopefully, I’ll jump the bump. Tomorrow or the next day. Which means maybe I stay down at Tybee a little longer than I’d originally planned. Not a bad thing, except I miss home and hubby—and junk buddies. And I SO want this book done. But you can’t hurry fiction. So here I stay, for the time being. In the mean time, on Tuesday, when things were going well, I finished my morning page quota in time to sneak out to an estate sale. It’s totally a very tiny world, because while at the sale, I discovered it was being held by an ollllllddd college buddy from UGA. BD, (who is still an amazingly talented photographer–and he even teaches digital photography–gotta sign up for a class) and I worked together at the Red and Black (that’s the college paper), and then later, we free-lanced stories out of Savannah together for the Atlanta and Jacksonville newspapers. The house was BD’s late mom’s house. I bought a swell lavender chenille bedspread, and some cool ’60s banded ice tea tumblers, and an aluminum water pitcher, all of which will go in the booth at Maisy’s Daisy. The bedspread had some weird orange stains, but after four washings, including an Oxy-Clean soak and extensive Oxy-Clean spray-on stain removal, all the orange went away. What the ??? is in that stuff? I wish I could buy stock in it, I love it so much. While my mind was in a stall pattern today, I took my new finds, plus the rest of my Brimfield goodies, over to Maisy’s Daisy, where Susan, the Seaside Sister madam, has promised to make it all look yummy. In the meantime, here’s a peek at the goods, which I styled here at the Mermaid Cottage I’m hiding out in. Check out the amazing egret/heron barkcloth pillows I picked up at Brimfield. Also, the cool old black and white 1920s beach snapshots. Tonight, I went to an book-signing for my friend Polly Powers Stramm, at the Trends and Traditions Framing Gallery, in Ardsley Park. Another example of what a small world it is, I used to work at the Atlanta Constitution with the owner’s father, the late, great, Tom McCollister, a wonderful sportswriter and all around sweet man, who we lost too soon. And of course, Polly is an old pal from waaaay back (we’re talking 30 years here) when I was just a baby reporter at The Savannah Morning News. I bought a copy of Sentimental Savannah, her collection of columns written for the Morning News, to put in my “local library” which I’m planning for the beach house. And now, just to tease you, here’s a sunset I shot from the Back River the other day. By the way, today the weather was so beautiful. Breezy, with just the slightest hint of fall. It’s a great time to be at Tybee…if only I could jump that bump.

Sunday Night at the Beach

I took Mr. Mary Kay to the airport at 5pm, and now, here I am, snug in my Mermaid Cottage for the week, on Sunday night. Usually, Sunday nights mean we are driving home, already fretting about the week’s work ahead of us. But this week, I get to stay at the beach on Sunday night. Coming back to Tybee, I passed a long line of cars heading off the island. But I was headed the other way. The cottage I am staying at is called Nowhere To Go, and it’s charming, as all the Mermaid Cottages always are. It’s bigger than most, with four bedrooms, a huge living room and dining room, four bedrooms and two baths. I went out on the deck to enjoy the relative cool of the evening, and peeked through the grove of palm trees in the backyard. Then I walked over to the Tybee Market and bought my groceries for dinner. Yes, I had my ritualistic spaghetti. I don’t know why I have to have spaghetti when I go away to write, except that maybe it’s because spaghetti is a no-brainer–open a jar of sauce, boil some pasta, and you have dinner. As I was driving back along the beach today, it reminded me of Sunday nights when I was a little girl. My mother worked as a waitress at a steakhouse when I was very young, and she frequently worked Sunday nights. This was Florida in the 1950s and early ’60s. We had no air conditioning, and with Mom at work, my Dad’s solution to dealing with five hot, cranky kids was to load us up into the family sedan and take us out to Pass-A-Grille Beach in the early evening, when the crowds had thinned out and the heat wasn’t as intense. Sometimes we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a thermos of Kool-Aid for dinner. We’d swim and chase, and Daddy would let us jump off his shoulders into the water. We’d always beg him to buy us an inflatable raft. His standard reply was that rafts were very dangerous–what if the tide took us out into the Gulf? We’d end up in Mexico! It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realized buying rafts for the five of us would have eaten up the week’s grocery money! If he was feeling flush, we’d each get a quarter to get snacks from the concession stand. A fudgesicle was a huge treat. When we were worn out, he’d wrap us all in towels and load us back into the car for the ride home. And if he was really, really flush, sometimes we’d get to stop at the A&W hotdog stand on the way home, or Biff-Burger, which made the best onion rings ever. The Biff-Burger is now a rib joint, last I heard, and I don’t know what happened to the old A&W. The last place my parents lived before Mom died four years ago was in a Gulf-front condo–directly across the street from the spot where we played as kids. They never tired of looking out at those gorgeous sunsets, or of thinking about how far they’d come from those peanut-butter and Kool-Aid days. So, Sunday nights at the beach are still special–but bittersweet.

Where were you?

Seven years ago today, I was out in my backyard office here in Atlanta, trying, as I’m trying now, to finish a book. When I have my head in a book, I deliberately try to blot out the world. No television, no lunch dates, just me and the book. I think my husband called. “Go in the house and turn on the news,” he said. So I did. And I watched–along with the rest of the world–in absolute horror. I never liked science fiction movies–too scary for me. But this was like watching a science fiction movie gone horribly, horribly, real. I didn’t write again that day. Maybe not all week. It’s impossible to write funny, flip fiction when your heart is broken. I called my editor and agent in New York, to reassure myself that they were ok. Later, I talked with other writer friends around the country. Those who lived in New York were not really ok. They couldn’t work. Certainly couldn’t write. Couldn’t laugh. Those terrorists took all that from us that day, along with all the beautiful, productive lives lost, they took our laughter, our sense that no matter what happens, something silly will come along, and we’ll forget our troubles for a little while. I remember another catastrophic day too–the day JFK was assasinated. I was out of school sick that day, and had gone with my mother to my aunt’s beauty parlor. My mom had a standing appointment every week to have her hair done–hey, it was the ’60s. Somebody turned on the radio, and we heard the news that the president had been shot in Dallas, and that he’d been rushed to a hospital. We left, and went to the A&P, and at some point, the store manager went on the loudspeaker, and announced that President Kennedy was dead. My mother was crying–and my mother never cried. She and I left the store and went to our church, where we lit candles and prayed. And cried. I was in the third grade. President Kennedy was our president. He was Irish and Catholic, like us. I still cry when I see that old photo of Jackie and Caroline and John-John–with John-John saluting his fallen father. What can we do in the face of all this evil, all the bad news we hear every morning? I don’t know about you, but I’ve decided I’ll do something good today. I’ll continue trying to finish this funny, flip book of mine, because that’s my job. Making people laugh. And when I go out to do my errands, I’ll make a mitzvah–a good deed. Just because I can.

Sneak Peek

The worst part about coming home from a buying trip is the un-loading and un-packing. The fun part is the hunt, and then the fluffing. After a 14-hour drive Friday–much of it through driving rain, Beth and I made it back to Raleigh, and then I drove another six hours to get home to Atlanta Saturday afternoon. Today I unpacked my treasures. So, here’s a sneak peek at some of the goodies. The quilt has wonderful colors and detailed quilting, but the red dyes in old fabrics frequently made the fabric weak, so the red stars have some wear. Still, the wonderful red, white and blue colors and the graphic appeal of the stars would look wonderful as a wall hanging, or even folded at the foot of a bed or in a cupboard. I fell hard for the vintage Georgia and Georgia Tech pennants, which are framed, and you can see a representative assortment of other stuff too. Not shown is the great pink and white quilt, which is being laundered with Oxy-Clean. I don’t know what’s in that stuff, but I swear, it works wonders. Two weeks ago, a friend’s son knocked over a full glass of red wine on the sisal rug in the living room. She brought over a steam cleaner to try to clean it, but it only turned the wine stains black. The next day, I gave it two applications of spray-on Oxy-clean, and voila–the stains disappeared. Also not shown is the wicker highchair, which is a work in progress. It’s Heywood-Wakefield, complete with worn label on the underside. I’m painting it Seaside Green, and then it’ll get a vintage barkcloth seat cushion. The three-panel cottage screen will also undergo a transformation, with a new paint job and some shirred fabric. I’ll try to post them when my projects are completed. As usual, I’m torn this week–between getting my Brimfield goodies priced and ready to take down to Seaside Sisters–and writing. But writing must win. Mustfinishbookmustfinishbookmustfinishbookmustfinish….

Bye-Bye Brimfield!

After three days of serious, kick-ass, hard-core junking, junk sistah Beth and I are packing up to go home. The van is full, our bank accounts near-empty, and we are, as my daughter Katie would put it, “tore up from the floor up.” But it was loads of fun. If you are a junk novice, let me just tell you that the Brimfield Antique Market is the largest antique market of its kind in the U.S. Estimates vary, but I’ve read that at least 2400 dealers from around the world set up here in these former pastures in the tiny town of Brimfield, Mass. And buyers come from around the world too, especially antique dealers, who come to re-stock their shops. I’ve bought tons of goodies for my booth at Seaside Sisters, at Tybee Island, Ga., and Beth has been buying for her business, Knick-Knack Paddywhack, in Raleigh. Fortunately, we are at the opposite ends of the spectrum in the antique world. Beth buys high-end, bona-fide antiques–much of it French or English for her customers. And me? I buy shabby chic, retro, funky junky beach house-type stuff. I love to buy original art–amateur oil paintings, water-colors or drawings. I have a weakness for forties and fifties barkcloth, and because our little shop is at the beach, I buy anything nautical. And wicker. And rattan. And McCoy pottery. And architectural salvage. So, a reader asks, what did I buy this week? Three cottagey screens which can be hinged together, with chipped white paint. A pair of fabulous barkcloth pillows in acid green with herons on them. A wicker high-chair, a pair of 1950s-era framed Georgia and Georgia Tech felt pennants, an adorable turn–of-the-century double school desk-table with cast-iron legs. Four children’s English blue willow grill plates. A pine-topped green wicker table. An old-timey bingo hopper, complete with the original bingo balls and bakelite detailing. A pair of small wooden paddles, several paintings, and some great vintage black and white beachy snapshots. For her part, Beth bought several oriental rugs, lots of blue and white English transferware, a pair of 19th century French walnut cane-bottom chairs, a gorgeous French daybed, some silver, and a slew of paintings, including a Florida Highwaymen painting which I covet in the extreme. It’s been a good, fun week. We ate at our favorite food court, New England Motel, pictured above, every day. Beth had lobster, I had pilgrim roll (turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce), and Greek food. The people-watching was great. I saw a dealer who specializes in selling Viking ships (now that’s specialized!), and another who buys full-sized robots and models of flying saucers. Lots of dealers had their dogs in their booths. I saw a huge Robert E. Lee statue. In Massachusetts, yet. Beth had a celebrity sighting–Keri Russell was buying up lots of Swedish antiques. And now? It’ time to head home and try to out-run the tropical storms and hurricanes taking aim at the South. Oh yeah. Time to go home and finish the new book before my editor comes back from vacation.

Book Fair, and Back to Brimfield

The AJC Decatur Book Festival was big fun. Friday night, my friend Jennifer and I went to hear poet Billy Collins at Agnes Scott College. He was wonderful, funny, charming, refreshing, his poems funny and sly and subversive and silly. My favorite part was when he dropped the F-bomb. I mean, the former poet laureate of the United States, and he drops the F-Bomb at a girl’s college. You gotta love it. I got to meet him afterwards, and before-hand, got to meet one of my favorite southern writers, Bailey White. If you’ve never heard her on NPR, or read SLEEPING AT THE STARLIGHT MOTEL, or MAMA MAKES UP HER MIND, you have missed a rare and wondrous treat. She’s got a new book coming out, called NOTHING WITH STRINGS, and I, for one, can’t wait. I met Rick Bragg in the author’s green room too. That’s the great thing about a book festival. One time, I was in the green room at the Miami Book Festival, and Amy Tan came in, with her two eensy-weensy purse puppies, and then Dave Barry came in, and I just took it all in.

We had a very nice crowd for the book festival. Right after my gig at the festival Saturday, I ran home and jumped in the 10-ft. cargo van and hot-footed it up to Raleigh to pick up junk sistah Beth. Sunday morning, we lit out for Brimfield, which turned out to be a 14-hour odyssey, due to traffic jams on various turnpikes. But we are here, we have done a reconaissance around the fields, and have set our alarms for—buttcrack of dawn, or as some people call it, 4 a.m. All the antique fields are supposed to be officially closed today, but I snuck in, and the first person I ran into was Bob, who sold me my bathtub and kitchen sink at Scott’s in Atlanta. The junk world really is a small place. A few years ago, on my first junking trip to England, I ran into a dealer friend from Atlanta at the antique fair in Ardingly. Tomorrow, I junk for joy!

Meet me at the Old Courthouse

In all the drama of trying to finish a book (and get a beach house rehabbed) I’ve completely fallen down on the job of SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION FOR BRAZEN HUSSIES. So, let’s pause for a moment for a message from our sponsor. (That would be me, wearing my writer hat.)

This Saturday, at 12:30 p.m. please join me and author H.N. Kilby at the Atlanta Journal Constitution Decatur Book Festival. About the festival, it’s a really fun, family-oriented book-centric outing.

Snark warning: Just between us? It always annoys me when a book festival lines up a “headliner” who isn’t actually a writer, but rather, a cosmetically-enhanced television personality. It saddens me, too, because I realize that these television personalities will always out-draw the inky wretches who scratch out a living by writing. One year, I went to a book festival with an estimated 200 authors, and yet, the promoters chose to make Andy Rooney the marquee speaker. Andy Rooney, who makes a living being a cranky old tv codger on 60 Minutes, decided after about five minutes at this festival that he was outta there, leaving a line of some 200 people scratching their heads and wondering what to do with the book they’d just purchased. The AJC Book Festival’s headliner was going to be Ty Pennington, the over-caffeinated host of Extreme Home Makeover for Poor People who are Not too Proud to Accept Free Wide-Screen TVs and Hot Tubs. Guess what? Ty has apparently had a better offer from Oprah, so he has ditched the festival. Oh children. Okay, snarkiness over.

We’ll be speaking at the Old DeKalb County Courthouse. You know it–it’s the actually attractive decomissoned courthouse on the Decatur Square, facing Ponce deLeon. I’ve had a blast doing this festival for the past two years, and this year should be no exception. I have no idea what I’ll say or do, but I’ll do my best to be entertaining. And–should you need a bribe–and really, who doesn’t want a bribe?–I’ll be handing out my coveted MaryKayAndrews funeral parlour fans. But wait! There’s more! You say you want a door prize drawing? Well, sisters, I am all about pleasing my peeps. All you have to do is fill out a puny little piece of paper giving me your email address (to be added to my MKA mailing list) and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a $50 gift certificate to my favorite Decatur restaurant, FEAST.

Now, about that mailing list. I don’t sell it or rent it. And I have no interest in selling you the world’s smallest fishing pole, penile enhancing substances, or colon cleansing products. I only want to sell you on selling ME, Mary Kay Andrews. So come, enjoy, pick up your freebie, register for a prize, buy my books, make me rich. I’ll be signing books after the talk, and then, I’m loading up my rented cargo van and heading back to Brimfield, Mass, with my junk sistah Beth for the Brimfield Antique Market for a solid week of junking. Oh Joy!

It’s a dirty job…

But somebody had to keep my friend Beth company while she’s staying at The Cloister last week.

I motored over there Wednesday and spent the rest of the week ensconced in total luxury. Our room was the size of my living room at our modest little Tybee beach house. The grounds were lush and green and perfectly manicured, and the terrace outside our room looked out on the Black Banks River. All was serene. A hurricane may have been threatening Florida just a few miles south of there, but at the Cloister, they have staff to deal with annoyances like that. We had three lovely dinners at three different restaurants, all great in their own way. I think my favorite for the week was a place called Delaney’s.

I wrote three chapters. Maybe I could have written more, maybe not. But it was a nice break. I treated myself to a massage Thursday afternoon. And we dropped by G.J. Ford’s Books, where owner Mary Jean caught me up on the latest island gossip, and I bought a new book., HAM BISCUITS, HOSTESS GOWNS, AND OTHER SOUTHERN SPECIALTIES, by Julia Reed. I’d already read and enjoyed the author’s THE HOUSE ON FIRST STREET: MY NEW ORLEANS STORY, so I know I’ll love this one too. I fell a little short on my four-day writing goal, but on the other hand, I think this may have been my ultimate freeloading move.

Beth is staying on at the Cloister, but it was time for me to head on home Friday morning. I drove for six hours in the Fay-whipped winds and rains. Got home and discovered that Wyatt ate one of the down sofa pillows in the sunroom and Weezie ate the edges on the rattan coffee table that was going to go in the living room of the Tybee house. Bad dogs.