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Success by Birth and 10,000 Hours December 1, 2009

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This past Saturday, I signed my latest children’s books at The Bookmark, a wonderful, independent bookstore in my hometown of Fort Madison, Iowa. While I was there, an illustrator, Mark Anderson, stopped in to visit. He graduated from my high school a year before me. My hometown of 10,000 also produced horror writer Tina Jens (graduating the year after me) and movie star, TV actor, and author Hil Harper (graduating a few years after me). People from my hometown keep asking me, “Was there something in the water those years?”

I have yet to figure out why we had so much creativity come out of Fort Madison during those years. But I read from Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, while  staying at my sister’s house, and I keep thinking about one thing Gladwell wrote. He suggested that success is largely influenced by when people are born. He noted that a few scattered spurts in U.S. history account for virtually all of our self-made tycoons.  When the Industrial Revolution started happening, a few men born at the right time rose to the top. Same with the computer revolution.

Gladwell also noted that people scoring highest on intelligence tests don’t always achieve the greatest success in life. He found that people who achieve great success, such as The Beatles, put in about 10,000 hours honing their abilities before reaching that level of success. I’m a practical person, so I immediately calculated how many years it would take a writer to achieve success using this as a formula and writing one hour a day.

Twenty-eight years.

I wonder if blogging counts.

Jack-of-all-tradebooks November 23, 2009

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The pace here is kicking into high gear. I am blogging, interviewing, presenting, researching, writing, selling, networking, and even sleeping once in a while. Today’s author is truly a jack-of-all-trades.

Living It Up to Live It Down, the second novel in my newly released series, is up for both the Cybils Award and the Sid Fleischman Humor Award. The publisher Web site, www.rfwp.com,  now lists The Kirsten Hart Series, and both books in the series–A Shadow in the Dark and Living It Up to Live It Down–can be purchased online there. They will also be available soon on other sites.

This morning I interviewed with The Author Show and, later this week, hope to interview with my hometown newspaper in preparation for my visit and book signing in Southeast Iowa over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Next week, I have two school visits and a signing at a Barnes & Noble in Kansas City, Missouri. Then the following Monday I start a new job with the State of Nebraska. This is only part-time temp work, so I expect to continue promotions with a blog tour and other events.

A reviewer told me she thinks my books would be great catalysts for discussion among Christian teens. I have one church youth group that is considering launching a reading group with the books, and I have high hopes for this. I plan to prepare discussion questions for the books and will post them to this site. And I’d like to find other Christian teen reading groups. Any suggestions, anyone?

Advances and Royalties, Part 2 November 18, 2009

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Earlier this year, I blogged about advances and royalties. In part, I mentioned that a New York Times bestselling author, Lynn Viehl, had posted her royalty statement online at http://www.genreality.net/the-reality-of-a-times-bestseller. Lynn has received another royalty statement for that bestselling book and posted it online at http://www.genreality.net/more-on-the-reality-of-a-times-bestseller. The way I understand it, her profits from the book now stand at just under $25,000 after subtracting expenses, taxes, and agent commissions. She said she posted these royalty statements to dispel myths in publishing. Consider the myths dispelled.

Generosity and Competition Among Writers November 16, 2009

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I worked the Nebraska Writers Guild booth at the Nebraska Book Festival on Saturday. I had a great time networking with other writers and selling books. A beginning writer might wonder how festivals and writing organizations like this can work when writers are all in competition with one another. The truth is, we’re not.

I write books for children, primarily teens. I worked the booth with a nonfiction historical author, a poet, an author of a crime novel, and a romance author. We all attracted different customers.

I found another children’s author a few booths down, but she’s published in picture books while I’m published mainly in young adult novels. We discussed promotional opportunities like school visits, and we may collaborate on these because, again, we’re selling to different audiences.

Over the years, I’ve found that the more experienced writers get, generally the more generous they become. Perhaps the reason why is so simple as they’ve realized how little money is involved in this business for most writers. Becoming cutthroat over peanuts is silly.

In some genres, experienced writers even usher in novices, conveying the notion that there’s room for everyone. I’ve found this particularly true in the romance genre. Romance authors are some of the most generous writers I’ve met. This may be true because more than half of the books sold each year are romances. When a genre dominates the market like this, good writers can usually find a place without becoming hypercompetitive.

Beginning writers sometimes see writing organizations as head-to-head competition and fear joining, but I’ve found most writing organizations are fun and supportive.

Synchronicity November 9, 2009

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I sent the first three chapters of my inspirational romance to an editor who requested them and now am digging into that pile of romances I received at last summer’s Romance Writers of America conference.

I’m surprised at how many of “my ideas” I see cropping up in these books. Of course, these romances are already published; mine are still in the works. When I thought of the idea for my inspirational romance, I hadn’t seen any romances in which a dog played a key role. Then Marley and Me hit the shelves (and soon after the movie theaters), and now it seems every publisher has romances with comical animals in them. That’s synchronicity. Many writers writing about the same thing at the same time without realizing they’re far from alone.

Years ago, I wrote a picture book series about a clumsy uncle whose speech made him sound as if he came from the Victorian Era and yet he was always trying to impress his niece and nephew about how hip he was. He ended up in a series of accidents in each book, and each book started with a warning. The first one stated, “Warning: This book is not meant for scaredy-cats.” I sent a proposal for this series all over with no response. A few years later, the Lemony Snicket series came out. This series bore enough resemblance to mine that my series basically became unsaleable.

A new writer hearing this might respond, “They stole your idea!” I doubt it. If I had a contract for every time I submitted a story to a publisher and, a year or two later, they came out with a highly similar story by a different writer, I’d be very well published by now. But I’ve seen synchronicity in action.

In a journalism class I took in college, the teacher assigned students to write a story about a psychological experiment. In the experiment, scientists had people in various vehicles try to get toll collectors to waive the fee for crossing the bridge. The scientists discovered that people in luxury vehicles like limousines had far more success at gaining free passage than less prestigious vehicles. For my hook (or first line of my story), I wrote:

“Money talks.
And when it does, people listen.”

The college instructor collected the stories we had written and redistributed them in the classroom. I received the story of a woman who sat across the classroom from me. The opening lines for our stories matched, yet neither of us had copied off the other. That’s synchronicity.

Beginning writers sometimes worry about joining critique groups because they fear another writer will “steal” their ideas. This could conceivably happen, but it’s more likely that another writer (or two or three or fifty) is already out there working on the same idea.

Recently, I heard that publishers think they’ve identified what the “next big thing” in publishing will be after the current trend of vampire stories dies down: angel stories. I was happy to hear this since I had an angel book, The Time-for-Bed Angel, published in 2008. This time, I may be riding the crest of the synchronicity wave.

Letters October 24, 2009

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I presented at a Lutheran school in Kansas City this past weekend and at the Young Writers’ Conference in Liberty, Missouri. In the last part of my workshops, the students wrote letters.

Just before I left the Liberty conference, a fifth-grade boy ran up to me and handed me a folded piece of paper. It was a letter:

Dear Ms. Stromberg:

Thanks for the wonderful day. You did some wonderful work on your book.

Sincerely,

[student's name]

P.S. You are an excellent writer.

Naturally, I choked up. I had been paid one of the highest compliments a children’s author can receive:  a writing child.

I do get letters. I’m relieved that most of it now comes as e-mails instead of snail mails. Teachers used to organize snail-mail efforts in which all the children in their classes wrote favorite authors. For me, a postage stamp cost more than the royalty I received from a book, so every letter I answered set me further back financially. Thank goodness for e-mail!

My stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul books have drawn teens to e-mail me from around the world. I received several from Japan and even one from an Arab country. I’ve answered every letter except one from a prisoner. As a writer, I’m sometimes amazed where my words turn up!

Critique Group October 18, 2009

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Saturday, I met with one of the three critique groups I’m in. I can see real improvement in others’ work. This group is mostly unpublished children’s writers, and I’m encouraging them to seek agents once they’ve written and polished their novels. The market has closed up a lot since I started writing thirteen years ago. Few large publishing houses will even look at unsolicited submissions. With the recession and staff layoffs, some editors who have been let go are trying to establish themselves as agents.  This may be an opportune time to find an agent. I would probably look myself, but I’m tied up with promotions on my two young adult novels.

And I was fortunate enough to secure a critique of the first three chapters of my inspirational romance from an award-winning author of thirty-plus romances. This was the first time I actually had a published author agree to look at my work. Usually, published authors are too busy working on their own manuscripts to take the time to look at the writing of someone else not as far along. I understand that. I get requests all the time that I have to turn down. So, I was thrilled for the opportunity. And I learned a lot. Now I need to rework those first three chapters before I submit them to the editor who requested them at conference. I’m hoping to get to that this week.

I am teachable and I do persevere. I think those are the two qualities needed most by anyone who wants to make a living writing.

Literature Festival October 6, 2009

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I spoke to all the kindergartners, two sixth-grade classrooms, and a seventh-grade classroom at the literature festival of a local Catholic school. The children and I had fun while discussing descriptive writing and practicing it by describing the ugliest sweater imaginable.  They asked me to autograph their festival T-shirts, which visiting Husker football players had also signed. (The players visited the school to read picture books to children.) Anyone who knows Husker fever knows what an honor this was! I was reminded of a comment from John Archambault on Saturday that the word author comes from the word authority. That was one of my first surprises when I became an author back in 2001:  how many people view authors as authorities. 

The staff at the festival was wonderful–well organized and helpful. One teacher said to me that she would have liked to have had the opportunity as a child to meet an author. I agreed. I don’t think I met any children’s authors until I became one myself. Many schools now offer that at book festivals or fairs they hold in the fall.

My husband, like many Husker fanatics, would have rather met a football player as a child. He still hasn’t quite gotten over that I was the one who got to spend the day with all of these football players–and I didn’t even take any pictures or ask for autographs.

Plum Creek Literacy Festival October 4, 2009

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I spoke to two groups of teachers, librarians, and college students at Plum Creek Literacy Festival yesterday and had the pleasure of going to the endowment dinner in the evening. Many award-winning children’s authors–including Carmen Deedy, Richard Peck, Avi, and John Archambault–spoke at the conference or dinner or both. Talk about a polished group! After hearing Carmen Deedy relate the hilarious story of how she went from being a reluctant reader to being an avid reader, I inquired whether she had taken storytelling classes. She said she had worked on that particular speech for a year. I told her I’m a “beginning writer of thirteen years now.” She said that when she first started achieving success, people talked about her as “an overnight success,” but she had written for 20 years prior to that. Confirmation, once again, that what looks easy usually has a lot of hard work behind it.

Books in Print October 1, 2009

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I received my author copies for A Shadow in the Dark and Living It Up to Live It Down yesterday. I am thrilled with the books! They look great. The publisher said they should be listed on BarnesandNoble.com within about a week. The publisher isn’t using Amazon.com for these books, which I was disappointed about but understand. Amazon requires steep discounts, making it difficult for small publishers to make money when using them for sales.

I will be speaking at the Plum Creek Literacy Festival on Saturday, appearing as a featured author at a Lattes for Literature celebration on Sunday, and speaking at a local Catholic school’s literary festival on Monday. On Tuesday I begin marketing my new books by taking part in blog tours and media interviews. Later this month, a school in Liberty, Missouri, will be hosting me for an author visit. A nice kickoff for the release of my new books!