On Writing About Terrible Things

WARSAW GHETTO, POLAND ---JEWISH GHETTO POLICE ARM BAND EARLY 1940's by woody1778a

A friend wrote me that she’d bought the Kindle version of Epistolophilia. She commented:

“Really easy to read writing and I love the conversational style you use, although such a heavy topic. I find I have to read in doses. How did you keep from getting swallowed by sorrow while doing all the work and writing?”

She’s not the first person to tell me she’s had to read the book in small chunks to keep from getting overwhelmed by the terrible events it describes. Nor is she the first person to wonder about how I survive researching and writing about the painful eras I work on. It’s not an easy question to answer.

I’ve been thinking about my father’s death in relation to this question, and the process by which I was able to start talking and writing about the pain and sorrow associated with that loss. My father’s now been gone for twenty-one years, but it’s only been eleven years since I’ve been able to talk about him without drowning in sorrow. I’m only just beginning to be able to write about him, but doing so gives me perspective and helps me understand my own past in ways that would have been impossible otherwise. It also helps to feel that in writing about him, I’m creating something for him.

Something similar was in play with Epistolophilia. I’ve been researching the Vilna Ghetto for some fifteen years, and I worked on Epistolophilia for eight. Although there were days when the facts overwhelmed me, time and writing saved me from drowning. I worked very slowly, bit by bit, breaking the story down (not unlike some of my readers, interestingly) to very small pieces (3 pages at a time; 1 idea at a time). That helped. But the sense that I was writing the book as a gift for Ona Šimaitė was probably the most powerful impetus to keep going.

I must admit I’ve wondered what it says about me that I only write about murders, civil war, genocide, terror, and mass deportation. A psychoanalyst would, no doubt, have a field day. But I believe that someone must speak for the dead. Someone must tell the stories they couldn’t and can’t. And someone must try and remember a few souls threatened by oblivion.

That’s what I try to do.

[Photo: Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Police Armband by woody1778a]

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In Praise of University Presses: How They Work, What They Publish, and Why You Might Consider Them

Typography good enough to print by RellyAB

For almost ten years now, there’s been growing anxiety in the writing community about the “publishing crunch.” Essentially, what’s happened is this: publishers find themselves in increasing financial peril; they need to make money, so they try to make safe bets.

The result for readers is a “narrowing of the breadth and depth and diversity of our culture: the quieting of all but the blandest voices, the elimination of all but the safest choices.” The result for writers is that every year it gets harder to publish. Bestsellers reign supreme, and midlist (or mid-career) authors have been shunted down the pecking order, taking the place that beginning writers used to occupy. As small presses (the home of many first-time authors) die in huge numbers, first-time authors may find themselves out in the cold.

It’s a kind of death of the middle class, but within the microcosm of our industry.

There are many reasons for the crunch: the publishing industry’s antiquated returns systems, the growth of the big-box store and mega-distributor, the rise of e-books and internet retailers, and the influence of ever-larger publishing giants.

A writer calling herself Jane Austen Doe, described the crunch for Salon.com in 2004:

In the 10 years since I signed my first book contract, the publishing industry has changed in ways that are devastating — emotionally, financially, professionally, spiritually, and creatively — to midlist authors like me. You’ve read about it in your morning paper: Once-genteel “houses” gobbled up by slavering conglomerates; independent bookstores cannibalized by chain and online retailers; book sales sinking as the number of TV channels soars. What once was about literature is now about return on investment. What once was hand-sold one by one by well-read, book-loving booksellers now moves by the pallet-load at Wal-Mart and Borders — or doesn’t move at all.

So what is a junior or mid-career writer to do? Perhaps you’re not ready to jump into self-publishing (and I think there are many reasons not to), yet find yourself agentless and therefore shut out of the above-mentioned conglomerate publishing world? Perhaps you don’t want to write about vampires or celebrities or weight loss. Well, there’s one corner of the publishing world that  remains a meritocracy (that is, publishing decisions are made largely based on the literary value of a work) and where good writing can still find a home. This is the world of the university press.

University presses publish a large number of books that would never see the light of day otherwise. These presses and the texts they disseminate are important for our culture, our memory, and for the way that future generations will regard us.

Contrary to popular belief, university presses don’t only publish dry treatises and technical works. In fact, a huge number of university presses publish non-scholarly texts. Many publish creative nonfiction, memoir, poetry, fiction, and even children’s and Y/A literature. Most publish regional fiction — the University of Nebraska Press has a series about the American West; Indiana UP about Indiana; Queens-McGill UP about Canada.

When I was looking for a home for my first book, Silence is Death — it’s a hybrid text (part memoir, part literary analysis, part biography) — I submitted proposals to 13 university presses. 12 said no thanks, but the University of Nebraska press asked to see more. Nebraska is a major publisher of creative nonfiction and memoir, as well as colonial French history, so we seemed a good fit for one another. I ended up publishing the book with them, and my editor at the press made it clear that she was interested in anything else I wrote.

Now, to a writer, there’s nothing quite as valuable as having a champion for your work.

While struggling to finish my second book, I had coffee with my U Nebraska editor who had been so supportive of me the first time around. I was feeling frustrated. My book had stalled while I was trying to force it into a form that seemed more mainstream to me, but it hadn’t worked. Finally, I’d given in and started once again to write from my gut. I was having fun, but the book seemed weird, and this worried me.

“I wanted to write a straight book this time around,” I confessed.

My editor laughed and shook her head. “Why would you want to do that, when you can do what you do?”

I went home with renewed energy and confidence and finished the book.

Long story short: the manuscript sailed through peer review at the University of Nebraska Press (if you don’t know this works, see my earlier post here), and here I am, many months later, waiting for the birth of my second book, Epistolophilia.

University presses will not be an appropriate match for every writer. If you write genre fiction, for example, it won’t be a good fit. But, if your stuff is smart (calm down, I’m not saying that genre writers and writing aren’t smart, just that these are not what university presses publish!), researched, and literary, you may find a home there, and you will find yourself in good company. (My own press, for example, publishes a former US poet laureate and two Nobel Prize winners.)

When submitting to a university press, you generally don’t need an agent. Go to their website and read their submission guidelines carefully, then follow them to the letter. At the proposal stage, send out as many queries as you want (but always according to each press’s individual guidelines). Once a press has solicited your MS (that is, they ask to see the entire book), the accepted etiquette is to send the entire book to only one press at a time.

Here’s a list of university presses that publish in areas other than strict scholarship:

Baylor University Press nonfiction, children’s books
Capilano University Editions poetry, anthologies
Carnegie Mellon University Press poetry, fiction, short stories, nonfiction, drama
Cleveland State University Poetry Center poetry
Harvard University Press poetry, fiction
Kent State University Press poetry, chapbooks, fiction, nonfiction
McGill-Queen’s University Press poetry, nonfiction, art, photography, drama
Miami University Press fiction, poetry
Michigan State University Press poetry
Northeastern University Press poetry, fiction, nonfiction, photography
Northwestern University Press poetry, fiction, nonfiction
Ohio State University Press poetry, short fiction
Ohio University / Swallow Press poetry, nonfiction
Oxford University Press USA fiction, nonfiction, children’s/YA books
San Diego State University Press poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art
Southeast Missouri State University Press fiction, nonfiction, poetry
Southern Methodist University Press fiction, creative nonfiction
Stephen F. Austin State University Press poetry, fiction
Temple University Press art, coffee table books, sports
Texas Tech University Press poetry, fiction
Trinity University Press regional nonfiction
Truman State University Press poetry
University of Akron Press poetry, nonfiction
University of Arkansas Press poetry
University of Chicago Press poetry
University of Iowa Press poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction
University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press fiction
University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books poetry, memoir, creative nonfiction
University of New Orleans fiction, poetry
University of South Carolina Press creative nonfiction
University of Tampa Press poetry
University of Tennessee Press fiction
University of Utah Press poetry
University of Virginia Press regional nonfiction, poetry
The University of Wisconsin Press poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction
University Press of Kentucky poetry, regional nonfiction
University Press of Mississippi regional nonfiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, photography
Wesleyan University Press poetry, nonfiction
West Virginia University Press/Vandalia Press poetry, fiction, nonfiction
Western State College Press poetry, fiction, nonfiction, anthologies
Utah State University Press fiction, poetry, folklore, regional nonfiction

[Photo: RellyAB]

This post is part of a weekly series called “Countdown to Publication” on SheWrites.com, the premier social network for women writers.


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A Call for Beauty in E-Books

Illuminated Manuscript Koran, The right side of a double-page illumination, Walters Art Museum MS. W.575, fol. 2b by Walters Art Museum Illuminated Manuscripts

A few weeks ago, I finished editing the proofs of my new book Epistolophilia. It was a great feeling to see the text typeset, designed, and looking official (and beautiful). This, in combination with some back and forth about cover design a month or so ago has got me thinking about how books look. And whether or not, as e-books gain traction, we may be hearing the death knell of book design as a profession.

My new e-reader is what sparked all this. Not long ago, for the first time ever, I paid good money for two electronic books. The transaction was fast, easy, and the product light-weight. But there was one real drawback for me: design.

There is none.

Instead of a carefully chosen font and luxurious white space around images to rest a reader’s eyes, the text pours into the page haphazardly. Large spaces gape between words without rhyme or reason, and endnotes (of which I am not an enemy, and yes, I realize this makes me a minority) are rendered basically unusable.

For some reason, the electronic jumble of text bothers me less when I’m reading books from Project Gutenberg (like Middlemarch). These are free, and no one is making any money off them (I don’t think…), so I don’t expect a paid designer to be in the mix.

But electronic books that cost about as much as a paper copies? These too should come in contact with the hand of a designer before they reach my screen.

A friend and I disagree on this point. He claims that all I have to do is play with the text on my e-reader: I can manipulate both font style and size myself!

And he says this like it’s a good thing.

But I don’t buy it. It feels like a con. It feels like work that the publisher should have paid for. It feels like a designer out of a job. And it feels like disrespect for both reader and writer.

And so, here’s my new call: a bit of beauty in the e-book business please!

Thoughts?

[Photo: Illuminated Manuscript Koran, The right side of a double-page illumination, Walters Art Museum MS. W.575, fol. 2b, by Walters Art Museum]

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