Questions for beta readers, your free author resource

Posted on May 3, 2015 by moonbridgebooks

The Korean War memoir I’ve been working on is almost ready for beta readers! What’s a beta reader? B is for beta, the B Team. Once you have self-edited your book, the next step is to find some volunteers to be your B Team – the test team to read your manuscript and tell you what they think so you can fix it up and get it ready for the A Team, which is your professional editor. You don’t want to waste money paying an editor to hack through a manuscript that needs a lot more work, and you need to make sure you will hit the mark with your targeted readers.

The ideal beta reader is someone who likes the genre you are writing and has read a lot of that genre. Hopefully, he or she is also good at spelling and grammar, but that’s not as important since your editor will cover that ground. Beta readers should also be unafraid to tell you what they think (nicely), but that depends on if they perceive you are open to the truth. Authors who have a thin skin will not learn how to make their writing better. Beta readers and editors should focus on how to help your book be better, not on babying your ego.

Actually, I have already given some chapters of this memoir to a couple friends who wanted to read them. One didn’t tell me until afterwards that she didn’t like reading about war! The other is used to reading NYT bestseller war books written by journalists, historians, or expensive ghostwriters, so had to shift his thinking a bit. I have one man’s down-to-earth personal stories of hell on the ground, no Hollywood sheen. Either way, I have already learned I need to get rid of some mission details that a fellow combat vet might like but would make the average reader’s eyes start to glaze. There’s a happy medium to be found, and fortunately my veteran friend is okay with me deleting more of the notes he so painstakingly wrote and rewrote. Not everyone’s ego is that accommodating to their ghostwriter/editor.

Authors should give their beta readers a set of instructions. How detailed those instructions are depends on if their betas are writers or are otherwise interested in spending time thinking about your writing. If you have someone willing to go indepth, here is a post from Joel Friedman’s blog called “Questions for your beta readers” by editor Jodie Renner. Most everyday (nonwriter) readers will likely do better not being overwhelmed by things to look for. I put a new page called Beta Readers in the Resources section of my blog. There you’ll find the “Short list of questions for your beta readers.

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A Zany Slice of Italy – having crazy fun with memoir

Posted on March 21, 2015 by moonbridgebooks

Ivanka di Felice, born and raised in Toronto, Canada, fell in love with Italy and is now a ZanySliceItalywriter living in beautiful Tuscany. But from her bio, “She will assure you that it’s far less pretentious than it sounds. In her quest for happiness, she followed Nora Ephron’s advice: ‘Secret to life, marry an Italian.’” Ivanka has written A Zany Slice of Italy,  a delightfully charming and funny memoir made up of short stories about her “Italian Prince,” who was once Canadian, and his many traditional Italian relatives plus equally quirky friends and neighbors in Italy. Under the Tuscan sun you apparently become half baked. I am in love with this book! Here are a couple tidbits:

“The cantina is stocked with at least a year’s worth of food and wine, ready for any impending natural disaster, a world war, or a few typical Italian family dinners,” and later, “although we had just recently visited and returned with a car full of food, an Italian mother knows no bounds. I bring my overnight bag outside and find the car loaded to the brim. A virtual grocery store has once again taken over the trunk. The two chickens are in a little box next to the car.” (Ivanka’s favorite story is about the chickens and a policeman.)

“Giorgio has much to show us, and time is of the essence! Obstacles such as our extreme jet lag will not be allowed to get in his way… Sitting in the backseat, I soon realize I’ll be calmer if I look sideways, rather than straight ahead. In matters that relate to speeding oncoming traffic, it’s best to remain ignorant.”

Following are questions I asked her before reading much of the book, which I then devoured as though it were homemade pasta with zingy fresh tomato sauce. Ivanka includes a few recipes at the end of the book and I made a sloppy American version of the Pappa al Pomodoro (fresh tomato with drowned bread) soup to eat while reading. It was delicious!

  1. You have interesting and hilarious stories of adapting to another culture. Did you keep a journal? At what point did you decide to write your stories and did you intend from the start to publish for the public?

We first lived up in the hills of Abruzzo with no TV, no phone, and no internet. We decided to “spice things up” by buying an old second hand computer (from a fugitive it appears). With not much else to do I started writing short stories to send to update friends about our last known whereabouts. It was thanks to their encouragement and thanks to the advice of a wonderful agent in London that I began to polish up the stories and get them ready for book format.

Or, perhaps I subconsciously wrote so that when my husband and I dispute “facts” then I can refer to page xx of my book and say “well, according to my book….” Of course, if my book confirms that he was correct, then I say nothing and hope it will pass unnoticed.

  1. Did you write linear on a timeline, or scattered stories? Did you work from an outline? How long did it take to write your book?

The stories take place chronologically. As funny things would take place I would jot down notes (behind the backs of many a relative) and then later write a story based on these notes. It was a total of six years from the early beginnings typing on a possibly stolen computer to when I handed it over to my editor, Patti Waldygo, in early 2013.

  1. You’ve probably read or seen the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun.” I saw the movie, which is also about adapting and has funny moments. How is your book different, and was “Tuscan Sun” any sort of influence on your writing–maybe even something to avoid similarity to?

While on occasion I cannot help but mention the wonderful food, fashion, and people, my account of our year in Italy includes an unusual angle. Frances Mayes did not have what I have—relatives! Without them, this novel would fail to capture the realities and true essence of life here. Hence, while Frances Mayes was dining by candlelight, my glass candle holders were doubling as tomato holders; each one had a freshly picked tomato balanced on top, courtesy of my mother-in-law visiting.

I write humor and have chosen to write about the quirky situations and occasional mishaps that we have found ourselves in simply because they are funny. Plus, I wanted to avoid readers asking “Just how many more walks in glorious sunflower fields do you think us readers can take?”

  1. What does your husband and his family think about being in the limelight, for better or worse? What do your Italian neighbors think about this book? Did you use real names?

Prior to publishing, I had both my husband and my sister-in-law read the book to see if they felt anything should be taken out. They loved it as it is (whew!), and my mother-in-law, the real star of my book, is really good-natured and laughs out loud when I recount the stories to her. However, just in case, I think it best it never be translated into Italian, and I have put this disclaimer at the beginning of my book:  The story you are about to read is true, though some names have been changed to protect the innocent, namely the author.

  1. Your book is well-written and I like the cover. Can you tell us a little about your self-publishing journey? There’s a lot to learn about that.

Thank you. I was fortunate to find a wonderful editor and great cover designer. The cover is based on a chapter from my book. I sent Joe Shepherd the chapter, a picture of our car, and a picture of David and me—his imagination did the rest.

Dorie Simmonds, an agent in London, gave me suggestions on how to improve my book. I followed them and she took me on as a client in 2013. Dorie worked really hard on my behalf, however due to the abundance of travel memoirs it was hard to find a publisher. In the meantime, I had read up on self-publishing and decided that instead of waiting I would try to self-publish. Dorie was understanding and wished me the best. Even though my book was edited and ready to go, I soon realized how handy it may have been to have a publisher – I spent hours looking for a cover designer, for formatters for the e-book version and print version, getting ISBNs, trying to figure out U.S. taxation issues, etc., etc. And it never ends! You then have to advertise, promote, etc. In order to be successful you need to invest a lot of time (and money, sigh!)

(Marie Lavender’s “Writing in the Modern Age” blog has a great article by Ivanka explaining editing in “22 Ways Most Authors Need an Editor” – Authors, please read!)

  1. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about writing or publishing? I hear you are working on another book.

Find your style and stick with it so that writing is enjoyable. Not everyone will appreciate your book but at least you are doing what you enjoy, and there will be many that do appreciate it. While no author likes getting bad reviews, it is good to remember the story about the Man, the Boy and the Donkey – no matter what you write you cannot please everyone!

Also, it is extremely important to invest in a good editor—one whose style matches yours. I sent out my story “Stranieri Giusti” (The Right Type of Foreigners) to five editors and asked for a sample edit. The story came back essentially the same, but the editor I chose had a style that just merged with mine. She had a perfect balance of fixing grammatical errors and tweaking while letting what she calls my “unique humorous voice” still come through.

Yes, I am working on my next book for our “adventures” never seem to end! 😉

* * * * *

Thank you, Ivanka! I think you have done everything right and are on your way to being a best seller, at least in my books.  🙂

Find A Zany Slice of Italy on Amazon US or Amazon UK. I fell in love with the description and was not disappointed. I highly recommend this book so that you, too, can laugh and love those Italian relatives (and bask in the glow of sunflowers). Think about injecting a little humor in your life writing!

ivanka fur

Posted in book reviews, book talk, heritage, memoir writing | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Is your memoir worth the time to write?

Posted on March 8, 2015 by moonbridgebooks

“Worth the time to write?” I repeated—raising my voice into a question—when a man said Denis Ledouxto me at a conference where I was speaking that most people didn’t have a memoir that was worth their time to write. “Not only is every life worth writing about,” I countered, “but the writing of a memoir is a healing and developmental process for the writer. There is something in the telling of a tale that produces satisfaction and resolution and often growth.”

“I don’t know about the healing,” he said, “but I do know that most people haven’t done anything interesting enough to write about, let alone have someone else read it.”

“I don’t think children and grandchildren feel that way,” I answered. “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t happy to have a memoir by a father or mother.”

“Well, okay,” he conceded, “but who else is interested?”

“First of all, the size of the audience is not what makes the writing of a memoir significant. There is worth in the telling itself.”

An Important Point

While there continues to be an insatiable hunger to know about one’s family and culture, the man’s commentary, of course, held an important point for you—for any of us—to consider. If you have not led a momentous life, are the stories you have to share worth the time to write them?—speak them, yes, because sharing a memoir is a meaningful way one generation transmits stories to another. But, writing them is so much more difficult—is the sacrifice of time and energy really worth it for you?

Let me repeat: it is appropriate to write stories solely for a family or other small readership. There is nothing “wrong” or not worthwhile with a small, familial audience. The value of any piece of writing is not measured by how many people—total numbers—have read it. This emphasis on size is a spin-off of the commercialization of worth. It is a result of the creation and promotion of the “superstar” in our culture.

The worth of a memoir is better measured by the inherent value to the writer and to its selected audience—whether that is your family or the world. The act of writing will change you and your relationship to your life. Writing is significant in itself.

“Writers, if they are worthy of that jealous designation, do not write for other writers. They write to give reality to experience.”

                                                                        —Archibald Macleish

—

Action Steps

  1. For whom do you want to write your stories? This is your audience. The answer could be as varied as: for my family; for parents of Down Syndrome children; for men who are about to retire; for women who love judo. Describe them, their needs and their interests in some detail.
  2. Why do you want to write for these people? In what way, do you need for them to hear your stories? In what way, do they need to hear your stories? Again, write lengthy responses.
  3. Write about the immortality writing will bring you as your memoir and family history live on into future generations long after you are gone. Is this important and comforting to you?
  4. Place your writing from this exercise in a three-ring binder.

* * * * *

Denis Ledoux is the author, most recently, of How to Start to Write Your Memoir which is Book One in the seven-part Memoir Network Writing Series. This post is adapted from that e-book. Also in publication is Don’t Let Writer’s Block Stop You. A complete list of publications is available. To be placed on an alert list, send an email.

How to Start to Write Your Memoir

Memoir Network Writing Series

 Don’t Let Writer’s Block Stop You

Posted in lifewriting | Tagged | 13 Comments