P is for Phoney

And for the Pixies

There's an interesting debate going on over at Pimp My Novel about how factual memoirs should be. This is an old problem, fiction in memoir, that keeps resurfacing. The latest kerfuffle revolves around Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson. The WSJ has a piece here with specific allegations against him, but they are basically of two counts: Greg Mortenson made up parts of the story in his memoir and he misappropriated funds due to his charity.

Obviously the misappropriated funds is black and white - it's just wrong, no question.

But making up stories is a harder thing to prove, to qualify.


I met a mom at a PTA event recently and she told me she was a writer too, but that she wrote non-fiction. We got to talking about writing groups and decided to start one up together.

OKAY. We actually met at a PTO event, but I changed it to PTA because I thought that was something more people would understand (Parent Teacher Association/Organization, for the un-kid initiated) And she actually told me she was a teacher at a community college, then told me she wanted to try and write non-fiction someday. I tightened that bit up, made it less boring. Also, can 'recently' be 'over a year ago'?
Finally, we did talk writing groups, I had already started one, and she said 'no thanks' to joining mine.

See? Even in this no-account blog, I'm embellishing, adding, editing to make things seem better than they are. I do it all the time when I'm talking to people, when I'm pretending to listen to family tell stories I've heard a gajillion times before. I'm dissembling. LYING.

Where is the line of truthiness? Where is the art (short for artifice) in the memoir? What's an acceptable lie, one that doesn't hurt someone? What's unacceptable? One that makes the author seem more heroic, admirable, marketable than she really is? Is it intent that matters?

This is a subject that fascinates me because I feel like I'm a pretty good liar (as I've mentioned before). I try to lie for good, not evil by being a writer, but I would never write non-fiction, I couldn't trust myself. And, despite being a liar, I have an adverse, visceral reaction to people like James Frey. If you're going to be a liar, for chrissakes be honest about it.

What do you think about fiction in memoir? How stringent should the standard for factuality be? What is a lie too far?

Writing Tip Thursday #10 - How to Write a Query Letter

Made you look. I don't actually know how to write a successful query letter. If I did, I'd have an agent and be one rung up from where I am. BUT I do need to figure out how to write a query letter - I have 10 days to write a good one -  I figured we could learn together.

As to why I have 10 days to write one, that's because I'm a coward. Last year when I went to the Pennwriter's conference, I didn't do any agent pitches or anything where I was compelled to speak to humans. This year, I'm trying to do a little better. I signed up for networking lunches, cocktails, crits etc. But as for pitching to a flesh and blood agent, I quailed, dear reader. I chose the one agent who was doing a crit of a query letter and the first 10 pages of ms. instead of a pitch. I'm a slowly recovering coward.

At the bottom of this post are a bunch of links to resources for query letters. There's a ton out there, which is the good news. The bad news is that each query letter is so individual, so much a mix of a business letter and a personal plea that there's no formulaic way to write one* You have to craft the bugger.

First you have to figure out what the thing wot you wrote is about. Good luck with that. It's not always as easy as you think it is, and it's not always what you thought you were writing. To get myself to the nugget of what BookEnd is about, I snowflaked it. This is a method that you can use to outline your story before you write, or to get to the essentials of what your story is afterwards. I found it really useful after the fact, but not that useful before writing. Your results will vary, obviously.

Secondly, I've decided to leave the 'personalizing' part of the query letter last. Not that this isn't important. I understand that you need to have done research on the agent you are sending the query to, that you have to know why you are querying them and not every other agent on querytracker.com. Robo-querying is not the way to go. But I want to concentrate on the message of my query, since a query is essentially a pitch written down.

So, here's my first go - please please please throw me some suggestions, I need all the help I can get. I know that the letter should probably be longer. What more should I tell about the story?

The bold type is what I've changed, the rest is TK.

Dear [Agent name],

I chose to submit to you because of your wonderful taste in [genre], and because you [personalized tidbit about agent].

Finial Smith is a teenager living in world where book characters, called QRs (Quasi-Reals), come to die or be recycled. But then Fin meets Anne, a QR who is more alive and real than anyone he's ever met. Now Fin has to decide to stand with his family and let Anne be destroyed, or to endanger everyone he loves to save her.  Knowing Anne will forever change how Fin sees his world and teach him what it means to be Real. 

BookEnd is a 70,000 word Young Adult novel. This is my first novel. 

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes,

*Well, of course there is a formula. You can find one from Nathan Bransford here. But when you're done with it, it shouldn't feel formulaic.

Query Letter Writing Resources
Agent Query
Nathan Bransford
Query Shark - sometimes brutal but always effective advice by example - what works and what doesn't. check out her 'wins'
Writer's Digest
Pub Rants - Agent Kristin has a list of her client's queries that have (obviously) worked for her - and more importantly, how they worked.
Pimp My Novel also has an interesting (non agent) take on queries

Definitely an E Ticket

My family went to Disney when I was seven and and all I remember is crying over ice cream*. When I hear e-reader or email or even, in an airport, e-ticket, I think of Julie Brown and her song Homecoming Queen Has Got a Gun. I was eleven when that song came out and I thought it was hilarious, the way most eleven year olds think guns are a hoot. So in trying to get my head around electronic readers I have two hurdles: First, my general oldness and luddite tendencies and second, the fact that the song lyric "Definitely an E Ticket" keeps popping up in my head. E stood for 'exciting' in those days, now it stands for things that move faster than I can comprehend Easily.

I don't need to understand technology to understand the allure of the e-reader. I use email, I have an iphone, ipod, imac, I'm lousy with i's. And though I've blogged about my general feelings about e-readers, I find that I need to find out more, because I'm not only a reader, I'm a writer and electronic readers and their partners in crime, electronic books are about to kill/save publishing, thus have a knock on effect, possibly, on my hoped for livelihood.

So I've been gathering some information on the ebook revolution which won't be televised so much as tweeted and occasionally post a Facebook update:

I *heart* Nathan (Bransford) rounds up the doings of 2010 as transitions in this post about the seismic changes that have taken place and are still to come.

Eric at Pimp My Novel reminds writers, gently, gently, that publishing is a business, and market forces rule.

And a nice, in depth piece from the Independent.

Let's get e-schooled together!

* I do also remember "It's a Small World". I cried over that, too.