 20 years of Master Class to Masterpiece |
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FROM AGENTS TO AUTHOR VISITS How did you connect with your first agent as a then-unpublished author? During a creative writing class at Indiana University, my instructor encouraged me to seek an agent for my in-progress adult novel. He gave me a list of agents to query, and one of them agreed to represent my novel. It didn’t sell, but within a year my second adult novel, Night Watch, did. Then I went through three agents during twelve years before selling my next book, the YA novel Wish You Were Here. How do you promote your published novels? I do book signings and library talks. Occasionally, I do a keynote address for an educational organization, often resulting in sales—many teachers and librarians rely on them to help my books reach readers. Author visits are my favorite way to promote my books. I usually do free visits, since funding for the arts is so hard to find these days. Lately, I’ve combined a breakfast talk for teachers about how to use creative writing techniques (to enhance the writing program any of them are required to use) with a day of “modeling” these techniques in the classroom. How do you make your school visits successful? Teenagers have great crap detectors, plus they are just waiting for you to be yet another boring guest speaker. My strategy is to surprise them with honesty. Unless the teacher has asked me to do something specific, I go in and say, “Ask me any question about writing and the writing life, and I’ll answer it.” If there’s dead silence, I say, “Okay. If you don’t have any questions, I can lecture about writing. No problem.” Invariably, a hand goes up, and we’re off! Bottom line: You have to like teenagers, feel comfortable with them, and be genuinely interested in their lives. You can’t fake that, and—in the end—it’s the most important key to successful author visits. ON A PERSONAL NOTE... What are the greatest challenges you see novelists face, and what’s most challenging for you? No matter how talented or capable you are, it almost always takes a long time to write a good novel. Beginning writers of all ages are often in too great a hurry to move from the writing to the marketing phase. Probably, being patient enough to see a book through as many drafts as it takes to make it right is a novelist’s (and my own) greatest challenge. I keep a Flaubert quote on my computer to help me remember this: “Talent is a long patience and originality an effort of will and intense observation.” What do you like best about being a writing teacher and novelist? I love the way that developing the kind of skills writing good fiction requires brings people face-to-face with their own issues and those of the people they love. It is the most satisfying thing in the world to me to guide students of all ages through the process by which they consider these personal issues “sideways” through the lens of fiction, gaining insights that help them live their real lives more happily and with greater compassion. The best thing about being a novelist is knowing that my books have a life of their own. I love to think of them making their way out in the world, falling into the hands of readers who love and need them. To read more about Barbara Shoup, visit our workshop’s FACULTY page.
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