GETTING PUBLISHED

By Marion Aldridge

At some point in my life, I discovered I was a better writer than I was a preacher. Writing is an extension of, if not an improvement on, what I did in my preaching days. My goal is to communicate some truth that can make life better for people who are paying attention.

Getting published has always been my goal. There are other reasons to write. Some people write to pass family stories to their children and grandchildren. I organize my thoughts when I write, which can be helpful even if those thoughts are never published.

But, make no mistake about it: I want other people to read what I write.

Writing is a gift. The ability to be published is an entirely different skill.

Here are two related strategies that will help an author move from having a good idea to being published:

1. There aren’t many markets that publish old ideas; so successful writers need a unique angle.

That means authors need to compose something that hasn’t already been written. We learned when writing our first term papers that you couldn’t write about a Big Topic such as “The Civil War.” You needed to narrow the focus: “Humor in the Letters of Civil War Soldiers” or “Comparing the Value of Confederate Money in 1864 and 1964.”

A writer needs a slant, a perspective not yet considered. South Carolina Wildlife recently accepted an article I titled, “Just Short of the Wild Side.” My premise is that I like to be alive at the conclusion of my travel adventures. So I make hour-long hikes to South Carolina waterfalls with my grandson rather than attempt to climb Mt. Everest. It’s not a complex idea, but apparently, in this era of kayaking over dangerous rapids and trekking through deserts, nobody had scripted a short article with this obvious angle.

2. Fill a niche.

Thousands of books have been written about families. Hundreds about twins. My friend Shelly Rivoli discovered her niche, and writes a successful blog as well as books on the theme, “Travel with Baby.”

http://travelswithbaby.com

My first two books were worship guides. As a young minister, I had purchased the standard worship manuals with wedding and funeral services in them. However, none gave a clue regarding why we do what we do when we gather for worship. And no one talked about the more peculiar worship occasions: Homecoming, Graduate Recognition and Labor Day weekend. Even seminary didn’t help much. I created two books that cover everything from Easter to Independence Day to ordinations to weddings and funerals. I simply added a brief four or five page explanation at the beginning of each chapter, answering such important questions as 1) What does the Bible say? 2) What are our Christian traditions? and 3) What are the practical considerations? The first volume, The Pastor’s Guidebook: A Manual for Worship, was published 30 years ago and has sold well over 25,000 copies. It’s still selling and I’m still getting checks, and it was easy to write. Not Great Literature. But it met a need. By the way, the Bible has nothing to say about Mother’s Day.

So, fellow authors, create with an eye toward publication. There are a lot of good writers, but if nobody ever reads what you have to say, you’ve fallen short of success.

WRITE

Marion Aldridge

Write!

Write. Whatever it takes to write, do it. Turn off the television set. Get up early. Go to a coffee shop. Don’t go to a coffee shop. Set aside the time. Take the time. Steal the time. Write.

In a yoga class this week, I had a flush of “retirement guilt” as I listened to young moms talk about how hard it is to create space in their lives to come to a yoga class. During my first year of retirement, I have been blessed with lots of free time and choices. So, I felt a bit defensive about my abundance of free time. Then I remembered that I worked my butt off for 45 years at “real jobs” and made time to be a husband, a parent, a good employee, a friend, a sports fan and a writer. J. K. Rowling did way better than I did.

Write.

Whatever the subject, write. You can delete it or throw it away later. I wrote an entire book that turned out to be pretty awful. Now I know how not to write about that subject.

Write, even if it’s bad. You will have second and third and twentieth draft opportunities. It won’t be perfect on the first draft or the fifth draft. You can research later. You can get opinions from proofreaders and copy-editors later. Just write.

I would like to be a better writer, but people who don’t write aren’t even bad writers. They are simply not writers.

I would like to be a more consistent writer, but I’d rather be an erratic author than a wisher or an if-onlier or a wannabe.

I would like to be a smarter or more clever pundit, but I don’t think the Nobel or Pulitzer prizes are in my future. I would simply like to get some ideas out there for conversation and to receive an occasional check in the mail.

So, I write. 

I Don’t Want a Niche

By Marion Aldridge

Current wisdom for writers and for many other professions is to find a niche market and focus. You can’t just write about travel. You have to write about gay travel or traveling as a handicapped person or travel in the Florida Keys or travel by dugout canoe. If you choose to specialize in travel by dugout canoes, you need to decide whether your canoe will be dug out of maple or cedar. Niche marketing.

My trouble is that I am curious about everything. Don’t limit me. I see a bumper sticker that says, “Eat Bertha’s Mussels,” and I wonder what that’s about. Who is Bertha? Where is Bertha? Can I get to Bertha’s by suppertime?

The world has always had a love/hate relationship with generalists. One of the first words I remember being taught in a classroom is the word “dilettante.” It describes, I was told, someone who is “a jack of all trades and master of none.” Apparently, to be labeled a dilettante is to be insulted. I prefer to think my interests are eclectic. I may read the biography of a baseball player one day, a financial analysis of “Tulip Mania” the next, a science fiction novel the next, a book about Buddhism the next and a Civil War history the next.

“Where the Pavement Ends” has been my attempt at writing a travel blog in the year since my retirement. 

http://marionaldridge.wordpress.com I have written about New York City, Shreveport and Machu Picchu, but I have also written about football, colors, grief, friendship, patriotism, race relations and alternative medicines. Travel, it turns out, is too narrow a topic for my interests.

I admire people who have specific, marketable skills, who are expert in a particular area, those who can craft fine furniture, who can wire a house for electricity, who can play the flute, who can teach children in a classroom, who can perform surgery. Some people are brain surgeons, play the flute and make fine furniture. I am not one of them, but I am happy the world has people who cross disciplines. Too narrow a focus makes us less than we might be.

An old joke tells of St. Peter giving new residents a tour of heaven. As they pass certain sections, he shushes the recent arrivals, motioning for them to be quiet. Later someone asked, “Why did we need to be quiet back there?’

St. Peter responded, “Oh, that’s where the Baptists stay and they still think they’re the only ones here.”  

Retirement has been good for me because it freed me from many of the restrictions of my life that were employment based. Being restrained by others and limiting myself drives me nuts, but it is somewhat inevitable in the workaday world. Nowadays, every morning, I drink coffee from a cup that is inscribed, “Never affirm self-limitations.” When I begin my morning and the sun is rising, I want my ears sensitive to all that is happening around me and I want my eyes wide open. I want to see, taste, touch, hear and smell it all. Bring it on. No limits.

I Love Words

Marion D. Aldridge

 “The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and lightning.”—Mark Twain

The first time I remember being impressed by the “right word” was when, as a young man, I read Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice. In a letter to Beverly Axelrod, he wrote, “Your letters to me are living pieces—chunks—of you.” I still have the paperback where I underlined that sentence and made note of the descriptive word: “chunks. “

No lightning bug there. Lightning!

Piano lessons cost money, so I never took a piano lesson.

Libraries, on the other hand, are free. So I read. Tom Sawyer. Swiss Family Robinson. The Mark of Zorro. I won the summer reading contest at the West End Free Library on Eve Street in Augusta, Georgia. I learned to love words.

Words do not have to be multi-syllable to be savored. Being incarcerated is no better than being jailed. The prisoner probably cannot tell the difference.

I’m pretty sure no one except doctoral students ever says “methodological parameters.” You can research the entire corpus of John Steinbeck, Margaret Atwood and Alex Haley and never read that phrase. Simple and clear is almost always better.

Some words are loaded with meaning and continue to be fresh even though they have been around a while: grace, paradox, courage, wisdom, hope, curious, integrity.

Some words are fun. Persnickety. Brouhaha. Rambunctious. Imp. Skittish. Chartreuse. Slimy.

Plurals can be fascinating: A congregation of alligators. A flight of butterflies. A murder of crows. A pod of whales. How did people know this stuff before Google? A tower of giraffes. Is Google pulling our long legs? A scourge of mosquitoes. In South Carolina, that one is easy to believe. The best, of course, is an exaltation of larks.

I enjoy the dynamic nature of our language. Cookies and the cloud mean something different than just a few years ago. What’s not to value about a vocabulary that includes such words as: earworm, ringtone, Zen, diss, netiquette? I could probably live without twerking, kankles, sissification and incentivize, but with language, you take the ugly with the exquisite.

Word combinations can double the pleasure: mash up, extreme scrupulosity, password fatigue, and unintended consequences. I have a personal affection for pleasantly plump.

Maybe the best word of all for a writer: period.

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Columbia II Blogger

MARION ALDRIDGE

Marion Aldridge is enjoying his retirement career as a writer, blogger, humorist and consultant. His latest book is about coming “unstuck” at any age:  Overcoming Adolescence. It has sold over 20,000 copies.    He has written over 100 articles for magazines ranging from SC Wildlife to Sandlapper to Tennis. Aldridge is married, has two adult daughters and one grandson and was recently awarded the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina’s highest civilian honor. 

Marion's first blog at this site follows.

Writing Non-Fiction Articles and Columns

By Marion Aldridge“Writing Non-Fiction Articles and Columns”

Marion Aldridge

for July 7, 2013, SCWW Blog

“Two types of writers fall short; those who write well about unimportant things, and those who write badly about important things.” Edward Hoagland, Tigers and Ice

Bodies don’t fall out of closets in most non-fiction, which is what I write. Short of corpses, I try to begin my articles, columns or chapters with some startling fact, or a clever, edgy, surprising, or funny phrase or story. Is there an elephant in the room that needs to be named? I like it when my writing provokes an “I can’t believe you said that!” response.

Start with a bang, and then assume that your reader has Attention Deficit Disorder.

Write about your passion. If the subject bores you, pity your poor reader.

Upgrade the verbs and adjectives in your document. If you treat one subject frequently, create your own thesaurus for that topic.

Avoid duplicating words, unless you use repetition for effect. I am utterly predictable in my critique groups. When someone uses the exact expression two times in close proximity, I will circle each instance. If the author returns to the cognates of that term over and over in the course of a manuscript, I believe a writer must find a way to say the same thing differently.

Read. The first time I heard someone declare that though they wanted to write, they did not enjoy reading, I thought that might be the stupidest confession I have ever heard. If you don’t like to read, don’t write.

Be witty. Even in the most serious of novels, odd and quirky events provide texture to the narrative. Entertain. Light and airy is better for most people than dense and intense.

Read what you have written out loud. Revise. Cut. Get to a fifth draft and a sixth draft. Whatever it takes. No short cuts. Composing an article is torturous and tedious work for me. I have served on boards when people would ask me, “Would you write up an account of this meeting? You are a good writer.” Would you ask a painter to sketch a watercolor of the meeting? Would your request that a pianist provide a melody describing the meeting? The person making the request doesn’t understand what they are asking. Writing, for me, is serious business and hard work.

Give the readers some way to respond to your composition with their senses. What in your article can they taste? Or smell? Get them to snap their fingers. That involves sound and touch. Don’t let the reader get bored or go to sleep. Can you add some color, maybe a vivid neon orange, or a subtle violet?

The biggest mistake I see in wannabe writers is thinking they will be the next Emily Dickenson, that when they are dead, someone will come along and find their clever words and finally appreciate the genius that they were. Not gonna happen. It occurred exactly once in history—and that was to Emily Dickenson. Every other writer had to work at the craft. William Shakespeare wrote for profit and on deadline. You are not better than Shakespeare. Hunker down. Write. Practice your profession. We learn to write by writing.