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May 15, 2012
Tags:
writing, writing memoirs, parenting memoirs, how to write a memoir battle hymn of the tiger daughter, battle hymn of the tiger mother, mommylit, moms who write
Congratulations, you've been writing your heart out and you've been dipping your feet in the vast whirlpool that is the publishing industry.
Here’s what you’ll do next. I know, because I’ve been there. You’ll get bogged down in your first chapter/first blog/first sentence. You’ll get stuck. You’ll start writing about the trees, and you’ll lose sight of the forest.
It’s okay. It’s what newbie writers do. But it’s a stage you need to get past if you’re ever going to get your writing into the hands of readers.
You need to learn craft. Craft is beyond sentences and words. It's also structure and theory. In my experience, would-be writers are often naturally good at the sentences and words, but not so much on the structure and theory.
There are a million craft books out there. Which is the best one? That’s easy—whichever one works best for you. Every writer has her own specific weakness. Maybe it’s plotting. Maybe it’s grammar. Maybe it’s character. You won’t know what it is until you start reading craft books and seeing which ones help you and which ones just seem silly.
My biggest weakness is plotting. For a long time, I swore by Deb Dixon’s Goal, Motivation Conflict. Excellent book to start with. It changed everything for me.
But my plotting was so bad, it wasn’t enough. My next big find was Christopher Vogler’s, The Writer’s Journey. I have this book memorized I’ve read it so many times.
Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat was another excellent plotting book. This is a screenwriting book, but it works for other kinds of story-building as well.
But the book that changed my writing life was Stanley D. William’s The Moral Premise. Again, a screenwriting book. But Williams has so many amazing things to say about story structure, I can’t recommend it enough. If you're really stuck in a book, I promise that Williams can set you free.
But these are just my books. You might find that these books don’t speak to your issues at all. I know writers who swear by books that did nothing for me. I think you have to try everything you can get your hands on. You never know where the nugget is that will open your eyes to whatever it is that’s holding you back.
While you’re learning from books, be sure you also learn from other people. You need a critique group. If you want to learn to write a romance novel, boy are you in luck. There are 10,000 amazing women ready and willing to teach you everything you need to know from the Romance Writers of America. (http://rwanational.org) There's nothing like it in the writing world. Find your local chapter, and get started. You won't be sorry.
If romance isn’t your thing, look for any local writing group. It takes time and experimentation to find the right people for you, but it’s worth the effort. No one can judge her own writing. You need help.
Next: But can I make any money at this?
April 24, 2012
Tags:
writing, writing memoirs, parenting memoirs, how to write a memoir battle hymn of the tiger daughter, battle hymn of the tiger mother, mommylit, moms who write
Now that you've started writing, you need to start thinking about what you're going to do with all the masterpieces you've written. Wait, shouldn't you try to learn more about the craft of writing first?
Yup. But don't. Not yet. Because the biggest mistake most newbie writers make is obsessing on the craft and never learning the business. Don't sell learning the business short. It's equally if not more important if you want people to read what you write.
If you want them to pay you for what you write, it's even more important.
There are two kinds of publishing, traditional publishing and independent publishing. The traditional way to get published is to 1) find an agent 2) have that agent sell your manuscript to a publisher. There are lots of excellent books and blogs on how that's done.
To get a handle on the traditional publishing world, there are some excellent agent and writer blogs to follow:
Nathan Bransford
Jenny Bent
Pub Rants
Independent publishing, also known as self-publishing is when you go directly your reader, cutting out the agent and publisher middlemen. Amazon.com and Smashwords.com make it incredibly easy to self-publish. Self-publishing used to be a vanity hobby, but now, lots of authors are making viable careers of it. (I do both traditional and self-publishing—a common path—so why not learn everything you can about both?)
Follow these Indie Pub blogs for a good start:
A newbie's guide to publishing
The writer's Guide to E-Publishing
Dean Wesley Smith
Read these blogs every day. Listen to what they say. Follow their links. Soon, you'll start to learn the landscape and the lingo.
Meanwhile, keep writing.
Tomorrow: Let's talk craft.
April 23, 2012
Tags:
writing, writing memoirs, parenting memoirs, how to write a memoir
So many people tell me that they wish they could write, but they don't know where to start. Should they dive right into a novel? Start with short stories? Write articles about stuff they know? Should they go to school? Take a class? Start a critique group? Start a blog?
The answer to all those questions is yes. Absolutely, positively, yes!
But sadly (or not), to do all those things, you'd have to neglect your family. Nora Roberts famously told her children to not bother her while she was writing unless the house was on fire or there was blood. Once her kids turned twelve, she told them only to bother her if they couldn't put out the fire themselves with the extinguisher or if it was blood from a major artery.
If this is too much for you, maybe it's best to take things one step at a time.
So, let's break writing down into manageable steps.
The first thing to do if you want to start writing is to start writing.
Yup, just start. Stop thinking and start writing. Open your computer and let the words flow. Don't worry about what you're writing or why you're writing it. That will come later. The important thing is to put words on paper. Write about your kids. Write about your relationships. Write what you like to read.
Congratulations, now you're a writer.
But perhaps you want something more from writing? Money, fame, power, inner peace, world peace?
In between your writing, which you should be doing every single day, start researching. There are two areas to research, craft and business. Craft means learning how to write well. Business means learning the business of writing for money and influence. Both these areas are equally important when it comes to being a working writer. For some kinds of writers, craft will be more important. For other kinds of writers (the ones who need to put food on the table), understanding the business will be what's vital. More on that tomorrow...
Tomorrow: Learning the business of writing
April 16, 2012
Tags:
funny mom articles, funny kid articles, parenting, mothering, a break from the serious
What advice would I give my children as they begin kindergarten? Pursue what you love? Do unto others? Don’t sweat the small stuff?
No. I have just one piece of advice for them: go to the bathroom. Not just to pee, but to do everything that needs doing. Do it proudly, arm waving in the air for permission. Shout it out! Then come back twenty minutes later, unabashed for the time spent to honor the mysterious ways of that masochist, Nature.
Let’s face it, in the history of elementary school since the stone age, there are just two kinds of kids: those who do and those who don’t even if they might pass out.
Really, it’s a miracle more children don’t die.
I have a friend who didn’t send her child to pre-school, as he couldn’t perform on a public potty. But how long can you hold a child back? Fifth grade? Sixth?
Back in the day, I was a miniature Tom-Cruise-Entering-The-Room-Where-The-Secret-Computer- Chip-Is-Hidden. DUM-dum-dum-dum -DUM-dum-dum-dum …. I crept, spider-like, now-or-never, assured that no one will see me as I had spent the last four hours plotting my move. Then blam -- every time ! – there was Susie Popular, washing her hands primly, feeling good, no awful stretch on her bladder. Oh, Susie would just prance out and play with all her millions of friends, not having to worry about splitting a gut before she gets home.
“Darlings,” I’ll say to my children, “we all do it. So do it at school. It will put you in the right crowd.”
Or, better yet: “Darlings, every day at kindergarten, go proudly into the bathroom and do your business. There are bathroom fairies in there and every time you go, they will grant you your fondest wish. But only if you wash hands after.”
Yet, probably: “Darlings, dearest childdren of my heart -- Whatever you do EAT OR DRINK NOTHING! ESPECIALLY DRINK NOTHING!”
The sad truth, of course, is that there’s nothing I can say. My children come from a long, long line of iron-bladdered stock. It’s in their blood. (If they hold it in long enough, could it really be in their blood?)
You have no idea of what I speak?
So, you’re one of them. You have no idea what I'm writing about. It's okay. I have other friends.
Permission to pee . Really, it’s absurd. Do we need permission for other embarrassing, humiliating bodily functions? “Ma’am, may I grow a pimple now? Right in the middle of my nose, please?”
“Teacher, may I barf up my lunch on my shoes?”
School is hell. Someone should do something about it. But who will be the brave one to bring it up? Surely, not me.
At least, not when anyone else is around.
April 9, 2012
Tags:
dara-lynn weiss, diana holquist, parenting girls, battle hymn of the tiger daughter, battle hymn of the tiger mother, april vogue, mommy memoirs
Dear Ms. Weiss,
In your article for Vogue, you wrote about how you put your "obese" daughter Bea on a draconian diet that included public shaming and carefully-controlled-by-mommy meals. She was seven years old, four-foot-four, and 93 pounds.
I won't pile on to the criticism of your diet and its methods. Slate.com pretty much sums up my thoughts in their article, Is concern with childhood obesity about health or beauty? Bea herself also summed up my feelings quite nicely in Vogue when she tried to tell you, "I'm not a different person just because I lost sixteen pounds." You argue with her until tears "run down her beautiful cheek."
It's all been said on the Internets. I have nothing to add.
But what I'd like to weigh in on (so to speak) is that book you're planning to write about your daughter's struggle with her weight, The Heavy.
Please think twice before you write a book about your child while your child is still a child. No seven-year-old (or eight or nine or etc...) can give you permission to make their private life public. They're too young.
A few facts about writing a non-fiction book about a child: All their friends WILL read it. All the parents of their friends WILL read it. All their teachers WILL read it. All their enemies WILL read it. Let's not even get started on the college admission committees and the hiring committees.
When the last "mean mommy," Amy Chua published Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, her children were teens. She let them read and edit it. They discussed it. They revised it. They were old enough and educated enough to understand.
When I wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter, my fifteen-year-old wrote half the chapters. The chapters I wrote, she read with a red pencil in her hand and she was not afraid to use it. The rule was, she had veto power over every word.
Can an eight-year-old exercise such power? Can she understand the consequences of what goes out into the world about her?
There's more than age at issue here. How tough is your daughter? How confident is she at dealing with difficult social situations? When friends and relatives (my first readers) expressed concerns about certain parts in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter, I would remind them that this was Hana we were talking about. Her hair is blue (well, at the moment, purple). She wore homemade unicorn hoodies to middle school. She went fearlessly by herself to school dances and other social events. She even confronted bullies who were attacking other children. This was a child who marched to the beat of her own drummer. She didn't give a %#$# what anyone thought of her.
How's Bea at all that?
I hope she on board. I hope she's thrilled that you'll be telling her story to the world. I hope that you and your husband have discussed thoroughly the moral and ethical issues around this book and decided that the world needs this book despite the pain and shame it may cause your family, especially your young daughter. I even truly hope that we've entered an age of so much public disclosure on Facebook and reality television, that I'm totally off base, and Bea is thrilled at all the attention. Your book will be for her just be a drop in the great big sea of over-exposure that is modern life.
But I doubt it. So, Ms. Weiss, please put your daughter's feelings and issues before your career and your pocketbook. The silent star of the book is your child. Your very, very young child who has a very, very public weight problem.
She's already got a lot on her plate (sorry). I hope you know what you're doing when you pile on even more.
Yours warmly and with compassion,
Diana
March 4, 2012
Tags:
battle hymn of the tiger mother, battle hymn of the tiger daughter, tiger mother, tiger daughter, mothering, western mothers, diy book covers, how to design a book cover
Readers always judge a book by its cover. As a former advertising professional with a deep understanding of brand and the unconscious motivators of humans, I knew this. And yet, when it came time to design my own book cover I made every single mistake in the book.
Then, with great humility and pain, one by one I fixed them.
Mistake Number One
"I can totally do this myself."
Sure, I don't have a 'real' art background. But fifteen years in advertising agencies working with some of the best designers in the business meant I knew how to work the software (sort of) and understood all the buzzwords like pixels and dpi (more or less).
Plus, I had exquisite taste. What could possibly go wrong?
How about this:
My daughter took one look at this cover and said, "It looks like something from the 80's that you'd see in the twenty-five cent bin at a garage sale and you wouldn't buy it because it's hideous."
My God. She was right. I had produced a totally adequate, absolutely sucky book cover. How had I let myself do that? And how did I not even notice?
"It's all over the place," she went on. "It's like you don't know where to look. Everything is glimmering and askew and the colors...."
Right.
Plus, I had committed the number one sin of sucky book covers: it had no concept. I had been in advertising for cripes sake. I knew the number one rule of picture + text: they must create a story. So besides the fact that this book cover was hideously ugly, there was no story on this cover. The words and picture didn't interact to create tension.
So I began to think concept. What was the concept of Tiger Daughter? That the daughter is wiser than the mother. That successful parenting happens only when the mother steps out of the way to let the daughter discover her own passions and desires.
Thus, mistake #2
Mistake Number Two
Tone is everything.
The next cover was much better. I had a concept I searched for stock. I got a little better at InDesign and Photoshop. And I came up with this:
Whoa. Now we were getting somewhere.
Luckily, before I bought the stock, my daughter looked at it and said, " Are you trying to sell a book to get kids to be criminals? It doesn't really make any sense. I look like a hoodlum. I'd never spray paint over something. I hate graffiti."
After being mad at my persnickety daughter for a day or so because this was one heck of an excellent concept with a pretty decent execution if I do say so myself, I realized she was right.
Which leads me to mistake number two: don't ignore tone. The concept of this cover was spot-on, but the tone was off. Tone is everything.
I knew exactly how to fix this. But I couldn't find the stock. And if I couldn't find the stock, I'd have to shoot the photo, which would be expensive.
Ah, mistake number three...
Mistake Number Three
"I really don't want to spend a fortune on this cover."
I thought about this for a long time before I decided that I had to hire a professional photographer if we were going to get the cover we wanted.
Luckily, I go a few times a week to our local college library to get some writing done. By chance, I picked up the college student-produced magazine. Hey, this stuff wasn't bad. So I emailed the student whose work I really admired, and we had our picture fast, inexpensively, and with no hassle.
Thus, we didn't fall for mistake number three--spending too much or too little for your cover.
And we ended up with this:
Perfect.
A cover with a concept. A cover with the exact right tone. A cover that's been selling beautifully.
I couldn't be more thrilled.
February 10, 2012
Tags:
Bringing up bebe, tiger parenting, tiger mother, tiger daughter, American parenting, French parenting, Chinese parenting
Okay, enough already.
First, there was Tiger Mother. Her battle hymn joyfully sang the death knell of America and its lazy, over-indulgent parents. The "Chinese" way was the only way to parent if you wanted "success."
And mental illness.
Now, there's Bringing Up Bebe, which claims that French parents are the ones who know how this parenting thing is done.
Oh, please.
I've already said my piece on Tiger parenting. (See Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter.)
And I'm not going to knock the French. Especially if one of them is making me dinner. In Paris. With fresh butter.
But come on, American parents. Grow a pair! We have no reason to put ourselves down.
First, the stereotype these cultural parenting books portray isn't true. For every high-achieving Asian, there's a just-as-high achieving Jew, WASP, and Hispanic doing as well or better without the trauma of parental tyranny.
As for the French, I don't know what playgrounds Pamela Druckerman hangs out on, but I've spent many an afternoon on French playgrounds in Paris and beyond and I've seen some pretty atrociously behaved enfants. I'll never forget being in a row boat under a lovely bridge in the Loire valley with my very well-behaved American kids. Paradise except for the French 10-year-olds pelting us and the other boaters with rocks.
Listen up, American parents. We nail it. Why? Because one precept guides American parents above all that makes our country and our culture still the go-to paradigm for education, business entrepreneurship, and the arts.
This one distinctly American value sets children raised the “American” way on the path to true success and happiness.
The value is this: American parents praise the rebel, the dreamer, and the outcast above all else. We're not about chasing a stereotype to fit into the old ways; we're about standing out and finding new ways. We're not about conforming to society's demands for good behavior. We're about remaking society one amazing, breathtaking, shocking risk at a time.
We question everything.
Even ourselves.
So unlike the provincial French of Druckerman's world or the "Chinese" of Chua's world, we're out to grab the best of every culture we can get our hands on.
That's why Americans raise the kind of kids who can invent Facebook and Google and Apple.
That's why we raise the kind of kids who can write Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother or Bringing Up Bebe. Yes, those books were written by fierce, questioning, re-inventing American moms. Heck, the Chinese edition of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is called Parenting by a Yale Law Professor: Raising Kids in America.
Even they know that we know the secret to raising amazing kids.
Americans take the best from every culture, avoiding destructive mistakes, because we're not culture-bound. That's why America is still the go-to country for mad creativity, fierce independence, and daring self-direction.
Want your kid to make it big? Go to France. (I know, hilarious, right?)
Want your child to have a happy, fulfilling life? See you in China! (Yeah, I didn't think so.)
Face it, despite our kids not sitting still at restaurants or scoring perfect on the goodie-goodie Test of the Day, America still rocks.
One awesome, hell-hollering, wild child at a time.
(Diana Holquist is the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter, a memoir on how she raised her self-reliant, madly independent, fiercely creative daughter the American way.)
January 17, 2012
Tags:
mommy etiquette, playdate rules, how to tell another mother what to do, good mommy/bad mommy
"Oh, and we prefer Daphne not to have sugar or watch TV," Daphne's mother called gaily, as she waved good-bye to her six-year-old daughter who was at our house for her first playdate.
"Then, I suppose liquor and gambling are out too?" I called after the woman, who stopped in her tracks.
Neither of us smiled.
Now, I'm not a mean person, but I thought Daphne's mother was out of line. Okay, suppose we do spend our afternoons stuffing ourselves with candy bars until we fall into a sugar-induced coma in front of the TV? will Daphne never recover? Daphne and my daughter had chosen to be friends. Daphne's mother has seen my daughter at school, and she's not a sugar-crazed maniac. Our home life, which our daughter cannot escape day-in-and-day out, has not disfigured her. Surely, whatever horrors we perpetrate on her daughter for the next two hours will be okay in the end.
Most of my friends disagreed.
"Oh, I always make clear the parameters of a playdate way before-hand. The only thing rude about that woman was that she waited until the last moment," one friend told me.
"I never leave my child for the first playdate. I like to see what goes on," another friend admitted.
I was horrified. I would never presume to dictate what other people can do in their own homes. If I think a house in unsafe, my child won't go there. If I think a house filled with cartoons and candy, I shrug my shoulders and let my daughter experience for herself how our life differs from theirs. Variety is the spice of life. It's a learning opportunity.
Spice, fine, my friends tell me. Just no sugar, TV, guns, rough-housing--the list goes on and on.
What do you think? Is it okay to list rules like this? Or does it cross a line?
January 9, 2012
Tags:
battle hymn of the mother of a tiger, tiger daughter, mothering, western mothers, mothers and daughters
Folks have been asking me, did I really write a battle hymn, or was I using the title, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Daughter, as a metaphor?
Yeah, I wrote one. (It's in the key of G major.) Of course, it's more a "Battle Hymn of the Mother of a Tiger." But that made a crappy title for a book, don't you think?
Here is the beginning of it. Enjoy!
Battle Hymn of the Mother of a Tiger
People wonder how American parents raise such innovative, creative, kick-butt children. What is it that these parents do to create kids with the courage to follow their dreams? Kids who defy the word “stereotype”? Kids capable of seeing beyond the outdated, conventional clichés—Harvard, violin, doctor, lawyer—and into a future that most parents are too old, tradition-bound, and small-minded to even imagine? Well, I can tell you, because I know. Here are a few things that my children, Hana and Isaiah, are never allowed to do:
1) Miss an episode of The Office.
2) Waste their time on extracurricular activities that they don’t love.
3) Pass up important family or social events because they put their own personal enrichment first.
4) Think that they’re better than other kids because of their grades. An “A” can mean excellent, but it can also stand for “asshole.”
5) Brag about awards. The only achievements that matter in the end don’t get awards (character, kindness, compassion, courage, friendship).
I’m using the term “American parents” loosely. Anyone who embraces the Western values of individuality, creativity, and questioning of authority can be American in my book. But let’s face it, most people with these values live in the West.
Specifically, in America.
Quite a few of them live in my house…
January 5, 2012
Tags:
parenting book, tori spelling, mommywood, tiger daughter, battle hymn of the tiger daughter, mothering books, parenting books
Writing a parenting book has been an exciting adventure. And a surprising one.
One of the biggest surprises has been our competition. I thought we'd be up against psychologists. I thought we'd be up against PhDs.
To tell you the truth, I had nightmares that Amy Chua, the original Tiger Mother, might knock on my door, jonesing for a fight.
No.
It's much, much worse than that.
We're up against Tori Spelling.
Yep, that's right, Tori Spelling. She of 90210 fame (if you're of an *ahem* certain age). It seems that Tori Spelling has written not one but TWO parenting books.
The first of Tori's books is called Uncharted terriTORI. I have no idea what this means, but it's currently #12 on Amazon.com's top mothering books.
Her second book is called MOMMYWOOD.
Feast your eyes on that cover. You can't look away, can you?
In any case, BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER DAUGHTER has gone as high as #9 on the Amazon.com Motherhood list, but Tori--damn her and her green bubble dress!--keeps beating us back.
Am I going to have to read her book(s)?
Please, say it ain't so!
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