Writers in the Storm

Kimberly Brock

Lightning Collectors

There are these questions I get a lot as a writer.

“What do you write?”

 “Do you actually make any money at this?”

“How do you have the time?”

Blah. I don’t mind answering any of these questions, but honestly, they bore me. They’re so obvious. So unoriginal. These questions are placeholders. I have this theory that talking to a writer is akin to talking to an alien for most people. They just don’t know what to say to us. They can’t imagine what on earth our lives are like or what they have in common with someone who sits in a room in a smoking jacket, swilling two-day old coffee and murmuring to themselves about philosophy and Shakespeare. Or maybe we wear high heels and silk dressing gowns and drink wine while imagining hulking, naked, wealthy tycoons on horseback. That’s the thing. THEY JUST DON’T KNOW. So they don’t know what to say to us.

I’m not offended. It’s pretty funny, actually, because I know the truth. I know the coffee is hot from the Keurig and I may or may not brush my hair before 2pm. But sometimes, to be honest, I make stuff up. Stuff like how I write on trains crossing North Africa, or in bohemian apartments in Paris. Or maybe I only write twice a year when I’m on a yacht in the Caribbean. Or I can’t volunteer in my child’s classroom because I’m living amongst monks, finishing my next novel. Or I’m too weak to bring snacks for the little league team because I’ve totally been fasting for weeks, eating only banana leaves until the muse comes to me

Okay, okay. None of this has any bearing on the reality of my writing journey. At. All. (Think preschool parking lots, Costco, my closet floor, leftovers, etc) But I know these questions don’t really matter because no one bats an eye, no matter how I answer them. The most passionate reaction I might get to my zany responses is a mildly doubtful, vaguely Valley Girl, “Seriously?”

But there’s this one question I love. It is the best question, a sincere question. When I get this question, I know I’m meeting another alien, another seeker. This question comes at me differently, and if you’re a writer I bet you get it, too. The person asking will often lean in just a little. This question is a great skeleton key, slipping into a mysterious lock. It’s what’s inside that wardrobe in the attic. It’s the invisible ink that shines in moonlight. The secret language we storytellers speak only to one another. Ready? Do you know what it is?

Where do you get your ideas?

Ahhh. See there? Doesn’t that thrill you just a little? How I love this question for so many reasons! I love it for all it reveals in me. And in the one who is asking. And I have the answer always ready.

The same place as you.

BAM! POW! SHAZAM! All the comic book sound effects apply to this moment. Eyes meet. Recognition zings. Alien recognizes alien.

This question is about you, the writer, but also about the one who asks it. It’s about what connects us all, the true secrets of the storyteller. But beyond that, it’s about identity. It’s about a person who wants the answers for themselves because they know somewhere inside that they are something strange and wonderful and… they are like you. Of course, that’s not what I tell them because that would be boring and normal and not alien at all. But when it comes to this question, I tell them the truth in a way that only another storyteller will understand. A litmus test.

We’re Lightning Collectors. 

Wait. Watch. A real storyteller understands this answer intuitively. We know that we don’t GET ideas. We RECEIVE ideas. They are delivered to us from the universe, baby. Storytellers are built for stories. We are conduits. We just take in everything that’s around us and we are bathed in stories. We soak up the energy of our personal world. That’s what’s behind the curtain of every storyteller who ever cranked out a good yarn. Sounds easy enough, right?

Wrong. If your litmus test tells you the truth, your question asker will go bright-eyed and misty at this point. Because they know. And they know that you know that they know. And they know that once they know, they can’t un-know what they’ve always secretly believed about themselves. Scary? You bet. And that’s the real question that’s being asked. So, here’s my real answer. The whole she-bang.

Collecting lightning is not like carrying a basket through the woods. Collecting lightning means being a structure that invites risk to zip right through us. It means the chance of getting burned – sometimes, fried. It means standing in the worst kind of storms and not pulling inside yourself. And here’s where my answer really matters, when I tell this seeker the most important thing I’ve learned about what and who I am as a Lightning Collector. Seriously. I looked up lightning rods on Wikipedia, so I’d be an expert.

“…lightning is actually composed of both a cloud component and an oppositely charged ground component.”

Did you see miss it? Did you blink? It’s a glorious flash, the secret to what makes up all our stories, the requirements for lightning to strike – both the cloud and the ground. A story requires the energy of inspiration AND the grounded certainty of the storyteller’s courage. Wise Lightning Collectors know they can’t be afraid. They must be aware in a world of people who often aren’t. They have to believe - long before the flash, really believe – they are sufficient to conduct all that energy. That kind of confidence is what cauterizes souls and sparks voice.

Where do you get your ideas? If you’re paying attention, you already know the answer, don’t you? Oh, you dear and fierce Lightning Collectors, from the most mysterious source of all. Ourselves.

Are you present in the world in this way? Is it challenging to go through life with this kind of hyper-intuitive awareness? Do you find that your story ideas come to you from this awareness? Do you find comradery and comfort when you meet other storytellers who understand this kind of awareness?

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About Kimberly

Kimberly Brock is the award winning author of the #1 Amazon bestseller, THE RIVER WITCH (Bell Bridge Books, 2012). A former actor and special needs educator, Kimberly is the recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year 2013 Award. A literary work reminiscent of celebrated southern author Carson McCullers, THE RIVER WITCH has been chosen by two national book clubs.

Kimberly’s writing has appeared in anthologies, blogs and magazines, including Writer Unboxed and Psychology Today. Kimberly served as the Blog Network Coordinator for She Reads, a national online book club from 2012 to 2014, actively spearheading several women’s literacy efforts. She lectures and leads workshops on the inherent power in telling our stories and is founder of Tinderbox Writer’s Workshop. She is also owner of Kimberly Brock Pilates.

She lives in the foothills of north Atlanta with her husband and three children, where she is at work on her next novel. Visit her website at kimberlybrockbooks.com for more information and to find her blog.

June Stevens Westerfield

Creating a brand that represents you as an author and reflects your writing as a whole is hard enough when you write in just one genre.  Often, when an author writes books in just one series, their author brand gets tied inextricably with their series brand.  That isn’t ideal, but it isn’t necessarily a problem either.  But what happens if the author starts writing a completely different series or even a standalone novel?  What’s more, what if the new novel is in a completely different genre?  It stands completely outside of the author’s known brand.  The author now has two choices, either change their brand or use a pseudonym.

I was once on the 'pseudonyms for different genres' bandwagon.  But that was over a decade ago.  As the digital age has matured and social media has become a necessary part of an author’s platform, the ease of keeping up more than one author name has become more difficult.   It entails maintaining websites, blog posts, newsletters and active social media accounts for each pen name.  That is both expensive and time consuming.  If you write within several subgenres, maintaining your pseudonyms would be unmanageable, and it would leave little time for writing. 

The best option is creating an author brand that can encompass all that you write, and what you may write in the future.  In short, you want to brand yourself as an author, not your genre.   I’ve worked with several clients to create author brands that can represent their work as a whole.

The first step is figuring out what exactly does all of your work have in common?  Do they have a common audience, common themes, etc?  I always ask my clients to list at least three things all their books have in common.   At first most of them say “nothing, they are all different.”  But when pressed, they can usually find many more common traits than just three. 

Next is to pick one of those common threads, or even all three, to come up with a tagline to represent you as an author.  Not all authors choose to use taglines, and ultimately you may choose not to either, but choosing one can help you decide what direction you want to go with the visual aspects of your brand, such as colors, fonts, and logos. 

CASE STUDY: LAURA DRAKE

The best way to illustrate is to walk you through the re-branding process I went through with Laura Drake.  Laura writes both romance and women’s fiction.   In her mind, they are very, very different and on her website she was using two different taglines and branding images for them and had them separated into different sections of her website.  That was a little confusing for the reader, and made it confusing for Laura when it came time to promote her books. 

   

When Laura came to me to consult on her branding, I asked her to list three things that all her books had in common.  She balked at first, saying they were very different.  That’s a normal reaction, we like to think every series, every genre is unique.  But we are humans and our styles don’t change just because we write different genres. 

As a reader and fan of Laura’s work I had the advantage of being able to suggest a few things, and once the ball was rolling, Laura jumped in, a little more at ease.

We determined that all her books feature strong women at turning points in their lives, the stories focus on those women’s relationships (whether romantic or interpersonal), and they all take place in small towns or communities. 

We then took her two existing taglines, and decided that one of them was already perfect to represent all her work:

Ordinary women on the edge of extraordinary change  

Once she simplified her author brand, it made it possible for her to focus on the individual brands for her series.  She created lovely images with the book covers of each series, and then listed her series titles (with each book title popping up when the mouse passes over) in her menu bar.  This makes it easier for fans of a particular book who may not know the series title (or genre) to find what they are looking for.  It also brings the focus back on her books, and not the genres. 

Finally, she pulled it all together with the black and creamy gold color scheme of her website and her very simple initial logo in the top corner.  It’s sleek and elegant, just like her writing.

Laura’s case was actually pretty simple.  But what if you write is wildly different genres, such as paranormal romance, contemporary romance, and nonfiction?

It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible.  How do I know?  My first “multiple genre client” was myself.  I started out in contemporary romance, then added paranormal/urban fantasy.  Then recently put out some non-fiction.

The three things my books have in common: 1. My audience is women, of all ages. (even though I do have male readers)  2. I write strong female characters (even my non-fiction is about women’s strengths) 3. I focus on relationships and emotions

My tagline represents everything I ever want to write, no matter the genre, even non-fiction: Damsels Not in Distress.  But, my brand also represents me as a person, at least the public part of me.

I chose the color scheme of hot pink and dark grey because they are my favorite colors and they pop with the tagline.  Everything about my brand kind of screams.  And that is perfect for me.  I have purple hair and I’m kind of in your face.  My brand is brash and bold.

To make it even better, there is no shortage of awesome images out there that I can use to make “Damsels Not in Distress” promotional images.  And it’s okay if they are all different, it’s even better that way, because my damsels are all very different. 

The thing to remember when thinking about branding is that everything your readers see says something about you.  So, you need to think about more than just the words in your stories.  Who is the “you” you want the public to see, to get to know, not just through reading your books, but through your website and your social media.  That is the person you are branding. 

What do you think, WITS readers? Are you rethinking your brand? Any questions for June?

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Hey all, June is offering WITS readers a special!

About ABE

Author Branding Essentials is dedicated to offering comprehensive author centric branding and design services at competitive prices.  As an Author, your name is your brand. Building your Author Brand is key to success. Many agents encourage authors to begin building that brand long before they are published. At Author Branding Essentials we understand the unique criteria it takes to build an author brand, versus another type of business.  We can help you decide on the best options for your author brand and help you implement them. 

Christina Delay

In case you didn’t know, there’s a little thing called NaNoWriMo going on this month. It’s basically a month in which writers lose sleep, stop talking to their families, give up binge watching Netflix, and forget how to spell without Word’s autocorrect feature, all to meet a challenging word count of 50,000 words in 30 days. So, we’re writing a novel in a month.

A really horrible, crappy novel. (I’m not talking about those gold-fingered mythological writers whose turds smell like lavender. You guys suck.)

It’s November 11. You are 11 days into NaNoWriMo and this is the point you start wondering:

What the crap kind of story am I writing?

You may be tempted (or have already fallen into temptation) to stop your forward movement and, gasp!, edit.

Don’t. And I’ll tell you why.

I’m switching to metaphor mode, because I like metaphors and because I can. Go with me.

A few weeks ago, I hopped on a tiny boat on a river in Belize and speedboated for an hour to see some Mayan ruins. On the way, our guide told us a tale he heard from his grandparents when he was a boy.

Back then, Belize was very much a developing country. In many respects, it still is. Since Belize imports almost all their goods, they’ve had to be resourceful in meeting their day-to-day living needs. 50 years ago, our guide’s grandparents and parents were still going into the jungle for weeks at a time to forage for food and supplies to make soap.

And they came back with tales.

Tales of a city being swallowed by a jungle.

They were ignored.

The tales simmered into myth and local lore until about 1970, when the Canadian government and Harvard University took an interest.

Guess what?

There actually were cities being swallowed by the jungle.

What came next was years of excavating, slowly revealing the Mayan story that the jungle had hidden. A thousand-year-old empire that had been taken back by the jungle, until not even the tops of the tallest temples could be seen.

It’s so much like our first draft, don’t you think? So often, our story gets hidden behind the jungle of run-on sentences, under-developed characters, plot holes, and blah-writing. It takes a while before we, the author, can push aside the vines and dig through the dirt to discover the ancient treasures hidden inside our stories.

But we have to write them down, first.

The archaeologists who first came to the Mayan ruins of Lamanai didn’t put one foot down on land, then dig, put their other foot down on land, then dig, and so on. That would have been the most inefficient way to discover the story!

Instead, they walked the jungle, exploring before digging, and then stepped back and studied the big picture. They looked at the “first draft” in its entirety and only after understanding the scale of what they had to work with did they start excavating.

NaNoWriMers, you are drafting this month. You are writing the foundation of your story, but the first draft jungle is swallowing it up.

Let it.

Your story needs the vines to take hold and the roots to grow around it. Your story needs to be buried in warm, fertile soil. You story needs to be held safe in the cocoon of the jungle to be able to deepen the mystery.

Get the first draft out before you start excavating.

After NaNoWriMo, break out your story tools. Uncover your story once you take a step back and look at the vast empire you’ve created. Only then can you discover the true treasures: the deep conflicts, the twisted plot lines, thematic point of view, the heart of the story you are telling.

But for now, pull on your mosquito netting, lace up your hiking boots, and go back into the jungle.

Are you doing NaNo? Is the jungle taking over? Report in your progress!

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ABOUT CHRISTINA:

(http://www.christinadelay.com/) is the hostess of Cruising Writers (http://cruisingwriters.com/) and an award-winning author represented by Deidre Knight of The Knight Agency. When she’s not cruising the Caribbean, she’s dreaming up new writing retreats to take talented authors on or writing the stories of the imaginary people that live in her heart.

About Cruising Writers

Cruising Writers brings aspiring authors together with bestselling authors, an agent, an editor, and a world-renowned writing craft instructor together on writing retreats. Go to France with us in April (http://cruisingwriters.com/retreat/southern-france-writing-retreat/) and stay in a historic chateau with Margie Lawson, agent Louise Fury, Shelley Adina, Kobo Writing Life, and Literary Translations. Or cruise with us to Grand Cayman (http://cruisingwriters.com/retreat/7-day-western-caribbean-writing-retreat-cruise-september-10-17-2017/) with Lisa Cron, Anglea Ackerman, agent Michelle Grajkowski, and editor Deb Werksman of Sourcebooks!