WIN 39 - How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead with Ariel Gore

Welcome to win the Women Investing Network, the podcast where you can learn from successful entrepreneurs, business leaders and real estate investors who are winning in business and life. Learning from others is the fastest way to grow your skills, gain knowledge and avoid pitfalls so you can win. Join our hosts, Elizabeth Embry and Jason Hartman. Elizabeth is a seasoned real estate investor, experience corporate executive and skilled mentor. Jason is a self made multi millionaire investor, entrepreneur and highly acclaimed thought leader. Together with their successful guests, you'll get the tools you'll need to win.

It's my pleasure to welcome Ariel Gore to the show. She's the author of seven books including how to Become a Famous Writer before youe Words in Print and you'd Name in Lights. Ariel, welcome.

Thank you.

It's good to have you on to talk about the specifics of writing technique and really looking forward to covering this topic. We have not covered it before. First of all, tell us a little bit about your background.

Well, I studied to be a journalist and I got really interested in magazine journalism. I started a magazine called Hit Mama when I was a pretty young single mom. And so I started my writing career that way, self publishing the magazine and really getting it out there. So I guess my background is as a writer and an entrepreneur at the same time, which is something that I think that they don't really teach a lot in writing school, even in journalism school, especially not in the MFA programs. You know, right now people are, writers are taught to, you know, write to old school magazines, send out their stuff for submission, hope that a publisher will be so enthralled by their writing that they'll pick them up and do all the promotion for them. And it's, I mean, it's sad because it doesn't really happen that way for very many writers. And so I think there are a lot of writers and all kinds of artists and creative people who are, you know, just sort of waiting to get discovered or something or, you know, even doing some more of the work with the submissions, but not really making things happen for themselves in terms of having confidence in their work and being like, I want to get this out there. I can publish a few copies myself and I can, I can start to be a writer without anyone having to come and crown me as a writer.

Sure, yeah, I would agree with you. I think that that's sort of the old school of writing something and then getting discovered. That just doesn't really happen nowadays too. Certainly not nowadays. It's a business world, it's a self promotional world. And those are the people that it really belongs to. So let's talk about actually writing first, if we can, and then we'll touch a little bit on the promotional aspect. A lot of people cover the promotion, but really there are very few that cover the more technical aspects of what does it mean to be a good writer? What does it take? There are really definable skills, aren't there?

Certainly. And, you know, I think a lot of people feel like they have a writing talent, and I think there's a lot of truth to that skill. You know, some of us as kids love to write, feel like, you know, people enjoy the stories that we write. But the truth about writing is that it is mostly a craft, and it's something that you practice and you keep on practicing at. I've been teaching writing workshops for over 10 years, and it's really exciting because people do get better. It's not, you know, there's some things that, you know, our talent is sort of innate, and that's that. But at writing through practicing, through getting our words on paper and sharing them. I mean, that's why I think of publishing, or, you know, just even included in publishing would be, you know, going out to your local cafe at open mic and sharing your stories and getting a feel for how people react, what people react to, you know, what people think is funny, what kind of pacing in your storytelling makes people emotional, all these different kinds of things. I think a lot of us love telling stories as kids. And so it's. The question is, you know, how do we get back to that if we've been formally educated? I think that a lot of our writing, our ideas about writing get sort of either academic or we get told that, you know, this isn't good enough, or you can't start a sentence with. And. And that's not really what it's about. It's about how do I communicate my heart and my soul to you? How do I do that with the written word?

When you say this, your language right now sounds like you're talking about fiction, novels, storytelling. I mean, that almost implies that, right?

Well, I've written one novel, and I've written a memoir, but most of my books are actually nonfiction books. The work that I did with Hip Mama, the book that I have called how to become a famous writer before you're dead, they're essentially, if you would categorize them as how to books or journalism. And I think that it's important to bring the tools of the storyteller to nonfiction work. I mean, even people in my workshops do business Writing, they do things that we don't traditionally think of as creative writing. And yet, if they're going to be successful, you have to bring in the tools of the storyteller. You know, we've all read boring nonfiction books. They're not interesting. And the way to make a nonfiction book interesting is by using anecdotes and telling stories. And in the case of a nonfiction book, they just happen to be true stories.

So storytelling is obviously something that's very, very important. And it's important as a writer, but it's also important as a speaker. It's important as just a communicator of any sort, just in daily life. Give us some tips on storytelling. There's a real technique to that, isn't there?

There is. And I think, as I've noticed, as the culture gets more visual, that storytelling does have to be more cinematic in order to keep people's attention. And so, you know, it always comes back to these sensory details, the visual details, really painting a cinematic picture. And if, you know, if you're doing something that's not maybe a short story or a novel, if it's more of a nonfiction thing, then you might just use a few little visual or sensory details to almost create the illusion of a scene. Even though you know what you're doing in your writing is just telling somebody how to put together a bicycle or something. And so there's ways that you can bring in just even just a couple of phrases of visual or any kind of sensory detail to bring your reader into your world and sort of get them out of the space where they want to argue with you or anything like that. No, you're entertaining them at the same time. I always talk about, can you describe what this character looks like? And then the natural thing for someone to do is say, like, oh, they have brown hair and blue eyes and this color skin. But a lot of times to describe what your character looks like might just be the clips that they wear on their jeans when they ride their bicycle or the shape of their glasses. Sometimes just a really small detail like that can kind of suggest the whole.

So painting a picture, a good song does that. A good story does that. Can you address the issue of cadence and bringing people up and bringing them down in the story and adding that sort of roller coaster effect, I think, has always been intriguing to humanity. I mean, the Greeks thousands of years ago would have techniques for storytelling and live theater and so forth.

Sure. You know, you want to have your reader have some level of anxiety to keep reading. I mean, that's why that's part of what we go to literature for is that sort of page turner. And sometimes that's, you know, there's all kinds of different techniques that we use for that. I mean, sometimes it's writing in the present tense, so there is no promise that the character is going to survive. Some people find it awkward to write in the present tense, but that's just one. One technique. A lot of times when people are telling a story, even if it's in the past tense, they'll sort of flash forward and give it away. You know, we don't want to know for sure that you survived. I mean, of course you're telling us the story. And you know what? I don't deserve mean survive like you're alive at the end of the story, but that, you know, that the love survived or the. Your action plan survived. So if you're writing a story about someone who had a great goal to do something, you know, we don't want to have any hint beforehand that they succeed, even though, you know, we know we hope we're not reading a tragedy. But there's always. It's the writer's job to always keep that up in the air. I mean, that's life too, right? Every day you don't know if you're going to meet your goals or if you're going to discover who done it. And so that's. I think that's just a very human part of storytelling. Some writers really don't like to share their work with other people while it's in progress. And everyone has their own process, that's fine. But I think it's so important to, you know, have a writing partner or a small writing group or a small writing workshop where you can start to share your writing. And, you know, again, it's practice that's going to help you out with all these techniques. So sharing them, seeing what works, you know, oh, that was too fast for me. Oh, that's too slow for me. And the only time you're going to get that feedback is by sharing with other writers and, you know, people that you trust who aren't going to, you know, go out and show your rough stories to their friends and laugh at you. But, you know, but I do find that it's just with all these techniques, it's really a matter of practice and also of reading. I think that a lot of times we only read the genre that we write in, and I think that can be a mistake. I think all writers can learn so much from really good Mystery writers, what you're talking about sort of plot and keeping that anxiety with the reader. You know, we can read old noir stories and, you know, we don't have to pick up all that sort of cheesy language. But the pacing of the Maltese Falcon is this amazing thing. And so even if you're, you know, you're writing something completely different, you're going to learn from that. A lot of times I think it's more valuable actually to read outside your genre, to, you know, bring poetry into your nonfiction writing, to bring mystery into your memoir, to really have all those techniques that you're.

So you teach an online course to teach people how to write, how to be good writers. Can you sort of go over the outline of that course and the things covered and maybe give some tips on those different areas of writing?

Yeah, people can find out about the writing workshops if they're interested@ariel gore.com which is my website. It's Lit Star Training is the name of the class. It's an eight week class and we get 15 to 20 writers together in this online forum. And it's been really great for me just to have writers from all over the world working together. Previously I just have taught workshops in Portland and Santa Fe and Mexico. But then you're getting this sort of small sampling of the population at those in person workshops, online workshops. People are from all over the world. All we have in common is that we're writing in English. And there's an assignment, there's two assignments every week. It's actually quite a productive experience. There's a quick write every week. And so I just give people a prompt and they write. They set their timer for eight minutes and they write on the prompt. And you can't do it wrong and you just have to post it after the eight minutes. I think sometimes people cheat because there's some really great stuff that they post. But the pacing of the class is such that they probably don't take more than 15 minutes to do it. So they do that. So you get in the habit of almost meeting a deadline. I mean, going to journalism school was actually very good for me as a creative writer in that it's midnight, your piece is done. That's it. There's no. It's not perfect. You're going to press, it's done. And so that's sort of bring some of that into the quick write. And then each week there's also a longer assignment that I give people. And people either work in memoir or fiction. Sometimes people will be working on book projects, and they'll sort of take elements of my assignment but actually be writing a chapter for their book every week. We've had a couple of books come out of the class, so that's been exciting. And we just. I read everybody's stories and give them all kinds of feedback, and then all the writers in the class read a few of each other's stories. So if you were in the class, you would read maybe three other writers stories and give them feedback. And that's, I think, extremely valuable, too. I mean, sometimes if you have a writing workshop and, you know, say you're in the workshop and you haven't written anything this week, you'll say, oh, I won't go to. I won't go this week. But in fact, I think it's actually more valuable as a writer sometimes to listen to other people's works in progress and learn that way what works. A lot of us only read things that are already published. So there's all this sort of mystery and magic, like, how did it get to be so good? You know, how did it get to be so perfect? And there's a lot to be said for seeing the process as it's built, Hearing stories that are going to be masterpieces long before they're masterpieces.

I want to just take issue with you real quickly on that for a moment on feedback. So there is no shortage of these stories where someone got turned down by 39 publishers and all their friends said it was awful, and yet they became extremely successful as a writer.

Right. Well, that's the feedback. I'm talking about being with the writers, not going to the editors first, because they might not be looking for something that's wonderful. They might be looking for something that sells. And I'm not talking about going to your friends either, because if people aren't writers, it's not the same. And so having a. And it doesn't have to be a workshop that you have to pay for. You can just put a flyer out there at your local bookstore and get together a group writers. And whether or not they're supremely talented or experienced, the fact that they're writers makes them see things differently and understand things differently. And of course, there's always going to be a wingnut in your group who gives you crazy advice, and God bless them, and you will learn to have the confidence in your own work that you don't have to take everyone's, you.

Know, everyone's advice at face value. Sure, yeah. No, I understand. I understand.

So I just think that's so important. I had a student a little while ago who, you know, she'd been sharing her stories with her friends for a long time, and they would. She was writing memoir and she was writing about a really hard time in her life. And so of course, the friends kept coming back to her with feedback about her life, which is nice of them, maybe, but. Or not so nice, but that's not, you know, as writers, we are obviously compassionate and sorry that people have had these maybe hard times in their life, but we're looking at the writing and what. How can we have change this experience into art, this hard thing that you went through, into something that's healing now?

Let's switch gears, if we could. Well, is there anything else before we switch gears? Because I want to talk to you about promotion. Ariel, anything else you want to mention on the technique of writing? I know there's a lot more to this, and it's really rarely covered. There's a lot of write something, who cares if it's any good, Go out there and promote it to death and it'll be big. Just wrap this up and make sure we cover some of the main points on technique.

Well, I love the story of, you know, the goddess Lakshmi who sort of bestows prosperity, and the goddess Saraswati, who is all about creativity and reading. And the way that you get Lakshmi to pay attention to you and dump money on your head is not to pay any attention to it at all, but pay all your attention to Saraswati, who is all about making your art really good. And so that's not about technique, really, but it's a focus. I feel that focusing on our craft, the success will follow. You know, there is too much junk out there in the blogosphere, in publishing, things that are very widely published, that aren't good. And that is not helping the world. And that's not why we want to be writers. I don't think so anyway. It's not why I want to be a writer. So just focusing on the craft first, and then you can turn around and promote it with all kinds of confidence because this a beautiful thing that you've made. It's very hard to switch gears when you really put your heart into something, but it's possible. So that's. I mean, that's all I would really add.

So switch gears on the promotion side. Once someone has written something, what do they do to have people find out about it? We've all heard the old saying, no prophet is ever revered in their own time, right? Whether it be music Writing, art, every category, philosophy, everything. They're not discovered or they don't become renowned in their own time. And people want success and they want it as quickly as possible. What do they need to know about promoting their work?

The first thing is that it is a fallacy that self publishing is looked down upon. So getting your stuff out there and publishing in print, if you can, I think there's a kind of validity to that. And so putting things on the Internet is fine. Publishing is sharing your work, and that's part of storytelling, is putting it out there. And so getting away from these ideas that somebody else has to do that for you. When I first started book publishing, publishing with outside publishers about, oh, I don't know, about 15 years ago, they didn't talk about this thing called a platform, which they all talk about now. What's your platform? Well, what your platform is the promotion that you have done yourself. You know, how many people in your town know about you. And it's not because, you know you were swept off your feet and put on television. It's because you've been going around to bookstores that have open mics and getting your stuff out there. It's because you've been publishing zines. It's because you've been putting your stuff on the Internet and supporting other writers as well. You know, people send me their books all the time to edit them or blurb them, and that's fine, but if I don't know them, their literary community is going to be the people that they know and the relationships that they cultivate. I think writers are notoriously shy and sometimes a little awkward in talking. That's why we write. And so having to suspend that part of our personality and get out there and network and have a literary community can be a lot of work. But stuff to sort of say, it's okay that I'm a total weirdo and I can barely talk. That's what writers are like. I'm going to get out there and be my weird self, and that's fine. So there's the scary side of that. But also, you know, as a writer, you're not expected to be a super eloquent glamour queen. You just get out there and share your work. And so. And I'm not obviously against traditional publishing. Most of my books have been published by traditional publishers. But I think that all successful writers now do both. They do some. They publish some of their own work. They use traditional publishers when that is going to meet their goals. A lot of times, most of my books the print run is much too big. I couldn't pay for it myself even if I wanted to self publish.

What kind of print run are you talking about, by the way, when you say that?

I published a book myself last year that actually won the Lamda Literary Award. So I was very excited about that. And I printed 3,000 copies of that and I could sort of afford that. I think my other books, probably the print runs are 10 to 20,000. And so that's something. Publishers are doing smaller print runs now because they can. It's cost effective to, to just reprint when necessary. Still, if you're trying to publish more than 3,000 books, that's a pretty big investment. There's also the skill set of distributing books, which is quite overwhelming to a lot of writers. And so that's another reason to bring in a publisher. In terms of the actual marketing, though, even very large publishers now are not really paying for book tours if you're not Stephen King. And so a lot of them, the promotion and marketing of your books is going to be up to you, no matter who you're, no matter if you're self publishing or working with a traditional publisher. And so the skill set that you bring when you're ready to publish a book, from all your experience publishing little zines, is going to come in amazingly handy when it's time to get out there and do readings and set up your own book tour. In a lot of cases, you will even be booking your own book tour, even f Harper Collins publishes your book. So it's just, it's the business side of writing. It's also a really fun side of writing. It's very, I think it's very intimidating to people in the beginning, but everyone also has like their inner ham and performing kind of grows on you.

How about on the digital side of it? Are you publishing your stuff on all the new Digital Media, Kindle, iPad, etc. Or are you still on the print side?

So far, most of my books are available on Kindle, the ones that I've self published. I have not done the digital stuff yet, but most of my books are with traditional publishers so that they are all available digitally. You know, I mean, there is a balance in terms of how much of our rating we want to put online for free. At some point it sort of, it starts to devalue what you do to give your writing away for free. And so it's important to pay attention to, you know, is anyone going to buy your book if the whole thing's online? Some people will because It's a strain on the eyes to read things online. So, you know, making sure that you value what you do and there is a monetary value to what you do as an artist and respecting that. I mean, it's not. Maybe you're not always going to get paid at all or what the value is, but not letting go of, you know, as writers, as artists, we are giving something to the world. We're doing something really important. And to never, to not forget that, to not feel like people are doing you a favor if they publish your writing or if they buy your book, it's great. I mean, they're supporting you and that's important, but they're not doing you a favor. You're doing them a favor too. And in promotion, I mean, you always want to be coming up with creative ideas. I mean, once I tell you what to do, it'll be sort of like everyone's doing it and then it won't be that interesting. It's like in advertising, it's always the shock of the new. There's also. If you're going on a book tour, I think readings have a reputation for being boring. So how do you. How can you guarantee your audience a reading that's not going to be boring? You can bring a band with you. You can bring something that's a little more lively, especially if you're not a polished performer, per se. My first book tours, I always brought somebody else along who was more of a diva and who really had more of a stage presence than I did. And, and the main event was me reading from my work, but it was just having other support performers to kind of back me up until I felt more comfortable in that role. So how do you make your readings not boring? That's something to brainstorm about when you're ready to promote your stuff. A lot of times indie musicians are sort of further ahead than writers in terms of being creative, being open to smaller venues. You know, maybe if a bookstore is not interested in having you in a given town that you want to go to, maybe there would be a shop that you could do your reading at.

Coffee shops are good possibilities.

Yeah, coffee shops, different. Depending on the topic of your book, it could be all kinds of places. Yeah, definitely. Coffee shops, bars, you know, depending on who your audience is, they might even be better venues than bookstores. So being creative in that way, also being willing to sort of be non traditional and be very accepting of the fact that maybe two people are going to show up, maybe 200 people are going to show up, but maybe two people are going to show up and you don't know how far they drove or walked through the snow. And so it's important to put on the show for those two people and, you know, not poo poo their efforts just because they didn't bring 200 friends.

Right. Exactly. Well, that's a good point. All right, Ariel, well, thank you so much for sharing this insight with us today. The website is arielgore.com and anything else you'd like to say in closing?

No, it's been great. Thanks so much for having me and I hope your listeners will start writing more.

Excellent. Well, please do listeners get your thoughts down on paper and they will be there forever. So thank you, Ariel. Appreciate it. All right.

Thanks a lot.

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