A professor recently asked me, “So, why now? Why did you decide to apply to MFA programs?”

I sat and thought for a moment, finally answering, “I didn’t want another year to go by where I’d regret not applying.”

Plus, what was the worst thing that could happen? I would not get in.

Still, here I am, end of March, a little bit relieved and a lot bit eager, with 7 acceptances (and 1 wait list !) to all sorts of programs. Small and large, big city and small town, low-residency and full-residency.

I want to thank all the kind writers and friends who helped with my writing sample – reading, critiquing, and letting me bounce revision ideas off them through one very hectic month. Thanks also to my three wonderful letter of recommendation writers, two of whom will likely never read this, but one who I think will, and in whose class I began the memoir piece that shaped my writing sample.

Of course, I am grateful to my family and friends for listening to me complain, whine, worry, and kvetch about how I would never fully realize this dream. And now, for listening to me dissect every mundane program detail, and, more importantly for telling me there is no wrong choice, that wherever I go, there — and only there — will be the right program for me.

I do not yet know which school I will attend. Each has amazing qualities — supportive faculty, publishing and teaching opportunities, inspiring location, exciting coursework. But I do know this: I’m going to spend the next 3 years of my life doing something I truly love.

I have a short personal essay in the December issue of Author Magazine about a chance encounter in Target with a boy in a red jacket and what it taught me about writing memoir.

Read it here.

I feel guilty that I haven’t posted in so long, but I’m bogged down applying to MFA programs. It’s a rather stressful and competitive process. But I’m trying to go with the flow and assume what’s meant to be will be. That’s all I’ll say about that.

In the absence of my words, I’ll give you those of one my favorite poets: Bruce Snider. Printed in The Year We Studied Women.

The Certainty of Numbers

Early in 2011, I wrote about how I’ve had some big book ideas brewing for a while. There’s one of these in particular, which has compelled me entirely. Maybe it’s because I researched and wrote about refugees learning English during my senior year of college.

Or maybe it’s because the topic itself had me curiously and enthusiastically engaged–enough to keep me asking questions months, even years, later.  Now, more than 30 months have passed, I’m still plagued by language as psychotherapy and how refugees move away and on from families, homes and the only lives they’ve ever known.

As a journalist, I don’t just think there’s more story there: I know it.

Well, it’s time to do something about that story.

If you subscribe to The Traveling Writer newsletter (and if you don’t, then why not?), then in one of Alexis’s e-mails, you’ll  be asked to make a To Do list pertaining to your goal. At first, I thought it seemed silly. Could I really make a list about a book that I have A.) No idea how to go about researching and writing and B.) Could take me years and years to write?

Yes — because I just did it. And I even completed two steps on the list today.

My tentative plan is to pursue opportunities to volunteer with refugees in my area and set up a new blog specifically for this project, a great way to keep myself accountable in making progress.

I know the steps will be small, but that’s okay. I’m not going to have a finished product next year, or maybe even in five years. But I’m going to start the engines so I can begin to reach my dream within the confines of my status quo.

Stay tuned!

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Photo courtesy of Melody Campbell

Ask why.

At the very least, that editor will remember your name.

At the very best, you’ll open up a dialogue about your piece and may receive some constructive feedback.

The first time I asked an editor “Why,” did just that for me — I recieved an explanation about my submission and genuine encouragement to submit other ideas. So, I pitched her again and landed one of my first essays online.

Now, I always ask why. And it’s helped me form connections, improve my writing, and stay optimistic.

So, don’t get discouraged–get curious and motivated, and then get published. But first: ask why!

I love doing reviews! Which is why I was thrilled when the editors over at Brazen Careerist sent me a review copy of Susan Johnston, the Urban Muse’s, new ebook, LinkedIn and Lovin’ It.

Susan’s book made me realize that I shouldn’t just be mindlessly perusing LinkedIn without purpose — I can be making real connections to find new freelance work or clients using the site.

Read a few sneak peak hints from the book in my Brazen Life post, Tips for Using Social Media’s Neglected Child, LinkedIn.

Feel free to send me a message if you’d like to connect on LinkedIn

I never realized how much I enjoyed the visual component of journalism until I began writing and editing for a magazine.

We outsource our magazine design to a great firm, but they make us feel very involved in the process, and for that I am grateful–because it’s made me realize how much I love the way a great feature concept can enhance an article and make it more engaging.

And lately, I’ve been obsessed with infographics–a whole other way to do just that. I’ve been sending my coworkers ideas and examples left and right. From GOOD. The Washington Post. The Daily. All great sources for inspiration if you’re just starting out in data visualizations.

The September issue of our association magazine contains our first-ever infographic (it’s even animated in our digital version!).

What do you think? Have you begun using infographics, and do you like reading them?

My Wednesday Writers on Writing series has been on hiatus for a while due to work picking up, new freelance opportunities and summer travel. So when I saw an e-mail from Catherine Ryan Howard that she’d set a release date for her second memoir, Backpacked: A Reluctant Trip Across Central America, I was psyched! I interviewed Catherine about her first foray into self-publishing, Backpacked, here last year. I loved her humor, vibrancy and storytelling abilities. Here, she dishes on travel, fiction and why she took it upon herself to right the publishing industry with her e-guide on self-publishing. I admire Catherine’s zest for doing ‘whatever it takes’ to get her stories out there!

ACM: How did you come up with the idea for your second book, Backpacked?

CRH: When I released Mousetrapped (the story of the year and a half I spent living in Orlando, Florida and working in Walt Disney World) in March 2010, I thought of it as a one-off – both in terms of writing a travel memoir and self-publishing my own book. My plan was to use Mousetrapped’s success to keep me in coffee supplies and spruce up my writing CV while I tried to get a traditional publishing deal for the novel I was writing, my “real” writerly dream. But when sales took off about a year after release, a demand was created for another book and since I’d mentioned in Mousetrapped that immediately after Florida I’d gone backpacking in Central America, that seemed to be the natural thing to write about. It would effectively be a sequel but also stand alone. I had a travel journal, a much highlighted copy of the Lonely Planet’s Central America on a Shoestring, hundreds of photos, old blog posts and a best friend who could remind me of all the details of our adventures – all the material was there. And I love things that match, so being able to call the book “Backpacked” sealed the deal for me!

ACM: What did you learn from self-publishing Mousetrapped, and how did you apply that knowledge to your second memoir endeavor?

With Mousetrapped I was really learning about self-publishing as I went along, and I was quite lucky that everything turned out okay (mostly) in the end considering what little knowledge I was working with! I think the biggest lesson I learned that I can apply this time around is to pick a side of the publishing fence and stay on it. What I mean by that is, if you’re selling e-books and POD paperbacks, concentrate your efforts online. I had a book launch in a local book store because I wanted to feel like a proper author for a couple of hours (!) and because friends and family don’t quite understand the concept of a book only being available to buy from the internet. The launch went well, I got great publicity and I sold plenty of books, but it was a terrible idea financially. I had to pay out for things like posters, invites, etc. and I had to ship the books to myself (at a high cost; they had to get from the US to Ireland) and then sell them through the store. Plus, there were no “stranger” sales – all the books I sold were to people I knew who would’ve bought them anyway even if I hadn’t had a launch, so the expense was unnecessary. This time around – and from now on – I’ll only be selling my books online. Maybe one day someone else will publish my work and I’ll see my books in stores but until then, I’ll happily take the profit instead.

ACM: What’s the most challenging part of writing book-length nonfiction?

CRH: Both of my books are about personal experiences, so my challenge has been to resist putting every little event that happened into the book. Once you manage that, you have to figure out what goes in of what’s left. I was lucky with Mousetrapped because I was in Florida for a year and a half, and highlights pretty much emerged organically. But Backpacked covers a three-month trip, where every day something interesting was happening. It was really difficult not just to chuck it all in. A bad travel memoir reads like “This happened, and then that happened, and then we went there, and this happened…” whereas a good one has a theme, it has something more than a period of time holding the events it describes together. Once you find that, it becomes easier to see what should go in and what isn’t worth its own paragraph.

ACM: I hear you’re working on your first novel. What’s different about writing fictional characters and events?

The novel is actually finished and it’s currently being proofread before I self-publish that too in October. (It’s called – PLUG ALERT! – Results Not Typical, and it’s like The Devil Wears Prada meets Weightwatchers.) Fiction for me is almost too much like hard work. I’ve read interviews where writers say they much prefer novel writing because they have the freedom to make stuff up, but I find non-fiction so much easier because the events have already taken place and all I have to do is make them sound funny and interesting. Plotting, on the other hand, gives me headaches! But then I have to say while I prefer the process of writing non-fiction, I prefer having written fiction. It all balances out.

ACM: You also created an e-guide about self publishing. Why did you want to share your knowledge of self publishing with others?

CRH: Usually the first thing I do whenever I’m about to start something new is buy a book about it. With self-publishing all I could find, it seemed, were books assured me that traditional publishing was dead. I remember one of the first ones I came across said, “If publishers are doing so well, why do you they ask you to include return postage with your submission?”

Please let me now abuse punctuation to convey my reaction to that:

?????!!!!!!?????!!!!!!????????!!!!!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????!!!!!!!!!

Frighteningly it was in one of the top selling books on the subject too! So I decided to leave the books and instead figure everything out for myself as best I could. I started chronicling my self-publishing adventures on my blog, but I called it “self-printing” to reflect the approach I was taking to the whole thing: a sensible, realistic one.

By March 2011 – a year after release – I had an extensive collection of posts on the subject and I thought maybe I’d combine them into a PDF or something so it would be easier for new readers to access them. I know personally that I prefer having something to refer to rather than having to trawl through blog posts looking for the information I need. One weekend I sat down to copy and paste the posts in chronological order into a document but soon realized that there was loads of info I’d left out. So instead, I decided to write a guide, from scratch. The result was the 100,000+ words of Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing – the self-publishing guide for people who don’t think CreateSpace is going to get them on the New York Times bestseller list, who know that uploading a book to Smashwords isn’t going to make them rich and who don’t use the word “gatekeepers.”

ACM: Do you always have a new idea brewing? What’s next??

CRH: What I really want is to get a novel traditionally published and I’ve taken a break from that in the last few months so I could get Backpacked and Results Not Typical out in the world. Once they’re released in September and October respectively, I’m going to concentrate on finishing a women’s commercial fiction title I’m writing, and then try to use that in the new year to get an agent. (The agent I had left the business for personal reasons recently and I decided to start the search afresh.) After that I don’t know but if Results sells well, I do have two more books planned in that series, so I’ll probably turn my attention to them. And I’ll have to update Self-Printed. And after all that I’ll need a long holiday, which works out well because I also need material for a new travel memoir…

(I’m going to lie down now!)

*

Check out Catherine at:

www.catherineryanhoward.com

www.selfprintedbook.com

www.backpackedbook.com

www.twitter.com/cathryanhoward

Print is dead – long live print!  (Well, just kidding, I’ll always love print, but things ARE changing.)

Next month, my association magazine will begin using QR codes, video articles and infographics. To say I’m excited for this issue to hit the online newsstands and mailboxes is an understatement.

So, stuff is changing in the world of publishing. What does this mean?

We’re no longer thinking in terms of pages, we’re thinking in terms of content.

We’re no longer thinking about statistics or tables, we’re thinking about data visualizations and creating an interactive user experience.

And digital is changing the workplace too. It’s even changing the job search process. That’s why this week I wrote about the transformative impact of Skype on the interview on Brazen Careerist, where you can find me blogging twice a month. Read it. You may be asked to do one sooner than you think….

And don’t forget that if you want to reinvest it in yourself, you may want to consider sharpening your social media saavyness with Brazen U’s Executive Social Media Bootcamp.

What’s even cooler than hearing from Penelope Trunk and new media mavens from Etsy and Edelman? Since I’m now an affiliate, by signing up using the link above or below, you’ll also be helping me out

If you’re like me, you love keeping up with trends and learning new things. But refreshing your skill set can be costly, and though I love free online tutorials and webinars, I also value the structure of courses and conferences, which typically require you dish out the dough.

Luckily, I also have some experience with grantwriting, and pitching your boss a training opportunity is a lot like writing a grant proposal: you need to be concrete, detailed and realistic. On Brazen Careerist, I give more tips for getting your employer to fund professional training and development.

If you’re able to get your employer on board, or even if you’ve come into some money and want to reinvest it in yourself, you may want to consider sharpening your social media saavyness with Brazen U’s Executive Social Media Bootcamp.

What’s even cooler than hearing from Penelope Trunk and new media mavens from Etsy and Edelman? Since I’m now an affiliate, by signing up using the link above or below, you’ll also be helping me out