blogher '12: turning your blog into publishable essays

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Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12: From Blog Post to Published Essay Powerpoint author: Susan Goldberg / @mamanongrata Additional input from: Jennifer Armstrong / @sexyfeminist Rita Arens /@ritaarens

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Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays at BlogHer '12

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Page 1: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

From Blog Post to Published EssayPowerpoint author: Susan Goldberg / @mamanongrata

Additional input from:

• Jennifer Armstrong / @sexyfeminist

• Rita Arens /@ritaarens

Page 2: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

“Good writing isn’t written – it’s rewritten.”

– Ralph Milton

founder of Wood Lake Books

Page 3: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

What anthology editors are looking forIndividual essays

• Good writing

• Compelling stories

• Diversity

• Breadth of experience

• Big names

Overall

• A collection of pieces that work well together

Page 4: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Find and mime your niche

• If you have no specific “niche,” your writing may have to work harder.

• Read the call carefully and submit in the correct format

• Query if you’re uncertain!

Page 5: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Tips (continued)

• Go as personal and juicy as you can.

• “… part of our trust in good personal essayists issues, paradoxically, from their exposure of their own betrayals, uncertainties, and self-mistrust.” -- Phillip Lopate, “The art of the personal essay”

Page 6: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

But …Don’t overshare for its own sake:

• You also need to bring greater meaning to your own story, a larger point that will make it interesting to people who don't know you.

• Don't confuse being confessional or exhibitionistic with being a good essayist; good essayists make the

personal universal and meaningful.

Page 7: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

(Continued)

• Choose details wisely; be aware of the larger point you're making, and stay focused on it throughout the piece.

Page 8: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Don’t confuse free writing with your final draft.

"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something – anything – down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft – you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft – you fix it up. Is try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed or even, God help us, healthy.“ – Anne Lamott

Page 9: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

The “pre/-down” draft

• For your eyes only. Hint: Write it in longhand, on paper.

• Brain dump: Anecdotes, memories, insights, ideas

• “Anecdote map”: Most good essay writing is a sequence of anecdotes that relate to a larger theme -- write these down in detail.

Page 10: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Structure

Introduction/lead (lede)

• [reflection]

• Thesis

• Anecdote/reflection [X 2, 3, 4…]

• Ending

Page 11: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

First things first: the introduction• Begin at the beginning: With a point of

conflict, desire, change, crisis or questioning for the author

• Get rid of the “verbal throat clearing”

• Draw us in from the opening line:

• Anecdote or an image

• Dialogue or a direct quote

• Create a scene

Page 12: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Possible hooks

• Anecdote or incident

• Background

• Character sketch

• Conflict (explicit or implicit)

• Puzzle/question

• Gripping metaphor or image

• Provocative statement

• Paint a word picture

• Promise of benefits to the reader

• Startling fact

• Well-known quotation or maxim (turned on its head)

Page 13: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Thesis: Make a point!

• Otherwise it’s not an essay.

• Not just for academic papers!

• Shows what this piece of writing will be about

• Connects introduction to the other anecdotes to come

• Will be what the conclusion addresses

Page 14: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

In between …

• Layers of anecdote/reflection

• Building toward conclusion

• Moving into deeper emotional territory

Page 15: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Context/reflection/analysis

• Does the author give the necessary background context the reader will need to make sense of the story? Does this information come soon enough that we are not confused or frustrated? Is there too much background information — does background threaten to overwhelm the main story?

Page 16: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Conclusion• Whatever comes up in your introduction

and your thesis should be addressed in the conclusion

• Does the conclusion actually conclude or resolve the writer’s goal? Is it clear that the writer has explored the topic thoroughly and discovered something or somehow changed in the process? Does the conclusion relate to issues and images raised in the introduction and throughout?

• Does the conclusion resist the urge to tidy things up nicely?

Page 17: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Conclusion techniques• A vividly drawn scene

• A memorable anecdote that clarifies the main point of the story

• Telling detail that symbolizes something larger than itself or suggests how the story might move forward into the future

• Direct address to the reader where the writer says, “this is my point”

• Ominous glimpse into the future

Page 18: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Style• What’s at stake?

• Honesty and reflection

• Show, don’t tell• Active versus passive language

• Specificity, detail

• Language considerations• Shorter sentences/clearer language

• Sentence and paragraph variation

Page 19: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

What’s at stake?

• You need tension or conflict: unresolved desire

• What is it?

• Look back to your thesis

Page 20: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Honesty/reflection

• How honestly and thoroughly do you explore the tension?

• Do you explore/allow for the points that are different than yours?

• Do you gloss over the difficult parts?

• Or do you write them, even if they don’t present you in the best possible light?

• Do you simply complain, or do you try to find deeper meaning?

Page 21: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Tips: honesty/reflection• Look through your draft for hints that you

are backing off (“I don’t know why”; “that’s just the way things are … ”)

• Take your emotional temperature as you read

• Don’t let outward intimacy masquerade as honesty (sex, confessional, nudity, etc.)

• Watch for passive language

Page 22: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Show, don’t tell

• Eliminate “to be”

• Watch for “I felt, I thought”

• Watch for adverbs

• Use dialogue

Page 23: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Eliminate “to be”• I am/was, you are/were, s/he is/was, etc.

• Instead of:

• I was nervous … “I felt like I was riding in a car with all the doors open.”

• I was embarrassed … “I turned red.”

• I was angry …

• I was hungry…

Page 24: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Other passives

• Watch for “I felt, I thought … ”

• Adverbs: can you show “angrily, nervously, heatedly, quickly, happily, repeatedly … ” Etc.

• Can they be replaced with more vivid nouns and verbs?

Page 25: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Use dialogue

• Replace some instances of “s/he said” and “s/he told me,” with the actual dialogue.

• Much more immediate: brings us into the scene

• Too much is overkill

Page 26: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Specificity

“Write an I.O.U. to your soul to capture something that only you could have noticed about a story.”

—Robert Krulwich, NPR

Page 27: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Meaningless phrases• On the basis of

• To a large extent

• In the neighborhood of

• For the reason that

• Subject to

• Along the lines of

• For the purpose of

• At this point in time

• With respect to

• With a view to

• In the event that

• In terms of

• On the grounds of

• Provided that

• In accordance with

• To conclude

• On a daily basis

Page 28: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

Deflate words

• Rationalization

• Implementation

• Imagination

• Superficiality

• Declination

• Accomplishment

• Prioritization

• Termination

• Reason, excuse

• Do, use

• Imagine, think

• Shallow, fake

• Go down, diminish

• Make, realize

• Choose, rank

• End, stop, fire

Page 29: BlogHer '12: Turning Your Blog into Publishable Essays

Session hashtag: #BH12Post2Essay: Conference hashtag: #BlogHer12:

How do you know you’re done?

“You just do. … you’ve gone over something so many times, and you deleted and pruned and rewritten, and the person who reads your work for you has given you great suggestions that you have mostly taken — and then finally something inside you just says it’s time to get onto the next thing. Of course there will always be more you can do, you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.”– Anne Lamott