Over the past few years Jo Case, a writer and editor (currently Senior Writer/Editor at the Wheeler Centre) has been working on Boomer and Me: a memoir of motherhood and Asperger’s. I ask Case how she overcame what I imagine is a big challenge of writing memoir: having a 24/7 immersion in her subject. ‘The first thing I did was a very rough chapter plan,’ she says. Although her plan changed over time, it still gave her broad direction.

Turning the cover of a memoir is like opening a door. Thanks to nino** for this image, Through the Door, under Creative Commons.

While following that direction, Case also allowed herself some freedom in her first draft. ‘There’s a bit of a filter when you’re writing but I just tried to write what I was going to write and then go back and edit,’ she says. Once she had her story down Case looked for prose that was extraneous (the proverbial darlings). ‘There were little bits I had in there that I liked in terms of what they said about the characters in the book. But they weren’t actually necessary and they weren’t actually telling you anything that you didn’t see elsewhere or that you really needed to know,’ she says. Even after she sent her self-edited manuscript to her editor, Case estimates a further 20 thousand words were both cut and added.

Writing memoir raises the question of when and how to include other people. Case wrote a piece in Meanjin about her biggest challenge in this context: writing about her son. But there were other character portrayals to be considered too. ‘I would think about the fact that the writers who I admire don’t write with a view to being nice. They don’t write with a view to being mean either but there’s a certain amount of courage in there,’ she says. Case told the story as she saw it in her first draft. It wasn’t until she was editing that she gave rein to her anxieties and conscience about specific characters.

Like many writers Case had days when everything she wrote seemed bad to her. ‘I am so critical of myself. That was one of my biggest hurdles when I was writing,’ she says. She had periods of inactivity when she was convinced that her prose was poor, either because it was impossible to write or because it came too freely. At these times she drew on her knowledge of craft. ‘I knew that you have to write crap and then write through it to get to the good stuff. But it’s one thing to intellectually know that and another to actually deal with the fact that you’re creating words that make you feel like you’re no good.’ Nevertheless Case did dealt with it and now has a respected book to show.

For Case, self-belief was a challenge that related not only to her prose, but also to her genre. ‘I felt really narcissistic about [writing memoir]. I felt embarrassed when people would ask me what I was writing… It felt like the cheesiest thing to be doing. And I don’t feel cheesy about the book,’ she says. Memoir is not without its detractors. But Case overcame these concerns by studying her genre carefully. She wrote her conclusions in a popular post on her blog, Problem Child: In Defence of the Memoir.

In talking to me she sums up her philosophy about what makes a good memoir and writing in general. ‘I like reading books where the author clearly hasn’t made up their mind about what kind of perspective they’re trying to give you. [It’s more like they’re] exploring questions than trying to give you an answer,’ she says. Case kept this top of mind while writing. ‘I tried to keep thinking that I should be learning. I tried to keep questioning myself and to not just write things as they happened but to think a little more deeply about it – to be unafraid to leave things open,’ she says.

Which is an engaging way to close a memoir really… leaving things to resonate in its readers’ lives.

Follow @futurelongform on Twitter (or its writer, Pepi Ronalds on Facebook) for more stories about writing, publishing and long form non-fiction (including another post with Jo Case about working with editors).

‘Whether they make those little gasps or laughs or sighs, whether they’re relaxed or fidgeting and on edge: all of these bodily, nonverbal communications are part of what carries it. Both from you to the audience but also between them.’ Perrin’s seen what happens when a story falls flat and she knows when a story is resonating. She’s aware of the nonverbal communications that can keep writers distanced from our readers. As a writer for print I hate being in the same room as someone reading my work, every twitch and raised eyebrow sends me into a tangle of anxiety. Yet the way Perrin describes the conventions of telling stories, I wonder if the ability to have such a tangible connection with the audience might be a benefit.

Julie Perrin (top right in blue, talking) of Telling Words has an understanding of her audience that many writers don’t.

‘There are lovely conventions of repeated rhythms, alliteration and internal playing with sound that make it more memorable, and can lull people. There are repeated refrains that are like being rocked and (in the right moment) the people really appreciate that,’ says Perrin. In person or on paper, her awareness of how this musicality is received must surely be an asset. ‘There are other moments where it needs to become really sharp, witty and acerbic,’ she adds. These descriptions of hers make me wonder how different her writing process is for print and performance (she’s been published in The Age, The Big Issue and Visible Ink).

In fact, when she has a story idea, Perrin isn’t always sure whether she will print it or perform it. ‘I often run two different versions – not wildly different – but there’s just a slightly different inflection,’ she says. As her stories evolve Perrin decides whether her words will remain in print or be pared back for performance. When chosen for performance the artifact changes. ‘Ultimately you can have the most beautiful text but [if you’re going to tell it rather than print it] you can’t just sprout a text like a recitation because all of your energy is in remembering those words you’ve tried to learn,’ she says. ‘Audiences can see you trying to remember.’

Perrin breaks the to-be-told stories down to key words and storyboards, and she maps their locations and objects in the space around her in order to ground her listeners. The story might even change in the performance itself. ‘In any spoken story there’s a reciprocal relationship between the story, the listener and the teller. How a story is listened to by a group of people effects how it can be told. The story shifts with the quality of the listening,’ she says.

‘You really can’t make it too literary, so it’s about being artful with the everyday rather than trying to be really clever with very intense and dense language,’ Perrin says of choosing words for spoken delivery. But to me her advice seems apt for written work. Perrin describes the delivery of spoken work as ephemeral. ‘Essentially speaking it is just shaped air. That’s what it is. It’s here today and it’s gone in a second. The beginning of uttering a word: it’s almost over before it’s begun,’ she says. To me, a first-read is similarly fleeting.

Delivering to audiences has taught Perrin the importance of a moment in storytelling – of the tangible aspects of what writers make. Yet although an audience’s response may seem telling in one performance, unlike me, Perrin knows to take each twitch and raised eyebrow as they come. ‘There are all these different kinds of breath-response. There are all these different kinds of stories,’ she says, stating that just because one audience doesn’t scream with laughter or sob in sadness, it doesn’t mean your story and your writing is any less powerful or beautiful. ‘You just need to seek to inhabit it,’ she says.

Follow @futurelongform on Twitter (or its writer, Pepi Ronalds on Facebook) for more stories about writing, publishing and long form non-fiction (including another post with Julie Perrin about reading your work aloud).

Mmmm.

I’ve thought this notion dubious for some time. Not only do I have a sense that social media platforms are becoming saturated, but also I have pondered the limits of social media as a ‘platform’ for emerging writers. Many say it’s an asset to establishing a writing career but I’m not yet convinced. Two weeks ago, in a post about my fundraiser I demonstrated the limits I found (and these were despite assistance from influential Tweeters). My old boss, Tim O’Neill, Joint Managing Director of digital agency Reactive and AIMIA National President was an early adopter to Twitter. When he recently noted its limitations he had me listening.

Reckon we can all fit up there and still be heard on the information superhighway? I’m not so sure. Thanks to caribb for use of this image 12 Birds under Creative Commons.

‘In the earlier days (maybe two years ago when everyone was new to Twitter) everyone was out to find new followers. Everyone would follow people quite easily,’ O’Neill says. Back then a person could be strategic about generating followers. They could devise logical strategies to draw them in. ‘It would be quite achievable to get ten or twenty or thirty followers in a day just because people would sign up quickly,’ says O’Neill. But now? Not so much. These days most people think they have enough followees in their feed.

‘I’m personally really reluctant to follow anyone,’ says O’Neill, describing himself as somewhat mercenary. ‘It’s nothing personal. If I see lots of tweets from someone that are not relevant to me, then I’ll just unfollow – so that my tweet stream is interesting to me all the time,’ he says. Most of O’Neill’s 1,800+ followers were obtained in his first year on Twitter, the rest have just dripped in, on by one. It used to be different.

‘The classic way to manufacture more followers is to get someone who’s really popular on Twitter to retweet (or to mention you),’ says O’Neill. In the early days this would yield followers who presumed that you had something in common with the retweeter. (The hashtag #FF ‘Follow Friday’ is a part of this culture). ‘You’d get 100 followers straight away but now you don’t. You get maybe two or three,’ says O’Neill.

‘Part of [this challenge] is how Twitter handles retweets now,’ he explains. ‘Before Twitter had its inbuilt retweet function you used to have to do an RT (a manual retweet) and a manual retweet has a higher visibility of the person who’s retweeting,’ he explains. This would alert potential followers that the retweetee had the same interests as the retweeter. O’Neill notes that the more-recent inbuilt retweet function maligns the name of the retweeter to tiny font, and renders their endorsement far less influential.

If you want to draw attention to someone’s Twitter presence you would be better to include their @ handle in the body of the tweet, says O’Neill. More than that, tell the reader what’s in it for them. ‘It needs to be a simple and clear message and be obvious what it’s for or what it will do,’ he says.

I’ve interviewed a few publishers over the past year, and while they are all adamant that good writing is central to getting published, they also admit that a social media ‘platform’ can help. From an independent publisher’s perspective a bigger platform can simply save them time (in the same way that a flawless manuscript can). The more you can contribute from a marketing (and editing) perspective, the more attractive you are to them. A larger publisher stated clearly that many writers don’t get involved in social media. However she noted that the authors who do make an effort via social media can be more successful in getting reviews and attention.

So I suppose we all have to persist.

Follow @futurelongform on Twitter (or its writer, Pepi Ronalds on Facebook) for more stories about writing, publishing and long form non-fiction.

While my friend and I chat, the official launch of the 2013 Emerging Writers Festival (EWF) program looms and EWF staffers usher us to our seats. When one gets to me she smiles. ‘Oh! Hi Pepi! I didn’t know you were going to be here,’ she says warmly, ‘but then again…you’re always at EWF things!’ And I smile too, because it’s true. I am. I only learned about the EWF a year ago. But I’ve been an absolute fan since. This is because the EWF has been at the foundation of my achievements in the past year.

I might not be the greatest at making and designing fan-cards but I am one of EWF’s biggest fans.

I might be new to EWF but this year it’s celebrating its tenth anniversary. I can’t begin to imagine how many careers it has ignited in that time. For me it started with an encouraging PS on a kind of ‘rejection’ email to last year’s call for writers. I’d expressed my interest in the context of experiments I had done using Kindle as a way to publish long form non-fiction. ‘PS’, Karen Andrews (EWF’s Program Manager) wrote at the bottom of the email, ‘On a personal note, I really like your idea of long-form work potentially finding an Amazon/online audience. Good luck with it.’ I liked that she liked my idea, and her encouragement fed another idea I’d been kicking around for a while. A week later, the first fizz of EWF-inspiration took action, and I started planning this blog.

The 2012 Festival arrived and I was heartened by what I learned. I paid just $65 for a weekend of Town Hall conferencing which was unbelievably good value. This was one of the best investments I’ve made in my writing career so far. At the conference I made a new writer-friend. I learned that I was not alone in my goals and aspirations. I was inspired by the experiments of other writers dealing with our changing publishing environment. I became convinced of the need of a platform in which to write regularly.

A month later I launched this blog. My original intention was to write and post a few weeks in advance, but I was far too inspired. So I uploaded four of the five posts I had already written, backdating them to May. (Read my first post: Give up the newsroom or your career gets it). That may have been enough inspiration from one festival, but for me at least, the EWF is a festival that keeps on giving. Andrews’ PS and the Town Hall Conference were just steps one and two. There were plenty more to come.

I kept writing my blog every week. I started with no readership, but loved the discipline of writing and thinking about writing regularly (and still do). When the EWF put the call out for Emerging Bloggers for the Melbourne Writers Festival I put my hand up. I’ll never forget the thrill of learning that Future of Long Form had been selected. I was whooping through our empty house. The EWF had given me a great opportunity.

In August 2012 when the Emerging Blogging gig began I was struck by the warmth of both EWF and MWF staff. I didn’t know it yet, but EWF was making me a part of a writing community. I now had new writer friends and industry contacts (including my fellow Emerging Bloggers). Thanks to my MWF/EWF calling-card doors opened to interviews with prominent writers and organisations like Creative Nonfiction magazine, Robin Hemley and Margaret Simons. Plus I had ten days of uninterrupted inspiration with my cherished free festival pass. At the end of the festival I wholeheartedly thanked both the EWF and MWF for an amazing experience – somehow thinking their contribution to my career couldn’t get any better than this. Ha!

From Andrews’ PS, to the Town Hall Conference, to starting my blog, to becoming a blogger for MWF came a new opportunity. Based on my interview and post about Robin Hemley I was selected as an official blogger for the NonfictioNow conference. It’s another opportunity to interview great writers of international stature and I was gifted with more days of inspiration at that conference.

By then I’d developed the discipline of writing everyday, and I felt that my work was all the better for it (of course, I’ve still got a long way to go). I also learned a huge amount about long form, writing craft and distribution. I had some impressive names on my blog, which lead to more great names, which increased my readership. All of this makes me consider that none of this would have happened without the EWF. But it doesn’t even end there! It’s no wonder I’m a card-carrying fan.

In January 2013 I got two more whoop-worthy emails, which I wouldn’t have, were it not for the journey that EWF began. Imogen Kandel, Online Editor of Killings (Kill Your Darlings blog) invited me to be a 2013 columnist on Books and Writing. (My work was first exposed to Kandel during MWF). And the Wheeler Centre awarded me a Hot Desk Fellowship. I doubt I would have applied for the fellowship if the EWF team (especially Karen Andrews) hadn’t encouraged me and my new writing career all those months ago. (Props too, to former Director Lisa Dempster and new Director Sam Twyford-Moore – love their work!).

So yes, that’s why I am a card-carrying fan of EWF – and that’s why you’ll often see me at their events. I hope you’ll all go to plenty of events (view the program here) because you never know what might happen. And when you do go, come and say hello. I’ll be at the Town Hall Conference and other events and will be tweeting via both @futurelongform and @pepironalds.

Follow @futurelongform on Twitter (or like its writer, Pepi Ronalds on Facebook) for more stories about writing, publishing, craft and long form non-fiction.

My goals were to raise money for the Japan Red Cross and raise awareness that there is much work left to do in Japan. With the second anniversary as my signpost I aimed to leverage peoples’ curiosity about my experience into a purchase of the article. All royalties would go to the Japan Red Cross.

I tried to sell my long form to raise money for victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

It was punt, and I knew it. No one knows what’s going to take hold in the zeitgeist and the odds of success were low. But as this was a fundraiser I knew there’d be some goodwill and it was worth a try. My strategy was to focus the attention in one week (the week of the anniversary) and ask other people and organisations to promote it. I had no budget but I did have time.

I sent an email to friends and colleagues asking them to promote the fundraiser on their social networks. I also sent more personalised emails to people and organisations who were either interested in Japan, long form non-fiction or writing/reading generally. I sent tweets and got retweets, plus many friends and colleagues wrote their own tweets and Facebook posts. If it wasn’t for these people and organisations I wouldn’t have had a penny to donate. So a big thank you everyone who helped promote the initiative. These included high profile organisations like the Melbourne Writers Festival, the Wheeler Centre, the Emerging Writers Festival and JETAA. I also approached influential tweeters like Yoko Ono and David Grann (don’t ask, don’t get!). But I didn’t get any retweets from them (and I can appreciate their hesitation given that I am a stranger to them and not a registered charity).

I even managed to get an interview with Lindy Burns on my local (Melbourne) radio station, ABC774. Burns broadcast my web address at least twice and during the 15 minute live-to-air interview she made my goals clear to her listeners. She also sent out a retweet after the event. (Thanks again to Lindy and the ABC team!)

Here’s all of the exposure I managed to achieve:

• Various messages posted in:
  • Twitter feeds of at least 53,000 users.
  • Facebook feeds of at least 10,000 users.
  • Interview broadcast to between 10,000 and 20,000 listeners in my home state of Victoria.

This totals around 83,000 points of exposure to potential buyers (53k + 10k + 20k). Because I can’t know the exact numbers let’s be conservative and say that I managed to get the message in front of around 60,000 people.

The response I got (as measured by traffic to my website, pepironalds.com) comprised in the order of 135 visits. That is, of the 60,000, 135 decided to learn more.

66 of the 135 went to my website on the first day of promotions (and the day I was broadcast on ABC774), 41 went to my website the next day. Within four days traffic had returned to its usual (non-fundraising) amount. I don’t know how many people went directly to the article on Amazon (that information isn’t available).

These numbers say a lot about the challenges of marketing long form non-fiction in this format, as well as the limitations of social media as a viable platform for writers. Because of the huge goodwill, my message was exposed to 60,000 people. Yet I received 135 visits to my site. That’s a return of 0.22%.

And how many copies did I sell? 24 (yes, twenty-four). That’s a return of 0.04% on all that social media exposure. Or, if we’d like to be more generous, a return of 17% on the traffic to my website.

The picture with this article shows a bank draft for 9,585 yen. It sounds impressive but actually, it’s only around 100 Australian dollars. But even this is not how much I finally raised. Despite all that goodwill, exposure, time and effort I raised a grand total of US$28.33 for the Japan Red Cross. The rest of the AUD$100 in the bank draft is my own. I’ve paid this against the anticipation of future royalties because I’ve decided to continue selling this essay as a fundraiser indefinitely.

There were clear weaknesses in my strategy for this fundraiser. For example, I got the idea a week before the anniversary, so there wasn’t a lot of lobbying beforehand. (Yet all in all I spent at least three days, full-time, getting the message out there). The amount of royalties I made was also limited by my location in Australia. Kindle saturation is low here and Amazon grants only 35% royalty to sales within Australia (which is most of my sales) US sales would have yielded 70% in royalties.

Furthermore there would be a resistance to buying an e-book by an unknown writer. I hoped the fundraising aspect would offset that (and perhaps it did). But I wonder how difficult it would be for emerging writers to sell their long form without this goodwill?

I share this information because I promised to let everyone know how my fundraiser fared. But also, as a case study, I think this says a lot about the rhetoric versus the reality in selling our long form non-fiction online. Plus it shows the challenges in harnessing social media to promote our work. Still, we did manage to raise a small amount and for this I am extremely grateful to all those whose goodwill enabled this. Thank you so much everyone!!

I have since decided to continue to donate my royalties. So if you want to help out it’s not too late! http://www.pepironalds.com/help-japan

If you found this post helpful, be sure to read E-books: starting with a big bang.

Follow @futurelongform on Twitter (or its writer, Pepi Ronalds on Facebook) for more stories about writing, publishing and long form non-fiction.

But how does a lone writer with no marketing budget promote their new e-book? The common advice in writing communities includes sharing via social media, getting reviews and getting yourself and your work profiled on traditional media. These are all good strategies. But it isn’t until I put the question to someone outside of the writing community that I realise there are good ways and bad ways to apply these. Tim O’Neill, Joint Managing Director of digital agency Reactive, AIMIA National President (and, full disclosure, my old boss) draws a useful parallel between marketing e-books and marketing apps.

Promoting on a budget? Pack your marketing efforts into one big bang, says Tim O’Neill. Thanks to continis for use of this image, Fireworks, under Creative Commons.

Concentration is at the core of app marketing. ‘You want to get a real peak of downloads in one go so that it flies up the charts because you get noticed,’ says O’Neill. Getting noticed means the opportunity to be featured on New and Noteworthy charts – places that app buyers (and e-book readers) regularly frequent. A concentration of marketing activity can also help get your work into the zeitgeist. If people are exposed to your message via different sources they may soon become curious and download or discuss it themselves. This is another component of app marketing: ‘trending’, which can be carried over to e-books.

‘The easiest way to get trending is to get all that attention bundled as opposed to drip-feeding it over time,’ says O’Neill. He calls it the big bang theory of marketing. ‘The big bang theory of marketing is to work out what you can do and do it all at once. You spend all your media in one big go,’ he says. Concentrating all of your marketing activity to a single day or a single week is the difference between standing in a crowd lighting little sparklers one-by-one or blasting your message above that crowd through a single firework.

Writers with no ‘marketing spend’ will need to gather their gunpowder nimbly. ‘Part of marketing your e-book would be having the book [or information about it] in as many free places as possible,’ O’Neill says. He cites slideshare.net as one example. Free sites like this give you a chance to be discovered. ‘Especially if you do the meta tagging and descriptions correctly,’ says O’Neill.

Consider also who can promote on your behalf. Taking the example of my recent fundraiser, O’Neill suggested asking the Red Cross to promote it or retweet about it. Asking for retweets is particularly easy, ‘It’s definitely an appropriate way to go about promotion because you’re asking someone to do something in the medium,’ says O’Neill. (Do a logic test first however, because it needs to make sense that this person or organisation would retweet). Calling on friends and family for their pyrotechnic assistance will also help. ‘It’s getting other people to amplify it for you rather than you having to do all the work,’ O’Neill says.

As a professional digital expert O’Neill knows the value that search engines can bring. ‘Search is definitely going to play a role and search optimisation should play a big role if you don’t have a media budget,’ says O’Neill. First decide on a page or domain where you will concentrate all of your marketing efforts (for example mine is pepironalds.com/help-japan). Then use search optimisation techniques to get that page ranking highly on search engines like Google (this is a complex venture, so I won’t try to explain it here: try this PDF instead ). You may even want to invest in a paid campaign (but take care to set it up correctly as these ads can cost more than your royalties).

‘In the product development phase app developers will ask things like who the audience is and whether there is a need and a demand for it. If there’s no immediate need or demand they ask how they will create that demand,’ says O’Neill. These are the kinds of questions that will define the avenues on which you market your e-book. What’s it about? Who would like to read it? Who needs to read it?

The trick to big-bang marketing is preparing all of this information in advance, making the contacts and setting up the day, or week for all of the marketing to happen. As with handling explosives you will need to take particular care and concentration. But this might be the difference between a blast of sales or a disappointing implosion.

For more advice like this (including more from my interview with Tim O’Neill), follow @futurelongform on Twitter (or its writer, Pepi Ronalds on Facebook).

Shrinking newsrooms, merging publishing houses and the proliferation of free content all sit on the not-so-great side of the income-earning ledger. On the other hand new initiatives like digital-first or digital-only publishing houses and print-on-demand technology have been encouraging. For some writers there may be potential income in exploring in these new spaces but Alex Adsett, Consultant and Literary Agent with Alex Adsett Publishing Services, says we should check the fine print.

You may be contracted for life if you don’t take care! Thanks to Michael Cory for use of this image, Empty Office, under Creative Commons.

‘Writers should be aware that a lot of digital-first or digital-only contracts still try to get everything,’ she says. By ‘everything’ Adsett is referring to rights (such as film rights, translation rights, audio, merchandise, serialisations, the right to on-license, print rights and more). ‘If [the publisher is] going to do something with them then that’s fine and that’s always a decision the author needs to make… But if they’re just some little company that just wants to sell your e-book then they shouldn’t be getting that broad a range of rights,’ says Adsett. Limit rights where appropriate (for example with a digital-only company writers should try to license only digital). Keep in mind what’s appropriate. (Writers often take care with regional rights, but in a digital setting world-rights might be needed given the costs of geolocating / blocking and the small profit margins involved in publishing).

Those of us excited by the opportunities new technologies bring need to understand the affect of these on the old ‘out-of-print’ clause. Traditionally this clause reverted rights back to the author when a work was no longer in stock. ‘With e-books and with print-on-demand technology, that’s just not realistic anymore. A book is always going to be available for sale,’ says Adsett. She warns that the out-of-print clause applied to digital or print-on-demand technologies could mean a publisher holding rights to your work in perpetuity (even if they have no intention of making that work available).

Adsett says that good publishers are applying new ‘reversion’ clauses to cover out-of-print in both e-book and print contracts. In these contracts out-of-print is defined as either relating to a sales limit (for example, if less than 50 or 100 copies are sold in a 12 month period) or it’s defined as relating to an expiry date (in the form of a fixed-term contract). The dwindling sales or the expiry date trigger a reversion of rights back to the writer. On self-publishing platforms Adsett says we should check for similar ‘escape’ clauses. She warns that publishers refusing to negotiate fairly on rights may be a part of a new numbers-oriented breed that has emerged alongside new technologies.

‘There was always a high cost to publishing. You had to actually believe in a book to put your money into the printing of it,’ says Adsett. Because of this, traditional publishers invested in editorial, design and marketing. They contributed their expertise and hard work and in doing so they gave writers a stamp of quality. By contrast, new technologies have reduced the cost of publishing significantly. Some new publishers are adopting a more hardnosed model. They sign up hundreds of pieces and invest in little or no editorial.

In this scenario if one in 100 pieces sell through, the numbers add up and the publishing business (and one writer) is successful. But it’s a poor deal for most writers says Adsett, ‘All of the other 99 authors have signed away their rights for almost nothing, for almost no sales, and not a lot of chance of getting their rights back.’ If you send your work into that cookie-cutter framework you’re likely to be worse off. You may even find yourself sitting, in a suit, at a desk, from 9 to 5 in one of those tall office buildings making back the income you lost.

Contracts may be complex, but our contractual obligation is simple. ‘Even through all that excitement of [getting a publishing offer] think about what you’re actually signing and why,’ says Adsett.

Follow @futurelongform on Twitter (or its writer, Pepi Ronalds on Facebook) for more stories about writing, publishing and long form non-fiction.

So just in case you’re as naïve as me, let’s get this difference sorted: a translator works with a printed text and translates it into a different language (also of printed text), an interpreter works in an interpersonal situation interpreting real-time speech from one language to the other.

Interpreters and translators bridge the language barrier when we research across the pond.

Nic Low, Manager of the International Writing Program at Asialink, says the process of working with an interpreter can be challenging. ‘When writers get together they’re some of the most excitable and talkative people you could ever hope to meet. It’s in that fluid exchange of ideas through conversation that connections are made [and] that parallels in your work are formed,’ he says. Introduce an interpreter and that fluidity can feel a little swampy.

‘It’s like being underwater. It all happens in slow motion because after everything you say you have to stop and wait while the interpreter translates,’ says Low. Yet a change of pace can also be helpful: waiting half a minute between exchanges gives writers the opportunity to formulate stronger questions. ‘It can [also] allow for some of the most succinct and concise conversation,’ Low says.

I try to imagine this painstaking exchange in the context of the questions writers must ask. ‘Some people find it incredibly difficult. It’s like having an intimate conversation with someone but having someone else in the room,’ says Low. I feel the awkwardness of putting the hard questions to an interviewee, and then picture that with an interpreter. Are there times when an interpreter fudges or slightly rephrases something contentious or culturally sensitive?

‘My observation is that their training is all about staying neutral,’ says Low. If you ask a personal or culturally challenging question, your interpreter must also ask it. Qualified interpreters are fluent in both languages. This means writers working with these interpreters should feel confident not only about their questions getting through (eventually) but also about the quality of responses. ‘With a good interpreter there won’t be any broken English or odd turns of phrase. It’ll all come to you crystal clear in either language,’ says Low.

The emphasis on neutrality means that interpreters can’t be expected to help navigate the cultural terrain. What you need for this is a fixer. ‘This is someone who can walk you through the potential pitfalls and can show you how you can do what you need to do in a way that’s respectful,’ says Low. These folks have connections and ideally some knowledge in the field you’re researching in. They’ll help you get around a foreign country, linguistically, culturally, geographically and bureaucratically.

There are various grades to interpretation. Cost will depend on your location and other factors. At times Low says, a top-grade interpreter can charge in the order of AUD$700 to $900 per day. ‘But it’s very unlikely that any [writers] would be able to afford them,’ he says. Instead he recommends we find our own champions. ‘If you’ve got someone whose English you trust, who can come along with you voluntarily, that’s the most feasible way of doing it,’ he says. [See also this post on International Research].

Low advises writers on the Asialink program to learn as much of their soon-to-be local language as possible before leaving Australia. No matter how organised or cashed-up you may be there will invariably be times when you will be without an interpreter (or getting by with the help of someone who has English as a second language). He also tells writers to, ‘be constantly signaling your intention to communicate, your intention to listen and to understand, to not show impatience or frustration… Be very present in your listening, maintain eye contact to give the kind of phatic communion signals that we give in everyday conversation.’ These non-verbal signals can take you a long way.

Dealing with translation may sound far less complicated but Low warns us not to underestimate this work either. ‘There is a real creativity to good literary translation,’ he says. ‘It’s not about creating your own work but it’s about having sufficient expertise, depth of knowledge and being a really good writer yourself.’ Literary translators need an ear for a writer’s rhythm and emphasis, and for the music of language.

Appreciating the difference between translators and interpreters has captured me in a semantic loop. I realise that many times I’ve said ‘lost in translation’ when ‘lost in interpretation’ would be more correct (but something more is surely lost in applying the words correctly!) For now I’m going with ‘lost in translerpretation’.

For a great long form read follow this link to Nic Low’s piece about the Christchurch earthquake in the Griffith Review.

Follow @futurelongform on Twitter (or its writer, Pepi Ronalds on Facebook) for more stories about writing, publishing and long form non-fiction.

Sometimes this silence is golden. All I can hear is the wind in the trees, birds tweeting above and children playing at the nearby school. But other times – when the silence is due to my isolation and inexperience – it’s all too frustrating. It’s the silence that comes from not having the information, skills or expertise to move forward. It’s the silence that’s got me to thinking about the idea of a mentor.

Without a mentor my ear might as well be made of stone. Thanks to Anja Jonsson for use of this image Ear of a stone head under Creative Commons.

With the downsizing of newsrooms and publishing houses more and more writers are working in isolation. ‘They want someone who can guide them long term [and who] they can turn to more than once,’ says Sally Williams, Marketing and Membership Coordinator at Writers Victoria. Williams runs Writers Victoria’s twice-yearly mentorship program. ‘When we open applications we get absolutely swarmed with people, and in between… we get loads of enquiries,’ she says. So it seems I’m not the only one interested in a bit of professional guidance.

According to Williams, the key to a successful mentor-mentee relationship is being prepared and totally clear about what you want to achieve. ‘Don’t just come into it and expect the mentor to be able to wave the magic wand and make things better. [Writers need to set] clear measurable short and long term goals that they can achieve.’

‘If we didn’t have that goal-setting process I could see the relationship falling into a weird, useless exercise in not much,’ says Samantha van Zweden, freelance writer, blogger and bookseller. She has a mentoring arrangement with writer, editor and reviewer Laurie Steed. Steed and van Zweden’s mentorship evolved organically from a professional association. But other writers find mentors by approaching directly or going via a program like the one at Writers Victoria.

One of the biggest challenges for all writers in mentorships is in meeting expectations says Williams. ‘A few mentors will really crack the whip and have expectations of what they think the mentee should achieve by the next meeting.’ Williams has often seen writers struggling to keep up. ‘The mentor offers the guidance but the writer still has to go away and do the hard yards,’ she says.

For van Zweden these hard yards are part of the benefits a mentor arrangement can bring. ‘That’s to do with accountability. Because I know there’s someone rooting for me, I want to reach that point. He won’t expect something of me that I can’t do,’ she says. So when Steed sets her a challenge she does everything in her power to achieve it.

Right now van Zweden and her mentor are working on preparing pieces for publication and stretching her multi-sensory descriptions. ‘He’s encouraging me to use all my senses and setting me specific exercises to work towards that.’ Steed has also helped her with goal-setting, improving her writing and pitching stories.

The Writers Victoria program involves six one-hour sessions. The first is an overview mapping expectations and goals. ‘From there each session is about looking at progress made and focusing on any weak spots that the mentor might identify in the work (or parts that the writer’s really struggling with),’ says Williams. Van Zweden and Steed take a less formal approach. They’re based in different states and prefer as-needs email correspondence.

A paid mentorship can cost anywhere between AUD$50 and $100 per hour depending on who your mentor is. (It’s $60 per hour in the Writers Victoria program). There are also mentors who aren’t paid, or who are paid in kind by mentees who undertake research or other tasks. Van Zweden says that it’s important for mentees to show their appreciation, ‘I know that it’s very generous for [Steed] to give me a mentorship in terms of time and brainpower. So I make [the tasks he sets] a priority, to show it the respect it deserves,’ she says. And let’s not forget that there’s something in it for mentors too. ‘By identifying problems in someone else’s work and helping them through it [the mentors are] learning about their own writing,’ says Williams.

In addition to providing guidance, Steed has helped van Zweden build her confidence and expand her perspective. He’s helped identify weaknesses in her writing and even at times, what music to listen to (they both write to music). He’s also acted as a champion for her work, and made relevant introductions. ‘The doors that are opened because he’s there… wouldn’t be there otherwise. I’m eternally flattered about how much he’s gotten behind what I do,’ she says.

All in all Williams says that mentorships hum along nicely, bringing benefits to all parties. ‘There have been a lot of ‘ah ha’ moments,’ says van Zweden of her exchanges with Steed.

‘Ah ha!’ – sounds like just the words to fill my silence of inexperience.

Help me raise funds for earthquake and tsunami victims

Last week I wrote a post about remembering 3/11. You can read more about my experience of the Japanese Earthquake and make a small donation to earthquake and tsunami victims by downloading my long form essay.

All royalties on sales this month (March 2013 inclusive) will go to the Japan Red Cross Earthquake and Tsunami fund.

More details are outlined on my website pepironalds.com/help-japan

If there’s anything you can do to help spread word of this fundraising effort I’d be most appreciative.

As a long standing graduate of Media Studies I thought I had a good understanding of how the media machine worked. Yet it took my experience of being in that disaster to grasp these processes fully. Being the reported-on rather than the reporter increased my sensitivity to telling a story fairly, to checking facts and being considerate of those I’m writing about. Story is crucial to non-fiction but there is a fine line between story and spin.

My perspective: where I was standing when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck.

I never missed my media more than in the days after the earthquake. My partner and I were in the eye of a media storm. We had no electricity, no phones and no internet. We couldn’t speak Japanese, so talking to our neighbours was out. We sat, ignorant and in darkness while screens across the world glowed with information about what was happening around us. The earthquake struck at 2.46pm Japan-time (4.46pm in Melbourne). It wasn’t until 9.00pm that we learned a huge tsunami had inundated communities less than 10 kilometres away. This was five hours after the event.

Of course, when our electricity and internet was restored a few days later I was hungry for information. The first thing I did was go to the websites of English language newspapers. It didn’t take me long to wish I hadn’t.

It wasn’t that these newspapers were giving me dire information. I already knew the situation was pretty grim. It was that these newspapers were taking a sensational angle on the information they had. They were highly selective in what they chose to publish, and from my quiet perch in Sendai I could finally see the play between story and spin. I could understand it too: the readerships of these papers (and some of their reporters) were safely ensconced overseas.

‘Radiation fears from plant explosion’ is a harrowing headline to read when you’re less than 100 kilometres from said plant. I remember looking for information in detailed articles like this while I was in Sendai. But I realised that though I was among the most in need of information I was not the target audience. The reports weaved information with schadenfreude and titillation. For me, the spin went in the wrong direction.

I read about a colleague reported as missing when in fact he wasn’t. I heard stories of TV journalists insisting interviews with locals were conducted outside one of the few significantly damaged buildings in Sendai city. These reports invariably ended with speculation. They were guaranteed page-turners investing an appetite for the next day’s news. The best advice I got that week was from an Australian consulate official. He told me not to look at news sites but instead, the embassy sites. These were produced by people in the business of providing information. Understanding this difference between news and information was a revelation for me.

In the past week I’ve seen reports anticipating the second anniversary of the earthquake. Again I am reminded that distance makes a difference to spin. So many of these English-language reports are focused on the worst and most tragic of the situation: a story about lingering radioactivity, another about suicides.

Watching and reading these with the perspective of someone who was there heightens my awareness of my duties as a writer. Lee Gutkind says, ‘you can’t make this stuff up,’ and serious writers of non-fiction try not to. But what we choose to focus on is critical, the way we frame our questions, select our words and write up our stories will always put a spin on things. Writers, take care.

Not surprisingly I am super sensitive to reports on this particular event. It brings up fears and memories that at times I’d like to forget. I don’t appreciate the negativity put on the futures of people I care about. But as a writer I am grateful for what will be an annual reminder of the need for balance. It will always encourage me to use my words respectfully.

Help me raise funds for earthquake and tsunami victims

Make a small donation to earthquake and tsunami victims by downloading my long form essay about my experience of the earthquake.

All royalties on sales this week (11 to 17 March 2013 inclusive) will go to the Japan Red Cross Earthquake and Tsunami fund.

More details are outlined on my website pepironalds.com/help-japan

If there’s anything you can do to help spread word of this fundraising effort I’d be most appreciative.