Author: Scott Nagele

You got a receipt for that beanstalk, Jack?

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I’ve written about reading to my kids an edition of The Three Little Pigs that completely ditched any concept of personal responsibility, making the two pig casualties simple victims of fate. The latest fairy tale to make me wonder about its lessons is Jack and the Beanstalk.

As with the pigs, Jack comes in many versions. The one we read was a Golden Books edition, which I think are supposed to be the standard for children’s classics. I hope I’m wrong about this, and there is a Jack with better morals out there.

bad boy Jack

Let’s hope there’s a reform school at the top of this thing.

Jack makes bad choices, but benefits from them. He is absolved of his poor bargaining decisions because of a freak bit of luck. There’s no way he should have traded his cow for a few beans. His mother was right to give him hell about it. Out of a thousand kids who traded for magic beans, 999 of them went to bed hungry and rose hungry the next day, and that was the end of it.

It was pure luck that Jack happened upon the only trader offering legitimate magic beans. This happenstance made a stupid decision look good. It made his mother look like an overbearing scold, when she was really the sensible one. We never hear about Jimmy and the Beanstalk, or Stanley and the Beanstalk. You know why? Because their magic beans were hoaxes. They got spanked and sent to bed. In the morning, they ate dirt for breakfast. No happy ending there.

Jack gets lucky. In the morning there is a giant beanstalk outside his window. Jack climbs it up into the clouds – probably not the wisest decision, but I’ll give him a pass on that one. At the top, he finds a castle. He goes inside. I would too.

Inside the castle, Jack discovers a giant. This giant has two noteworthy possessions: a goose capable of laying golden eggs and a magic harp. Without any hemming or hawing, Jack decides to steal these things. Jack spends so little time weighing the morality of this theft that we cannot tell if he would act similarly in a neighbor’s house, or if this is a special case because giants are different and therefore okay to steal from.

Jack hurries down the beanstalk with his booty. Naturally, the giant chases him. In some versions, Jack chops down the beanstalk; in this one the beanstalk falls of its own accord. This is a relief, since it negates the burden of explaining to my children why Jack stole from the giant and then murdered him. The theft issue is quite enough.

But it’s really not so bad. You see, unbeknownst to Jack, the giant stole the goose and harp from Jack’s dear departed father. It was justice in the end, expunging Jack’s crime of stealing. Again, dumb luck bailed out Jack. Though Jack stole from pure greed, the giant’s estate couldn’t press charges because the items were pilfered by their rightful owner. It all makes me wonder from whom Jack’s father stole the stuff in the first place.

Legally, Jack is off the hook. Morally? Well, that’s a discussion you’ll have to have with your child.

Word of Mouth advertising: inexpensive and unmeasurable

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Whenever someone takes the time to tell me they enjoyed one of my books, I make sure two things are part of my reply. First, I say, “Thank you,” because it’s the proper response. The second thing I say is, “Tell your friends.”

There are many forms of paid and unpaid advertising the self-published author can use. Compared to the advertising big corporations can afford, all of these forms reach relatively few people. Yet, even for a large publisher, paid advertising would not be enough to carry a book to success. Never can enough people be influenced by paid advertising alone. If people who enjoy a book don’t talk about it, the book will not reach its potential.

Word of mouth is one of the most handy marketing tools available to the micro-publisher. It’s free and nothing carries more influence with readers than the opinions of trusted friends. The problem with word of mouth is it’s difficult to measure.

Easiest to gauge are the people you know, and even this is not so simple. Sometimes people who have enjoyed my books will ask to buy an autographed copy to give to a friend. This is an easy tally for word of mouth. You can mark it down, and it’s already sold you an extra book. Outward from here, things get murky. People may tell you they loved your book, but it’s usually hard to know if they’ve told that to anyone besides you.

Get the word out

“Hey fellas, let me tell you about this great book I just finished! After that, maybe we can go put out a fire.” (Image: Gordon Parks/US Farm Security Administration)

You don’t want to grill them about the number of people with whom they’ve shared their enjoyment of your work, because you don’t want to become that author. They just wanted to be entertained; they didn’t expect there would be homework. So you don’t ask, because you want them to remember their enjoyment, not that you robbed them of it by leaning on them to pimp your book.

It is always gratifying to hear that somebody enjoyed your book, but it can be frustrating not knowing if that enjoyment is being translated into any meaningful word of mouth. Once you come to terms with the fact that there will never be a good way quantify the number of times satisfied readers recommend your book, you can focus on the positive. Your hard work has resulted in a book people are enjoying. That’s a big deal because it’s the first prerequisite for successful word of mouth advertising.

Even though you can’t know the number of personal recommendations of your book, you do have the power to increase that number by continuing to work hard to promote your book. The more people you reach, the more people they, in turn, will reach.

You have to trust your readers. You’ve worked hard to interest them and touch their emotions in some way. If you’ve done it well, they’ll share it. But it’s not a breach of faith to drop in a polite, “Tell your friends,” after showing gratitude for a compliment.

You want to write a novel, but life gets in the way

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I read a lot of blogs these days; it’s the unintended consequence of becoming a blogger. One thing I have discovered from reading blogs is that even among bloggers who don’t blog about fiction, there are many who are working on writing a novel. Even more dream of writing a novel.

Bloggers, with some exceptions, blog because they have stories to tell. A fair number of them have special stories kicking around in their heads, waiting to spill out into great novels.

I’m still searching for commercial success as a novelist myself. But as someone who has written a handful of novels, maybe I can offer some advice and inspiration to those who feel daunted by the prospect of finishing, or even beginning, their novel.

To begin with, I have good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad news because that’s what writers would want first.

The Bad News: You’ll probably have to write more than one novel, if you want to build a readership for your work. The age of the Harper Lees is gone. Hell, Harper Lee isn’t even a Harper Lee anymore.

The Good News: Once you finish the first novel, you’ll realize how non-daunting writing novels can be. You may even become eager to start another.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s the first one that’s the trouble. How do you make it happen?

Assuming you’ve got a good story to tell, you tell it in the same way you tackle every other life challenge: one day at a time.

A daily routine

Captain Scott was on a mission to reach the South Pole and he still found a few minutes every day to write. Okay, so maybe not the best example of a success story, but you get the point. (Image: H.G. Ponting)

The secret every aspiring novelist should know is that you don’t have to put your life on hold to write a novel. But you do have to make it a part of your daily life.

It doesn’t have to be a big part as long as the commitment is there. If you write a mere 500 words a day, excluding weekends, in two weeks you’ve got 5,000 words. And you may be surprised to learn how often you can write those 500 words in half an hour. In eight months, you’d have a respectable 80,000-word first draft. The caveat is that the words have to advance the plot; your characters can’t lose focus and go on about the weather, unless the weather is about to kill somebody.

A daily 500 words is fine, but how do you consistently move the plot? Trust your characters. Let them do the logical things for interesting people to do in their unique circumstances. Also, don’t wait until you’re on the clock for your novel to happen. The most time-intensive part of writing a novel is not hammering out the story at the keyboard; it’s thinking about the story. This you can do while you’re walking the dog or waiting in the car line at your kids’ school.

If you can’t meet your goal one day, make it up when you’re on a roll. In between, think about how the place you’re in fits into the big picture. Use the writing and non-writing parts of writing a novel together to problem solve. Write the scenes; think the big picture. Novels happen one little bit at a time.

And after you’ve finished your novel, what do you do with it? Maybe somebody smarter than I am will answer that question.

If you truly love me, you’ll ignore my screams of terror

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Like many things in life, writing is a roller coaster ride. But it’s a ride that most writers can manage by themselves, or with the encouragement of a small group of peers. The scarier roller coaster departs the platform after the book is written. This is the hell ride known as promotion.

Promotion is a huge, daunting monster you can’t work out in your own head while sitting quietly. If you are a low-key, quiet type of person, it can be difficult to even board this ride without lots of support. It’s important to have a few people who love you. It’s also good to have some people who like you.

The people who love you, a spouse for example, can help psyche you up for this ride that goes so much against your nature. They comfort you and coax you toward the car, then, when necessary, in the ultimate act of love, they give you a good shove into the seat and slap down the restraint bar over your arms. You know you need to do this, but it’s hard to overcome your nature. Only the most cherished loved ones will be there to tenderly ignore your screams of terror and lock you in before you can run away.

If you are that shy, quiet writer, do yourself a favor by marrying someone completely opposite from you. Find someone who likes to plan events, rocks social media, and has no qualms about tooting your horn for you, because face it, you’ve never been any good at tooting it yourself. Your better half makes it sound much more melodious than you ever did.

running the show

“You just hold your hands out and smile big, and I’ll make sure this whole ball of yarn happens.”

Do your best to make sure they love you, because they really excel at these things when their heart is in it.

If they are the best thing you’ve got going for you in life, they will also be the best thing you’ve got going promoting your books.

This crazy ride is also easier if you have people who like you. These are the people who show up to your signings and pay their hard-earned money for your books, not because they are sure you are this generation’s Steinbeck, but because they like you and they want to show you some support.

They get excited about having you sign their copies, not because your autograph promises to become valuable, but because your signature is a memento from that time when they watched you reach for the stars, regardless of how close you came to touching any sky.

A little help

It’s nice to have friends to look out for you when your comfort zone gets turned upside down.

I’ve always tried to be likeable to the people I know. This has paid off in the support I have received from them. I wonder what would happen if I had spent more time getting to know a larger group of people. But that’s where my nature limits me again. At least I didn’t spend my life pissing off my relatively small group, so I’ve got that going for me.

And that’s a good start.