- Joined
- Jul 14, 2005
- Messages
- 293
- Reaction score
- 136
- Location
- The Land of Cotton
- Website
- www.lesiavalentine.com
Y'all forgive me for not using the quote feature here, but there was so much to quote, I found it much quicker to simply copy and paste to Notepad.
Anthony said:
And it's not unusual that memoir serves dubious purposes: self-aggrandisement with minimal creative effort; inflating the author's sense of self worth (which too often turns into a "pig/lipstick" situation); highly personalised therapy; lashing out & venting.
*********************************************************
To which Sakamonda seems to take offense. Sakamonda, it may be true that your memoir is innocent of all these things. I haven't read a single word of it, so I am unqualified to judge. You may have the very best of intentions, but I urge you to take a look at some of the phrases you've used in your reply:
I will likely lose friends and alienate family / that is something I'm willing to live with
frankly not worried about these threats
None of my family members have the gumption, stamina, or financial ability to follow through on those threats
As far as some of the more tangential people in the book, I am frankly not worried about them, either.
I've decided that losing a few friends and alienating a few family members a worthy price to pay
it's not even that much of a loss.
I will not allow them to dictate to me
I won't change
That would go against my journalistic integrity.
I don't personally care much
I really have no motivation whatsoever to consider their feelings
the actions I describe show that they never, ever considered my feelings
I will have to expose some very ugly things.
I am not afraid to anger people or alienate loved ones to tell the truth.
*****************************************************
It may be true that you're not lashing out, but examine the words you've used in your reply. That's the way it sounds. (I can't help but wonder if you're Sagittarius. They have a thing about "the truth.") I understand where you're coming from because I come from an abusive, dysfunctional, mentally ill family, too. I know it hurts, and I know it leaves scars that nothing will ever erase. The unique situation these days is to come from a family that isn't one of those things. If you read Miss Snark's and / or Agent X's blogs, you will find that agents see a million queries for these kinds of memoirs. I urge you to go and find those posts.
You also said this:
the publishers who are looking at my memoir is the fact that despite the fact they find the story compelling and my writing of high quality, they reject the book because I am not already a celebrity with a large built-in media platform.
How fortunate you are to get that kind of feedback from publishers! It's quite a lot compared to the rejections most of us get. Did the publishers actually say they were rejecting the manuscript because you're not a celebrity or have a platform? Or are you assuming it?
******************************************************
Susan B said:
My reaction, I knew, was irrational--especially as someone who actually has written a memoir And I'd never tell my brother not to publish this. (My mother, on the other hand, told me she'd insist he not use my father's real name. So maybe she'd want my brother to use a pseudonym?)
******************************************************
Hi, Susan.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your father is deceased, your brother may write anything he wants about him. When a person is deceased, their right to privacy goes with them.
You also mentioned the difficulty in getting permission to use song lyrics in your manuscript. I think you and I had this conversation via private e-mail at one time. I have used them extensively in my ms, although in editing, many have been cut. You can use one or two lines. Audrey Niffenegger used them in The Time Traveler's Wife, Connie May Fowler used them in The Problem with Murmur Lee, and Lee Smith used them in The Last Girls. Many authors use a couple lines with no acknowledgement to the authors / composers. It's called "fair use." However, if you want to use more than a couple lines, this info should be helpful to you:
It’s not that difficult to get permission to use lyrics in your novel, and it’s not that expensive, either. I spent more than nine months getting permission before I needed to, but I didn’t know that at the time, so I learned from it. You can save yourself nine months and learn from me.
Unless you’re trying to quote lyrics from the Beatles, Eagles, or Fleetwood Mac, don’t bother trying to get permission first, just go ahead and write.
Then do this:
Go to the ascap website at http://www.ascap.com/index.html
Click on the Ace Title Search button, and when the page changes, click on Click Here to Search the Database >>>
It will take you to the search page, where you can search by title, writer, performer, publisher / administrator, or T-Code. When you find the song you’re looking for, keep a record of the information for future reference. Be sure to write down the T-Code. It will save everyone tons of work later on. You’re going to find that songs are often written by more than one person, and you have to get permission from ALL of them. On top of that, you’ll often find that each of them used a different publisher, so you could be writing four or five separate letters for each song you want to use. Don’t panic. Read this entire bit of information and you’ll learn the shortcut.
What I did was write to the publishers or administrators and ask for permission to use the lyrics. When you do this, they want to see the page preceding the lyrics, the page where the lyrics appear, and the page after that. It’s just like querying a lit publisher. Don’t send more than they ask for! They’re just as busy as lit publishers and won’t appreciate having to wade through an entire chapter to find the lyrics. Some won’t even bother. Most are very nice, very helpful, and I even made a few rock star friends along the way.
HOWEVER, although you can usually get them to say, “go ahead and write it, come back with the necessary information when you have it,” you will not get official permission until you have a publisher, run date, number of copies to be printed, page number where the lyrics will appear, etc. This information obviously needs to come from your publisher or agent.
The cost is actually minimal in most cases. Depending on how much of the lyrics you want to quote, it’s generally between two and five cents per book printed, although some are a little higher. I found a couple places that charge a thousand dollars flat fee and you may print as many copies of the book as you want. Some have even given me permission at no cost. There is a contract.
If you don’t find the lyrics you are looking for at ascap, try BMI at http://www.bmi.com/
You might find them there.
After I did all this, and waited months and months, and sometimes did not hear back from some of these places, I found out that permission for the majority of the lyrics I am using could be obtained much faster and easier from Universal Music Publishing. http://www.umusicpub.com/ My go-to person there was Melinda Mondrala. Being as ignorant as I was at the time about how all this is done, I must have sorely tested her patience, but patient she was, and soooo helpful.
She’s able to grant permission from all the places who had dicked me around and not replied in all those months – just as soon as the publisher can give her the information about the print run, etc. You’ll make her job easier if you supply the T-Code with your request.
I would start with her! Write and give her the name of the songs and the T-Codes, and ask her which ones she handles. If she doesn't handle them, then go back to ascap or bmi, and write to the publishers yourself.
MELINDA MONDRALA
UNIVERSAL MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP
2440 SEPULVEDA BLVD.
SUITE 100
LOS ANGELES , CA, 90064
Tel. (310) 235-4700
*******************************************************
And finally, Penny said:
Southernwriter,
You are the closest to getting the drift of what this is about.
I believe I do know, although I'm sometimes still surprised. My heart goes out to you. Yours is a difficult position to be in, and I can understand why you want so much to tell the story.
You said Paranormal romance, and you do have my attention. I may need to PM you so I can keep legal issue details out of the public here, but in a nutshell, I am sorry about your friend, reallly, and that goes to show what having someone's husband or wife find out something they never knew.
Thank you. Please, do pm me.
As far as mine goes, of course he knows the whole story in living color detail. He too has a great respect for this guy, knows how I came out of it, knows how what I learned changed his own life for the better, and gave him a better understanding of this world as a result of realizing there are other worlds and dimensions than this one. So, yeah, he does know and has been the one insisting it should be published, not to get melodramatic, but for "the betterment of mankind".
That's great. It must be a big relief not to have that hanging over your head.
I know, talk about egocentric about your own book, huh, but really this isn't about a book, it is about an event which I fear I can never share. Trying to do the right thing vs....?
I don't see why you can't share it, if you go about it the right way. I'm thinking, though, that you're adamant about using those real names. Is it really necessary? Truth is truth. If the story is true, changing the names won't make it less true, and won't hurt your chances of publishing.
And no this was no Mary Sue, at all, in fact, completely the opposite. Could I call it fiction? Sure, but if I did, there are better, scarier, more elaborate fictions...sometimes if it really happened, it is profound, scary and people would say "God, I hope I never go through that." But if you say it didn't happen, they will say, " I could have made up something better than that." And it would be true.
I see what you're saying. It's important for people to know it's true. You believe it will open their eyes to the fact that there are more things out there than we could ever dream of. I understand. But changing the names won't alter that, and you can still publish it as memoir. And I'm sure you know, some people refuse to believe something is true, even when it's staring them in the face. It's like those emotional memories memoirs are made of - the truth becomes subjective. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Those who need to know it's true will see it as such, and those who don't, won't.
As for editing, I am at least going to start doing that and disguising descriptions as I go, also not mentioning any city or state.
I guess the question here is what kind of description you've given your setting. If I had read your ms, I might feel differently, but in most cases, I think we have to clarify for the reader where something takes place.
Trying to cut, yes, because it is 1500 pages double spaced, if you figure 250 words a page, so what is that...without a calculator about 375,000 words.
Yikes. And I thought mine was long. You poor thing. You've got a lot to cut. When is the last time you sat and read the whole thing? Are you seeing it with fresh eyes? When I shared the word count of mine with other writers, I was constantly asked if I could make it two books. In my case, it wasn't possible. How about yours? Also, don't count your words that way. No one does, any more. Use the word count your software provides. Are you using MS Word? You'll find it under "tools." I can't recall where it is in WordPerfect; I haven't used it in so long, and suggest you switch to Word, if that's what you're using, because it's difficult to share those files.
Yes, must be whittled down and maybe I will be a better writer in the end as well. Thanks for jumping in here, and I may be pming you soon, if that is okay with you.
I hope you do. I'm curious to know if your experience was anything like mine. I don't login here often, though. You might reach me faster through e-mail. The addy is in plain site on my blog and my website.
Anthony said:
And it's not unusual that memoir serves dubious purposes: self-aggrandisement with minimal creative effort; inflating the author's sense of self worth (which too often turns into a "pig/lipstick" situation); highly personalised therapy; lashing out & venting.
*********************************************************
To which Sakamonda seems to take offense. Sakamonda, it may be true that your memoir is innocent of all these things. I haven't read a single word of it, so I am unqualified to judge. You may have the very best of intentions, but I urge you to take a look at some of the phrases you've used in your reply:
I will likely lose friends and alienate family / that is something I'm willing to live with
frankly not worried about these threats
None of my family members have the gumption, stamina, or financial ability to follow through on those threats
As far as some of the more tangential people in the book, I am frankly not worried about them, either.
I've decided that losing a few friends and alienating a few family members a worthy price to pay
it's not even that much of a loss.
I will not allow them to dictate to me
I won't change
That would go against my journalistic integrity.
I don't personally care much
I really have no motivation whatsoever to consider their feelings
the actions I describe show that they never, ever considered my feelings
I will have to expose some very ugly things.
I am not afraid to anger people or alienate loved ones to tell the truth.
*****************************************************
It may be true that you're not lashing out, but examine the words you've used in your reply. That's the way it sounds. (I can't help but wonder if you're Sagittarius. They have a thing about "the truth.") I understand where you're coming from because I come from an abusive, dysfunctional, mentally ill family, too. I know it hurts, and I know it leaves scars that nothing will ever erase. The unique situation these days is to come from a family that isn't one of those things. If you read Miss Snark's and / or Agent X's blogs, you will find that agents see a million queries for these kinds of memoirs. I urge you to go and find those posts.
You also said this:
the publishers who are looking at my memoir is the fact that despite the fact they find the story compelling and my writing of high quality, they reject the book because I am not already a celebrity with a large built-in media platform.
How fortunate you are to get that kind of feedback from publishers! It's quite a lot compared to the rejections most of us get. Did the publishers actually say they were rejecting the manuscript because you're not a celebrity or have a platform? Or are you assuming it?
******************************************************
Susan B said:
My reaction, I knew, was irrational--especially as someone who actually has written a memoir And I'd never tell my brother not to publish this. (My mother, on the other hand, told me she'd insist he not use my father's real name. So maybe she'd want my brother to use a pseudonym?)
******************************************************
Hi, Susan.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if your father is deceased, your brother may write anything he wants about him. When a person is deceased, their right to privacy goes with them.
You also mentioned the difficulty in getting permission to use song lyrics in your manuscript. I think you and I had this conversation via private e-mail at one time. I have used them extensively in my ms, although in editing, many have been cut. You can use one or two lines. Audrey Niffenegger used them in The Time Traveler's Wife, Connie May Fowler used them in The Problem with Murmur Lee, and Lee Smith used them in The Last Girls. Many authors use a couple lines with no acknowledgement to the authors / composers. It's called "fair use." However, if you want to use more than a couple lines, this info should be helpful to you:
It’s not that difficult to get permission to use lyrics in your novel, and it’s not that expensive, either. I spent more than nine months getting permission before I needed to, but I didn’t know that at the time, so I learned from it. You can save yourself nine months and learn from me.
Unless you’re trying to quote lyrics from the Beatles, Eagles, or Fleetwood Mac, don’t bother trying to get permission first, just go ahead and write.
Then do this:
Go to the ascap website at http://www.ascap.com/index.html
Click on the Ace Title Search button, and when the page changes, click on Click Here to Search the Database >>>
It will take you to the search page, where you can search by title, writer, performer, publisher / administrator, or T-Code. When you find the song you’re looking for, keep a record of the information for future reference. Be sure to write down the T-Code. It will save everyone tons of work later on. You’re going to find that songs are often written by more than one person, and you have to get permission from ALL of them. On top of that, you’ll often find that each of them used a different publisher, so you could be writing four or five separate letters for each song you want to use. Don’t panic. Read this entire bit of information and you’ll learn the shortcut.
What I did was write to the publishers or administrators and ask for permission to use the lyrics. When you do this, they want to see the page preceding the lyrics, the page where the lyrics appear, and the page after that. It’s just like querying a lit publisher. Don’t send more than they ask for! They’re just as busy as lit publishers and won’t appreciate having to wade through an entire chapter to find the lyrics. Some won’t even bother. Most are very nice, very helpful, and I even made a few rock star friends along the way.
HOWEVER, although you can usually get them to say, “go ahead and write it, come back with the necessary information when you have it,” you will not get official permission until you have a publisher, run date, number of copies to be printed, page number where the lyrics will appear, etc. This information obviously needs to come from your publisher or agent.
The cost is actually minimal in most cases. Depending on how much of the lyrics you want to quote, it’s generally between two and five cents per book printed, although some are a little higher. I found a couple places that charge a thousand dollars flat fee and you may print as many copies of the book as you want. Some have even given me permission at no cost. There is a contract.
If you don’t find the lyrics you are looking for at ascap, try BMI at http://www.bmi.com/
You might find them there.
After I did all this, and waited months and months, and sometimes did not hear back from some of these places, I found out that permission for the majority of the lyrics I am using could be obtained much faster and easier from Universal Music Publishing. http://www.umusicpub.com/ My go-to person there was Melinda Mondrala. Being as ignorant as I was at the time about how all this is done, I must have sorely tested her patience, but patient she was, and soooo helpful.
She’s able to grant permission from all the places who had dicked me around and not replied in all those months – just as soon as the publisher can give her the information about the print run, etc. You’ll make her job easier if you supply the T-Code with your request.
I would start with her! Write and give her the name of the songs and the T-Codes, and ask her which ones she handles. If she doesn't handle them, then go back to ascap or bmi, and write to the publishers yourself.
MELINDA MONDRALA
UNIVERSAL MUSIC PUBLISHING GROUP
2440 SEPULVEDA BLVD.
SUITE 100
LOS ANGELES , CA, 90064
Tel. (310) 235-4700
*******************************************************
And finally, Penny said:
Southernwriter,
You are the closest to getting the drift of what this is about.
I believe I do know, although I'm sometimes still surprised. My heart goes out to you. Yours is a difficult position to be in, and I can understand why you want so much to tell the story.
You said Paranormal romance, and you do have my attention. I may need to PM you so I can keep legal issue details out of the public here, but in a nutshell, I am sorry about your friend, reallly, and that goes to show what having someone's husband or wife find out something they never knew.
Thank you. Please, do pm me.
As far as mine goes, of course he knows the whole story in living color detail. He too has a great respect for this guy, knows how I came out of it, knows how what I learned changed his own life for the better, and gave him a better understanding of this world as a result of realizing there are other worlds and dimensions than this one. So, yeah, he does know and has been the one insisting it should be published, not to get melodramatic, but for "the betterment of mankind".
That's great. It must be a big relief not to have that hanging over your head.
I know, talk about egocentric about your own book, huh, but really this isn't about a book, it is about an event which I fear I can never share. Trying to do the right thing vs....?
I don't see why you can't share it, if you go about it the right way. I'm thinking, though, that you're adamant about using those real names. Is it really necessary? Truth is truth. If the story is true, changing the names won't make it less true, and won't hurt your chances of publishing.
And no this was no Mary Sue, at all, in fact, completely the opposite. Could I call it fiction? Sure, but if I did, there are better, scarier, more elaborate fictions...sometimes if it really happened, it is profound, scary and people would say "God, I hope I never go through that." But if you say it didn't happen, they will say, " I could have made up something better than that." And it would be true.
I see what you're saying. It's important for people to know it's true. You believe it will open their eyes to the fact that there are more things out there than we could ever dream of. I understand. But changing the names won't alter that, and you can still publish it as memoir. And I'm sure you know, some people refuse to believe something is true, even when it's staring them in the face. It's like those emotional memories memoirs are made of - the truth becomes subjective. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Those who need to know it's true will see it as such, and those who don't, won't.
As for editing, I am at least going to start doing that and disguising descriptions as I go, also not mentioning any city or state.
I guess the question here is what kind of description you've given your setting. If I had read your ms, I might feel differently, but in most cases, I think we have to clarify for the reader where something takes place.
Trying to cut, yes, because it is 1500 pages double spaced, if you figure 250 words a page, so what is that...without a calculator about 375,000 words.
Yikes. And I thought mine was long. You poor thing. You've got a lot to cut. When is the last time you sat and read the whole thing? Are you seeing it with fresh eyes? When I shared the word count of mine with other writers, I was constantly asked if I could make it two books. In my case, it wasn't possible. How about yours? Also, don't count your words that way. No one does, any more. Use the word count your software provides. Are you using MS Word? You'll find it under "tools." I can't recall where it is in WordPerfect; I haven't used it in so long, and suggest you switch to Word, if that's what you're using, because it's difficult to share those files.
Yes, must be whittled down and maybe I will be a better writer in the end as well. Thanks for jumping in here, and I may be pming you soon, if that is okay with you.
I hope you do. I'm curious to know if your experience was anything like mine. I don't login here often, though. You might reach me faster through e-mail. The addy is in plain site on my blog and my website.