MWA 2014 Literary Contest up & open!

The MWA 2014 Literary Contest is now open–to members & non-members alike. And what’s better than winning money? Winners will also be considered for publication by Apprentice House Press! For guidelines and information, visit the MWA Contest Page.

New Maryland Art Martketplace Open for Artists

In advance of launching its new Maryland Art Marketplace, the MSAC is inviting Maryland artists of all disciplines to sign-up for the Maryland Artist Registry, and encouraging those with online selling sites for their art, crafts or artistic merchandise to opt-in to the Maryland Art Marketplace during the process.

Once launched later this fall, the Maryland Art Marketplace will be promoted by the Arts Council and its partners as a hub for Maryland-made art—including books, music and visual art—that is available for purchase online.

To read more, visit the MSAC website.

MWA at the Western Maryland Indie Lit Festival

The MWA will be present and participating in the 8th Annual Western Maryland Indie Lit Festival. Stop by and say hello, or check out MWA President Lalita Noronha in the “Ask an Editor” panel.

For more information on the festival and program, visit the Frostburg University website.

Save the Date! MWA Annual Meeting and Elections

The 2014 Annual Meeting of the Maryland Writers’ Association will be Saturday, June 21 from 1-3 at the Leonardtown branch library, 23250 Hollywood Road, Leonardtown, MD 20650. Our thanks to the  St. Mary’s Chapter for hosting the event!

At the meeting, we will:

• Tally the votes and announce the slate of officers for the 2014-2016 Board of Directors. (Slate to be announced soon!)
• Vote to change the bylaws from a fixed membership year (currently July 1-June 30 for all members) to a rolling membership year (i.e., starting on the date that a person joins).
• Welcome the Summer Solstice — and the new board, of course — with light refreshments, hors d’ouerves, and socializing.
• Perhaps we’ll have a speaker too! UPDATE: We’re pleased to announce that past MWA president and current mystery/thriller writer Austin Camacho will be the speaker at the Annual Meeting!

Keep an eye on Keyboard in Hand, Facebook, and the website for more details. In the meantime, please circle the date on your calendar and come on down to St. Mary’s County to celebrate with us!

For directions to the Leonardtown branch library, click here.

Hope to see you there!

Six Questions for Agent Lauren Clark

by Carolee Noury

Writers know it’s a good idea to get to know an agent before pitching to and/or querying her. In that spirit, here’s an opportunity to meet Lauren Clark, of Kuhn Projects literary agency. She will be one of four agents participating in the practice pitch sessions at the 2014 Maryland Writers’ Conference.

Catch up with Lauren Clark, a Maryland Writers’ Conference agent, if you can. Wear your running shoes or make it easier on yourself and register for a practice pitch.

Carolee Noury: Your Twitter profile says “Cincinnatian at heart.” What do you miss most?

Lauren Clark: I can only narrow it down to my top three: Mio’s Pizza, Half Price Books, and the abundance of unmetered parking.

CN: What do you like best about your job?

LC: I feel fortunate to have a job that lets me mix the creative and business-oriented parts of my brain. In a typical day I’ll read and respond to an author about her proposal, and then think through a contract negotiation. I enjoy that balance; I wouldn’t want to do all one or all the other.

CN: What inspires you?

LC: My colleagues at Kuhn Projects, daily.

CN: What has been your most meaningful project to date?

LC: I handled the foreign rights for Escape from Camp 14 by former Washington Post reporter Blaine Harden. Escape was the true account of the life of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person born into a North Korean prison camp who was able to escape and make it to the West. I got to meet Shin briefly, and I was also in constant contact with Blaine because the book sold extremely well overseas. It became an international bestseller and was translated into more than 25 languages. I was so happy for Blaine and Shin each time another foreign publisher bought the rights to the book. I’m grateful to have been involved in that book, even a little bit.

CN: What’s your idea of happiness?

LC: A long, tiring run in the woods.

CN: What is your favorite DC haunt?

LC: The fiction section of Kramer’s or the National Gallery of Art.

An Interview with Dean Bartoli Smith

by Steve Berberich

Dean Bartoli Smith

The theme of the 2014 Maryland Writers’ Conference, on Saturday, April 26, 2014 at the Conference Center at the Maritime Institute in Linthicum Heights, is “Feed Your Writing Habit.” Some writers are poets, some novelists, and still others prefer the short story format. They all think about crossing over, to stretch their gifts into other writing genres, even different and media.

Dean Bartoli Smith will be speaking at the conference on the tools and mental approach to crossing over in his workshop, “Putting It All Together. ” Smith has published poetry, prose, and non-fiction books. Below, he tells in his own words how he does it. He recently published a book in August on the Baltimore Ravens football teams run to the winning the Super Bowl, which he calls “part an account of the 2012-13 season, part love letter to Baltimore. ”

Steve Berberich: What does your workshop title, “Putting It All Together, ” mean to you?

Dean Bartoli DBS: It refers to melding the genres together: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The first book I published was poetry in 2000. My poems are of a very narrative nature and can be easily turned into nonfiction or even fiction. In Never Easy, Never Pretty about the Baltimore Ravens, the foundation is poetry. Every section starts with a poem by American poets and it grew out of poems I had written about football. As for my writing habit, I need all the genres all the time.

SB: What can you tell authors about the mental process of making such a transition in genre?

DBS: Poetry opens all possibilities. From a poem, I will try to revise it into more accessible forms. I will write in between the lines of the poem. Here is an example from the book: I’ve spent my life running under a Johnny Unitas touchdown pass. To me that is a line of poetry. I’ve also had journal entries become poems. I start breaking apart the linkages and varying the syntax and something new arises. Memories drive poems and longer forms emerge. I wrote a poem called “Chow Mein” for my book of poetry American Boy. It was the last night my parents were together. I was seven and remember the plate of chow mein–the noodles and the chicken and the light from a bright chandelier. It stayed there until morning on a white tablecloth in front French doors. Mark Strand once told me that the success of any kind of writing is based on how well it evokes a shared sense of suffering.

SB: How did your love of a particular topic, football or perhaps the city of Baltimore, help you become a better writer through the years?

DBS: It’s about the imagination and for me sports are a kind of launching pad. It is one of the topics I like to write about from an imagination perspective. I am interested in the way motion and athleticism, especially when slowed down, approach art. For others, it may be a particular painting that inspires a poem. That’s happened to me too. Whatever that springboard is, that font or units of energy called psychic energy, that is what really cultivates the mind. That is what nibbled on the outskirts of poet Stanley Kunitz’ consciousness in his poem “The Wellfleet Whale,” for example after the townsfolk gathered around a whale that washed up on the beach.

SB: What’s new with Dean Smith these days?

DBS: I’ve become more interested in writing more long-form things after being forced by my publisher to produce the Ravens book in 90 days. And going back further, when I started doing journalism in 2008-9, those deadlines and word counts prepared me to write the nonfiction book. It gave me the necessary discipline. I’ve got a poetry manuscript entitled “My Father’s Gun” that’s ripening in its 15th year and a detective novel that needs a rewrite.

SB: My guess is that a lot of your subject matter and inspiration comes from your love of Baltimore. What can you offer others in terms of how they can find their Baltimores?

DBS: I know this place. It is an acquired taste like the mustard in the back fin of a [blue] crab. It is the muse in a lot of ways, for me. Those poems come easier. They seep into the consciousness like water into the cracks of a sidewalk. Write what you know and the rest will take care of itself.

Questions for Literary Agent Shannon O’Neill

by Carolee Noury

Writers know that it’s a good idea to get to know agents before pitching to and/or querying them. In that spirit, here’s an opportunity to meet Shannon O’Neill, Agent at Lippincot Massie McQuilkin. Shannon will be one of four agents participating in the practice pitch sessions at the 2014 Maryland Writers’ Conference. Shannon is an agent for a New York firm who lives in DC–offering the best of both worlds for our Maryland writers: a “hometown” rep with NYC connections.

Carolee Noury: What’s it like working as an agent in DC? While it’s not remote, it’s also not New York or California.

Shannon O’Neill: DC is full of articulate and driven people. There’s a strong intellectual climate here; it’s a very literate city. I feel fortunate to be based here with so many universities, think tanks, and nonprofits in my backyard. And, oh yeah, the government just so happens to be here too. That means a large pool of interesting people who are experts in their field, and plenty of aspiring writers.

I love that DC is such a livable city. It’s quite beautiful, easy to navigate, and has so many free cultural offerings. The Smithsonian museums are my favorite, especially the National Gallery and the Museum of the American Indian. The free concerts at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage can be pretty great too.

CN: What trends are you seeing in popular science these days?

SO: The narrative is ascendant in most all types of nonfiction these days. It’s not enough to have breakthrough findings or brand-new scientific discoveries to share; you really have to be able to tell a great story and to connect with your readers.

CN: What makes fiction “upmarket? ”

SO: Upmarket, to me, basically means writing that aspires to last beyond the season in which it was published. Beyond being entertaining or well-written, upmarket fiction has staying power. It resonates with a reader on a deeper level. To write in such a way requires a mastery of the craft. Other forms of fiction do not necessarily make the same demand.

Recent examples I love include Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena and Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs.

CN: What writing book(s) do you wish rookie writers would read before they start writing?

SO: I wish that people would read more, and read more widely before they tackle their own book. There’s no “how to” guide that I’d recommend; instead I’d urge people to read or return to to the classics of literature, or make sure you’ve read every recent book on your subject that’s intended for a general audience if you’re writing nonfiction.

CN: What books are you reading right now?

SO: My most recent reads are Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be, and Nabokov’s Pale Fire.

CN: What’s a typical “a-ha” moment when you know you want to take on someone’s project?

SO: It’s different for every project but for fiction, I’m usually drawn in by the voice or the authority of the writing within the first few pages, or the first chapter.

For nonfiction, a strong platform matters but so does the originality and marketability of the idea. It’s often after a phone call or a meeting that I really feel confident that the writer and I are on the same page and would work well together.

CN: How many hours do you spend working in a typical week?

SO: That’s a really good question–one that I need to work harder on quantifying. Whenever I am reading–the news, book reviews, blogs, articles, literary magazines–I am constantly thinking about whether this person could write a book, or this article deserves to be expanded into something more robust, or the expert cited in a piece might have more findings to share. I need to work harder at unplugging!

Register to Win a Free MWC Pitch Session

Have you been thinking about registering for the 2014 Maryland Writers’ Conference but haven’t gotten around to it yet?

You can register here right now.

Now is the time—anyone who registers for the conference between March 30th and April 5th will be entered into a random drawing for a free practice pitch session with the MWC agent of your choice!

A hearty MWA thank you to member Charles Evans for donating the session for this drawing!

For a bonus entry, share this with your Twitter connections by referencing @MarylandWriters !

Or click here for a tweet that is ready to go! (Limit of one extra entry per person; but please tweet as often as you’d like to! See more Fine Print below.)

Maryland Writers’ Conference Hashtag:
#MDWriters 2014

The winner will be notified by email on April 6. (Winner will also be announced on our Twitter and Facebook feeds.)

Fine Print: The free pitch session cannot be used as a refund for a previously purchased session. It can only be used for a new session. We’ll do our best to schedule you for the time you prefer, but sessions are selling quickly. If you don’t want to use it, let us know and we’ll give it to the second runner up.

See you at the conference!
Carolee

—
Carolee Noury, Vice President/Acting Treasurer
Maryland Writers’ Association

Good Writers Should Know Their Tools: an Interview with Gabe Goldberg

by Paul Lagasse

Sometimes, it seems that writers today need to be masters of technology. It’s not enough just to be good at writing; we’re also expected to know how to do formatting and layout, graphic design, audiovisual production, and online marketing. Do writers really need to be techies in order to do their jobs?

“Writers don’t need to be a techie anymore than I need to know how to build or repair a car,” says Gabe Goldberg, a technology communicator and consultant who has has contributed extensively to consumer publications, co-authored three McGraw-Hill technology books, and written hundreds of computer press and website articles. “But when I buy a car, it’s up to me to be an informed consumer because I’m going to live with that car for many years.”

Technologies for Knowledge Workers Gabe Goldberg 4:15-5:00 in the Business of Writing Track Technology advances faster than the eye or mind can follow, but what tools and practices do 21st century professionals (from tech novices to experts) really require to survive and prosper in their careers? This presentation provides important but easy-to-forget tips and resources for online, mobile, and computing productivity/safety, aiming at essentially everyone: employees, freelance workers, work-at-homers, retirees. It covers procedures, opportunities, and suggestions from session participants. Find out more about Gabe Goldberg on the Maryland Writers’ Conference’s Speakers, Panelists, and Agents page.

Gabe says that many of the questions that people ask when shopping for a car can be applied to their search for the right hardware and software. Will this help me do what I need to do better? Does it have the features that I need? Am I paying for things that I don’t need or won’t use? “The universal tool set includes the ability to evaluate your other tools and learn to use them effectively,” he says. Gabe will be helping writers ask and answer these questions for themselves at the 2014 Maryland Writers’ Conference, “Feed Your Writing Habit,” on Saturday, April 26 at the Conference Center at the Maritimg Institute (CCMIT) in Linthicum Heights.

Gabe says there are two common misconceptions about technology that writers and other knowledge workers (people who locate, consume, produce, structure, and distribute information) have. The first is that whatever tool they’re using right now is the tool that they *should* be using. The second is that technology is inherently reliable and infallible.

“As technology changes, you may be missing opportunities to save time and use technology as a force multiplier,” he explains. “You need to stop thinking about what you need to get done and focus instead on what you need to be able to do that.” At the same time, says Gabe, people also need to take precautions to ensure their work and their personal information is safeguarded, because no matter how much you eventually come to rely on that technology, it can–and at some point probably will–fail.

Gabe speaks frequently about technology to diverse audiences, from senior citizens and baby boomers to techies, while avoiding jargon and “technobabble.” In his experience, there are several reasons that writers develop an aversion to technologies that could otherwise help them. “Sometimes it’s because the skill doesn’t come to them naturally,” says Gabe. “Other times, it’s because they weren’t raised immersed in the technology–so they’re recent arrivals, called digital immigrants. It doesn’t fit their self image. They see themselves as creative intellectuals and see the tools as removing them from what they need to be concerned with.”

To this latter problem in particular, Gabe offers some practical advice. “The antidote is to recognize that, with discipline, you can keep problems small.” This helps avoid slipping into a spiral of procrastination and avoidance. “You’re going to have to do it sooner or later,” Gabe reasons. “It’s not going to be better later, and you’re going to feel better if you don’t have the obsolete or problematic thing sneering at you from across the room for a long time.”

To get going, Gabe says, you have to “allocate some mental bandwidth” to focus on the tools that you are using now and on the tools you need. He encourages people to read product reviews, visit tech centers, and join user groups. “Try some blank-paper thinking,” he suggests. “Ask yourself, ‘OK if I was starting from scratch, what would I be using?'”

Finally, says Gabe, it’s important to maintain a sense of perspective about technology. When you’re having trouble getting a piece of hardware or software to work while others around you are using it without problems, don’t feel embarrassed, frustrated, or inhibited. Instead, try to remind yourself that those people had to learn how to use it, too.

“Look, you weren’t born knowing how to drive a car, or dance, or sew,” Gabe says. “You’ve spent your life learning how to learn. This is just one more thing to learn.”

# # #

Here are some of Gabe Goldberg’s publications that may be of interest:

Articles on Freelancing

• “Living the Fantasy Life?“
• Articles by Gabe Goldberg for Magnificent Publications

Technical Works

• Articles by Gabe Goldberg for the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab
• The Rexx Handbook
• The VM/ESA Systems Handbook
• The VM/ESA User’s and Applications Handbook

Consumer Interest

• “Let’s Make a Deal — With Coupon/Discount Codes“
• “Rebating Your Way to Savings“

# # #

Agent Lauren Clark Joins the MWC14 Pitch Practice Team

by Carolee Noury

The Maryland Writers’ Conference team is excited to announce the addition of a fourth agent to take practice pitches at the 2014 Maryland Writers’ Conference, “Feed Your Writing Habit,” on Saturday, April 26 at the Conference Center at the Maritimg Institute (CCMIT) in Linthicum Heights. Lauren Clark, a DC-based agent for the New York City firm Kuhn Projects, answers the questions we asked agents Jessica Negrón, Shannon O’Neill, and Jessica Sinsheimer in the earlier post No Need for Nerves.

About Lauren Clark: Lauren Clark is an agent with Kuhn Projects and is based in Washington, DC. She has previously worked for ICM/Sagalyn and earned her Master’s in English/Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati. Under the nonfiction umbrella she’s interested in great writing about politics, history, current affairs, science, business, and sports, and under fiction she’s on the lookout for literary fiction and political, legal, and/or tech-centric thrillers. Find out more about Lauren on the Maryland Writers’ Conference’s Speakers, Panelists, and Agents page.

Carolee Noury: What should people expect when they attend a pitch session with you?

Lauren Clark: An author should expect a casual, straightforward conversation in which she’ll tell me about her book, and I’ll respond with either thoughts or a request that she send me more of her manuscript. If I don’t request further material, I’ll do my best to explain my decision. If she has any specific questions–about her synopsis or query, etc. –I’d be glad to try to answer them if we have time.

CN: What advice would you give to authors in preparation to pitch?

LC: Practice! When I’m preparing to pitch an author’s book to an editor, I practice my pitch, and it makes a big difference, especially if I’m reaching out to an editor I don’t already know. It lets me scrap all the wording that might have seemed beautiful on the page but wound up feeling clunky in my mouth.

Also, when I practice my pitch on someone who doesn’t work in publishing, that person will sometimes point out very obvious holes in the story I’m telling or the argument I’m making, and that feedback is invaluable.

CN: Will you share a memorable pitch experience–good or bad?

LC: This wasn’t a formal pitch session experience, but someone once called me and pitched me his book while he was driving in heavy traffic. The call wasn’t scheduled, which meant that he could’ve called me at a time that was more convenient for him, and we hadn’t met previously, so my first impression was that he was distracted, frazzled, and not very serious about his book. Five seconds online would have let him prevent some of his basic mistakes.

I can’t think of an official pitch session that went badly enough to stand out.

CN: What made you want to be an agent (aside from loving books)?

LC: I really enjoy matching an author with an editor who will support that author and his work, and who will enthusiastically push that author to produce his best work. It’s rewarding to enable the love-fest that can happen when an author is excited to work with an editor, and that editor is thrilled to be working on the author’s book.