By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

The written word asks more of an audience then visual mediums. All authors must make fundamental choices when creating a narrative: how much is just enough? What words will create the time and place I want to evoke—while still inviting readers to use their imaginations? To use the medium of written work correctly, we must leave space for the reader in what we write: readers who bring their own contributions to a book are more invested in its outcome.

Unfortunately, finding the right way to frame your story, and sticking to your guns about it, is not always an easy task. Primarily because we now live in a time when virtually every writer has been raised on television and motion pictures. This has fundamentally changed the way we approach and create the written word as well as the way our brains work while we are writing. For most of us, when we are in deep in a story, our imaginations are unfolding a sort of mini-movie in our heads, providing a visual track we describe as we write our books. But, unfortunately, by rooting our narrative in a primarily visual base, we leave ourselves open to bad habits that can limit what we ask the reader to bring to our writing. Since the last thing you want as a writer is a disengaged reader, it’s important to recognize these writing tendencies and root them out. To help, here is a list of the bad habits I have noticed in myself and in other writers, many of them identified during my time as a book reviewer for the Washington Post.  

Too many adjectives and adverbs

This is the number one bad habit of writers today. In our desire to make that mini-movie in our head more real, we put way too much page space into adjectives and adverbs. The problem with this approach is that, not only do we drag our stories down with bloated word counts, we rob the reader of the chance to bring their own life experiences and imaginations to the story. We risk describing the appearance of a romantic lead, for example, so thoroughly that the reader has no chance to bring their own desires to how that protagonist looks. Taming this habit requires time and discipline. When I finish a chapter, I go back through it and cut out at least 25% of the adjectives and adverbs I have used (although my aim is to cut 1/3). If you are a writer, I highly recommend you do the same. You want enough adjectives and adverbs for your book to feel alive, but not so many that you dictate the experience for your readers.

Minute-by-minute action descriptions (the film reel effect)

Much like the overuse of adjectives and adverbs, many writers fall into the trap of describing every move a protagonist makes to get them from Point A to Point B. Readers don’t need to know that your protagonist woke up, got out of bed, brushed their teeth, took a shower, and made coffee… See what I mean? I almost fell asleep just writing that sentence. Identify the essential actions and emotional epiphanies of every chapter before you begin to write then concentrate on those moments. It may feel a little clunky at first, but you are doing your pacing a favor and keeping readers engaged when you learn to cut out the mundane.

Slippery viewpoint

Remember that you are a writer, not a movie camera. You must make deliberate choices about the viewpoint you use in your book, and if you choose to mix your viewpoints, then you must be very, very careful to stick to a single viewpoint within a chapter. Otherwise, you risk confusing your reader and muddying your story.

I find that many writers today use a limited omniscient approach by adopting the viewpoint of a single character within each chapter, but using the viewpoints of different characters across the arc of an entire book. Done well, I think this can give a story more depth. However, be careful how you use this technique, balance the use of multiple viewpoints, and, again, never mix viewpoints within a single chapter. In fact, my basic advice is this: mix viewpoints at your own peril. Most editors hate this technique because many readers do. It’s a tough act to pull off, even when you’re Barbara Kingsolver (Poisonwood Bible) or JK Rowling (A Casual Vacancy), so it’s not one I recommend until you are experienced enough to be extremely confident in both your characters and your approach. I could show you my own (unpublished) book as an example.

If you find you have chosen a viewpoint that limits your ability to develop the story, consider taking on the voice of the different, more universal character… or divide your books into sections, each section devoted to a different character… or take the plunge and choose the omniscient viewpoint. But whatever you do, choose deliberately and stick to your guns. Slippery viewpoint is jarring to the reader who has embraced your book and the narrator’s voice.

Uneven pacing

Most people today fit time for writing into their otherwise busy lives; few of us have hours a day to devote to working on our books. Because we must write in what amounts to fits and starts, I think that many of us end up with uneven pacing. That’s because, each time we write, we are like a car in first gear gradually revving up to go faster. This can make for very uneven pacing in a book, and its risks losing readers to boredom or leaving them behind when you rush. You can help mitigate this habit by working off a precise plot outline that guides you each time you sit down to write. If, on the other hand, you write organically and don’t like to be hemmed in by an outline, then be sure to put your book down for a long enough period of time to clear your head, then go back to it with one and only one goal in mind: would a reader brand new to your plot feel comfortable with your pacing and the way your plot unfolds?

Slow passages/not enough reason to keep turning the pages

Today’s readers have also been raised on television and motion pictures. Because of this, they bring certain expectations to the medium of the written word and you would be wise to meet those expectations if you want to build a following for your writing. One of those expectations is the idea that readers like to be kept in suspense and surprised. Without resorting to contrived plotting, it can help to identify the fundamental challenge of every chapter in your book and see what you can do to add smaller pockets of suspense to what should be an enthralling overall plot.

Superfluous characters

Just because a movie has extras in it, doesn’t mean your book has to. If you have to list your characters and describe them at the front of your book, then either you have too many characters or you have not devoted enough time to making them memorable. There’s nothing wrong with a minor character orbiting in and out of the book to add color or, perhaps, provide a clue or crucial plot transition. But, in general, if a character does not play a distinct role in your book, think twice about making them a part of it. It’s hard for readers to keep track of the secondary characters and it can lessen their enjoyment if they have to keep stopping to flip the pages backwards to figure out who the characters are. Just ask anyone who has read the fourth book in the Game of Thrones series.

Character names that are too similar

This bad habit, I think, comes from the peculiar tendency of our brains to store memories in the same place as specific emotions. As a result, many writers will give their characters names that are so similar it is tough for readers to keep them apart, especially at the beginning of a book. I think it’s a good idea to even avoid naming characters of the same gender with names that begin with the same letter. You may have two friends named Cathy and Caitlin, and understand that they are completely different, but your readers are going to have trouble keeping them apart, especially before you have had time to make each character unique. To combat this habit, I recommend choosing all names before you even begin writing your book, and even creating a short back story for each character. This helps you choose exactly the right name for the type of character can have in mind and allows you to consciously adjust your characters’ names when they slide too close together.

Out-of-character actions

Don’t be that desperate writer who has paid so little attention to how your plot unfolds that you end up throwing the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass to one of your characters. Unless you give the reader a reason why someone is behaving out of character, don’t do it. Part of creating authentic characters in your book is establishing the boundaries of their psyches and actions. When you violate those parameters, you are impugning the integrity of your writer’s voice. Again, I recommend a separate reading of your draft solely so that you can ask yourself the question, “Would the character I have created act that way?” about every major action they take. Characters who suddenly behave differently are jarring to the reader and disrupt the imaginary world you have created.

Too much nuance

It kills me to write this but we all need to face it: nuance is dead. We live in a world where people are instantly labeled as heroes and villains, and there is little middle ground in between. If you are writing for that last, blessed slice of humans who treasure nuance and love creeping up on a realization, then have at it. But if you are writing for a larger market, always err on the side of the obvious. You’d be amazed how often your obvious is interpreted as someone else’s nuance. If you’ve got a sleazy character, don’t be shy about showing their sleaziness. If someone is secretly unhappy, make sure it’s not-so-secret to the reader. People today are used to being spoonfed their emotions. They are used to being told how to react and they are definitely used to having their emotions manipulated. You will risk losing some of the perceived depth of your book if you decide to be too subtle.

Breaking the “rules” of your genre

Very few fiction writers today write outside of a specific genre. Whether it’s crime, romance, speculative, women’s, historical or what have you — marketing considerations put virtually every fictional piece in a box. These boxes come with expectations. Every genre has its informal rules. You don’t solve a mystery by bringing a character in at the last moment; that’s cheating. You don’t end a romance novel by having the two protagonists engage in a roaring fight and break up. That’s just plain mean. In other words, readers bring certain expectations to the genres they love and it’s not a wise idea to disappoint them. Learn the rules of your genre by reading in your genre. Pay attention to the common structures and plot devices employed across your genre. Follow them. Sure, you can be different — I, personally, always applaud the different — but know that you are being different at your own peril and that it will decrease the likelihood that you will be published by a mainstream house if you break your genre’s rules.

As always, the advice above comes with a caveat: take what you feel, in your gut, might be useful to you in your writing and discard the rest. You are the captain of your own ship. But first take the time to step back and at least evaluate whether you have any tendencies toward the bad habits listed above. Read your work deliberately to look for them in your drafts as you work. If you find yourself engaging in any of them, rip out the offending passages as if you were weeding a garden. Your book or story will be the better for it.

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

As the entire reading world obsesses about the new Harry Potter — certainly, the first time in my life time that so many people have cared about reading the script to a play — my thoughts have turned to Gone With the Wind, not only because it was the blockbuster of its day but also because, when you think about it, it is a sort of sorting hat for literary tastes. I have found that how you react to the characters in GWTW can not only tell you a lot about yourself, it can also tell you a lot about the direction you should go in as a writer or reader. I have cleverly tested my theory in bars across America as I meet with other book lovers and I am pretty sure I am on to something.

Let’s start with the obvious: Scarlet. Here is a narcissistic, spoiled woman-child who toys with peoples’ emotions, treats her maid abominably, is equally dismissive to her own mother, manipulates her father in an über-Freudian fashion, obsesses over the one man she can’t have, and blithely steals her sister’s lifelong suitor for a little bit of change in the bank. Certainly, Scarlett had strength and determination. And held her family (if not the entire county) together after the Civil War. If her strength and quest for romantic fulfillment is what captivates you about her, then chances are good you are either a romance writer or into women’s fiction. On the other hand, if all you can see when you think of Scarlet O’Hara is a long line of victims toppled behind her like bowling pins and cannot help but think that she would have made an excellent serial killer, chances are good you are into crime fiction. As for myself, I can only tolerate Scarlet by pretending that we finally find out what happens to her in Streetcar Named Desire, when Blanche DuBois is led away in a coquettish delusional state by a version of the proverbial men in white coats.

Ashley Wilkes is another good litmus test. It is safe to say that all southern women fall into one of two categories: those that swoon over Ashley Wilkes, and those who prefer Rhett Butler. For me, the choice is easy. Sure, Ashley Wilkes is genteel and noble on the surface, but he doesn’t have the cajones to tell Scarlet to leave him alone, he sits around moping an awful lot for a man in the middle of a major war, he’s atrociously unhelpful when Melanie is dying, and he even gives in and kisses Scarlet when he knows that he may as well have been waving the starting flag in front of Dale Earnhardt. In short, he is too indecisive and weak for my taste, and though I loved him when I was very young and found most men loud and scary, I have little patience with him now that I am older. I prefer the Rhett Butlers of the world, though I have no illusions as to their essential character. At least Rhett was honest about who he was, recognized quickly that his love for Scarlet was toxic, stood by Belle Watling with an admirable loyalty, and could get the job done. If you are an Ashley Wilkes fan instead, I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that you are a big fan of either young adult fiction or most men active in progressive politics. We Rhett fans will be over here in the corner enjoying our thrillers and spy novels.

Melanie is another character who inspires revealing reactions by readers. She is generous and selfless, impossibly good, and thus clearly doomed from the start. How could anyone not like Melanie? But there is a difference between admiring her and wanting to be around her for too long. Melanie makes you feel inadequate. Melanie makes you feel mean and small. Melanie would make for an awesome character in a mystery book. Think about it: what if someone was actually lousy enough to whack her? Who could do such a thing? Now that would be an interesting puzzle. Melanie represents the essential good in human beings, and as such probably appeals to readers of all genres. After all, doesn’t every book explore whether people are essentially selfless or self-serving at their core?

Other lesser characters, and how you react to them, can reveal even more about your reading and writing tastes, if not your soul. Let’s take the Tarleton twins. They’re like a pair of dumb Labrador retrievers, tongues hanging out as they pant around Scarlet, fetching her barbecue and vying for a pat on the head and “good boy” from her. You just know that they will be the first to charge into the fray, without stopping to think whether it’s the smart move or not. You know they won’t make it halfway to Fort Sumter, much less Gettysburg. This cynical reaction to the Tarleton twins should have told me, early on, that I needed to go into crime fiction. If you, too, saw it coming but, unlike me, found it a little noble, may I recommend any book by Stephen Ambrose?(Although Stephen Ambrose is one of my all-time favorite authors, just for the record.)

Meanwhile, Aunt Pittypat is the litmus test for whether you are a fan of southern women’s fiction or not. If you find her iconic and endearing, please do not read Flannery O’Connor anytime soon. If you mostly want to slap her and hand her off to the Symbionese Liberation Army, welcome to the dark side. Start with Stephen King and go from there.

My reaction to the death of Bonnie Blue Butler was another clue that I like to avoid the sunny side of the street. The very fact that I could entertain a smidgen of relief that the pony did her in clearly labels me both a horrible person and a crime writer. (Although in my defense, the young actress who plays her in the movie version of GWTW is so abominably coiffed and overly cute in that saccharine 30’s kind of way that I think probably everyone should get a pass on cheering for the pony.)

Finally, we must discuss the characters of Mammy and Prissy, the O’Hara family’s house servants (and by that, the ending credits designer surely meant SLAVES). I never understood the need for comic relief in an otherwise utterly serious tale — I almost threw tomatoes during Keeper of the House in Les Miserables — and I certainly do not understand making these two, of all people, the comic relief in GWTW. I think the only sane reaction to their characters is to watch Django Unchained every time you watch GWTW in order to balance out the moral scales of the universe.

Try this literary sorting hat for yourself. Think of the characters in Gone With the Wind and your reactions to them. Then stop and marvel that fictional characters can reveal so much about you. Stop and give homage to authors who are able to create such iconic and evocative characters that people talk about them for decades, if not centuries. Then give those authors the due they deserve, whether it is Margaret Mitchell, JK Rowling, Shakespeare, or someone else whose characters haunt you. Because characters capable of striking deep chords within readers are the hallmark of great books. If you’re a writer, remember that. Take the time to build and get to know your characters before you even start to write your book.

How do you feel about the characters in Gone With the Wind? Who are some of your most memorable characters in literature? Your favorites and your least favorites? I’d love to know which characters speak to you and what they tell you about yourself or the world.

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

Whenever I conduct a writer’s workshop, I always learn something from the experience. Whether it’s an attitude or a question or, perhaps, an unexpected answer from the audience – I always leave having realized some new truth that helps me in my own writer’s journey. This past week is a great example. It was a busy week for Piedmont Laureate workshops. I conducted a workshop for elementary school students, another for high school students, and still another for adults. When I was done, I was left with the realization of how very personal imagination is, how much it fuels a writer’s need to write, and how big a role it plays in making a book your own. The week left me with a healthy respect for the connection between a writer’s imagination and their voice.

Each workshop was different, bringing a new realization about how we view imagination. The youngest children were brimming over with creativity, their boundless energy sparking idea after idea after idea. But they had something else, too: fierce pride in their own imagination, pride that sometimes spilled over into outrage when their suggestions were not adopted. I began the workshop by explaining the different elements of mystery writing and asking the children, as a group, to give me ideas for settings, motivation, plot events, and characters, especially heroes and villains. They did not need much explanation, beyond a brief discussion of those same elements as played out in the Harry Potter book series. Soon they were coming up with places to set our group mystery (college was a popular choice), heroes (many nominated themselves), and villains (they preferred their villains to be as different from themselves as possible, ideally big, bad, and easily recognizable). With nearly 30 kids in attendance, it was impossible to use everyone’s ideas—and not all of the children could cope gracefully when their suggestions were not chosen. In fact, when it became obvious how important their own ideas were to their sense of self, I changed plans and had them complete the story on their own to give all of them the opportunity to write exactly what they wished.

Later, after I had talked to two much older groups, I realized that this sense of ownership over our imagination is what creates writers. The need to give voice to our imagination, and to organize and sort it out as we see fit, is why many writers choose the solitary life of sitting in front of the computer, living with fictional characters rather than real human beings, spending hours and days and lifetimes marshaling their imaginings into stories.

In a separate workshop that same week, I taught a group of attentive teenagers a range of techniques that writers can use to organize their books and inspire compelling plots. I was amazed when, having gone through the fairly complicated process of identifying a basic book structure that appeals to today’s readers, every attendee immediately set to work creating a book timeline of their own by overlaying their own ideas onto the generic structure. Even the teenagers who walked in that day without any work in progress immediately came up with an idea for a book and steadily fleshed out that idea for over an hour. But unlike the younger children, they were almost unanimously private about their ideas. Although I encouraged them to get feedback from their desk mates, most were content to work quietly, with one-on-one help from me on how to build out their narratives. By the time we were done, I was struck by how seriously they took their ideas and envious of how they still retained an intimate connection to their imaginations. Clearly, most of their ideas came from a very personal place inside them, they recognized that, and they were instinctually driven to protect them. I started to wonder if maybe maintaining that connection and exploring the more private places of our imaginations wasn’t the key to writing a book uniquely my own.

Finally, I ended the week by conducting a workshop for 10 adults, all of whom are part of an ongoing national writers’ movement. They were intensely focused on what I was saying as I led them through my process for creating the bones of a book and using a combination of brainstorming and different outline techniques as the foundation for a strong first draft. It was clear from their questions that they were relating what I was saying to their own work in progress. As they took notes and asked me more questions, I was struck by how much they respected their own work and, by extension, their imaginations. They understood the challenges of their books and seemed eager to learn any new techniques that might help them build a better book and make it their own. Many of their questions had to do with my own choices as a writer, inspiring me to look at my own influences in more detail. I walked away from that workshop with a much clearer understanding of what drives me as a writer: my distant past, my life’s experience, my successes and my failures, my disfunctions and my strengths, my disappointments and my joys, my ideas about fairness and justice, my hopes for a better world—they are all there in my imagination, feeding the books I write. I need to understand that, and to respect that, if I hope to write books that are uniquely my own.

I used to think that it would be fascinating to be a psychiatrist for writers, that by listening to them speak as honestly as possible in the confines of a safe, treatment room, and then poring over their work to discern the unspoken pain of their lives, that I could make the connection between my own subconscious and the books I write. But now I realize that there is an inherent judgment in that scenario, an assumption that there is something in me  that needs fixing that will be revealed by my writing, an assumption that encourages a desire to hide behind words rather than use them to reveal truths (an impulse I think many other writers feel). I am going to reject that notion. I now see that attempting to scrub traces of ourselves from our imaginings is a mistake. Because our imaginations are a lot like our dreams: a stew of desires, impulses, fears, deeply rooted need, and an overwhelming drive to control our own destiny and connect to others. It’s just that, when you writing, you are given the opportunity to bring order to the chaos. Unlike dreams, you get to define how these very personal forces unfold as well the ending. But both our dreams and our imaginations are deeply, deeply personal and the only way to make what we write truly our own is to understand and respect that.

In the end, I came away from each workshop with valuable lessons that will make me a better writer. Going forward, I’m going to take fierce pride in my ideas, like those elementary school children so connected to their imaginations. Then I am going to acknowledge the connection between my ideas and the forces that drive me in this lifetime, shaping who I am. After that, rather than fearing that these inner drives might be divined by my readers, I am determined to respect the personal foundation of my imagination, honor myself, and write a more authentic book the next time I sit down to write.

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

When I was little girl, I used to spend whole afternoons perched in a tree in my overgrown backyard in Raleigh’s Cameron Park, reading books for hours while eating fresh tomato sandwiches on toast. I can still feel the sharp bite of toast in my mouth and the sting of tomato as I turned the pages, lost in my own private world. (That’s me on the right in the photo, in my prime tree-climbing days, no doubt clutching some unsuitable paperback to my chest. No one was getting my book away from me.)

God knows there was no shortage of books for me to choose from, and little supervision over what I read. I read from the original first editions of the Mother West Wind books, plowed through every single one of the Wizard of Oz books, and got an early dose of detective fiction with the Boxcar Children and the Bobbsey Twins. But I was just as likely to be reading Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West (clearly exhibiting a dark streak early!), or even Aldous Huxley and Sinclair Lewis. My grandfather had been a Chicago time study engineer in the meat packing business and so his shelves yielded Upton Sinclair as well as all three volumes of Shelby Foote’s Civil War series. As I got older, I discovered Lady Chatterley’s Lover and a massive medical guide to psychiatric disorders under my mother’s bed that kept me rapt for weeks. Later on, when my father became the book editor of the News and Observer, I had veritable mountains of books to choose from whenever I read. But I think one of my favorite reading experiences was methodically working my way through a huge pile of original Life magazines stacked in our living room that chronicled decades long past. I became a time traveler and still feel, deep inside me, as if I actually lived through those decades — such is the power of reading.

Later, as a real traveler barreling down the highways of the Northeast and Canada on camping trips with my family, I would sit in the boot of our station wagon, reading James Bond for hours until, bleary-eyed, I’d look up to see some massive mountain looming in the distance. As a result, I still believe, on some level, that every James Bond book takes place in Switzerland.

I took my love of reading to college, and can vividly remember reading Gone with the Wind on a hot summer day in the tiny bedroom of a trailer parked off a then-deserted Mason Farm Road outside of Chapel Hill. I was devouring the story so rapidly that one of my cats, after observing my eye movement in silent bewilderment, tried to pluck out an eyeball. It was dangerous business reading about Scarlet, but after surviving a corneal scratch, so obsessed was I that I actually read the cheesy sequel of the same name — an absorbing but ultimately unsatisfying experience that did nothing to deter me from tackling other huge tomes like James Michener‘s Hawaii. (“Is there no place on earth safe from James Michener?” — an unknown, and much funnier, book reviewer than I). The bigger the book, the better the book became my motto. Oh, for the days of a long attention span!

I was, of course, using reading as an escape. Those long afternoons in the crook of a tree were the only quiet times I had growing up in a house full of nine individuals, sometimes an equal amount of dogs, and more than enough drama. In college, books were an escape from all the decisions that awaited me about my life. Later, when I lived in New York for many years, books were a way to escape the city’s endless concrete and air of general disappointment that eventually gave me spiritual claustrophobia and sent me back to the South.

But somewhere along the way, in the midst of juggling two careers and raising a child, I lost the ability to sit and read for extended periods of time. The advent of social media did not help. Like everyone else, I was fascinated with this new online world and wasted hours of my life talking to strangers. When the instant high of the online scene faded, and the demands of the real world grew ever greater, I was left with a persistent tear in my soul that I could not quite pinpoint. I did not realize then that it was the lack of reading in my life. Thank God for my book club, if not for the past 15 years of needing to show up once a month having read the book, or at least part of it, I am not sure I would have read many books at all beyond those I was contractually obligated to review.

Then a lovely thing happened six months ago: I moved much closer to where I work and found myself with an extra hour a day to do with as I wished. Weary of computers, email, and instant messages, I was determined to spend that hour off-line. I began to reclaim even more lost hours, shut down the electronics, and spent more and more time reading. I discovered the joys of used bookstores and walked out with shopping bags full of everything from true crime to Proust. I started to read my books every Sunday morning in companionable silence with my housemate, one of the few people I have ever known who can actually read the entire New York Times. Every session spent reading seemed to restore some lost part of myself. I began reading for an hour after work each day in my side yard, enjoying the green among the green (as Graham Greene himself would say). Little by little, I reclaimed my reading time and reclaimed myself along the way. Now, without apology, at least once a day, I do not return messages, I ignore Facebook posts, and I let the e-mails sit as I take a book and withdraw to my solitary pleasure and let the calm of being lost in a private world wash over me. I am grateful to have found this peace — and I feel myself becoming whole again in some mysterious way.

It is nearly impossible to find privacy in this world we live in. There are always noises coming at you, messages pinging, phones ringing, images moving, and people bombarding you with ways to spend your money. Reading remains one of the very few solitary pleasures left and I am grateful I have re-discovered it.

If you, too, feel the world is too much with us these days, I highly recommend that you return to reading as well. I don’t think it matters what you choose. What matters is that you give yourself the time to sit, insulated from the madness around you, lost in the world of your pages, just you and your book, and an engaged imagination, and a soul that is grateful for the rest.

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

On Saturday night, as part of the Piedmont Laureate program, I joined a number of other North Carolina writers in greeting people as they entered the North Carolina State University Theater to see two wonderful mystery-related shows, The Hollow and Something’s Afoot. What a wonderful experience it was to see groups of people entering the lobby, their faces animated with the expectation that they were soon to see something new. Even better, I was able to meet and talk with many of them, introducing them to the writers there so they could learn more about their books. I was struck by how engaged the theatergoers all seemed, as well as by the diversity of the crowd — people of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds, all there to share in the experience of live theater. They brought good-humored curiosity to meeting the authors waiting for them and it was wonderful to see one new connection after another being made. A number of people had their children in tow. I wanted to throw my arms around those parents and thank them for making sure that at least some young people grew up understanding the joy of being a part of the arts.

“It’s just such a different feeling,” one dapper gentleman told me. “You are part of something volatile and alive. Each show is a different experience from the one before.” He remembered a show he had seen at the theater a few seasons before where, when the actor bowed, his wig flew off and skittered across the stage. “You just never know what will happen!” he said happily.

Was he in search of cultural enrichment? No. I think he just wanted to feel alive and be more than a sack of meat and bone staring, slack-jawed and drooling, at a flickering screen.

The theatergoers were a great crowd to talk to about reading. Most of them were devoted readers and eager to meet new authors and take a look at the books we write. They wanted to talk about ideas, they were open to making new friends, and they seem relaxed and at ease with themselves. There was a camaraderie in the lobby, a sort of shared acknowledgment that everyone there had something in common and that it was okay to drop the suspicion that is so easy to adopt towards strangers these days.

We need a nation of people like this. I am convinced that people who get up off their couches and head out to see theater, or attend author readings, or enjoy an arts performance of any kind, end up being less afraid of the world, less affected by the histrionic messages that pour into our homes via media, bringing fear and hostility and that persistent sense of vague doom that relentless news reports and shares of those reports can create. It is so easy to get caught up in the constant stimulation of one outrage or disaster after another that I think we sometimes forget to be a participant in the world, rather than simply a watcher of it.

I wish we could find more ways to get people out of their homes and out to arts performances. I wish we could convince more people to turn off their televisions and skip the shopping mall and take a chance on a music or theater experience, or meeting an author, or viewing a new painting or photography show, or seeing once and for all what modern dance is all about. All of these art forms are, at their heart, a form of expression and simply being there, to witness that expression, shows a respect for other people and that makes the world a better place.

So please join me in vowing to be a more active participant in what is somewhat demeaningly called “culture” these days. Be one of those happy, engaged people in the world. Be one of those people with open minds who seek out the unexpected. Be one of those people who would rather see something they don’t understand than sit on a couch and watching a television show they already know the inevitable ending to. Go ahead and buy those season tickets. Go ahead and invite a friend to the next show. And if you have kids, take them to the theater, to the art gallery, to a dance performance. Let them see for themselves how much richer life can be when it doesn’t come at you through an electronic screen.

By Katy Munger, 2016 Piedmont Laureate

This blog post is the final installment of an adaptation of a talk I gave on April 26th at the Cameron Village Library. Prior posts focused on the future of libraries and books. In this final post, I discuss how the world is changing for writers and why we need to change how we define success as well as what it is that we are aiming for when we write.

It’s not easy being a writer in a world where the way we communicate and absorb information changes, literally, by the day. Worse, for too many writers, this is today’s reality:

It is more difficult than ever to make a living writing books. With the rise of ebooks, more people than ever are publishing even as traditional publishers offer authors smaller advances and less support for books outside the mainstream. To make a living writing good books is even harder: you can’t make big money as an author without devoting significant amounts of your time marketing your work—yet time devoted to marketing is time away from perfecting, revising, or writing your books.

Big publishers follow a throw it against the wall and see what sticks spaghetti strategy. Authors come cheap. For a few thousand dollars, they can lock down a book, keep the competition from getting that author, throw some copies out there, and then wait and see if lightning strikes and someone manages to break out by the grace of the Internet gods or a lucky break.

Big publishers are way too fond of distracting authors in hopes we won’t notice how badly we are being treated. They do this by pitting us against one another (trust us, we’re not each other’s enemies) and by sending us off to market our own books using whatever the technique du jour may be. Maybe if we’re busy blogging or self-promoting on Facebook, we won’t notice our publisher didn’t buy a single ad or schedule a single interview for our newest book.

Even if you do get signed by a major publisher, it’s almost impossible to break in no matter how good your book is. Because good, new books rarely sell. What sells is another book by a name brand author, or a book by someone similar who can convince an existing big name to throw their endorsement behind them.

What do we do under these circumstances? We can start by naming it right and by claiming the power that we do have.

And what we have the power to do is control is the writing process itself, the stories we tell, what audiences we write for, and how we present our books to the public. To claim your power, start by rejecting the idea that writers are irrelevant today. As writers, we are the only people in our world who provide depth you can’t find anywhere else, depth needed to counteract the superficiality of the rest of the information we receive today. We are the only ones putting all the superficial instant messages coming at us in context and provide other people with perspective. We are the ones who connect humanity, for, absent personal contact, it is within the context of a tale that people cross demographic and geographic boundaries, to learn about one another while realizing the truth about humans: no matter where we come from, we are always more alike than we are different and we must remember to honor how we are alike if we hope to survive this world as a species.

So yes, you have great power to shape the world for the better. This is my advice to those of you seeking to claim that power:

Know why you write and who you are writing for. Is it to shine a light on how to survive a crisis? Is it to inspire people to live life more fully, or to make people laugh? Don’t type a single word until you know exactly why you are writing, who you are writing for, and how you want people to react to what you have written.

Tailor your outlet to why you write. Not everyone will have a goal that can be achieved or an audience that can be reached by having a book published by a mainstream publisher. Find your audience, learn how and where they read, then choose an outlet and a format that will bring you in touch with that audience—whether it is a full length book, self-publishing, a series of online novellas, a graphic novel, a podcast, a blog, or some other medium.

Don’t define your success by whether you get a contract from a brand name publisher. Define your success by whether you have reached the audience you were trying to reach.

Don’t play their game beyond the first three innings. If you do not get a big advance from a mainstream publisher, they have no incentive to market you. So if you do go the traditional route, and you don’t get a decent advance and marketing support by the time you reach your third book with them, find another publisher or find another way to reach your audience. Otherwise, you’re just spinning your wheels.

Only write a good book, with your truth in it, when you have something to say, no matter what your genre is. Find your voice and write your book with it:  never imitate someone else… don’t write solely to try and create a bestseller because the chances are zero that you will… and above all, remember that the world does not need another bad book. If you can’t write a book with you in it, you are only contributing to information overload and that may well end up dooming us all.

Understand that the real value of being a writer lies in the process itself. You are privileged to sit down and write. Feel it, enjoy it, and make the process your destination. That’s where you will be spending 99.999% of your time. Don’t waste that time. Experience it and make it count.

Participate in author co-ops and other group efforts like book tours and online marketing campaigns. Channel the power of social media for all. These are your people. Support one another.

Support and honor small publishers. Help them publicize their books. Buy their books. Give them a chance to publish your book. They are our only hope for keeping quality in the book-selling business and preserving the diversity of our voices.

Protect your writing time. If you are an author, put your talent and your energy into writing. Don’t drink the Kool-Aid. No one can be a great writer, agent, designer, and publicist all at the same time. If you have to publicize your own books, save up your money and hire someone else to do it. If you have to design your own book or eBook, and you’re not proficient at it, then hire someone else to do it for you. Your job is to write.

None of these ideas are magic bullets. None of these ideas are mine alone. But they are a start and we need to start the discussion now. In closing, I’d like to urge you to be part of the discussion. Talk about it today. Make it real. Be a writer citizen of the literary world. Be a writer willing to shape the writing experience rather than sitting and taking what the future brings.