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Much Ado About Publishing

First Class Publishing Wisdom from Second Grade

by Nina L. Diamond

And that’s not even because it’s all been done before. Nope. It’s because none of that kind of advice will do you a damn bit of good in publishing.

Being nice oughta get you somewhere, but it doesn’t. Nobody uses scissors anymore since all the design and production is on computer, and you can forget about playing well with others: Every “other” you encounter in publishing doesn’t want to play with you, or anybody else, at all, let alone well.

It occurred to me very recently when I was talking about some of the survival skills that every author needs, that I’d actually learned mine way back in second grade.

Even the applicable skills and life lessons I’d learned before then all jelled that year to form a fundamental professional worldview that serves me quite well to this day. Perhaps that’s because the year I was in second grade – September, 1963 to June, 1964 – was a pretty momentous one in the national, global, and cultural scheme of things.

Let’s begin with what I brought to the table when the school year began:

EVERYTHING BEGINS WITH THE WRITTEN WORD: “Run, Spot, run!” Words carry your message, and they must be loved and respected, not neglected or dismissed. Yes, it does matter that your book is written well. Oh, you’ve seen lots of poorly written books that’ve found publishers? Well, that brings me to the next lesson. My mother taught me this one.

IF EVERYONE ELSE JUMPED OFF THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE, WOULD YOU JUMP, TOO? I’m sure you’ve all heard this one before, and you know exactly what it means: Just because other people are doing something stupid doesn’t mean you have to. Be yourself. Answer to yourself. Don’t follow the crowd.

Of course, today, the surest way to get a six figure advance would be to jump off some bridge, survive, then write a book about it. But, that’s a whole ‘nother matter.

BE A BRAVE LITTLE SOLDIER: This one I learned from watching old Shirley Temple movies. Some grown-up was always leaving her and telling her that while they were away she had to be a brave little soldier. Here she was, the most vulnerable person in the whole scheme of things, yet she always had to bear more burdens than the far more powerful folks around her.

And it turned out that she always had the answers, and could out-reason every befuddled adult in charge of looking out for her. She ended up looking out for them. Yes, the weight of the world was always on poor, little Shirley’s shoulders, but she bore that weight with brains, charm, resourcefulness, humor, and, of course, talent.

When you’re an author, you’re the Shirley Temple of the publishing world. You will need to be a brave little soldier. And yes, you probably will know better than all the “publishing grown-ups” in charge.

NEVER GIVE UP: Sorry, guys, but this one came from a Shirley Temple movie, too. It was called The Little Princess, and it’s a classic. It was made back in 1939, but it pops up on TV once in a while, and you can get it on video and DVD. If you haven’t seen it, you must.

Shirley’s at a very posh girls’ boarding school in London while her father is away fighting a war at the turn-of-the-century. Unlike her fellow students, Shirley isn’t a snotty, little brat lording it over the poor girls who work as servants at the school. And that turns out to be a good thing because little Shirley is soon to join those servants when word comes that her father has died in battle and there’s no more money to pay for Shirley’s stay at school.

She trades in her frilly party dresses for a rag of a dress, and is put to work at the school cleaning and shoveling coal in order to pay for her back tuition, room, and board. Gone is the well-appointed room she’d once enjoyed. Now, she’s in the attic with no heat and barely any food.

She endures these indignities far better than any grown-up would have, and what keeps her going is her gut feeling that her father is actually still alive.

Of course, no one believes her. But, that never stops our Shirley. She knows what she believes, and she never gives up.

She takes on the evil woman who runs the school, she takes on the local hospital staff, she even outsmarts the local police. She has a few adult allies, but there’s little they can do to help her. So, as with every Shirley Temple movie, it’s all left up to her. That’s okay, our Shirley can do it.

In the end, Shirley is right. Her father is still alive, and she finds him among the wounded who have recently been shipped to the local hospital. No one knows who he is, though, until Shirley sees him, because he’s shell-shocked and doesn’t know his own name. He doesn’t recognize Shirley, either. Does that stop her? Of course not. She shakes him (I hate to use this expression, but, oh, hell, I just have to: “You go, girl!”) until he snaps out of it.

He knows who she is! They hug! They cry! They’re cheek to bandaged head! They laugh! They cry some more!

She tells him that she always knew he was alive, that she never gave up. And, in the end, she even gets the thumbs up from none other than Queen Victoria.

Whew! No matter what anyone tells you, never give up. Shirley could do it, and so can you. And, oh, by the way, this particular movie’s take on class differences will give you some insight about how and why lead title authors are treated so much better than midlist authors.

That didn’t stop Shirley, either. And it shouldn’t stop you.

BE YOURSELF: I’d heard that a real, live, honest-to-God, actual writer lived down the street. I don’t remember who he was or what kind of writing he did, and I’m not even sure that I knew back in second grade. But, since that was the year when I officially decided that I was going to be a writer, I was very interested in getting inside the house of a writer. And Halloween was my ticket in. Candy was secondary to my trick-or-treating that year. I was on a reconnaissance mission.

I still remember everything about the writer’s house.

In the yellow glow of Halloween candles, I stood in the foyer and looked around as Mrs. Writer put candy in my bag. Mr. Writer was nowhere to be found, but evidence of him was everywhere: giant stacks of newspapers, magazines, books, and assorted papers crawled from the floor up every wall in the living room, dining room, and the hallways.

The yellowed, crinkled, papers went every which way, in stacks that were taller than I was.

“Oh, my God,” I thought. “I sure hope that having this kind of mess isn’t a requirement when you’re gonna be a writer.”

Even if it was, I knew I was going to ignore that particular rule.

I was one of the few kids in the world who never had to be told by her parents to clean up her room. Apparently, I was born neat and organized. To this day, I really have no idea how to make a mess. I clean up as I go along. Everything has a place where it “lives,” and I always put it back. I’m not interested in spending the better part of each day looking for stuff.

After that Halloween peek into The Haunted House of The Messy Writer, even at seven years old, I knew that I was going to be my own kind of writer, whether anybody else approved or not. His mess was his business, and my organized room (with books on shelves by category, a neat desk, a clean typewriter, and my dolls lined up artfully in a row) was my business.

Writers and authors don’t have to have messy soap opera lives, either. They don’t have to suffer or torture themselves in order to have something to write about. Life throws you enough curveballs without you purposely screwing things up. Which brings me to my next lesson.

BAD STUFF HAPPENS OUT OF THE BLUE: On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated. They sent us home from school early that day. It was bad. Everyone was crying. The whole country sat glued to their black and white TV sets. I sat on the floor and watched as “Uncle” Walter Cronkite kept me informed. I learned that when bad stuff happens, you need as much information as you can get…from people you trust. Bad stuff will happen, mostly when you least expect it, so…

BE PREPARED: I learned that from Brownies, and then Girl Scouts. Be prepared for pretty much everything. Even the things you can’t think of. The good things and the bad things. But…

EXPLORE: I learned that from Brownies and Girls Scouts, too. And even more so from books. Books take you everywhere out in the world, and to worlds beyond, and everywhere inside your mind. Explore every opportunity you have and every opportunity you can create. Which brings me to…

MARKETING IS EVERYTHING & WIDER THAN YOU MAY THINK: I learned that from The Beatles. They first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show that winter of second grade, in February, 1964. The next day, at recess, we all held hands and danced in a big circle on the playground and sang Beatles songs.

I clipped articles about The Beatles from the newspaper. I bought teen magazines and drew hearts around Paul’s photos. I bought Beatles records, Beatles buttons, and, later, went to see Beatles movies.

Although The Beatles weren’t marketed directly to seven-year-olds, we all got swept up by it anyway.

I wonder if such a thing would be possible today when everything is so ridiculously narrowly marketed.

Perhaps the closest thing we have to the cross-demographic whirlwind that was The Beatles (and still is) would be the Harry Potter books. They were marketed to kids, but adults fell in love with them, too.

Market to everyone.

I think the movie people have learned this lesson. They know, for example, that a movie with baseball or basketball in it isn’t a sports movie just to be marketed to the fans of that sport. The sport is usually just there as metaphor.

Think about Field of Dreams. It wasn’t about baseball, and the movie marketing people knew that. In fact, it was about pretty much everything but baseball: reaching for your dreams, missed opportunities, one last chance to reclaim your dream, discovering that what you ended up doing was even better than your original dream, following your intuition even when no one else understands, expanding your original idea of who you are, repairing relationships…so many universal aspects of the human condition.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with an editor at an independent publishing house about the success of the book Seabiscuit. He was trying to convince me that the only reason it sold so well and stayed so long on the bestseller lists was because so many horseracing fans bought the book and propelled it to bestseller status.

He was completely convinced that the book was about horse racing, and therefore must’ve been marketed just to horse people, who were solely responsible for its success.

Since I know him well enough not to bother being diplomatic, I proceeded to tell him that he was out of his %$#*& mind, that the book wasn’t just for fans of horse racing, and horse people hadn’t been the ones who bought the book in significant enough quantities to make it a long-term bestseller. That everyone bought the book. We argued this for a long time.

And then this sick feeling creeped up inside of me: had he been the publisher, he would’ve thought of Seabiscuit as solely a horse book, to be marketed only to horse folks.

Unfortunately, most publishers (independent and the big houses) think exactly as he does when they acquire and market books. Which brings me to my next lesson, courtesy of my father.

CONSIDER THE SOURCE: Too many people are idiots, everyone has biases, everyone has an agenda, and just because somebody says something doesn’t automatically make it correct.

When someone says something, consider the source – who they are and everything involved with that – while you’re considering how much stock to put into what they say. And don’t let anyone or anything limit you. And, finally…

ONE PERSON CAN MAKE AN IMPACT THAT LASTS A LIFETIME: For me, my second grade teacher, Naomi Otterbein (now Bryant) has been that person.

She will be 85 in February, and we’re still friends. She’s still teaching me.

It was in her class that I decided to be a writer. To this day, she’s more excited by my books and my newspaper and magazine articles than anyone else I know, including my family and my other friends.

Despite being practically bionic – hip and knee replacements and God knows what else – she leads a full life that people half her age would find it hard to keep up with. She’s retired from teaching now, and she travels extensively with her sweetheart of a husband, James, climbs mountains, and still wants to learn and see everything. She’s as sharp, creative, inquisitive, and witty as ever.

With her big heart and melodic laugh, she still has the patience she always had while expertly and kindly inspiring children for more than 40 years.

In Naomi’s second grade class, I learned lots of big words, and lots of things most kids don’t learn about until high school. She encouraged us to explore, imagine, create, and express ourselves.

I hope that when I edit authors, and when I write about the publishing industry, I’m passing along the spirit of what she has always given me: the kind of support of creative freedom that everyone needs while they write and sell their work.

In a world full of people who say, “No,” to those who create, it’s always nice to have someone around who says, “Yes.”

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Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.

Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.

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Logo image courtesy of George Glazer Gallery, NYC georgeglazer.com