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Nathan Bransford

Author

Life of a Writer

How do you cope with staring at screens so much?

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Many of us look at screen all day as we work. We look at screens when we are reading the news. We look at screens when we’re watching TV. We look at screens when…

Okay you get the point.

Looking at screen all the time can make writing very difficult. To wit:

  • We often write on the same devices that have access to email, Twitter, Facebook, and any number of other distractions. So blocking out the outside world is a challenge.
  • It can cause eye strain, especially as day shifts into night. 
  • Perhaps most importantly, it can feel claustrophobic, like you’re in a very small room whose furnishings don’t really change much.
So how do you cope? How do you force yourself to keep staring at the screen when you really need to write, especially when you don’t really have an alternative to screen-staring?

Devices? Apps? Screen settings?

(Thanks to Olivia Clements for the question!)

I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and consultations! And if you like this post, check out my guide to writing a novel.


Art: A Writer Trimming his Pen by Jan Ekels the Younger

Interview: Author and editor Rakesh Satyal on writing, the book business, and the importance of diversity

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I’ve known Rakesh Satyal for most of my adult life, ever since we were young publishing pups coming up at Curtis Brown Ltd. and Random House, respectively. Rakesh has gone on to have a super interesting career. After moving over to a successful editing stint at HarperCollins, Rakesh left the industry to work in branding, before returning recently to work as an editor at Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.

In addition to being a fabulously talented editor, Rakesh is also a fabulously talented writer… plus a fabulously talented singer, which you’ll see at the end! Renaissance man! His debut, Blue Boy, won a Lambda Literary Award, and his follow-up, No One Can Pronounce My Name, was just published by Picador.

Away we go!

NATHAN: You had a lot of success with your debut Blue Boy, including winning a Lambda award. What was it like to return to the well after that and write a second novel? What does No One Can Pronounce My Name mean to you?

RAKESH: With Blue Boy, I had a pretty firm idea of who the protagonist would be and what his voice would be and what the trajectory of the story would be. With No One Can Pronounce My Name, the approach was quite different. I began writing one of the central characters, Harit, as if he were in a short story, and it wasn’t until a bit farther into the writing process that I realized he would intersect with the other key character, Ranjana, and that their story would be a novel about this intersection, about friendship.

A fundamental theme of the book is how we process loneliness — and how this kind of emotional processing can be constructive rather than destructive — so the intent of the book is really to help people feel less alone and to show them that their journey to, through, and sometimes back to loneliness is important and often necessary for growth. I have personally found that discussion meaningful and hope that others do, too.

You have had a super interesting career, rising up to to become an editor at Random House and HarperCollins, then leaving publishing to work in branding, and now you’re back as an editor at Atria. What was the biggest thing you noticed about the publishing industry when you returned?

I know that people invoke the topics of diversity and representation often, but that’s because we have a long way to go on those fronts — still. All the same, one of the reasons why I joined the team at Atria is because the imprint has a long history of hiring people of diverse backgrounds and publishing books across a wide spectrum, so I felt seen and heard.

The other big difference — and this is a great one, of course — is that the rise/resurgence of the indie bookstore is real. Having just completed a book tour, I can tell you that the booksellers at those stores are all the more dedicated and passionate, and that’s a wonderful thing for everyone to see, from writers to agents to editors to, most of all, readers.

What’s the biggest thing you learned outside of publishing that you’re now applying to your job as an editor?

This may sound broad or overly general, but the importance of innovation cannot be overstated. In my branding roles, I often saw how a client or company that could truly take stock of what had come before and think of ways to add something new to the equation often garnered an audience far beyond that which they may have originally envisioned.

Similarly, as an editor, I think that you can assume that your readers, who are already so smart and eager for fresh writing, want innovation more than confirmation, that they want you to be taking the kind of creative risks that afford them something distinctive and eye-opening as they read.

What is one thing you learned about editing as a result of being a published author, and one thing you learned about writing as a result of being a professional editor?

I had the very good luck of having yet another amazing editor for this latest book (Anna deVries at Picador), so I learned a lot about what particular idiosyncrasies I have a writer that might be helpful or detrimental (I can’t share the specifics of those with you or I’d have to make you sign a Faustian pact).

On the flip side, I think my editing life has allowed me to give myself permission to simply push forward and create instead of constantly questioning the legitimacy of my work. The best editors will encourage you to follow your instincts; in fact, as an editor, I often encounter situations in which an author already knows, deep-down, that something might not be working but wants to plow ahead anyway just for the sake of getting the project done. Being able to check in with myself and be honest with myself when I’m trying to ignore certain weak spots is definitely something that has helped me.

On a recent panel, you were quoted as saying “Publishing is all about trickle down enthusiasm.” What do you mean by that?

The editor’s job is very different from what people outside of publishing may think. The typical portrait of an editor in the larger culture is that of a copyeditor, in fact. That is, to be sure, vital work, but the editor within a publishing house is really a liaison among the author, the agent, the publishing house (including production, publicity, marketing, and sales), and the eventual readership. Since engaging those within the publishing house requires numerous meetings over the course of years, the editor really has to be the most passionate advocate for the book because that enthusiasm has to carry over to all of those people.

If you could wave a magic wand over the publishing industry, what would you change?

I would love to see more people of minority backgrounds represented in publicity, sales, and marketing. I obviously wish the same for editorial, but most people when they apply for entry-level positions in publishing tend to think of editorial alone. I think that having representation in those other areas is just as important, if not more so.

Anything else you’d like to add? The floor is yours!

We’re living in unprecedented times, to be sure, but No One Can Pronounce My Name is about a life-saving friendship between immigrants, so I hope you’ll check it out. It’s by engaging with personal stories — not sweeping generalizations — that we change the world and meaningfully engage with each other, and I hope that this is one of those stories that can make a difference. Oh, and on a much lighter note, check out this Hamilton-themed book trailer I made for it!

RAKESH SATYAL is the author of the novels No One Can Pronounce My Name (just out this month from Picador) and Blue Boy (Kensington Books), which won a 2010 Lambda Literary Award and the 2010 Prose/Poetry Award from the Association of Asian American Studies and which was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Debut Fiction Award. Satyal was a recipient of a 2010 Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and two fellowships from the Norman Mailer Writers’ Colony. His writing has appeared in New York magazine, Vulture, Out magazine, and The Awl. A graduate of Princeton University, he has taught in the publishing program at New York University and has been on the advisory committee for the annual PEN World Voices Festival. He lives in Brooklyn.

I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and consultations! And if you like this post, check out my guide to writing a novel.

Which program do you use to write?

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A few months back, Gizmodo published an article asking why people are still using Microsoft Word.

There are tons of word processing programs out there now, everything from bare bones to feature rich.

So what program do you use to write, and why?

Microsoft Word? Google Docs? Apple Pages? Scrivener?

Oh, uh… Pen and paper?

Personally I use Apple Pages because it’s easy to sync across devices, and works relatively well going both on and offline. But I’ve heard great things about Scrivener and have been considering taking it for a test drive.

What about you?

I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and consultations! And if you like this post, check out my guide to writing a novel.


Art: A seated man sharpening a quill pen by C. Guttenberg after F. van Mieris

The incredible advantage of fast typing

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As longtime readers know, I’m a tad obsessed with productivity.

And here is what I think is actually one of the most important factors to being productive: typing really freaking fast.

(Curious how fast you type? This is a good site to test it. I’m around 110-120 come at me bro).

Think about how much time you spend typing per day. Then imagine you could write the same number of words in 75% of the time or even 50% of the time.

If you’re languishing in the 30-40 wpm realm (the average typist), just think of what’s possible if you could type three times as fast! Imagine if you could type as fast as your brain can think!!

You could send extra emails, get a few more pages done on your work in progress, and have some more time for chores, just by typing faster.

This is, sadly, not the time where I tell you about my patent-pending typing class available for $19.95 with free shipping and handling. But I would definitely encourage you to think of typing like muscle strength and work on it like you would an exercise regime.

If your typing form is poor, consider a typing class, either online or in person. If you’re good, play speed typing word games to get better.

The faster you type, the more you get done. It’s that simple.

I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and consultations! And if you like this post, check out my guide to writing a novel.


Art: Underwood Standard Typewriter

6 writing tips from Hamilton

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Hey so I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there’s the musical called Hamilton and it’s pretty good.

I finally had the chance to see this rather incredible blockbuster show a few months back, and it’s one of those rare pieces of art that manages to live up to whatever crazy expectations have been established for it. It’s really, truly good.

And I was especially pleased to learn that writing is hugely central to the story in Hamilton. In the very first song, about Alexander Hamilton’s childhood, James Madison raps that Hamilton “Put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain,” and the rest becomes history. (How awesome is it to write the words “James Madison raps.”)

Alexander Hamilton lived and ultimately died from his writing. From his early days, to his letters during the American Revolution, to the Federalist Papers, to the editorials that soured his relationship with Aaron Burr, writing was everything to Hamilton.

And within Hamilton and through Lin-Manuel Miranda’s experience writing it, I found some inspiration that has helped me think about my own writing. (Mild spoilers below)

Don’t throw away your shot 

Let’s start with the obvious one.

It’s impossible to watch “Hamilton” and not want to immediately run home and start writing. Characters marvel how Hamilton is writing “like he’s running out of time,” and Hamilton repeatedly vows that he’s not going to throw away his shot.

Hamilton, through and through, is a writer, and a massively driven one.

Hamilton raps that “I’m just like my country, I’m young scrappy and hungry” and when he agrees to be George Washington’s right hand man he immediately starts cataloguing the letters he needs to write.

Hamilton is hungry, writing is deeply woven into his identity, and the scrappy way he’s presented in Hamilton is infectious.

It’s all about the story

Lin-Manuel Miranda took copious, at times wild liberties with Hamilton’s life and nearly everyone in the musical.

For just one illustrative example, there’s a moment where Aaron Burr raps that Martha Washington named her feral tomcat after Hamilton, and Hamilton says, “That’s true!”

It’s not true. But it’s a funny moment!

Would Hamilton be better if Miranda had strictly stuck to historical accuracy? No! He opts for meaning and story over strict accuracy, and Hamilton is better as a result.

Don’t neglect your personal life


Hamilton was a rising star, before he was brought down politically by one of the early country’s first sex scandals, where he was caught paying hush money to his lover’s husband. Which also led to…

Don’t be overconfident

Hamilton is so used to solving problems through writing that he catastrophically miscalculates with the Reynolds Pamphlet, where he confesses the affair and self-immolates his political career.

He thinks he can save himself with his writing. He can’t. Jefferson, Madison, and Burr cackle that “he’s never gon’ be president now” and “You ever see somebody ruin their own life?“

Hamilton’s pride also led him to accept Aaron Burr’s challenge for a duel, which of course led to his untimely death and one of the greatest commercials of all time.

Take the time you need

It took Miranda six years to write Hamilton. It was worth it.


Keep writing


Let’s take this one straight from the man himself (if you’re reading this via email, please click through to see the tweet):

Got it? Good.

Now don’t throw away your shot.

And if you want to hear from Miranda himself, check out this interview with the Nieman Foundation, this summary of some lessons from Hamilton: The Revolution, and this interview with NPR.

Have you seen Hamilton? What did you think, and what inspiration did you take from it?

I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and consultations! And if you like this post, check out my guide to writing a novel.

The script

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Whether you realize it or not, you and I and everyone else walks around with scripts that we deploy in common social situations.

When someone dies, we express sympathy, and they say, “Thank you.” 

When someone gets a promotion, we express excitement, and they say, “Thank you.” 

When someone keeps making the same relationship mistakes, we express bewilderment, and they say, “I know, why do you think I drink so much.”

This is all well and good and natural. They’re frameworks that help us from having to start from scratch every single time we encounter an emotion in the wild.

But there’s an unintended consequence to these scripts: they are rote, they are unthinking, and they don’t allow for nuance or complexity.

When people direct “the script” at you, it can feel as if they’re boxing you into feeling a certain way. You start to think you’re *supposed* to feel in the exact way they think you should feel. And when you deviate from “the script,” people may react with confusion or even outright hostility.

When someone dies, what if you also feel some relief? 

When you get a promotion, what if you secretly want to quit your job? 

When you keep making relationship mistakes, what if you secretly love the drama?

Authors can feel this acutely when you ascend a rung on your publishing journey. You spend so much time writing a novel, so much time trying to find an agent, and then when you find one, according to “the script” you should be filled with unbridled joy, not, well, joy mixed with terror and doubt.

Then when you find a publisher, according to “the script” your problems are *really* solved. And good luck trying to complain about anything ever again when you’re a bestseller.

The best people in your life will give you the freedom to deviate from the script and see you with all the nuance and complexity you possess. Because it’s *OKAY* to feel something other than what you’re “supposed” to feel. You’re a human being, not a robot.

Seek out these good people who will let you complain when you’re “supposed” to be happy and let you be happy when you’re “supposed” to be sad.

But most importantly, ignore the rigid people out there who try to make you feel badly because you’re flipping their script. They’re not seeing you as a human being, they’re seeing you as a faulty computer program.

It’s fine if you are terrified after you get an agent.

It’s fine if you feel more down after publishing a book than you were before it was published.

It’s fine if you are filled with terror, doubt, elation, sadness, confusion, all at once, and/or separately at different times of the day.

The publishing journey is tough enough without being boxed into feeling something you don’t actually feel. Toss the script out the window and let yourself be a human being.

I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and consultations! And if you like this post, check out my guide to writing a novel.

Art: Two Wives by Carl Bloch