“Hey, Mom! I just got done planning a book about relativity. I outlined 20 chapters, and I’m going to write them all. I even came up with chapter titles. And you’re going to love it, because it’s full of faux resolutions.”

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Today we’re linking to a guy my husband knows, Joe Brockmeier, a professional writer who’s written a great post on exactly what that job is.

Writing’s always been a fun idea for people who really like written language and telling stories (some folks call them “lies”), and lots of us out here have been noodling around with words and sentences and characters and plotlines for decades, enjoying ourselves mightily the whole while.

But suddenly in recent years there’s been this explosion of massive marketing aimed at people who don’t really know writing—most notably the latest rage to skip working on your writing skills and go straight for the platform—fueled by the very industry that feeds off the dreams of aspiring hopefuls. And it’s insane. You can’t be a professional writer if you don’t learn how to write! And you can’t earn money at it if you don’t like doing what you have to do to earn it!

Me, I don’t mind technical writing. It’s all about organization and clarity, translating complex ideas into simple language, which appeals to me. It also comes with a salary, so I don’t have to keep asking my boss over and over and over again to hire me back. Even now that I’m not working full-time in the industry anymore, I prefer contracting. It pays really good.

I don’t much like freelance nonfiction work. I don’t like competing with all the other freelancers over who’s got the best clippings. I don’t like the constant self-sell. It taxes my lily-white brain. So I pretty much leave it to the people who don’t mind that stuff, like my friends and husband.

Of course, I love fiction. I love working with fiction authors. I love reading fiction. I love writing it. However, as with freelance nonfiction, I’m basically lazy and don’t send stuff out all that often. I get busy. . .

The worst part of the publishing industry these days is the economy. Because, as more and more professionals in the industry get laid off and turn to freelance work teaching others how to do what they used to do, the more innocent hopefuls are pulled into the vortex. And the harder and harder it becomes to sell any writing, no matter how great, making the vortex that much darker for everyone.

My closest writer friend tells me I should stop saying things like that, since my own work feeds off your innocent assumption that if I edit your work you can get it published. It’s perfectly true that I can edit your manuscript to be not just publishable, but the highest quality it can possibly be. (That difference, unfortunately, gets bigger every day.) I do know how to do that. Really well.

But please, guys, understand what professional writing is. Understand what it isn’t.

Understand your dreams.

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Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos independently published her book, Silent Sorority, on April 18, 2009, after eighteen months of approaching traditional publishers from her background as a professional marketer.

She did her due diligence, spent five years writing her book, hired an editor and designer, identified her unique, focused market, and blogged and networked conscientiously to build her platform. (You should see the number of comments on her site.) She researched agents and had some enlightening conversations. The bottom line? She was writing for “too specialized” a target market. No one would publish for an audience “that small.”

Pamela’s niche market? The infertile for whom medical intervention does not work. Those who fall through the cracks of the massive fertility industry ($3 billion in the U.S. alone). A grieving community for whom no books, apparently, are published—not because those readers aren’t there, but because nobody in traditional publishing knows they are.

Pamela is one writer who is also a successful marketer. And she agreed to be my next interviewee on indie publishing.

First—what printer did you use? Why? Was it the price vs. service level, reputation, print quality, or something else?

BookSurge. It was at the time one of two companies that Amazon had acquired.

I did a lot of diligence about what different vendors would provide in the way of services. I wanted control over artwork and cover—BookSurge did offer turnkey, but they also had a very lightweight offering that said, If you provide us with everything, we will assign you a publishing consultant to guide you through the process. It was $300 to turn over my fully-formatted and -designed book.

They sent two different final proofs, with covers, to read. I found a few more typos I didn’t catch in my formatted files and got them back to them for revision. I approved the final galley, and within a week it was up and available for purchase on Amazon.

What service level did you choose, why, and how much did it cost? Were you happy with what you got for the price?

BookSurge no longer exists—it got merged with CreateSpace—so I was lucky, I got the tail end, because CreateSpace at the time was entirely self-service. At BookSurge, I had the name of a person who was my account contact, so I had a go-to person. At CreateSpace, in April 2009, you didn’t have that extra layer of protection in terms of service available. (I recently found a link that compares the BookSurge to CreateSpace offerings.)

Rights: who retains them, and for how long? In whose name is the ISBN registered?

I own my copyright. I did register for it. It’s one of those administrative tasks that are absolutely must-have. I applied to the copyright office a year before my book came out. I submitted for the copyright, ISBN, Library of Congress, all in my own name.

Daniel Poynter’s Self-Publishing Manual is phenomenal. He’s really good about giving self-pub authors help, he’ll sit the book on his website, he’s got a newsletter. It’s been around for awhile, and he’s updated and added a bunch of things.

His recommendation was to create your own publishing company. (It was way too much to do for tax purposes, for me). He has a checklist.

Self-sales: does the printer give author- or bulk-discounts if I want to purchase copies to distribute locally? If the publisher is not associated with a major distribution channel (like Ingram), doesn’t it then cost a lot of money to place physical copies at local bookstores?

CreateSpace is associated with Ingram. CreateSpace allows me to buy one copy and gives me an online store, whereas BookSurge had an author discount only if you bought a bulk number of copies.

My royalties went up when BookSurge merged with CreateSpace. If you click on Buy the Book, it takes you to what looks like a storefront. Amazon completes the transaction, but I get $8.50 for every book sold on my storefront, and on Amazon I get $5.75. My cost for books I buy is only $3.44.

I have had a couple of wholesale distributors buy, but for most folks fertility is a fairly narrow topic, so if you’re a bookseller my book is not necessarily a must-have.

Barnes & Noble—I ended up sending a copy of my book to B&N for review, and I got this very official form letter that said, We don’t believe this title has a broad distribution opportunity, so no, thanks. But I ended up going through Smashwords. The CEO/Founder Mark Coker does an amazing job (for no charge) helping authors convert their manuscripts to ebook formats. He has a relationship with B&N and Sony, and in a matter of weeks—literally, from the time I took it from print PDF to ebook—it became available through B&N. (You can submit your book separately as a Kindle, but you get higher royalties through Smashwords.)

Depending on what you sign up for, the way of quality control, you may get different experiences. But CreateSpace and Smashwords are as good as a bookstore. And I would encourage people to take copies to libraries.

Quality: some people are saying indie publishing companies are not publishers, just really, really, really good photocopiers. Was that your experience? Where you pleased with the quality of what you paid for?

The book quality, in the end, was as good as you’d find in a library or bookstore. I did hire a book designer, which gave me professionally-formatted PDF files that were then uploaded and used for the first book proof. I took the time to get a good book designer. I found her on on Elance, a San Francisco Bay Area marketplace of freelancers. I typed in a proposal, and people bid on the project. Elance is great. You can check references. They take a small percentage of the total amount paid. I also hired a great editor.

You know, If someone just has a personal interest in sharing a story with immediate family and friends, there are tools that allow people to do that. Shutterfly—there are a variety of other ones—there are ways to create mini-photo books. They’re boardbound.

How did you like working with this publisher, personally? Did you find them pleasant and helpful, informative, really inspiring? Or simply business-like? Or did the service kind of suck, but it was worth it for what you got? Would you recommend others use them, and would you use them again yourselves?

Smashwords is very, very professional, and, as I say with BooSsurge, they would send me emails in response to everything I was doing, and at the bottom of each email it said, If you’re not satisfied, here’s the customer service info.

Can you tell us how sales have been?

It’s been really good, based on just word of mouth, and my sales are increasing, month-over-month, trending up as I get deeper into the communities of interest.

I’m contributing articles to blog sites that range from Open Salon to Divine Caroline to Fertility Authority. In some cases I’m compensated for my posts, and sometimes not, but it really does have a multiplier effect. At the Huffington Post, for example, there’s a woman who teaches women’s studies in Houston, and I get involved in those conversations. It does generate a moving flywheel. Get that flywheel spinning, the royalties start coming in.

I set my price by looking at other comparable books. It’s a balancing act. I chose a price significant enough that, if someone truly wanted to buy it, I wanted them to think it was worth the time. Based on other books in the marketplace on this topic, and the fact that it is a first run, I chose $14.95 because it’s under $15, and hardcovers are around $25.

You have to look at the economics of it at all. For the publishing houses to make an investment, they are taking a big risk. Consequently they have to figure out that the market truly is big enough to support a particular title. At the same time, what happens is there are always going to be niche books. I fully understand that my book will never be a best seller. But the people who are interested in it—people in the infertility community—read everything they can. They have the time. They’re sitting in doctor’s offices! These people are voracious.

I’m reaching an international marketplace. In fact, two of my biggest markets are in South Africa and Australia. I don’t know if there would be this opportunity for me without Amazon. Because it’s Amazon.

Interesting point—I did a fair number of interviews with authors who had gone the traditional versus indie route. After a certain time, traditionally-published books became unavailable. With indie publishing, I jokingly say my nieces and nephews will be getting my royalties in perpetuity. I’m finding the people are very loyal readers. They want the book on their bookshelves. My resale price is twice as big as my real price because a lot of those are being sold in Euros. Another woman did go through traditional publishing at the same time I did, but her book was safer and a how-to manual. She and I are listed as comps. Her books went from $15 to $6, and the price of mine is staying constant. I don’t know what was the initial agreement with her publisher. But, you know, my book will always be available.

Is there anything you would have done differently? Any specific advice you have for others considering independent publishing?

The only thing would be to have been given myself more time to do pre-launch book promotion. I was dead set on getting it out by Mother’s Day, so as a result I really rushed my own promotions. I pitched media first and then put out a press release. I know the drill. I had predetermined a number of bloggers and sent them copies and knew full well that they could have given me a thumbs-down. Fortunately the reviews came in positive.

Nonfiction in particular is an easier way to pursue indie publishing than fiction because there are ways to get into industry groups. I wrote a business plan for my book. There’s an industry around fertility, so I know how to work those channels. If you’re writing a book about infertility, you have to be smart and differentiated. I knew that, since 99.9% of the books out there have been written by mothers, I had a unique voice.

Silent Sorority came out on April 18, 2009. I did a fairly heavy amount of promotion in the May-June-July timeframe. I’ve got a community of readers who read my blog regularly. I had a post up called Birth Announcement for my book.

The workload now feels infinitely lighter than trying to get the book ready for publication. That, for me, was the hard process. A really fine-tuned social appointment, a set of reporters I know, Google set for topics. Now it’s seamless. I do this for a living, so it seems perfectly easy to spend an hour a day scoping about who’s writing about what.

Any other points or stories you’d like to elaborate upon? If I missed something significant that you think others should know about, please do talk about it.

I will say to your point earlier that there is nothing easy about publishing these days, whether it’s through traditional or indie. As the author you are 100% accountable for the publishing of your material.

Indie publishing’s got a negative connotation based on the marketplace. I really was very reluctant to move toward self-publishing, worried it would signal that my writing wasn’t of a good-enough caliber. I was extremely hard on myself when it came to the manuscript. I rewrote it three times over five years. I think you really need to think hard about: Are you propagating the myth of junk? Or are you really truly holding yourself to a high standard, such as you’d get from an external source?

I was reluctant to associate myself with anything that could be perceived as vanity press. And let me be clear: broadcasting to the world that you couldn’t conceive isn’t something you do for vanity purposes. In fact, I didn’t tell family and friends that my book was available right away. They found out about it after I’d already sold a bunch of books.

Realistically—I’ve been around the block (I’ve been blogging for three years)—my intent initially was to build a community and see what the level of appetite was for the type of book I was writing. I signed up for a couple of helpful search engines, went diligently and found out what agents work in what topics—Who do these agents represent? Do they look at issues outside conventional wisdom? And I put very specific pitches together. What I found was really interesting. The response was, “You’re involved in a particularly unusual topic that doesn’t necessarily fit neatly into the traditional publishing world model, so I don’t know that I’d be successful at pitching your idea. It doesn’t fit into their categories.”

Would my idea in itself be interesting because it’s different? I had three or four conversations with agents about this, but they didn’t feel they could make an adequate commission (reading between the lines). Pub houses were tightening the filter, so it had to be a blockbuster type of book.

Which reminded me of the movie studios. There was a time when if it didn’t fit the model it wasn’t used.

I spent eighteen months chasing the traditional publishing world, and I thought, Okay. I work in marketing. I’m just going to do that. I became the contractor for my own book.

I think we’re in the really early days of indie publishing. There are those of us who have decided we don’t fit the formula. When I’m talking to those who have created an economic arbiter—like Hollywood—I don’t lead with the fact that I’ve self-published, I just say it’s available.

Publishers were once the arbiters of good taste. Now it’s the readers who decide what’s good and what’s not. I’ve got thirty reviews on Amazon—thirty-two if you count Amazon.ca—twenty-eight five-star and two four-star.

You said you asked yourself, What is my objective, as an author?

Yes. I was feeling isolated in my infertility experience, I had enough angst about it that I went to the library, I went online. I could find no books by women about infertility who were not mothers. It became evident that there were a whole bunch of issues that hadn’t been covered—the stigma associated with failed infertility treatment. There were no appropriate guidelines for how you grieve and move on through that experience. I got so annoyed, I thought, Hell, I’ve got to change that.

I was shocked by how the fertility industry had become all about the business, not about the individuals seeking treatment. I was flying back from a business trip, and I was in business class, and this young woman was chatting near me with the flight attendant. The flight attendant asked, “What do you do?” and she said, “I’m a med student. I’ve been doing a lot of research, and the highest-paid doctors are in fertility.” Fertility and plastic surgery, those were her two options. The highest money. That’s nasty.

Because there are huge emotional issues associated with finding out you may never have a child. One of the things I put out to people is there is a belief—in society—that if you never actually delivered a child you have no loss. There is this weird sense that you have to have diapered a baby, or you have not suffered any real loss. The creation of embryos, really truly—when you have for the first time gotten an alpha pregnancy—you associate a life and a set of dreams with those early days. To know that others disregard that completely? It’s devastating that there is no support system. So if you’re out there trying to work through that set of emotions, you don’t have a natural safety net, a safe harbor to work through the loss of a fragile dream.

The reader email I get now breaks your heart.

They say, “Nobody understood what I was living through. You have given me a voice I never had.”

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos is the author of Silent Sorority. She can be reached through both her blog and her book.

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Check out this fascinating look at the evolution of publishing by O’Reilly’s VP of digital initiatives. Are ebooks the new quad type?

And this Week in Review in the NY Times on the history of the relationship between reading and socializing. Didn’t they read Dickens out loud around the fire? And is that the same thing as joining a chat group to hash over the subtleties of megapopular fiction?

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I’m the featured guest blogger on She Writes today, talking about indie publishing for their Countdown to Publication. I’ll be the Friday guest blogger there for the next few weeks. You can check in on Fridays or follow my posts.

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Michelle Davidson Argyle and Davin Malasarn, along with Scott G. F. Bailey, run the Literary Lab, a vibrant online community dedicated to the literary craft of fiction. In the past several months, they’ve run a contest for short stories in a variety of genres, with the results published as the Genre Wars anthology, from which the proceeds go to charity. Michelle and Davin graciously agreed to be the first to be interviewed in this series exploring the independent publishing options available to authors.

First questions first—why did you choose Lulu as your self-publisher? Was it the price vs. service level, reputation, print quality, or something else?

Davin: Well, I first started using Lulu only because Scott (and others) told me how fun it was to print out a draft of their novels in this format to get a sense of actually holding it as a book. So, I tried that with my novel and had a blast. When it came time to do the contest, I knew that other aspects of this would be complicated: reading the entries, judging them, advertising, finding charities—so I wanted to minimize the complication and stuck with Lulu because it was familiar. The price seemed reasonable, although I didn’t have anything else to compare it to.

Michelle: I first heard of Lulu through my father-in-law a few years ago, but I never did anything with it. Then I heard about Davin and Scott printing out their manuscripts through them and how the quality was up to par. I then ordered a novel from a fellow blogger who had put her work for sale on Lulu. I was impressed with the quality and the prices offered. I haven’t really looked into other POD publishers, so I’m not sure how Lulu compares to any others. So I guess you could say it was the reputation that initially got me interested in Lulu.

What service level did you choose, why, and how much did it cost? Were you happy with what you got for the price?

Davin: We chose the most basic service level. This means that we did everything on our own, from the cover design, to the formatting of the text, to the copy editing. So, all that was free. The only cost we had was the cost per copy, which was around $9 each.

Michelle: I’ve been happy with the overall price and the fact that we can also offer downloadable copies of our anthology at whatever price we choose. I like how we can set the price of the anthology, how much profit we’ll make with each sale, and the cut that Lulu takes as well (which seems to be about a fair percentage to me).

Rights: who retains them, and for how long? In whose name is the ISBN registered?

Davin: We didn’t get an ISBN for the book. Again, we wanted to keep things simple. So, as far as that goes, we have the rights to publish the stories. But, since this was an anthology, we only asked for one-time rights to publish the stories in the anthology (and the winners on the blog also). After that, all rights revert back to the original story authors.

Self-sales: does the publisher give author- or bulk-discounts if I want to purchase copies to distribute locally? I have heard that Lulu makes authors pay full price, like everyone else. If the publisher is not associated with a major distribution channel (like Ingram), doesn’t it then cost a lot of money to place physical copies at local bookstores?

Davin: We are able to get copies of the book for the standard price minus any additional revenue we decided to add onto it. That means we can get copies for about $9. We could have also made the book available at that price. But, since we’re donating our profits to charity, we chose to pay full price like everyone else. However, we did order the cheaper versions of the anthology so that we could copy edit from the hard copy. As for bookstores, that wasn’t really a consideration for me. We are basically an online presence and an online community, so we planned to stay within that community.

Michelle: Lulu does also offer bulk discounts—the more copies a buyer purchases, the cheaper each copy is. I’m not sure how this works with Lulu, since we seem to make the same profit off each one, even if they are discounted for the buyer. So I’m guessing it just costs less for Lulu to print multiple copies, so the price therefore goes down, which is nice. I’m not sure if that answers your question at all about distribution. I guess if we wanted to distribute physical copies to local bookstores, the cost would be doable since we’d order in bulk and just have to pay the printing cost.

Quality: some people are saying Lulu’s not a publisher, just a really, really, really good photocopier. Was that your experience? Where you pleased with the quality of what you paid for?

Davin: I’d be okay with calling Lulu a really good photocopier. That’s how we used it. I do believe they have other service options, though, so one could presumably get a more professional book if they were willing to pay more. With that in mind, though, I’m very happy with the results. Lulu tells you if the cover image you want to use is of high enough resolution. The actual text pages look beautiful, in my opinion. Perhaps the one downside to Lulu is that the cover quality doesn’t seem to be as nice as other books I’ve purchased. The glue that holds the pages together is not quite perfect, but not a big problem either.

Michelle: Overall, I’ve been impressed with the quality for the price. Mostly, I’m happy with how simple and easy-to-use it was—especially if someone doesn’t have a lot of design experience. Lulu made it easy to design a cover and have it look decent (and even better if you know what you’re doing), and it was easy to upload the file straight from Word. Lulu converts it to PDF printable format for you. I dealt with my university’s press when I was in school working as the editor-in-chief on the literary journal, and the printing wasn’t as nice as Lulu’s. Quite frankly, I was surprised when I saw a book printed from Lulu. I thought the quality would be less that it is.

How did you like working with Lulu, personally? Did you find them pleasant and helpful, informative, really inspiring? Or simply business-like? Or did the service kind of suck, but it was worth it for what you got? Would you recommend others use them, and would you use them again yourselves?

Davin: For me they are pretty business-like. I think they do their job and they do it well. We also didn’t require hardly any assistance on their part, so it’s a bit difficult to evaluate. I’d use them again, especially as I feel more comfortable with the process.

Michelle: We didn’t really run into any problems with this printing from Lulu, so I didn’t personally have to deal with their service. I’m impressed with the turnaround, though, and how well the site is designed. I’m already planning on using Lulu to print out a copy of my current novel so my husband can read it and not complain about staring at his computer screen for hours. I’m excited to design my own cover and get the book in the mail. It will take a little of that “need to get published right this second” edge off so that I can be patient with revisions and querying the book in the future.

Michelle Davidson Argyle can be found at both the Literary Lab and her personal blog, The Innocent Flower.

Davin Malasarn can be found at both the Literary Lab and a science blog he shares with fellow lab scientists, The Triplicate.

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Your little dose of reality, folks, from the people who know.

You’re not going to get rich as a writer. You’re not even going to get the $150,000 advance this heartbroken author got and spent on living expenses so many years ago.

You’re probably not going to make much of anything.

Write because you love it. Because you love this work.

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Carolyn & Neal, 1947

Dean merely looked at Camille, pointed at his wrist, made the sign “four”. . .and went out. At three the door was locked to Roy Johnston. At four it was opened to Dean.—Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Neal turned back abruptly and, taking a step or two toward me, raised two fingers in an urgent gesture. What could he mean by that? Alone at last. . .As I lowered my hideaway bed, I was startled by a soft knock on the door. My clock read 2:00 a.m. Who on earth? Cautiously I opened the door a few inches and was face to face with Neal, suitcase in hand. I ardently wished I had not lowered that bed.—Carolyn Cassady, Off the Road

It’s been such a pleasure getting to know you, Carolyn. When I told my husband—that first morning I heard from you—whom I was replying to, he said, “Great! She was always my favorite character in On the Road. I thought she was the only one with any sense.”

Well, bless yo husband—though I didn’t think Camille got a look in, really. And what a howl! Sal sees this “white thigh in black lace”! Sorry, I don’t think so!

[laughing] Let’s talk about being the “only one in On The Road with any sense.” You are known as the woman who was “married” to both Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady simultaneously.

And Kerouac didn’t write anything about the time we spent together when he came to Denver. In those days of the late forties and early fifties, it “wasn’t done.” You couldn’t write about fancying your best friend’s girl, and later he couldn’t write about having an affair with his best friend’s wife! Goodness, no! But—when it gets to the sixties and he writes Big Sur, he is quite comfortable telling how Evelyn had two husbands at the same time. How times change!

The San Francisco men I’ve known who idolized Jack and Neal imitated the misogyny they saw in On the Road. And in As Ever, Allen Ginsberg tells Neal: “I call Jack up to tell him come over and meet this here girl, and he says I only fuck girls and learn from men. . .So I starts writing him poison pen postcards (anonymous) saying that’s why your so dumb.”

It is so strange you think Kerouac was misogynist! His remarks—like the one you quoted about girls—were always taken so seriously, yet he never had any set opinions. You ask a question, get an answer. Ask the same question ten minutes later and get a totally different one.

I can’t see misogyny in OTR, either. At any rate, the men I knew of that generation, especially those raised as Catholic, were all very respectful of women—something the feminists abhor. I loved having car doors opened for me and chairs pulled out, et cetera. When you read my book, you will find a letter to me from Ginsberg in which he tells what Jack thought of me. Hardly misogyny.

So, so, so many misunderstandings.

Like the ”Beat Generation.” No such thing. A phenomenon invented by the media and promoted by Ginsberg. But Kerouac kept saying, “I didn’t have anything to do with all that.” He was forced into it and had to play along, but he hated it. Neal, of course, was totally out of it. The big boys, like Burroughs, disliked this “jail kid” “conman” who hadn’t been to University and didn’t write poetry. Of course, he had read far more than any of them and had a photographic memory as well as an over-the-top IQ. And no ego (Catholic miserable worm of a sinner).

Another opinion is that Jack was tied to [his mother] Memere’s apron strings. I see it quite differently. Actually, he was hardly ever with her, was he? I think that because he was so sensitive, so painfully self-conscious, she was the only person he could be with and just let himself go and be totally himself. She drank and swore, so they could carouse together and not worry who cared. Yes, he loved her—like the madonna, but he didn’t want to live with her for long.

I was going to say I was amused on that website where I found you that some guy said it had never been established if Neal and Jack had a sexual relationship. It is so weird to me that everyone these days seems to think if two of the same sex are loving friends, sex has to be involved.

Ginsberg’s sexual interest in Neal is documented in As Ever, as well as Neal’s love for Ginsberg and his ambivalence about having sex with him (“I’m a lazy punk. . .to allow my elusive cherry to escape from you. . .I love all—sex—yes all. . .In despair I cry ‘Allen, Allen, will you let me splatter my come at you?’”). I think people’s curiosity about sex between Neal and Kerouac is based on Neal’s relationship with Ginsberg.

When I grew up every guy—and gal—had a “best buddy.” Both my brothers did. Then, of course, no one I knew had ever heard of homosexuality. Neal and Jack couldn’t have been more hetero. If Jack got too drunk he could be found in a man’s bed (like Gore Vidal—who elaborated his story after Jack’s death, but I know Jack could never have been the aggressor). Neal, however, gave or sold favors, but he didn’t like it. [Carolyn's book shows no homosexual overtones in Neal's relationship with Jack, although they do appear in Neal's relationship with Allen.]

Jack’s and Neal’s and Allen’s writing, in large part, revolves around the search for identity. In the process of exploring their identities, though, they obscured your own behind the myths of Camille, Evelyn, and St. Carolyn by the Sea. If you could say it in a nutshell: who are you really?

Wasn’t it common and the usual complaint that women were not as important as men—to men, anyway? I refer you to the letter Allen sent me telling what Jack said about me. Of course, that didn’t get into his books. Jack couldn’t write about me much for fear of offending Neal. He wrote several books about his other women—not exactly obscuring them.

I was the stable “mother”/lover. All these men I knew wanted a conventional home eventually, and I furnished that meantime. Have you ever read Allen’s description of his wedding, marriage, and family?

Yes, in your book. It’s beautiful. But of course Allen never married.

“To gratify her is simple enuf as it consists of fantasy words” —Neal wrote this to Allen about Diana Hansen, the woman he was bigamously married to while still married to you. In a separate letter to Allen after Jack married Joan, Neal analyzed his own impulses to marry with amazing lucidity. To what extent do you think lying was a guilty compulsion of Neal’s, and to what extent do you think he knew exactly what he was doing and simply felt no remorse?

Neal could always tell people what they wanted to hear, even if he wasn’t sincere.

You must realize Neal had never known a traditional marriage or family life. I had been raised in an extreme Victorian milieu. So many of his actions were simply a lack of conditioning or any understanding of what was expected. Of course, he’d read a lot of books about marriage, but most of those weren’t exactly perfect in a traditional sense. He was the most compassionate man I’ve ever met, so it was ignorance of my expectations and needs, I think.

Do you think now that it’s better to stay in such a marriage or to get out sooner rather than later? Would your opinion be different if you were convinced the lying partner was an exceptional human being, in spite of their severe problems?

My book answers why I stayed in that marriage—[metaphysics advisor] Elsie Sechrist. But now I see it was all for the good. I learned lessons I would never have learned from another. And I believed in vows. I had married for life. One needn’t take vows, but I believe if you do you must stick to them. Of course, Neal had no concept of such a thing. And yes, I had no doubt he was an exceptional human being, but a split personality.

What did his “diagnosis” as sociopathic mean to you as his wife and mother of his children?

That condemnation that he was sociopathic by the ignorant journalist—I knew better, and it hurt him deeply, being so committed to becoming worthy and respectable. He was certainly responsible: never out of a job, would work at anything, supported a family for ten years. Then when that got a bit boring, with his need for adventure and his need to prove he was lovable, he led his double life.

He did not abandon his family. I forced him to, and he never gave us up. I think it is possible he had manic-depressive tendencies or was. His deep depressions seemed to occur when he was away from me, and he would write to Jack about them, but I wasn’t aware of them.

Was Neal the great love of your life?

Yes, Neal was the great and only love of my life—then. When I met him, I knew he was the one. Our karma, as we were to learn. And why we got into metaphysics. I told you Helen Hinkle felt the same, although she wasn’t into metaphysics either and thought it all hogwash.

Do you still miss him?

Yes, I miss him. I am friends with his first wife and his last mistress of eight years, and we all miss him. As do his children.

You’ve also said you were the great love of Jack’s life. How much was friendship—your husband’s best friend—and proximity—he often lived in your house—and simply sexual attraction between healthy young adults? And how much was romance, romantic love?

It began as a survival tactic. Alas, Neal didn’t “make love”—he just used your body to masturbate, actually. He was never into kissing or caressing or foreplay. [Neal's last mistress] Anne Maxwell agreed, but she was turned on inside, so she didn’t mind. I wasn’t.

Tut, tut, tut. I needed affection. I never had any cuddling as a child nor much approval. (Is that an excuse?)

I didn’t consider Jack a good bet as a husband. He had never had to be responsible and had no responsibilities when we knew him. I knew he had to be free in order to write, much as he longed for marriage and a family. So we were his surrogate family. He kept assuming I would marry him, and in that one letter he says, “Carolyn, your life with me would have been awful,” or words to that effect, assuming I wanted a life with him.

It’s a good thing I didn’t go to Mexico and that’s why he suddenly split, knowing he wouldn’t want me to go back to Neal. [Carolyn once agreed to take a vacation from her family to meet Jack in Mexico, but didn't go, and soon heard from Jack that he'd stopped waiting for her and gone home.]

All in Divine Order, see? Crazy karma.

How did your love for Neal and your love for Jack fit together, in your life and in your mind and in your heart?

I learned our hearts are big enough to love more than one, if in different ways.

Jack and Neal, in spite of so much in common, were quite different men. Jack was more sentimental, gentle and romantic. As I said, I was sexually inhibited, but that’s the price I paid for affection and, in Jack’s case, romance. Neal, who loved everyone and never criticized or judged, always wanted to share everything he loved with those he loved.

He could be jealous—and possessive too—at times. Once his, always his. He never gave up [his first wife] LuAnne in his heart. I could understand that when I allowed myself to love Jack, too.

Ah, sex. Testosterone rules the world. All these married women who turn off after they have kids don’t understand a man’s needs, apparently. Most of my lovers were married.

The writer Jane Bowles fielded a phone call in Tangier from Allen (she called him “a boy”) when he arrived there to visit Bill Burroughs. He was looking for her husband, Paul Bowles, and during the call asked Jane whether she knew “about twenty-five men” whom she didn’t know. She responded to each query with increasing levels of, “Oy weh!” until he finally asked her whether or not she believed in God. She called them the “Zen Buddhist-Bebop-Jesus Christ-Peyote group.”

I knew of the Bowleses, but I was—and am—so opposed to drug use, I never got with them. I think I have a documentary somewhere showing him reading.

But, you see, I keep getting classed with these people, because I knew Jack intimately for twenty-two years, Neal for twenty-one, and Ginsberg for fifty. But I had been raised so sheltered by strict Victorian parents, I was totally ignorant of any street wisdom. Of course, in time I learned that’s why Neal married me—a status symbol for his lifelong quest to become worthy and “respectable.” I didn’t figure that out for many, many years, however.

Jack didn’t drink much when he lived with us. He’d have a half-bottle “poor boy” he drank before he slept or when alone, but Neal couldn’t drink anything but a beer or two. He was not alcoholic, as reported. Hard liquor made him deathly ill, and wine reminded him of his Dad.

So I keep learning how other women my age—like Joyce Johnson and Helen Weaver—were living and am gobsmacked! ( I love that English expression!) All three of these guys I knew really longed for the conventional home I provided, knowing no other, and were always happy in it. (Until I banished Ginsberg—we all make mistakes.)

I am old-fashioned in all my ways and tastes.

You say in your book that Jack was very close to your children. What about his own daughter, Jan? She wrote three books and then died in her forties of hard living, just like her father. What do you make of him denying she was his the way he did?

Yes, Jan Kerouac died many years ago. I have to keep battling the opinions people assume about Jack, never having known him. I know exactly why he dismissed Jan. Jack had these devout opinions on how to raise kids (I often got hints). He intended to have a family when he could support them properly through his writing. When Jan came along, he couldn’t, and there was no way he could give up his freedom and take care of her. He had to be free! It was such a very painful decision for him, but he just couldn’t face being tied down, so he pretended she wasn’t his.

She was very friendly to me, wrote to me, visited me, wrote a poem to me, all before she became so ill. Poor dislocated girl. I knew Edie, his first wife, very well—a real weirdo.

You don’t mention much in your book about Jack’s wives, simply that Joan was his second and Stella his third. (“Jacky! Jacky! Stop. . .”)

Edie was a nut case. I have letters from her that are incredible—they begin with no greeting, so you wonder if it’s the first page, and they are pretty hysterical. When she was at the Boulder festival she rented a room she filled with paintings—obviously by a well-trained painter and signed even. Edie insisted they were by Jack. (She didn’t sell any.) She also had one of his letters copied in the hundreds, because it began with “my only wife.” The last night of the seminar she passed them out to everyone in the amphitheater. She went to his funeral as his “wife.” Funny lady.

I never met Joan. Jan tried to get us together, but Joan said, “I don’t want to know that blonde who stole my husband.”

I also never met Stella, but we corresponded while I was writing the book, and she was very friendly until she read in Ann Charters’ biography that I had said [Jack's sister] Nin killed herself. So she got furious and even sent me a copy of the death certificate. I tried to tell her I never said that, Jack did, and I’d told him I didn’t believe him. Stella said, “Ask Allen.” I did, and Allen said Jack had told him that, too. But Stella believed Ann and not me, so she refused to allow me to publish Jack’s letters. Thanks, Ann.

That’s what put my book on the shelf for twenty years. No one suggested paraphrasing then. The Doubleday office in San Francisco closed, and I lost my great editor there. (He had originally asked me to write the book after Jack died because the journalists were so ignorant of him. Luther Nichols had had a talk show and interviewed Jack, Allen, and Neal, and so knew them.)

Jack did so want a family and a wife, but he was so impractical and when drunk so romantic. Or that’s where Joan came in. Edie he married to get out of jail, and Stella to take care of Memere. He kept proposing to me, but I knew Jack wasn’t husband material yet. He had to be free, and he was no provider, which he knew. Neal was a good provider and loved his kids. We made him “respectable.”

Jack really loved all the women he loved—he, like Neal, loved everyone and always so lonely and horny—well, what the hey.

You say, “knowing Jack’s convictions toward women” when you discuss his sudden marriage to Joan. What specific convictions were you talking about?

I thought I was writing about Jack’s convictions about bringing up children, not women—that’s confused.

We were dumbfounded that he married Joan so impulsively, but he was always lonely and kept hoping to find a mate. And by then the drink was increasing. He was never practical, anyway, but a creature of dreams. Pisces. Neal and I had logical minds and were “from Missouri.” If it didn’t work to improve things—never mind. We needed help! Jack was more mystical and completely illogical or unrealistic, believing in visions and impulses.

You’ve talked about how Catholicism gave Neal the sense of being a “miserable worm of a sinner” and Jack a “madonna/whore” complex (so that you thought he really enjoyed sex best with prostitutes). Do you think they’d have lived different lives if they hadn’t been raised in the Catholic Church?

Yes, I’m afraid the Catholic Church has a lot to answer for through the ages. It isn’t Christ-ianity, it’s Church-ianity. Has no relation whatsoever to Jesus’ life or teachings, yet they still call Him their Lord. Well, don’t get me started. Everyone I know, including [her son] John’s first wife, who were raised Catholic have been so conditioned by their evil teaching, they never get over being guilty and unworthy.

Jesus said,”Ye are Gods! Anything I can do you can,” or words to that effect, since we all have the same Spirit within. “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” Well. Enough.

But yes, I’m sure their lives would have been different without all that guilt—which they never got over. The Church gets them so young, and with all that glitter, candles, colorful costumes, they get brain-washed and indoctrinated before they can even think. So the more they enjoyed sex, et cetera, the guiltier they felt. There’s the constant dichotomy and struggle against human desires and so-called spiritual guilt. Although both Neal and Jack learned to disbelieve and turned to other religions, that guilt stuck.

Neal was ecstatic about finding Jesus again through our metaphysical studies. And we studied Jesus’ earlier lives and his long training to become the perfect man and show us how (the Wayshower). Which the Catholics destroyed. Enough!

You refused to mortgage your house in order to post Neal’s bail when he went to San Quentin, in spite of his intense pressure. Was it paranoia on your part? Or do you think you were correct in suspecting if you bailed him out, he’d disappear, and you and the children would become homeless?

Yes, I think that’s clear in my book. After all, he had twice thrown away our savings. The first time it was the money being saved for the ranch—nine hundred dollars. And the second time it was the investments.

Neal had no experience or interest in money—that is, no idea of planning for future security. I did all the taxes, insurance, mortgage (we always had a mortgage), since he hadn’t a clue. I had to learn, too, because I’d had no knowledge or experience with any finances as I grew up. So, all that money sitting in a bank haunted him. Money to him was to spend! A real novelty for him. And, of course, he always had the best of intentions and had figured it all out carefully so that he satisfied himself he would pay it all back. The road to hell. And, yes, I think he never did forgive me, really.

You have said you found Jack’s work difficult to read because you could tell when he was being false. I certainly have that experience when reading the work of writers I know well and love. Can you pinpoint specific examples?

Honey lamb—now that the archivists have taken away his books I had, I can’t possibly re-read them to give examples of what I accuse him of. Sorry. Seems to me it would be obvious to most people. Maybe not if one is so enamored of him and his writing.

Philip Hensher in the Telegraph, UK mentioned recently how pleased he was when he “rudely” denigrated Allen Ginsberg’s work in a review and received a long, furious letter from Allen in return. People sometimes feel free to treat celebrities like zoo animals, poking them just to get a reaction. You were quite a young woman during your years with Neal and Jack and have lived with their legacy nearly all your life. How has their fame affected you?

Some of the notice I’ve received from being involved with these guys has been very rewarding, and I’ve met a lot of interesting people because of it. As the years go on, however, I do get very tired of having to go over the same ground again and again.

Was Jack’s fame what killed him—did he he really drink himself to death because he couldn’t take the pressure?

Jack had extreme sensitivity, self-consciousness, paranoia—and complete disillusion to have not been considered a literary star, like Hemingway, just a hedonist. The cruelty of the journalists, the total misunderstanding by the young. . .He did vow to drink himself to death—he wasn’t your ordinary alcoholic.

Neal and I learned the purpose of life together; Jack never did. “We’re all gonna die.”

You never married again after Neal died. Why?

Hard as it is for me to comprehend, I never, ever after Neal met any man remotely suitable, unless he was married or gay. But then, I doubt another husband would like to live with a wife who was constantly forced to talk about her first one. Still, I never thought I’d end up alone.

If you could go back and live your life differently, would you? Or is this the life you’d have chosen for yourself?

I believe we choose the life we need, so I must have chosen this one. I regret quite a lot, but if I didn’t learn a lesson offered, I’ll get another chance—some other way.

Well, you asked.

Carolyn Cassady is the widow of Neal Cassady, Dean Moriarty, and Cody Pomeroy, and author of Off the Road: Twenty Years with Kerouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg, The Overlook Press, USA, 2008; Black Springs Press Ltd., UK, 2007. She can be reached through her website.

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I just spent the day reading interviews on Writer Unboxed. Do you know about those guys? They’re pretty cool. And they’ve interviewed LOTS of people!

I went there originally this morning to re-read their interviews with Donald Maass and Lisa Rector and refresh my memory for the co-interview I’m doing with those two right now. (There have been unavoidable delays, but it is going forward nicely.)

However, I got hung up on an interview Writer Unboxed did with independent bookstore manager Robert Dougherty of Clinton Book Store, because it’s all about Indiebound. And I realized I ought to be bringing Indiebound to your attention. So you can bring it to other people’s attention. So they can pass it on.

Because Indiebound is the voice of independent booksellers online, and I can’t even tell you how important that is—to you, to me, to all the writers and readers out there.

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We’re talking about holographic fiction in three different articles on the magazine this week:

Bouncing like a yo-yo. kaboing. kaboing. kaboing.

Macrocosm. Microcosm. Macrocosm. Microcosm.

Cosmology. Quantum physics.

The holography of fiction.

In the cosmology of your novel, you’ve got a Hook (big bang!), leading into Conflict #1 with its plot point that snaps your characters’ heads around and drives them in a new direction, which leads to Conflict #2 and the significant apex of your story, which leads to Conflict #3 with its really, really, complex, multiple, and deformed plot point that snaps your characters’ heads around yet again and drives them in another new direction, leading fortunately to your Faux Resolution.

Whew! Pause and mop your brow. Because your Faux Resolution drop-kicks your characters right into the Climax.

Ta-dah! You fixed them.

And you know what else? This process works on each layer and sub-layer, as well, down through each individual Conflict, each episode in each Conflict, each chapter in each episode (or vice versa), each scene in each chapter, each chunk of action or dialog or description or exposition in each scene. . .each sentence. . .

Quantum physics.

Say you’ve got a scene in which your protagonist and their antagonist/love interest are hashing over a long and rather complicated argument absolutely vital to your theme. This conversation needs to convey a lot, you’ve designed your chapter for a good, long wallow in the discussion, and it’s time these two simply had it out.

But after you’ve determined the points to make and the order in which to make them and then you’ve sat (sitten) down and written it all in marvelous, pointed, contrasting and ultimately poignant lines of dialog. . .

I’m so sorry. That sucks so bad. it reads like a fricking script. . .

Read the full essay on The Art & Craft of Fiction.

Bouncing through an action scene

Let’s try microcosm with an action scene.

You know what the set-up is, the plot point this scene needs to fling the reader at. You know who’s in the scene, what fuels the action, the moves they have to make during the course of it, and where they have to wind up at the end. You’ve got it choreographed in your mind.

So you sit down and write it:

move #1
move #(1+ <= n – 1)
move #n

(I think that’s the right code. It’ been a lot of years since I wrote incrementation. Anyway, you get the gist.)

Then you go back and read it. And you know what? It’s just like with dialog. It reads like an instruction manual. . .

Read the full essay on The Art & Craft of Fiction.

Bouncing through description

And let’s wind up our exploration of microcosm in scene with a bounce through description.

You’ve got a spot where you need a little breather. You’ve just come out of an intense piece of action or dialog, you want to give the reader a second to let it fully sink in, but you always have to keep moving the story forward. So you take a glance around, setting the stage for the next rush.

What’s your hook?

Remember Kanen and the sharpened hunting stick? Remember what was significant about it? That’s right—foreshadowing.

What’s the climax of the upcoming scene (the one you’re setting up with description)?

Read the full essay on The Art and Craft of Fiction.

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