So this one’s pretty cool.
Last spring I put together and edited Concord Writers Night Out 2018: An Anthology of Writers and Writing in association with the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. It’s a collection of short stories, novel excerpts, poems, and essays from writers around the area with an introduction and a short story by yours truly. (My piece is called “Rejection,” a fictional rejection letter to a REALLY bad writer). I handled the editing and the bulk of the organizing while fellow writers Gary Devore and Kevin Barrett formatted the e-pub and distribution ends.
It was a pretty rad project to work on, and I’m happy to say that it’s finally out. After much discussion we decided to make the electronic versions available FREE to literally anyone who wants one, so if you want to check it out you can download the PDF from the NHWP website or get the e-pub for Kindles and tablets directly from the publisher or the iTunes store. (Did I mention that it’s FREE?)
Alternately, if you want a for-serious physical copy in paperback the cheapest way to get one is directly from the publisher ($4.34 + $3.99 shipping = $8.33), though you can also buy one from Amazon ($8.68) if you don’t mind paying the markup fee. Since this is a not-for-profit project the money you pay for the hard copy covers the cost of printing, distribution fees, and that’s it—the goal for this anthology was to get writing out into the world, not to sell a bunch of books or make money.
Also, can I just say—a book that I put together is actually available on Amazon, and that feels pretty awesome.
How’d You Get to Work on This Project, Anyway?
Back in New Hampshire I was part of a statewide writer’s group fittingly called the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. They’re the biggest writing group in the state and they hold a yearly conference, regular webinars, theater readings of novels-in-progress, and a bunch of other stuff for writers both experienced and just starting out.
The NHWP holds local meet-up groups in different parts of the state, and for me that meant joining the Concord group, which I did back in 2016 after I got back from Nebraska. Our group met once a month and talked about everything from how to write an agent query letter to how to market your work to the issues we all have getting our own projects done. For me, the meetup was a great chance to talk with real people about the same creative-work balance stuff I write about on this blog, and also a solid opportunity to meet other writers—some of whom, like Josh Bresslin and Ange D’Onofrio, went on to write guest posts about their own Day Job-related struggles.
A while back, someone had the idea of putting an anthology together featuring work from writers around the Concord area, and I was instantly drawn to the project for a few different reasons:
- It would be fun
- It would be a solid opportunity for us to get our writing out into the world
- It would be a chance to see what other local writers were working on
- It’d be a kick-ass project that would show our group weren’t messing around
So How’d We Get the Anthology Started?
With projects like this, the hardest part is getting off the ground. Our group tossed around a lot of ideas about how to make the anthology happen, and formed a small committee that I ended up spearheading. A lot of people had a lot of ideas about how a writers’ anthology could work, so to sort them out I wrote up a survey asking who was interested, when people could submit, how many pages they wanted to submit, etc., to get an idea what an anthology would look like.
The survey results were pretty clear: a lot of people were interested, and most everyone could have a submission ready by spring 2018. This worked out extremely well because I’d applied for the job in Japan and was planning to escape from my crooked boss in the spring, thus giving me a boatload of extra time in May and June to put an anthology together.
The timing was too perfect to ignore. I made sure the anthology project stayed on our meeting agendas, and since external deadlines make excellent motivators I set a final date of May 1st for everyone to submit.
The Nuts and Bolts of Organizing an Anthology
Planning a project like this is hardly rocket science, but I wanted to make sure the other committee members had easy access to everything I was working on, and also that if the group decided to do a second anthology after I left for Japan they’d have a setup ready to go. I handled all the anthology correspondence using a separate Gmail address with an official-sounding name that I created for the project, stored the submissions on Google Drive, and kept a spreadsheet of everyone’s submissions using Google Docs. Everything in one place = Less hassle.
Starting in early May I went through each submission one by one, marked any edits that needed changing, and sent each piece back to its author with notes. I edited each piece in order from shortest to longest so I could contact a greater number of people earlier on, thus giving more people more time to get back to me. It took me just over a month to get through everyone’s pieces, so by early June I just had to wait for the authors to approve their final edits.
Everyone in the group took the project really seriously and was easy to work with—plus, they replied to emails pretty quickly as long as their non-writing work wasn’t getting in the way ;-) I also asked everyone to send in a bio with the usual info about themselves, other projects they’d done, and social media/email links so readers would know who was who—after all, a little self-promotion never hurt…
The busiest part of the project was definitely editing everyone’s pieces, which took up a HUGE chunk of my worktime in May when I was also trying to finish the grad school novel and review my Japanese, so I felt like I was spreading myself way too thin by trying to do too many things at once (lame…).
The most demanding part of the whole process, though, was definitely responding to everyone’s emails about their edits, since I found myself checking the anthology email every day so I could establish a quicker back-and-forth. Having this extra task to take care of every day was just one more thing I had to worry about during an already busy time, so even though the emailing itself didn’t take up much time on its own it was more bothersome because it gave me a lot of little things to worry about over a longer period.
I also knew the anthology needed an introduction—something to explain what the project was and set a general tone for readers. I wrote a two-page intro poking fun at people who see writing as a snooty, high-class endeavor when at the end of the day, writing and enjoying other people’s writing should be for everyone—a spirit of open-mindedness that I wanted to instill from the very first page.
Formatting and Polishing
Putting the anthology together also meant arranging everything in one big MS Word file, making it look good with fonts and margins and spacing, and using the dreaded Word Styles feature to make sure all the titles and author names looked the same. I’d done some work with Word Styles before this project and knew how it all worked, but this was my first time creating a style template entirely on my own. Fortunately, once you know the basics it’s just a time-consuming process of going through the entire 138-page document and setting up the different sections of each piece—though I won’t go into more detail here since there aren’t too many Word nerds like me reading ;-)
Original photo for the anthology cover, Cheryl Barnhart’s “Many Glimmers Lead the Way” (National Gallery of Arts, Washington DC)
When all that was done I worked with Cheryl Barnhart, one of the anthology writers who also works in photography, about choosing a photo for the cover. She sent me a few different options and I went right for this photo taken at the National Gallery of Arts in DC since it captured a more urban, modern spirit I wanted to project with the cover. Cheryl was also super-easy to work with and essential to getting the project finished—especially since I waited until the last minute to even start thinking about the cover…
After that I sent the proof version off to everyone in PDF form to check for typos or last-minute changes—something I DEFINITELY recommend any editor do on a project like this since you never know what you might miss! Only a few people found things that needed fixing (yay!), which meant that after a few last-minute tweaks we were good to go.
Twelve days before I left for Japan I sent the final Word file off to Gary and Kevin so they could finalize the legalese on the title page and format it into an e-pub. With my work on the anthology finally done, I was free to focus on the hectic transition to life in Japan while Gary and Kevin tackled the intricacies of reformatting the final, FINAL versions of the e-pub and print copy. Both of them were essential during this final step of creating something people could actually download and read, so double kudos to them!
I Learned a Lot and Have a Really Cool Project to Show for It
Putting the anthology together was less of a learning experience and more of a culmination of a bunch of things I’d done before through other jobs and personal projects: emailing writers, organizing a schedule, editing manuscripts, passing on feedback, formatting a Word file, etc. That made putting them all together feel incredibly natural when it came to making this anthology happen.
I’m genuinely happy with how the anthology came out, so I encourage you to give the digital version a download and check it out—after all, it’s freakin’ FREE! In addition to the introduction and Rejection story by yours truly there’s also a piece about a guy who calls in to work dead, a Lovecraftian horror story featuring a small-town cult, a novel excerpt about the Greek gods coming to life, plenty of fantasy pieces, and even a story written from the point of view of a tree. The goal was to have something for everyone, and no matter what your tastes, there’s sure to be something here for you.
So like I said, check out the PDF on the NHWP website or pick up the e-pub for your tablet, Kindle, or whatever—both are free and both are going to stay that way. And if you want a print copy to actually hold in your hand you can get one through the publisher (slightly cheaper) or from Amazon.
Final Plug: If you’re from the 603 and want to get involved with either the 2019 Concord Writers’ Night Out anthology (yeah, I said it!) or the NH Writer’s Project itself, drop me a line or check out the Writer’s Night Out page for more info.
Oh yeah, one more thing…if you like what you see, help me out with a follow or two! Every little bit helps….
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