The shoeshine box held two horsehair shining brushes, a dauber brush, a bottle of cleaning cream, tins of Kiwi brand shoe polish (black and brown), and a soft shining cloth. There was no polishing glove. In all the times I watched my father shine his shoes before going off to work, he’d first pull an old sweat sock over his hand to prevent the dark polish from staining his fingers.

I mention the shoeshine box because I’m a big fan of toolkits. I’m fascinated by the things professionals collect to do their jobs – the stranger the better. Ever see a professional piano builder’s kit? It’s a sexy assortment of lathes, chisels, and auger bits. Have you ever heard of a tobacco smoke enema kit? Oh, they’re very real, I assure you. In the 1800s, they were the indispensable piece of medical equipment for assisting drowning victims – until they were debunked. Once, on a research trip to a medical history library, I got my hands on a Civil War-era surgeon’s battlefield kit. Although most of the implements were of the cutting and sawing variety, everything was stainless steel – still gleaming – and very lightweight. Nasty little cutters. Take an arm here, take a leg there…

Every professional has their toolkit. As writers, we’re no different from the rest. It can be easily assumed that anyone reading the BookLifeNow.com site on a regular basis has stacks of books on every flat surface in their home. But there’s always room for more, eh?

Recently, I was at a conference during which a panel attempted to come up with a list of essential books for any writer to devour before picking up the pen. The panel moderator called it a “writer’s toolkit.” I listened, made notes. I didn’t agree on a number of the titles mentioned – some were irrelevant to my chosen genre, others didn’t interest me. But the mention of the toolkit held my interest. When I returned home to the paperback-and-empty-whiskey-bottle nest I call an office, I walked the stacks and hunted down every title that had been helpful to me in all my efforts. My writer’s toolkit (abridged):

Dialog gives definition to your characters, reveals motivations, aids in setting, and propels the story forward. No two characters should speak alike.

Dialogue (Write Great Fiction Series) by Gloria Kempton

Writing Dialogue by Tom Chiarella

Characters in fiction should be treated like real, live human beings. With history, motives, and reputation – they are believable and worth caring about to the last page.

Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card

Writer’s Guide to Character Traits by Linda Edelstein

Save the Cat by Blake Snyder

Writing Your First Novel is damn difficult work. Ask any professional and they’ll tell you the same. It’s hours and hours of dedication to the craft, but it beats working.

Your First Novel by Rittenberg and Whitcomb

How NOT to Write a Novel by Mittelmark and Newman

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

Writing Great Horror is a topic near and dear to my heart. Horror has its own language and rules and pitfalls. Whether a slasher or a morality tale, horror stories are part of a genre that is continually reinventing itself.

On Writing Horror by the Horror Writers Association, Ed. by Mort Castle

The Philosophy of Horror by Noel Carroll

Writers Workshop of Horror by Michael Knost

Psychology for Screenwriters by William Indick

Story is the realities, not the mysteries of writing. Story is the essential element to any successful product of the craft. A bad story does not excite readers and turn pages.

Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee

The Hero With 1000 Faces by Joseph Campbell

20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald Tobias

I’ve always thought that books on writing are invaluable, due to the fact that they are a resource available at any time of day or night. I can’t count how many times I’ve left the bed at three in the morning and picked up one of these books to sit at the kitchen table until I’d worked out some plot turn or character aspect. If nothing more, a writer’s toolkit is a preparation – waiting for that moment when you’re struggling to hammer something together.

In the title, I suggested that this toolkit was almost everything you need to get the story started. Every toolkit is personal. None is ever complete. What is your essential writer’s resource? What books do you lean on in times of trouble? Let us know in the comments section below.

Cheers!

Here, he shares some tips for writers in their dealings with booksellers. – Jeff

(James Crossley)

(1) If you’re reading at a bookstore or participating in any other similar event, remember to be gracious. Audiences are forgiving of many faults, but they don’t usually enjoy arrogance. One writer’s opening appearance in front of a substantial, welcoming crowd consisted solely of staring at the lectern and saying, “I’ll read for about fifteen minutes, and then I guess we’re supposed to move on to a Q&A session, but hopefully we can dispense with that, because I don’t really see the point.” Now, these kinds of appearances can become tiresome and repetitive, but there’s certainly a better way to express discomfort with the process than by announcing, in essence, that you don’t want people to buy your book.

(2) Your graciousness should extend particularly to the store staff. Ideally, a reading will result in some immediate sales, but for a writer without an established reputation, the more significant impact will come later on as booksellers spread the word to their customers. If your book is of interest to the staff, it will be one that’s remembered and recommended, and making a good personal impression can only help in this regard. I worked with a woman who was a big fan of a journalist who’d co-authored a couple of edgy and informative books about marginalized industries including punk music and adult films, and she heavily promoted his work whenever she had the chance. She was delighted to help arrange an event for him, but in person he proved bizarrely hostile and demeaning, and by the end of the evening she’d been reduced to tears. Thereafter, his sales fell off more than slightly, not surprisingly.

(3) When trying to convince a retailer to carry your book, similar rules apply. Before you pitch whatever it is you’d like to sell, check the store out in person if you can and be honest with yourself about whether you can imagine a place for your book on its shelves. A shop that emphasizes business titles and vacation thrillers may not be suitable for your young adult novel. Try to engage with the staff about the place and what they like to read and sell, not in an artificial way, but to size up how well your book fits in. If you find someone who seems amenable to what you have to offer, expect to give away a copy to sway the decision maker. A bookseller will pay far more attention to an actual book than she will to a postcard or flyer. If you can’t make an actual visit, at least research online as best you can to better target your approach.

(4) When you’re communicating with a retailer, be conscious of how he’ll sell your book even if he hasn’t read it. What’s its intended audience? Don’t say everybody, provide a specific hook. “It’s great for fans of smart, action-oriented historical fiction, like Patrick O’Brian’s books,” or “It has a very contemporary setting, but the characters are discreet and the story unfolds gently, so it has more appeal to the Jane Austen crowd than it does to Sex & the City viewers” or “It’s for literary readers who find Pynchon too simplistic.” If there’s a local connection, highlight it. You may feel as if you’re reducing your work to a caricature, but once you’ve shown that your book can sell to somebody, you’ve established a beachhead of sorts and word of mouth will begin to push it in other directions.

(5) If at all possible [if you don’t have the support of a traditional publisher], make sure your book is available through the major distributors such as Ingram and Baker & Taylor. The terms won’t be quite as favorable to you as they would be if you supplied copies yourself, but easier availability makes it much more likely that your book will be stocked. Many independent stores will work directly with you, however, especially if you’re willing to consign your book. Self-publishing no longer carries the stigma it used to, but customers are still concerned with aesthetics, so pay attention to the design of your book if only to make sure it doesn’t stand out in a negative way. This is an area where an expert can really be of service.

As you can see by visiting the events page, I’m embarking on 28-event 35-day Endurance Tour in support of Booklife and my new novel. I’ll be hitting a variety of venues on the West Coast and East Coast, and I hope to see Booklifenow readers at many of these events. The tour also includes guest blogging, interviews in local media, engaging with local writer groups, and much more.

Booklife covers book tours, including how to conduct a virtual book tour through guest blogging and the like. But as my friend Matt Staggs and I put together my Endurance Tour, I think we both realized that the modern book tour is a complex, organic entity, the dimensions of which are even more dynamic and three-dimensional than depicted in Booklife (I can already see I’ll need to revise that section for the second edition).

Here are some thoughts just from planning the Endurance Tour. When I get back in mid-December I’ll report on how much of this I still believe in and what new ideas were sparked by the experience.

(1) Real-world events are still important because a real-world event still triggers certain responses from local media and from the blogosphere, which is especially useful for events in large cities, where local coverage can translate into national attention. (Besides, doing a reading or other gig contributes to the cultural literacy of your country.)

(2) A book tour should be balanced between real-world and virtual events, in part because doing so engages different audiences and different gatekeepers and influencers. You can also be your own best advocate out in the world by Twittering and blogging from the road–people love hearing about writer tour experiences.

(3) Good intel from readers “on the ground” as to which indies and individual chain bookstores are best at promoting events will save you from booking an event at a venue that winds up just going through the motions.

(4) Adding variety to the real-world part of your book tour means turning to universities, venues that host workshops, and unconventional locations like bars. For example, one of my gigs is a lecture at MIT in Boston and another is at Manuel’s bar in Atlanta. Given local resources and the timing of each event, each venue is the best possible for the area. (The MIT lecture will be podcast to a wider audience, and there are no indie bookstores in Atlanta with enough pull to make an in-store event a success.)

(5) Adding variety also means being able to bring diversity of material into play. Just doing a reading and signing will not allow you to take advantage of all the opportunities out there. I have prepared a number of different talks, lectures, discussion topics, workshops, and anecdotes to take advantage of many different situations.

(6) The actual physical event is important, but only half the battle. Getting pre-event publicity to encourage attendance is also important, but as important is sparking reactions after the event, from bloggers and others. Having a chance to meet bookstore managers is also key, as they are, of course, among the strongest advocates for the written word.

(7) In creating a book tour, you should think about how the events dovetail with your career as a whole. Which is to say, while you want to sell books and generate interest in your current book, you should also analyze how certain events fit in with your long-term goals. Since I want to do more workshops and lectures about certain subjects, some of the events I’ll be doing for the tour should be gifts that keep giving: they will lead to other opportunities.

(8) If your tour is unique enough to write about the experience, you can create another context for getting publicity for it. I would be writing about my five weeks on the road regardless, but as it turns out I’ll be blogging about it for Amazon and for other venues, in addition to a longer piece at the end of the tour for a print media venue. What makes my tour unique? The variety of venues and the length mean that I’ll be getting a nice cross-section of American book culture, and that’s worth writing about.

(9) Teaming up with other writers is often a good idea. It’s not just that there’s safety in numbers, but that variety can create additional interest. In addition, if you’re teaming up with writers you find really interesting, you benefit because you get a chance to hang out with them and talk before or after the event. (In general, the talking to interesting people aspect of a book tour gets lost in all of the more “practical” reasons for doing one.)

(10) If you can multi-task so a tour supports your career and creativity goals, all the better. I’m working on a definitive book about steampunk called The Steampunk Bible. This book tour will allow me to meet and interview some of the main creators in this subculture.

Also, the physical part of a book tour in our new media age helps balance all the hours spent at a computer, and that travel, for me at least, always sparks a thousand new story ideas. I also feel less fragmented on the road, because it’s almost impossible to be online 24-7. No matter what the irritations of travel and the stress of planning the gigs and prepping material, that all tends to make up for it.

But, as ever, your results may vary. A physical book tour isn’t strictly necessary in this day and age. Even a virtual book tour may not be necessary, if you get the right reviews and the right word-of mouth. The most important thing is to be happy and creative. Me, I like to push myself sometimes. This is me, pushing myself. Endurance Tour. If I survive, I’ll tell you all about it.

>>>Share your experience: Tell me the funniest or strange event you’ve ever done in support of your Booklife?