Tag Archives: Suzanne LaFetra Collier

Spring News Round-Up

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Following the publication of several novels last year, 2024 sees the publication of two BookEnds novels: Nora Decter’s What’s Not Mine (ECW) was published earlier this month, and you can watch the BookEnds BookClub featuring Nora in conversation with her mentor and program co-founding director Susan Scarf Merrell here. Joselyn Takacs’ Pearce Oysters (Zibby Books) is available for preorder now. Joselyn’s novel will be featured at the BookEnds BookClub in September, in conversation with her mentor and other program co-founding director, Meg Wolitzer.

We are proud to announce that 2022 Fellow Giano Cromley’s BookEnds novel American Mythology is forthcoming with Doubleday, Summer 2025! Several Fellows from our recent and incoming cohorts have also signed with agents this spring. 

BookEnds alums are also busy and active in their community, with new works in progress; supporting one another through daily and weekly Zoom writing sessions; giving each other advice, feedback and support on query letters and the query process; and—of course—through our BookEnds blog. Check out this recent post from 2023 Fellow Suzanne LaFetra Collier on serving as a BookEnds selection committee reader.  

We’re also delighted to remind everyone to check out program co-director Meg as the host of Selected Shorts! 

We look forward to bringing you more great news soon. To learn more about BookEnds, check out our Fall 2023 Open House!

Reflections of a BookEnds Selection Committee Reader

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2023 Fellow Suzanne LaFetra Collier reflects on serving the other side of the BookEnds process.

I once attended a writing conference where an agent held up a manila envelope stuffed with a thick manuscript. “This is how much time you’ll have to get an agent’s attention,” he told the crowd, and lifted the first page a few inches, just enough to read the opening paragraph. He paused, then released the page, which slid back down into the envelope. He flung the whole thing aside with a flourish.

A BookEnds applicant does not get the manila envelope treatment. I know, because I spent much of the winter reading manuscripts from the first page to the last. Each manuscript is read by several people, including alums, all of whom are experienced readers. There isn’t a checklist or list of attributes we’re supposed to flag; reading is a subjective experience. My approach was to note the strengths and weaknesses in each manuscript, consider potential fixes for the problems I saw, and determine whether those issues could be resolved via BookEnds’ revision process. 

As a writer, it was enormously instructive to read lots of “almost there” manuscripts because it underscored some key elements that make stories work, even when they’re not yet ready for publication. I also found myself surprised (and comforted) at some­ of the things that landed a story in my YES pile, even when the manuscript had significant problems. 

So, as both a reader and writer, here are my takeaways. 

Character Matters

The characters populating the manuscripts I read were as varied as thumbprints. The ones that grabbed me were conflicted, inside and out. It didn’t matter that their arc wasn’t fully fleshed out, as long as they had personality and were flawed.

Another key element in strong drafts was a protagonist with agency. Passive protagonists who were like passengers in a car, watching their worlds go by, came off as underdeveloped. Characters who grabbed the wheel— even when they drove off in the wrong direction—crackled.

Characters with agency—who acted—shaped the story. In contrast, when the writer was the puppet master, marching hollow characters through a carefully constructed plot, things fell flat. I’m all too familiar with this problem in my own writing, which occurs when I don’t know my characters well enough yet and/ or I’m clinging to plot elements I’ve painstakingly constructed. A manuscript with a passive protagonist was a sign that a writer still had work to do.

Novel Writing 101 tells us that a protagonist must want something, and there must be obstacles—external and internal—standing in their way. But if a protagonist’s goal was still fuzzy, that wasn’t a deal-breaker for me. Sometimes, there was a tiny seed in a character’s backstory that had yet to blossom into a full-fledged inner conflict, but I could see the potential was there. I know from experience that figuring out a character’s desire can come quite late in the process.

Plot vs. Sensibility

We’ve all heard about bestselling novels that are “propulsive,” where every event causes another, like cascading dominos.

Reading the application manuscripts, I assumed that causality between events would be essential. Instead, I found that what mattered more than tight plotting was the writer’s sensibility and aesthetics, and whether I felt held by the worldview the author was creating.  

At the start of my BookEnds year, I presented the events of my story to the cohort. “And then X happened, and then Y, and meanwhile Z was happening over here….” I understood immediately that the story was not propulsive. Even though the events were connected in my mind, they hadn’t yet been developed to be causal. 

A propulsive narrative can’t be established until a writer homes in on character motivation, which requires time. My BookEnds year offered me the space to work on this critical element in my book, while helping me cultivate the flexibility to restructure my narrative in order to make it more propulsive.

Generosity

There is a subjective You-Know-It-When-You-Feel-It quality to a manuscript, something  BookEnds director Susan Merrell called out as “generous.” A generous story is one that feels written for the reader. 

Heavy-handed manuscripts that were trying to make a point didn’t come across as generous. Neither did those that seemed preoccupied with showing off the writer’s cleverness. Those drafts are for the writer. Sometimes, writers need to work through a few rounds before they can just tell a good story.

Manuscripts that obfuscated and withheld necessary information in an attempt to create “mystery” usually left me feeling frustrated. Similarly tiring was a parade of information that showcased a writer’s research, when it didn’t connect directly to the story. I have a note over my desk with WOO THE READER in all caps, to remind me that a good book entices readers, giving them enough—but just enough—to keep them turning pages.

When I was reading manuscripts with that generous quality, the story’s problems didn’t trip me up so much. Plot holes didn’t bother me, nor did wonky timelines. It wasn’t a deal-breaker when a book hadn’t quite found its structure. Even an unanswered central question like What is this story really about? didn’t disqualify a manuscript. In my own as-yet-unpublished novel, I have struggled with those big picture questions, and it was reassuring to remember that answering those questions is simply part of the novel-writing process.

There’s far more to this experience as a BookEnds reader; importantly, there were terrific manuscripts that strayed outside my subjective guidelines. Being open to what was in front of me, willing to go for the ride the writer was taking me on, was the most delicious part of the process. As long as the story had energy, if there was a beating heart in there, that was enough to carry me through. All other issues seemed workable. After all, writing is revision. 

Suzanne LaFetra Collier’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Creative Nonfiction, The Sun Magazine, Brevity, Smokelong Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Juxtaprose, on the San Francisco NPR station, as well as in fifteen anthologies. She co-directed the award-winning documentary film, FREE: The Power of Performance, which aired on PBS.  She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and was a ‘22-23 BookEnds Fellow. She lives in Berkeley, California, and is finishing a novel, a dark comedy about late capitalism. More about Suzanne on her website: https://suzannelafetra.com.

 

 

 

When Things Fall Apart: The Pod as Foundation

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2023 Fellow Suzanne LaFetra Collier reflects on working with her BookEnds pod.

Writing a novel is such a long, strange process. The non-writers in my life tilt their baffled heads in pity: why go through all that? At least at BookEnds, we don’t have to do it alone.

During my first BookEnds residency, we were sharing our outlines, and it was suddenly painfully obvious that my manuscript had major issues. I came away from my outline presentation and discussion with a task list that seemed insurmountable. The novel lacked focus. It needed a single protagonist, and it had to be told from the point of view of the deeply dysfunctional business-owning family at the center of the story. The novel I had submitted had twelve different point-of-view characters, including a prison warden, a nun, a nine-year-old boy, and a drug kingpin, in addition to the entrepreneurial Fisher family. Furthermore, I had constructed a complicated Rubik’s Cube-like plot that locked the story into place, and it seemed to me that to disassemble any one section meant the whole thing would crumble. 

I felt crushed. The story over which I’d labored for so long, the story I believed was nearly finished, had to be taken down to the studs. “I’m open to making changes,” I said to my pod, Rose Afriyie and Katie Kalahan, “as long as I can do so without completely blowing up the plot. Ideas welcomed.” They commiserated and made encouraging cooing sounds. I knew I was in good hands because they didn’t laugh in my face. Instead, they suggested I reach out to the program co-director, Susie Merrell, who reassured me. “Stop worrying and start writing,” she said, and explained that the people who were most successful in the program were those who didn’t cling to previous versions of their work. She gave me an assignment: Write 20 pages, by Thursday, every week. Messy, vomitous, rambling pages and I shouldn’t worry one bit about the plot or where things started or ended. “Just write,” she said. 

So, I wrote twenty pages that week. And vomitous they were. I did the same thing the next week, and the next, writing as fast as I could from the Fisher family’s point of view, exploring without conscious thought to the sequence or propulsivity or humor or conflict or stakes. Characters mostly ruminated and remembered and wandered. I wrote of Steven’s recollection of his mother peeling an orange, Amanda’s memory of playing Mousetrap as a kid. 

I was reluctant to share the pages at first, because I worried all those memories and ruminations were just wheel-spinning. But my pod said that these set pieces, memories, and deeper dives into the psyches of my characters added context and tension. Rose told me that she fell in love with Adam the moment he shoved a carving knife into the Christmas goose’s back. Katie told me that it crackled when the grandmother was in the room. They loved the new omniscient perspective that made the story feel epic. They reminded me that readers cared about what happened that terrible Halloween fifteen years ago; they wanted to know how in the world a mother’s relationship with her son became so fraught.  

For eight weeks I generated 1000 words a day and the story of the Fisher family began to emerge. I made a list of things my characters could do instead of ruminating and remembering: sneak around, threaten one another, plant a kiss on a stranger, have a drink after ten years of sobriety. I went back through the vignettes and added action, and some of those snippets became actual scenes. But was it a book? I worried I wasn’t moving the story forward. 

My pod showed me that I was, in fact, putting stakes in the ground. The scenes began to line up in surprising ways. Suddenly, they had so many questions: Will Corinna die? Will Amanda’s lie be exposed? How far will Adam go to get what he believes is his? 

Katie assured me that writing “forward” might look like writing backwards sometimes, or downwards or inwards. Rose reminded me that there was no shortcut; writing a novel takes time. We brainstormed plot ideas for all of our books, and talked about trusting ourselves, diving into the depths, and nurturing our spirits while doing the emotionally charged work of novel-writing. They cheered me on. 

Within a few months, I had completed a new draft. Now the novel told the story of the Fishers and their family business. Many characters and elements from the earlier draft remained, but now there was a clear plot line, narrative thrust, and an emotional heartbeat. 

Without the support of writers to read, cheer, coach and commiserate, I might have given up when I realized I had to smash my manuscript to smithereens. But my pod helped me understand that when things fall apart, that’s just part of the revision process. It’s a sign of progress. 

Suzanne LaFetra Collier’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Creative Nonfiction, The Sun Magazine, Brevity, Smokelong Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, Juxtaprose, on the San Francisco NPR station, as well as in fifteen anthologies. She co-directed the award-winning documentary film, FREE: The Power of Performance, which aired on PBS.  She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and was a ‘22-23 BookEnds Fellow. She lives in Berkeley, California, and is finishing a novel, a dark comedy about late capitalism. More about Suzanne on her website: https://suzannelafetra.com.