2048: From a Bestseller to a Movement

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

–Eleanor Roosevelt

Kirk Boyd is a visionary. He’s an attorney who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law where he is executive director of the 2048 Project. He’s also a client and the author of 2048: Humanity’s Agreement to Live Together.

Kirk met Jeevan Sivasubramanian, executive managing editor at Berrett-Koehler, at the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference. BK published 2048 last April, and it spent four weeks on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list.

Kirk wants 2048 to change the world, and he’s using the book to help build a movement. He is a passionate advocate for his dream of having an enforceable International Convention on Human Rights, signed by every country by 2048. The date will be the hundreth anniversary of the signing by the United Nations of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Eleanor Roosevelt helped to write.

Kirk and Jeevan will discuss how to make a book a regional bestseller and build a movement at the Third San Francisco Writing for Change Conference, November 13-14, 2010, at the eco-friendly Hilton/Financial, www.sfwritingforchange.org. Berrett-Koehler is a conference sponsor, www.bkpub.com.

Kirk wants everyone to help write the declaration by contributing to it by mail or by email at www.2048.berkeley.edu. You’re welcome to help him change the world by participating. Kirk is a perfect example of how one writer can make a difference. If you have a dream about creating change, the conference can help you make it a reality.

Writers: Raise Your Voices for Change!

The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

–James Baldwin

The imprints of six companies fill bestseller lists. KGO Radio talk-show host John Rothmann reports that the radio business is even more concentrated. Four companies control 80% of the nation’s talk-radio stations. They syndicate their shows because it’s cheaper than using local talent and pleases the national advertisers that sustain them.

            Also news to me is that 40 million people listen to talk radio throughout the day at home and while working, traveling, and exercising,  More remarkable still is that 80% of talk radio advocates the conservative agenda. The three leading talk-show hosts fill nine hours of prime time, echoing talking points they’ve been given. They have the power to make a bestseller out of Laura Ingraham’s The Obama Diaries, which you may not even find at San Francisco’s independent booksellers.

            Forsaking truth and fighting change can entertain the public, win elections, and make bestsellers, but it won’t serve the country or the world. More than ever, we need writers who are change agents.

            Through their writing, speaking, the Web, and other media, writers can help provide the ideas, the understanding, the guidance, and the inspiration to act on it. The issues are many, but for some of them, the time for averting disaster grows short. To the keyboard! Write about the change you most want to see in the world.

The Third San Francisco Writing for Change Conference: Changing the World One Book at a Time / November 13-14, Hilton Financial/Chinatown / www.sfwritingforchange.org / Keynoters: Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior) and John Robbins (Diet for a New America) / blog: sfwriting4change.wordpress.com

Memoirists: Are You Fiction or Nonfiction?

William Hamilton once did a cartoon showing an aspiring young woman writer asking a balding, mustachioed literary type: “Are you fiction or nonfiction?”

If you’re writing a memoir (a me-moir to the cynical)  you may wonder whether it would be better as a novel. What reasons might there be for making that decision?

Legal Reasons

Publishers are extremely wary about anything that might cause litigation. If you’re going to include unflattering things about living people, they may sue. You can disguise them, but if you’re living in a small town or people will know who you’re referring to anyway, that won’t help.

Personal Reasons

Fictionalizing your past may make it easier to write about. A memoir is constrained by the truth. Writing fiction liberates you to alter your experience as you wish.

Literary Reasons

What are your literary goals in writing the book? If you want to create a legacy for your friends and family, writing a memoir makes more sense. Nonfiction is easier to write because you’re drawing on your experiences and facts you can verify.

But writing fiction liberates you to create whatever combination of character, plot, and setting will have the most impact on readers. And a memoir should read like a novel. Frank McCourt’s bestseller, Angela’s Ashes, which ignited the interest in memoirs, certainly does. You could call it a novel without changing a word. The dialogues he had as a child with his family capture the emotional truth if not the factual truth of what was said.

Like a novel, a memoir has to describe places, characters, and situations so readers will want to keep reading about them. The book needs a story arc that traces your transformation from who you are at the beginning of the book to the person you become after being changed by your experiences. Many novels, especially first novels, are autobiographical, and all novels make use of the author’s experience filtered by the imagination and the needs of the story.

Commercial Reasons

What are your financial goals for your memoir? Will it be more salable as a novel? Will it be more promotable? Will it have more film and foreign rights potential? Will have more potential for follow-up books?

My partner, Elizabeth Pomada, spent quite a while trying to sell Pam Chun’s biography of her great grandfather, The Money Dragon. Finally, we suggested Pam call it a novel, and the first publisher to see it published it complete with photos and trial transcripts. It became a prizewinning bestseller in Hawaii, where it’s set.

I hope these considerations help you answer the question of whether to fictionalize your memoir. Everyone has a story to tell, and I encourage you to tell yours. First get it down on paper in the most effective, enjoyable way you can, and get feedback from a fiction or memoir critique group as you write. Then, if you still can’t decide whether to fictionalize it, let your community of readers help you figure out how best to offer your story to the world. If your writing has enough humor, drama, insight, or inspiration, it will find its audience.

Take heart. The hardest part of many memoirs is surviving the research!

The Third San Francisco Writing for Change Conference: Changing the World One Book at a Time / November 13-14, Hilton Financial/Chinatown / www.sfwritingforchange.org / Keynoters: Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior) and John Robbins (Diet for a New America)

Growing a Tribe of Believers

All the great things that have been achieved in the world have been achieved by individuals, working from the instinct of genius or of goodness.

–Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A recent Thomas Friedman article in the New York Times quoted Curtis Carlson, the chief executive of SRI International: “This is the best time ever for innovation for three reasons:

First, although competition is increasingly intense, our global economy opens up huge new market opportunities.

Second, most technologies — since they are increasingly based on ideas and bits and not on atoms and muscle — are improving at rapid, exponential rates.

And third, these two forces — huge, competitive markets and rapid technological change — are opening up one major new opportunity after another. It is a time of abundance, not scarcity — assuming we do the right things with a real national growth strategy. If we do not, it rapidly becomes a world of scarcity.”

Friedman’s column was about kick-starting new businesses, but change “markets” to “media” and “growth strategy” to “strategy for change,” and you have the reason for the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference. The world has abundant needs, and the creative, passionate, dedicated people it needs to meet them.  What people need is the vision and leadership to mobilize the will to do what we must to ensure the future we want.

This is where writers come in. Writers have the opportunity to be the voices, visionaries, mentors, consciences, and inspiration for change. They can summon us to our highest selves. It is easier than ever to

* Reach readers around the world online with a blog, articles, videos, podcasts, interviews, and comments on what others write

* Grow a tribe of believers who share your goals and help you achieve them

* Use your writing to change the country and the world

The larger and older an organization, business, or institution is, the harder it is to change. That’s why we can’t rely on government, business, or religion. Non-profits are helping, but they are limited in what they can accomplish.

Americans are open to new ideas. They’re pragmatic about abandoning what fails for what works. United by the same needs, problems, desires, and the willingness to do the right thing, Americans will accept change.

Facebook exploded from an idea to 500,000,000 users in six years.  You cannot stop an idea whose time has come.  What’s needed is a barrage of ideas, forcefully and eloquently presented in all media with urgency and relentless determination, tempered with compassion for the human condition.  

Anyone can participate at any level in this transformation. The author James Baldwin wrote: “The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.” There is no time to lose. Start making demands.

The San Francisco Writing for Change Conference will take place, Saturday and Sunday, November 13 and 14, 2010 at the Hilton Financial District. The keynoters will be Dan Millman, author of The Way of Peaceful Warrior, and John Robbins, author of The Food Revolution, www.sfwritingforchange.org.

Engaging Your Readers for Life

New York is a city where something exciting is going on all the time, most of it unsolved.

–Johnny Carson

Elizabeth and I are back from BookExpoAmerica and meeting editors in New York, and solving the mystery of why we go is easy. May in Manhattan heats up by the end of the month, but it’s a delightful time of year to be in the Big Apple.

The cozy, funky basement apartment we rent in a federal brick building on a quiet, tree-lined street in the West Village makes an enjoyable oasis from which to visit editors, promote our conferences, and meet with friends and family. (We also saw the wonderful production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music with Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta Jones.)

Going to BEA is the only way to get a sense of the state of publishing in one place. In addition to booths on the floor of the huge Javits Center showcasing publishers’ fall books, there are signings, free galleys, talks by authors, and panels on subjects of interest to publishers and booksellers.

Thanks to our marketing director Barbara Santos and the BEA, we had a booth for the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference (November 13-14, 2010; keynoters: Dan Millman and John Robbins; www.sfwritingforchange.org), and the San Francisco Writers Conference (February 18-20, 2011; keynoters: Dorothy Allison and David Morrell; www.sfwriters.org).

BEA was more upbeat this year than last, reflecting the improving economy. Even with 22,000 attendees, the convention is an annual reunion, because there are people, including out-of-New-York editors we only run into at BEA, as well as the unexpected pleasures of meeting people from around the country in a line, at a panel, or at an author breakfast. Booksellers and publishing people are in the business because they want to be, so their shared passion unites them as members of the family of the book.

Attending BEA, at least once, is a valuable experience for writers. It gives you a perspective you can’t get elsewhere on the business and the enormous flow of books into which yours will merge.

When we first went in the late sixties, it was held in the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. on the steamy Memorial Day Weekend. The holidays have always been the most profitable time of year for booksellers, so publishers used the convention to promote their fall books. Publishers had book jackets spread out on tables and special offers for  booksellers who ordered at the convention. I remember the air conditioning failing, but it was a bustling, relatively small event that gave independent booksellers the chance to meet with publishers.

The word from this year’s convention that stuck with me and will help you is engagement, because building communities has become as essential as writing, promotion, and having a platform. The web enables you to become engaged with potential book buyers who see whatever you choose to send forth into cyberspace: your site, your blog, your articles or short stories, your videos, your podcasts, and your profile and comments in social media and elsewhere.

Engaging a growing community of people you want to read your books is one of the web’s greatest opportunities for writers. Go get engaged. Your readers are waiting for you. Some of them will become life-long fans.

From Bestseller to Human Rights by 2048

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

–Eleanor Roosevelt

The right book will change the world. Kirk Boyd’s new bestseller, 2048: Humanity’s Agreement to Live Together, is such a book.

Kirk, a client, is a visionary as tireless as he is idealistic. Last week, he did talks at Bay Area bookstores. He sold enough copies for the book to reach number two on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list the week of publication.

Part of the credit for the book’s success goes to his publisher, Berrett-Koehler, which is unique in its dedication to its books, its authors, and its mission: “Creating a World That Works for All.”

Out of the suffering of World War II came the commitment to prevent another catastrophe by creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt lead the effort to create it, and all countries signed it in 1948, but it was unenforceable.

The 2048 Project, based at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, is an international movement to create an International Bill of Rights that will be enforceable in every court everywhere. The project’s goal is for the bill to become law by the 100th anniversary of the Universal Declaration.

Kirk, executive director of the project, will be giving talks around the country and abroad about it. Everyone who wants to can help write the bill can visit the project’s website, www.2048.berkeley.edu. All proceeds from the book will go to support the project.

Kirk will be speaking at the San Francisco Change Conference: Writing to Make a Difference, Saturday and Sunday, November 13th and 14th, at the Financial Center Hilton. Dan Millman, author of million-copy selling classic, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, will be a keynoter.

There are harder ways to get to heaven, but Kirk’s  dedication to his cause will guarantee his posthumous destination. His life will embody the words of the prophet who said: “All the way to heaven is heaven.”

I hope that the beauty of your dreams justifies devoting your life to them. Think big. Plant yourself in the biggest pot you can; spring is here.