The Write Spot: A Survey of NYC’s Best Writing Havens

A recent listicle on the best places to read in New York got us thinking that it would be nice to have a similarly handy guide to the best places to write. Luckily for us, we know a few wordsmiths or two to consult. So we polled our network to find out their favorite fortresses of scribbling solitude.

Here’s a quick travelogue of the top nominees, which we hope will be useful to New York vets and occasional visitors alike. (P.S. Stay tuned this fall for guides to other cities.)

The Writers Room

One of the most popular answers was The Writers Room, a membership-based space created specifically for writers. Located at Astor Place and Broadway, The Writers Room has 42 partitioned desks, a writers’ reference and research library, Internet access, a kitchen/lounge, and panoramic views for inspiration. At the end of every year the covers of all the books published by members are reproduced on a celebratory cake!

Find out more about TWR here. (http://www.writersroom.org/)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

GG friends Thomas Cook and Carla Jablonski visit the Met when they need to work. Tom visits an exhibit, and then heads to the cafeteria to work (just make sure you avoid the lunch rush). Carla likes to find an exhibit that relates to what she’s working on: “I wrote my adaptation of the Bacchae among the Ancient Greek statues, my master's thesis on 19th Century Circus in several 19th Century Paintings rooms, and a book partially set in ancient Egypt sitting beside the Temple of Dendur!”

Libraries Big and Small

Michael Laser recommends the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library at 40 West 20th Street. “They welcomed me, although I'm not blind, and I was able to write my novel there. Quieter than any cafe, and more peaceful than most other libraries. I miss it.”

Several of our other colleagues – including Michele Hollow, Thomas Cook, and Paul Marks found peace and quiet under the watchful eyes of the librarians at the the NYPL’s fabled Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street (don’t mind the tourists).

The Science, Industry and Business Library is a formula for inspiration for David Kronfeld -- a quiet, clean, convenient branch of the NYPL. Located at 188 Madison Avenue, the building is large and well outfitted with carrels and wi-fi.

Allan Leicht’s office away is the Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. It’s the seating as much as the setting, Leicht reports: “It is the only library I know of that has Herman Miller adjustable mesh chairs rather than wooden or plastic. As writers know, the chair is the second most important writing tool, second only to the nap.”

Odds And Really Odds

Josh Nanberg, who does his best work when there’s a buzz around him, visits the Ace Hotel lobby. “Also, they have great coffee,” he adds. “And - for when I'm done - a killer Old Fashioned.

If you need your caffeine fix while writing, Amy Klein recommends the Aroma espresso bar on West 72nd and Broadway. “Great food, free wi-fi, outdoor space and outlets.” They also have locations in Midtown and SoHo.

Lisa Schiffren writes at home, but walks through her words while walking her dog in Palisade Park in Riverdale, along the Hudson.

And the winner for the most unorthodox nominee came from Francis Levy, who said the best place to write in peace was in a coffin show room “in the basement of a prominent NYC funeral parlor.” Words to live by, indeed.

Book Spotlight: Confessions of a Ghostwriter

Our friend across the pond and ghost extraordinaire Andrew Crofts is generating a lot of well-deserved buzz for his provocative new book, Confessions of a Ghostwriter, which was officially released this past Friday by Harper Collins.

With four decades of ghosting experience, and multiple best-sellers to his credit, Crofts had plenty of beans to spill. We caught up with him last week to get an inside look at his inside look and get his take on some of the tricky questions his professional confessional raises for our traditionally veiled field.

Before you click over to pick up your copy, check out our exclusive Q&A with Andrew Crofts below.

What prompted you to write this book?

Whenever people hear that I am a ghost they always say “you should write a memoir yourself” and I have always resisted, preferring to hide behind other people. Then I realized that I had been in the business for 40 years and had seen a lot of changes in the publishing world, and that I might actually have something of interest to say. At the same time I came up with a formula of “anecdotes as chapters” which I thought worked well. An enthusiastic publisher persuaded me that I was thinking along the right lines.

What sorts of ethical questions did writing this kind of book raise? How did you work through them?

There are of course many stories that I can’t tell due to confidentiality, but there are equally many that can be told as long as I change the names and obscure some of the details so that the subject cannot be identified. If I thought it would be okay to mention someone, (mainly people in the publishing world rather than the authors I wrote for), then I asked them if they were happy about it. The publisher had previously published “Confessions of a GP” (Doctor), where the problems were very similar, so there was a formula in place to deal with it.

I have also talked a lot about ghostwriting in general terms, including jobs that I auditioned for and didn’t get, that sort of thing, where there are no confidentiality conflicts.

Were you concerned that this book might impact your ability to get work in the future? What sort of precautions did you have to take?

Well, I took the precautions that I have mentioned above, but since I get two or three inquiries a day, (about a thousand a year) and seldom take on more than three books a year, I think this will probably not have a significant impact. The fact that more people will have heard of my name because of the book will probably compensate for anyone who might worry that I would write about them, (although if they read the book they would see that they were quite safe and I very much doubt I will write another book on the same lines). If anything, I suspect it will increase the inquiries I receive rather than decrease them, particularly as it is receiving very complimentary reviews in England.

Has there been any blowback from past clients?

None at all.

How did you get into ghostwriting?

I was working as a general freelance writer, straight out of school, when someone I was interviewing for a magazine told me he had been commissioned to write three books but didn’t have the time. He asked me to ghost them for him so that he would benefit from the publicity without the problem of doing the writing. He told me I could have the money from the publisher.

It seemed like such a good idea I advertised, “Ghostwriter for Hire” in the Bookseller Magazine and other people started to approach me. The next book I ghosted was “Sold” by Zana Muhsen, which was her story of being sold as a child bride in the Yemen. It went on to sell more than five million copies. After that more and more people approached me with stories, including publishers and literary agents.

What advice would you give to someone who’s just starting out in ghostwriting?

Find people and subjects that interest you and approach them with the suggestion that you help them write a book. Then just read a lot and write as well as you possibly can. Practice is everything. Put your ego on hold, nobody needs to know your thoughts and opinions, at least not in your clients’ books!

What do you find to be the most challenging part of being a ghostwriter?

Just staying at the keyboard long enough to get the job done. It can be a long haul some days.

The most rewarding?

Meeting the most interesting people and getting to ask them every question I can think of, traveling to the most interesting places on Earth and being able to earn a good living as a writer.

You end your book with the line “perhaps that uncertainty is one of the reasons that make writing and publishing such interesting professions.” A lot of people seem to be in a panic these days about the future of the writing and publishing industries, you seem to have a very optimistic view of this. What would you say to someone who’s worried about where writing is going?

Don’t panic. Storytellers were around long before publishers and the craft of writing came long before the printing press. People will always need storytellers and scribes, either for education, entertainment or commercial reasons. All we have to do is work out the best way to bridge the gap between us and our audiences, and ensure that we earn a living while we do so – which basically means “business as usual”, except now there are even more options than ever before and more of the world’s population is literate than at any time in history. How can any of that be bad?

Andrew Crofts is a ghostwriter and author who has published more than eighty books, a dozen of which were Sunday Times number one bestsellers. He has also guided a number of international clients successfully through the minefield of independent publishing.

How to Get a Six-Figure Book Deal

By Eric Nelson

Most people think the two most important ingredients are a good idea and good writing. But these are just table stakes. Those two things alone may not even get you a $15,000 deal. A good idea and good writing gets an editor's attention. But then they have to consider this as a business proposition, and they're looking for one of the four following qualities.

BIG FOLLOWING. This is where the vast majority of sixfigure deals come from, including all authors who have published books already. When you read about these people getting a six figure book deal, everyone says, "of course they did." To justify a sixfigure deal, publishers are wondering if you can sell 40,000 or more copies. So they want to see proof that you have 40,000 people or more who might buy your book. That could be an eblast list, Twitter or LinkedIn following, or a list of Facebook friends or YouTube subscribers that's bigger than 40,000 people. Ideally your following is several times that number, as the conversion rate is probably closer to 10% on average. Your following could be speaking to groups that total more than that in a year. It could be that you regularly write for an outlet where you generated three or four times that many pageviews, or appear on a broadcast where you generate ten times that many viewers or listeners. If your proof of a following is a single product--a TED talk, an oped--the audience has to be hundreds of thousands or millions because of the low conversion rate. The best proof of a following is that you've written a book that sold over 40,000 copies.

BIG SUCCESS. By this I mean that while you may not be a household name, your accomplishments are. This means you are a person who has been the subject of lengthy profiles in national publications. Usually that's a celebrity: actor, athlete, musician, or a politician. But it can also be something everyone would recognize as a big deal, even if they don't recognize your name: Google executive, astronaut, Nobel prize winner, life-saving hero, and so forth. If you think you are really important in the world you come from, but you have never had had an article about you in a big circulation publication (Time, Rolling Stone, Gawker, Wall Street Journal) your success is not the kind of success I'm talking about.

BIG BUZZ. This requires a consensus of expert opinion. Think of it like a first round draft pick. He may not be famous yet, but by the time the draft comes around, "everyone" knows he will be. If you fell like you are the next big thing, that's not good enough. If your big deal friend says you are the next big thing, that's not good enough. You need every big deal person in your area to know you're the next big thing. This is the point of getting famous people to blurb the book. But the point isn't to show that you know famous people. It's to lend credibility to the story you're telling about how quickly this consensus is forming around you. This is usually where big fiction deals come from, as by the time the editor presents the book to her team, it feels like the whole in-the-know literary world is buzzing about the book. (It's not uncommon to see the movie rights to a six figure fiction debut were sold before the actual book was sold.) Not only does your proposal need to make you sound like the next Seth Godin, Seth Godin himself has to already be telling people that, too.

BIG PRESTIGE. This is the least likely way to get six figures, but it's still possible. There are certain things that can help you get to a big deal, even if you're not famous, don't have a big following, and have not been on the subject of fawning profiles. Those things are: Pulitzers, academic book prizes, major grants, long fellowship titles, proximity to political power, and so forth. The hope, for the publisher, is that the author's previous accomplishments will turn into excellent media coverage, and a manuscript that makes year end best-of lists and book prize shortlists, and that will provide the following.

If you're not in one of these four categories, is it impossible for you to get a six figure deal? No, but it's far more likely you're going to get a five figure deal (or for fiction, a four figure deal) if you get a deal at all. Most of the six figure deals that don't fit this are because the editor mistakenly THOUGHT the book belonged in one of these categories, but didn't realize this author wasn't as prestigious or successful as they'd hoped.

At least if you want to get a six figure deal, now you know what you need to do to dramatically increase your odds.

(This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.)