DON'T LOOK NOW: (i'm writing)

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting here of late. I'm happy to say that I'm finally back at work on both my memoir and my new novel, and I've wanted to spend any and all available writing time on them. I'll be back here at some point, though perhaps not until the fall. Until then, I hope that all of you have a pleasant and creatively productive summer.

You may not see my previous posts on the blog on this page, as the display is date-sensitive. It's all still here, though; just click on "older posts," below, or use the search bar at the very bottom of this main page to search by topic.
On one more minor point of housekeeping: I've gotten a couple of questions about the Jane Austen Fight Club video posted here as one of my film-ettes on Fridays. Sadly, it has been pulled from YouTube as a result of copyright issues. I am a fierce supporter of copyright protections, as I believe all creative people should be...but I must admit, I'm sorry not to be able to revisit that delicious little piece of work.

BONNETS MADE OF CHEESE: literary voice on Twitter

Today I received a link to a blog post about Rosanne Cash "channeling" Jane Austen on Twitter. (Surely there is a simpler way to express all that, but it is Monday evening and I can't think of it.)


Until this little snippet it had not occurred to me that one could tweet in persona, as it were. Somehow, using Twitter in my own already overused voice has never seemed very festive, and I have hence been avoiding adding yet another task to my eternally overlong and underdone to do list. Buttweeting in the crisp and dulcet tones of a literary heroine...now, there's an entertaining thought.

According to the blog Austenprose, Ms. Cash, an accomplished memoirist and singer-songwriter when not tweeting, offered a particularly amusing series of Janeite observations on Twitter during the Super Bowl--certainly an occasion that might bring out the swooning maiden in a gal.

My favorite among them was surely "Some ladies are determined to sport bonnets made of cheese. I must take to my bed."

The thought of enjoying such dainty and ironic snippets isn't quite enough to make me sign up on Twitter just so that I can follow Ms. Cash.

But it's close.

FILM-ETTES ON FRIDAYS: so you want to write a novel...

Working Writer (who is also a Working Book Coach and Editor) loves this snarky little film so very, very much.

NO THANKS, ANNE FRANK: when even the great publishers stumble

Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and the publishing house he built are among the great treasures of literary history.

Nevertheless, the immense trove of Knopf papers now housed at the University of Texas' Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center proves that Knopf rejected just as many future bestsellers, for just as many ridiculous reasons, as anybody else.

In a practice that still continues today, the piles of submissions sent to agents and, back in the day, publishers are often screened by anonymous readers, usually writers or critics desperatae for extra income. (Yes, Working Writer has been among these forgotten toilers. But only in poetry manuscripts, so don't blame her that Penguin turned your novel down.) Most of these readers are both bright and well-meaning, but as I said in my last post, no one is truly impartial, entirely open, or even eternally in a good mood.

Over the years, Knopfs's readers dismissed, among others, Jack Kerouac, Sylvia Plath, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. My favorite among their embarrassing errors is surely their rejection of The Diary of Anne Frank. As illustrious historian David Oshinsky wrote in a delightful article in the New York Times, "the work was “very dull,” the reader insisted, “a dreary record of typical family bickering, petty annoyances and adolescent emotions.” Sales would be small because the main characters were neither familiar to Americans nor especially appealing. “Even if the work had come to light five years ago, when the subject was timely,” the reader wrote, “I don’t see that there would have been a chance for it.”

Here's what I love about this: this criticism is so totally wrong, but it's also so totally understandable. The book was being considered in 1950, not a year famous for its openness to honest, unguarded female stories, much less books by obscure teenagers. If I had been its reader then, would I have recognized the priceless human tale tucked within the diary's intimate, apparently trivial events?

I like to think I would have. But honestly, I'm not one hundred percent sure.

Doubleday's Everyman's Library has recently published a lovely hardcover edition of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl.

And it seems fitting that the re-launch of Everyman's in the early 1990s, which made possible its republication of Anne Frank now, was supported in the U.S. by none other than the firm of Alfred A. Knopf.

FILM-ETTES ON FRIDAYS: the rejected writer's revenge

The Irish comedian Dylan Moran wrote and stars in a sitcom called Black Books, which revolves around irritable and unpleasant Bernard Black, who owns (but emphatically does not enjoy) a bookstore. The protagonist of today's Film-Ettes on Fridays video is named Bernard Black, though I'm not sure whether it's part of the television show or not.

Either way, it's a hilarious take on writing rejection letters, complete with cigarettes, alcohol, editorial scorn, and promises of head-butting. Even if you haven't submitted any work to be ground in the giant gristmill that is publishing, I think you'll enjoy it. It can't be embedded in this blog, but just click here to view it. Note that the video may come up with an annoying ad at the start (a YouTube feature I can't change, much as I wish to). Just use the toolbar in the YouTube window to mute and/or skip it. It's worth the effort and annoyance.

ROTTEN REJECTIONS: everybody gets 'em

Working writers get rejections....it's just a fact of life. Still, the terse dismissal of months of one's heartfelt work can sting.

That's one of the reasons that Andre Bernard's little book Rotten Reviews and Rejections: A History of Insult, A Solace to Writers has a permanent place on my bookshelf.

This small gem of a book reminds us that on a regular basis, really smart readers, writers, and critics—including the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charlotte Bronte—heap withering scorn on books and authors that go on to be classics.

Does this mean that we should assume that those who criticize our work are wrong? Hell no. What it does mean is that writing is called an art rather than a science for a reason. Personal taste and personal "takes," not to mention the myriad influences of time and place and culture, always influence a reader's responses, no matter how experienced or illustrious the reader may be. My suggestion? Learn what you can from your rejections, but never use the responses of any one reader as your guide.

Unless, of course, it's Working Writer who has bullied—er, I mean blessed—you with the scrawl of her brilliant red pen.

THE ART OF REJECTION

Many of us writers have received rejection letters, usually in the guise of impersonal form letters. It's a rare treat to read a rejection letter that is itself a work of art, and also a work of apt literary criticism. Yet such things do exist. Click here to read the best rejection letter ever. And check back on Friday, when our "film-ette" is amusingly rejection-themed as well.

A MARVELOUS MODERNIZATION: Dr. Watson as Blogger

I always have mixed feelings about updatings of literary classics. I love to see them build new readerships for long-ago books, yet I am also enough of a stickler to bristle at some of the inaccuracies that happen in the process.

I therefore felt a suitably dark chill of foreboding on discovering this fall that PBS' Masterpiece Mystery would be airing Sherlock, a series they airily described as "Sherlock Holmes in the 21st century." I've been a passionate lover of Holmes since adolescence—I even wrote an essay on his apartment for a literary journal. Part of the richness of the stories, for me, is the very nineteenth-century world that Holmes inhabits. So modernizing Sherlock, to my mind, was playing with (a cozy but nonetheless dangerous coal) fire.

Well, I need not have worried. Sherlock wasn't just good; it was brilliant. Benedict Cumberbatch is pitch-perfect as the contradictory and semi-sociopathic Holmes, while Mark Freeman is equally good as the doggedly loyal Watson, now a veteran of the Afghanistan wars of our own time. Good as they are, it's the writing that's the real star. Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, who clearly know the original stories backwards and forewards, stick closely enough to the smallest element of Doyle's imaginings to satisfy us Sherlockians, yet also move them to modern London without a hitch. In fact, what's surprising is how utterly convincing Holmes and Watson seem as young inhabitants of a London filled with cell phones and computers, GPS and Goths. I loved almost every detail, right down to the fact that this new Watson posts his stories of Holmes through a blog...a reimagining that is both entirely modern, and entirely consistent with the spirit of the original.
When an adaptation is done this well, it does two really valuable things. First and most obviously, it introduces a classic to a whole new generation, meeting them where they are before beckoning them back into the past. Equally important, maybe, it shows existing "fans" just how rich the text they love can be. I wasn't just impressed with the folks that created this new Sherlock as I watched it; I was reminded of Conan Doyle's own gifts. Unusual psyches, unequal friendships, bumbling officials, fussy landladies, mysterious older brothers, a world filled with unbalanced people and unexpected challenges: the core of the Sherlock Holmes characters and premises he created is at once classically Victorian and completely timeless, an accomplishment to which I tip my imaginary top hat.

I'm posting this review very belatedly. But you may be able to catch the three episodes of this new Sherlock on your local PBS station, and you can also buy it (or perhaps borrow it from a library) from PBS and other vendors on DVD.

WORKING WRITER REVIEWS: The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood

Like some people, some books are simply...charming. They may (or may not) also be intelligent, humorous, helpful, and/or any other number of lovely qualities. But first and foremost they are charming, and it is that characteristic that makes you want to be near them.

Monica Wood's The Pocket Muse: Ideas and Inspirations for Writing is that kind of book. It is, indeed, intelligent, humorous, helpful, and any other number of lovely qualities, but what captures me about it first and foremost is its charm.

It's charmingly titled, the "pocket muse" phrase perfectly conveying its small collection of inspirations and ideas. Charmingly designed, a small hardover with winsome little images and page formats. Charmingly illustrated, with a variety of vintage and not-so-vintage photographs of unexpected things. Charmingly voiced, with a nice mixture of recollections, suggestions, questions and gentle admonishments and a mood that is both lighthearted and wise. Every time I browse through it I feel as though I would like being in the company of Monica Wood (who I do not know personally at all) especially on one of those days when my writing is dreadful and my mood is worse. Such a meeting being unlikely, it is a sufficient pleasure to spend a little time with her book.

If you too have days of terrible writing and terrible-er moods, you might enjoy this one. It's also useful for non-writing days when everywhere you look there is a woeful dearth of, yes, charm.

GET OUT YOUR POPCORN: Film-Ettes on Fridays Returns!

Okay, writing friends, you've spent enough Fridays planning gift lists, scrounging around your sofa cushions for money, buying gifts, wrapping gifts, smiling woodenly while opening gifts, returning gifts, and hiding unopened bank statements unbalanced by gifts in either your sock drawer or your trash folder. It's time to get back to film-ettes on Fridays!

I often say in my classes that story subjects are infinitely malleable, and that every story "seed" can be adapted to virtually every genre. Picture an old house, to name just one obvious example; it could become the heart of a romance (hmmm....my own "Harper's Moon"), a psychological thriller ("Psycho"), a slapstick comedy ("The Money Pit")...and the list goes on. In other words, as writers we have almost umlimited options to shape our material as we like.

Today's little offering, a fiendishly clever little effort by Chris Rule, illustrates the point. As it suggests, mysterious women appearing unasked and out of nowhere to control the lives of your kids are sort of creepy, aren't they?