working writer wonders...

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

2011-05-03T11:48:00.008-04:00

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

2011-02-19T17:13:00.000-05:00

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...

2011-02-18T16:44:00.000-05:00

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

2011-02-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

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

2011-02-04T09:00:00.002-05:00

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

2011-02-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

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

2011-02-02T11:43:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-10T09:00:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

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!

2011-01-07T11:37:00.000-05:00

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?

THE WRITER'S DESK

2011-01-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

In the course of the culling of books I've spoken of on my DeCluttered Creative blog, I came across a wonderful volume I'd half-forgotten I had, Jill Krementz's book of photographs of writers at their desks (now sadly out of print.) Krementz is a wonderful photographer and the images are beautiful, clear and luminous, telling: a young Susan Sontag working amid a pile of books and papers, her trademark streak of silver hair barely yet in evidence; E.B. White typing in a spare wooden space, rather like a barn, with open water out the window; Georges Simenon standing, smoking a pipe, with his hands resting on a desk lined with such pipes, all arrayed with mathematical precision.

But it is the brief words added by each writer pictured that I value most, maybe because I am a fellow writer myself or just because they seem even more intimate, even more personal, than the representations of the authors themselves. These little captions are not about desks so much as about process, that more interesting and infinitely deeper subject.

"It's very simple, really. You have to go to the typewriter, that's all you have to do," says Terrence McNally. "I'm a writer. I don't cook and I don't clean....Dear child, this place is a mess—my papers are everywhere," Dorothy West noted amusingly, her desk indeed a mess but her eighty-seven-year-old face a beacon of warmth and clarity. Simenon, not surprisingly in a man who lines up his pipes, notes that "The beginning will always be the same; it is almost a geometrical problem." I could go on, but I won't, if only because this might be a book you would enjoy seeing in its totality. As I write this Amazon has it available only at the prohibitive price of $199, but Alibris has copies beginning at about twenty bucks.

There are many messages within these pages, but perhaps the most evident is that there is no such thing as "a" writer's desk or "a" writing process. There are desks and tables and beds and kitchen counters, there are morning writers and night writers and sober writers and drunk writers, there are pencils and word processors, there are rituals and the lack of rituals. Someone, I now forget who, once said to me that asking how writers write is like asking how lovers make love, a question just as foolish and futile. And the comparison to lovers is apt, maybe, because one thing all the writers under Krementz's scrutiny do share, as her book radiantly shows, is a passion for the book, the story, and the word.

RE-RE-RE-REBALANCING: or, where the hell i've been since october

2011-01-02T23:17:00.000-05:00

Anyone who has read this blog or taken even one of my classes knows that words don't fail me very often. But somehow, late this fall, they did. Nothing went horribly wrong; nothing dramatic even changed. I just did a lot of thinking, or perhaps a lot of feeling, about how 2010 had gone and how I wanted 2011 to be. Anyway, my apologies to those who follow, or followed, this blog for such a protracted absence.

This time of professional and creative reflection reminded me (as though I really needed reminding) of how difficult it can be for writers, or any creative artists, to get the balance of their creative and professional lives right. On the one hand there is the imperative of our creative practice and work; on the other, the demands of money and practicality. It's not just the tension between the two that can trip us up, but also the delicacy of the balance and the frequency with which our needs change. What is right at one time, for one project or phase, can be frustratingly counterproductive for the next, and it can take quite a bit of time and self-scrutiny to see when, and what, changes must be made.

For me, the relationship between my work with others and my own writing is particularly hard to get right. This is especially true when my own project is at an early stage, as is the case right now. It's easier and sometimes more fun to poke around someone else's manuscript, and it also seems far more sane to earn something from a teaching or consulting role than to pin any part of my bank accounts to the as-yet unformed, insane, utterly unsalable mess hiding on the hard drive of my computer. Add the normal challenges of family, health, and other aspects of "real life," and I suddenly wake up to realize that it's been two months since I've made any progress on either my novel or memoir in progress. (And then, in the unsnarling of that as well as the aforesaid family and health issues, I'm too muddled, albeit fruitfully so, to blog for three months.)

I'm committed to rebalancing the various elements of my creative and professional life in twenty-eleven. Or re-re-re-rebalancing them, I should say. I look forward to sharing that journey with all of you and to getting some glimpses of yours as well.

In the meantime, if you happen to see Working Writer some day, do ask her if she's actually written anything lately.

A PUMPKIN ENCORE FOR HALLOWEEN

2010-10-29T09:00:00.001-04:00

Yes, this week I'm on a pumpkin binge. I've been asked to re-run the wonderful Life and Death of a Pumpkin video posted earlier this year, and I'm happy to comply. As I said originally, it's a brilliant demonstration of the power of viewpoint. And beyond that, it's just a perfectly done little drama. Steal a little of the candy you bought to give out to kids, watch, and enjoy!

THE PUMPKIN'S VOICE

2010-10-26T14:32:00.001-04:00

As I have likely said here before (I could check, but the heart quails), voice is one of the least understood but most powerful aspects of writing.

It's easier to tinker with plot, character, dialogue...all the things that are both more local and more concrete. Voice is more elusive, and hence harder to address. Yet it's truly significant to a book's power and memorability. If the voice is bland or uninteresting, it will often feel flat even when the other elements are strong.

With Halloween coming up, let me use one of my favorite books ever, Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare the Neighbors, as an example.

Now, you wouldn't think a childless middle-age psedo-intellectual like Working Writer would get all tingly about a book that explains how to decorate seasonal squash. (I was going to say "seasonal vegetables," but like its sneaky little cousin the tomato, the pumpkin is a fruit.)

Nevertheless, I find Extreme Pumpkins utterly delicious. One reason, admittedly, is that the pumpkin designs appeal to my dark and perhaps deranged sense of humor. It gives directions for a Carrie pumpkin, a brain surgery pumpkin, a worm-infested pumpkin, a mooning pumpkin (think two tall pumpkins in a pair of drooping pants), a conjoined twins pumpkin, and a variety of other equally gross, twisted and/or funny themes.

But even better is author Tom Nardone's voice, which is witty, entertaining, and unapologetically irreverent. It's also much more sophisticated than one might expect. Nardone clearly writes to appeal to his core audience of, say, eleven year old boys, but his text is also designed to make adults laugh. A wise move, given the inability of most eleven year old boys to drive to the bookstore themselves.

Nardone's step by step instructions are written in a wonderfully mischevous voice. So too are his general remarks. So, even, is his index, which includes page citations for "carnge," "electrocution," "poetry corner," "roadkill statistics," and "self-analysis." Now, that's what I call going above and beyond, and also an element clearly designed for grown-ups. (Did you refer to indices as an eleven year old? Me neither. However, you'll note that somewhere along the line I did look up the plural for "index.")

I'm not saying that the voice for your next book needs to be infantile, snarky, or gross. I am saying that it should be something. Warm and sensible, clever and amusing, dark and deceptive. Witty, plainspoken, elaborate, simple, all-American, Eurotrash, introspective, aggressive...I could go on, but you get the idea.

Look for a post on some of my favorite author voices later this week, along with a reprise of my favorite pumpkin-themed-mini-film ever.

P.S. Creating and sustaining a wonderful and distinctive voice does not absolve you of the requirement to produce a great story (fiction, narrative nonfiction) or useful information (general nonfiction). Tom Nardone's pumpkin designs actually have to work. In that regard, let me say that after I recommended the book to writer Lily Hamrick at the Atlantic Center for the Arts last fall, her family won a First Prize for their giant hamburger pumpkin. (The pumpkin becomes the bun, if you're wondering). Which was good, because manipulating the ground meat for the filling is apparently not fun.

COMPELLING STORY-BUILDING: CONSTRICTION, PART I

2010-10-15T14:10:00.000-04:00

In ordinary life, we usually have considerable time to make decisions and fix problems. In fact, we often have endless time, that is, we even have the option not to take action at all and let matters resolve themselves in their own time.

That kind of freedom doesn't work well in most written stories. In good writing, there is usually some source of constriction—something that puts pressure on the plot and characters, something that creates suspense and tension that open-ended issues just don't have.

Time constriction is one of the most obvious strategies. Silly as it was, there's a reason that the 1914 "Perils of Pauline" became famous. It was quite literally built on the idea of an irresistable force bearing down on an immovable object, with the added excitement of an unpostponable point of collision built in.

Obviously, you'll want to use time constriction in a subtler form that a thundering train coming down the track (although the late Dick Francis used that very device in suitably updated form to excellent effect in his novel The Edge). It goes without saying that the level of subtlety should align with the type of story you're telling. What's right for a thriller is overkill for a literary novel; what is right for a literary novel might be overkill for a comic caper. The same elements or motifs might be used in each, but their degree of drama and exaggeration would likely vary hugely.

An external event is the most obvious source of time construction. A wedding, a divorce, an eviction. A sentence of some sort: death sentence, terminal diagnosis, upcoming decision by a jury. A deadline.

Characters in the story other than the protagonist(s) can also provide good sources of constriction. The source of tension in most murder mysteries, for example, is the fact that the murderer is out there plotting further mayhem while the detective struggles to figure out the crime. The shady activities of a personal or organizational enemy, the dangerous activities of a friend, the destructive activities of someone who is troubled or flawed all create time pressure.

Finally, of course, you can create time pressure within a protagonist him or herself. Protagonists doesn't have long to figure things out if their child is being bullied, their spouse is suffering some kind of mental disintegration, or their mother is dying with her deepest wish unfulfilled. A protagonist living an increasingly unbearable lie must act, and act soon, whether or not their secret would be revealed by someone else. A protatonist obsessed with an overwhelming ambition or passionate dream won't dally, either. Nor will one struggling with a depression so deep he or she wants to die, and soon.

Discussed like this, such devices sound sort of silly. But they can be used with immensely powerful effect and great subtlety. The return of Sir Thomas Bertram from the West Indies is one element of time constriction in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. The growing suspicion of the protagonist that she has been duped provides time pressure in Winston Graham's masterful The Walking Stick. Penelope's suitors create time constriction in The Odyssey, the coming of Christmas Day in A Christmas Carol, the end of the author's journey in Eat Pray Love, the fading of day and the coming of bad weather in Jon Krakauer's Everest memoir Into Thin Air. You don't notice time constriction in these stories consciously; you just feel a satisfying awareness of tension. And you'll notice that there are works of nonfiction on this list; while nonfiction writers can't invent constrictive devices like fiction writers can, they can, and do, make use of existing constrictions in their material to create a suspenseful tale.

Members of the BookStrategy Writers Group are invited to write a short piece that utilizes time constriction in some way for our next Group meeting on November 9. Have fun, gang. Get creative.

Non-members who live in the Treasure Coast area are welcome to join us. Click the Group link above for information.

Those of you with no current, future, or even possible relationship to the Writers Group are invited to have a nice Friday.

And you'd better do it now. Because before you know it, it'll be Saturday.

WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU CROSS WYATT EARP WITH COUNT DRACULA?

2010-10-09T09:15:00.001-04:00

In Friday's post, I playfully asked if anyone out there wanted to write a cowboy vampire novel.

I'm pleased to say that someone has actually done this. Meet Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall, authors of The Cowboy and the Vampire. I wanted to give you links to the author websites as well as the book, but they don't seem to have one. Too bad; I'm dying to know what such a site would look like, and what the authors' backgrounds are.

More generally, Friday's post got me thinking about literary hybridization: the mingling of DNA from two or more genres into a new type of book. Hybrids like this are sometimes called "mashups," for obvious reasons.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith (with author credit to Miss Austen as well is such a book, as is his Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.So are Ben Winters' Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina, and Sherri Browning Erwin's Jane Slayre. So is Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next mystery series, which melds literary classics with sci-fi. (Sorry not to have hyperlinks in those titles; for some reason, Amazon's link system isn't working. (Perhaps it is a vampire, and it's asleep in its coffin this morning.)

If you're a literary purist, books like this could drive you crazy. I am not a literary purist, as you might have guessed if you've read my (well, Suzanne Scott's) single long-ago Harlequin romance, One Hot Summer (now available from Alibris for less than a buck, and hence, of course, a ginormous bargain). So I love this kind of cross-bred creature, even when it races right to the edge of absurdity and then falls off.

As a teacher, I would rather have young people read Jane Austen with Zombies than not read her at all. And as a writer, I love the freedom we all have to create whole new genres by mixing and matching older ones. It's worth noting, too, that "high art" writers can use this strategy as effectively as us ordinary scribblers. Modern fiction and metafiction does it all the time. My favorite case in point is Italo Calvino's extraordinary If on a winter's night a traveler. I would love to synopsize it, but I can't; suffice it to say that it's a fiction that combines a love story, a meditation on reading with a narrative that offers ten different genre/style takes on the same opening paragraph.

If you have a passionate love for two different genres—a passion so deep that both have become part of your DNA, so to speak, or at least your soul—it's worth considering how, and if, they might go together. (You can't do this well if you're just trying to combine genres salably; you have to really love them for the result to become a coherent whole of its own.) If not, just enjoy the knowledge that other writers are using literary hybridization to keep the wolf—the coyote, the sea monster, the masked intruder—from their doors.

FILM-ETTES ON FRIDAYS: Ride 'Em, Cowperson!

2010-10-08T09:00:00.001-04:00

America's expansion into the wild, wild West gave us many wonderful things. Sadly, most of these things are not helpful to you if you are a writer (though as a book coach, I sometimes think that spurs would be useful).

That said, the West did give writers "back in the day" something helpful: a living. The colorful Western tales published in pulp books and magazines helped many a starving writer keep the proverbial wolf (or perhaps I should say coyote) from the door. Sadly, pulp magazines, like Conestoga wagons, are little in evidence today, and the relentless changes of popular taste has replaced genre Westerns with newer themes, such as vampires. (Want to do a vampire Western, anybody?)

In remembrance of two noble, now vanished breeds—the pulp-fictional cowboy and the real live writer of pulp Westerns—today's film-ette celebrates the cowboy mags of a vanished era, complete with perfect soundtrack. To my delight, after doing some searching around on the name "bestjonbon," which was given as the creator credit for this piece YouTube, I discovered that it was created...by a writer! John Lee is clearly a many-talented guy. And perhaps goofy YouTube videos are in some way the pulp art of the future?

Anyway, tie your Appaloosa to the hitchin' post, march those cowboy boots into the saloon, plug any varmints who bother you with lead, and enjoy.

TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAYS: the talking wounded

2010-10-05T09:00:00.004-04:00

“I’m one of your talking wounded,” the narrator of James Fenton’s poem “In Paris With You” says.

He’s not talking about writing and writers. (He’s in Paris with “you,” so presumably he has better poisson to fry.) But he could be.

Many of us love to talk about our writing, especially in the early years of our careers. I talked for hours about my works in progress when I first began. To this day, I'm sure there are still people in Manhattan who would duck into doorways rather than hear me explain one more of my book ideas. If any of those folks happen to be reading this, mea very very culpa.

Over the years, I’ve learned not to talk about my writing in progress much, not so much out of fears for my already idiosyncratic social life but because it sours my writing. For me, talking about a book doesn’t get the book written. In fact, once I’ve hashed out an emerging story out over coffee, I no longer feel a compelling need to sit down and actually write it. I always write more, and better, when I don’t drain off any of the tension or curiosity that draws me to a piece by letting it escape into conversation. I guess you could sum up my personal rules on this subject like this.

Rule 1: Talk about writing and other writers often. Talking about writing other than our own connects us to our tribe, our craft, our colleagues, our inspirations. It’s fun, and it fires me up.

Rule 2: Talk about your own work in progress very little. Any and all words even possibly related to that subject don't belong in our mouths; they belong on the page.

Are you one of the writerly "talking wounded"? What are you personal strategies for keeping your energy on the page?

IN MEMORIAM: Stephen J. Cannell

2010-10-04T22:43:00.000-04:00

My friend Linda Hengerer, co-chairwoman of the the Mystery Writers of America, Florida chapter's always wonderful Sleuthfest conference, told me yesterday morning that television and mystery novel writer Stephen J. Cannell died this past weekend.

As it happened, I had seen him as one of the commentators on a television show just a few days before. As always, he looked full of health and vitality; as always, he was humorous, warm, and engaging. It was a shock to hear that this man, so full of life, had died, and at the relatively young age of only 69.

Cannell created a variety of successful television series including The Rockford Files and Wiseguy, as well as writing both series and stand-alone mystery novels. His prolific and consistent production was especially notable because of his lifelong struggle with dyslexia—a challenge for anyone living in our text-saturated world, but a special struggle for a professional writer.

He was also, clearly, just a nice guy: funny, unpretentious, and generous with his time to writers, writing organizations, and a wide variety of friends and family.

For more information on Cannell, his body of work, and his soon to be published novel, visit his website at cannell.com http://www.cannell.com/

TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAYS: between the gutters of commerce and the ivory tower

2010-09-21T09:00:00.002-04:00

Here's the way most of us work when we begin what we hope will be our careers as fiction writers.

We write a book, then we try to write a synopsis that will sell it. There's no chicken-and-egg question for most of us: the artistic process of the writing definitely comes first, inspired by all sorts of things other than the marketplace, and the commercial "spin" on it a rather distant second.

The problem with this sequence, as I was reminded by looking at one of my own old synopsis drafts this morning, is that addressing the sales aspect of a book only after that book is entirely completed it often doesn't work well, or for that matter, at all.

A synopsis is not a magic cape that you drape over a book to turn it into different, something that will sell. It's a lens you design to let others see the book as sharply as possible—and if that book isn't salable, the best possible synopsis won't make it so. The sad thing about this is that by waiting until the book is complete and we're too exhausted to go back and change it, we've made potentially fixable problems into probably unfixable ones. If we want to publish, wouldn't it be better to consider the marketplace during the book drafting stage, rather than when it's too late to do anything but collect rejections and sigh with despair?

Even to me, there's something sacreligious-sounding about those words. Aren't we supposed to listen only to the dictates of our Muse? Isn't it crass to consider tailoring our work to the imperatives of Commerce?

Not necessarily.

The trick, it seems to me, is to operate from the middle ground. Don't attempt to define your work entirely from the grubby gutters of commerce. That never works. But if you want to publish, don't write an entire book with your gaze firmly fixed on the inside of your pure white ivory tower, either. There's information that will help strengthen your book in both places—and I do mean "strengthen," not just "sell," though it will help you do that too.

Here's my personal best guess at how to find that middle ground.

Get the working premise of the book firmly in your mind, in whatever way you do that. Know what your intention for its genre and shape and voice are. Write or outline or muse enough to feel reasonably certain (there's no such thing as total certainty here, or at least there shouldn't be) you won't be making any radical changes to those basics.

After that point but before the entire book and every story and style element within it are set in the proverbial stone, do some gentle mental moseying around the marketplace. Don't overwhelm yourself; just browse. Who's writing comparable stuff? What can you learn from them, not so much in terms of craft but in terms of how their work is presented and summarized and marketed? How can you nudge your book in one way or another to make it stand out a bit more from the major competitors you see? What would your book as you understand it now sound like in synopsis? Do a rough draft to see. What does that draft suggest to you about elements that might be weak or uninteresting or difficult to explain powerfully?

Notice the words in this paragraph. Gentle. Mosey. Browse. Learn. Nudge. Suggest.

You're not becoming what my friend Joe Castagna once called a Trend Whore.

You're just being a good observer, one who is curious, open-minded, alert, and ready to use some of what you notice when it serves you.

And isn't that just what an artist is supposed to be?

WRITERLY RESPITE, part one

2010-09-17T10:41:00.000-04:00

At the first, lively meeting of the new BookStrategy Writers Group, the issue of writerly dry spells came up a lot. One writer was tired and disheartened from the publishing process, another feeling hampered by too much consciousness of writing lessons and rules, yet another happily focused on non-writing tasks like grandkids. Two of us had also experienced multiple bereavements which silenced us for a time.

In theory, we tend to expect ourselves to write regularly and productively, turning out new pages and new books on a consistent, unwavering schedule. In reality, that just doesn't happen. Every writer's life has lulls and low points, lapses or even silences. Sometimes these times of block are temporary glitches—mid-book blues, for example—that can be ended by soldiering on; a few days of "bad" writing later, they resolve themselves. But just as often, the problem is deeper than that, and forcing ourselves to write is at best painful and at worst utterly counterproductive.

How do you know the difference? You don't, at least at first. You have to pay some sustained but gentle attention to the problem to figure it out. You have to regard it with openness and without judgment. You have to be more curious than condemning.

Take a moment to ask and to observe. What does your particular dry spell feel like? When did it start? What is going on with your life as a whole—how energetic and nourished do you feel there? What is going on with your work in progress...where are you in your writing itself? What does your intuition tell you is wrong? What does your gut tell you to do?

I'll deal with other forms of block or lull in later posts. For now, here are a few strategies that may help if you just feel creatively depleted--not an uncommon experience in our go-go-go lives.

1. Rest. Most of us live lives that are what a friend of mine calls "Burnout Central." It's surprising what a day off or a few extra naps can do to recharge your batteries. Some really nourishing food, eaten slowly, can do wonders too.

2. Read. Return to classics you love. Check out some masters in your genre with whose work you're not yet familiar. Search out great writing in some form you rarely read. I often read poetry when I'm feeling creatively depleted. It reminds me of how much I love language, and it's brief enough that reading it doesn't feel like yet another chore.

3. Find inspiration from non-writing sources. I am inspired by looking at visual art, talking to interesting people, watching documentary films, listening to instrumental music, making jewelry, walking, staring up at the sky, and watching the brief talks by brilliant people in many fields collected at TED (http://www.ted.com/). What deeply inspires and nurtures you? Make time to reach out for it. And savor it fully, one thing at a time.

4. Take an evening or two as an "electric (and electronic) sabbath." For a specified amount of time one evening (two or three hours works best for me) turn off or silence all electric and electronic devices. Turn off the electric lights, too, and light some candles instead. You might be surprised at how totally different your time will feel. You won't be able to multi-task. You won't be able to push yourself to get something else done. You won't be subject to the incredible overstimulation that is a fact of modern life. You'll be able to read, or chat, or play a board game with your family. You'll probably feel antsy at first, addicted as most of us are to 24/7 input from our devices, but don't give up...once you get used to it, you may find it really enjoyable. And after an evening of withdrawal from external "noise," you may find yourself eager to write.

5. Take a conscious break from writing for one week, two weeks, even a month. In that time, fully commit to staying away from your writing and to staying away from any guilt or blame. Return to writing on the day you've planned and see how you feel.

BOOK PROPOSALS AND LASAGNA: from cook to chef

2010-09-15T09:00:00.001-04:00

Oddly enough, several people have raised the same question with me this past week: is it possible to write a good proposal just using one of the checklists or books out there in the marketplace?

The answer is yes...maybe.

I want to answer that question by starting with one of Nathan Bransford's excellent (and funny) analogies. In one of his blog posts he compares a book proposal to lasagna, pointing out that "there are a thousand ways of making it, everyone has their own recipe, but most every lasagna will have a few basic ingredients and chances are it's going to taste good in the end." His point is, as always, not just well stated but well taken. There is no one single formula (or outline, or checklist) for a successful book proposal. Many variations will work.

But (as Nathan points out often in his blog, though not in this lasagna-related way) if you're an aspiring author hoping to publish a nonfiction book through a commercial (as opposed to self-) publisher, it's also important to note that a good-tasting lasagna isn't necessarily the same thing as an award-winning, restaurant-ready lasagna. To make a lasagna lots and lots of people will pay for, it's not enough to follow a recipe. You're going to need to know why those ingredients are there. Why they're there. How they work. How they react to heat or cold or time. How much they cost. Which ones people like best. What can be substituted for a fresh or updated version of the old standard. In other words, you're going to have to become quite expert not just on lasagna, but also on gastronomy and marketing as well. Only once you understand these broader subjects will you be able to tweak an ordinary lasagna recipe into something that is truly yours, truly unique, and truly salable. Only once you understand them will you begin to be a chef, not just a good cook.

A book proposal that actually sells to a commercial publisher is like that award-winning, restaurant ready lasagna. It's not just good, it's expert. It's not just expert, it's original. It's not just expert and original, it's salable, and to strangers, and to strangers in quantity, and to strangers in quantity in a profitable way. That kind of book proposal is entirely different from the kind of proposal you write by dutifully following someone's outline without deeply understanding either that outline, or publishing in general, or even your own book.

That's why people like me, who are trained to teach and consult on book proposals (or their fiction equivalents, queries and synopses) exist in the writing marketplace and offer personalized help. When I work with a client on their book proposal, my job isn't merely to repeat the same checklist and explanations that are available for free. My job is to help that client understand the "whys" behind each element of the proposal, to answer them as compellingly and professionally as possible, and even perhaps to adjust his or her book as necessary to make a strong case for it in the current market. We're not just writing a proposal together, we're thinking it together. I don't say this to suggest that you must hire a professional book consultant or teacher in order to create a proposal that succeeds. I just want to point out that there is a level of professionalism and thought and exploration in a good proposal that is difficult to achieve if you don't learn a lot about all that's behind that simple checklist of "Overview" and "Competition" and "Marketing" and "Credentials."

That "tough love" imparted, let me use the lasagna metaphor once again to offer a closing note of hope.

It's not easy to create a restaurant-ready lasagna or a selling book proposal. But it is possible, and possible for the "average joe." The ingredients, the practice, the mentorship, the comparison with others' creations past and present, the feedback, the care that go into a great book proposal--they are all available, to all of us. Finding them, using them, and building from them may take hard work and the investment of both considerable time and a little bit of money. But you can create a selling proposal, whoever you are.

You just have to want it...a lot.

TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAYS: they've heard it all before, part 2

2010-09-14T13:00:00.002-04:00

I've been asked some interesting questions by fellow writers in the past couple of weeks. Here's the one of them, and my thoughts on the subject.

In response to my Touchy Topics Tuesday post They've heard it all before, author Dianne Lininger, whose books The Kingdom of Cydinah and The Valley of Shadows and Shame are from Crosam Press, wrote this: " To be honest, your clever poem for HOME LIFE would have sold me on the manuscript had I been your agent. I thought it displayed noticeable talent! I don't understand why being different, original, or unique doesn't work for pitching manuscripts when it's amazing successful at marketing detergent, insurance, hair plugs, or laxatives."

First, let me thank Dianne for her kind words about my poetry!

Beyond that, her question about why quirkiness and gimmicky "hooks" don't work as well selling a manuscript as it does when selling some other "products" is a good one.

One important reason is that the publisher who buys a book is making a much more significant investment. Given overhead, printing, shipping, advertising and other costs, even a low-advance, small-print-run book will cost its publisher ten thousand dollars or more, take space in their list away from any other book, and commit them for several years at least. That's a serious and tangible investment, and demands a more serious approach—and much more solid information—than is involved in a single small retail purchase. Too often, tricky or innovative pitches stop with the clever hook, and fail to go on to demonstrate the salability and professionalism needed to justify this investment.

I would also underscore the point that most good agents scan hundreds if not thousands of query letters a year. The hook that seems so unique and compelling to us as writers crafting a single query letter probably doesn't seem anywhere near as cute to them. They've heard it all, and what they really want is to be able to assess the quality and economics of our project quickly.

Finally, there's the issue of risk. The problem with attention-getting hooks in everything--singles gatherings, keynote speeches, sales pitches generally—is that they either work perfectly or fall completely flat. Sure, an agent may love your weird and dramatic hook. But they may also find it silly or cliched or exaggerated enough to question your writing and your common sense. In contrast, a smart, savvy, and lively opening that doesn't try too hard to impress the recipient with novelty will work well in most situations.

All that said, here's some basic advice.

Tailor the "hook" in your query letters to the genre of your book. A mass-market suspense novel or book of humor may warrant a clever hook. A literary novel, a history of your town or memoir of loss probably don't. Your opening lines and your query letter generally should sound like the "you" that wrote the book you're pitching, not like a door to door salesman on crack.

If you can't come up with a hook that is startling, novel, or unique, don't worry for even a minute. Work to create something that is really smart, really concise, really informative and just plain interesting instead. Meeting even those criteria is difficult enough.

Remember that a query letter is, at heart, a business letter: a communication from one professional to another. Be professional enough to give your fellow professional the information he or she needs to make a decision on your book.

Last but not least, don't overemphasize the importance of having a unique or exciting hook. Agents are very smart people. They're more than capable of scanning below the hook for a second or two of further assessment. I've never known, or even heard of, one who threw queries away because their hooks weren't original enough. (I can just hear it now. "Hmmm. This book could be the Silence of the Lambs of 2012! Too bad the author can't write a hook. Next!") Conversely, I've never heard of any who ask to see lousy books just because the hook is clever. (Here again: "Hmmm. This book has a market of about four people. But that is one clever, clever hook. Get Random House on the phone!")

Or, to end this post with the same bad verse that closed out the last one on this subject:
My dear authors and friends, this small rule I will share:
Of cute gimmicks and tricks please devote not one care.
Be smart and be lively, be clear and be brief
And your letters of query shall come to no grief.

PURELY FOR PLEASURE: okay, a few lessons, too

2010-09-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

As I've surely mentioned earlier on this blog, I'm a great fan of illustrated books, which are becoming ever more inventive and affordable thanks to the wonders of digital printing. I received James Balog's Extreme Ice Now: A Progress Report (National Geographic, 2009) as a gift last Friday, and I've been marveling over it ever since.
Because printed books are usually the collaborative effort of a team of people who never meet one another, their different elements (text, size, shape, graphics, font, and more) don't always work perfectly together. This book is one of the exceptions. From its spare slipcase to its square shape, from its striking use of typography to its rich essays and its haunting photographs, this is one of those books which is impeccable in every single regard. More than impeccable, in fact: impressive, memorable, haunting, and full of integrity. Integrity in the original and best sense of the word, that is, meaning not just honesty, but rather wholeness and internal consistency.

I first saw the work of the book's author, James Balog, in one of his early books of animal photography. Though their underlying themes are similar, his images are created differently from one book to the next, with each new form or process designed specifically for its subject. Survivors depicts animals using some of the conventions of commercial photography; the large composite images in Tree are built from hundreds of smaller shots. The images in Extreme Ice Now are made in even more complex ways, requiring a variety of special cameras to be left in a variety of very cold places for considerable lengths of time. (That's a very simplified version of the process, which is far better explained in the book and the Extreme Ice Survey website; my apologies for this rinky-dink description.) I actually learned of the Extreme Ice Survey on the PBS series Nova, which aired a documentary

There's an obvious technical element to this work, and an obvious scientific point. Yet the images themselves are not clinical in any way; instead, they are gorgeous and sad, evocative and haunting. Balog's essays are interesting and beautifully written, but it is these astonishing images that makes the book so powerful. The ice in them is like a living creature. These photographs take a subject that is literally and figuratively removed from our ordinary lives, literally and figuratively cold, and allow it to speak warmly to our hearts, the place where all true change starts.

I've been enjoying this book as a lay person, not as a professional in the writing and publishing field. Yet it does remind me of two precepts all of us writers would be wise to follow. The first and most important: always, always, always be sure to find the emotional heart of your topic, whether your'e writing about murder mysteries or the building of outdoor decks. Second: if you write only about that which you care passionately about, your work (like James Balog's) will feel coherent even if your subjects or forms differ, and it will find others who care passionately about it, too.

You can see selected images from James Balog's portfolio by clicking here. The Extreme Ice Survey website offers a wealth of information and images. Finally, many thanks to the senior James Balog for sending me the book: a kind and generous gift to ths appreciative "starving artist."

LONG TIME NO BLOG: putting my money where my manuscript needed to be

2010-09-12T12:52:00.000-04:00

Apologies for an unusually extended absence to those of you who follow this blog. I got distracted by something else in late August and am just now returning to my normal, blog-loving state.

Let me tell you about that "distraction," as it was a very working-writer thing.

I hadn't been able to make consistent time for my own writing for many months. In a time of financial pressure, paid projects always seemed to crowd as-yet unpaid writing out. And though I'm lucky enough to have teaching and consulting work that I deeply enjoy, a full day of work on others' books doesn't leave much energy for my own.
In the course of musing about this problem in the early summer, it occurred to me that I wasn't doing my own writing because there was a financial incentive not to do it.

A logical solution, therefore, would be to create a financial incentive to doing my own work. Or, stated in reverse, a financial disincentive to avoiding it.

So on June 28 I emailed eight dear friends who have supported me and my work lovingly over the years. I told them I was offering them a deal. If I could not produce a book proposal, synopsis, and 5,000 words of my new book on September 3, I would give each of them fifty bucks. They didn't need to read the work I produced, or for that matter do much of anything else. The only condition of the deal was that they weren't allowed to enable me or let me slide. If I couldn't produce, they had to agree to demand their money.

Well, guess what.

I love the gals I emailed my little proposition to. I'd be happy to give any one of them fifty bucks. But thrifty Bud Fox's thrifty daughter ain't handing out the equivalent of a month's mortgage payment to anyone (except a mortgage company).

And so I'm sitting here looking at the printouts. A proposal. A synopsis. Six thousand seven hundred and three words of writing. All finished on September 2, at which point I repaired to my bed to watch TV reruns, catch up on my sleep, and lick my creative wounds.

Not of the work I produced is great, let me hastily say. It's all very first-draftish. But it's there, and that's what counts.

Financial fear might not be your driving force (and if it's not, I deeply congratulate you).

What is?

Create some accountability around it, and see what happens. It worked for me.

At least so far.

FAY WELDON (on Fay Weldon)

2010-08-26T20:15:00.001-04:00

Fay Weldon is one of those writers whose diverse yet intense careers delight me. I first saw her name on one of the Upstairs, Downstairs episodes of the 1970s; she wrote the pilot episode and a number of others, all miniature marvels of characterization and story. Since then she has written a score of novels, several collections of short stories, some teleplays, stage plays, and more. Much of her work focuses on women and women's relationships, which she addresses in a rich variety of stances and stories.

Here is her author statement as printed on the British Council's Contemporary Writers web site. Artist statements of any kind, including author statements, are very difficult to write well, but this is a gem. I love the intense and humorous voice, the rich language, the rapid pace...actually, I love pretty much everything about it, I guess:

"Well, there's no time to waste. Life's short, the world's history is long and its societies diverse. If I am a prolific writer and turn my hand, with what seems to some as indecent haste, from novels to screenplays to stage and radio plays, it is because there is so much to be said, so few of us to say it, and time runs out. Readers crave explanations of their lives: the writers of fiction provide it, enlarging experience, giving meaning and significance where none was before. I see myself as someone who drops tiny crumbs of nourishment, in the form of comment and conversation, into the black enormous maw of the world's discontent. I will never fill it up or shut it up; but it seems my duty, not to mention my pleasure, to attempt to do so, however ineptly. See me as Sisyphus, but having a good time."

"See me as Sisyphus, but having a good time." Isn't that every writer who loves his or her craft: pushing that giant boulder uphill, pushing, pushing, knowing we can't ever quite get it to the top, but enjoying every laborious moment?

TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAY: the finances of getting commercially published

2010-08-24T09:00:00.002-04:00

Today's Touchy Topic is the finances of getting commercially published, that is, how the money works for you, the author, when you are lucky enough to get your book purchased by a publisher who actually pays you money and prints the book. (I'll talk a bit about the economics of self-publication on an upcoming Tuesday.)

It's difficult to talk about this matter accurately for many reasons. Prime among them: publishers' calculations are complex and often difficult to ferret out, and writers, understandably, don't want to share the details of their royalty statements.

Which is why we should all thank paranormal romance author Lynn Viehl for sharing hers. Though I just came across the posts with this information, she actually shared the first installment in April 2009 and the second installment in November of that year. (Genreality, on which she posted this info, is an excellent blog on the reality of genre writing and publishing, well worth a look if you're a genre writer rather than generalist, so to speak. You might also check out Viehl's blog, Paperback Writer.) But though the specific calculations of book advances and royalty statements may have changed a bit since then, the information is really excellent.

If you're among the many good writers still in the ranks of what my friend Gerri LcClerc wittily calls "the pre-published," the first thing you may notice that Viehl's advance for the book in question, Twilight Fall, was $50,000. And yes, that sounds like a lot when you can't get anyone to buy your book for five bucks. Viehl has published almost fifty books under a variety of pen names (you can see her entire backlist here) and built a thriving, hard-working career; her advance reflected both facts.

Get beyond the advance amount into the calculations, though, and you'll see why I'm sharing her information. It gives you the chance to see how everything from agent fees and taxes to book returns affect the income from a book...how slow the income stream is in coming...how complicated all of the calculations are...and what the financial life of a successful writer is like once you look behind the gross numbers and get into the net.

You may see all this as depressing, and I guess that in some senses it is. On the other hand, work out there in the "real world" beyond writing isn't a walk in the park these days, either. I prefer to think of it in terms of "forewarned is forearmed." When you understand at least a little of the economics of book publishing, it's easier to work toward a truly sustainable career. And it's also easier to view those published authors you see on bestseller lists or at book signings as hardworking folks just like the rest of us rather than as lucky millionaires sitting around counting their money.

The celebrity authors may be doing just that. But the working writers are home, sweating over that next sentence.

WHY DO YOU WRITE?

2010-08-23T18:51:00.001-04:00

I've quoted from writer-ecologist Susan J.Tweit's blog, Walking Nature Home, on my GriefGlow blog before. This quotation on writing is from her January 24, 2010 post on decluttering and reclarifying her life. Not very recent, I'll admit, but as I read it again now I'm struck by how wise and grounded it is.

Susan writes:

I guess writing is always a journey of faith. Sometimes I allow myself to tense up with fear and I can't quite discern my way. I blunder about, stumble, or race in circles. When I realize I've gone wrong, I stop, collect myself, and start anew.

Just as today I uncluttered my shelves, dusted my office, and in the doing, remembered what it is that I love about my work. Why I write: To think, to dream, to share my love of life, to light the darkness that lurks around the edges of this world. Writing is my way of living with my heart outstretched as if it were my hand. (Thank you, singer/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter!)

Put simply: Writing is how I love this world.

As a writer, teacher, and blogger, I'm often engaged in sharing thoughts about the business end of writing. Indeed, my post for tomorrow's Touchy Topics Tuesday is on the financial aspects of a book contract. But important as it is to be savvy about planning and sales and everything that comes in between, it's just as important to remember why we write in the first place.

When we forget why we write, burnout becomes inevitable; bitterness and envy may follow as well, like radioactive cherries on an already toxic cake. When we forget why we write, we end up focusing only on the tough parts of a writerly career—the competition, the uncertainty, the ups and downs (or downs and downs) of the money. The joy of creation, the love of language, the lure of story, the bliss that is honing a beloved craft get lost.

Why do you write?

It's worth asking yourself that. And posting the answer someplace near your desk.

I write because I love the variety, the playfulness, the plasticity of language. Because books seem to me to be among the world's most enduring tools of transformation. Because I believe, oh how I believe, in the power of bearing witness to one's truth, whatever that truth might be. Because once a story gets hold of me, I have trouble focusing on anything else. Because writing is just plain fun.

Those reasons sound corny, I know. Your own reasons may be different, or better.

It doesn't matter what they are. It just matters that you know them.

TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAYS: brevity is the soul of sales

2010-08-10T11:00:00.001-04:00

When we spend months, years, sometimes even decades working on a book, it's profoundly difficult to reduce our work into brief summary. Condensing it into a sentence, a paragraph or a page seems to dishonor the very richness and complexity we've spent so much time and effort creating. It feels almost insulting to have to lower ourselves to such a plane of oversimplification. And inevitably, whatever summary we say feels flat and silly.

That said, we have to do it anyway. No matter how painful it is.

Obviously, the effort we invest in crafting a strong brief pitch pays off because it helps us sell our books.

Less obviously but still importantly, it gives us clarity, confidence, and the chance to be articulate. Once we've constructed a strong one-sentence pitch, we know what the core of our book is. We know we can express it in any situation, at any speed. Those are not inconsiderable advantages, especially in a world where many authors can't discuss their books without hemming, hawing, or talking on helplessly for an hour.

Finally, our one-sentence summary indirectly conveys some important messages to an agent and editor. That we understand their time is limited. That we "get" that they must turn around and pitch the book to others. That we are professionals. That we don't shirk the hard parts of writing.

Here is the one-sentence summary for my first nonfiction book, which was eventually titled Home Life and published by Simon & Schuster.

Combining personal and cultural history, autobiography and memoir, Home Life is both a story of one woman's coming of age and a meditation on the meaning of home.
Here's the one-paragraph version.

Combining personal and cultural history, autobiography and memoir, Home Life is both a story of one woman's coming of age and a meditation on the meaning of home. Coming of age stories have traditionally been tales of travel and risk. Home Life turns this well-worn formula inside out, using a traditional female domain—the home and its relationships—to trace an untraditional female life.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? It wasn't. Home Life was a tricky book to explain, not just because it mixed genres but also because I hadn't consciously thought out its themes or structure before I began to write. It grew intuitively, leaving me with a finished book that I didn't really understand on any conscious level. The fact that it was my first book only compounded the problem. I'd had no practice at all at explaining my work at this point, much less selling it.

Coming up with that sentence-length pitch, and then with the one-page synopsis that followed it, took me longer than it had to write most of the complex essays in the book. I would never have done it had not Richard Locke, my kind and brilliant mentor, insisted. I suffered multitudes of false starts, created a goodly number of explanations that expressed nothing but my own confusion, and generally drove myself crazy. I knew all along that the book fit somewhere...but I was damned if I could figure out where.

But as I've said, the effort was more than worth while. I don't think that Simon & Schuster bought the book because of my synopsis. But I do think that they might not have bought it had I not been able to put it so clearly and concisely in context. And long before they so much as saw the manuscript, having a decent synopsis in hand gave me a confidence that I sorely needed. It made me feel less vulnerable to "get" my own book in this way. I no longer felt that the book or my process were quite as muddled and accidental as they had seemed.

I don't share my one-sentence summary because it's brilliant. It's not. And if you're a fiction writer, your own one-sentence pitch won't sound much like this nonfiction one anyway. I just want you to see why boiling your book down to some compelling statement of its true essentials is so important, and what the results might look like generally.

If one-sentence, one-paragraph and one-page pitches are projects you're feeling ready to take on, read literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog posts on the subject. This one explains why you need to create them. (Bransford calls the one-page version a two-paragraph version, but we're both referring to more or less the same thing.) This one explains the form of the one-sentence version with Nathan's usual clarity and charm.

FIVE MINUTE FICTIONS: the sign

2010-08-09T09:00:00.002-04:00

Here's another little writing prompt to tickle your imagination if you're feeling stale.

Write five hundred works of something, anything, inspired by this sign from a beachside rest room. You could play with the meaning of the word "sign" and write about some revelation or epiphany, or you could build on its more literal givens: kids and dirt, youth and authority, control or freedom.

For extra credit, write something that does not involve either child characters or characters with children, yet still uses the sign in some significant way.

AND IN THIS CORNER, REPRESENTING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE....

2010-08-08T18:32:00.000-04:00

As its title suggests, Tom Stoppard's 1982 play The Real Thing concerns that which is authentic or true, that which is mere semblance or illusion, and the gray area in between. (If you've seen the film Shakespeare in Love, which Stoppard wrote with Marc Norman, you'll already have witnessed his obsession with the tension between art/artifice and reality; it merges playfully throughout the movie, from the gender-switching heroine all the way to the question of whether Christopher Marlowe really conceived Shakespeare's plays.)

As writers long before Stoppard have recognized (I'm thinking of George Orwell here, but there are myriads of examples), language can be force for both truth and falsehood, so it's not surprising that The Real Thing speaks directly on that theme, as well as expressing it indirectly through a series of literary tricks, deceptions, and double entendres. At one point Henry, the playwright protagonist, says the following about Brodie, a anti-nuclear protester:

He's a lout with language....Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good anymore, and Brodie knocks their corners off. I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.

So much of that passage resonates for me (and all of it, of course, is beautifully written). I particularly love the image of words getting their "corners knocked off," and the insistence that their precise use is not mere pedantry but rather a way of building "bridges across incomprehension and chaos." It's a worthwhile reminder that as writers, the power of our work necessarily rests on the precision and power with which we use words, and language generally. It's tempting to be careless with our word choice or unconscious about our diction. But great writers don't work that way. They use words as precisely as, say, Mozart uses musical notes: so that each and every one rings true.

Click here for an nice interview from the British Guardian in which Stoppard discusses this and other issues.

TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAYS: they've heard it all before

2010-08-03T10:35:00.001-04:00

When I was putting myself through writing grad school I had the chance to do some preliminary submission screening for a variety of publishers and organizations. This was before email submissions, so it was dusty and surprisingly physical work. (If you've never hefted giant manuscript stacks, let me tell you that paper is heavy.) It wasn't very fun, although it sometimes was funny. But it did give me a transformative glimpse of what longtime agents and editors experience.

The most important thing it taught me was that trying to be original, startling, unique, or otherwise memorable in your pitch, as opposed to the writing you're trying to sell, just doesn't work.

It's as if you were beginning chess player trying to surprise Gary Kasparov or or Boris Spassky with your brand new opening gambit. They have seen hundreds if not thousands more opening gambits than you have. What's unique to you is not unique to them. They've heard, and played, it all before. And the less you understand that, the more amateur you seem.

What does work? In getting your writing published, I mean, not in chess, about which I know only four things. (For the record: Boris Spassky and Gary Kasparov have been champions, Bobby Fisher is one crazy dude, and chess pieces are pretty.)

It's this simple: being professional works. Submitting only those genres of work they say they actually want in the format they request (that is, really researching your submissions rather than sending out huge email blasts). Being informative rather than being "unique" or "different" or "original." Skipping the bold claims and inflated credits for confident honesty. Learning what they need to know to make a good decision, and giving it to them concisely.

Like manuscript screening, this isn't really fun. I'd personally much rather choose fonts and cook up striking first lines for a query letter. But it works. You may still get rejected, and rejected a lot. No letter can sell a work of writing if that work doesn't happen to be right for this particular recipient at this particular time.

But you'll get rejected for the right reasons, and not because you sabotaged a perfect viable book submission by, say, starting your query letter in anapestic tetrameter. That reference sounds impressive, but it's actually the poetic meter used by Dr. Seuss, a writer whose work is permanently engraved on my synapses (which is the only reason I know its name). Herewith, just to show you that I feel your pain despite the rather hectoring tone of this post, is a query for my first book, Home Life, in more or less anapestic more or less tetrameter.

To my dear Agent X: this small book I submit
In the hopes it will charm you with wisdom and wit.
My small memoir of rooms is so detailed and smart,
that its style and its grace will catch most readers' hearts.
I'm impoverished, unknown, and a novice, it's true,
But just try it and see it make profits for YOU!

FILM-ETTES NOT QUITE ON FRIDAY: good things come to those who wait

2010-08-01T19:54:00.005-04:00

Working Writer had what felt like a multitude of meetings on Friday and, while each was festive in its way, felt far too exhausted to post the usual Friday film-ette here. However, though belated, the Jane Austen Fight Club is one of the most delicious filmettes this blogger has ever seen (seen four times, so far). The slaps, the kicks, the blood (yes, slaps, kicks, and blood! in JANE AUSTEN!) the hats, the Bichon, the lovely multicultural presences...it's a little gem. (Though I must credit here the lovely snippet of music that is uncredited in the filmette; it's from Dario Marinelli's soundtrack for the 2005 Joe Wright film of Pride and Prejudice.)
Make some Lady Grey tea, find a crumpet, and enjoy.

Or I'll have to punch you right in the kisser.

BEYOND WORDS: picture books for grown-ups

2010-07-29T09:57:00.000-04:00

As writers we are necessarily obsessed with the lengthy and complicated sequence of little hieroglyphics that are a book's content. We don't usually focus on a book's form unless we are either self-publishing, or furious with a commercial publisher for turning out our book with (a) a hideous cover, (b) an idiotic cover, (c) a cover that reveals the key plot twist, (d) a cover that reveals that the cover artist has never read the book or anything like it, (e) a hideous page format, (f) an idiotic page format...

But I digress. Surprise!

What I really wanted to say was that there are legions of fascinating folk out there who obsess over the place where form and content meet. My friend and colleague cj Madigan, who designs the books, such as Grief Country, that I write and publish under my BookStrategy imprint, has a nice post about this in her Book Thinking blog today. (Grief Country is currently the featured book on her site, so you can get a brief glimpse of the process of its creation here.) As a book designer, among other things, cj gets to obsess about stuff like typefaces and page structures. Different from obsessing about words, but no less glorious and no less frustrating.

If you're feeling the need for a mini-vacation from words, take a gander at her post and the book on handmade books it features, or visit one of the following sites that highlight the work of book, artists book and altered book artists: Little Red Notebook, the Journal of Artists Books, the International Society of Altered Book Artists, to name just a very few.

Most of the books you'll find on these sites are handmade, but there are also also folks who create books which meld text and book design in ways that are striking and artful, yet feasible for commercial book publication. Nick Bantok, creator of the Griffin and Sabine series, is perhaps the most famous of these. Gordon MacKenzie's Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace and Keri Smith's This is Not a Book are other personal favorites in this form.

Finally, I'd like to mention the work of the extraordinary Barbara Hodgson, a Vancouver graphic artist and writer whose books layer (extremely well-written) text, ephemera, fragments and glimpses and shadows of images, and all sorts of other visual goodies to create a memorable whole. I own and love Paris Out of Hand, a collaboration between Hodgson, Bantock, and Karen Elizabeth Gordon. (I confess with some shame that, having bought it purely because I love Paris and it is so deliciously pretty, I owned the book for some days before actually browsing past its rich visuals long enough to realize that it is a fantasy, a guidebook to an imaginary Paris. You'd think the upside-down image of the Eiffel Tower on the cover would have given me a hint. Surprise!) And I can't wait to get her Trading in Memories: Traveling through a Scavenger's Favorite Places.

Let me close this post by noting that I'm not suggesting that any of us boring ol' writers make the job of getting published even more difficult by adding all sorts of complicated and expensive graphics to the mix. If you didn't feel that visuals were a compelling part of your work from the start, no need to add them now.

Plus, finding publication is already hard enough. Surprise!

TOUCHY TOPICS THURSDAYS: in which I say why you should read what Nathan Bransford says you should never say

2010-07-29T09:00:00.001-04:00

This Tuesday my subscription to agent Nathan Bransford's blog delivered a special gem. His posts are always informative and funny, but this one speaks so eloquently, and amusingly to a readerly habit that makes me sputter with indignation that it just made my day. As you can see, I couldn't even wait until next Tuesday, my usual Touchy Topics day, to share it. I'm not going to say anything else about it (you folks who take my classes know how rare that is). Just click here to read it. Be sure to read past the comic irritation to the real point, about what you as a writer should say, and why. And click on the link for comments at the end to read the dialogue that ensued...a dialogue in which Nathan himself engages. Ah, the delights of the blog!

TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAYS: rejection response roundup

2010-07-27T09:00:00.002-04:00

Let's face it. Rejection is part of every writer's life. And I do mean every writer, not just those who are submitting first books or building early careers.

I've recently spoken to three different authors, all excellent writers with long careers and many published books, who are dealing with rejections because their publisher or the market or lord-knows-what-else has changed directions. And when I get the chance to talk even to the literary or bestselling giants, those writers one would think were absolutely immune, and they all have stories of recent rejections that rankle. A snide review. A publication that doesn't review the book at all. A peer who bad-mouths. A conference that doesn't invite. A book tour that isn't offered. Worst of all, a book that just doesn't sell according to expectations—the author's, or someone else's.

With that in mind, I'm offering a roundup of some online perspectives on rejection from those that know. There are lots and lots of good ones; this is just a sampling. No offense to bloggers or sites I "rejected."

I've mentioned agent Rachelle Gardner before; her blog is one of those I often turn to for clear and sensible comments on the writing biz. I did a search for "rejection" in her blog posts; this link guides you to that location. If it doesn't work for some reason I can't predict, just scroll down the right hand column of her blog until you get to the "find posts on this blog" section and click on "rejection."

I like agent Nathan Bransford's blog a lot, too. How can you not like a guy that explains writing book proposals through the metaphor of making lasagna? I couldn't find a way to search specifically for rejection, but just browsing his blog seems to put things in perspective.

Editor Betsy Lerner, author of the wonderful book The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers, writes a lot of funny, salty posts. (You won't like this blog if you're sensitive to colorful language.) This one is excellent, and so are the comments it inspired. If nothing else, it will remind you that you're not alone.

Query Shark, not surprisingly, rips apart queries. Very funny, very educational, usually very apt. When you read this blog, you're actually glad agents and editors don't send critiques with their rejections. You could send your query to the Shark if you're feeling brave. Be sure to have bandages, blood supplies, vodka and/or Valium on hand when you read the results.

The blog of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management also writes well about rejection. This link brings you to an overview of some of their pieces on the subject.

Going from the sublime to the potentially repetitious, let me close with four very brief "rules" for handing writerly rejection. You've heard all this before, but it's still the best way to approach the ego-bruising reality of a writer's life.

1. Do it enough to get used to it. Rejection never becomes easy. But like some chronic illnesses and your spouse's lame jokes, it does become easier once you've experienced it repeatedly. It's much harder to get rejected once than it is to get rejected ten times.

2. Don't take it personally. They're not rejecting you. They're rejecting a series of words on paper. That's a crucial difference.

3. Keep going. And going. And going.

4. Keep learning. Sometimes rejection isn't a hardship, it's a gift. Had my first book been accepted in its original form, I would not be writing this blog today. Instead, I would be lurking on some obscure Pacific island in ABSOLUTE AND UTTER MORTIFICATION. Is your book really good enough to make you proud ten books from now?

5. Be kind to yourself. Writing is hard. Rejection is hard. Ample supplies of supportive peers, good snacks, frequent naps, and loving family and friends help. A good therapist isn't bad either.

And finally, just so that we end on a more poetic note than this little list seems to be managing, let me quote from the brilliant Barbara Kingsolver: This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address. Hard as it is to accept it, she's right.

AUTHORS ON AUSTEN: but not for "jane-ites" only

2010-07-25T10:05:00.000-04:00

A friend recently lent me A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen, edited by Susannah Carlson and published by Random House in 2009, and I have been stealing tidbits of time away from my work to browse guiltily through it ever since, like a woman with a sweet tooth who keeps on sneaking away to hit the Chips Ahoy bag hidden in the back of the pantry for one more cookie...just one more...just one.

It goes without saying that a book like this is easier to understand and enjoy if you have read something by and about Jane Austen. But the broader themes of which the collection speaks aren't about Austen per se at all; she is the exemplar, but not in some sense the point. This is a book about why some novels endure while others vanish, about what each new age brings to its readings of earlier literature, and above all about how existing books shape the imaginations of other writers. In that way it's relevant to all of us writers, whether we adore The Great Jane or abominate her.

In the collection there are classic essays I read at some long-ago moment: Virginia Woolf's Jane Austen at Sixty and an excerpt from Lionel Trilling's Why We Read Jane Austen. There are classic essays I feel like I should have read but hadn't, including pieces by E.M. Forster, Eudora Welty, and Somerset Maugham. There are people from my past: an essay by Janet Todd, whose class on British writers I took in college and who I had pretty much forgotten since (no offense to a good and entertaining teacher intended). And there are visions very much of the present. Among this group, I especially enjoyed was Benjamin Nugent's The Nerds of Pride and Prejudice, which calls Mary Bennett of that novel "one of the earliest examples of a nerd in a famous work of literature." But every piece in the book is interesting, articulate, and insightful. Martin Amis, Amy Bloom, David Lodge, Jay McInerney, Fay Weldon: it's fun to see writers we know from their own very diverse and contemporary fiction weigh in on an author from the past who has become part of the collective imagination.

I started to include some quotations from the book in this post, but that became impractical more or less immediately given the multitude of little gems to choose from. I'll offer just one, chosen not because it's the grandest or most meaningful thought but because it reminds us all of something important. This is from Amy Heckerling, whose film Clueless is a brilliant and in a deep sense very accurate updating of Emma. Her essay, which shares some of the story of making her film, is called "The Girls Who Don't Say 'Whoo'!" and reads, in part:

...here is one area where I have some beef with many of the Jane Austen films. The novels Jane Austen wrote are classics, but that doesn't mean they should be interpreted in some sort of "classy" style. They don't require slow, swooping shots of idyllic landscapes. There is no mention in Emma of lush symphonic music heard as the wind sweeps through the heather on the hill. The trees, clouds, and birds can do whatever they want. It's not about them, it's about the people, and the people in Emma are BUSY. The book has the pace of youth—sometimes headed the wrong way, but fast, restless, and exuberant.

A reminder that reading great literature requires us not only to see the differences between its time and our own, but also the things that stay the same.

2010-07-23T09:15:00.001-04:00

I promised in Tuesday's post that today's film-ette would be an low or no-budget author promo that's gotten two hundred thousand-plus hits on YouTube. Well, here it is: romance author Diana Holquist's trailer for her book The Sexiest Man Alive.

A few things to notice about this brilliant feat of fearless and funny author self-promotion.

First, you'll notice that Holquist exploited both what she had and what she didn't have with extreme, almost fiendish cleverness. She had a webcam, a cat, a brain, a sense of humor, and a book cover that allowed both sex and humor to shine. She didn't (presumably) have a big budget, a high-end camera, a music composer, a make-up artist, or James Cameron to direct. She found a form that built on both. The informality, the intimacy, the amateurishness, and the silliness intrinsic to home webcam use are exactly what makes the trailer so effective.

Second, her trailer connects with viewers. It's not just about her book. And it's not just about selling that book. It's about her, and the fact that she is very much like you, me, and most of her readers. She lives in an ordinary house, she has a cat, she isn't perfectly coifed or made up: no Jackie Collins or Barbara Cartland here. She's down to earth, she's funny, and—even better—she's willing to be funny about herself and her work. You probably don't go to the site address given at the end of the piece—and I'm absolutely confident that many, many viewers have done just that—because you want to know more about the book. You go because she seems like she would be a fun, funny, and interesting person to know.

Third, and closely related to second (not sure why I'm in such a numerically precise mood today), this video does not sell the book the way romance covers and ads sell the book. I hope you're listening, because this is very important. In case you're not listening, let me say it louder: IT'S VERY IMPORTANT. Romance novels and romance ads speak to romance readers. Most YouTube viewers are not romance readers. Holquist's trailer succeeded because she was willing to meet the YouTube "tribe," to use Seth Godin's word, where they are. She paid attention to the fact that they are probably younger, probably hipper, probably not interested in reading romance, and certainly more gender-divided than the romance market. She didn't violate the integrity of herself or her book to do this, by the way. She just found an aspect of her book and brand that worked for YouTube, exactly as she found aspects of her book and brand that work for her web site.

And finally, you'll notice the most obvious thing of all: Diana Holquist ventured into the brave new world of YouTube and tried it.Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Holquist's earlier YouTube promo for this book and the one that preceded it is also very clever, and even more minimal: no live action, in fact no movement of any kind, at all.

I could have made that. You could have made that. But we didn't. Something to think about.

FIVE-MINUTE FICTIONS: The Sleep Box

2010-07-22T09:00:00.001-04:00

I was fascinated to some across this image of a Sleep Box, a little booth complete with wi-fi, a mattress, and sheets that are changed that may be findable in many public places someday. It was designed by architects Alexei Goryainov and Michail Krymov of Moscow's Arch Group to provide a safe sleeping space for people in emergency situations and a secure, hygienic rest spot for travelers in airports. All that real life stuff aside, they're little settings justing waiting for fiction.

So: take five minutes and write a little fiction about something that happens in, around, or because of a Sleep Box.

For extra credit, fit it into an existing genre: romance, erotica, sci-fi, mystery, thriller.

For extra-extra credit with a cherry on top, make it a Western.

TOUCHY SUBJECT TUESDAYS: the times, they are a-changin'

2010-07-20T09:22:00.000-04:00

If you're an aspiring or midlist writer, it's not easy to welcome the nine zillion changes occurring in publishing in this, our digital age. Few of them seem to be to our benefit, and even fewer seem clear or easy to comprehend. Yet like it or not, the digital future is here, changing much of what's familiar (at least to those of us of twentieth-century "vintage") about book content, book publication, book distribution, and book marketing. To reprise the Bob Dylan quote I used for the title of this post, the times, they are indeed a-changin.'

As authors, I think we ignore these changes at our peril. That's the bad news: that sticking our heads in the sand isn't going to help us build careers or force all of this scary, messy, technologically intimidating change to go away. The good news is that some of the new media now evolving do help us as writers trying to promote books. Blogs are one excellent example; for another, check back on this blog this week, when Friday's "film-ette" is a wonderful little book-promotion piece done by an author herself with a webcam, a budget of maybe ten bucks, and without even putting on her makeup. Lest all that sound unimpressive, I should add that this little book trailer has amassed over two hundred thousand hits on YouTube. Yep, that's 200,000. Name an earlier form of author book promotion that could reach an audience even a tenth that large, especially on virtually no money at all.

Another piece of good news is that we don't have to become techno-experts to survive in the "new" publishing. We do need to learn basic new skills, and/or find a kid, grandkidd, nephew, niece, intern, or unemployed twentysomething to deploy them on our behalf. And I think we also need to cultivate at least a nodding acquaintance with new technologies and trends. Otherwise, among other problems, we're submitting to agents or editors without partaking at all of the world in which they must function.

Here's an easy place to start. I've spoken about the always thought-provoking work of speaker and writer Seth Godin before (see my May 22 post, "Big Pictures and Piddlling Little Points.") He's someone who's really worth reading if you're interested either in the impact of evolving media or the way marketing really works, or really doesn't work, in the twenty-first century. He's also very generous with his work, making lots of interesting material available free. This link gives you a free listen to most of his talk on the "new dynamics of publishing," given this May to the Independent Book Publishers Association. Part of what's helpful about it is precisely the fact that it's oriented toward publishers, giving you a glimpse of their world; another useful aspect of his points is that they are created by technology, but not about it per se. (For the record, being a former Manhattanite used to folks who talk brilliantly but fast, I happen to like Seth's rapid-fire idea-rich style, but you can also take him in rather more serene style via his books; two of my favorites are P ermission Marketing, a classic by now, and Tribes.) You can also visit IBPA's Publishing University 2010 site and hear two interesting talks from their gathering.

Okay. Now we can all go back to writing those beautiful things, those actual, physical books, perhaps with those beautiful things called pens.

That wasn't so bad, was it?

JULIE COMPTON: BUTTER CAKE AND BACKSTORY

2010-07-19T15:55:00.001-04:00

I've been to very few author events or writers conferences for the last few years. The demands first of caregiving, then of grief, and then of restarting a business, a life, and a body that didn't want to do much other than nap, snack, and cry put such pleasures on the proverbial back burner. But I did get to mystery writer Julie Compton's seminar on backstory on Saturday, which reminded me of how enjoyable such events can be. The Mystery Writers of America's Florida Chapter organized the event, and the always-gracious-to-authors Vero Beach Book Center hosted it.

In person as in her books and blog, Julie is energetic, intelligent, and generous. In addition to demonstrating all of these nice qualities at Saturday's meeting, she brought us all pieces of homemade butter cake; now there's the kind of author we should all get out and see. Her talk used the first pages of her new novel, Rescuing Olivia, to illustrate the various ways that backstory can be handled. I was struck by how well she used very small snippets of backstory, expressed sometimes in as little as a sentence, to add elements of mystery to the plot. We often think of backstory as something that fills in the main story, that answers questions; these elements in her pages reminded me of how much more effective it can be when it also asks questions or opens up unknowns. References to Olivia's unexplained nightmares, narrator Anders's difficulties with his father, the appearance of a woman who is said to know Olivia better than her own mother, for reasons not yet explained: these are little things, minor elements, and yet they deepened my desire to read on in a major way. And of course they illustrated another of Julie's points, that backstory often works best when it is inserted gradually and briefly into a novel. Kudos to Julie for an excellent seminar, a delicious cake, and a richly rewarding novel.

Along with my friend Linda Hengerer, Julie is co-chairing MWA Florida's annual conference, Sleuthfest, which will take place March 3rd through 6th, 2011 in Deerfield Beach, Florida. If you're in Florida already or want an excuse to come here in the perfect season, you might want to check it out. Sleuthfest always features excellent authors and programs, and is worth attending for anyone interested in mysteries and their variations.

FILM-ETTES ON FRIDAYS: ROMANCE NOVELS

2010-07-09T12:34:00.000-04:00

Today's "film-ette" is a small spoof on the formulaic quality of romance novels. No particular redeeming value, just an amusing morsel for Friday afternoon. Warning: Rated RHSB (Romance Heroine Swelling Bosom).

2010-07-08T19:10:00.000-04:00

Sam Sattler's blog, Book Chase, has this as its quote of the moment: Mark Twain's “Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” Very amusing, and new to me. You might think that I, well known to be a "Janeite," would bristle at this, but in fact I always forgive harsh criticism as long as it is funny. (Well, harsh criticism of others' books, at least.) I don't know what bugged Mr. Clemens about Miss Austen, though I could certainly hazard a score or two of guesses, or why he chose the shin-bone in particular. It sounds sort of like a Great Books version of the game Clue, doesn't it?— Mr. Twain, in the Library, with the Shin-bone.

2010-07-07T18:32:00.001-04:00

It ill behooves the ordinary working writer to covet material goods. We have enough trouble buying food. Yet sometimes, dear reader, we do yearn for tangible treasures. (I have no idea why I'm speaking in the plural here. Perhaps I have been reading so much Michael Cox that my mind has been invaded by Queen Victoria, or perhaps onetime my pen names, Suzanne Scott and Suzanne Judson, have been called forth by the pulp-fiction theme of this post.) Today, we crave one or more of the brilliant faux-book-cover posters devised by the Heldfond Book Gallery. Each poster is designed like the cover of a pulp novel, though the theme of each, with deliberate irony, is the far less earthy world of rare books. Our personal favorite, glimpsed in its "sample" form at the left, is entitled BiblioBimbo and features a James Dean type leering at a suitably trashy babe under the tag line, "Every Bookseller In Town Had Been In Her Library"—proving, if it requires proof, that it is possible to make utterly innocent words sound completely filthy if you're clever enough. Anyway, kudos to Heldfond for celebrating both the pulp legacy and the rare book marketplace at once in such fine form, and for all of the beautiful rare books they more seriously purvey. (I crave the limited edition book of Henri Cartier-Bresson's illustrations of Rimbaud's Sonnet of the Vowels they offer, too, but the twenty-five-buck BiblioBimbo poster is precisely 72 times more affordable.)

TOUCHY TOPICS TUESDAYS: THE DRAINING ART OF SELF-DEPRECATION

2010-07-07T10:12:00.000-04:00

I must confess that this Touchy Topics Tuesday post is being completed early on Wednesday. I guess you could call this Where the Hell Were You Wednesday. Post-long-weekend Tuesdays always feel like Mondays, and also often have the leftover tasks from pre-long-weekend Fridays, and...well, you get the picture.

The topic for this week is self-deprecation: specifically the kind of self-deprecation we use, and abuse, as writers. I'm not talking here about the kind of humility I discsussed in last Tuesday's post. I'm talking about the hundred little verbal jabs we aim at ourselves in conversation when the subject of our writing comes up. "I'll probably never be published." "He's a real writer, not like me." "Everyone else is so well-read, I'm ashamed to say anything." "Published? No, but I do have a bathroom wallpapered in rejection letters."

If you've heard me teach or speak even once, you'll know that I'm no stranger to this kind of comment. Irony about myself and others is hard-wired into my sense of humor, and to that extent it's (perhaps)more or less benign. Yet it's also easy to stray into something more toxic, and I do that as well.

Here's the problem. Every time we aim one of these sharp little verbal arrows at ourselves, we drain a bit of our self-confidence. We tell ourselves that our writing practice isn't valid, that our work isn't worth while, that we don't have the skills or the smarts or the right to take our work seriously. We make a comedy of something that isn't comic, and cast ourselves for the part of the buffoon. It's tempting to say that such innocent little barbs don't mean anything, but I don't believe that's true. Whether uttered from our own mouths or anyone else's, judgments repeated often inevitably begin to have the ring of truth.

And every time we do it, we also drain others. Wordlessly but no less powerfully, we ask them to reassure us, validate us, praise us, prop us up. I don't actually think it's bad to ask for reassurance; I just think we should do it consciously, intentionally, and clearly. Telling someone I trust, in a setting that makes real dialogue possible, that I am struggling with doubt or block can be deeply healing. Telling someone I barely know, in a setting that allows only the briefest and most banal exchanges, that I am not a "real" writer isn't deeply anything. It's just a superficial bit of schtick, a quick soft-shoe shuffle that says hey, don't worry, I'm no threat at all, no sir, not me.

Let's stop reducing ourselves to this kind of minor comic turn. Let's stop disparaging work that has taken hours of struggle and years of soul. Let's start being intentional here. If you can't acknowledge your writing with at least a modicum of pride--and there are many social situations in which that's the case--then don't raise it at all. When you do bring it up, learn to do it in words that honor both you and your writing. For example: "Am I published? Oh, no. I'm still learning the craft, but I'm loving every minute of it." Is that sparkling banter? Nope. But is it thinly disguised self-criticism? Nope, it's not that, either. It's an honest and humble statement...that leaves you and your work unscathed.

When does the temptation to "diss" your writing come up most strongly for you? How do you handle it? If you have a thought, a suggestion, or just a question, leave a comment below. One of the ways to detox conversations with people who don't understand our vulnerability about writing is to engage in dialogue with people who do.

FILM-ETTES ON FRIDAYS: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY HAUNTED!

2010-07-02T11:03:00.001-04:00

This video from ImprovEverywhere (motto: We Cause Scenes) gives the venerable New York Public Library Reading Room a completey goofy pop-culture spin. The little drama they create makes me laugh every time I see it. I especially love the fact that one of the ghosts carries a laptop and has to adjust his eyeholes to use it. And as a former Manhattan resident, I'm charmed by the many folks in the reading room who completely ignore both ghosts and ghostbusters, going about their business in utterly unfazed fashion. Us New Yorkers, we ain't 'fraid of no ghosts!

TOUCHY TOPIC TUESDAYS: are we good enough today?

2010-06-29T21:42:00.002-04:00

In the world of professional sports, you hear the same thing at the end of a lot of hard-fought, high-visibility matches. "I wasn't good enough today," Andy Roddick/Annika Sorenstam/Shaun White/Serena Williams/Jeremy Abbott/Gretchen Bleiler will say. Or "It wasn't my moment." Or "S/he just outplayed me." "We just didn't have it," the Yankees/Red Sox/Manchester United/Mercury/Steelers/Rangers will comment. Or "They're really playing well. We just weren't at our best."

I like these moments a lot. I like to see an individual or group that is highly skilled and even more highly competitive acknowledge that at this moment, in this setting, in this particular format, they didn't fail because of the weather or the position of the planet Mercury or their fight with their spouse or the basic unfairness of their sport, they just failed because they weren't good enough...today.

I like it that they don't say, "I'm just lousy and I always will be lousy." Or "I'm always going to lose." (Writerly self-deprecation is next Tuesday's Touchy Topic.) It's good that they don't blame themselves. But I also like it that they don't lay blame on outside forces, either.

I like the combination of honesty, humility about today, and confidence in tomorrow. It's simple, and it's strong.

Why don't writers say stuff like this more?

Rather than complaining about the unreliability of publishers, the greed of the market, the necessity of connections, the sway of short-term fads, wouldn't it be both wise and gracious to acknowledge that maybe, in this particular book, at this particular time, we just might not be good enough? That our book isn't (yet) competitive with Joan Didion or Annie Proulx or Sebastian Junger or David Wroblewski or Nora Roberts or Ian McEwan or Michael Lewis or Grace Paley or Harlan Coben or (insert your idol/envy here)?

I'm not saying that publishers aren't sometimes unreliable, that the market isn't generally greedy, that connections aren't helpful, that fads don't often hold sway. Publishing is full of boneheaded decisions, spectacular misjudgments, and slipshod plans. Agents and editors do miss excellent books and select poor ones. Forces other than quality certainly shape many of the book decisions that disappoint us.

I'm just saying that in our business as in every other, taking some responsibility is sometimes the best policy.

I can't speak for you. But I can say that I'm not as good today as any of the writers mentioned above. I also haven't worked as hard, worked as regularly, read as much, or paid my dues for as long.

I'm not good enough today. I hope I'll be at least a little bit closer tomorrow.

But in the meantime, it's not the flaws in publishing that make the difference.

FILM-ETTES ON FRIDAY: A Pumpkin's Perspective

2010-06-25T09:27:00.001-04:00

Created by Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan (working under the name BlameSociety Productions), the very funny short film Life and Death of a Pumpkin is useful lesson on the importance of viewpoint in narrative. The first person voiceover (read in suitably portentous tones by Matt Sloan) gives the filmmakers a way to shine a whole new light (literally as well as figuratively) on a familiar holiday (you can guess which) and an equally familiar genre (low-budget horror films) at once. A delightfully dark four minutes and change, and a reminder to all of us writers that viewpoint choice can make or break a story. Warning: This film is rated CVV (for carved-vegetable violence). And please forgive the ads at the bottom: they are not mine but YouTube's, and I have not yet been able to find the gadget, widget, elf or spell that will remove them.

INTRODUCING TOUCHY SUBJECT TUESDAYS

2010-06-22T21:13:00.001-04:00

This post introduces "Touchy Subject Tuesdays," a series of weekly posts addressed to stuff few of us writers want to talk about and even fewer want to hear.

Today'stopic speaks directly to all of you hoping to get your book(s) published, and starts with a little math assignment.

Think back on the past twelve months and guesstimate how much money you spent on buying books. Specifically, books that are written by living authors, are new rather than used, come from the midlist (the ranks of ordinary writers) rather than the best-seller list, and are in genres other than reference.

Note that the question isn't how many such books you read, but how many you actually bought. You don't have to be accurate down to the last twenty bucks, but do be reasonably honest.

Once you have a number in mind, click here to get the rest of the assignment. You'll be directed to a confidential page on my bookstrategy.com/artybutsmarty.com web site, but I hope you'll come back and visit the blog again after you're finished there!

WORKING WRITER, ACCORDING TO ROTH

2010-06-19T10:00:00.002-04:00

I just found this quotation from Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer scribbled on the back of a piece of paper that has nothing to do with Roth or even writing. (Such random notes, which of course are never to be found when you actually need them, are one of my bad habits. I have every intention of curing myself of it...someday.)

I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning. And if I knock off from this routine for as long as a day, I’m frantic with boredom and a sense of waste.

As happens so often, Roth hits the nail right on the neurotic's head. Indeed, that’s writing: a sometimes nauseating roller-coaster ride swooping between monotony and terror, with just enough time for tea in the pause between high and low.

A PICTURE'S WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS (a post about writing, sort of)

2010-06-18T20:18:00.001-04:00

I was looking at photographer Robert Polidori's images of Versailles for a post on my Decluttered Creative blog when I noticed that he has also photographed New Orleans after Katrina. The first image that comes up in that sampling is a photograph of a bedroom on Deslondes Street. (Find the image here: I don't want to reproduce it without permission.)

A photograph of what was once a bedroom, I should have said: for of course, by the time Polidori photographed it, it was a bedroom no more. That's one of the things the photograph was about: the collision (it's far too strong to be just a "contrast") between what it had been—pink, feminine, with a little chandelier hanging from the ceiling and fanciful drapes on the window—and what it had become.

There has already been extraordinary writing done about New Orleans, and surely there will be more, about Katrina then and the oil spill now. But sometimes, this image reminded me, the old cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words is true. Though photographs are just as manipulated, just as mediated as prose, they have the advantage of being able to exhibit a reality without also having to explain it. Polidori's photograph is so powerful precisely because viewers like me know nothing at all about the room, the house, the street, or any of their residents. We know the macrocosm, of Katrina, and the microcosm, of this single room; of all that is in the middle of the two, Polidori explains nothing, allowing us instead to witness from our place of unknowing.

I was humbled by this photograph, and inspired by it. It made me want to revisit the images in my own work in progress, and to shape them better than I have been doing.

In the hands of someone like Polidori, a picture is a thousand words...or ten thousand, or more.

A BIG BEAUTIFUL WARDROBE, A BEAUTIFUL LITTLE BOOK

2010-06-13T19:42:00.003-04:00

I'm always a little envious of people who write really short books that are really good. Jeannette Montgomery Barron's My Mother's Clothes: An Album of Memories is one of those books...the kind that tempts you to say something like "I could have written that," except that you didn't.

Barron writes on her website: "I originally thought of photographing my mother’s clothes as a project exclusively for her, to help spark her memories from the past; she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The project worked; my mother and I looked together at the photographs I had taken and she would remember parts of her past...As [it] progressed and my mother slipped further away, I started concentrating on the small details; her sketches and notes made in her address book (like haikus,), a lipstick kiss on the back of a clothing tag, mounds of costume jewelry. I suppose this project became my way of coping with the loss of one part of my mother, her memory."

And now, like good books of its kind always do, it is playing yet another variation on this theme of remembrance, making readers like me think of their own mothers, living or gone, in fresh ways and with freshly awakened memories.

Barron is a photographer by trade, but she knows when to speak and when to shut up, a balance that can be tricky for even the most practiced writers to achieve. She's not afraid of keeping her photographs very specific--a single gown, a pair of stockings, a pile of hangers, the size label from a jacket. And the brief texts that accompany each image—never more than a paragraph in length, and often considerably less—pay close attention but never overexplain. You feel the resonance of those empty spaces, and come to know the author and her mother in a way memoirs ten times this book's length don't always achieve.

The phrase "a gem of a book" sounds hyperbolic...but this genuinely is.

LESSONS FROM THIRD GRADE: visiting the classroom

2010-06-08T12:53:00.000-04:00

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting my friend Claudia Balint's third grade class at the Osceola Magnet School here in my home town of Vero Beach. There are few places an obscure writer like me can go and be listened to with awe, but Miss Balint's class is one of them. Claudia had prompted the class to prepare some questions for me, so I got to answer a nice series of rather astute queries, including "Are you lonely when you write?" and "Do you have a favorite among your books?" I gather she had also identified questions that could not be asked, a list that I presume included things like "If you're a published author, why haven't my parents ever heard of you?" and "When are you going to grow up and get a real job?"

Claudia has been having the kids write frequently in what she's named their Creativity Books, the same kind of lined composition books, complete with stiff cardboard covers printed in mottled black and white, that I remember from my own time as a kid. She's taught them some basic forms, including haiku, and provides them with prompts that meet them where they are, like "What is the hardest classroom rule for you to follow?" The class is a diverse bunch of smart little live wires, and the writing they shared from their books was fresh and smart: sometimes sad, sometimes funny, always authentic and always brimming with energy.

As I drove home, I felt a little abashed. The students in Claudia's class are doing more of their own personal writing, more regularly and more happily, than I've done most months this year. And they're learning math, science, and the location of, say, Tunisia too, none of which I have actually yet mastered. Admittedly, they have Miss Balint to prompt them. But I'm 55...shouldn't I have outgrown the need for adult and external motivators by now?

My goal for this summer is to recapture both the regularity and the joy of my writing. In the meantime, thanks to Miss Balint and all of her third-graders for a lesson much needed.

2010-06-07T10:45:00.000-04:00

In our word of digital publishing, it's sometimes heartening for a writer to remember that there are folks out there who revere books as physical objects and adore the slow and finicky hand-work of making them.

In that vein, click on the link here and spend a few moments watching this little documentary (a documentaryette, we might say if this was 1950) about letterpress printing, brought to you courtesy of my friend and colleague cj Madigan's book thinking blog and, before that, of YouTube. I've given you the link via cj's blog both because her thoughts on images, book design, and information management are always interesting, and also because her post offers a handful of little videos on related processes and crafts.

The letterpress one is my favorite: wry, amusingly voiced, filled with lovely images, and even explaining the source of the curious phrase "out of sorts." Enjoy.

EMINENT VICTORIANS/I: my idiosyncratic list of period pieces

2010-06-06T10:02:00.001-04:00

Writing a novel set in the distant past is a tricky task, a fact of which I am constantly reminded as I tinker with the beginnings of a novel whose main action takes place in Victorian England.

There are all those obscure little details: could a middle-class woman of 1853 get into her corsets without a maid? What kinds of cheese would have been in her particular kitchen? How soon did publications from London reach the provinces? Relatively few readers will know the answers to these questions, but they're still crucial.

Even more problematically, there's the issue of the language itself. Both Victorian speech and Victorian prose are quite different from their contemporary equivalents; how does a "modern" author find a style and sound that feel neither jarringly anachronistic on the one hand, nor pedantically slavish on the other?

To help me with this question, I've been revisiting some favorite (more or less) recent novels set in the (more or less) same period. Herewith, a brief and by no means complete, or even thorough, list of these books. Each seems to me to be successful both in capturing some aspect of the period's mood or essence, and in meditating on themes that perplex us in our present moment.

For the convenience of those of you how might want to browse further, I've linked the book titles to Amazon listings and the author names either to the author's web site or, failing that, to some interesting interview or article on them.

Margaret Atwood: Alias Grace: A Novel
Julian Barnes: Arthur and George
A.S. Byatt: Possession
Andrea Barrett: The Voyage of the Narwhal
Tracy Chevalier: Remarkable Creatures
Michael Cox: The Meaning of Night
John Fowles: The French Lieutenant's Woman
Peter Lovesy: Waxwork
Charles Palliser: Quincunx
Jay Parini: The Last Station
Iain Pears: Stone's Fall
Jean Rhys: Wide Sargasso Sea
Dan Simmons: Drood
Colm Toibin: The Master
Sarah Waters: Affinity

CLUTCH TIME: starting to write again

2010-05-31T20:47:00.000-04:00

Over the past few weeks I've been working on my own writing again, for the first time since a delicious residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts last fall.

The chance to get back to my own stuff should be something to celebrate, but it doesn't quite feel that way. The pages I've already written seem at once stale and overwritten, never a combo that heartens a writer. I feel oddly distanced from them, a little as though someone else wrote them, but worse; if someone else had really written them, I wouldn't feel nearly so mean or so critical. Sometimes I sit down with them and new pages just flow. Sometimes I sit down with those new pages and the whole thing suddenly stalls. I feel a little like I did back when I was learning to drive a stick shift. It's clear that the damn car can move...it's just not clear when, or how much, or where it's all going, the Autobahn or the ditch.

I know from experience that this discomfort will pass, and that some of the pages I'm so jerkily writing now will turn out to be at least a little bit better than they feel. At least, I'd like to think I know that. It doesn't actually sound very convincing at the moment. No matter how many times I manage to re-start my writing when it's stalled, it always seems like this latest try will be my first failure. I'll let you know how it goes--from the Autobahn, or the ditch.

I'M GOING TO KILL YOU IF YOU MISUSE THE WORD LITERALLY AGAIN. Literally.

2010-05-30T20:15:00.000-04:00

I try not to get too grouchy about the increasing numbers of language usage errors that appear today in conversation, on television, even in august print publications. Grouchiness is a slippery slope in midlife: one day you're bitching over a single word, then before you know it you don't like the weather, the government, the traffic, the cost of living, the color yellow, your house, your spouse, your nose, your teeth, your dog, or pizza.

Despite these good intentions, I have to say that the moribund state of word "literally" really irritates me. Once a sturdy little worker bee, the poor thing's been blurred out and beaten down until it's a useless shadow of its former self.

As in: That purse cost like, literally, a million dollars.

As in: He's literally skin and bones.

As in: I literally died.

Part of what irritates me is that there's no really graceful substitute for the word. If you can think of one, do please post a comment below.

I'll be so grateful, I'll literally kiss you.

THE OLD ERA IS DEAD. Pass the shrimp.

2010-05-28T20:10:00.002-04:00

It seems that articles, essays, blog posts and other screeds are being written about the death of writing, publishing, literacy, and so on every day. I very rarely (read: never) like them. I'm too innately optimistic, I'm too tired to worry about the problems of The World At Large, and I don't like running around being scared of things except after dark on Halloween (and not very much even then).

Not surprisingly, however, Garrison Keillor's op-ed on this subject in last Wednesday's New York Times won me over. It's charming. It's rueful. It's clever. It reminded me of my days in Manhattan in its image of a roof party at which "...authors and agents and editors and elegant young women in little black dresses, standing, white wine in hand, looking out across the Hudson at the lights of Hoboken and Jersey City, eating shrimp and scallops and spanikopita on toothpicks, all talking at once the way New Yorkers do." Once upon a time I too was at such parties (I was the waitress in the corner sticking spanikopita in her pocket as a nice change from Ramen Noodles). I particularly love the ending of the piece--an ending that reminded me that Garrison Keillor doesn't much like running around being scared of things either:

Children, I am an author who used to type a book manuscript on a manual typewriter. Yes, I did. And mailed it to a New York publisher in a big manila envelope with actual postage stamps on it. And kept a carbon copy for myself. I waited for a month or so and then got an acceptance letter in the mail. It was typed on paper. They offered to pay me a large sum of money. I read it over and over and ran up and down the rows of corn whooping. It was beautiful, the Old Era. I’m sorry you missed it.

MAKING YOUR BOOK IDEAS WORK: The Play-Doh Theory

2010-05-27T10:05:00.015-04:00

Play-Doh delights the senses and takes a very, very long to harden. It's designed to for radical experimentation. If you don't like what you've made of it, there's lots of opportunity for even drastic change.

Plaster of Paris is gritty, clammy and dull. It sets quite quickly. Once it hardens, you can't change its shape without breaking it.

Too many of us develop our book ideas in plaster of paris. We forget how endlessly and inventively malleable ideas are. Our book concepts get set in stone, so to speak, long before we've pushed them around to see where they need to go. We can' make the alterations needed to reflect our research on competitors, expert critique, or even our own instinct when it tells us something must change.

Thanks to this premature finalization, we end up with books that aren't as good as they could be.

Keep your book ideas in the "play" state long enough to develop them fully, imaginatively, openly.

I keep a small container of Play-Doh on my office credenza to remind me of this. (And occasionally, to open as a micro-vacation. That smell: to me, it's pure childhood.)

TWO WEEKS AND AN OVEN TIMER: the sequel

2010-05-26T09:30:00.000-04:00

My May 20 "Two Weeks and An Oven Timer" post was based on the Japanese principle of kaizen, which aims to grow productivity through continual small improvements rather than occasional giant leaps.There's a lot of good stuff out there on kaizen, but my favorite book on the subject is Robert Maurer's One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. A wise, and more importantly, a brief and gentle little book.

If you, like me, expect so much out of yourself and your writing that you write less often, and less comfortably, than you could, you might find it helpful.

And those of us who have fled the computer to our bed, there to hide under our down comforter trying to make the voices that say WRITE THAT TWENTY PAGES NOW and WHY AREN'T YOU HEMINGWAY need all the help we can get.

A FINE MESS: a metaphor brought to you courtesy of the department of roads and bridges

2010-05-25T08:30:00.010-04:00

For the last six months, the state road that leads to my house has been undergoing a vast widening project. The stretch closest to me is now in the grading stage, I discovered when I left to go to the Post Office this morning. As far as the eye could see, the landscape was littered with orange cones, detour signs, mounds of gravel, parked trucks. All so that a single guy could ride back and forth in a small truck pushing a big roller, doing something that seems to have no visible effect at all.

And then I thought: isn't that the pot calling the kettle black (as my grandmother used to say).

A big mess. A long time. A solitary person. The seemingly endless task of leveling. And smoothing. And packing. And balancing. And smoothing again, all to make changes so subtle than no ordinary human can see the difference.

Welcome to the Working Writer's world.

If our work as writers was visible, I suspect it would look just like this kind of road project. No "normal" person, no non-writer, would understand the minute revisions we so often find ourselves engaged in, or the seemingly endless time that they seem to take. But we know that this work is not just necessary but foundational. If we don't get it right, the visible parts of our book or poem, story or essay, just won't work. And if we don't get it right now, it will be much messier--or even impossible--to fix it later, when everything is set in stone. Or in asphalt, as the case may be.

INSPIRATIONS FROM AFAR: What, beyond writing, nourishes you and your work?

2010-05-24T08:51:00.001-04:00

Tricia Guild’s book Inspiration is a gorgeous visual encyclopedia of one creative person's sources of creative stimulation and refreshment.

Among her inspirations are porcelain. Cuban cars. The Amalfi coast. Vintage fashion photography. Garden designer Arne Maynard. The Memphis Glass collective. And a score or three of other, equally vivid and idiosyncratic things.

Here’s my theory: interesting artists of all kinds are interested in things of all kinds. They are informed by work in their own field, but they’re also inspired by things far beyond it. Their far-flung inspirations help give them a rich creative vocabulary, a connection to the world beyond their own discipline or genre, and a way of recharging their batteries when their work sputters to a halt.

You don’t need to be inspired by any of the things Guild is. You don’t need to be inspired by visual things at all. Maybe your own non-writing inspirations come from music. Or nature. Church. Food. Travel. Psychotherapy. Civil War battlefields. Cinema noir. Sixties television. Your grandmother’s letters. Volcanic eruption. Geodesic domes.

I don’t think it matters much what inspires, excites, and renews you. What matters is having non-writing inspirations to turn when your writing well runs dry, and feeling a genuine passion for them.

WHEN ABSENCE ACHES: Maya Lin, Language, and Less is More

2010-05-23T12:36:00.014-04:00

I came across the web site of Maya Lin in a circuitous search around the web yesterday. You probably know her name from the Vietnam War Memorial, but she's designed a variety of other memorials, buildings, and art installations as well.

It shouldn't have surprised me that her Maya Lin Studio site, like all of her work, is spare, elegant, and supremely thoughtful. Run your cursor across the delicate hatch marks on the black homepage and you'll see closeups of each work emerge, each accompanied by a different musical tone; click on one of the headers near the bottom of the page and the marks unrelated to its topic fall from the visual field like rain. I'm not usually fond of music on web sites, but the sound here is beautiful, and very much a part of the site's minimal, powerful language.

Compared to Lin's web site--which holds a lot of information, I might add--most sites look crammed and haphazard. There's something that speaks to the writer in me here: a reminder, maybe, that great art is built as much with what is left out as with what is put in. It's sometimes hard to trust your own instinct to discard or simplify a text, to go for one effect rather than ten, to speak more strongly to fewer readers rather than less strongly to many. Yet if you shape it right, you can make the space defined by restraint or even absence most powerful element of all. The point isn't that less is more, exactly. It's that the emptiness or mystery are themselves a "more." The soldiers' figures Maya Lin chose not to sculpt. The literal "meanings" Emily Dickinson chose not to explain. All the aching or anticipatory energy of the unsaid, the withheld, the longed-for and the lost.

I'm not sure how Maya Lin had figured all this out by the time she submitted her Vietnam War Memorial proposal at the tender age of twenty-one. But as I wandered through her web site, I found myself glad that she hasn't forgotten it in the decades since.

TERRIFYING MACHINES and times gone by

2010-05-22T23:10:00.006-04:00

My fellow writers might enjoy this description of a once-alarming writing tool, which appears in the title piece of Cynthia Ozick’s collection Dictation. The novella opens with a scene in which Joseph Conrad, at the time an author with only one book to his credit, visits Henry James in the older author’s London flat. There he sees—or at least truly notices—a typewriter for the first time.

It was said that the Queen had requested the new thing for her secretary, who had refused it in terror. On a broad surface reserved for it in a far corner of the room….stood the Machine. It stood headless and armless and legless—brute shoulders merely: it might have been the torso of a broken god. Even at a distance it struck Conrad as strange and repulsive, the totem of a foreign civilization to which, it now appeared, James had uncannily acclimated. The thing was black and glossy, and in height it ascended in tiers, like a stadium. Each round key was shielded by glass and rimmed by a ring of metal….Their glassy surfaces were catching the overhead light. Shifting his head, Conrad saw blinking semaphores.*

I love Ozick’s evocation of the typewriter’s alien, oddly malevolent presence. And also the reminder that even in the halcyon days of the early twentieth century, writers could feel threatened—even terrified—by the new technologies that kept arising around them.

*From "Dictation," collected in Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008. Copyright Cynthia Ozick 2008.

WRITING CRITIQUES: big pictures and piddling little points

2010-05-22T21:59:00.008-04:00

Seth Godin's work on marketing isn't directed specifically at writers, but if you're a writer who wants help with book marketing and career building in the age of new media, you can't find a better source. His thoughts are concise and provocative. His books (the latest is Linchpin ) are not just useful but also entertaining. And you've just got to love a guy whose web site tells you to click on his bald head to visit his blog.

Seth's recent Sentences, Paragraphs and Chapters post addresses a business issue, but his comments apply perfectly to writers and writing critiques as well. Too many workshops and critique groups focus on piddling little corrections rather than big questions. There's less risk of hurting the writer that way, and maybe less fear that raising those big questions will make us sound arrogant or presumptuous.

You'll notice I said big questions, not once but twice. I'm not necessarily talking about big criticisms, though sometimes they may be needed.

I'm talking about helping each other look at the totality of a book, a career, and a writer's gifts and goals as effectively as we help each other tweak the specifics of a scene, a line, or even just a word.

I also don't mean to suggest that copy-editing and proofing and general manuscript polishing aren't important. They are. But they're tasks separate from manuscript critique and revision...or at least they should be.

Let's not sit around making writerly small talk while we rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's hard enough to keep little lifeboats like the S.S. First Novel afloat in these choppy seas.

FUNCTIONING AUTHOR MARVELS: the perils and pleasures of word choice

2010-05-21T09:53:00.001-04:00

It's not every day registering a domain name makes you laugh so forcefully you nearly snort Perrier out your nose, but I had that pleasure recently when I went to buy the domains associated with this blog.

I had figured that "workingwriterwonders" was weird enough that it wouldn't be taken, and I was right. Nevertheless, the computer at the site wanted me to have every possible option, so it made some suggestions of its own.

EffortWriterAmazes. BestWriterOnline. (If only.) JudyWriterOnline. DriverWritingOnline. My own personal favorite, FunctioningAuthorAmazes. (I couldn't use that one even if I wanted to; I'm often working, but to claim that I'm actually functioning is a stretch.) WorkingAtHome Forever: a premium name, the site said, that would cost me a cool $477 for a year.

Then there were the shorter suggestions: FunctioningWriter, WondersAuthor, WorkingAnimals, WorkingAway, EffortAuthor, WorkingHen (another $477 choice, though I discovered I could get WorkingChicken for only twelve bucks), and FunctioningAmazes. Well, indeed it does.

Samuel Clemens famously noted that "the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." I like to think he'd be amused at this illustration of his precept, even if it's just a computer with a bug providing it.

As for me, I'm going to save up my pennies until I have twelve bucks...not easy for those of us who are WorkingAtHomeForever. Because I can totally see myself writing a Working Chicken blog.

A GOOD WRITER, ON BAD WRITING

2010-05-20T19:14:00.012-04:00

Laura Miller's May 11 essay for Salon.com, "Bad Writing: What Is It Good For?" drew me in immediately, not only with the counterintuitive idea that lousy writing might serve some redeeming purpose but also with its subtitle: "crappy prose is our most abundant resource, so let's put it to work." No one with my snarky sense of humor could possibly fail to read on.

Okay, I was a little disappointed not to find suggestions about some really tangible use for bad writing. I've been wondering, for example, if there isn't some way to stuff novelists' first drafts, instead of golf balls and rubber tire shreds, into the unstoppable ex-oil well currently making the the waters of the Gulf as murky as The Talented Mr. Ripley's soul. Talk about your "Junk Shot"!*

Nevertheless, the always intelligent Miller is true to form here, describing one defining characteristic of bad writing as the fact that the writer doesn't doubt its quality, yet also reminding us that what writers think is their worst writing isn't, or at least isn't always. (Cases in point: Kafka, who Miller mentions, and Virginia Woolf, whom she doesn't.) If you're intrigued by the mystery of bad writing, your own or anyone else's, her piece is well worth a read.

*For the record: I am not making fun of the terrible catastrophe afflicting the Gulf and all of those entities, both human and -non, being injured by it. But I admit that I am making fun of the names BP gives its proposed fixes, which make already questionable plans sound even more implausible.

TWO WEEKS AND AN OVEN TIMER: creating writing time

2010-05-20T09:21:00.016-04:00

When it comes to our goals, many of are felled not by laziness but by ambition, by our own grandiosity. We don't exercise for ten minutes because we don't have the hour we believe we should spend. We don't say no to the one little pizza slice because we're just about to go on a great big diet. We don't put our one just-used coffee cup in the sink because we really need to clean up the whole ten-room house.

And we don't write for fifteen minutes because in our mind, our writing sessions should be two hours and we should have them every day. We can't find that two hours most days, much less every day, and so we write little or not at all. This is completely natural. I fall into this trap a lot, and most other writers do too. But it's also two other things. First, it's idiotic. Would you refuse to take a snapshot of your kids at Thanksgiving because you should really be filming the whole thing?

And second, it's totally counterproductive. It trains your creative brain to see writing as some big hairy deal, rather than as a natural outgrowth of your interest in the story or project you're working on. It trains you to wait to write until perfect conditions are achieved for writing, and ignores the reality that perfect conditions are almost never available.

If you're bedeviled by this problem, here's a possible solution.

Decide on a place to write. Your desk, your dining room, your garden. Put your basic writing tools there, ready. Basic: laptop, pen and paper, pencil and notebook. You won't need your Compact Oxford English Dictionary or the rough draft of the seven hundred pages you've already drafted for this exercise.

Set the oven timer for fifteen minutes. I say oven timer because just about everyone has one. But you could use your microwave timer, iPhone timer, or any other clock you want. The point isn't the mechanism, it's the precision of the fifteen minutes.

Now sit down at your spot and write. Keep your hand(s) moving the whole fifteen minutes. It doesn't matter if what you write is illegible crap or genius worthy of Shakespeare. Just write. And when the timer goes off, stop. Even if you're having fun and channeling Shakespeare. Stop. You can finish your sentence, but that's it. Stop. Get up. Do something else.

Do this every single day for fourteen days, at more or less the same time if you can. But if you can't, do it anyway: some time, some place, but every single day, and for no more and no less than fifteen minutes.

Congratulations. You have now trained your brain to believe that (a) you do have time to write and (b) you can be trusted not just to write but also to stop and (c) you have plenty to say and would actually enjoy sitting down and writing more often.

If you want, you might try the optional follow-up: using the same basic structure and rules, write exactly thirty minutes, four days a week. But don't try this until you've done the first challenge.

Whether or not you ever do either exercise, here's the point. A page a day that you actually write is better than five pages a day that you never get to.

The way to accumulate writing is to write one page regularly, not write a whole book never.

THE BRONTË SISTERS ACTION FIGURES: Kick Some Victorian Butt, Charlotte!

2010-05-19T03:04:00.008-04:00

Words can't express the delight this "advertisement," made in 1998 by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, gave me. And...once we have Emily, Anne, and Charlotte B. as Power Dolls, can Jane A., Virginia W., and Emily D. be far behind?

STORY STARTERS: Why did the rubber chicken cross the road?

2010-05-19T02:44:00.007-04:00

Sometimes getting yourself out of a dreary writing rut (block, lull, coma, quagmire, blackout, hiatus, respite, suspension, layoff, tantrum: call it what you will) requires a bit of playfulness. Therefore: write a five hundred word short short story based on this image. For extra credit, consider having not just the mo-pedding chicken but also the bus play a role. For immediate induction into the Writers' Hall of Fame, post your short short below as a comment. (I was going to end that line by telling you not to be a chicken. But even for someone with my dopey sense of humor, that joke's a rotten egg.)

EVERY-DAY WRITERS (those lying scum)

2010-05-18T18:03:00.007-04:00

There are two kinds of writers in the world.

The ones who don’t write every single day.

And the ones who lie.

Virtually every writer you hear claiming that they do write every day is in the second category. The truth is that they don’t write the day they have brain surgery. They don’t write the day their daughter gets married. They don’t write the day their loved one dies (if it’s anticipated) or the day after their loved one dies (if it’s not).

And you know what? They shouldn’t write on those days. There are some days when you owe more to your life than you do to your writing.

It's okay not to write for a bit. But didn't your mommy ever tell you it's not okay to lie?

FIVE MINUTE FICTIONS: open arms, closed door

2010-04-25T23:42:00.000-04:00

Set some kind of timer for five minutes. Use that five minutes to write a little sketch or story that includes, and connects, these two images.

If you're still game when you've finished, set the timer for another five minutes. This time, your assignment is to alter the mood of the piece. If your first sketch or story was tragic, rethink and rewrite it in comic or satirical terms. If your first piece was playful or lighthearted, write a new one that uses the same images but has a more somber or serious mood. You may have to change some of your characters or plot elements, but doing so isn't required.

Images are interesting writing-starters because good ones are so often both evocative, and so mysterious. It would be possible to write an entire novel inspired by these two photographs. But luckily, you don't have to.