Place for the Stolen

Story Beats and Hooks that aren't for fishermen: A Tuesday Post of Accountability

2012-01-31T08:40:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday again, my fellow writing buddies! Time to talk about what we've accomplished this past week.

It was an interesting week for me. Most of it hinges on the Under Ground Writing Project meeting I wen to on Sunday.

Normally during the meetings we're critiquing one another's work - looking for stuff like plot, character, typos, that kinda stuff. This month we had a special guest critic, which we do from time to time, by the name of Jan CJ Jones. She's a producer at a local production company, Forest Rose Productions. And again, under normal circumstances, the guest critics offer their expertise as part of the larger group circle discussion.

But this time we ran it like a pitch session. As a producer, Jones is one of those people who is sitting on 'the other side' of the desk, like editors and agents and, well, movie producers. She offered to listen to all of us pitch our stories and give us pointers on the logline, the summary, and the first three pages of our novels. We took her up on her offer.

It was tiring. It was long. It was emotional. All in all, a good shake-it-up experience.

Generally I try not to focus on the marketing side of things, preferring to keep my energies on producing good language and developing a good story. However, after Sunday, I've figured out that pitching, or writing a query letter, or summarizing your story helps with the writing itself. Because, guess what, if your story is no good, your pitch material will show that. If you see a hole in your summary, there's a hole in you story. It's just how it is.

A month prior to this meeting we were given a handout that listed what we were to provide and present for our pitching session. First we were to provide information about ourselves: name, rank, serial numbers, where we are in our writing now, where we see ourselves in ten years, our writing strengths and our writing weaknesses. Then we were to give the low-down on the work we were presenting: genre, title, slugline/logline, and the 'back of the book' summary. After that, we listed the beats of our story: hook, inciting incident, midpoint, major setback, climax, denoument). Finally we read the first three pages of the book.

Let me take you through the bits that really stuck with me:

The logline:

So a few of us were whacked on the knuckles right out of the gate (how's that for some mixing of metaphors?) with the loglines. It's one thing to know intellectually that you should be able to 'sum-up' your novel in one sentence - it's quite another to put it into practice. ***Nathan Bransford has a rockin' post on his blog about One Sentence Summaries - aka the logline - definitely check it out. He's right on the money.***

The one lesson I took out of this early section of the presentation: The Reader is Ignorant. This isn't as harsh as it sounds. Put very simply: the reader doesn't know what the heck your story is about. They are coming from a complete space of unknowing. It's up to you, the writer, to let them know what's going on. Seems obvious, right?

However, you the writer know your story inside and out - putting you into a high context relationship with your story. You can joke with your story. You can hang out and have coffee with your story. You know your story had a really hard time around chapter fourteen that you guys worked out together. How are you going to introduce this story to a person who doesn't know?

For educational purposes only, I shall share with you the logline I presented. (Those of you who know nothing about my story will see the problem immediately.) (And my goodness, you have no idea how hard this is to type, but I'll force myself...like I said it was kind of an emotional roller coaster of a day):

First: title and genre: "The Line. Dystopian."

Second: logline: "Those who fall below the Line are never heard from again. When her sister falls below, Susanna Purchase must save her before their father's actions kill them both."

Dost thou seest the issue? What the hell is the Line? Some figure of speech? A physical thing? This logline says nothing much. *Jenny bangs head against presentation podium*

The other thing Jones talked about was the set up of the logline - and Bransford talks about it in more detail and more articulately at the link I've already given you. Logline must include: main character, the MC's obstacle, and the MC's goal.

I've had a little while to come up with something else and I'll throw it out here so youse guys who haven't read my novel can tell me if it A.) makes any kind of sense and B.) intrigues at all.

Jenny's second attempt at a logline: "Susanna Purchase falls below the Line, a State developedsystem designed to hold individuals accountable to predetermined standards,when her sister is accused of treason. Susanna, held in a prison camp, must joinan underground rebellion to save her sister before she is executed."

Meh. I'm not even done with the book yet, so I've got plenty of time to work on it.

The Beats:
Part of our assignment was to figure out the major 'beats' of our story. I'd never heard this concept before and during our discussion I thought that this was the most useful portion of the critiques. Since it's kind of like a summary, this is really helpful for character motivation and story coherence. So I thought I'd share the concept with you.

Here's what they are:

Beat 1: The Hook: This is the opening, what immediately grabs the reader's attention.

Beat 2: The Inciting Incident: This may or may not happen simultaneously with the hook. Basically, the thing to keep in mind with the inciting incident is that the main character is set on a course of action different than their everyday life. This is where the world will never be the same and the main character has to act. They 'gotta' have something, do something, etc. They are motivated to move.

Beat 3: Midpoint: Up to this point the main character has been figuring things out, trouble has been brewing, but here is where the stakes are raised. What happens if the main character fails? I'd never heard this question applied to a story before. Sure, you think about what your main character wants, what drives them, but this is the first time I'd considered what happened if they did not get it. Coming at it from the other side is a neat-o thing. What are the consequences? If there is no change because of the main character...well, that's just not a very interesting story.

Beat 4: Major Setback: Here is where the worst stuff happens. All the crutches are removed. The Bad Forces come into play. If the main character has some kind of character flaw, this is where it'll show up - and the main character will be either overwhelmed or will overcome.

Beat 5: Climax: All actions lead to this point. I think most of us understand what the climax is.

Beat 6: Denoument: Classically known as the 'falling' action. Where things wrap up, calm down, and a new order is established to the character's life.

...and that's what I learned this week. Have I gone on long enough? What'd you guys do?

Good Omens/Collaboration

2012-01-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

*This week's Monday post is brought to you early by Really-Busy-Tomorrow Cereal!

In a post the other day, Jenny asked me what I thought of our new collaborative adventures. To Jenny, I say, Good Omens. Oh my, how I love when things sync up like that. The book in question is a delightful collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. In a copy I read, or maybe an interview, Gaiman reflected on the process of collaborating. It's been a while since I read it, but the jist of what he said was that as they went along writing, their main goal was to write something that would make the other laugh. So, it was kind of like a game/conversation. I thought that was pretty cool

Now, to talk about me and Jenny. So far, we're still early days, so a lot of the collaboration is focused on questions like, "How do we want this process to work?" Piece by piece, we're working that out. For those of you who are interested, here's how we're tackling it:

In the book, we've got two timelines that relate to each other. I really liked the stuff and characters in the earlier timeline and Jenny had cool ideas about the later timeline. So, we decided to divide and conquer. We had an outlining/note making session to get on the same page about who the characters were and what our major plot points in both timelines would be. Now, we're working on the drafting stage.

For our respective timelines, each of us is responsible for writing the rough draft. Then, as we get a chapter or two finished, we e-mail the draft to each other. The other person reads the draft and tweaks it, adding what they think should be added, re-wording, etc. Then, it goes back to the drafter to review and see what they'd change about the other person's tweaks. I think the process should work well, and it'll help with things like consistency of voice & character and all the other logistical things that get tricky when you have two people driving the boat.

The blog follows a similar process. We've got an outline of mentors and we've divvied up the posting schedule and features, i.e. Tuesday Accountability posts are Jenny's domain, the Saturday Pages are my pet project. I think we're getting our rhythm, and it's fun to have someone to have a conversation with as I write. It's all about that idea of the Ideal Reader, and Jenny fits the bill nicely.

Ready, Set, Leap

2012-01-28T08:04:00.006-07:00

This week's Saturday pages is all about figurative language and taking leaps. I'm also going to offer you different levels to try your hand at - depending on whether you a lighter writing exercise or if you're game for some heavier lifting. The most important thing about today's exercise is that you shut up your inner critic and just write. Embrace the process. Hesitations are bad for big leaps.

One writer who ties in with Neil Gaiman is Terry Pratchett. Pratchett's on the mentor docket, so stay tuned, we'll be talking more about him later this year. I mention Pratchett in this post because I'm reminded of a comparison he made in one of his books which I have remembered, literally, for years. Because, when you write that Lord Vetinari, the city's ruling official, is like "a carnivorous flamingo," that's memorable.

So, go get your jumping shoes on and let's do this.

Level 1
Pick something to describe. It can be a person, an object, a feeling, or anything else you might be tempted to tack an adverb to. Feel free to use something in a piece you're working on, or take a look around the room you're in right now and do a little "eenie, meanie, minie, mo".

Take out a blank page. Number it 1-20. Stretch your writing (or typing) fingers and, as fast as you can, write 20 metaphors and/or similes about your subject. Aim for the far-fetched, the odd, the unusual. Don't over think it. Don't pause. Keep your fingers moving.

Once you've written 20, take a look at your list. Find the comparisons that you've seen before and cross them off. Likewise, take off any that are too literal, too easy. Next, cross off the ones that fall flat. What are you left with? The most awesome comparisons you've ever written about that apple.

Level 2
Now that you've got your list narrowed down to your best material, pick the comparison that seems the most far-fetched. Flip to a new page and write your comparison at the top. Your job is to take your oddball comparison and turn it into an extended metaphor. Now that you have something like, "Life is like a box of pickled sardines," at the top of your page, you're going to write a paragraph that really fleshes your comparison out.

Think of every possible point of intersection between the two things you're comparing and write those down. If you were Terry Pratchett, you'd be describing how a carnivorous flamingo walks, how it sounds, how it looks at you with pink, beady eyes that see right into your soul. Like Level 1, the key here is write fast and write a lot. That thought that just flashed through your mind that made you think, "No, that's too silly to write down"? Write it down.

Once you've filled as much of the page as you can, take a breath and look over what you've done. Right now, you probably have one of your most original descriptions. How cool is that?

Level 3
Now I challenge you to take your figurative language leap and build a short story, or maybe a poem, around it.

Happy writing!

Taking Leaps

2012-01-26T07:59:00.002-07:00

Read a bit of Neil Gaiman and you'll quickly realize that he has flexible ideas of reality. Yeah, I know his stock in trade is fantasy. I'm not talking about that. No, what I'm talking about is Gaiman's willingness to take leaps, and his confidence that you'll leap with him.

A couple of years ago, I got to go with some friends to see Neil do a book reading in Boulder. The featured book was The Graveyard Book. Now, there is an author who knows how to read his stuff. If you think you can hear his voice on the page, it's totally a treat to actually hear him speak the words. The part of that reading that I especially love is when he was describing his inspiration. He described taking his son to the local graveyard to play, because a graveyard is practically the same as a park, and looking at his son among the headstones and thinking, "He looks so natural there." Where other people might think of that as an odd thought to have, Gaiman embraced it and wrote a whole book about that image of a boy in a graveyard. Coraline gets the creepy factor from the button eyes, and Stardust is all about a shooting star that's actually a woman. Because, obviously, that's the way it's supposed to be.

Pay attention to the language of the writing, and you'll see a man who loves metaphors and similes. Everything is something else. During the book reading, it really stuck out to me how much he uses the word "like" in descriptions. And, for most of us, that "like" is all it takes to let us take the leap with him.

One of the things I'm trying to take away from Gaiman as a mentor is that confidence and that imagination to look for the comparisons that aren't obvious. When we think of metaphors, there are the easy grabs, the "likes" that leap to your mind right away:

His face turned red as a tomato

The news fell on her like a ton of bricks

But, everyone's seen those before. They might convey an idea, but they lack oomph. Take a bigger leap, travel farther from what's easy, and you take a greater risk that maybe your reader won't leap with you. Then again, maybe you get a bigger pay off:

His face turned red as the poorly-knitted sweater his aunt had cursed him with last Christmas

The news fell on her like a drunk polar bear

Okay, so maybe you went with me on those. Maybe you didn't ;) The point is, the second set is more memorable than the first. Say what you will about the great authors, one thing they're not is forgettable.

Quick! Time to practice your leaping! Leave a comment with your own, leaping, versions of the figurative language examples above.

A Week of Almost-Not-Quite: A Tuesday Post of Accountability

2012-01-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

Ah, welcome to Tuesday comrades. Time to see what we've accomplished this week.

For me:

It's the week of almost-not-quite.

1. Almost finished a new short story. I'm up to the climatic, near-end scene. The story sorta wrote itself, which is always nice, right? But it still isn't finished. Just two more scenes.

2. Worked on the first chapter of the book I'm collaborating on with Ali. (Soon she and I are going to be joined at the hip we're doing so much together.) But I didn't finish the work I wanted to do on the second chapter.

This collaboration thing is interesting. It seems to me that a lot of the decisions you make while writing are instinctive. When you have a writing partner, you have to be able to articulate - or, at least, to show - to another person what and why you're doing what you're doing. This is true both for this blog now that we're both working on it and for the fiction piece we're doing.

Ali - what are your thoughts on this work together stuff?

3. Almost hit my scheduled weekly word count for my own novel. But not entirely there. Sad faces all around. And I'm pretty sure I'm not going to hit the count again this week because I've got to prep for a presentation that my writing group is doing this Sunday. (More on that next week!) Also, I have to prep my submission to the same group - which means editing some of my NaNo pile instead of new writing. At least that is all on the same project.

4. Almost finished with a poetry chapbook on Ted Bundy that I'm going to submit to a competition. Need three more poems. I know the subject matter, it's just a matter of finding the right words. Poetry is tougher than anything when you're struggling with finding words. So it'll probably take me right up to the deadline before I finish.

5. Oh! I did finish one thing. I set up a page on Facebook for my writers' group The Under Ground Writing Project (UGWP to those 'in the know'). If you're so inclined, you can go on Facebook or go to the website and click Like. Also, feel free to join the website itself, even if you can't make the regular meetings. There are writing forums and blog posts and writing resources listed. The only thing you can't do on the site is read the group's documents. You'll forgive me for protecting our work, right? I really want to promote writerly friendships.

Now it's your turn! Tell me what you've been up to this week!

Story and Poetry - Why Aren’t They Together?

2012-01-23T05:23:00.000-07:00

In Fragile Things, a collection of short stories and poems by Neil Gaiman, there is a wonderful poem called “Instructions.” As Gaiman says in the introduction this poem is “Quite literally, a set of instructions for what to do when you find yourself in a fairy tale.” While he might not come out and say so, I say that the poem is also a pretty clear set of instructions for what to do in life as well.

It is also a mini-story. Even though the main character is ‘you,’ there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. If you follow the advice throughout the poem, you will arrive safely at the end…just like a character growing through a novel.

Reading this poem got me thinking about the disconnect I sense between ‘poetry’ and ‘story’ in today’s poetry. I’m no professional poet, I haven’t had poems published in any big name magazines, and I’ve only had a couple workshops but I am a reader. I love to read poetry and short stories and plays and novels. You name it, I’ll read it. (Or at least give it a good shot.) And what I’ve noticed in a lot (not all! there are exceptions everywhere) of contemporary poetry – which I’ll call poetry after the 1920s – is that there is a horrid tendency toward, um, navel gazing.

Oh yeah, I said it.

A huge amount of the poetry I have read made me go: so what? (Again, not all! No need to list ad nauseum the exceptions – if it made you feel something, then it wasn’t a poem of the navel gazing variety, agreed?) The poet shot a deer. Big whoop. The poet watched a baby being born. Sweet, sure, but millions of women have babies every day. Again, I say big whoop. My reaction has run the gamut between “huh, that’s okay” to “why did the poet just waste two minutes of my life with his self-satisfied, political whack job view on a subject I care nothing about?”

Then I read Neil Gaiman’s “Instructions.” My initial reaction was of the elitist, poetry workshop variety. Enter Snooty Jenny: these line breaks are sloppy, there’s not a high level of ‘telling detail,’ and so on.

But, ya know. I liked it. A lot. And I told my snooty self to shut up and re-read the poem again.

I did.

And I thought of something. Contemporary poetry, in my general unscientifically-polled opinion, does not embrace story. Sure, something generally happens – a deer gets shot or a baby gets born or whatever. But there’s not a story within it. There is no beginning, middle, or end supported by the things that make poetry work: line breaks, stanzas, meter, rhyme. The genres of fiction and poetry have gone their separate ways and it seems like it'll take a miracle to mush them back together.

It wasn’t always this way. Poetry used to be The Method for story, political essays and commentary, and a whole host of communications. Part of that is because meter and rhyme make stories, commentaries, etc., easy to memorize and repeat. (Thus easier to ‘go viral’ back in the day.)

While by no means an absolute certainty of the future of meshing the two, there are signs that story is returning to poetry with really incredible popular results – especially in the YA field. Ellen Hopkins, for example, with Crank, Impulse, and her new adult release, Triangles. Karen Hesse with Out of the Dust. What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones. And the list is growing.

I think that’s good news. What do you guys think about poetry, just in general? Do you enjoy reading it or hearing it? If not, why not? Inquiring minds want to know.

Have you read any good poems that tell a story?

And now, here’s Neil Gaiman reading “Instructions” at Cody Books (Pay attention to the intro, the crowd’s reaction, and Gaiman’s questions – what do you think about that?)

Saturday Pages

2012-01-21T08:42:00.004-07:00

"Somewhere in the night, someone was writing." ~Neil Gaiman, Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire

Today I bring you the first of a new feature on the blog. From now on, we're going to be giving you a writing prompt or exercise each Saturday. I hope you'll take a bit of time to stretch your writing muscles and play along. If you have a blog of your own, and post your Saturday pages there, please let us know by leaving a link in the comments. We'd love to check it out!

Without further ado, I present you with a line from a story called Closing Time which you can find in Fragile Things, a collection of stories and poems by Gaiman.

"I should have run then. My heart was pounding in my chest. But the devil was in me, and instead of running I looked at the three big boys at the bottom of the path, and I simply said, 'Or are you scared?'"

This is the start of your next story. Now, go write.

Talking to You

2012-01-19T20:31:00.004-07:00

Hello there, reader. Here goes my first post on Place for the Stolen, and I'm thrilled to be here. Also, I'm blushing a little from Jenny's kind introduction. Jenny's one of those cool people who is wicked smart and clever. Not to mention that she can, and has, straight up told people in our writing group that, "No! Ali's totally wrong about that!" while still making me feel loved. Hard to do, my friends, hard to do. In short, there's no one whose blog I'd rather be crashing.

Now, time to spread the love a bit more. The timing of joining the blog is great, because Neil Gaiman is high on the list of people I want to be when I grow up. Okay, so maybe I'll take a pass on the hair and the part where he's a guy, but otherwise...

My favorite Neil Gaiman book is American Gods. I love it so much, I even wrote about it in part of my thesis. Tonight, I'm going to focus on voice, i.e. the thing that makes an author memorable. It's what drags us back to their spot on the shelf, eagerly scanning for something new. Voice is the thing that makes us think about what it would be like to sit down over coffee with that author and imagine, "Wow, we would get along famously!"

What I love about Gaiman's voice is that he always seems like he's talking to you. In her post about Anansi Boys, Jenny mentioned folk tales. I think it's a very apt comparison, because Gaiman, at his heart, is really a story teller in a very traditional sense. His work feels like you're listening to an actual person talk. That's why you should check him out on YouTube and watch some clips of him reading his work. And, like every person who's great at telling stories, he even does the voices of the different characters. Consider the very first paragraph of American Gods, which introduces the main character (asterisks are mine, not his):

"Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don't-f***-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife."

It's easy to get a sense of this character, even though we've only got two sentences. Two sentences which tell you a lot of information and yet are incredibly simple. There's no beating around the bush here. Now, for those of you who haven't read the book, you should know that throughout the book there are a series of short stories and vignettes that tell of people coming to America and bringing their native folklore with them. Shadow's POV is pared down, Spartan. The "Coming to America" passages are more lush. These are the parts that are larger than life and steeped in myth. The voice reflects this. Here's an excerpt from a "Coming to America" passage The passage is dated 1721 and focuses on a woman from Cornwall who's connected to Celtic folk lore:

"Essie's eyes lighted on Bartholomew, the squire's eighteen-year-old son, home from Rugby, and she went at night to the standing stone on the edge of the woodland, and she put some bread that Bartholomew had been eating but had left unfinished on the stone, wrapped in a cut strand of her own hair. And on the very next day Bartholomew came and talked to her, and looked on her approvingly with his own eyes, the dangerous blue of a sky when a storm is coming, while she was cleaning out the grate in his bedroom.

He had such dangerous eyes, said Essie Tregowan."

See how the language changes? And yet, the one thing that remains the same is it's so easy to feel like there's an actual person telling you the story as you sit next to the fire at night.

Okay, so this first post has turned lengthy, so it's time to wrap it up. One of the things that makes Gaiman great, and one of the things that makes him work well in many different genres, is that his voice on the page feels like he's talking to you and only you. In his poem "Instructions" he's literally talking to you. He uses his voice to create a space that's just you, him, and the story. That's what we talk about when we talk about getting sucked in.

Create the story space, my friends. Nail that, and the rest will follow.

The Edgar Nominees

2012-01-19T10:33:00.001-07:00

Awards are so exciting. I was caught up in the tweeting and congratulations to Maureen Johnson, YA writer extraordinaire when I noticed:

Lo and Behold!

Our very own mentor for this month, Neil Gaiman, has also been nominated for his short story: "The Case of Death and Honey" from Study in Sherlock

Yay! Congrats to Gaiman, Johnson, and all of the finalists whom you can check out here.

And now, for some more mentorish action in the spirit of the awards, here is Neil Gaiman discussing Edgar Allan Poe

An Announcement and Mapping: A Tuesday Post of Accountability

2012-01-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

Hello my fellows, my comrades, my peeps! I hope this Tuesday finds you happily typing away on your keyboards.

These past couple weeks have calmed enough for me to post what I've actually done.

But first! An announcement!:

Considering the amount of reading and extrapolating I have to do for this blog, and considering the amount of work that I have to do on my works-in-progress I decided to recruit a partner on this blog project of mine. My good friend Ali will be popping in and taking on some mentor posts of her own. Ali has more degrees than me, an attitude that has earned her the nickname 'demon,' and is a fantabulous writer. She's got the pulse of contemporary fantasy authors down pat and has a Masters in English Lit. So she's pretty well rounded. Keep an eye peeled for her upcoming posts!

I'm hoping this addition will keep the posting consistent and less scatter-shot.

And now...here's what I've been up to the last couple weeks:

1. Drawing/sketching settings. I went out and bought a sketch book (this is laughable since I have no artistic skill whatsoever). Then I proceeded to go through and list the settings that I needed to know backwards and forwards - since my group pointed out they couldn't tell where anything was...and yeah, I had people turning left when they should've gone right. My bad. This should fix it.

Part of my setting sketches went toward a new project which I'm also working on with Ali. It occurred to me that a setting sketch would be doubly important when you're working with another writer. Not all rooms look the same to all people apparently. So we needed a base and I drew a rough one, sent it to Ali, and she had the grace not to laugh where I could hear.

Illustration 1: (Don't laugh)

2. Outlining. There's a great debate about outlining. But I have fallen on the side of outlining once I realized that an 'outline' did not mean this

Main Topic
A. Supporting Topic 1
    1. support of supporting topic 1
    2. further support of supporting topic 1
B. Supporting Topic 2
     1. support of supporting topic 2
     2. further support of supporting topic 2
C. Supporting Topic 3
     1. support of supporting topic 3
     2. further support of supporting topic 3

Etc.

My outlining looks more like this (again, don't laugh...and if you read too close you may or may not get spoilers...heaven knows what'll stay).

Illustration 2:

I know, this doesn't look like writing, does it? But I assure you, my word count will increase exponentially after doing this work. And I'm hoping it will also keep me from rewriting TOTALLY and COMPLETELY for goofy reasons like having the character in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

So...what've you guys been up to? Have you started this new year with a bang?

Neil Gaiman Selected Shorts Interview

2012-01-16T05:30:00.000-07:00

Poking around YouTube, I found this very fascinating interview with Neil Gaiman from Selected Shorts. All the questions came from Selected Shorts viewers/listeners. Gaiman himself just pulls them from a bag and answers - you can't get any more straightforward. Whenever you have about ten minutes to spare, check it out. He talks about truth in fiction, characters, and his desire to write for the theatre (which I found particularly interesting and I immediately started daydreaming about what a Gaiman stage project would look like).

Expect the Unexpected: Turning

2012-01-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

"...he could see the blackbirds, and small hedge-hopping sparrows, a single spotted-breasted thrush in the boughs of a nearby tree. Fat Charlie though that a world in which birds sang in the morning was a normal world, a sensible world, a world he didn't mind being a part of.
Later, when birds were something to be afraid of, Fat Charlie would still remember that morning as something good and something fine, but also as the place where it all started." ~from the end of Chapter One, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman.

In poetry, at least in my understanding of poetry, there is the idea that each line's responsibility is to either reenforce or to alter the meaning of the preceding line - it makes the poem surprising, leading the reader in one direction and then moving it somewhere else, somewhere unexpected.

To give a far too simplistic example - Shakespeare Sonnet CXXX:
"My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red"

These two lines reenforce each other. The chick is not that awesome.

But sonnets hinge on a turn - the final lines switch up the meaning of all the lines that went before. The first sets of lines create this snowball effect: my mistress ain't that good lookin', she's not that sweet, and so on.

Then Shakespeare turns the meaning of the poem:
"And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
as any she belied with false compare."

Meaning she's the rockinest rock star because she's herself.

I think of this as a 'turn' because, well, it turns. (I'm a simple creature.) This kind of thing is easy to see in poetry because that's one of the simpler ways in which poetry works.

Fiction, by it's nature a different beast, can still benefit from turning. It's not something that a fiction writer can do with every sentence because, damn, that'll hurt a reader's neck from all the back-and-forth.

Neil Gaiman is very, very good at the fiction turn.

Take the opening quote from Anansi Boys. He talks about birds as a normal piece of the world. And they are. But then, to add intrigue, there's that awesome clause "when birds were something to be afraid of." He contradicts everything that he's describing around that. It's jolting. It's effective. I read that sentence over and over again, wallowing in the idea of birds turning into something to be feared.

You find the turns throughout Gaiman. He's all about throwing in the unexpected note. Even his main character, Fat Charlie, is not fat. There's a show dog named Goofy. Little splashes like this wake the reader up, make the reader focus. And you want your readers paying attention.

Have you guys come across any instances of turning? Any authors or stories that you remember because of the way it shifted?

The Second Reason to Read Widely: It's Probably Been Done

2012-01-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

*The First Reason to Read Widely: because reading is fun.*

And now on to the second: because what you're writing has probably been written already.

I give you Exhibit A:

"It begins, as most things begin, with a song." ~opening line of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Seems innocuous enough, right? It's a very intriguing opening...and Gaiman riffs on for about half a page on the importance of song, the way it interacts with human emotion, the way song tells a story. All very beautiful.

So now, imagine, if you will, that you have a great idea for a novel. (I have many of these, and there's a long list of novels-to-be-worked-on.) Imagine further that you have gone so far in your plotting of said novel that you've constructed a title, an opening sentence, a final sentence, and the general structure of the book itself. You know how you want it to work - and the opening sentence and the closing sentence resonate for different reasons.

Now imagine that you're reading a book by a very famous author, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman for instance, and the first sentence of your brilliant book - which you haven't gotten to write yet because you're busy working on other novelistic projects - is syntactically identical to said famous author's opening line.

Say it with me now: AUGH!!!!!!

(By the way, I despise using exclamation points. But this feels like the only accurate way to express my melodramatic sadness.)

I do not begrudge Gaiman his sentence. Obviously, I think opening a story with such a sentence is a good idea. Genius even. That's why I wanted it.

My planned opening sentence was this:

"It begins, as all things do, with a gamble."

Perhaps not as brilliant as riffing on song. Perhaps I could even convince myself to still use it...but I would feel like a copycat.

Because, look, though I talk a lot about stealing/borrowing bits from successful authors (even going so far as writing blogs about it) I don't actually want to lift sentences in such a direct fashion. That is not the art of concealing your source. And the art of concealing your source is important.

So, in spite of my frustration - and my frustration definitely slowed down the reading of the first pages or so of Anansi Boys as I came to grips with the opening sentence - I'm glad I've read wide enough to catch this kind of thing. Having seen where Gaiman went with his opening and having followed it all the way to it's conclusion (a.k.a.: I read the book) made me rethink what I was trying to do with my own story-to-be. (Because, oh yes, it will still be! I lost a sentence, not a book.)

Anansi Boys is a mass of folk-tale telling skill. The opening sentence is lovely and puts the reader in that frame of mind. The book that I want to write is not that, and so now I'm wondering, as I go back to the drawing board, if there isn't something a tad serendipitous to the reading widely idea - that you come across what you need, when you need it, and learn what you need from it.

So...

1. Read widely. Because your Brilliant Original Idea is not. And you need to figure that out but quick. This is important for things like plot and whatnot, that goes almost without saying. But it's also important for small things. By reading Anansi Boys I figured out something else about the story I want to tell, just from reevaluation of the first sentence; it made me think about the tone and how similar or different I want it be in relation to Gaiman's book.

2. Write fast. Because if you do have a Brilliant Original Idea, you'd better lay claim to it before someone else does.

3. You should read - because reading is fun.

Chapters in Which Something Happens

2012-01-05T05:52:00.000-07:00

My daughter, who is three, is on her way to being the next Neil Gaiman.

Bronwen likes to tell stories. The other day we were driving somewhere, the destination is unimportant, and she asked me if I wanted to hear a story. Always open to the possibility of stealing my children's ideas and using them in a story of my own, I said, "Sure."

She began like she always does: "Okay, here I go." (Because she's learned the hard way that we need to know she has started.)

She goes on for a period of time describing a situation with dragons and knights in shining armor and Peter Pan and dinosaurs before she noticeably runs out of steam. But lack of a sequential, logical plot point is not a deterrent to Bronwen, master of the first draft that she is - oh no, she says "And then something happens" and we're off to the next portion of the story in which Captain Hook saves the day when he turns into a ninja and slays Shredder.

Subject matter is not the only way she is like Gaiman. (Joking. Don't yell at me.) Note the auspicious use of ye olde literary device: And Then Something Happens.

Ah-ha!

Now we get to why Gaiman is a really kick-ass storyteller. He has embraced the Something Happens. Which means he is not a boring storyteller. To tell a good story, stuff has to happen. Whether it's in logical order or believable is beside the point at this moment. With Gaiman, just assume that it does make sense - or, rather, he will make it make sense to you (the key!).

And I knew I was in pretty darn good hands when I picked up Anansi Boys just from the chapter titles. Chapter titles are risky things, as we talked about before with Margaret Atwood - who also gets away with titles - because they can give away too much. But what's interesting about Anansi's chapter titles is that they reassure the reader that something does happen.

A sampling:
Chapter One: Which is Mostly About Names and Family Relationships
Chapter Two: Which is Mostly About the Things that Happen After Funerals
Chapter Three: In Which There is a Family Reunion

From that tiny bit, I can assume that there is a family dynamic heavily at work in the story and that Point A leads to Point B because Something Happens. The first chapter is telling the reader who the family is, the second chapter takes place at a funeral - and I can assume that a family member has died (Something Happened), and that the family reunion after the funeral will not run smoothly because of the Something that Has Happened which will cause Something Else to Happen. It's all very dramatic.

So here's a possibly interesting way to apply Gaiman's storytelling to our own work, if you're so inclined: title the chapters "In Which __________ Happens." If nothing actually happens in that chapter, then you need to reevaluate what you want that chapter to say...and if it doesn't say anything, I think you've found some pieces to scrap/think heavily about cutting. (And don't forget to delete the chapter titles before you submit your book around - you don't want to give everything away.) Hm, come to think of it, that could be a cool way to help you write a synopsis too....

Cleaning the Closet: A Tuesday Post of Accountability and My One New Year's Resolution

2012-01-03T05:22:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday and time to share what we've all been up to!

I know I missed last week, but the blog page was starting to look like nothing but accountability posts and that gets boring after a while.

and I didn't do anything worth reporting...

However, on Sunday night I got a hankering to organize the writing room. Honestly it wasn't that messed up, it's probably the cleanest room in the house at any given time, but I felt the room was being utilized well enough. Ya know that feeling?

All was going fine....

And then I hit the Closet.

The Closet houses Stuff Jenny Sends To Die. There are three novels, multiple short stories, two poetry books, a play, and whatever else I might have written that needs to disappear. But I felt a certain level of guilt at allowing these things that I'd worked so hard on to just rot away in the dark - with no kind of organization. The pages were just stacked and scrambled.

So I found two plastic tubbies - the kind that hold files - and set about organizing.

I had a few moments of "Huh, that's not too bad." And other moments that were less hopeful. But overall I was stunned at the amount of pages, the quantity of work, the endlessness of it. It's about ten years worth of work and it was all staring me in the face.

Apparently I wrote my 'first' novel - a fantasy book that would have D&D fans either grinning in recognition or groaning in frustration - seven or eight times. But I never made it past Chapter Three in any given draft. Still...that's a lot of pages. And there are quite a few 'novels' that were started after that one: two serial killer novels, a novel about a writer (because we all do that at some point, right?), another fantasy novel, and something that I'm not quite sure where I was going.

Then there're the poetry books. The second one is the good one - and it's also about serial killers but it still needs work and I'm not willing to put in the time at the moment. But the first is so full of teen/young adult angst that if the pages had pores there'd be zits and broken-heart shards clogging every one.

Also in the closet are my under-the-bed novels. These are actually not too bad. The first one is impressive because not only did I pass Chapter Three...I continued for another thousand pages or so. That notebook is BIG. It takes up 1/4 of the file tubby. The second and third novels are good, for what they are. But these books are Trying Too Hard. So, under the bed/in the closet tubby they go.

This is just the stuff in the closet. This doesn't count the work currently piled in my computer, in my desk drawers, the stacks on my desk, and the work lining my bookshelves. It doesn't count the blog. It doesn't count school papers. Just the closet.

Looking at all of this, you'd think I'd be pretty proud. Among the scattered pieces were things I'd written for school, critiques, and notes-to-self.

Honestly, for a little while all I felt was disappointed.

"Look at all that work!" my head screamed at me. "Look at all that you've done! Why haven't you accomplished more!!??" And so on.

There were some frustrated tears, I won't lie.

Tucked away in the stacks were rejection letters. These letters are ten years old - which is when I started taking writing seriously. Without really thinking or knowing what I was doing, I'd sent my early short stories out to every magazine that I'd heard of. My early writing 'career' was what I considered successful. I won a small contest. I had the very first flash fiction piece I'd ever sent out picked up by the first publication I ever sent it to. I finished a thousand page novel. I was badass. But the rejection letters told me that this was HARD. This would be DIFFICULT. Being young and rather fragile, I stopped sending things out as regularly. I didn't give up, but I was more hesitant.

Sunday, I re-read those rejections.

Every single one of them was a personalized rejection letter. There were little notes - 'this one not for us, but send more.' There were mini-critiques telling me to focus on characterization or a plot point. And the piece-de-resistance? A full length letter from Weird Tales telling me that they were overstocked, so they were being super-selective, and my story fell short on A, B, and C plot points. An editor - from a well respected magazine - took the time to write a full-on letter to me. He mentioned my hometown. He asked me about Colorado.

And all my twenty-something self saw was the rejection. I actually thought it was a form rejection at the time.

The good news is that I didn't quit. I went to school. Learned more stuff. Applied more techniques. I got better.

But I haven't regained that "I own this!" attitude that I had at first. Looking through all of my work, reading those rejection letters, it occurred to me that there is no reason I can't get that attitude back.

The pages I have written are my skin - toughened by practice and experience. The letters are the evidence that what I have to say is effective. There's no reason to step back.

I will finish my work, I will submit my work. I will work more. I will finish more. I will submit more. And this time I won't hesitate. That's my resolution.

I'm going to work. And I won't stop.

New Year, New You, New Mentor: Neil Gaiman

2012-01-02T05:25:00.000-07:00

To kick off the New Year, we have a new mentor (who had been scheduled late last year before I got all overwhelmed and schtuff). You may recognize the name:

Neil Gaiman!!!!!!!!!!!!

*and the crowd cheers*

And to emphasize the importance of mentors - whether the mentors know they're mentoring or not - I direct you to the dedication page of the hardcover Anansi Boys:

"Note: the author would like to take this opportunity to tip his hat respectfully to the ghosts of Zora Neale Hurston, Thorne Smith, P.G. Wodehouse, and Frederick 'Tex' Avery."

Ah yes, our mentor recognized those who had come before him...and, I would assume, influenced him in some way.

Because, as I've often said and will certainly say again, we don't write in a vaccuum people. (Unless, of course, you're a Little and the vaccuum happens to be a cozy, if hayfever inducing, location.) As writers we are always responding to the literature that has come before us, and to the literature that is coming at us.

Gaiman is an author who is coming at us. His books rest on the shelves, dominate the bestseller lists, and he is still producing. This makes him someone you, as a writer living at this point in history, will probably have to respond to at some point. So it's good that we look on him as someone to learn from, because, damn, his work has a lot of stuff to teach.

So, this blogger would like to take this opportunity to tip her hat respectfully to this inspiring and inspired author. And, dear readers, it is especially cool to be examining a living author who is so active in the world of social media. You wanna hear what he thinks? Check out his blog Neil Gaiman's Journal and follow him on Twitter @Neilhimself.

And to get this party started, I would like to end on a question: What is your favorite Neil Gaiman book?

P.S. For those who may have missed it, I did start to do some work on Gaiman, and here are the links from back in December if you'd like to see where I'm coming from:

Seeing in the Dark: The YA Novel in General and The Graveyard Book in Particular
How to Avoid Being Too Dark?
Thursday Reviews: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (A Mentor Review!)
Winning the Newbery Medal: What Does It Take?

Late, late, late accountability

2011-12-22T09:39:00.003-07:00

You might think that by not posting a Tuesday Post of Accountability on Tuesday indicates that I was somehow slacking off. And you might think, because I'm posting an accountability post on a Thursday, that I am somehow trying to justify said slacking off.

To this I say: Nuh-uh.

1. I have written short story words. Not many. But they are written.

2. I have typed critique notes into my rough draft of The Line. (Which I'm waaaay excited to get to work on again in January, by the way! It's one of those: I KNOW HOW TO FIX IT! I KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT SUPER SHINY! kind of moments.)

Something funny (as in interesting to only me) I noticed while typing in notes: I doubled the book's size during NaNo. Prior to NaNo (which means about five months or so of writing) I had 48,300 words. During NaNo I wrote another 50,400 words. I know, that's a lot of words, huh? *patting self on back*

Now to turn that into 100K worth of usable words, yes? And, due to the epic scale of this particular story, I've got another 50K to go. Oh yeah, this is gonna be an awesome dystopia. And 'Awesome Dystopia' might be an oxymoron...but only until you see what I've done.

...or it might remain an oxymoron. We'll see. I'm excited about it. Right now that's what counts.

Survey Says!: An Article of Awesomeness from The Paris Review

2011-12-08T12:18:00.001-07:00

I'm starting to love Twitter like no other. If you follow the right people, you find some really fascinating material, like this article by Sarah Funke Butler from The Paris Review. The rundown: A sixteen year old student wrote a 'survey' on symbolism and sent it out to 150 well-known authors (like our very own July-August mentor, Jack Kerouac, as well as luminaries like Saul Bellow, John Updike, and Ray Bradbury).

The odd thing is that these authors responded. I guess writers just can't keep quiet about their craft, huh? They keep blogs and tweet and stuff nowadays. =)

Check it out. There's actual archival scans of the letters.

Tuesday Post of Accountability.

2011-12-06T15:47:00.001-07:00

I am not accountable.

I am reading.

Four books down so far in JenRidReadMo: Anatomy of Motive by John Douglas; The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta; The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff; and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre.

Yes, I'm behind.

Random Post of Awesome: Braggin' on a Buddy!: Ajay Ramachandran Poetry Published by Midtown

2011-12-05T14:21:00.000-07:00

Great news! My buddy Ajay Ramachandran, who comments early and often on anything Virginia Woolf or P.G. Wodehouse (our very special mentors from earlier this year), has had a a wonderful poem publish by Midtown: A Journal of Writing and Fine Arts.

"Achebe to Zwiren"

Please go check it out - it's well worth it. Bookophiles will adore it, and those who followed the Woolf and Wodehouse discussions will find it particularly impressive. Ajay knows what he's talking about! Congratulations, Ajay!

Time to clear the stack:JenRidReadMo

2011-12-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

Last month, as you guys know, was National Novel Writing Month. Millions of writers across the country set pen to paper/fingers to keyboard in order to write an entire novel in a month. Which is a crazy idea, when you get right down to it.

Partly to recover from this last bout of ridiculousness, and partly because I set myself the challenge of reading 80 books this year, I will be reading a book a day until the end of the year.

I'm dubbing this challenge: JenRidReadMo. (Jenny's Ridiculous Reading Month)

Why? I'm sure my friend John is asking (because he's always the one looking at me like I've lost my mind when I say "I'm gonna do this [fill in random thought]!").

My Reasons:
Palate cleansing. Post NaNo, I find I need a break from writing. I'm still working on a couple things, and by working I mean fiddling and getting nothing accomplished. And reading will help reboot the system.

Well filling. During NaNo my brain stopped working correctly. I didn't entirely lose the vision of my novel, but it definitely got blurred around the edges. I need fuel to kick the ol' imagination back in gear. Right now I feel like I have nothing to pull from. Time to chill and gather my brilliant thoughts again.

Because I wanna. Like NaNo, JenRidReadMo, is a challenge. I'd like to say that I did it. And I don't mean 35 books in one month, I'm referring to the goal I set back way early in the year - which I already missed because my original insane goal was 100. My previous years (according to Goodreads stats) I've managed about 30 books a year. I don't want to set it back again - that feels like failing and I don't like to fail. So this is an area where I'd like to push myself.

*****
And a quick shout out to Deniz - who is doing her own removal of her teetering to-read pile.

READERS UNITE!!!

Winning the Newbery Medal: What Does it Take?

2011-12-02T07:20:00.001-07:00

Newbery Medal winners are generally destined for a long shelf life, heaps of attention from libraries, teachers, and parents, and are often deserving of the lauds and acclaims.

What does it take to write a Newbery Medal winner?

Well, you can take a peek at the criteria here. But I’m also going to break down said criteria in relation to our mentor’s own Newbery winning novel: The Graveyard Book.

According to the Association for Library Service to Children’s website, committee members need to consider the following criteria when looking at a potential Newbery book:

1. Interpretation of the theme or concept.
The theme or concept isn’t assigned – this element speaks toward the question: Did the writer creatively and consistently interpret their own themes/concepts? Well, I’d have to say that The Graveyard Book, in its exploration of death, violence, friendship, and family did a whopping good job of it. I personally think it’s one of the more creative and well-executed ideas I’ve come across in a while.

So you have to have some kind of meaning integral to your story. What are you trying to get kids to think about? How is that shown in your work?

2. Presentation of information including accuracy, clarity, and organization.
A thumb-and-half up on this one. There’s an awkward ‘Interlude’ in the middle of the book that doesn’t really explain much…and in fact left me a bit confused for a few pages after…then there was the weird cave/tomb raiding bout toward the end…but considering the handling of the graveyard scenes, the presentation of time passing, I think that Gaiman did a decent job.

You have to make sense. And The Graveyard Book is also full of historical references - all of which seemed pretty darned accurate to me. I think this is important because when kids read - and to a lesser extent adults - the accuracy of information is necessary. What if this is the only book a kid reads on this subject? Or what if it's the first thing they've ever read on this subject and you flub up? Are you willing to take responsibility for a kids saying that Pluto is a planet still? In front of the whole class?

3. Development of a plot.
There definitely is a plot.

Please, please, please. For kids - give them a story! (This doesn't apply to poetry, which can also win Newbery Medals.)

4. Delineation of characters.
Each character played their roles well. I never got lost as to who was who (even with a strange passel of Mad Jacks popping up). I think that here is where Gaiman would’ve impressed the committee. Even the side characters have interesting contributions to the storyline – an accused witch without a headstone, a man buried beside his first and second wives…yeah, poor, poor dude, right?

I could see these characters clearly in my head. I loved how they worked together (plot-wise). Make sure your characters are distinct and that they have reasons for doing what they do - it helps individuate them.

5. Delineation of a setting.
And here is where I think Gaiman won. No one could beat this setting. Hogwarts is probably the only thing that could ever come close.

Make your setting count. Details. Rules. Metaphor. Setting can elevate your story to all kinds of heights.

6. Appropriateness of Style.
While I’d be a little concerned for kids younger than middle school grasping everything Gaiman throws in here, it’s still definitely a kids’ book. The illustrations added a child-element that was helpful to the overall feel, I think. (Considering, however, that illustrations can only be considered when they hurt a book, I think it was a gamble! But it worked, so the book wasn’t penalized.)

Make sure kids can read the book. Don't through million dollar words in there (without definitions). Don't start quoting obscure historical events (again without explanations). This is not an opportunity to explore feminism in the late twentieth century via dissertation. Tell a story in the way a kid would want to read/hear a story.

Have you got what it takes?

Thursday Reviews!: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (A Mentor Review!)

2011-12-01T07:52:00.003-07:00

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

British authors must have some kind of secret to writing scrappy orphan stories.

Not being opposed to books that start with a creepy man breaking into a house, murdering the family who lives there, and being thwarted by an infant and his ghost protectors...I thought this was a great book. The opening is certainly dark, but I can't imagine a coming-of-age-in-a-graveyard book opening with sunshine and happy little gnomes.

The creative concepts in this book really caught my attention. How would one raise a living child in a graveyard? If the ghosts can't leave, how do you get food? How do you educate the kid? How do you teach him to protect himself? How do you make friends? The answers Gaiman comes up with are soooo very interesting. Plus, it's all a very interesting take on the ultimate human question: What happens when you die?

Nobody Owens, Bod, is one of those characters that you want to cheer for. He works hard to do what's right, whether it's getting a headstone for the dead who long to be remembered or defending his fellow students from the classroom bullies. When he's told that he is kept in the graveyard for his own protection, Bod's reaction is to say that it's the man Jack, the man who killed his family, who should be protected - from Bod.

I love a can-do attitude.

The good news is life in the graveyard carries a story a long way. The only problem I had with the story was the reasoning - the 'why' - of the man Jack's assault on Bod's family was explained away in a sentence or two very close to the end of the book. The bad guys just seemed too simplistic, which was disappointing after so much mystery had been built around their 'society'. With the well-explained good guys balanced against the less-explained bad guys, the weight of the story shifted strangely, if that makes sense.

All in all, though, it's pretty darn good. I'd recommend it for middle school and up - and not because the opening is dark (which it is, no lie) but because there are a multitude of literary and historical references that I'm not sure younger readers would appreciate. There'd be a lot of blank stares unless there's an adult around to explain.

View all my reviews

How to Avoid Being Too Dark?

2011-11-30T06:46:00.001-07:00

On Monday, while discussing young adult literature, I utilized a ‘bedroom’ dark metaphor. The argument being that you can see in the dark if there is some light trickling in.

In my opinion, all young adult literature – all good young adult literature – has that little bit of light trickling in, even if it’s not obvious at first.

There is another kind of darkness though: total darkness. The darkness that makes people go blind after too long in an underground cave. There is no hope in this darkness. There is no light for your eye to catch and your pupils can dilate forever, but they’ll never grow large enough to pull light where there is none.

Rest easy. This kind of darkness doesn’t exist in kids literature at all. Editors just won’t let it happen. No way are you going to subject a kid to rape, torture, war, drugs, and murder without some kind of redemption in there.

However, let’s say that you’re writing a kids book, you’ve got some super-dark themes going on, and you’re concerned that the reason no one is picking up the book is because it’s Cave Dark.

For the Answer to Avoiding Being Too Dark, we shall look to our mentor, Neil Gaiman and The Graveyard Book for some pointers:

1. Humor helps. And not just humor, but where you position the humor. For example, in The Graveyard Book, you’ve got the man Jack creeping all through the house with a knife in his hand. You’ve got three dead bodies. DARK. Then, as you read the next couple pages, you discover that there’s a mischievous baby (Bod) who has jumped his crib, lost his diaper, and is gleefully crawling up the street naked. Not so dark. You realize that this little kid (who probably gave his parents several sleepless nights) is going to be the undoing of the man Jack…just because of his absolute nerve, even so young.

2. Explain the rules of the darker world. As Bod grows up he is exposed to ghouls, Hounds of God, vampires, and ghosts. For starters. These are the embodiments of most horror stories from the Dark Ages on up to now. DARK. Gaiman negates the spooky power by explaining how things work on the other side. There are still ‘town meetings’, there are days where you have to clean your crypt, there are children playing…but they’re all stuck to the graveyard. They can see in the dark. They can haunt. The problem with being dead, as it’s explained to Bod is that they can’t affect anything anymore. The ‘names have been written.’ Their potential is gone. Once the reader is exposed to the hows and whys of the place, there’s nothing left to be scared of.

3. Make your main character tough enough to handle the problems. No one likes a wimp. No one wants to read a book about a little boy whose parents died and now he’s all alone and being raised by ghosts and all he does is cry at the headstones all the dang day. When Silas – Bod’s guardian – explains what happened to Bod’s parents (they were brutally murdered = DARK), Bod flinches, but he doesn’t break. He gets angry. He wants justice. He may have suffered at this man Jack’s hands, but he is not his victim. That is a very hard distinction to make, and your characters will have to show their toughness in their own ways, but make sure they have some kind of tough.

Those are just a few ways to let the light in. So remember, if you have rape, war, murder, drugs, torture, and teen dating all in your book-cave…you really need to let some light in or your readers will go blind - they might even pluck their own eyes out in despair. That would be bad.

I'm a Winner!: A Tuesday Post of Accountability

2011-11-29T09:41:00.001-07:00

It's Tuesday again folks. And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!
And there's one big thing I've done in the last week:

I WON NANOWRIMO!!!!!!!!!!!!

50,000 total new words for my work in progress in the last month!!!!!

*crowd cheers*

So, about equals about 10,000 new words on my work in progress for the week.

That's really probably enough, isn't it?

And I'm not alone. Crossing the finish line with me: my good dear friend Deb and my good dear spouse Shane.

A big hearty congratulations to everyone who wrote this past month. And to everyone who is still punching those keys: STOP READING RIGHT NOW AND GET TO WORK.

It was a great experience and now I shall list what I have learned:

1. Having someone to write with is a good thing. Early on in the month I was gonna throw in the towel. Then Shane got a fire lit under his own typing fingers and sped past me. In one day he banged out 7,000 words, made me feel like a total bum, and therefore I kicked my own ass to keep up. Because, really, I should not get beaten by people with full time jobs. If they can do it, I can do it. No excuses.

He still kept ahead of me throughout the month. *Jenny's carrot*

Until I saw the magical '40,000' on the bottom of my Word screen. After that I was not stopping, I wasn't slowing down for anyone and ditched everyone and everything to end NaNo early on Sunday. I was beyond thrilled.

So it served to prove that, all too often, I'm the person in my own way.

2. I need a sketch pad or something where I can sketch out floor plans, ground plans, street maps, or whatever. The idea for this had already been in the back of my head because of an Umberto Eco essay in Confessions of a Young Novelist. I don't have the book in front of me, but Eco talks about how he added dialogue because a set of stairs in The Name of the Rose was long and the characters should be talking all the way down. Basically, he was so aware of space and location that he had his characters behave accordingly.

I think I need to do that -- and the point was brought home to me via my writer's group on Sunday. Basically, the end section of Part I is confused. There's a lot of action, but no one knows where anyone else is in relation to the whole. Part of that is me not having a clear idea of where or what I want my characters to be doing. I also forgot where I put the kitchen. And the home office.

This is stuff you need to know, ya know?

3. Writing is a reward in itself. Yesterday, when I had nothing I had to write, I still had a million and one things I wanted to get down on paper. I actually stopped myself because my well is really really really dry at the moment. It was energizing to get all that stuff down, but I need to get my bearings a little bit.

Today I'm going to continue work on a short story, but I'm going to take it nice and slow.

How are you guys recovering? Revving up for the holidays?

Seeing in the Dark: The YA Novel in General and The Graveyard Book in Particular

2011-11-28T07:07:00.001-07:00

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal took a series of hits for this article by Meghan Cox Gurdon. Her argument is that Young Adult Literature is DARK: “Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.”

A great many people have already gone off on this article and its overarching condescending tone toward today’s young adult literature. For the most part I agree with the bulk of the article’s dissenters, though, and I’m only going to say this so that you guys know where I’m coming from completely, I can see Gurdon’s argument if I look at how the subject matter is treated. Sex is a big deal. Cursing and language and expression are big deals. Violence is a big deal. Books and movies are currently how kids and teens learn to address their world and a blasé attitude towards these things is not to be lightly tolerated. And, quite frankly, I was unimpressed with the ‘gravity’ given to sex in the Twilight books – which millions of teens ate up – just an example, and just my opinion.

That being said, I can’t help but LOVE Sherman Alexie’s response to this article. (He was called out in it.) In his own Wall Street Journal reaction Alexie says that it’s too late to protect the kids. By the time kids read the teen books, the trouble has already hit them in real life. How do you tell a teen mom to not read about sex? Alexie says: “I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.”

Sounds a lot like the G.K. Chesterton quote: “Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated."

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book reminds me of those fairy tales. Here is the boogey man, come to slaughter a family, and only the chosen/blessed/selected child escapes. Sure, it’s dark. Sure, it’s scary. But I don’t think that anyone gets through life without suffering, without being frightened. By the time kids are old enough to read this book and understand what’s going on, they will have heard about horrible events on the news, they will have experienced fear of something. What’s beautiful about this book is that the main character, Bod, is raised by the very ghosties and ghoulies children fear when they are very young. Bod, a child, is given gifts that make him like them – he can see in the dark, he can Fade, he can Haunt.

And when he is strong enough, he must face his greatest threat – which is not a ghost or a ghoul, it is a man named Jack. A man. A person who is just like Bod. Living, breathing, and violent.

Not to give away the end or anything…but Bod defeats him.

So, as stressful as it may be to be a parent and have darkness facing your child from every bookshelf, it is a necessary thing. There are monsters in the world. That is real. There are problems in the world. That is real. But you always have to remember there is light on those bookshelves too - the dark is defeated, its power is negated.

The darkness facing a parent on the bookshelf isn't real darkness. It's like a dark bedroom. When the light goes off, you can’t see anything but the dark. But if you stay, if you keep your eyes open, if you pay attention to the dark, your pupils dilate, growing wider, larger, to capture the light that is hidden – a streetlamp, or the moon, or stars. Then you can make out the shape of the bed, a bookshelf, pictures on the walls. You see in the dark. And the things that were frightening, like the monster in the closet, turn out to be a pile of clothes spilling out of their basket. (I know, frightening in its own right!) There was nothing to be afraid of in the first place.

Marathons, Sheep, and Conclusions: A Tuesday Post of Accountability!

2011-11-22T08:52:00.001-07:00

Random Post of Awesome: Braggin' on a Buddy: Iver Arnegard in High Contrast Review

2011-11-20T10:14:00.001-07:00

Wahoo! My wonderful friend and mentorish-writing buddy, Iver Arnegard, has just had his short story "Made of Land or Water" published in the High Contrast Review.

Definitely check it out if you've got a second. It's worth it.

Congratualtions to Iver, who took time out of his crazed teaching schedule to talk to my writing group last month. So, not only is he a talented writer, but he's an all around nice guy.

The Multi-Creatives: David Keplinger's By and By: The Copybook Songs of Isaac P. Anderson

2011-11-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

A lot of writers I know do multiple creative things: needlepoint, ceramics, jewelry making, theatre, art, dance, music. There's a certain attractiveness to this. Because, always, creativity breeds creativity. Through experimentation people find what they want to say, and then, through even more creative exploration, discover the way to say it.

Every now and then, these various artistic bits merge, developing into something new and very interesting.

I have had the great opportunity to study with a poet by the name of David Keplinger (you guys may have heard me mention his name around here before). I've heard him read his poetry at many different venues.

But, I've probably heard him sing in bars, or around campfires, more. Cuz that's just how we roll.

Now I've just learned that David has combined his poetical sense and his musical inspirations to cut an album based on his great-great-grandfather's poems. I was so absolutely tickled by this that I had to let you guys know, so you can check it out. It's a really moving tribute to his family, but I think the historical notes, the creative expression, and the folksy style are inspiring too.

Your Slip is Showing: A Tuesday Post of Accountability!

2011-11-15T07:16:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Tuesday! And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

1. Um, yeah. NaNoWriMo is still going on. I'm not sure what week we're in now. Week six? Week twelve? Feels like it's been going on forever, and I'm slightly behind and in catch-it-up mode at the moment. It's been this interesting see-saw bit: one day I'm up, the next day I'm down. I can't seem to get ahead...which, I won't lie, would be really, really nice.

One thing that's funny about writing at a quick pace and not caring about what you put down (which isn't entirely true, I just can't not care about what I put down) is that your tangents/flaws/habits show themselves in a very exposing manner.

For example, I am an em-dash kinda chick. There is nothing like those double dashes to emphasize the parenthetical talky talk I like to emphasize. I'm sure this is especially annoying to the reader.

Also, I love the word that. And that is really helpful when you're trying to up word counts. Any time a hang-up is overuse of words, NaNoWriMo blesses you.

I'm not the only one to notice this phenomenon either. Shane is also participating in NaNo and he has discovered his penchant for overusing metaphors has resulted in sometimes three or four metaphors for one thing. (His word count is ahead of mine...perhaps I should embrace the power of long metaphors.)

Ah, to have your slip showing....

2. Reading. I have done some of it during this NaNo thing. However, I've also not finished reading anything. I'm halfway through a bunch of non-fiction, and only one novel.

I'm finding reading novels frustrates me as I try to pound out my own novel for NaNo. The novels remind me of how much I need to revise my em-dashed mess for it to be any kind of readable. Then all I want to do is revise. But no! I must hold back. I have plans! I have a schedule! I must write the dunderheadedness now! (See? NaNo also exposes your use of whacked-out words like dunderheadedness. I actually used the word nefariousness in my WIP. This is how it goes....)

How're you guys doing?

Domesticity: A Fictional Photo Essay (An Experiment)

2011-11-11T04:14:00.000-07:00

A mix of chemicals is required to wake, bitter-granule reminders of some forgotten, formerly memorable sensation.

The day continues, each hour folding one into the next. You are told the work is important.

There is no way to organize your thoughts in a respectful manner.

You push through, but maybe there is an edge of resentment. A little piece that knows: the work is important -

but your heart won't break if you go elsewhere.

Thursday Reviews!: The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

2011-11-10T03:00:00.000-07:00

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As informative as this book is, I'm still not 100% sure how to poison a person and get away with it...so I guess the "Handbook" isn't as handy as it's cracked up to be....

However, if you wanna know all about hunting bad guys with beakers and bunson burners in 1920s/1930s New York you will not find a better book anywhere than this one. I LOVED it.

Blum has an excellent way of guiding the reader through a multitude of areas that can get confusing in their 'high-context'-ness. Stuff like history if you're not familiar with the era or place; stuff like chemistry in any form; stuff like political science all get enough attention so, as a reader, you don't get lost lost and you're not bored to tears either. It's a fine balance and she handles it swimmingly.

This book also handles the intricately knotted tendrils of chemistry, crime, politics, and psychology in the best possible way. Cause and consequence - including the ever-irritating law of unintended consequences - are beautifully illustrated.

My favorite portions of the book were the sections that handled Prohibition's effects:

"So it was that as Prohibition moved toward reality - Wyoming had become the thirty-sixth state to ratify the amendment on January 16, 1919 - Gettler and his small staff returned to the idea that wood alcohol was about to increase in popularity. THe Eighteenth Amendment, now that it had attained full ratification, was scheduled to go into effect in 1920. Already, though, the medical examiner's office was charting a rise in alcohol poisoning, as New Yorkers hurried to find alternative supplies."

We're always looking for alternative supplies, aren't we?

The increase in drinking deaths, the government participation in poisoning its citizens (the government officials defending themselves with the all-too-common blustering defense: "They broke the law, they deserve to die!"...as if *abiding the law* and *life* have ever been synonymous), and the necessity of capturing real violent criminals (the kind who poison dozens of bakery patrons), all helped drive Charles Norris, New York's first medical examiner, and his crew to work round-the-clock to discover the make-ups of several poisons.

It's a great read. Really quick, to the point, and guarunteed to up your answer quotient on Jeopardy!. But, even more than that, I think that way Blum interweaves all of the seemingly disparate elements of the Prohibition period is helpful as a medium for looking at today's issues of concern like the economy, oil, immigration, and the reactions to Wall Street. These things, like the issues pressing in the 1930s, do not exist in a vacuum - and a good many of the problems Blum touches upon (corporation oversight, for example) are still with us today. I really think this is an entertaining and important book.

View all my reviews

Voices in Your Head: Writing Group Issue #1 with some help from Ursula K LeGuin

2011-11-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

At my last writers group meeting - we meet the last Sunday of every month - a disturbing trend came to light:

One of the group members said that she would not be submitting for a while because she was hearing the other members' voices in her head.

This probably would not have raised the little hairs on the back of my neck except for the fact that this was the second person I'd heard say those exact words in the space of a few months. That may sound like a long time, but in the space of critique meetings, that's twice in ten get-togethers. Which isn't much.

I admit to a certain amount of Really? in my own thoughts. Because I have no real issue distinguishing which pieces of criticism I want to take (what I need to take may be a totally different thing...there I go, happily ignoring stuff that might be necessary...), I had a very hard time even understanding what these writers were talking about. I don't hear people when I write. I barely hear them when I edit. I write down the critiques that are compatible with my vision of the piece and ignore the rest. Well, that's just ducky for me, right?

But that kind of attitude is just not helpful for writers who are experiencing this.

So in the past week or so, I've tried to imagine what it is they are experiencing. And my imagination, I confess, did not help me that much.

Mostly I felt like an intolerable bully who had helped pummel these writers into blockage. I found myself angry with these writers. I found myself being irritated that these writers "couldn't figure it out." Harsh? Oh yes. I was not thinking nicely.

While all of this was going on in my brain - which couldn't put itself in someone else's shoes (an experience which added to my frustration because, dammit, aren't writers supposed to be the ones who can go into everyone's shoes and walk around a while?) - I picked up a book that had been on my shelf a while: Steering the Craft by Ursula K. LeGuin.

As I was flipping through the book, I noticed Appendix 1: The Peer Group Workshop. Seeing as how this subject was on my mind, I flipped to the appendix and read all the way through the section. I found some things my group does right: we're all at about the same skill level so there's no inequality really; we read and mark up over time (we have a month to read and work on each other's manuscripts); we all speak up at the meetings; and we have just the right number of people.

Then I realized the other rules that LeGuin recommends in this appendix are rules designed to keep writers from 'hearing voices.'

1. LeGuin recommends: "The author of the story under discussion is SILENT." We are not silent. The authors can talk, ask questions, explain what they meant. LeGuin argues that silence is necessary because "It's almost impossible for an author whose work is being criticised not to be on the defense, eager to explain, answer, point out" so instead, the writer should focus on listening. By staying silent, "You won't be busy mentally preparing what you're going to say in answer, because you can't answer. All you can do is hear. You can hear what people got from your piece, what they think needs some work, what they misunderstood and understood, disliked and liked about it. And that's what you're there for."

While, on the surface staying silent seems like a writer is just gonna sit there and take it while the Voices keep going - what really happens is you hear your own voice much clearer. By not being able to respond, you draw your own conclusions about what the readers are saying. You have to know what it was you wanted to say. You have to know what you wanted them to feel. And you can just listen and see if they got that or not.

However, the author gaining anything from staying silent depends very much on the standard the critiquers are held to...which brings me to:

2. LeGuin recommends:

"Each critique should be:
Brief.
Strictly in turn.
Without interruption from anyone else."

Oh dear.

This is where our group totally falls apart. No lie. There's rambling, interruptions, debates, suggestions, correction, deletions, philosophy, styles, quotes, diatribes, reading recommendations, movie recommendations, music recommendations, and on and on and on. It's a chaotic discussion and generally there are two or three voices dominating the conversation. (Yes, one of the loudest is me.)

After I read LeGuin's rules from critiquing, and after I thought about the suggestions, corrections, recommendations, etc. I suddenly understood where the voices were coming from.

As a group, we don't shut up. No freakin' wonder our compatriots are brain-fizzled.

Each group has to decide for itself how it wants to run and what ways work the best for them, while not alienating members. Not everyone works the same and, after my soul-searching this week, I'm going to think more on it and then discuss with the group whether or not we need to revise our ground rules and how we would like to it if we go forward with new rules.

I'm still sorting out my own emotional component in the matter, because a great deal of how the group currently runs is based on organic development - a lot of the way we do things were attempts to make it 'more fair.' And then, I still wonder, if the writers who hear the shouting and debating while they write are going to be any better if the critiques are kept under more control? Or will brief, to the point critiques be enough to set the voices off anyway?

But I do think that LeGuin's ground rules will figure heavily in my thought process.

Anyone out there in a real-life or online workshop/group experience the hearing of voices? Any ideas on how to keep a meeting balanced?

Tuesday Post of Accountability!: NaNo NaNo NaNo

2011-11-08T08:03:00.001-07:00

It's Tuesday! Time to sound off on all the great and wonderful things we have accomplished.

Here's what I did:

1. NaNo.

2. NaNo.

3. NaNo.

And that's about it. Luckily, I'm right on pace (as of yesterday...now I need to do today's word count. It just never ends!)

However, I have a funny - okay, not really funny - story about being on pace because I wasn't until Sunday. I only had about 3,000 words on Saturday...which was minus quite a bit. Still, I wasn't as behind as Shane, spouse extraoridinaire, who determined that though he had only 1,000ish written, he was gonna catch up. By the end of Saturday he'd thrown down 7,000 words.

Watching him and feeling like a complete slacker, I banged out another 3,000ish on Saturday too (I wasn't about to get beat down in my own house). Then on Sunday he walloped another 3,000 and I caught up with the remaining 4,000 I needed.

Yesterday we both wrote what we were supposed to because trying to catch up (which you CAN do, people, with a lot of pain...a lot of pain...but you CAN!) hurt.

Yeah, so that was my week. How're you guys holding in there?

Random Post of Awesome!

2011-11-03T08:41:00.000-06:00

Yay! My new flash fiction piece "Judas Slouches Through Jerusalem" is out at The Medulla Review! Big thanks are due to the editors. Your work is appreciated.

So, if you've got a quirky little story that has something to say, this is probably the market for you. Check it out.

Thusday Reviews!: The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman (A Mentor Review!)

2011-11-03T07:08:00.002-06:00

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

***SPOILER WARNING***
For me, the setting was the most interesting part of this graphic novel: underground London. The subterranean rooms offered a unique framework for the already-freakish elements of a circus. That the ringmaster, guides, and performers were all take-offs of traditional horror monsters made it feel like something entertainers would consider throwing together for a special Halloween performance.

With such a set-up setting, I anticipated a little more horrifying-ness. But, It opens with the three central characters meditating on the missing Miss Finch while eating sushi...which doesn't strike me as a stressful opening. The comfort and expense of a sushi restaurant tells the reader/observer flat-out that this isn't an Immediate Situation. Yet, when you get to the end, you realize that the disappearance happened a few minutes earlier...kinda cuts the tension in half pretty quick.

As it's presented, there's no real emotional attachment to the disappearing Miss Finch (we don't even get her real name). She is presented as cold, not fun, proper, English, and basically as someone they're stuck with for the evening. Miss Finch critiques the whole underground freak circus as being in 'questionable taste'. Yet, when the opportunity for her to fulfill her wish ("I wish with all my heart that there were some [sabertooth cats] left today. But there aren't")comes, it slips into Mantasy World. Half-naked, Miss Finch -- up until that point a scientific, academic woman -- comes out with a couple sabertooth cats that try to eat an old lady. Then she disappears, still half-naked, off into the 'sunrise' with the cats.

So, yeah, some things didn't quite work for me.

What did work:

I was entertained by the three central characters. They were sarcastic and world-weary and hard to impress. Lots of snide little comments: "Jonathan had originally become famous hosting an evening talk show...he's the same person whether the camera is on or off, which is not always true of television folk." I enjoy that.

View all my reviews

NaNoWriMo GO! and Tuesday Post of Accountability

2011-11-01T09:04:00.000-06:00

So it's Tuesday, but it's a special Tuesday: the first day of November. Last year I did not participate in NaNoWriMo, and actually I've never participated. UNTIL NOW!

To add a literary notch on my belt, I'm going for it this month and will keep you posted on my progress...maybe...I could be writing....

For those of you who are going for it as well, here is a very interesting list of things that may or may not help you on your way to 50K words, via GalleyCat.

All right, now that we know what next week should hold (namely a lot of words), let's look at what I managed to get done last week:

1. Typed up the officially official end of Part I. And that decided me that I'm not gonna handwrite-then-type my NaNo project because, damn, typing in 13,000 words in one day (How do you spend your Saturdays?) was a lot of work and it didn't feel very good. Though, I'm a slower typer so this could bite me. Look for changes through the month. I tried to pace the writing so that the last four or five days of the month could be used for typing should I need to handwrite - which means more painful word count stints on the days I write, regardless of how I do it, but there it is.

2. I fiddled with/edited a short story that still isn't done. Since I'd finished the first part of the novel, I was tired of writing flat-out. However, that didn't translate to good editing time either. I got halfway, and it's better than it was, but I'm still not at the end yet. And that means it'll be at least a month before I get back to it...though I've slotted December for reading ONLY because November is gonna sting.

3. Had my writing group on Sunday, and that was a verrrry interesting meeting for me, because it brought up a lot of issues that writers have in writing groups. Yesterday I decided that I'll do some bloggy segments on the "group think" kind of stuff. Because there are some rewards and pitfalls to be aware of and I don't think writers talk about these things very often. Look for those!

But, in the meantime...it's time to get to work. Leave a quick note about your own amazing accomplishments this last week and then get back to work yourself!

Thursday Reviews!: Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood

2011-10-27T07:40:00.000-06:00

Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read the first story of this book, "Murder in the Dark," and when I was finished I turned to my husband, shoved the book in his hand, told him to read it and then he was to tell me HOW DID SHE DO THAT?

He didn't really have an answer but his comment defined what I thought of the rest of the book: "It's written with the confidence of someone who knows she can hit a homerun every time."

Confidence oozes through every one of these pieces.

Least faves (because they just seemed a little too forced - and I wish I had a better word for that sensation, but that's the best I've got!):
"Gertrude Talks Back": Queen Gertrude gives Hamlet her opinion on her current and former husbands. Fine. But the tone somehow seemed dismissive - and the character of Gertrude never seemed dismissive in the play - which is doubly odd considering the information she is giving her 'priggish' son. And, this may seem an odd critique, but I think the white space between the paragraphs doesn't do the story any favors. It gives it a fragmented feeling and I think that a piece riffing on Shakespeare would work better within the play framework - perhaps shaping the monologue in a block form like Hamlet's own speeches would have allowed the words to have more impact instead of making the reader adjust both the form and the words.

"Poppies: Three Variations": While this is probably the most complex exercise, it reads just like that: an exercise. She riffs on a verse about poppies by John McCrae by using the same words of that verse, in the same order, to tell three different stories. The first words of McCrae's verse is 'in Flanders' and all three mini-stories have with 'in' followed somewhere by 'Flanders' followed somewhere by the next word in the verse. It's a good way to stretch the literary muscle, but it's like watching someone work out - we admire their physique but prefer not to see the huffing and puffing and sweat that go along with it. Just give me the calendar, ya know?

The stories that I absolutely adore are the ones that have a satirical bite to them.

"Simmering": Oh! My FAVORITE by far. (I know, it's unfair to choose favorites, but there you have it, anyway.) It's all about what happens when men take over the kitchen. Go get this book and read that story.

"Murder in the Dark": It set the tone for the rest of the book. Is the author just trying to manipulate the reader throughout (I'm totally okay with the way Atwood manipulates, by the way), is she just a magician showing nothing of reality? Puts the power with the writer...so I think my writerly friends will enjoy this a lot...as well as readers who like to figure out the trick. I still haven't....

"Happy Endings": A choose-your-own adventure marriage!

Atwood also illustrated the collection, and some are as provocative as the stories - which are also dominated by the bits and pieces of male and female anatomy. Interwoven among the stories is the question of objectifying the body: "Making a Man," "Alien Territory," "Dance of the Lepers," and "Good Bones" hit on the question in a more direct way...but it's everywhere.

Well worth reading - and it won't take that long either.

View all my reviews

A Margaret Atwood Inspired Short

2011-10-26T03:51:00.000-06:00

Intro: In September I participated in the Colorado Springs Writing Marathon. I'd just finished reading Atwood's Good Bones and Simple Murders (reviewed tomorrow) and really, really wanted to try something small and twisty like the stories in that book. The following is the result:

The Crayon

It's robin-egg blue and hidden behind a potted plant. The boy who left it behind used it to draw clouds on his napkin at the restaurant. The napkin sky was white, and the clouds robin-egg blue. He liked his picture because it was different from real life - where sticky sweet smells meant beer instead of cotton candy. His backward drawing was brighter, because white skies let in more light than blue skies. You just needed blue clouds for a bit of shade here and there, like polka-dots. Before he left the restaurant, he managed to grab hold of his napkin with its imaginary sky, but he lost the crayon, which was found later, by a writer looking for inspiration and she wrote about the boy and his cloud.

Twitter and the Part I Smackdown: Tuesday Post of Accountability

2011-10-25T07:00:00.000-06:00

It's Tuesday! And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

Ah, it was a glorious week of progress!

1. Finished Part I of The Line on Saturday! Yes! I actually got to write "End Part I." So that's about 50,000 words finished all together. (Yes, I realize Part I is long, almost a novel in and of itself. However, you can't write big, sprawling epics and have short little lead-ups. How boring.)

2. That isn't enough for you?

3. Joined Twitter. (And one day I think I'll even understand what the heck's going on.) If you wanna follow me and my mini-steals then just clickity-click the link or the button to your right below my picture.

4. Last, but certainly not least, I heard that my flash fiction piece "Judas Slouches Through Jerusalem" will be published by The Medulla Review. I'll post the direct link to the story next Tuesday (because that's publication day!).

NaNoWriMo Prep Time!

2011-10-24T09:15:00.002-06:00

This year, I'm doing it. Last year I did not. Last year, I didn't even try it because I was in the middle of big project that I didn't want to interrupt.

This year, I can write an entire section of my current novel in one month - a section with its own beginning middle end.

Yep! It's National Novel Writing Month!

Well, not yet. Soon. Starting November 1st, writers around the world will be participating in a the mad writing frenzy that is NaNoWriMo. Before we start though, I thought I'd share some NaNo linkage for those of you getting dusted off and prepped:

1. The official NaNo website. Here you can meet up with the other folks in your region who are just as crazy as you. At the very least sign up so you can get the pep talks - the pep talking crew looks pretty good this year!

2. The illustrious Nathan Bransford had a very smart series of posts last year about the pre-work for NaNo. Here are the Boot Camps:
Day One
Day Two
Day Three

3. And...if you're in Colorado Springs, I've hunted down the NaNo write-in events for my writer's group, The Under Ground Writing Project - and you can check out our calendar if you're looking for places and times to meet up with the other crazies! I'd also like to give a shout out to the Pikes Peak Writers who are hosting the lion's share!

Mostly National Book Award Linkage for Your Friday!

2011-10-21T05:08:00.001-06:00

Okay, so first, the National Book Awards were announced. Congrats to everyone who made the cut. Unfortunately, in a bungling bungle to beat all bungles, they informed super-duper Young Adult writer Lauren Myracle that she was shortlisted...and then she was asked to withdraw:

"Her [Myracle's] book "Shine" was among the first five finalists announced live before an audience and radio broadcast in Oregon on Oct. 12; later that day, a sixth book, "Chime" by Franny Billingsley, was added to the list.

In explaining the addition of "Chime," National Book Foundation executive director Harold Augenbraum said, "We made a mistake, there was a miscommunication." That "Chime" and "Shine" sound similar was not explicitly stated but may have been a factor."~The Los Angeles Times, 17 October 2011

(Note the apologetic note at the top of the announcements. $5,000 dollars is being donated in Myracle's name to the Matthew Shepard Foundation. And if you'd like to donate as well, I would urge you to do so.)

As you can imagine, that irritated not a small amount of people. Here is Lauren Myracle's own reaction via Vanity Fair (it's beautiful, if you click no other link here, click that one). Libba Bray rushed to a passionate defense of Lauren Myracle's dignity. Super Agent Janet Reid makes a very compelling argument for how we should show our support for Myracle: buy her book.

But that's not all for the National Book Awards. Laura Miller over at Salon asks: Are they even relevent? And NPR asks What does the National Book Award really mean?

Plus, just because I love Stephen King - here's his acceptance 2003 acceptance speech for National Book Foundation's Medal for his Distiguished Contribution to American Letters Award.

Thursday Reviews: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

2011-10-20T08:42:00.001-06:00

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars...it's a first of series and, while beautifully written (because Atwood just does that) I found that I could put the book down a little too easily. So I started it a couple months ago and just now finished.

The Main Idea
Snowman (known in the life-before-the-plague-hit as Jimmy) is trying to survive in a post-human world with a bunch of genetically mutated 'humans' known as the Children of Crake. Food is short, Snowman's resources even shorter, and he is carrying the burden of guilt for his part/non-part in the plague that damned the human race.

The bulk of the novel is dedicated to Snowman's background and how the world has become the shithole that it is: genetically spliced "pigoons" and "rakunks" trying to eat him, threats of infection from bug bites or cuts are very, very real, there's a distinct shortage of alcohol, and for all intents and purposes, he's alone.

The Neat-o Stuff
Atwood has a superb gift for creating a futuristic world that sounds witty and real and disturbing. I didn't think twice about a website called Hottots - a site dedicated to child pornography. Or a cosmetic/self-help corporation compound called RejoovenEsense. Or a coffee company called Happicuppa. These things felt silly enough to be exactly what a marketer would come up with to sell an idea to the public.

Then there are the animals that get spliced together. Rakunks are racoons spliced with skunks and apparently they make interesting pets....

Her ultimate creations, of course, are the Children of Crake. I'm very curious to see how these guys evolve...because they have been designed by Crake: a genius who tried to eliminate certain things like emotion, and disease, and hierarchies in the Children's genetic code. His experiments seem to have worked so far. But now this group is out in this post-plague world with only Snowman to guide them (assuming they need guiding). This is only the first book in the series, but I'm betting they have more human flaws than Crake would've wanted...after all, they were created by a flawed human being.

The Less Neat-o Stuff
Why I give this book only 3.5 stars in real life:

Like I said, it was a little too easy to put down.

Snowman is interesting and flawed. He's a shitty situation. I definitely had sympathy for him. However, the background information that builds the world is done in flashbacks that stretch on for quite a while. There's a situation with his mother, he's got a couple daddy issues, his best friend (Crake) is a budding science whiz who will eventually destroy the world, and his the love-of-his-life, Oryx, is a former child porn victim. Yes, this information is important - but the parent sections felt more navel-gazing because Snowman wasn't really in control at that point.

The story gets waaaay more interesting later (and definitely less put-down-able) in the last third, where Snowman/Jimmy is all grown up, participating in the marketing scheme that'll destroy the world. Plus, the flashbacks coincide with his present life - and he has to escape some devious pigoons, figure out how to fix his damaged foot, and sort out what the hell he's gonna do for the rest of his life (however long or short that may be).

View all my reviews

In Related Margaret Atwood News...

2011-10-19T08:39:00.000-06:00

Atwood's new book on science fiction/speculative fiction In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination is out and about!

For an excerpt: From the National Post - "Margaret Atwood: Utopias in fiction and their failed real-life counterparts"

What Do Chapter Titles Reveal About Your Book (Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake)

2011-10-19T03:25:00.001-06:00

I'm not a writer who titles her chapters - though I've considered it for various projects, including my WiP. J.K. Rowling titled all chapters in the Harry Potter series, Neil Gaiman titled his chapters in The Graveyard Book, and there's a whole host of other authors who title their chapters. It's something I think we grow up with because, well, most books that title chapters are children's books. (Ever notice that?)

In Oryx and Crake (heads up!: totally not a kid's book!) the chapters have titles and I think it works because 1.) the titles don't give much away, and 2.)actually serve to intrigue the reader who has nothing else to go on.

Regarding 1.):
Atwood's titles do not give away anything.

In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, for example, Rowling actually titles a chapter "The Half-Blood Prince." It's like a glaring neon sign to tell readers Skip to here if you don't want the mystery! I know, it's not like she says who the Half-Blood Prince is, but still.

Atwood's chapter titles tend to be one word, and a regular word at that - so it tells you absolutely nothing.

Examples include: "Mango" "Hammer" "Purring"

Titles like these require the writer to explain, through the story, what the hell the significance is.

Admittedly, Oryx and Crake is the first in the series and my previous HP example was the sixth in the series - so there's a certain level of tension going into that new book. Year of the Flood, which I do not have in front of me at present, could have some questionable-give-away-the-story chapter titles.

Regarding 2.):
Atwood's titles are intriguing.

Sprinkled among the seemingly innocuous titles like "Garage" are the more creative bits that Atwood made up and the story is going to have to explain.

Stuff like "Pleebcrawl" "Sveltana" and "Brainfizz." These things mean absolutely nothing, but are interesting words in and of themselves. What do they mean? How are they important?

The juxtaposition of weirdness to normal is intriguing as well. How do you get from "Hike" to "RejoovenEsense"? The promise of the titles leads the reader - even with no other information from the story itself.

To me the table of contents reads like a writing exercise in and of itself. You know - the one the writing teacher always throws at you: "Write a story containing the words perfume, honor roll, and sandwich."

Only Atwood's words seem like way more fun to play with.

Reading, Writing; Writing, Reading: Tuesday Post of Accountability

2011-10-18T08:59:00.000-06:00

The writing
There was far less actual writing this past week, and definitely more thinking about writing. Here's what I thought:

"I'm almost done with Part I! I'm almost done with Part I!"

Here's what I did:

False started the last Part I chapter about four times. First, I started it at the wrong time with the wrong character. Then I started it with just the wrong character. Then I started at the wrong time with the right character. Then I got the right character in the right place at the right time and got five pages in before realizing -

I needed to change the trajectory of the chapter!

...Which was actually pretty exciting because now there's gonna be a lot more action instead of navel-gazing. However, it did make me re-think how I was going to handle the opening chapters of Part II. In a good way because now the characters have something I was trying to force on them before: motivation. I think this adjustment will feel more natural. (And, since I'm sort of cheating and doing Part II as my NaNo, it also gives me a lot to chew on for 50,000 words.)

All this thinking, however, led to small amounts of physical words-on-paper. Ah well. I just need to finish one chapter this month anyway.

The reading
As I was telling my friend Ali just last night: I've read about far too many bodily extremities this past week.

First up: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Awesome story.

Annnd also filled with genetically modified humans whose genitalia turn, um, blue when they're ready to get-it-on. Which was fun, but probably just a little too much information after I'd been exposed to

Second up: Rebellion of the Beasts; or, the Ass is Dead, Long Live the Ass by Leigh Hunt. Written in 1825, you'd think it'd be safe from any kind of extremity mention. Not so. In this pre-Animal Farm send up of monarchy, the animals of the world have rebelled and put a donkey on the throne. Fine.

But, in his description of ridiculous, frivolous royal-court manners...Hunt has a lengthy description of the fine art that is ass-kissing. Literally. Apparently it is a great honor to lick the donkey king's tail. And, apparently, the closer you're allowed to lick near the 'root', the higher-up in society you are.

Gross.

So, there you have my week of writing (very little) and my week of reading (too much of a good thing).

What were you guys up to? Hopefully it was a much more wholesome week all around for you.

Haruki Murakami: 1Q84 Interview

2011-10-17T09:10:00.000-06:00

The author of Norwegian Wood has a new novel out, a nod to George Orwell's 1984, called 1Q84. I came across this interview and he makes a lot of interesting points, about being a writer and about being a person - my favorite being that you have to know what you love:

"So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved. Those three things haven't changed from my childhood. I know what I love, still, now. That's a confidence. If you don't know what you love, you are lost."~Haruki Murakami in an interview with the Guardian's Emma Brockes

Another point he makes that resonated with me is a writer must be physically and mentally strong:

"Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door. So it's literally physical strength to open and shut the door. So if I lose that strength, I cannot write a novel any more. I can write some short stories, but not a novel."~Haruki Murakami in an interview with the Guardian's Emma Brockes

Definitely go check it out.

Tuesday Post of Accountability!

2011-10-11T16:53:00.000-06:00

I almost forgot another Tuesday! Looks like I don't want to be held too accountable....=)

Here's what I managed to finish:

1. Another chapter of The Line! Woo-hoo. I busted this one out pretty fast and it's the happy sorrow of having a draft finished...but knowing that I'm gonna hafta do the whole thing over again. It might even be in the wrong order. Partway through I caught myself thinking that "this chapter probably belongs two chapters ahead of where it is." I could be totally wrong on that. I'm kinda rushing the next chapter too because I'm so freakin' close to the end of Part I! (That's about 50,000 words for anyone who is counting besides me.)

2. Fiddled with the short stories. Still not done. Just fiddling.

3. Realized that there really, really, really is no new thing under the sun. I'm currently reading Writing With Intent by Margaret Atwood. In this book of essays there's a section on The Handmaid's Tale. Handmaid, as I'm sure you know, is a dystopian novel, which is what I'm working on, so I was interested in seeing what Atwood had to say on the subject of writing a dystopian piece.

Turns out, she had a lot to say - and it's all stuff I was already thinking. It was kind of freaky. I could have written the essay if I had anything near Atwood's skill at expression. To give you a clue of how close our thought processes are on the subject, we were both similarly inspired by a quote from our Pilgrim predecessors: "We shall be as a city upon a hill; a light to all nations." I discovered this quote via Sarah Vowell's Wordy Shipmates. I'm sure that Atwood was familiar with President Reagan's speeches regarding the "shining city on the hill" - a riff on the Pilgrim's mission statement, since Handmaid was written in the 80s.

Dammit! I thought I was being at least kind of original. (Our approaches are vastly different, of course, but still - to have someone else articulate your thought process is an odd thing indeed.)

4. I've also started doing revisions to Part I in my head. I think that the structure is there, now I just want to go back and add in the polish-type structure touches. (Pretty, sentence level revisions can wait until later. You know, the get-rid-of-passive voice crap. Save it for the end.)

How're you guys doing?

Writerly Linkage for Your Friday

2011-10-07T13:05:00.004-06:00

How intellectual property affects you: Borders customer database will be merged with Barnes and Noble's database. Here's the word from William Lynch, CEO of BN.

If you didn't know this already, just be aware that in UK it is the tail-end of Children's Book Week. If you're a teacher/librarian, there are no funds for physical packets of activities, but there are resources on the website. And, a side bit of good news for authors of children's books: they still make money. Don't worry: kids books aren't just for kids anymore.

In award news. Congrats to the Giller shortlisters. (Don't know what the Giller is? Check it out.)And speaking of awards...here's why Americans are apparently short-sighted jerks who will never win the Nobel. If that sounded short-sighted and jerky of me, my apologies. There are some interesting points in the article that I think are closely related to the idea of way-too-preachy novels by our great novelists. In a more generous spirit, I offer hearty congratulations to Tomas Transtromer, the Swedish poet who just won the Nobel.

And, finally: While it might not seem like writing news, it is. Nathan Bransford says Don't Be a Jerk. Sure, you might think you're being 'honest' in those reviews you're writing...but if you want Dan Brown's agent, or whoever, you'd best not insult their work.

Progress is Slow, but Inevitable: Tuesday Post of Accountability!

2011-10-04T07:24:00.000-06:00

All right, here's what I've done in the last couple weeks (since I missed last week - Bad Me!)

1. Finished a couple chapters of The Line. Now, last week I totally slacked off and managed to do a whole lot of nothing. My goal for September was to write 100 pages (count 'em) and I managed 60. At first I was all:

"Man! I'm 40 pages off of my goal. That's a lot."

then I talked myself down a bit and was like:

"I wrote 40 pages over what I managed to write in August. That's a lot."

It's all a matter of perspective. Progress was made, so I shouldn't bitch and moan too much. Plus, I'm right at the end of Part I. That means I'm in the fun writing stage known as: Jacking My Characters Up. The sadistic part of all writers loves this stage.

I'm also upping my ante for Nano. I realize that you're supposed to write something new, that you don't really care about, but I want Bigger Word Count. I want to have a rough draft of The Line finished by the end of February - and that's closer than even I think it is....

2. Started two short stories, which I'm really digging. Again, I'm off my goal because I wanted to have one short story done every two weeks. Since I'm halfway through both stories, I guess I'm not technically off my goal that much...especially if I finish both of them in the next couple weeks. It feels good to be working on somehing that can be finished fairly quickly. The work on the novel sometimes feels like a neverending task and it's good to have work in 'different states of repair'.

3. Joined a book group on Goodreads. Our first book is The Count of Monte Cristo. I dig the group. They have these giant books broken up in weekly, totally doable chunks. Since they're all going at the same pace, I feel like I can handle some of these big novels.

Thursday Reviews: Jennifer Government by Max Barry

2011-09-29T10:53:00.000-06:00

Jennifer Government by Max Barry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If McDonalds ruled the world: it would look like this book.

Or, rather, if Nike owned the world.

The Low-Down Dirty:
Welcome to the not-so-far-away future, where everyone is identified by the company they work for. Hence, our trigger-man (in every sense of the word, sort of) is Hack Nike. Hack Nike works for John Nike and John Nike. **No, that wasn't a typo. There are two John Nikes in this book. One is prettier than the other.** John Nike has decided that the greatest marketing scheme of all time includes shooting ten teenagers to make the new shoe, the Nike Mercury, that much cooler and desireable. The Johns ask Hack to handle it.

But Hack's not very good at this and outsources to the Police, who in turn outsource to the NRA -- who kill fourteen teenagers instead.

Now Hack is being hunted by the Government: Jennifer Government.

How it Works:
Barry has pulled off a fast-moving, sometimes confusing feat of how-not-to-run-the-world. Considering the world-wide scope of this story, it's amazing the characters come together as well as they do.

You've got unemployed people (a.k.a. 'entrepeneurs') working on computer viruses to sell to the highest bidder. You've got a government that can't prosecute criminals unless the victims agree to pay for said prosecution. You've got ambitious corporate-ladder climbers that make the Enron assholes look like pansies. It's an exciting set-up for things to go wrong.

The most interesting parts are the people who somehow grow a conscience out of this whole debacle, and there are a surprising amount of them, which bodes well for humanity. Just be prepared, as a reader to keep a mental list of the cast of characters because Barry doesn't slow down to let you catch up. If you lose a person, you're outta luck for a little while until you can get your bearings.

View all my reviews

A Late Post of Accountability

2011-09-21T07:44:00.000-06:00

It's Wednesday! Which really means not much except: get through it.

However, even though I'm not keeping up with the mentor posting and, instead, am focusing on my own writing...means I still need to keep up with the posts of accountability.

So, here's what I've done since posting last:

1. Three chapters of The Line. Which included a re-examination of my structure and I decided to speed things up a little bit. So I upped the timeline. Which had the added bonus of making it more exciting for me to write, and I hope that translates to more excitement (not more confusion) for the reader.

I aim to be finished with Part One by mid-next-month.

2. Started a new short story. Since I'm not blogging as often, I've decided to use that extra time toward mastering the short story - or, at least, writing a few. My goal is one short story every two weeks. I'm defining one short story as the following: A.) A rough draft of something totally new or B.) A full edit of a short story that leads to a finished story.

I'm not totally beating myself up if I miss that, though. Novel first!

3. Sent out six submissiosns. Yay! Fingers crossed.

Anybody else do anything interesting/productive?

Difficult Decision!

2011-09-12T12:25:00.000-06:00

Hey guys, I'm afraid that this'll be my last post for a while. I do have a few already scheduled to go up down the line...but after some heavy consideration, I've decided that I need to spend more time on my writerly writing.

As you can imagine, following up on the mentors and reading/researching, etc. takes a lot of time and energy. While I'm learning a lot, I have discovered that most of my time has been going to writing about writing instead of doing the writing. So, I'm going to pause the blog and revisit how it's structured...but that could be a while.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this stuff! I hope that your writing endeavors are richly rewarded!

Now get to work.

Hang-up Awareness

2011-09-09T10:33:00.000-06:00

After an interesting bout during a critique meeting, a few of my writers group buddies and I discussed our hang-ups in fiction. Basically, we asked ourselves: during a critique is there anything that you, personally, cannot get past or overlook in another writer's submission – and it’s an entirely personal reaction, not something like comma-use or story structure or anything ‘writerly.’

For example, my hang-up is the treatment of women in a story. I have next to zero tolerance for what has been termed ‘Mantasy’ because a lot of the elements of this type of fiction treat women in a questionable manner. For example, rape is often utilized in some manner in the unpublished works I’ve seen – often negatively, but rape will still show up in there somewhere. Because this is such a damaging life-altering event in any woman’s life (I hope to heaven it never happens to any readers here!) I hate seeing it used as anything even remotely erotic.

That’s an extreme example, but my hang-up shows up in smaller ways too. If a story doesn’t represent a balanced woman’s perspective I have a difficult time overlooking it. Sure, not all stories need a balanced perspective – but I really think that Of Mice and Men would’ve benefitted a little. (See? It’s a matter of personal taste.)

Anyway, reading The Handmaid’s Tale I realized something else: I’m also irritated when men are not treated in a well-rounded fashion.

As a woman, I had some strong reactions to this book. The dehumanized portraits of women reduced to a color or a duty. The lack of choice. The fear, the threats, the loss. I felt all of it, so two-hundred and ten points to Atwood for that. But something was bothering me throughout the story and I finally realized that it was the men.

So this Handmaid’s Tale society is male-dominated. The dudes are in charge – which just takes it back a hundred years or so and is not a monstrous stretch of the imagination (woe be the day!). And this is where I hit the flaw in the story: men were in charge for centuries prior to this one. They have a certain amount of logic and dominating capability. In fact, when it comes down to dudes "defending" themselves against women, their “claim” is that they are more “rational” and “logical” rather than “emotional” and “passionate” like the chicks. While I don’t think guys are more rational than women, by any means, I do think that a dominating group has certain rationales that drive it.

In Tale, the rationale for the Handmaids is that they have proven themselves in The Time Before as capable breeders. All of them have had children. The Commanders (dudes in charge) want kids. But the Commanders are stuck with their Wives, have negotiated certain rights and responsibilities with said Wives, and the Wives – some of them – are not able to have children. Therefore the Handmaids are brought into the Commander’s homes and assume getting-knocked-up duties.

Now, here’s my issue: the Commanders are in charge. They have certain requirements – namely children. Sure, they negotiated with the Wives prior to the takeover of the world, but now the world is taken over…why still negotiate with the women who aren’t adding to the quantity of children? Of course, it’s the men themselves that are probably responsible for the infertility…but that didn’t stop Henry VIII. Wouldn’t they start the rules for multiple wives, especially if they’re using Biblical precedent?

Like I said – this is my hang-up. There’s no way that Atwood could’ve made that choice, because that would’ve upset the balance of the story - in fact, it would've changed the story entirely - and there’s so much that is interesting already in Handmaid’s Tale. But I think that’s the key to creating a good story: the writer has to create a more interesting idea in order to help the reader past their own prejudices/biases/hang-ups.

It does make me wonder how much of our hang-ups make it into our own writing.

What are your hang-ups? Do you think that your hang-ups extend from your reading/critiquing into your writing? How can you spot it without it being pointed out by, say, your writing group?

Thursday Reviews!: Plum Island by Nelson DeMille

2011-09-08T08:01:00.001-06:00

Plum Island by Nelson DeMille

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ah...sarcastic narrators. This book's got one.

"I gripped my right ear and twisted, which is how I tune out idiots."

Unfortunately, it's apparent that everyone except John Corey (our fearless, convalescing-from-getting-shot-on-the-job narrator/hero) is an idiot. I sorta wish that his ear had been turned off for some larger chunks of the book -- because the reader has to wade through a lot of red herrings and schtuff to get to the meat of the book.

For example, getting a tour of Plum Island, the spot where world-threatening viruses are studied and possibly stolen, shouldn't be so long and tedious. For an example of that: there are numerous mentions of the ospreys -- but don't get all excited. It's not a clue. Apparently the bird has nothing more to do with the story than a narrative motif, which doesn't quite come off for me. The tour of Plum Island takes 100 pages and by the time you reach the end, witty repartee like

"I had to ask, 'But is the female screwworm fulfilled?'

'She must be,' Zollner replied. 'She never mates again.'

Beth offered, 'There's another way to look at that.'"

is just a little frustrating. You want INFORMATION, not wit, by that point.

That being said, the characters are certainly likeable (you know, except for the ones you're not supposed to like.)

And even the false leads are intriguing. Pirate treasure, virus hunting, international intrigue, historical implications, etc. You just can't get much better than that. The whole thing is an adventurer's wet dream. It's fun to go and figure stuff out along with Corey -- though the turn might be a little to easy to catch. I mean, I got the gist before they left Plum Island...which might explain why a lot of the copious detail felt, well, copious.

View all my reviews

Tuesday Post of Accountability! Writing! Yeah!

2011-09-06T12:47:00.000-06:00

Ah, Tuesday. Time to be held accountable.

Here's what I was up to:

1. Writing. Woo-whee! Finished a chapter and am half through another, for a grand total of twenty-odd pages this past week. Since I figured out the schedule that I need to be on, I've been sticking to it pretty consistently. Of course, I only figured it out last week...so let's see how long I stick to it, yeah?

Another reason I think I've been so productive is that I've figured out not to try too much new. A certain pattern has emerged on the projects I finish and, if that's how I'm finishing, then that's what I need to do, right?

So, my process (my real process, as I figure out every time...so remind me next time I try something too different): hand-write in the cheap notebooks that are so plentiful this time of year - because they're cheap I don't have an ounce of guilt about what should or should not go in them, which plagues me for some reason with the nicer notebooks/journals. Then edit as I type it in later.

Another weird thing I've noticed: when I'm working on a big project I like to use one writing utensil - whether pencil or pen - until said utensil runs out (either the pencil is so short it's awkward to hold, or until the pen runs out of ink). Seems strange to the outside world, I'm sure, but I think I use these as measuring sticks. If I ever feel I'm not making progress...I can just look at the length of my pencil, or my pen will suddenly refuse to write another word. Then I have the distinct triumphant feeling of: Ha! I beat that one!

2. Finished reading some books that I've been monkeying around with. On Goodreads I entered 100 books as my reading goal this year, so when I plotted my writing goals I plotted my reading goals as well. Turns out that I was a tad smidgen too ambitious. So I've revised to eighty books and I've actually scheduled out how much time I'll need to read said books to hit my goal by the end of the year.

Shane looked at me and said "You're a little intense."

Well, writing and reading are pretty much my thing, so it doesn't feel like work. I want to be an expert and all....

3. Learned to pity English teachers (well, actually, all teachers). I'm from a family of teachers, and my husband is one. He's just taken on a job at, basically, a Talented and Gifted charter school that can get kind of intense. He had stacks of stuff to grade this weekend - drafts of paragraphs that he had to mark up and get back to the kids by today. I had mercy on him and helped edit...though I don't know how helpful I was with the rubric schtuff. I'm sure he wasn't the only teacher grading on Labor Day, so let me give a shout-out to my teacher people: I LOVE YOU! YOUR STUDENTS LOVE YOU! KEEP IT UP!!!

Answering Questions with Questions

2011-09-05T09:30:00.000-06:00

Perhaps you noticed in the introductory post on Atwood, during her interview with Bill Moyers, that Atwood answers a lot of questions with more questions. Moyers asks something like “Are the myths true?” and Atwood answers something like “What is true?”

The interviews with Atwood that I’ve found online are all like this. A question gets asked, and she responds with a question. I’m sure this is a very frustrating trait for interviewers. I’m sure they’d like nothing better than to reach across the interview space and smack her around. Because journalists are about getting answers.

But novelists are about asking questions.

Any story, any novel, is a presentation of a question – the What If? – and the exploration of a possible answer: these characters in this situation would do this (maybe). Take a group of novelists and give them a situation and watch them ask a million questions of their characters, of the situation, of the setting, of the ‘theme.’ Whenever they answer, it’ll be with a story, but something interesting will have occurred. Their stories will be riddled with further questions – the story isn’t an answer at all, it’s just a way to ask deeper questions.

In my opinion, Atwood is a strong writer because she asks so many questions.

I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale recently, and that’ll be the example book for this week and probably next week – so just fair warning that I’ll probably ruin some stuff for you if you haven’t read it, but I’ll try to be careful about that.

Imagine that you’re in a group of novelists that has been asked to answer the following questions with a story:

1. Women no longer have rights. Their personal incomes are shut down, they are completely reliant on men for support. How did this happen in the late twentieth century?

2. What does this new society look like? How does it function? Does it look like the late 19th century? Medieval times?

Atwood’s answer to these is The Handmaid’s Tale. Her answer to the first question defines a lot of the structures in the book: everything collapses after a violent massacre of the U.S. government – congressmen are killed, the government can’t really function, and voila – a whole new regime that Atwood actually keeps fairly small and in the early stages, the struggle for control is still ongoing. And her answers to question two (the societal structures and purposes of the Handmaids, the Wives, etc.; clothing based on Mid-East garb; religious totalitarianism) define the other questions that need to be asked.

But what’s really interesting are the questions that The Handmaid’s Tale brings up: Could something like this happen? Has something like this happened already? How is the similar or different to today, or yesterday, or what we’re expecting for tomorrow? How realistic is it?

Good literature makes us ask questions – even today we talk about the questions brought up in, say, Jane Eyre regarding marriage/violence/mental illness. But I also think that good literature is only created when the writer explores questions. Exploring questions is different than answering questions. Exploration is similar to experimentation – you start with a question and then start digging into what the answer could be.

It’s sort of like the new theories of time travel and different lines of time. Say, for example, that a Yankee really did go back to King Arthur’s court. One of the theories circulating at the moment is that the Yankee won’t have changed this timeline…he would have created an entirely new one, so nothing is predictable anymore. Thomas Edison may or may not invent the lightbulb. Columbus may or may not discover America. The entire planet of Vulcan could be destroyed! Stuff changes when different questions are asked.

So, as writers, it’s up to us to ask questions of our work. Would our characters behave this way? Why? Why not that way? How can something work differently? What are my options? What is truth? What am I trying to say? How else could it be said?

***And, speaking of interviews, here's a great one from the New York Times: Margaret Atwood interviewed by Joyce Carol Oates in 1978. (There are fewer questions asked in this one...but she's younger, and younger people know it all, right?)

Mentors Coming Along Right When You Need Them

2011-09-02T06:44:00.001-06:00

Happy September everyone!

With this new month comes a new mentor: Margaret Atwood.

In all honesty, I picked Atwood because my dear, dear friend Deb LOVES her. Before last month I had not read word one of Atwood, so I was going completely based on my friend's suggestion. No other reason. Like most of the mentors this year, I kinda picked her at random.

Still, have you ever had the experience of getting what you need right when you need it?

Earlier this year I had to choose whether to work on one project or another. Strangely enough, the combo of Virginia Woolf and P.G. Wodehouse convinced me that I should write what I'm most interested in (human behavior in extraordinary circumstances) -- after all, neither of them were going after fame or riches. Woolf tried to write beautifully. Wodehouse tried to make people laugh. But both were obviously passionate: as evidenced by Woolf's focused diaries and Wodehouse's sheer output.

Christie and Kerouac have, again strangely, worked together to show me that I needed to write. More words = more output = finished products. No whining. Do it because you love it. Through their notebooks and journals you can see how often they thought about their work (all the time), and how often they were working (all the time).

And now, having read some Atwood and continuing to tear into more of her work, I'm sure that I'm getting more specific information toward my own work. I'm writing a dystopian novel, she is Queen of that particular subject matter. Her work is a gorgeous melting pot exploration of philosophy, religion, sociology, science fiction, fantasy, all mixed with this amazing sense of storytelling structure and language. She's so good that I can't be jealous of her...only stand back in awe.

Of course, with the kind of subject matter she handles there're controversies and debates. The work almost demands a college education to dig into all the -isms that crop up.

I can't wait to dig deeper! For a small taste of her sensibility here's the lady in her own words, in an interview clip with Bill Moyers:

Legacies and Jack Kerouac

2011-09-01T07:54:00.000-06:00

Today, we say farewell to Jack Kerouac as a mentor. ("Farewell, Jack!")

However, just because we have to say goodbye doesn't mean that you can't continue to explore Kerouac's legacy. If you're a writer (and if you're reading this, I bet that you are in some way, shape, or form) there's a more formal place to go if you'd like to participate in part of Jack Kerouac's legacy:

The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

Started by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in 1974 in memory of Kerouac, I know two people personally who have graduated from this particular school (both brilliant writers). You can get a BA in Writing and Lit. A MFA in Writing and Poetics. A MFA in Creative Writing - low residency degree. And there's a summer program too.

But, seriously, how's that for a way to be remembered? Your buddies start a school and name it after you. I don't know if there's much higher praise, and I certainly can't think of it at the moment.

As I sat and daydreamed about my friends' starting a writing school named for me, I ran into an interesting question. For the Kerouac school the website offers this as an explanation of their goals and vision: "The Kerouac School is distinct among academic writing programs because of its lively community of writers who trace their genesis and inspiration from a wide range of aesthetic and social movements, including postmodernism, Buddhist and contemplative teachings, the l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e school of poetry, the New York schools of poetry, the Black Mountain school of poetry, the Berkeley and San Francisco Renaissance, the Black Arts movement, the Beat movement, Surrealism, Dada and the Harlem Renaissance. One tradition that is emphasized is the Outrider lineage—a heritage of counter-poetics operating outside the academic mainstream."

My question: What on earth would my school be based on? The movements listed for the Kerouac school can certainly be seen in his writing. I don't know if there's a Stephen King literary movement - but I'd probably fall into that. Can you make a whole school, dedicated to educating young, newbie writers - college graduates at that - based on the way that you write?

A good question to end on, I think. Daydream Time! Ignore the fact that a lot of us are unpublished wannabes and fast-forward to our successful futures: If there was a school dedicated to teaching your methods/themes/styles/whatevers - what would you want included? What do you want your legacy to be?

Tuesday Post of Accountability!: Making Plans

2011-08-30T08:11:00.000-06:00

It's that accountableness time again! And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

What I have done this week (8/23/2011-8/30/2011):

1. Finished a chapter just in time to hand in a submission to UGWP. May the force be with it, because I don't think there was much force behind it. I was trying to finish up two chapters...but it just wasn't to be. Ah well, I'll get 'em next week.

2. Speaking of getting stuff next week - I did manage to figure out that I can finish the thing up in six months at my current pace...which I'll admit I was disappointed by. But writing and immediately editing is a tough thing and it takes more time than just banging it out. Then those snarky writer's group members find even more stuff that I have to fix. All of which I've already put in my Track Changes file. (That's pretty impressive actually - I just got the critiques yesterday. Can I get a GO JENNY!)

3. I formulated a plan to finish in six months too. Along with looking at what I was comfortably accomplishing plus an extra push, I have it broken down month by month - time to bang out words and then time to revise said words each month until I'm done. (This may or may not mean something because I've formulated many, many, many plans in the past...the plan that I just came up with is, in fact, a revision of my previous plan.)

4. Switched novel notebooks. I know this seems so silly. However, I write faster in the cheapy little spiral notebooks when I'm working on something large like a novel - so I quit fighting it and am ignoring the pretty notebooks...which shall be saved for notes or random jottings or fits and starts. The things we sacrifice for progress.

All right guys, your turn. Whatja do?

Alcoholism, The New Fitness, and Writers

2011-08-29T07:03:00.095-06:00

"At some point, he [Tobias Wolff] says, he would like to tackle another memoir. He recently read a book about literary life in 1940s Dublin and fancies writing something in a similar vein, about the writer's place in 21st-century America. Are there any obvious comparisons? Wolff laughs. 'Well, there's less alcohol than there was in Dublin, that's for sure. In fact, that's been one of the big changes during my time as a writer. We all grew up inspired by men like Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Robert Lowell – all of these great authors who drank too much and led these troubled lives. But then, over a period of about four or five years, the whole culture shifted and the drinking just stopped. So writers in America today are very different. They live on the campus, they're supported by the universities. It's all extreme health with them. It's about energy drinks and running programmes.'" ~ from "Tobias Wolff: 'I still feel as though I'm faking it'" by Xan Brooks, from The Guardian, Thursday 25 August 2011

(Special thanks and shout out to Ajay, who pointed the article out to me!)

Jack Kerouac lived life hard, and his writing reflects this. There are a lot of drugs mentioned in his novels. The number one: alcohol.

There have been enough hard-drinking, alcoholic writers through the centuries to make the hard-drinking, alcoholic writer a cliche. Substance abuse has traditionally been part of the package, right along with depression, manic-depression (bipolar), and suicide.

Kerouac was a poster boy for alcoholic writers everywhere. He died from it. A liver hemmorage, caused by cirrhosis, killed him at the age of 47.

I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty damn young. And it seems like a real waste of talent.

I've heard the arguments/reasonings for alcohol and/or drug induced writing. Stuff like: drinking can relax a writer. Drugs can stimulate a writer. Alcohol and other substances help enter that dream-state where creativity waits, just out of reach.

In my opinion, it all boils down to the idea that a writer has to get out of his own way in order to write.

Do I agree with Wolff's assessment of how writers have changed? That, instead of margaritas, they hit Jamba Juice and ask for an extra shot...of wheat germ?

In my experience, that's exactly what's happened. The Pulitzer prize winners are teaching at universities. A ton of writers of my acquaintance are vegetarians. (I'm also from Colorado, where we have the highest percentage of fitness junkies around...so my impression could be skewed.)

So, why would writers today be more likely to die from a sports related injury than cirhossis of the liver? There are millions of reasons outside of the writing sphere -D.A.R.E. programs, Got Milk?, and anti-meth billboards abound, for example.

But I think there are some changes within the writing world itself that have created these changes.

Here are my completely unresearched, unscientific, unverified theories regarding the shift from Alcoholic-Inspired Writers to Aerobic-Inspired Writers:

1. The alcoholics blew it for the rest of us. After Kerouac and Hemingway and Fitzgerald, do you think publishers want to work with that today?

2. Publishers are big-business. This ties to #1. Here's a truth about big-business: you can't keep up if your eyes aren't focused. These editors are not going to risk their careers on a production company (that's you, writerly brethren) that can't deliver on time. They can't be bothered to track your butt down at the local bar and hope that you have a manuscript tucked in the bottom of your glass. Your head has to be in the game. (Perhaps this self-publishing trend will bring back the glory days of alchies...but I doubt it...readers can see a jack-off as fast - if not faster - than professional editors)

3. Those troubled writers of yesteryear, when faced with today's world, would be slapped on Dr. Phil faster than you can say "Twelve Step Meeting." Society just doesn't put up with that kind of shit anymore. Reading Kerouac is actually irritating because you can see the psychology behind what's going on...and, even as a reader, you know that this kind of behavior can be moderated. There's no need to die for it.

4. Try figuring out "Track Changes" on Word when your drunk.

5. There isn't a whole ton of money in writing now (or then) but today's writers get a lot of funding (as the Wolff article states) through Universities. The competition for those jobs is fierce - maybe fiercer and bloodier and more personal than getting a publishing contract. You think you're gonna beat anyone if you're drunk? Nope. It won't happen. Sure, there are some remnants of the old school, but the liberal arts students-turned-profs are more likely to be doing those shots of wheat-germ than shots of whiskey.

6. Author photos. You cannot be ugly nowadays and be an author. We don't have to be super-model attractive yet, but hot authors on the back of the cover do sell more books than ugly authors. (Like I said, this is a completely unscientific opinion....) We've all seen those anti-meth billboards and, even if you're not all that pretty, you will not sell books looking like those teenagers.

Kerouac’s Genius/Interpreter Theory vs. Jenny’s Genius/Genius Theory

2011-08-24T08:05:00.002-06:00

“Let’s examine the word ‘genius.’ It doesn’t mean screwiness or eccentricity or excessive ‘talent.’ It is derived from the Latin word gignere (to beget) and a genius is simply a person who originates something never known before. Nobody but Melville could have written Moby Dick, not even Whitman or Shakespeare.” ~ Jack Kerouac, “Are Writers Made or Born?”

If you get a chance, you should really read the whole text of “Are Writers Made or Born?” – Kerouac covers a lot of ground in a short space of essay. In it, he talks about the difference between a genius and an interpreter. His argument is that a genius is someone who does something that has never been done before: like Walt Whitman with poetic lines or James Joyce with the stream-of-conciousness thing.

He goes to explain the idea of an interpreter: “I always laugh to hear Broadway wiseguys talk about ‘talent’ and ‘genius.’ Some perfect virtuoso who can interpret Brahms on the violin is called a ‘genius,’ but the genius, the originating force, really belongs to Brahms; the violin virtuoso is simply a talented interpreter – in other words, a ‘Talent.’”

So, in other words, there are genius writers and there are interpretive writers. You can be talented, but still not be a genius.

I don’t know if I entirely agree with this assessment. I’m more inclined to think that there are two types of genius.

The first type is identical to Kerouac’s definition of genius – the guys and gals who put out something that hasn’t been seen before. You know their names: James Joyce, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and even Gertrude Stein’s weird repetition, weird repetition.

However, I have to disagree with his assessment of interpreters not being geniuses in their own right.

In his essay he brings up Thomas Hardy – a genius writer, right? Kerouac thinks so, and I think so, but Kerouac says that Hardy was an originator…and there I have to disagree. I say Thomas Hardy was a kick-ass interpreter.

He wrote long, sprawling, Victorian epics whose subject matter stretched the boundaries of what was ‘decent’ or ‘acceptable’. But he didn’t create the three-volume form that was so popular during the Victorian period. Nor did he develop the serialized epics that were equally as popular…and in which he participated. Nor did he create the idea of writing epic tales of relationships, industrialization, or interfamily conflicts. He’s a genius the same way George Eliot and Charles Dickens are geniuses: working with subject matter, and working within a structure that’s already been developed, and telling the world as they see it, building on the authors that have come before. That’s interpreting something, not creating it.

Now, Kerouac defends Hardy as a genius because, no matter what, Hardy would always write like Hardy – and I see and appreciate that argument. But I’d also argue that a genius interpreter would always sound like him or herself. If we’re going to use some musical examples, yes, Brahms is an originating genius…but he doesn’t sound the same when performed by, say, Yo-Yo Ma. It takes on a new life. You know when Yo-Yo Ma is playing. That skill level, that talent, is a form of genius.

Tuesday Post of Accountability!: Almost, not quite

2011-08-23T08:06:00.000-06:00

It's that Tuesday time again! And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

What I have done this week (8/16/2011-8/23/2011):

1. I was hoping to say DONE with the chapter I'm working on, but I'm not quite there yet. Trying very hard to finish it for this writers group submission go-round. It's getting there....(I've gotta say that these last two chapters have been the most difficult to write so far. I think I'm making it too hard on myself.)

2. Got a list of new markets to submit short stories to, but again didn't quite make the submissions themselves. Ah well. I guess this is the week of "Almost"

3. Did figure out the next few steps in my novel outline, so I know where I'm going. That's a plus. I don't outline a whole piece before I write it -- though I generally know the end spot. So I 'outline' a few chapters at a time. When I first write a chapter outline it'll be something like "A and B fight" and by the time I get to actually writing the chapter, I know what A and B are fighting about and what the outcome needs to be...because generally the next chapter is outlined as "B recovers from fight" or something.

Writing to a Soundtrack

2011-08-22T07:07:00.005-06:00

My proclaimed 'protégé', Oliver, likes to put the “song of influence” (my term, not his) underneath the title of the short story or novel chapter that was inspired by the tune. He has received much feedback on this, ranging from: “don’t do that” to “I can see how that fits.”

He is not the first writer to be influenced by musical stylings. I admit to being pretty influenced by music as well.

Nowadays, when writers talk about ‘soundtracks’ to their work, I think we refer to inspiration instead of interpretation. The music acts as muse (ha! word roots, anyone?) for subject matter, not style. That’s certainly how I refer to it. I make playlists on the iPod with the names of my WIPs as constant re-inspiring material. These songs remind me why I wanted to write the story, or they remind me of a character’s motivation, or something else related to the storyline.

Jack Kerouac is a little different.

Kerouac was heavily influenced by Bop. The jazz stylings were something new, different, and emotionally compelling to the generation following WWII. While I’m sure Kerouac was inspired the same way that Oliver and I are (getting story ideas, etc.), it also influenced how he told the stories.

Kerouac’s spontaneous prose theories – the improvisational styling, the lack of editing, the ‘flow’ of words instead of musical notes – were a writerly interpretation of this musical style. Bop is fast, like Kerouac’s flow of writing. Bop riffs on melody lines, like Kerouac’s story lines – On the Road’s central idea was moving from one place to the other, each place was different, but the road/being on the move acted as a melodic line.

I’ve never written a story or novel based on a musical form. Partly because I’ve never had the training to understand how music forms worked. I can’t tell you the difference between a symphony or a concerto. (If there is one?) I understand bits and pieces of jazz and Beatle’s era rock-n-roll. Mostly, I can tell you what a bridge is…but after that…if it doesn’t repeat in the study of poetry…well, I couldn’t write an entire novel on any of my bits of knowledge. Still, I find the concept an interesting one.

What about looking into a song structure and expanding it into a longer piece, like a short story? Would you get the classic story ‘structure’? The rising action, climax, denouement, etc.? As Kerouac illustrates, when you play around with structure, some not-regular things happen.

And now, some Bop music to 'type' to...here's some Dizzy Gillespie

Don’t Make It Too Hard On Your Reader

2011-08-19T07:31:00.000-06:00

Okay, writing a book in three days and three nights is a feat. It probably requires amphetemines of some kind. Or copious amounts of Vivarin. It also requires keyboarding skills that most secretaries would envy.

I think most of us would agree that some editing would be involved.

Kerouac did not think as most of us.

He banged out The Subterraneans in the aforementioned three day—three night psycho writing frenzy. And he didn’t edit it too much either, according to popular record. While this has certain interesting advantages (Ah, the satisfaction of being done)…and while there are interesting linguistic stylings that occur (as shown on Monday)…it sure is hard to read.

He wrote the book a lot faster than I’m reading it, that’s for sure.

I’m still pushing through it. It still has interesting bits, fascinating bits even. But I find that I read a sentence over and over and over again and I’m still not 100% sure what’s going on some of the time. Since his sentences are paragraph-length with minimal or creative punctuation, that’s a lot of rereading only to get the overview, ya know?

What’s the last book that you struggled through? Was it worth it in the end?

Tuesday Post of Accountability!: Mini-Scenes and Track Changes

2011-08-16T07:42:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Tuesday! And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

What I accomplished this week (08/09/2011-08/16/2011) :

1. First and foremost -- I got the oldest kid to school starting last Thursday (where did the summer go?). Youngest kid and I are renegotiating the terms of staying at home alone together. "No, you can't watch television all day just because older brother is away and can't play with you."

2. Am halfway through next chapter of work in progress. After reading The Help, I have been aware of what I'm calling 'mini-scenes' that last a few paragraphs, fill in some gaps in the story and then continue along their way. Say what you will about the racial aspects of that novel (read this, I think it's a pretty good review), Stockett is a very good 'mini-scener.'

Now, the thing to understand with mini-scenes, as I'm learning, is that you can really set them anywhere. Mainly you just have to ask "What's the character thinking about?" and then think about what setting would trigger it. Since the focus is just on a mini-epiphany, or a mini-struggle in the character's life, the field is wide-open. Which is both freeing and frustrating at the same time because you wonder "Where would be best?"

The chapter that I'm working on now is a sort-of series of mini-scenes -- it has information that needs to be covered in order to move forward, but didn't quite serve a large, cohesive scene. Plus, I want to show a little bit of time passage, so again, the mini-scene is coming in to do some heavier lifting.

Until I caught on to the concept of a mini-scene, I was completely floored on how to write this chapter. So, if you find yourself stuck...you may wanna try them too. Don't be afraid of writing a section that's just a few paragraphs long. Throw in some white space and call it good.

3. I also created a Track Changes version of all the critiques I received last month. As I was stuck on the above-mentioned chapter, I decided that reviewing people's notes and typing it all in to one document would let me see problem areas.

Luckily, all of the problem areas boil down to one chapter. So at least I know where to hit when I do the big revisions. For now, I'm plunging through and trying to finish a rough draft by the end of October, so no time for MAJOR revisions unless it absolutely changes the outcome of the story (as it is, the critiques mainly wanted more POP and some clarifying details, which doesn't change the overall information presented in the problematic chapter...so I don't have to tear it up this second).

And by the way, I hate Track Changes. I did that so when I'm all finished I will have to retype everything in a clean draft. That's the easiest way to catch all the glitches anyway, may as well force myself to do it the right way instead of the easy way, ya know?

Spontaneous Prose: What it Looks Like

2011-08-15T07:25:00.003-06:00

There’s a list Kerouac jotted down that is often copied. Called “Belief &Technique for Modern Prose,” it is thirty pieces of advice for writers who want to write spontaneously and Beat-like.

A couple of my favorites tidbits:

#1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy (because I love the idea of writing for your own joy)

and

# 29. You’re a Genius all the time (which is just a nice thought, ya know?)

The items that concern me today are: #13 Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition and #15 Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog.

It’s hard to define these kinds of terms – what does Kerouac mean? How do you know if you’re grammatically inhibited? Does interior monolog mean no dialogue? How can any story be written in such a manner?

Mostly the answer to all of these questions is: write FAST. Don’t THINK. Kerouac wrote very quickly, inspiring the famous quote from Truman Capote regarding Kerouac’s writing style: “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” And a big part of me sides with Capote. (Most of me, actually.)

That’s not to say that, as writers, we shouldn’t experiment.

Writing fast, keeping to internal thoughts, and removing English-teacher-inspired inhibitions has an interesting effect. There’s a blurring of lines. There’s an additional layering of meaning – because an adjective or an adverb can apply to multiple things. It reads more poetically, and has a lot in common with stream-of-conscience writing.

Here’s an example from Kerouac’s The Subterraneans, which I’m reading right now and, to me, comes across as the most free of Kerouac’s prose I’ve read yet (just be forewarned, this excerpt is a little long so you can get the feel of it):

“Out of the bar were pouring interesting people, the night making a great impression on me, some kind of Truman-Capote-haired dark Marlon Brando with a beautiful thin birl or girl in boy slacks with stars in her eyes and hips that seemed so soft when she put her hands in her slacks I could see the change – and dark thin slackpant legs dropping down to little feet, and that face, and with them a guy with another beautiful doll, the guy’s name Rob and he’s some kind of adventurous Israeli soldier with a British accent whom I suppose you might find in some Riviera bar at 5 AM drinking everything in sight alphabetically with a bunch of interesting crazy international-set friends on a spree – Larry O’Hara introducing me to Roger Beloit (I did not believe that this young man with ordinary face in front of me was that great poet I’d revered in my youth, my youth, my youth, that is, 1948, I keep saying my youth) – ‘This is Roger Beloit? – I’m Bennett Fitzpatrick’ (Walt’s father) which brought a smile to Roger Beloit’s face – Adam Moorad by now having emerged from the night was also there and the night would open – ”

I never said it was easy to read. The whole book is like this. No commas = no breathing.

But let’s take a look at a couple of the effects….

Without the pesky commas, a line like “with stars in her eyes and hips that seemed so soft when she put her hands in her slacks I could see the change” gains multiple levels of meaning. Since the stars refer to her eyes and then syntactically continues on with no break to her hips, it reads like there are stars in her hips. That’s an interesting image.

By putting her hand in her slacks, Kerouac adds a sexual image with ‘change’…even though it also refers to coin change in her pocket.

And ‘night’ in the last sentence gets multiple uses as well. The reader hears “emerged from the night” “the night was also there” and “the night would open” all in one fragment – and the first two ‘nights’ are in the same position in the sentence, so you also get the longer image of “emerged from the night was also there” when it’s all smashed together…and it all refers to the character of Adam Moorad still.

Multi-layers.

Fun, huh?

I didn’t even go into Kerouac making up new words (‘birl’ for a girl who wears pants or ‘slackpant’ to describe the clothing).

Or his use of repetition of “my youth, my youth, my youth”…and then his flat out, kinda spaced-out “I keep saying my youth” as if the reader didn’t notice.

Thank God this is a rather simple boy-meets-girl-they-break-up story. Otherwise my head would be spinning more than it already is with this book.

Should you like to hear all of Kerouac’s “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose” here ya go:

Ben Hecht's Interview of Jack Kerouac

2011-08-12T06:43:00.007-06:00

I seem to have talked a lot this week, so now I'm gonna let Kerouac talk, scabs and all.

This is the second portion of an interview held just before/immediately after the release of The Dharma Bums, which we've been talking about this week. In this interview Ben Hecht and Kerouac talk about Buddhism vs. Christianity, a brief mention of The Dharma Bums as the new book out, the "happiness of Negroes" (full disclosure: I have to say that I'm embarassed for both of them - white 1950s guys that they are, I cringed at the generalizations made), and world peace.

The interview is interesting both for the interviewee and the style of the interview. It's not quite McCarthy-esque...but it certainly has the flavor of the time period....

Thursday Reviews!: The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac (A Mentor Review!)

2011-08-11T07:49:00.000-06:00

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If I'd read this alone on a mountaintop, or while camping, or just out in nature somewhere I'd probably've given this four stars. The descriptions of nature, the out-and-out enthusiasm for the outdoors, and the romanticizing of living out of a backpack (which, for an indoor girl like me, is a hard sell) were the most engaging sections for me.

That and the descriptions of food were somehow entrancing. Who knew pork and beans could be so effective as a literary presentation? And I'm not being sarcastic either. After Kerouac describes the cold during the mountain climbs, or the extensive traveling without rest, the descriptions of food seem to rejuvenate the reader as well as the lead characters. It's a strange thing and I can't think of a book that comes close to describing food in such a satsifactory way. (Odd praise, I know, but it worked for me.)

Had the nature and backpacking and food been the center stage for this novel, it would've been just fine for me.

My issue comes with the pop-Buddhism. It really felt like Ray (the main character/Kerouac doppelganger) was an enthusiastic guy trying to understand something that he wasn't quite getting. He knew the terminology, knew some Buddhist practices and tried to apply it in his life...but there's a section where Japhy (the Ultimate Dharma Bum) calls him out and says that Ray is just putting everything into words. And that is exactly right -- I practically cheered when I got to that point. Ray is just describing and describing being "enlightened" but he never actually is, and doesn't see it, and it gets annoying.

Really, it's Ray's childlike enthusiasm and joie de vivre that make the pop-philosophy forgiveable.

Side note -- I found it hilarious that Alvah Goldbook, Allen Ginsberg's doppelganger, was the poet to protest the Buddhism the most. Funny, because Ginsberg was the most faithful of Buddhists after Kerouac introduced him to the religion...his funeral was in a Buddhist temple. There's just no predicting....

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Haiku

2011-08-10T06:58:00.003-06:00

Haiku is defined in Jack Myers’s The Portable Poetry Workshop as: “A Japanese lyric form composed of three lines totaling 17 syllables: 5, 7, 5 respectively.”
Well, if you ever want to understand the terminology of poetry, you can’t do much better than this book. If you want to know the definitions for anything from “enjambment” (“A line ending whose syntax carries over to the next line”) to homolochos (“A classic, stock physical-comedy character of the buffoon type”) Myers has the literary and poetical definitions for ya. But – and no offense to Mr. Myers, who is a former Texas Poet Laureate and two time NEA fellowship recipient – the definitions didn’t quite cover enough for me as I worked through one particular section in Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums.

In the scene, Ray is mountain climbing with his buddies Japhy and Morley. As they climb along they are inspired to compose haikus on the spot. Stuff like: “Talking about the literary life – the yellow aspens” – from Japhy. My first thought as I read was That’s terrible. And I’d tolerated plenty of sorta-Buddha babble from these guys up to that point.

Still, while I may have disliked “Rocks on the side of the cliff…why don’t they tumble down?” – from Ray – I appreciated Japhy’s explanation of what a haiku is: “A real haiku’s gotta be simple as porridge and yet make you see the real thing.” That definition makes a heck of a lot more sense to me than a breakdown of syllables-per-line.

And the way the characters composed these haikus is very telling about the Beat generation of writers as well.

In his 1974 essay “On the Road: Notes on Artists and Poets 1950-1965” poet Robert Creely describes his experiences as a poet during the Beat time period and it’s surprising similar to Kerouac’s life experience: “I had gone through a usual education in the East, had witnessed in shock the terrifying conclusion of humans killing one another, had wobbled back to college, married (mistakenly) in the hope of securing myself emotionally, had wandered into the woods…and I was returned without relief again and again to the initial need: a means of making articulate the world in which I and all like me did truly live.”

Being able to articulate the world sounds like a pretty tall order to me – but I think, as Japhy points out in his haiku definition, that articulation doesn’t need to be complicated. Haiku is not complicated. It’s as “plain as porridge” but it is articulate. It says a lot with very little.

Japhy quotes a haiku by Shiki: “The sparrow hops along the veranda with wet feet.” He goes on to explain why that’s a great haiku: “You see the wet footprints like a vision in your mind and yet inthose few words you also see all the rain that’s been falling that day and almost smell the pine needles.” What Japhy describes is the articulation of the haiku.

Turns out, this is one of my favorite scenes in The Dharma Bums, partly because it got me thinking about poetry, which I enjoy – dry terminology and all – and partly because of the statement it makes about the Beat writers. The scene functions articulately.

The Beats didn’t worry about haiku syllabics (Kerouac doesn’t even break the haikus into lines). These guys were just experiencing the world and playing with words at the same time. Creely says in his essay: “any form, any ordering of reality so implied, had somehow to come from the very condition of the experience demanding it.” The scene articulates the idea of spontaneous, experimental composition. The haiku form within the scene is Kerouac’s example.

It’s great, layered, which I dig.

Tuesday Post of Accountability!: Reading Should Count As Writing

2011-08-09T11:23:00.000-06:00

Pop Buddhism

2011-08-08T06:50:00.001-06:00

This weekend, I finished reading The Dharma Bums – the book that apparently started the Backpack Revolution.

First, My Problem:

As the title implies, there are a plethora of Eastern-religion references throughout Dharma Bums. My problem was, and remains, that I had the toughest time believing Ray Smith, the main character, really understood the tenets of Buddhism. Sure, he meditated. Sure, he could list the Four Noble Truths. Sure, he bought into the idea of Enlightenment.

But he seemed to use all these things as an excuse to sit on his butt and do nothing. It’s not an attractive characteristic.

He used Buddhism to excuse his life rather than to live his life – does that make sense? This kind of pop-philosophy annoys me.

Second, Pop-Philosophy is Exactly What I’m About to Do:

After all, Kerouac’s my mentor this month, right? Gotta learn from the man. So, without further ado, I give you:

The Three Temptations of the Buddha as They Relate to Writing

1. Desire: It’s actually referred to as 'lust' in the story…but I’m adjusting things to make my point.

What on earth can desire have to do with writing? Well, it speaks to motivation, as do the other two temptations that I’m gonna talk about. I don’t know about you guys, but every now and then J.K. Rowling’s paycheck pops into my head. (As do Stephen King’s , James Patterson’s, and Nora Roberts’s). This seems harmless on the surface – after all, my logical brain knows the odds of getting the dough these writers bring in is astronomically low.

But my family is a single income family – and that single income is a public school teacher. (I know it’s forboden to discuss money, politics, and religion…but apparently I don’t follow rules very well.)

My husband and I cut a deal, known in the writing-type world as the Dean Koontz Deal. Meaning: my husband will bring home the bacon for a few years while I focus exclusively on my writing. I noticed, at the beginning of the summer, that a certain desperation had crept into my writing. It made me sit down religiously. I wrote word after word after word (and don’t get me wrong, they were pretty good words, if I do say so myself). But I panicked that I wasn’t moving fast enough. I didn’t need to be a millionaire, but I needed to have some income. I really, really, really wanted this to work and I wanted it to work FAST.

That’s desire. Sure, an income would be nice. But that kind of pressure...that kind of Want, the kind that feels like Need, is very, very unpleasant to write with.

2. Fear: Pretty straightforward this one, isn’t it? My desire could certainly be construed as fear – how to feed the kids? How many cars does a family need? Think of everything I lose in this game!

Fear can certainly be used as a motivator – fear of missing a deadline, fear of not hitting a word count, fear of being stuck. I think, a lot of times, writers just write because they fear the silence of a blank page. What if I never write again? Must put down WORDS! Must EDIT NOW! Because if I stop writing for even a second it means I’m Not A Writer.

Then, what if what you put down isn’t good enough? That’s one that stops writers. It stops me often enough. I’m not even comparing myself to anyone. Speaking of comparing…

3. Others: You can’t do it for Them. You can’t do it for your writer’s group…can’t try to impress them. You can’t do it to impress your mom, or to show your high school ex-boyfriend how you’re better off without him. In other words: You can’t do it for other people – not to beat them down with your bad-ass-ness or to bask in the glow of their love.

This one hasn’t been as much of a problem for me…maybe because my mother has hated all of my stories (she’s one of those very specific like/dislike kinda readers) and I only ever had to do it because I enjoyed writing. Though, I won’t lie: I sure do look forward to praise.

Now, How to Avoid Temptation?: The Middle Road

The middle road for all writers, in my-own-self’s opinion, is that you should always write for your own enjoyment. Maybe this is desire, but I don’t think so. This is a concept that has to be internalized, and accepted whenever a writer is ready. It’s an easy thing to say: “Just write because you like to write and don’t think about all that other shit.” But harder to put into practice.

One thing I thought of to help internalize this idea is a play on the concept of the Under The Bed Book. The idea is that Bad Books go under the bed, never to see the light of day. These are the books you never show anyone, you accept the lesson and move on.

I’m gonna shift that around a little and say: Put a Good Book under your bed. Put away a book that you’re proud of. Put away a book you think could be saleable. Just let it go. You created it, now keep it for you. You keep the lessons learned, and you don’t have to hear anyone ever say a bad thing about that book, and you never have to care if you would’ve made millions on it.

“Oh, yeah, Jenny," you say. "You putting your money where your mouth is?”

I am actually. I’m currently working on a project that I’m going to keep to myself. I'm working on it right along with a project that I’m going to let out when it’s ready. I’ve had to do this for myself, to give myself permission to not feel that crazed desperation looming over me. I had to remind myself to write for myself.

If you can do that without doing all the work of writing a not-to-be seen novel, kudos to you! Keep doing what you’re doing.

I’m still working on it.

Where to Put the Good Blonde?

2011-08-05T09:23:00.000-06:00

In Good Blonde and Others, the opening selection is about Kerouac, hitchhiking back from Mexico, catching a ride in a brand-new Lincoln Mercury driven by a beautiful blonde in a bathing suit. Throughout the section, Kerouac wonders who on Earth would ever believe that he’s so lucky?

Apparently, he didn’t think anyone really would, or he thought the section too lengthy, or he thought some other kind of editorial thing about it…because it remains as a fragment. He mentions the blonde in the second chapter of The Dharma Bums (imagine my interest when it suddenly appeared as I was reading along), but she is a brief, flitting literary construction to get him from point A to point B:

“hitchhiking the rest of the way from Santa Barbara in one long zipping ride given me, as though anybody’ll believe this, by a beautiful darling young blonde in a snow-white strapless bathing suit and barefooted with a gold bracelet on her ankle, driving a next-year’s cinnamon-red Lincoln Mercury, who wanted Benzedrine so she could drive all the way to the City”

An almost-paragraph is all that’s left of some twenty odd pages of writing.

So, why not put in everything and make it a longer chapter?

This has something to do with the tone of the book The Dharma Bums. The main guy, Ray Smith (another Kerouac doppelganger), is all about enlightenment…and sex doesn’t enter into it. Now, I’m not psychic, but I bet Kerouac had that figured out. Rule of thumb: don’t put in lengthy sections that have nothing to do with your theme/point/story. Episodic as it is, The Dharma Bums, like On the Road, is a focused presentation of a period in Kerouac’s life – not everything is gonna make it in.

A lot of good writers do this: write way more than they would ever need. I read somewhere that Amy Tan wrote almost a thousand pages for The Joy Luck Club. The end product is around three hundred pages. That’s seven hundred pages of material that didn’t get in there. Same with Kerouac. "Good Blonde" is a twenty page episode cut down to about a paragraph.

How do you know what material is extraneous material? How do you know where to put the Good Blonde? Or do you even utilize your Good Blonde section at all?

A few things that I’ve thought of to help in the decision making process:

1. Finish your story…all thousands of pages of it…and take a real hard look to see what it’s really about. If it is about a mother’s love, do you really need the main character to be married five times and to focus so much on husband number three? Probably not. Stuff like that can be pared down. Throw it on a scrap pile to be cannibalized later into a short story or something.

2. Is the extra material all front-loaded? If it’s taking your forever to get to the real story – like a hundred pages or so – you may be doing what they call ‘a running start’. Most of the material you think of as character-building, or background, is extra. The Good Blonde portion of The Dharma Bums is up front. If Kerouac had spent twenty pages telling us about this unbelievably lucky pick-up he would have taken an extra twenty pages to get Ray (main character) and Japhy together – and that’s the central relationship in the story, so the Blonde is just a run-up. You can cut those. Scrap pile 'em.

3. Conversely, does the denouement of your story go on forever, like Lord of the Rings? Similar principles to #2 apply.

4. Can characters be combined? Do you really need enlightenment scenes with three different characters? Why not smush it all down to one scene and one character? If you find yourself repeating insights or details, remember: the reader will get it the first time! You’re not adding in new or essential information at that point and the scene, as well as the characters that go with it, can probably go.

Thursday Reviews!: Good Blonde and Others by Jack Kerouac (A Mentor Review!)

2011-08-04T07:47:00.001-06:00

Good Blonde by Jack Kerouac

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Best part about this book:

The sections where Kerouac talks his writing style. There are two selection/chapters that cover this "spontaneous prose": "The Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" and "Belief & Technique for Modern Prose." Both are kind of checklists; but how-to lists might be more accurate. Interesting, downright fascinating...though I'm not 100% sure what to do with stuff like #14 in "Belief": "Like Proust, be an old teahead of time." But I can certainly get behind #29: "You're a Genius all the time." (I tell myself this everyday. Heehee.)

And speaking of genius -- the essay "Are Writers Made or Born?" is AWESOME. Basically he separates the idea of great talents (what he refers to as interpreters...like a great violinist is not Mozart, for example, even though he/she plays well) and geniuses -- the Mozarts -- are people who create something new that hasn't been seen before. Worth reading even if you read nothing else in this collection.

Other stuff that was pretty good:

His arguments for Beat and what it is. His definitions are meant to clarify a lot of the philosophy of the Beat movement. I don't know if they clarify too much...but I think I caught a few details that I didn't know before. Probably one of his most interesting observations in "On the Beats" is "The dope thing will die out. That was a fad, like bathtub gin."

The stuff you have to wade through:

Sports. While he makes some really great arguments for why baseball strategy (walking the best hitters, etc.) makes for dull games and players who don't know how to swing for the fences...for the most part the sports sections are dull. The games and seasons he writes about are long gone, and the immediacy of a sports article doesn't reverberate through the ages like we would like. Even for a writer like Kerouac.

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Tuesday Post of Accountability!: Getting Stuff Nailed Down

2011-08-02T07:01:00.001-06:00

It's Tuesday again! And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

Stuff I have accomplished this last week:

1. Not much as far as word counts. There was a large societal-world-building conversation on Saturday night between my brother, the spouse, and myself. They asked really important questions and I was proud to say that I had the answers to a lot of them. But then Shane hammered away at something that's a fairly large problem. (I'm not sure whether marrying someone smarter than yourself is a good thing yet....) Luckily, he voiced his issue early on and I can easily, easily fix it moving forward.

Also got UGWP critiques back. For the most part I was super-happy about the questions that were asked, and only had one brief moment where I felt myself resisting an idea...but then I thought to myself: Aren't they just pointing out a section that you were worried about yourself? And I had to talk myself down from being defensive. (I always need a day or two after a critique to digest and Stop Being Defensive.)

Though the critiques of my work, and a couple of my fellow members' work as well left me with the question: How much do you trust that the writer is doing what they mean to do? This is a bigger question in a novel chapter critique, since as a reader/critiquer you often don't have the whole thing in front of you. With a short story you have the end, know the arc, and can adjust accordingly, with novel chunks you have no such luxury unless the writer tells you what's gonna happen. I realized that some of my critiques of others' work was based in the idea that I wasn't trusting the author to do what he/she was doing. For example, last session I gave one of my writer buddies a critique that switched the opening structure of the story around...and while I think a great deal of it can still work, now that I've read more of it, some of that critique isn't in line with what he's doing...so I don't feel as useful as I could've been.

2. Read quite a bit. Finished Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and made a good dent in The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. Something good that I know about my process: I have to just shut down and read sometimes, and I try not to beat myself about that. Especially when I'm reading things that give good inspiration to continue my own work.

How're you guys doing?

Writing the Windblown, Schizophrenic World

2011-08-01T06:18:00.005-06:00

I came across this fascinating book called Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954 -- which covers the period of time when he wrote his first novel The Town and the City and his second On the Road.

Basically, it's a log of his word counts, which are insanely high (but we talked before about how much he writes) and his emotions as he writes. Check this out:

"This thought, concerning the change in my writing which now seems so important, came --: that it was not lack of creation that stopped me before, but an excess of it, a thickening of the narrative stream so that it could not flow. Yet tonight I'm really worried about my work. First is it good now? -- and will the world recognize it as such. The world isn't so dumb after all; I realize that from reading some of my unfinished or unsold novels: they are just no good. I will eventually arrive at a simplicity and a beauty that won't be denied -- simplicity; morality; and a beauty, a real lyricism. But the now, the now. It's getting serious. How do I know if I'm reaching mastery?"~Kerouac, entry dated November 10

I know, right? If he writes this way in his journal, obsessing about the beauty of words and worrying about mastery...well, he was probably gonna accomplish something, right? There are pages of this stuff in this book. Kerouac goes through the writerly schizophrenia that's in all of us writers.

I'm a master!
I suck.
I'm the greatest that's ever lived!
How will I ever measure up to Dostoyevski?

At this very moment I'm trying to keep my schizophrenic self from wondering if I'll ever be any good because Kerouac wrote gorgeous stuff in his journals and mine read more like this (back in March, during P.G. Wodehouse's mentorship):

"Speaking of...the thought process for these last two weeks was to fill the old bean with stories and movies (visual stories) but I'm avoiding writing I think. Spending way too much time online and not enough on The Line. I think I'm scared. No. I am scared. This is a big deal idea that I'm super-proud to have come up with. But instead of being excited to drive forward, I am stressed about whether I'll make it work. I'm worried that I'm not good enough. yeah, it's not success I'm worried about. I'm worried that I finish this book and it'll have something so wrong in its make-up that I'll have to totally re-do it all. I'm going to try to revise every 100 pages or so to try to set the writing stronger. I'd really like to do some short stories too. Yi." ~Me, undated entry

Yes, I'm comparing my journaling to Kerouac's and worrying about whether or not it's good enough. Talk about schizo.

I think the fear comes, no matter how hard we working, because we wonder if we're good enough, if anyone will ever notice, and whether the work is worth noticing at all. It's something we all have to work through, even Kerouac.

(Or maybe that's just my fear and you guys are all fine and dandy.)

The answer is the same regardless of whether your fearful or not: write and find out what happens.

The Road Trip Story: Kerouac is Not a Beginner

2011-07-29T06:44:00.000-06:00

On the Road is a road trip story.

(Any objections?)

I'm sure the influence of this experimental novel, with its meandering structure, has been the bane of many a writing teacher's existance. I'm basing this assumption on the fact that my writing teacher, David Keplinger, took the time during a class to discuss road trip stories and the dangers of them.

It boils down to this: very rarely do road trip stories have a point.

Keplinger talked about how the story often followed similar lines.
A.) troubled boy/girl begins adventure by leaving college/family/social structure behind
B.) troubled boy/girl has adventures with random people (promiscuous sex, drugs, car breaking down, some scene where people are stuck in the rain)
C.) troubled boy/girl has some epiphany that leads them to realize they've left their true love/future/hopes somewhere
D.) troubled boy/girl manages to get to the home of true love/future/hopes and goes to knock at the door
E.) dramatic moment: troubled boy/girl knocks on door...and rest is left up to reader's imagination

Keplinger's argument was that the story started with the knock on the door. That's where the conflict comes in. Sure, the story had some events and some really trying moments...but episodes and conflicts are not the same thing.

On the Road definitely is episodic. But Keplinger's argument is intended for beginning writers who have all the subtlety of jackhammers. Beginning writers don't understand what conflict is, don't understand how to resolve it, and don't know how to tell something in a scene.

Kerouac, when he wrote On the Road, was not a beginner. It's clear in his prose alone and it becomes clearer when you see how he handles the novel as a whole. Episodic? Yes. But that is part of his point. The episodes, if you look at them, become the conflict itself.

Sal goes off on his own for trip. Sal and Dean go off on another trip. Sal and Dean go off on more trips. Trip, trip, trip. Episode, episode, episode. Readers get irritated; they go What Is The Point Of All This?

The point is just that: this is an exhausting lifestyle. This is an exhausting pace. Cars run out of gas. Wives get fed up. Eventually, Dean will go off on his own, leaving the lout, Sal, behind...which was Sal's greatest fear in the opening of the book. In the scroll version of On the Road, Kerouac says that had he not been married, he would have gone with Dean again -- but instead goes to a theatre show he doesn't want to go to, with his wife. That shows a shift in Kerouac/Sal's attitude...even if all he wants is to go with Neal/Dean and live that exhausting lifestyle.

Kerouac didn't need a knock on the door to end the story. The road keeps going, but the story is done.

Stories like that are not for the faint of heart and they are not for beginners, like I was (and still am...) when Keplinger talked about what not to do.

Well, I say, if you want to write a road trip story -- try it and see what happens. Just be aware that for a road trip story to work, the conflict, the real conflict has to be worked out on the road.

Lightning, the Lightning Bug, and the Price of Some of Kerouac's Revisions

2011-07-27T10:39:00.001-06:00

**Be forewarned, adult language/content**

Mark Twain once said something like (I don't have the direct quote in front of me): "the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."

Agree or disagree, Twain has a point. To illustrate, I give you two passages from On the Road -- the 1957 version and the Original Scroll version.

In the following section of the book, Kerouac has just offered to stay overnight on an old boat. (Character names are different in each passage. For clarity purposes just realize that Remi=Henri and Lee Ann = Diane.) Note that the character of Lee Ann/Diane is naked and sunning herself on the boat deck. Kerouac's character is looking at her from above, on the poop deck.

Here is the first one, from the 1957 version of On the Road:

"Remi was astounded; his admiration for me doubled. 'Sal, I'll pay you five dollars if you have the nerve to do that. Don't you realize this thing may be haunted by the ghosts of old sea captains? I'll not only pay you five, I'll row you out and pack you a lunch and lend you blankets and a candle.'
'Agreed!' I said. Remi ran to tell Lee Ann. I wanted to jump down from a mast and land right in her, but I kept my promise to Remi. I averted my eyes from her."

Now, same passage in the Scroll version:

"Henri was astounded; his admiration for me doubled. 'Jack I'll pay you five dollars if you have the nerve to do that. Don't you realize this thing may be haunted by the ghosts of old seacaptains. I'll not only pay you five I'll row you out and pack you a lungh and lend you blankets and candle.' 'Agreed!' I said. Henri ran to tell Diane. He was amazed at my courage. I wanted to jump down from a mast and land right in her cunt, but I was true to Henri's promise. I averted my eyes."

You'll note some obvious differences: There are no paragraph breaks in the Scroll version. There are fewer commas in the Scroll version. Kerouac fixed the "I was true to Henri's promise" -- where it sounds like Henri made a promise instead of Jack, in the 1957 version. He also cut the scroll line about Henri being impressed by his courage in the 1957 version. (Probably so he didn't sound quite so egotistical to the reader.)

Now I'm going to do something I never thought I would do, and defend the word "cunt." (You have no idea how much I hate this word.)

'Kay. So in the edited, 1957 version, Kerouac utilizes the phrase "in her" to illustrate the sexual desire he felt for the naked woman on the deck. Fine. It's straightforward, still pretty offensive, and gets across the point that he is horny. Agreed? So, all in all, he has managed to convey what the original scroll conveys.

However, that's also a phrase utilized in romance novels when the couples make love. In today's terminology, it can have romantic undertones.

Cunt has no such ties. When Kerouac uses the word cunt, there is no romantic undertone, there is no respect, it is all about sex. And not just sex. Fucking. Yep, another strong word. Again, which cuts out the emotional attachment that some readers might want to put in. Now the reader understands that there are no romantic undertones, an underlying element of disrespect and objectifying the woman -- so we understand something else basic about this dude's character -- as well as all the things that 'in her' accomplished: offensive and horny.

So...the nasty word in this case is more clear, more in tune with the character's wants and desires, and is definitely, definitely more striking to the reader. Why not just slap the reader with a dead, wet fish to wake them up? It is effective.

Another thing changes with that one word: the tone. The 1957 excerpt almost feels Peter Pan-esque. The focus seems to stay on sea captains and ghosts and boys playing around. Even the 'in her' seems more like flying playfulness. Not so much in the scroll version. We are reminded that these are grown men who perform grown-up acts and can cause grown-up pain. It raises the stakes.

All of those things were edited out, and it still remains a classic. Yet, again citing my unscientific Goodreads reviewer survey -- more readers gave more stars to the Scroll version. Could it be because the 1957 version had the ugly words, or ugly thoughts, which are very effective when used correctly, edited out of it? I think it's a good indication.

Tuesday Post of Accountability!: Critique Week!

2011-07-26T06:23:00.000-06:00

It's Tuesday again! And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

Stuff I have accomplished this past week:

1. Critiqued my writing group's work in an experimental way.

There I was, reading one of my buddies submissions while peddling away on the stationary bike. (It's hard to make marks that way.) -- And no, that wasn't the experiment. But it's where I came up with the experiment. When I was done sweating away literally and figuratively, I go to my husband and say, "Spouse, how about we take one submission every night this week and take turns reading alternating pages aloud? Then we get to experience the stories in aural and oral fashion." (Not as kinky as it sounds.)

Spouse says, "Sure. Why not." Because he's so agreeable.

And that's what we did. As you can imagine, many interesting things came up.

First: Reading aloud does help in a couple ways. The most obvious is that typos and awkward sentences JUMP out and PUMMEL you. Especially if you're silently going right along and your partner, who is reading aloud, stumbles. You didn't stumble because your eye just glided right over the pothole in the road. Not so much when you hear it.

Second: It's not all good, this experimental style. Since you are reading with a partner, the old law of observing changing the observed comes into play. I didn't have as much of an opportunity to let the story sink in. I had a harder time with the overall critique, though I think the line critique got stronger. I don't know if I have as many structural notes (don't get me wrong, I still have the bigger notes) but I don't know how detailed they are.

Third: Even though you don't get to sink into the story, you are forced early on to articulate yourself. As you stare at a section while your critique partner waits, you have to explain why you're making them wait. At first it comes out as "Wait a sec, something's not right here." Then you have to ponder. Then your partner ponders.

Then you say: "I have a problem with such and such motivation."
Partner says: "Like, there is none?"
And you say: "No, not like that. But would the squirrel really run across the street like that? After watching his whole family go the same way?"
Partner says: "Have you never observed squirrel behavior?"

Then the conversation disintegrates from there--you use every piece of zoological information that you retain from 10th grade ecology classes, your partner counters with every time he's ever driven a car...and you have to think further on your position. It can be rough going.

2. Not much else, really. I finished another bothersome chapter, but am pretty darn certain that I rushed it in a desperate need to get it done. In the Hero's Journey, I believe that this chapter would be what is known as the Call to Action. Who knew calling would be such a pain in the tush? I think it has enough information to allow me to charge through to the next chapters easily enough...then I can go back and shift stuff around. MUST HAVE MORE MATERIAL my brain yells! Words, words, words!

3. Oh, I did do something else. I finished my first ever notebook from page one to page 160, a la Virginia Woolf! Didn't feel like dating stuff. Didn't feel like begging for forgiveness if I missed a day or sixteen. I wrote in it when I needed it. And I'm on to my second one. Being the same size and whatnot, I figure that I'll be done with that one around December. Whoo-hoo!

All right guys, let's hear your triumphs!

Kerouac, The Lotus Eaters, and Star Trek

2011-07-25T07:04:00.001-06:00

Many academic articles have been written on Kerouac and the sense of place and time evoked in On the Road. I’m sure a great part of that reason is that place and time are very integral to the format of the book – so it makes a lot of sense. Even I noticed that place and time were super-important to how the story worked.

On that note, the note of place and time, there were two things that kept going through my head as I read the book: the myth of the lotus eaters and the most recent Star Trek movie.

Time like The Lotus Eaters

For those of you who don’t know the myth of the lotus eaters, I’ll give you the Percy Jackson-ish (also seen recently on the True Blood: Season 3 premiere, I might add) version: The lotus eaters seduced/encouraged/forced people to eat this flower. The victims ate and lost all sense of time. They descended into hedonism. Years went by in a matter of hours.

There are no fairy creatures forcing Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty to eat and be hedonistic – they do that all on their own – but, instead, the reader is the victim in this revelry. You pick up the book and are bombarded by the characters’ actions, which take years to go through, but the book reads like they’re moving from one day/one adventure to the other. According to Kerouac, he was on the road seven years. Almost an entire decade. And the book reads like just a few weeks…even though there are obvious passages demonstrating time has passed. Once you hit the road, you have devoured the lotus and all that exists is the road.

Place like Star Trek

There’s a line in the new Star Trek movie where Spock shows Scottie his own formula for warp teleportation. Scottie says that teleporting someone onto a space ship traveling at warp was like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet blindfolded (or something along those lines). Spock shows the formula. Scottie says something like “Huh, it never occurred to me to think of space as the thing that was moving.”

That is what reading On the Road feels like.

Imagine a pencil. Imagine the pencil tip resting gently on an American map, at the dot representing New York. Now, try to trace a line from New York to San Francisco without moving the pencil. How do you do that? You move the map, right? The pencil stays in the same place, doing the same thing.

The pencil is the characters in On the Road. They don’t change. They party from one coast to the other.

The map is the road, moving along underneath them. They see the scenery change, they appreciate the shift, but they are still the pencil.

*

Now, this brings up a difficulty to me – both of these elements emphasize that the characters don’t change. This is problematic because, as we all learned in school, characters need to change to have a good story, right? If you go into Goodreads and look at the criticisms of this book, you’ll notice that there are a lot of one/two/three star reviews. The basic arguments are related to being bored, the characters behaving like jerks, etc. Basically, the criticism relates to the two elements noted above: place and time. The story doesn’t work like a normal story.

Well, I think the thing to take away is that Kerouac isn’t telling an everyday kind of story. It is more of a memoir and we never really know where we change in life until we come at it from experience. Kerouac wrote this book in the throes of living it, so the lack of perspective, or the change, isn’t really there.

However, I don’t think this is necessarily a flaw. It’s just a different way of writing. And not one that’s easy to pull off. In fact, I can’t think of another writer that I’ve read who writes like Kerouac, or who sees the way that he sees. I love my friends, but I don’t think I could present them in the loving way that Kerouac presents his friends, while still being honest about their flaws. I love America, but I don’t think that I could be as worshipful of the landscape without making some kind of cutting, Sarah Vowell-esque remark about the history of the places.

So, you see, I’m kind of torn. I recognize Kerouac as a skilled writer. I acknowledge the beauty of the language. I appreciate the biographical elements of his writing. But I struggle with defining On the Road as good story.
But then I wonder if the point of the story isn’t just: it is what it is.

Still thinking….

2011-07-24T14:12:00.000-06:00

Last night, I read my little girl three books. The night before that, her father read her two. Every night my son reads whatever Star Wars/Jacob Wonderbar/space book he can get a hold of - and just Friday he was reading to us about mosquitoes. I can't imagine what their lives would be like without books...

or their parents.

Over at Tracy Edward Wymer's blog, he has posted a story that captures my worst nightmare. A car crash taking the lives of two parents. Their six-year-old son, Trenton, was with his grandparents. I don't know about you, but my husband and I have date nights. Our kids are left with grandparents. And it is conceivable that we might never come back from those date nights. Drunk drivers. Lousy weather. All kinds of day-to-day risks that can shatter a family.

To help ease that pain (which can never be erased) Tracy, who went to school with Trenton's mother, has put out the word on OneBook for Trenton. Basically, pick out your favorite new or gently used books and send them to Trenton - and show that he is loved. I'm sending one (probably more) this next week.

Get the details on Tracy's blog. And go hug your kids.

Adding Gravitas: Kerouac’s Word Choices

2011-07-22T07:23:00.001-06:00

“Gravitas” is one of my husband’s million dollar words when he’s offering a critique. It’s a tricky word to digest when it’s thrown at you like: “This needs more gravitas.” He’s much more eloquent but, I mean, what can you do with that?

Generally I take it to mean that the stakes aren’t sufficiently high for my characters – but I’ve come to realize that this is not necessarily the case. Sometimes gravitas (gravity/weight/an anchor) isn’t in the story itself but in the way the story is told.

On the Road is a story with zero anchor, if you look at it. The characters flit from place to place in fast cars. There’s literally and figuratively no home-base. The characters ping around from place to place, leaving wives and children and parents. You can’t latch onto these characters. As Sal Paradise tells the reader when he gets to Old Bull Lee’s house: “Poor Bull came home in his Texas Chevy and found his house invaded by maniacs.” They are madmen. Druggies, cheaters, partiers, crazies. Trying to connect to these characters is very much like trying to nail down one of those bouncy balls you get out of the quarter machine. Ping ping ping! There goes the lamp.

So, with place and people unavailable for adding sufficient weight to a story, a writer has one refuge: language.

That’s how Kerouac centers his miscreants. He adds depth (a great deal of bullshit depth, truth be told) to their madness: “A tremendous thing happened when Dean met Carlo Marx. Two keen minds that they are, they took to each other at the drop of a hat…From that moment on, I saw very little of Dean and I was a little sorry too. Their energies met head-on. I was a lout compared, I couldn’t keep up with them. The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then; it would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust cloud over the American Night.”

This description of his two friends, who basically got together and talked ‘philosophy’ while drunk or high get some mythic heft from the way Kerouac describes them: ‘tremendous’ ‘keen’ ‘energetic’ ‘mad swirls’, he’s a ‘lout’ compared to them. Reading this, you feel like there are consequences to getting left behind – and a weird sense of admiration for those with greater faculties or abilities.

Plus, you’ve got that American Night. Capitalized. There’s not beating the sense of pride and participation in that kind of presentation. And there’s no sense of escape from the dust cloud that’ll cover them all. Reminiscent of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, shadows that still cover the whole country.

And all in a couple sentences describing two friends meeting. (Though, as an interesting side-note – Carlo Marx, a.k.a. Allen Ginsberg – had very little to do with the road trips.)

So, next time someone says that there’s not enough weight, or your characters seem flat, or there’s no meaning – instead of assuming it’s a plot point or a characterization (it still might be) see if it isn’t the way the words are working. Playing with the wording might just fix the issue.

Thursday Reviews! On the Road by Jack Kerouac (A Mentor Review!)

2011-07-21T09:44:00.000-06:00

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having been on many, many, many road trips with my military family -- I have to say that some of this story can be tedious. After all, spend enough time on the road, and you get dizzy with the monotony of the landscape. While there are those sections in this book, it is obvious that Kerouac's reaction to the monotony of the road is the sheer joy of being on the road.

Kerouac's observations are gorgeous, I really was swept away during the first part as he described eating apple pie in diners with almost no money in his pocket. I felt the wind as he sat in the back of truck stuffed with other men looking for work, trying to get home, or, like Kerouac, just enjoying the trip -- with a few nips of some alcohol or another to keep warm. His real talent as a writer is putting the mythic beside the profane...elevating and degrading both elements at the same time, like with this passage on the first time he saw the Mississippi River: "And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River, dry in the summer haze, low water, with its big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up." (pg. 12)

Yeah, but while the descriptions of the road are lovely, nothing good happens whenever these boys stay still. Wives and children are left. Drugs are done. High-flown philosophizing that allows them to bow out of life occurs. Whenever the road ends -- on one coast or the other -- it's not good. Friends and family get tired of draining freeloaders real fast. And part of the frustration of the 'still moments' (as I call them) is that Sal and Dean (representations of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady respectively) are oblivious to the emotional damage they inflict. Even when confronted by fed up wives/girlfriends/mothers directly, they don't see what they're doing.

It was a relief to me, as a reader, whenever they started moving again.

If you enjoy any of the following: fast cars, loose women, music, travel (and all the side roads that go along with it), America, your crazy uncle's stories, alcohol, and if you like it all set to beautiful language...well, you'll find something to like in this book.

View all my reviews

Charactouac? or Kerouacter?

2011-07-20T07:15:00.004-06:00

“New Criticism locates meaning in the internal qualities of literary works, specifically the unity of their multiple verbal structures. as much as it values unity and convergence, New Criticism eschews authorial intent and historical context as bases for interpretation, although it allows that they might supplement understanding.” ~Joshua Kupetz, “The Straight Line Will Take You Only to Death” – an intro to On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac

In his intro to the original On the Road scroll, Kupetz, editor of the scroll and an English professor, says he has been confronted by the idea that Kerouac “mattered first as a personality.” He proceeds to defend the scroll as an example that Kerouac knew what he was doing structurally, verbally, and creatively when he wrote the scroll – and is therefore to be acknowledged first as a strong writer. Which I totally agree with.

The problem is, Kerouac creates himself as a character. He inserts his personality into the story – more directly than other writers. So, try as a critic might to separate the two, the structure of the story is embedded with the biographical information that a critic would work so hard to separate out.

The 1957 version – the version published originally – is easier to separate from Kerouac-the-Author because he edited the thing. (Which, I might add, calls into question the idea that the fast, unedited way is the Beat Way to Write, as does the fact that Kerouac doesn’t seem to have any more scrolls in his closet….) There are chapters and paragraph breaks. And, most tellingly, the characters have character names.

The scroll, on the other hand, is an outright invitation to critics and readers to put Kerouac-the-Author in with Kerouac-the-Character – a charactouac or a kerouacter, whichever you prefer. The main character is not "Sal Paradise" in the scroll. It’s Jack. No "Dean Moriarty" here – only the real-life Neal Cassady. The scroll reads more like today’s literary memoirs, more like Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings or Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes or Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club.

So that’s a problem. If the scroll is presented as the definitive edition, how are we supposed to pull Kerouac out of it without unraveling the whole thing? It’d be like trying to pull Maya Angelou out of her oeuvre. Good luck with that!

Honestly, I don’t think that we can if the scroll is considered definitive. But we can separate the two using the 1957 edition – and I have to say that, regardless of how Kerouac may have felt about editing it…he did edit it. Ultimately, he compromised. It’s really okay that he did that. He chose that the public should have the book in some form. And it was a sensation. It allowed him the freedom to create other books.

Speaking purely as a writer, I would hope to heaven that my first drafts are not considered my definitive editions. I personally think that the perfect edition is really somewhere in the middle, somewhere between the scroll and the published book.

As it is, I think that it's easy to respect both for what they are. The 1957 version for it's classic structures - however far away from Kerouac's 'vision' (because we're not supposed to consider his intent, right? That can only happen with the 1957 version). The scroll, however, allows us to see Kerouac and accept or reject him as a character within his own context. There aren't many pieces out there that do that....

Tuesday Post of Accountability: Some Hands-on Kerouac Learning

2011-07-19T09:11:00.001-06:00

It's Tuesday again! And every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

Stuff I have accomplished this past week:

1. Finished rewriting the chapter that was giving me such pains last week. Will still have to rework it...but I don't have to rewrite it at this point. Live long Chapter Eight! Ye pain in the @$$ chapter. (I'm sure that won't be the only chapter to give me frustrations along the way, but it has created the greatest pains so far -- think that could be because when you hit that quarter-in mark things get more complicated so the writing has to do more? I think so.)

2. Did The Great Scroll Experiment! My goal was to write a short story really fast on the typewriter -- which is not my normal means of writing. And, since Kerouac did the whole scroll thing so he wouldn't have to stop and start with all the paper loading, I created a scroll as well. However, I don't think that Kerouac's feat can be recreated comfortably by any writer who writes on a computer....

Let me tell you about that. (This will be entertaining both for those of you who wrote research papers and books and whatnot on typewriters and have forgotten the foibles that go along with typewriters and those of you who have never written on a typewriter.)

Okay, so computer writers don't have to reload paper -- so the continuity issue is already fixed for us. We can just type and type to our little heart's content and not have to worry about the stop-start-stop-start that would hinder Kerouac, who had no word processor. When I switched to the typewriter, I thought I could just go and go and go...but there's still a stop-start element that I, as a computer writer, did not anticipate.

Automatic returns. Typewriters do not do that. Typewriters beep at you when you reach your margin and you have to hit return to get to the next line. This changes how you work a line. I found myself composing line by line instead of sentence by sentence. I would probably write better poetry on a typewriter than a computer.

Because, let me tell you, my short story did not do so well. Where a scroll and a typewriter for Kerouac made it easier -- because it actually sped up the process for him -- it slowed me waaaaayyy down. I had to think about what I was doing too much. Plus the typos distracted me. I'm horrible, even with a computer correcting me. (Ask my first readers: Hi Ali! Hi Deb!)

But, there are things to learn from this! For example, I alter the tenses of my sentences often. On a computer, that's no biggie because you can move the cursor back and delete/adjust accordingly. You don't get to correct on a typewriter -- in fact you can correct less on a typewriter than when you handwrite. I found myself constantly wanting to go back and change something because the second half of my sentence would make no sense...but I couldn't. The language had to be clear and set in my head before I could write a solid sentence. (Which is also why I'm going to keep going on the typewriter too...it forces me to think clearly and apparently I need practice with that.)
3. I also did critiques for my writer's group in an experimental fashion. More on that next week, when I see how the results work out!

All right, so that was my educational week. How'd you guys do?

The Great Scroll Experiment!

2011-07-18T07:26:00.002-06:00

In honor of Kerouac, and in attempting to learn what I can about writing from him, I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon trying to create my own scroll-of-fiction.

First, I gathered my paper (10 sheets...my thought process being that ten sheets of single-spaced typewritten paper made a more-than-decent length short story):

Then I glued all of that together into one long piece:

Fed it through my typewriter:

And began writing:

I'll tell you how the writing itself it went tomorrow in my accountability post. Now -- have you guys ever tried to copy a Great Writer's method? Wrote with quills? Fountain pens? Standing up like Hemingway is reported to have done? How did that work for ya?

The Scroll and The Legend

2011-07-15T07:29:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time there was dude who wrote a novel on a long scroll - one hundred feet long - no punctuation - no paragraph breaks - no rules - hopped up on bennies, he did it in three weeks after spending seven years on the roads across America, and occasionally down to Mexico - the result was a cult-icon book, the birth of a movement, and the Trophy of All the Literary World (excepting First Folios, as my buddy Tracy Edward Wymer points out): Jack Kerouac's On the Road Scroll.

But, if you really, really want to get a sense of the thing, take a peek at the unrolling of the scroll itself...and you may as well enjoy it on the screen while you can. Heaven knows how long the thing will last as it makes world tour after world tour.

(Sorry, that last was a bitter side-note because it is in the hands of private collectors - bought for the pretty sum of 2.4 million dollars - and not with the scholars/museum archives.)

Thursday Reviews!: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S Burroughs and Jack Kerouac (A Mentor Review!)

2011-07-14T07:20:00.003-06:00

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S. Burroughs

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was written in the couple years following the murder of David Kammerer -- the real-life case which Burroughs and Kerouac were so close to, and on which this story is based. Facts and names have been changed to protect the innocent...but, like most Beat books, the source material is not as well hidden by code-names as the participants would probably like and the book wasn't published until 2008. Fifty years later.

As if the subject matter wasn't interesting enough, it's also written by two iconic figures of the Beat generation: Burroughs and Kerouac. The story is told in alternating chapters, first Burroughs and then Kerouac taking turns at writing the chapters. This does result in a certain choppiness--which you would expect. After all, even icons were fledgling writers at some point and it's hard to control consistency-of-tone with one writer, let alone two. But it's not as rough as a reader would expect. According to the Afterword by James Grauerholz, Kerouac did type the manuscript "just as it is preserved, with no missing pages; he was a good speller and handy with punctuation." So, there you have it: good writers can do good jobs.

The story is very much a slice-of-life kind of piece, not a sensationalistic recounting of a bloody murder. If you want to know the ins and outs of the Merchant Marines at the end of WWII, bars, how to get money outta your friends, and morphine use, then this is your book. (Okay, maybe not quite that extreme.) The murder isn't a centerpiece the way that contemporary true-crime novels. The presentations of motive (and even that is not overt) and the story of the relationships behind the murder are central.

The overall voice reads very noir. The language is straightforward, which is why I think that the tone doesn't shift as much as it could otherwise. Take for example: "Then we boarded the subway and went back downtown to Washington Square." (Kerouac's chapter) and "We took the Independent down to Washington Square and said good night at the entrance because we were going in opposite directions." (Burroughs's chapter). Subject matter and descriptions are pretty similar.

Dennison and Ryko are the narrators, and they do a good a job. The characters are observant, full of questionable advice, and their reactions to a potentially explosive situation are very cavalier...which adds to the tension of the story. As a reader, I felt that the two leads were just as likely to kill or be killed at any given moment. Or die stupidly. To put it another way, it's like reading The Outsiders, only without Ponyboy's conscience.

The title alone is worth a star by itself.

View all my reviews

Hippos and the Beat of the Beats

2011-07-13T07:20:00.003-06:00

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is about a crime – a terrible crime – the worst kind of crime one person can commit against another. Yet, when reading the book, and even after acknowledging that the characters and details have been altered, I was struck that neither Burroughs or Kerouac took a position that favored one side (Kammerer as victim) or the other (Carr as perpetrator).

When Kammerer and Carr came to New York, Burroughs followed them. He was a friend of the murdered man – a guy who nowadays would be arrested for his attention toward: a.) a student and b.) a much younger boy. (An adult by this time.) But when Burroughs presents Al, Kammerer’s fictional representation, in all his obsessiveness, he does it with an air of acceptance for his friend’s flaws. Conversations like the following had my mouth dropping open:

     ‘Al sat there looking sad and ordered one beer and cold lobster. Finally he said, “I think I’ll go down there tonight and climb into his room.”
     I spat out a lobster claw and looked at him. “Well,” I said, “that’s taking the bull by the horns.”
     But Al was serious. He said, “No I’m just going to go into his room while he’s asleep and watch him for a while.”
     “And suppose he should wake up? He’ll think it’s some vampire hovering over him.”
     “Oh no,” said Al in resigned tones, “he’ll just tell me to get out. This has happened before.”’ ~from Chapter Five of Hippos, Burroughs’s chapter

(This kind of behavior bothered me in Twilight too, and I find it hilarious that Burroughs hit that nail dead-center decades before the vampire phenomenon.)

Burroughs takes his friend’s stalking tendencies in stride. And he’s not the only one aware of this situation. Phillip (the Carr character) asks Ryko (the Kerouac character) to help him get outta town, away from Al’s attentions. Ryko agrees, and tries to get Phillip onto a merchant marine ship as a crewman…but he also tells Al what Phillip is up to. It's not a big deal to these guys at all.

It’s easy to blame the attitude difference on time difference. Kerouac and Burroughs weren’t bombarded with the daily talk shows on stalking, child molestation, and the consequences of a set-up like this. I could maybe let their laissez faire point of view go if I used the “It was a different time” argument…but it’s still hard not to yell at the characters for being blind morons. Their attitude definitely is different, and I think it has more to do with the beat of the Beats than it does with whatever time may have elapsed between then and now.

Their philosophy of life has to be understood if a reader is really going to understand what they wrote about and, in turn, how they wrote about it.

According to Kerouac’s essay “Lamb, No Lion” in Good Blonde and Others, “Beat doesn’t mean tired, or bused, so much as it means beato, the Italian for beatific: to be in a state of beatitude, like St. Francis, trying to love all life, trying to be utterly sincere with everyone, practicing endurance, kindness, cultivating joy of the heart.”

In other words, it’s about the search for joy in everything – including junkies, bums, murderers, etc. In the search for peace, there is no hating on people. So, after the character of Phillip hatchets the character of Al to death, Burroughs encourages him to confess, but doesn’t pass judgment. It’s because of the Beat belief. It pops again and again in Kerouac’s work…even here in the earliest work.

Just one more example to help clarify the Beat philosophy/attitude/way of being, here’s Kerouac, in his essay “The Origins of the Beat Generation”: “Recently Ben Hecht said to me on TV ‘Why are you afraid to speak out your mind, what’s wrong with this country, what is everybody afraid of?’ Was he talking to me? And all he wanted me to do was speak out my mind against people, he sneeringly brought up Dulles, Eisenhower, the Pop, all kinds of people like that habitually he would sneer at with Drew Pearson, against the world he wanted, this is his idea of freedom, he calls it freedom. Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty.”

Aside from the fact that he’s not really accepting Hecht for himself…Kerouac says that haters are gonna hate and he’s not a hater. (I do wonder what he would think of the current political smackdowns that go on….)

Anyway, to hear Kerouac present and/or defend himself in his own words, here’s a clip from the Ben Hecht interview:

Tuesday Post of Accountability!: Rewriting Chapters

2011-07-12T10:49:00.000-06:00

Kerouac, Burroughs, and Direct Collaboration

2011-07-11T06:21:00.001-06:00

Direct collaboration, as opposed to indirect collaboration, is where a writer works directly with one or more people on a specific piece. Writers working with agents or editors to shape-up a piece for publication is an example of direct collaboration. In 1944 Jack Kerouac and his friend William Burroughs took turns writing alternating chapters of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a novel about the sensationalized murder of one of their circle, David Kammerer, by another member of their circle, Lucien Carr.

First, a super-quick background on the case:

Kammerer was a teacher out in Missouri, and Carr was a student. When they met, Kammerer was 25 years old, and Carr was eleven. Kammerer basically took Carr under his wing (otherwise known as: followed the kid around) and, as James Grauerholz sums up in his Afterword to Hippos: “Eight years, five states, four prep schools, and two colleges later, that connection was grown too intense.” Carr tried to join the merchant marines, hoping to get on a ship and head out of country and leave Kammerer behind. That plan didn’t work out. On August 14, 1944, Carr stabbed Kammerer and threw his body into the Hudson River. Carr surrendered a day later, after first confessing to Burroughs and then to Kerouac – who may or may not have helped conceal evidence (I can’t find a definitive answer, so if anyone knows, please let me know). Carr and Kerouac were both arrested. Carr ultimately served two years. Kerouac only got bailed out because he agreed to marry his first wife, Edie Parker, and her family paid for his release.

Seeing as how writers are such an understanding lot…Carr’s friends jumped to write about the whole situation. Ginsberg worked a few chapters for his own book, and according to Grauerholz, his version “is the most detailed, and possibly the most realistic, of all the dramatizations of Kammerer’s final hours.”

And Kerouac and Burroughs decided to write their version together.

I’m not surprised that writers involved in a collaborative circle would choose to write together. And I’m certainly not surprised Kerouac and Burroughs chose to write about an event that affected their lives, and the lives of other members of their circle, so completely. I am happy that the publication was saved until after all of the major parties have died. (Not for lack of trying, apparently, but Carr requested that they back off – which they did.)
Anyway, Kerouac and Burroughs did write the book together, choosing one of the most obvious forms of collaborative writing: the alternating chapter method.

That’s just like it sounds. Burroughs took a chapter, then handed it off to Kerouac, who wrote the second chapter, and so on. I can’t speak for Kerouac and Burroughs, or how easy/difficult it is to do with two people, but I have used this method.

With about ten other people.

There are pros and cons.

Pros:
• Word count adds up quick. It’s satisfying to watch the story grow and feel the ownership of it…and do only a portion of the work. If you’ve never finished a big thing like a novel, sharing the work with someone else can give you the impetus to finish your own work. From what I can tell, Hippos was the first big work completed by either Kerouac or Burroughs…even though it wasn’t published until decades later.
• It increases communication, which forces you, as a writer, to articulate what you’re trying to do. That helps with your solo work as well. This is part of the overall effectiveness of indirect collaborative groups that we talked about on Friday. You have to define your terms.
• You back up your work more. Hit SAVE!
• Keeps you on your toes – harder to predict what another writer will do with the material. Makes you think creatively within a piece and see various possibilities. (A lot like working improve for actors.) One of the rules for the round story projects that my writing group works on is that you can’t negate something one of the other writers introduced. So you can’t blow everyone up and start over in a new setting with characters you ‘like better.’ Hippos has a uniformity to the story that Kerouac and Burroughs had to have worked out in a similar fashion.
• It’s a great way to learn the structure of stories, because without thinking about that, the whole thing gets wonky fast. As it is, Hippos has an episodic build: first the characters go here, and then there, and then here again. There are some neatly interwoven threads, but there are a lot of diversions as well.
• It’s just fun. It keeps it playful, even if you’re dead serious.

Cons:
• You don’t have full control of the story. You MUST compromise. (If you don’t, it equals arguments with people who you generally respect and admire – why else would you choose to write with them?)
• Can result in a choppy story, no matter how hard you try. Hippos suffers from this, sorry to say.
• Schedules are a pain to work out. – Luckily, Kerouac and Burroughs were pretty much living together with some other buddies while they worked on Hippos.
• Without individual control, you hit the middle bar more often than the top bar. Kerouac and Burroughs were both smashing writers…but I have to say that Hippos doesn’t equal Kerouac’s solo work – at least from what I’ve read. (And I’ve never read Burroughs’s solo work, so I can’t compare on his side of the equation.) Part of the quality-question is definitely that this was their first big finished project for both of them…so it’s a book by beginners overall.

I highly recommend at least one attempt at direct collaboration like Kerouac and Burroughs. After a while of doing this writing gig, we’ll all have an opportunity to respond to agents and editors sounding off on the work, requesting that we adjust our stories. But it’s not as often that you’ll have an opportunity to meet up with a buddy and articulate what you’re trying to do while creating.

You just have to go into it with the knowledge that, if you fail miserably, you can at least blame it on the other guy.

***Side note on Lucien Carr: He is the father of novelist Caleb Carr -- the author of two of my own favorite books: The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness.***

Kerouac’s Collaborative Circle: Indirect Collaboration

2011-07-08T07:13:00.003-06:00

You may think that all you need to write good books is will-power, a stellar idea, and a cave. You may think that hiding in a cubby hole with a full-battery-power laptop is all there is to turning out a tale worth telling. Perhaps you’re a poet who thinks that a lonely hill, some loose leaf paper, and a pen with free-flowing ink is the way to go. Isolation. A room of your own. Space to create.

Eh. That’s only partly true.

Sure, you do need quiet time. I’m as big a fan of Peace and his buddy Quiet as the next writer who needs to escape cloying children, spouses who need attention, and houses that are collapsing around their ears because the laundry has grown legs and is threatening world domination. (“First this House. Then this Neighborhood. Finally the World!”) There is no way to complete a masterpiece, or even a passably passable story, without the time and space with which to create it.

But. The truly great writers all had at least one buddy to bounce off of. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were also known as the Inklings. H.G Wells, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Stephen Crane, and Ford Madox Ford create a dizzying circle of genius. Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury. And guess what? Shakespeare was in the theatre, the ultimate for collaboration.

Now, when I say collaboration, there are two different types: direct and indirect. Direct collaboration is where a writer works, ahem, directly with one or more people on a specific piece. Writers working with agents or editors to shape-up a piece for publication is an example of direct collaboration. When Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs wrote And the Hippos were Boiled in Their Tanks together, that is also direct collaboration.

Indirect collaboration involves the idea of influence. It involves writers talking to one another, perhaps critiquing, and basically sounding off on writing in general. In Collaborative Circles and Creative Work, author Michael P. Ferrell defines a collaborative circle as “a primary group consisting of peers who share similar occupational goals and who, through long periods of dialogue and collaboration, negotiate a common vision that guides their work. The vision consists of a shared set of assumptions about their discipline, including what constitutes good work, how to work, what subjects are worth taking on, and how to think about them."

I propose that without Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al., Kerouac would not have written as well as he did – and since most of his characters were based on his real-life associates, his storylines would be totally gone. The Beats are a textbook example of the creative collaborative circle:

• They were “peers with similar occupational goals and interests”: Kerouac = novelist/poet. Ginsberg = poet. Burroughs = novelist. Lucien Carr = writer. Neal Cassady = criminal/philosopher (which all groups need, I guess)
• “Through long periods of dialogue and collaboration…”: the Beats left tons of dialogic evidence behind in letters, journals, printed interviews, etc.
• “…negotiate a common vision that guides their work.”: the Beats called their vision The New Vision (I know, you’d’ve thought it’d be more original…) Basically, art was mankind’s highest state of being – and, yes, it figures artists would think that – creativity was to be nurtured however possible. Dreams. Drugs. Whatever. “The new vision assumed the death of square morality and replaced that meaning with belief in creativity. I think we were quite moralistic in a way.” ~Allen Ginsberg, qtd in The Beats by Mike Evans.

And as a group they agreed on
• “what constitutes good work”: apparently not Fitzgerald, but Yeats and Kafka were all right
• “how to work”: fast, no real revisions, Benzedrine and other drugs as stimulants
• “subjects worth taking on”: political subjects, the ‘lower’ classes of man to show reality or truth
• “and how to think about them”: everything open to creative expression, including bums, druggies, etc.

If you read any of Kerouac’s work, you will be confronted with his version of the New Vision.

And if you read any of Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al., you will see a different-yet-similar interpretation of that vision filtered through a different-yet-similar mind. It’s kinda trippy.

The Kerouac-Ginsberg Letters: You Have to Write More than You Think

2011-07-06T06:57:00.002-06:00

Jack Kerouac attended Columbia University for a while. It was there he met and started hanging around with some other names you may know – most notable fellow novelist William S. Burroughs and the poet Allen Ginsberg. Because we can’t talk Kerouac without talking about his crew, we get a two-for-one mentorship deal!

Starting in earnest in 1944 – when Kerouac was held as a material witness to the murder of David Kammerer – Ginsberg and Kerouac began writing a ton of letters to each other. If one or the other of them was outta town, in jail, or in a mental hospital, they wrote. Recently this avalanche of correspondence was collected and edited by Bill Morgan (for the Ginsberg estate) and David Stanford (for the Kerouac estate) in a great volume called Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg: The Letters. In the introduction, the editors talk about the quantity and quality of the letters: “Some of their letters are stunningly extensive single-spaced epics, longer than published stories or articles. There are aerogrammes from afar, words jammed to the edges, filling every inch, and handwritten letters on lined pages, tiny notebook sheets, old letterhead. Add-ons are scrawled on envelopes, and sometimes-lengthy postscripts tucked in.”

“stunningly extensive single-spaced epics” they say. And how.

The breadth and scope and word count of these letters left me a little breathless – partly in awe, partly in surprise, and partly in bafflement at the sheer volume of insights, information, and bullshit they (Kerouac and Ginsberg, not the editors) threw around. They talked books, women, men, religion, publishing, poetry, psychology, sex, not-having-sex, having-sex, and, of course, writing. It’s easy to get overwhelmed looking through so much material.

I was easily distracted by such tidbits as:

“But I do not wish to escape to myself, I wish to escape from myself.” ~ Ginsberg to Kerouac, letter ca. late July 1945

“However I hate you. Because years ago you and Burrows [Burroughs] used to laugh at me because I saw people as godlike.” Kerouac to Ginsberg, letter ca. December 16, 1948

“I filled a 150 page notebook in the last four days with a detailed recreation of the events of the last month.” Ginsberg to Kerouac ca. early May 1949

“The thirteen year old girl wrote a story on my typewriter about the Giant in the garden and the little children who were afraid to go in because they thought the garden door was locked, but it wasn’t at all and the door opened, and they went in, and the Giant cried with joy. This proves to me that children really know more than adults. Children are preoccupied with the same things Shakespeare knew.” Kerouac to Ginsberg, letter July 5-11, 1949

(I could go on, but will stop there. Like I said, easily distracted…)

Reading through the letters gave me an insight more basic than whatever subject matter Kerouac and Ginsberg discussed. As I read the letters (yes, sometimes wondering if they would ever end) I kept hearing the voice of my buddy John quoting the ‘rule’ that a writer must write a million words of crap before you get to anything good. And here, right in front of me, was what the first million words looks like…not that they were writing crap, but that they were writing a lot.

Here’s what a million words looks like:

• unpublished novels and poems – Kerouac and Ginsberg both had piles of stuff hanging around. Kerouac’s first published novel was 300,000 words before it was edited, a staggering count

• journals and notebooks that are never intended to see the light of day – note Ginsberg filled a 150 page notebook in four days…time to turn off the T.V. people!

• letters – there were 300 letters between Kerouac and Ginsberg that the editors of Letters worked through to create the almost-500 page collection (the editors didn’t include the letters post-1963)

It is an ungodly amount of material. A lot of writers think that finishing the first draft of a first novel is BIG (and it is – just in a different way than they think). Think about it: if your first novel is 100,000 words – a respectable sum – you still have to do that 10 more times. Tired yet?

Hope not. Because not all words are created equal. If you’re just throwing down words without learning what goes along with them (grammar, meaning, story-process) then those words don’t count as much as the words you put down with intent and concentration. In other words: you must practice with those million words.

Yep. You’ve got to write more than you think you do.

Nowadays we don’t really write letters, and diaries and journals have been replaced by blogs and Facebook. But just because our methods are electronic shouldn’t change the amount of work we put into our words. Blasting off an email can be just as artistic as writing out a letter. When you tell your friend about your day or your thoughts in an email, make those words count. Be descriptive. Use details. Tell your buddy how a thirteen year old girl is like Shakespeare.

Blogs are also not a space to be sloppy. Sure, we all flub and typo, and it may feel more casual than other types of writing, but it’s still a place to practice and get thoughts down articulately. (Plus, if you choose, a blog has a certain permanency on the web…Miss Snark’s blog may be dark, but her words live on in the ether-sphere.)

Hm, from the length of this entry, seems like I’m trying to beef up my own word count….

Okay, that’s enough from me. Whatcha waitin’ for? You’ve got words to write. Get crackin’!

Tuesday Post of Accountability!: Submissions and an Injured Finger

2011-07-05T07:17:00.002-06:00

Every Tuesday you will be ~~subjected to~~ regaled by the writing progress I have made over the last week. But! I insist that I not be the only one ~~exposing myself~~ sounding off. Let your comments reflect what kind of ~~suffering~~ butt-kicking you have done too!

Okay, here's my progress report:

1. Wrote rough draft of a three page short story I'm calling "The Last Typewriter in the World"...inspired by the fact that my mother just got me a typewriter for a Kerouac-like experiment that I shall be conducting shortly.

2. Submitted to four magazines. These are really my first submissions of the year. Working on novel-length pieces doesn't leave you a whole lot of submittable material, but I spruced up a couple flash pieces and we'll see how they do.

3. Thought about editing another short story and just wound up looking at it for a little while.

4. Worked on typing in handwritten chapters for TL, realized I was going to have to rewrite a chapter from another point of view and haven't worked on it since out of frustration. (Plus my right index finger still hurt from all the handwriting...I really think I strained something and will try to take it easier on my hand by mixing the handwriting/computer entry a little faster.)

5. Finished blog posts for the week...and they're lengthy so I think that counts as writing work. =)

All writey guys?

The Great American Novel and Jack Kerouac

2011-07-04T07:34:00.003-06:00

On the Fourth of July it only seems appropriate to talk about The Great American Novel. Books as varied as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and, more recently, Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom have all been considered for the title of Great American Novel. (Personally, I can see strong arguments made for Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, and My Antonia by Willa Cather.) It doesn’t seem like the title ever gets handed out though.

The obvious reason is that the American experience is so wide, so varied, that the books listed above can’t hit on every American’s experience. Since there is no quintessential AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, no book can be said to contain it. Especially as times change. Once upon a time Uncle Tom’s Cabin could’ve had a good argument going for it…but today the language is dated and the storytelling so melodramatic that the landscape narrows too much.

Kerouac’s novel On the Road has been mentioned with the books listed above as a contender for The Great American Novel, and while I haven’t made it all the way through the book yet, I see that argument clearly. In fact, having read and loved several of the books mentioned as the Great American Novel, On the Road is quickly becoming my personal favorite for that title.

Why? It has all of the flaws of the previously listed books. It can’t possibly encapsulate the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. The narrator is a 1950s White Boy, after all.

My reasoning:

1. On the Road avoids being about a single region of the United States like Gone with the Wind, The Jungle, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Age of Innocence, My Antonia, etc. (New York and the South seem to have placed some big claims on being All-American, huh?) The reader of On the Road, being a road trip, is flung from New York to Denver via Chicago, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming in just the first five chapters. It literally and figuratively moves all over the map. The traveling element (which dominates Huckleberry Finn and Grapes of Wrath, by the way) is a HUGE part of the American experience. I can name less than a handful of people – Americans – in my own experience who have not crossed multiple state lines. Roads dominate our landscape…more so now than when Kerouac was writing.

2. Kerouac’s main character, Sal, runs the gamut of class standing. Class is one of those topics that pops up again and again in American Literature. (Examples already listed: Age of Innocence, Grapes of Wrath, Beloved, Invisible Man, Freedom, Great Gatsby, The Jungle.)At least in the opening, Sal seems to navigate class distinctions fairly well. He’s just as comfortable hitching a ride with two university students as two railroad tramps. When he arrives in Denver, his buddies set him up in a decked-out apartment, but he doesn’t mind drinking or partying in the questionable side of town.

3. Probably the biggest argument for On the Road being the Great American Novel is that it doesn’t flinch from talking about things that we still don’t always discuss openly – but are there nevertheless. Kerouac brings out a whole slew of topics that are woven through the American tapestry: drugs, music (specifically jazz and bop), sex (pick a gender, any gender), fast cars, open spaces, political affiliations (yep, Carlo Marx is a character), and even apple pie with ice cream. It is all in there, and it’s all in just the first five chapters or so.

The biggest issue that hasn’t come up yet is race. Since White Boy is the narrator, I don’t know what attitude will come up: good/bad/indifferent. But Huckleberry Finn, Beloved, Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird and Invisible Man all come at this topic from dramatically different perspective and I can’t imagine that a guy – a white guy who navigates different classes – would travel across the U.S. and not present/talk about/creatively expound upon the topic of race. It remains to be seen.

So, The Great American title is still basically up for grabs. But I do think Kerouac’s novel should be slotted towards the top of the list.

Happy Fourth of July everyone! Have a safe and happy holiday. Don’t eat too much apple pie.

Beat the Drums! We Got A New Mentor: Jack Kerouac

2011-07-01T07:29:00.001-06:00

Jack Kerouac is best known for his iconic, voice-of-a-generation novel On the Road. Having never read anything (and I mean not a word) of Kerouac before, I decided it was time. Voila! He is the mentor for July-August.

For those who may not know much about Kerouac (like me until recently), I'm gonna give you a quick list of the highlight, or important lights -- since there are some lowlights too -- of his life and career, two things which may not be inseparable.

Kerouac born in 1922
Kerouac = sport star in high school which earns him:
Football scholarship to Columbia University in New York where
he meets other future icons of the Beat Generation (William Burroughs: Naked Lunch, Junkie; Allen Ginsberg: Howl)
1944: Kerouac arrested/held as a material witness to David Kammerer murder
1944: marries Edie Parker
Starts hitchhiking and traveling around USA (1947-1950 = Neal Cassady as travel partner, roots of On the Road), works on first book
1950: First book The Town and the City published
1950: marries Joan Haverty
Seven years later On the Road is published
Wild literary popularity--more books published, more traveling, more of everything
Kerouac introduced to and continues to explore Buddhism 1953-_____
1966: marries Stella Sampas
Dies October 1969 of a hemorrhage caused by cirrhosis of the liver

Okay, so that's a really simplified introduction/timeline to a really complex dude. But it's good to know at least this much because it'll help with the conversation.

Whatchoo guys know about Kerouac? What do you guys want to know? Tune in next week!