storytelling

I saw a bumpersticker today: bottomless pit of needs and desires.

My response to this is immediate and traceable to my Catholic school upbringing. Guilt. Why am I never always looking for things to entertain myself? I've got such a great life, really. Which reminds me of the line from Shall We Dance when Susan Sarandon demands an explanation from Richard Gere: why so secretive about something as innocent as dance lessons? And his answer: I was ashamed. How can I be unhappy when we have so much?

Which reminds me, in turn, of my various obsessions, for example: fonts. I love them. I lust after them. Today I got an email advertisement from the P22 people about a new set of fonts that I absolutely do not need, but oh, they make my heart flutter. I have hundreds of fonts -- all of which I paid for, to support those graphic artists who create such beauty -- but I always want more. So I'm wondering, can I talk myself into another almost hundred bucks for these very stylized (but historical!) handwriting fonts? How to rationalize the purchase? Maybe someplace, sometime, I'll be doing some pro bono design work for a school and the Staunton script family will prove to be exactly the right thing?

Okay, so, it's a stretch.

Back to work.

PS I have a whole slew of interesting links to share, mostly from the radiant Robyn Bender, who, by the way, FINALLY has received at least some of the recognition she deserves for her fan fic, by means of the Sparky awards.

Posted by at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

As nobody seems to have taken much note, I'm going to post this again. Because I like it.

Thus: this anonymous post-it note found on the floor of the deVille Bookstore in New Orleans. This time I have made it look like a post-it note, so maybe you'll get the impact. I'm still thinking about the person who wrote this, the circumstance, and the story.

Posted by at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I have to pack so I'm ready to head out to the airport tomorrow at an unreasonably early hour, but I wanted to record this for fear I'd lose the bits of paper.

Stopped by a small independent bookseller today in the downtown area: deVille Books, 736 Union Street, New Orleans LA 70130. Prominent sign near the cash register:

independent booksellers do it without chains

Really nice collection of books on local history and southern culture, and a fantastic book on the Brothers Robinson, who are on my top five list of illustrators, ever. So I struck up a conversation with the owner, Joanne, over a novelty book called "overheard in a bookstore" -- a couple dozen quotes, some of which I'd heard before, for example Wow, this book is expensive. But then it's big, maybe they charge by the pound. I mention that I collect bits of overheard conversation. She sez, well wait, what about THIS? And she pulls out a yellow post-it note she found on the floor. I copied it down exactly (okay, so, this box is gray. use your imagination, and make it yellow):

Warrants in Mesa
license in MS
Kids--PA
Felonys gone
Vegas payment

Now I ask you: could you write a short story on the basis of this post-it? Or a screenplay? I see Nicholas Cage in the lead. Jeanne appreciated my enthusiasm and asked if I knew of Found Magazine, which I did not, so she promptly called it up on her computer screen, here. My question: how is it I never ran across this before? This is exactly the kind of thing that keeps my mind spinning. In a good way. There's also a book, you'll note, and I'm going to order it.

Posted by at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Most people aren't on the internet, you know. I've done experiments where I've pulled ten names out of my past and looked them up, and I rarely find them beyond a telephone book entry that comes up as part of google's background scratching in regular old directories. The internet feels vast in some ways, but it's a smallish universe. So it shouldn't be surprising that sites I read regularly other people also read, regardless of how out-of-the-way the subject matter might seem.

I've posted before about getupgrrl at Chez Miscarriage, who has a (well deserved) gigantic readership. I know Joshua at Noematic reads her, though I don't know how he found her and what it is that interests him about the subject matter. Now TNH at Making Light has posted at length about the recent string of posts at Chez Miscarriage on what is being called the mommy-drive-by phenomenon.

It is a good series of posts, starting here. It's so good that the rare internet looping feedback thing got started, for example: I posted an example of a drive by I experienced and somebody came over here because she wanted to respond to me, and of course, couldn't really do that at Chez Miscarriage. Do you hear the feedback whine? (I'll post a copy of my post below so you don't have to go digging through the millions of comments at CM to find it should you be that interested.)

I have said before, and I'll repeat it: getupgrrl is one of those people you want to have as your next door neighbor and best friend. She's sane, and she's funny, and she's observant and smart. She's been through infertility hell and she's kept all those qualities intact. I usually lurk over at Chez Miscarriage (and at Making Light, as well) but getupgrrl has got a talent for pushing the collective mind button in a way that makes people want to talk; for my money one grrrl is worth a couple thousand Dr. Laura's and her ilk.

But. I find myself needing to add a footnote to this whole hugely complex discussion, and I don't want to do it there. Here it is:

I agree that parental drive-bys are the ultimate in poor manners, and I try to keep my opinions to myself. And yet, I draw the line at public child abuse, and will, in cases where a child is being abused, speak up. I have done this only twice in my life, and both times were highly traumatic for all parties involved, but they aren't the situations that come back to haunt me. What I think about a lot is the time I did not speak up, and should have.

When she was six, my daughter broke her wrist jumping off a tree stump at day camp. We ended up in pediatric orthopedic care at the University of Michigan's hospital so she could be xrayed. We were just hanging out there in the xray suite waiting our turn to talk to the doctor before we went to the cast room. There were three examination tables in this particular room, one empty, one ours, and on the third one, next to us, a little girl maybe ten years old. She had an elaborate cast on her left arm, the kind that has a metal bar to hold it in a particular position. There were xrays on the wall light box and I could see she had three pins in the bone of her upper arm. This was, in other words, a damn serious break.

Her father was with her. A guy maybe thirty five. Well dressed, middle class. And hissing at her like a snake. I can call it up with perfect clarity all these years later. It went like this: don't you cry don't you dare cry you baby you sniveling baby you can't get away with that with me maybe your mother puts up with it the bitch but not with me. shut up shut up shut up. And it never stopped for the ten minutes we were in that room together.

The girl was weeping, tears running down her face in a steady stream, her whole body shaking. And I said nothing. Why? How could I not tell him to SHUT THE FUCK UP and leave the kid alone? I wanted to. But there was my own daughter, six years old and traumatized and sucking her thumb (though it had been years since she had given up that self-comforting method). I put myself physically between the girl and her father and my daughter, and I kept talking to her in a low voice, about anything else, about what we were going to do the next day, about a movie she wanted to see, about anything anything else, but we could still hear him. There was a nurse, a middle aged woman who was going about her business in another part of the room. I kept trying to catch her eye and couldn't. I don't know if she heard what was going on. I hope she didn't. I don't like to think that she heard it and didn't say something to stop it. Finally a doctor came in and got the father and they rolled the stretcher the girl was on out of the room.

Elisabeth said to me, very calmly, "Mama, why was he talking like that to her? Why was he so mean?"

It was all I could do to keep from bursting into tears. I told her it was very, very wrong, that he should not have spoken to her like that, even if he was angry or upset. I told her I would tell the doctor about it. She looked at me very thoughtfully and finally just nodded and sighed and went back to her thumb.

This is the kind of situation where there are no easy answers, but I do know one thing: I feel as though I failed that child, and I will always, always regret that. I don't believe in heaven or an accounting in front of Peter the Woman Hater, but if I find myself there sometime, I expect this episode to be right at the top of the list of things I've got to account for. And there really is no excuse that holds water.

So sure, I will continue to try to be sensitive to the fact that other people don't need or want my opinions on how to raise their children, and to keep my thoughts to myself. Except if I ever run into this guy again, and I think I'd recognize him, I might not be able to keep myself from kicking him squarely in the crotch. And that's one drive by I'd admit to, without hesitation.

So here's what I wrote at Chez Miscarriage about my own experience with a drive by:

My daughter got great comfort from sucking her thumb. As she was a very unsettled baby to start with, and seemed content only when she had some part of my anatomy in her mouth (nipple preferably, but she'd make do with my little finger), we were thrilled when on the day she turned eleven weeks old she found her thumb.

So fast forward, she's seven months old, crawling like a madbaby, already cruising, full of life, with a sense of humor. It's that magical period from 6 months to 12, you'll see, it's baby heaven.

We're in the grocery store. She's sitting in the cart, and we're having a conversation. I hold up a can of beans and say, hey are we out of these? She pats the can with her free hand, the other one is busy, thumb in mouth. How much of this was she getting? I dunno. I do know she said her first word at nine months and was talking in three word sentences at fifteen months. At twenty months she said: "oooh, a parakeet. I like a parakeet. I got one at home." (which we did not, no parakeet, but she was trying to be sociable). I have a PhD in linguistics and have taught child language acquisition, and I took careful notes of her language behavior right from the beginning.

Suddenly an older woman, maybe seventy, dressed to the nines, comes swooping in from nowhere, and leans between me and Elisabeth to grab her hand and pull her thumb out of her mouth. She says in this outraged way: don't you know that's the worst thing you can let her do?

I immediately pushed myself back between the woman and Elisabeth and said, Don't you know better than to touch other people's children? (In the meantime, Elisabeth had retrieved her thumb and was watching with great interest.)

The woman's mouth dropped open and then she pulled herself up and said, I raised three children, you could do with some advice. I've been listening to you talk to that baby for the last ten minutes as if she understood even a word of what you say to her.

I debated giving her an impromtu lecture on language acquisition and the difference between passive and active language skills, but I was too angry. I said, you keep your hands to yourself. And your advice, too.

It happened maybe five or six times total that people scolded us for letting Elisabeth suck her thumb, but this older woman really was the blue ribbon prize winner.

Posted by at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

excerpts from the Louisiana Gazette and New Orleans Advertiser, 1814 and 1815

---

Washington's Anniversary Birthnight Ball

The ball will be given at Maspero's Coffee House and commence at seven o'clock. Supper to be served at twelve o'clock....Nobody is permitted to dance in boots.

The undersigned takes leave to notify the publick that he intends to open, on the first day of March next, A SEMINARY for the instruction of youth in the classicks and the other subordinate branches of education.

J. Barteau informs his friends and the public that he removed his beeswax and tallow candles factory to the corner of Royal and St. Peter streeets, where he continues to make wax candles for persons who having wax have neither mould or conveniences.

Wanted -- a good journeyman biscuit baker, to whom liberal wages will be given.

The firing of guns and pistols in the streets are prohibited by a corporation law, under the penalty of a heavy fine--- heretofore this law has not beeen rigidly inforeced; in future it certainly will be and the citizens are cautioned against violation of it. The beating of a drum or drums and playing of fife or fifes through the streets after night is unmilitary, and it collects crowds of idle boys, servants, slaves, etc etc to the great annoyance of the citizens. The officers are requested to prevent a repetition of this disorderly inconsiderate practice, as they regard the peace, good order, and safety of the city. signed: a candidate for alderman

I get such a sense of what it was like to live in the city from reading these newspapers, it's almost as good as a time machine. Is this an oddity of mine? Do other people find these as interesting as I do?

Posted by at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I am very happy with the life I lead, and have no real wish to go back to academia. The adjustment would be hard, in the extreme. However, there are a few things I miss. The moments in the classroom when a difficult point suddenly comes clear, and you see that on the faces in front of you. The sincere, hard working students with real curiosity; the ones you come across, once in a while, who have that something extra, that flash of insight that promises great things to come.

And this: compiling a long list of obscure references, articles from journals published in out of the way places for a few months only; newspaper reports that appeared two hundred years ago; out of print books held out of maybe five libraries in the whole country. I could put a long list together and send it to the library, and the results would start trickling in right away. In my departmental mailbox, every day, another book or photocopied article or a note: interlibrary loan should have x y and z by the end of the week.

So now I have to do the heavy lifting myself. Last year I spent thousands of dollars on books: new and out of print, on journals and newspapers, most of which I really don't need to hold onto. I could sell the volumes I don't need anymore on ebay, I suppose, or take them into one of the local used book stores or donate them to a good cause. But I always pause, worried that I will have a need for that diary of a fur trapper at some point in the future.

So that's my lament. Back to work.

Posted by at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The Historical New Orleans Collection is located in a beautiful old building on Chartres Street in the French Quarter. The research area is on the second floor, a large room with big tables and good light. For most of my adult life I had effortless access to such high end research facilities, and I took them for granted. Now that I live far away from any research library at all, I recognize how fortunate I was.

So I enjoyed my first day in the research library, working with a librarian who really knows her materials and her collection and seems to get as much satisfaction out of bringing me odd and obscure documents as I get from reading them.

If I lived in a city like this one, or in New York or Chicago, I would spend a great deal of time in the wonderful libraries. As it is, I have to make the most of my few days here. Today I read, with great care and reverence, letters written by regular folks who had been near enough to observe the Battle of New Orleans and felt obliged to share what they had seen with relatives who were far away. Brittle paper, faded ink, careful handwriting, and emotion on the page that almost trembles. Tomorrow I will dive into newspapers from 1814 and 1815.

Also, there's a list of another ten books I need to read. The hope is that in a few days time I'll have a better understanding of the way people were living here in the winter of 1814-15. And then the trickle of words that has kept this story moving will turn into a flood.

Posted by at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

to spend three days in the archives in New Orleans. I will post from there if I have the opportunity and something to say that might be of interest. Be back next weekend. You may talk among yourselves, if you like. Or not.

Posted by at 7:05 AM | Permalink

Recently someone someone wrote to say they missed the feature called "what I was writing a year ago today," which had got lost in the move to the new webserver. So I put it back into the right hand column, but I just realized that it's not working, though I can't figure out why. So, I thought it might be a good idea to repost certain early posts, now and then, especially as the number of daily visits has increased by about a thousand fold. So here is an early post on POV.

----------------------

POV is one of those things that beginning students of creative writing find hard to understand. The simplest way to determine POV (the one that I use when I'm confused in my own writing) is this: who's got the camera? We're seeing and experiencing this scene through somebody's eyes -- who is it?

For a long time it's been fashionable to write in limited third person POV, which means simply that only one character at a time is holding the camera. You're inside Joe's head, watching a car accelerate toward a brick wall; then you're in Jane's. The contrast between how two characters experience the same event is one of the ways to use contrast to build tension. Mostly my work is in limited third person POV. Here's Albany in 1794 seen through Elizabeth's eyes:

The roads were crowded with housemaids swinging baskets on red-chapped arms; peddlers hawking sticky peaches, sugar-sweet melons, wilted kale; young women in watered silks with feathered parasols tilted against the sun; River Indians dressed in fringed buckskin and top hats; slaves hauling bales of rags and herding goats. It was not so dirty and crowded as New York had been, that was true. There was a pleasing tidiness to the brick houses with their steeply tiled roofs and bright curtains, but still the humid air reeked of sewage, burning refuse, pig slurry and horse dung. Elizabeth swallowed hard and put her handkerchief to her nose and mouth, wondering to herself that she had forgotten what cities were like in such a short time. Three months in the wilderness had changed her, stolen her patience for the realities of a crowded life.

And now from Nathaniel's POV

Because they did not have any other molds, Run-from-Bears had melted down about twenty pounds of the Tory gold in a makeshift forge and cast a fortune in bullets. These Nathaniel had been carrying in double-sewn leather pouches next to his skin since they left Paradise, ten pounds on each side. In Johnstown this unusual currency would have caused a stir, but Albany was a town built on some two hundred years of high intrigue and trading shenanigans. Comfortable Dutch and British merchants had made large fortunes running illegal furs from Canada, reselling silver spoons stolen in Indian raids on New England families much like their own, and bartering second grade wampum and watered rum for all the ginseng root the native women could dig up, which they then traded to the Orient at an outrageous profit. A sack of golden bullets would raise nothing more in an Albany merchant than his blood pressure.

It used to be that authors wrote almost exclusively in first person POV (David Copperfield, for example) or in omniscient third. Jane Austen is a good example of the latter case: the author sees all, knows all, and tells all. She sees simultaneously into the heart and mind of of Jane, Darcy, and Miss Bingley and understands each of them perfectly. She is, in other words, their god. Along with what they are thinking and doing, Austen gives us a running editorial (and a sharp-edged one) on the greater society in which this is all happening.

I have wondered if I'm even capable of writing a whole story or book in omniscient POV, and I think the answer is that it would be a great deal of hard work. Like learning to write with my left hand, almost. There are a few writers now who are moving back toward omniscient POV; take a look at Ann Patchett's most recent novel, Bel Canto (which won the Orange Prize and a lot of other critical awards last year), or the novels of Patrick O'Brien or Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

And to state it clearly: I have over-simplified here. For a more detailed look at POV and the way it can be carved up, have a look here.

Posted by at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

this quote (which was unattributed) has had me thinking hard about one of my characters for the better part of a week:

those people who appear most independent are in fact the neediest, since they see their needs and desires as too enormous to be inflicted on others

The only problem I have with this is the categorical nature of the statement. I'm all for hedging bets when it comes to human behavior:

those people who appear most independent may in fact be the neediest, since they see their needs and desires as too enormous to be inflicted on others

There. That's better.

Posted by at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Really, I couldn't catch up. I've read so many books and watched so many films and seen so much television since I last posted a review that it would take a month to reconstruct it all. So I'm just going to give you some highlights.

Television:

Carnivale/HBO. The second season is underway and I like it. I can't decide if I like it more than or less than the first season. They lost some characters I was attached to and kept a few I could do without; they've had some excellent plot and character twists and some subplot lines which don't work for me. But all in all: they've got my willing attention.

Huff/Showtime.***** I loved the first season of this show. My big statement: It's worth getting Showtime to see this show. Don't get it on my word alone (oi, the responsibility), but that's my opinion. It's high time Hank Azaria had a lead role in a series, and all of the actors are at the top of their respective games. I may even buy this on dvd when it comes out, and I haven't bought (and don't plan to buy) Carnivale. Didn't even buy Dead Like Me, which I also like a great deal. I'm just hoping they have enough viewers to guarantee at least a couple more seasons.

Deadwood/HBO:***** This is what's so good about HBO, all these original shows that take risks (and I'm not talking about the vocabulary choices, either). The second season of Deadwood starts in March and so I've been watching the rerun of the first season. It's hard to work with historically accurate characterizations and make your people appealing, or at least complex enough to be interesting. They manage to do it here.

Films:

Spanglish***. I didn't expect to like this movie (James L. Brooks rarely does a movie that I really like, or get; I think I was the only person on the planet who really disliked Terms of Endearment.) In fact, I didn't like Spanglish... much. But I can't deny it stuck with me. It has tremendous ... heart, I guess is the only word I can come up with, but it's awkward to the extreme in some ways and silly in others. The narcissistic wife was done so well by Téa Leoni that I cringed whenever she came onto the screen, and Cloris Leachman was perfect. I also have to say that I always brace myself for Adam Sandler, and now find that I don't have to -- if it's a drama rather than a comedy I've come to see. Punch-Drunk Love was a wonderful (if quiet) movie. I am going to see this again as a rental, and may reassess at that point, but right now I'd recommend it to some (but not all) people.

Dawn of the Dead*** (remake). The first ten minutes of this movie were the most engrossing, exciting, well edited opening I've seen in a long time. Right up to the point where the titles start and you see a car crash from overhead. The rest of the movie is worth seeing if you like the genre. If you don't skip the whole thing.

Ray. *** Worth seeing for the performances and the music. The story itself has some serious pacing issues, but then it's really hard to make a movie about a man's whole life.

I saw a lot of other movies, and remember not a single title at the moment. Not a good omen.

Books:

I haven't read a book I really loved in a good while, except for:

Red Tide/**** G.M. Ford. This is the next in the series with his journalist Frank Corso, and it's really good. I had a hard time putting it down, which is saying a lot in my case. There's a biochemical terrorist attack in Seattle, but forget the usual suspects. G.M. Ford tells a fast paced, vivid story but he doesn't neglect the characterizations or the backstory, which turns the question of guilt and responsibility on its ear. My only quibble is the last two pages, which seemed a rather... lazy way to solve one of the backstory issues.

Posted by at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Really, there's no lack of story material. It's all around us, in the newspaper and on the television and the conversations you overhear on the subway or waiting for your dry cleaning. I'm constantly amazed by the stuff I come across that's true, but we are a talkative species and we're not satisfied with the truth: we've got to tell stories, and we'll take any material we can find. Thus the urban legend, or urban myth. I usually get the sense that there's some shred of truth in these stories, but it's so long ago and far away that there's no way to track it down. Mostly urban myths are apocryphal, so that maybe the best way to think of them is a modern day equivalent of gospel stories, being generated among us to pass along society's rules and fears.

There's one tale that I'm fairly sure is an urban legend, but have never been able to track down on any of the websites dedicated to recording and documenting these stories. I was reminded of it because some wag in Chicago decided to use ebay to sell 'authentic Chicago parking place holders'. Here's one of the photos they included as a sample of their wares.

Where I grew up in Chicago most people lived in apartments or two flats and at least fifty percent of them had no garage or off street parking. You parked on the street. In the winter, when the snow drfits were three feet high, you still parked on the street, but first you had to dig out your space. Which was not pleasant work. Chicago can easily see winter temperatures below zero for days at a time, when the snow accumulation freezes solid and the wind cuts through clothes with all the nonchalance of a hog rooting through swill. So you dig out your parking place, the one right in front of your building or near by, and then it's yours. You dug it out. It's yours by social agreement and neighborhood concensus.

Of course, you may need your car, and so you drive away from your carefully and painfully won parking spot, and then what do you do? When I was a kid, you got a kitchen chair, usually the chrome ones with padded seats, which now are fashionable again and cost a fortune. Now, according to the images on ebay, you get the cheapest plastic lawn chair you can find. You get two of them and put them out in your parking spot, one at each end to indicate the length of your car. That way other people (1) know you had dug out the space and were holding it; (2) can't cheat and pretend they don't know, because those are your kitchen chairs, and sacrosanct. My guess would be that things are a little more flexible now that we're talking cheap plastic chairs.

So here's the story I'm sure is an urban myth.

First really big snow storm comes and goes, and so Joe, who has been doing this for thirty years now, goes and digs out his space, right in front of his two flat. His car is sitting near by, double parked, motor running (standard operating procedure.) When he's done he goes to get the kitchen chairs which are sitting on his porch, waiting, and while his back is turned, a guy new to the neighborhood (and new to Chicago, clearly) neatly pulls his big old chevy into the newly dug out space.

A Chicago style argument ensues. Lots of yelling and waving of arms and thrusting of fingers. The new guy (call him Sam) won't budge. The whole neighborhood comes out and gets into it, but Sam is dumb, he won't back down, won't give in, and thus Joe has to go dig out another spot. Which he does. Ominously quiet as he works. Thinking.

Late that night, when it's really, really cold, Joe goes down to his basement and gets out the long garden hose. Hooks it up to the laundry sink in the basement and runs the hot water. Opens the basement window and feeds out the hose, and then he goes outside and spends a happy hour with the hose and the chevy.

In the morning Sam finds his car sitting inside a giant ice cube. The water froze almost as soon as it hit the car, and Joe spent some time making sure it built up nicely all over.

Sam didn't have the use of his car until the April thaw, is how the story goes. Of course, Joe didn't have his parking space, either, but he did get a great laugh every time he looked out his window at the icepop chevy.

If somebody can track down documentation on this particular urban legend, please do let me know.

Now, how is this relevant to writing? This is the kind of backstory or minor subplot that can really bring a novel some texture and heart. Some day I may use it. Or maybe you will.

Posted by at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Pokey (who never comes here to read this weblog, I know she doesn't, so I could say all kinds of interesting things about her and would she know? maybe we'll find out.) pointed me to an NYT op ed piece called A Fine Romance written Mary Bly, who is an English professor and also the author of historical romances (writing as Eloisa James). I'm encouraged that (1) the NYT ran the damn thing and (2) she had the nerve to write it in the first place.

The only thing I'm not sure I agree with is the contention that romance readers avoid certain kinds of novels. I'd have to see more proof of that.

You know these links to the NYT aren't free forever, so get over there and read it. The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: A Fine Romance. Here's an excerpt:

So why is romance the only genre ghettoized for including [sex] scenes? In the early 80's feminists like Janice Radway maintained that romances channel women's desire into patriarchal marriage, but now these scholars are issuing apologias, having discovered that many romances depict working, independent heroines. As Ms. Radway has since declared, romances actually validate female desire. Clearly, the genre's struggle for respect is part of a larger cultural battle to define and control female sexuality.

Posted by at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I ran across this poem at all monsters and dust

twould be nice to be
an apostrophe
floating above an s
hovering like a paper kite
in between the its
eavesdropping, tiptoeing
high above the thats
an inky comet
spiralling
the highest tossed
of hats

© Roger McGough, 1976

which reminded me of my exclamation point poem:

finger pointed in my face
shrilling voice, accusative case
Phallus with one cramp'd ball:
Richard Simmons on a service call
Infomercial's long rampage
Gushing Jerry Springer rage
(Pierre my Love! Vile scoundrel, desist!
Elvis is back and is he pissed!
Alien warships land on moon!
Make your fortune in an afternoon!
And if-you-act-right-now!-now!-now!
why-we'll throw-in-a-spotted-cow!)
Begone! enthusiasm spasm
Away! screaming ink tattoo
Instead: a comma like a dimple
Or the period, so elegant and simple
Smack on the spot: the universal dot.

© Rosina Lippi, 1999

which made me wonder. Are there other punctuation poems out there? And if so, where are they? If you know of one, would you please speak up? Because I think they all need to huddle together for warmth.

On a related matter, the radiant Robyn Bender sent me a book of poems that has me somewhat preoccupied. Sometimes a single line sets off echoes. More about that tomorrow.

Posted by at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've now moved saralaughs over to the new webhost as well, and in the process I actually did something I've been meaning to do for a while. I updated the faq page and the bio page and a lot of other bits and pieces, and it's all here if you care to have a look.

In the usual way of technological things, while the domain has transfered, email lags behind and is fopelessly hucked for the moment, at least. Just fyi.

Posted by at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I debated posting about this for a good while. Normally I would not bother with yet another literary award, by the literati, for the literati. As this one is sufficiently self-mocking, I point you to The First Annual TMN Tournament of Books, an award thought up by the literati/criterati minded at The Morning News. The award is The Rooster. Or a rooster:

We have looked into shipping a live rooster to the winner. We are still looking.

All this started on February 7 and is still going on. It's worth looking at if you first take this proviso seriously:

Which brings us to our next point: Arbitrariness is inherent in book awards. The way books are nominated, the judges who consider them, the division of labor as the books are assessed—arbitrary, arbitrary, arbitrary, bordering on meaningless. Our plan for the tournament is to make the proceedings no less arbitrary but far more transparent. We’ve already explained how the books were nominated, and as the tournament proceeds you will know which of our judges selected which books to advance and why. You’ll also know something about each of these judges’ preferences and biases and so forth, so when your favorite novel is eliminated by a work you judge to be lighter than chick lit, you’ll know why. Results from each bracket will be released sequentially on weekdays from February 7th to February 28th, when we will award The Rooster to the winner.

And I have to admit that some of the battles are quite amusing. Although I will state first, and for the record, that I still strenuously object to this idea:

We limited the selections to novels, and also to the 'you-know-it-when-you-see-it' genre known as literary fiction.

One of the judges is Mark Sarvas of the Elegant Variation. I had a short, interesting debate with him some time ago on the matter of (his term) 'serious' fiction, which you'll find right here. If you follow the comments right down, you'll see that Mark abandoned the conversation after I made this point:

My point is, the distinction between "a yarn, a page-turner, a good time" and "serious literature" is an artifical one that has more to do with dogma than a real examination of what makes fiction work. I would call most of Austen and Dickens page-turners, and certainly I have a good time when I'm reading them. They are also thematically rich, highly plotted and full of interesting characters. The no-pain-no-gain approach to reading strikes me as perverse, and truly unnecessary.

Maybe he had nothing to say. Maybe he had to pick up his dry cleaning and forgot about it; maybe he found better things to do. All possible. However, given this basic very big difference in philosophy and approach, I mostly don't read the weblogs written by the self-anointed guardians of so-called serious literature. I've made an exception for The Rooster. Because it made me laugh.

Posted by at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here are a few novels I have tried to read or listen to on tape, recently, and failed. This means I drifted away and never could force myself back to finish. Atonement (McEwan); True History of the Kelly Gang (Carey); and the new translation/edition of Gilgamesh. I would never, ever claim that these books have nothing going for them, but I can state that where ever it is they were headed, I just wasn't in the frame of mind to go along for the ride. Atonement, in particular, I found hard to bear. It was so beautifully written and so lovingly observed, I liked all the characters extremely, and yet it went on and on, and with every paragraph I cringed a little more, knowing something awful was about to happen. It's the centerpiece of the novel, the crucial event, and it takes McEwan a terribly long time to get there. So long that I couldn't stand it anymore and stopped.

Maybe I'll finish all of these novels when I'm in a different mood and love them to death. Entirely possible.

In the meantime, the ever thoughtful Robyn has sent me some interesting things to read that look much more my taste, at this point in time. I'll report back.

Posted by at 1:11 AM | Permalink

My daughter, who is a sophomore in high school, brings home lots of interesting stories, bits of paper, and viruses. She shares her stories sometimes, her viruses always. We both are enjoying this latest one, some kind of stomach flu. With a headache. So I'm going back to bed.

See you, hopefully, soon.

Posted by at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So if you've been following the off-again on-again discussion on what goes into a novel that is successful both commercially and critically, you'll remember about category seven. The Holy Grail of novels. The novel the critics fall over each other to adore, but at the same time it's got such a great story, so well told, such compelling characters, that it sells like the proverbial hotcakes.

If you're new to the topic, you may want to catch up. Or maybe not.

Now, people have been suggesting names of novels that they believe fit into category seven, and after thinking about some of those titles for a while, I've come to a conclusion. I have to set up a subcategory, or a different category all together. Because just as there are cult films, there are cult books, some of which may be category seven novels, but most of which are not. Here are the cult books I could come up with in a few minutes:

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Robert Pirsig
Naked Lunch | William S. Burroughs
The Catcher in the Rye | J.D. Salinger
On the Road | Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Ken Kesey
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas | Hunter S. Thompson
Breakfast of Champions | Kurt Vonnegut

I would argue that Gone with the Wind belongs in this category as well -- but I'm going to leave that for a moment, or the GwtW love squad will surely be after me again. Now, I have to say also that there are books that aren't quite category seven but may be cult books in the making, which brings me to my next point. Here are titles that have been suggested as Category Seven novels:

• To Kill a Mockingbird | Harper Lee
• Birdsong | Sebastian Faulks
• Regeneration | Pat Barker
• Fly Away Peter | David Malouf
• The Lovely Bones | Alice Sebold
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time | Mark Haddon
• The Name of the Rose | Umberto Eco
• Possession | A. S. Byatt
• Cold Mountain | Charles Frasier
• Ender’s Game | Orson Scott Card
• Outlander | Diana Gabaldon
• Flowers from the Storm | Laura Kinsale
• The Time Traveler's Wife | Audrey Niffenegger
• Cloud of Sparrows | Matsuoka Takashi

Of course, this whole process is highly subjective and thus ripe for disagreement and discussion. I personally wouldn't put most of these novels into category seven, for one reason or another. In some cases, simply because they miss out in critical success category -- for no fault of their own. Flowers from the Storm, for example, which I personally consider one of the five top romance novels ever written, isn't category seven simply because it is a romance, and as such falls below the radar of the critics. Right? Fair? No. I'm just observing, here.

However, there are many cult classics in the romance genre, and Flowers from the Storm is definitely one of those. In fact, if you think about it -- a cult classic is what it is precisely because it has been ignored (for the most part) or rejected (less often) by the literati, and it has been raised to its high status by the readers. I personally would far prefer to be able to say, at the end of my life, that one of my books had ended up a cult classic, because then people would still be reading it. That's worth a lot more than a couple weeks in the top five at the NYT. In my estimation. By the way, I would put Outlander in the cult classic category along with Flowers from the Storm, but I happen to know that Diana dislikes being classified as a romance writer.

I have this sense that this little experiment of mine hasn't been very useful to anybody but myself. At least I've succeeded in clarifying my own thinking on what makes a particular novel work -- for the readers, for the critics -- for the moment.

Posted by at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I have no idea how many people are actually reading this weblog since I moved it. There is still a fair amount of activity at the old server site, and I haven't figured out how to read the stats over here yet. Not that it matters; I'll muddle along whether I'm talking to you or to myself. But a few organizational matters need to be sorted.

First, while I believe I actually deleted the earlier version of storytelling at saralaughs.com, it's still showing up. How that can be, I have no idea. Maybe I'll have the energy to figure it out tomorrow.

Second, inspite of helpful hints from various people, I still haven't been able to make the redirect work. Also a matter for tomorrow. Or the day after.

Third, while I was busy with my machete, hacking away at the old weblog site, I checked the logs. The ones that tell me what people were searching for when they visited. For a long time I've been meaning to raise this topic, but I put it off because I'm not sure I can say what needs to be said without sounding condescending or mean. But listen. If you're using the search box (lower right hand column) because you want to find something, try to keep it to one or two of the most salient words. This is what I mean. If you search for:

reviews and evaluations on the book "Look Ma I Published a Book" by Sammy Wiseman

... then you are going to get a ton of hits, every time the word 'reviews' and 'evaluations' and 'book' show up in a weblog posting. In this case, it makes most sense just to search the word 'Wiseman' or even 'Sammy' -- which is fairly uncommon. Search engines don't work well with whole phrases. Here's another search string that is badly formed:

writing about sex in scenes with men and women not slash

This isn't going to reap anything useful, because the search engine isn't going to see 'not slash' as a phrase. It's just going to go along on its mindless way and give you a list of every post with a 'not' in it. Not to mention posts with 'sex' and 'writing' and 'scenes'.

Here are some searches I noted which make sense: 'Gabaldon' 'sex' 'Deadwood' 'Wilderness' 'slash' 'orgasm'. Most probably these people found what they were looking for. Or at least a discussion of what they were looking for. Of course, the category archives in the right hand column would probably be a quicker way to find the posts in question, and also, I must note: this list does make it look as though all I write about is writing sex scenes, which is not true. For example, tomorrow I'm going to write about Category Seven novels, specifically the lists that people have come up with, and whether or not I opening up this can of worms is proving useful.

Posted by at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

If you don't overuse a particular approach, a formula can be quite useful when you're trying to be funny:
Example 1:

Wednesday, February 2 was Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address. It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication and the other involves a groundhog. (Air America Radio)

Example 2:

What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish? One's a scum-sucking bottom feeder, and the other one's a fish.

Example 3:

What's the difference between a doberman and an Italian mother? Eventually the doberman lets go.

Which brings me to the topic of characterization, dialogue and wittiness.

I am not particularly quick witted in one-to-one conversation. Winston Churchhill was supposedly extremely quick, ala: 'Sir, you are drunk.' 'Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.' My cousins Tom is cut from the same cloth, although most of his wittiest spontaneous comments are so blue that they don't bear repeating. I knew many women in Austria who were astoundingly quick, but that came in part from the fact that they grew up in a social setting that valued storytelling and verbal acuity very highly, in some ways higher than they do any kind of written language skills.

One thing about writing fiction is that your characters can do the things you'd like to do, but can't. If you don't overdo it. You can have a character who always has the perfect quotation come to mind. Your Mrs. McGuire can be as quick on the draw as Churchhill, if you take the time to draw her thus. This is one of those areas where I draw from life, without shame. If I hear a particularly apt, very funny quick rejoinder while I'm moving about my day, something that comes up in spontaneous conversation, I'm likely to use it at some point in a scene.

A character can be witty, but oddly enough, it's really hard to have characters tell jokes and pull it off. I think the difficulty is twofold:

--delivery is everything in telling a joke. Body language, gesture, tone are crucial, and those are the things that you can't really recreate on the page.

--the minute a joke shows up, a reader comes out of the fictive trance and begins to compare it to other jokes they've heard.

Here's an example of a joke that I tried and failed to put into a scene (I gave up on it, eventually):

Martha and Ivy sneak out of the nursing home to go on a joy ride one day. They take the director's car. Martha doesn't say anything when Ivy climbs into the driver's seat, thinking she'll get her turn on the way back. Then Ivy goes through a red light without hesitating. Martha thinks, well, okay. It's been a while since she's driven. Give her a break. Ivy zips through the next red light. Martha squeeks. Third red light, Ivy rams right through and they almost get broadsided by a truck. "Ivy!" yells Martha. "Where in the hell did you learn to drive?!" Ivy turns to her with a confused expression. "Oh," she says. "Am I driving?"

I can't think of a single instance of a character telling a joke in scene that really works. Please do point one out, if you've got such an example.

Posted by at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Pam brought up an excellent point.

Could this be a case of a reviewer trying to increase their readership? Be extreme and see who you net for readers? Isn't it a niche market, readers of reviews? I was asking some people at the office, whether or not they would do something based on, or in defiant of, a reviewer's comments. Some don't ever read reviews of movies or books. (Who am I kidding, read reviews of books!?!) But others do, for the entertainment and to see if the reviewer "matches" their opinion. It's a form of entertainment for some people. For you?

Really the bigger question is whether critical opinion -- the blessing or the rejection of the literati -- matters at all. Certainly you can write a good story that finds a lot of readers and be ignored (or skewered) by the critics who write reviews. So why does it matter, to me particularly? A couple of things come to mind.

Maybe it's something as simple as needing approval of the authority figure. But of course that only works if I grant authority to reviewers. It was Eleanor Roosevelt who said "nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." I love Eleanor Roosevelt.

Then there's the matter of pride. Reviewers have a big pulpit from which to make their opinions known. I think Pam's right that most people don't read reviews, but right now that's probably not a lot of comfort to Bret Lott. If a hundred people read the review of Before We Get Started, I'm guessing that smarts.

I'm trying to remember specific reactions I had to bad reviews. Two come to mind, in one case I laughed, in the other I was angry.

The first case was the PW review that used the phrase "color by number cartoon caricatures." That phrase struck me as so studied and so extreme that I wasn't offended at all; I just didn't take it seriously. I imagined some graduate student in an MFA program getting paid twenty bucks to write the review, and pouring all his or her venom and anger into it, but coming up with ridiculous, instead.

The other case was a two line review in a minor Oregon paper for Into the Wilderness. It was something like "The main character has the Mohawk name Between Two Lives. Kind of like a professor who writes bodice rippers."

That one made me angry, because (1) obviously the reviewer (a male) hadn't read the damn book; and (2) it was condescending. It was also a case of a reviewer going for the pithy line rather than providing any thoughtful criticism.

I think that's the answer: anybody who is published hopes for reviews that are good, of course. But really what you want, what you hope for, are thoughtful reviews that indicate the reviewer read the book carefully and thought about it and understood something of what you were trying to accomplish. It's praise from a colleague, in a way, because most reviewers are also writers. A reviewer should know what goes into writing a novel, and so it's particularly hard when they cut corners or are unnecessarily nasty.

Somewhere in this long post are the reasons I read reviews. When I started writing this I thought maybe I could make myself understand that reviews aren't important and can be ignored, but I didn't get there. Because now I remember this: a well written review will make me see things about a book I might otherwise have missed.

PS I'm coming back to the topic of Category Seven novels soon. Those of you who have emailed me or posted book titles, I'm thinking about them.

Posted by at 12:11 PM | Permalink

Anamaria has pointed out a review at the Washington Post, on Brett Lott's Before We Get Started. This review is by Jonathan Yardley, who is a biographer, columnist and book reviewer of significant stature. Generally the book reviews at the Washington Post are far more interesting to me than the NYT, so I have read quite a few of Yardley's reviews over the years. I suppose I like him, in part, because he's less condescending about genre fiction than most mainstream reviewers. In April of last year he wrote a column with the irresistible title "Dumas, the Papa of Popular Fiction" which caught my attention, especially given the opening sentences:

The recent revival of interest in "popular" fiction -- fiction written primarily to entertain, with few if any literary pretensions -- is welcome and long overdue. The vast majority of the books that get onto the fiction bestseller lists are junk, pure and simple, but many readers and even a few critics have come to understand that there's occasionally genuine merit in so-called genre fiction -- mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, multigenerational sagas -- and that this work rarely gets the serious, respectful consideration it deserves.

I've been wondering ever since I read this if "multigenerational sagas" is some kind of code for that-which-must-not-be-acknowledged: romance fiction. But I'm going to put that aside for the moment. Just so you get the picture: Yardley is a reviewer I generally like and respect, although I don't always agree with him. And now there's his review of Brett Lott's book on writing. Or actually, it's a review of Brett Lott's whole career and personality, in addition to one of Before We Get Started.

This review has me in knots. On the one hand I agree completely with Yardley on some basics about how-to-write books (as I've posted here, not so long ago). He says in this review:

Yes, people who aspire to be writers are like people who aspire to anything else: They need help. Over the years some exceptionally good books have been written about the art and craft of fiction -- I think in particular of Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners and Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings-- but they deal with large issues rather than niggling details. They don't say, implicitly or explicitly: Do as I advise and you can be just like me. They understand that serious writing done in the hopes of making literature is a mysterious process the precise nature of which is hidden within the individual writer's heart and mind, and that this process cannot be transferred -- least of all in a classroom or a writers' colony -- from one person to another.

I have posted before about this general topic of literary pretensions, for which I have little or no tolerance, so I do agree with Yardley on that front. Except this particular review is so ... extreme, I'm not sure what to do with it. For example:

Though his prose is ordinary at best and gag-inducing at worst, and though his fiction rarely rises above sentimental tear-jerking, Lott has persuaded himself that he is "a literary writer," "a literary author," and has taken on all the airs to which he apparently believes this distinction entitles him. He travels every stop on the circuit, teaching at one "low-residency M.F.A. program" after another, and now he has the gall to offer himself as a literary exemplar whose "writer's life" provides a beacon that can guide to the literary promised land all those who dutifully follow it.

Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch. This feels like overkill to me. Now, Brett Lott is a grownup and he'll deal with this; my concern is far more selfish. I've got a bad taste in my mouth about Jonathan Yardley, and the only solution is to read the darn book and see for myself. If the tone had been more measured, I could have simply decided not to bother with Lott's book; as it is, I almost feel obliged to read it. Which is not, I think, what Yardley had in mind.

Posted by at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I've had a lot of emails recently with people asking when Fire Along the Sky will be out in paperback. I wish I had a definitive answer, but the best I can do is this: sometime between August and December of this year. Publishers set their schedules according to a bigger picture, and I have no voice in that process. I wish I could give more reliable information, but that's all I have.

You should know that as an author, I am both pleased and distressed by questions like this. Somebody wants to buy my book: that's great. That's encouraging. That same person is impatient, and wants the next book or the next edition right now: that's also encouraging, in a way, but it's also distressing. I think Robin Williams once said the life of a comic was hard because people were always pointing at you and demanding: be funny!

The writer's equivalent, of course, is that every day I should be putting out a solid chapter. If I could do that, I'd have a novel in 30-50 days. But I can't.

You should also know that when I am on the other side of the equation, I am also impatient and less than understanding. Just today I was wondering about Lee Child, Dennis Lehane, Stephen Hunter, GM Ford, John Sandford. What are these guys doing, playing poker someplace instead of working on their next novels? Because I'm ready to read them: right now.

They can't be funny on cue, either, and that's something I have to live with. But it does occur to me: why don't I get invited to the poker game? Except for the obvious reason that (1) I don't know any of these guys and (2) I don't play poker. In fact, I'm terrible at card games -- at all games -- pretty much without exception. And I really stink at Scrabble. All the pressure, all those tiny squares looking at me, demanding that I arrange them into a word that will knock out the competition, demanding that I produce, right now, right now, right now. Can't do it. Never could.

Posted by at 2:29 PM | Permalink

... or you'll never survive in this business. Thus I point you to the Book of Fanfic by Manna at LiveJournal, starting with an excerpt from Chapter One.

1: And it came to pass that some people wrote fanfic, and they had themselves a high old time of it, and why not, for it was fun.

2: And it came to pass very shortly afterwards that others read these writings, and thought that they were not Good, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

3: "Lo!" they said. "This badfic is a plague upon the nations of the Earth. For how hard is it to get a beta reader? Or to run spellcheck? Or use the holy powers of logic? Or write the characterisations *I* like? Or do *normal* pairings? Verily, these writers are crap."

If you are unfamiliar with fanfic and new to this weblog, you might want some backstory, here before you go read the rest of the gospel according to Manna.

Also, I am still finding broken image links since I moved the weblog to this server. I'm fixing them as fast as I can, so please bear with me.

Posted by at 10:11 AM | Permalink