Reading, Writing, Revising

It's All Happening

2013-05-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

I snuck off on a trip last week, and I have another one coming up shortly, and that's all before I go to Squaw Valley in early July for the workshop I got into. Thanks to everyone who offered congratulations. I'm still very excited about it.

I'm working hard on giving my novel those finishing touches it needs, making it better and shorter and more coherent. At the workshop, I'll get a chance to meet with a professional who may be interested in reading my manuscript and potentially working with me. I also hope to start querying agents this summer.

Short story thoughts are rattling around in my head, because I want to write something new to bring to the workshop. Plus I'm in the middle of reading four books right now. And I'm behind on Mad Men, and I need a haircut, and I probably haven't answered your email.

Life is busy. Life is good. More details as events unfold.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Gemma Cooper at The Bent Agency explains some common problems she finds when editing: "During action scenes, it's easy to get caught up writing movement and dialogue and forget the noise. What I mean about this, is when explosions are going on and your main character is running away, you need to remember to show this to the reader. Have the main character shouting their dialogue in broken sentences. They would be panting if running, and always when you are stressed, you don't bother with niceties in dialogue or even finish what you are saying."

News Is Good News

2013-05-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

Back in the fall, I blogged about polishing up the first chapter of my novel so I could submit it to a brand new juried writing conference. Eventually I heard back that I had a spot on the waiting list, which was better than a rejection but didn't result in getting to attend.

After that, I didn't blog about the fact that I submitted the same materials to another, more established conference. I decided I'd just keep that to myself unless anything came of it.

Well, guess what? I got in! In July, I'll be attending the week-long Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, and I am thrilled.

At the conference, I'll get to participate in a daily workshop of about a dozen students, having my work critiqued and critiquing the work of others. Every day our group will be led by a different staff member from the large roster of professional writers, editors, and agents. In addition, there will be lectures, panel discussions, and other opportunities to work with the rest of the attendees. My brain is filling up just reading over the information I've received so far!

I'm sure I'll have plenty more to blog about this as the conference approaches. And now I have extra confidence and motivation as I continue with the final-for-now pass through my novel.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Abigail Grace Murdy sums up recent discussions about unlikable characters by women writers: "Women face a deeply double pressure to please, to be likable--to be made of sugar, spice, and everything nice. In the world of fiction, that pressure falls on their characters." (Thanks, Conversational Reading!)

The Aversive Clause

2013-05-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

Reading a book written by a friend is a nerve-racking proposition. I was afraid to start THE AVERSIVE CLAUSE, a short story collection by B.C. Edwards, because I've known the author since high school. (As a result, I know all manner of embarrassing things about him, and vice versa. None of those will be revealed here.) I didn't want to find myself in the position of disliking the work of a person I'm fond of.

I had no reason to worry. From the first page of the first story, "Tumblers," I was taken in by the writing. Get a load of these sentences: "He wasn't always a driver, the man dressed as our driver said. Just this afternoon he was dressed as a man discovering his wife sleeping with another man on a fainting couch." How great is that?

So now I face the other problem with reading a book by someone I know: I have to convincingly explain that these are truly fabulous stories, independent of my friendship with the author. Fortunately, I can point out that other people think so, too.

Some of the stories in this collection are of this world, and others are set in worlds where things are a little different. In "Goldfish," a nineteen-year-old boy is drunk at a party and thinking about the girl who's always been good to him, and then the story circles around in a horribly clever way. "Aggie With The Hat On" features a slacker who discovers there's a more together version of himself living in the same town. In "Sweetness," a zombie-type illness begins with a constant sweet taste at the back of the throat.

Several of the stories have settings that are apocalyptic or on their way there, but one is the simple reality of a guy attending a family reunion with his boyfriend for the first time. In other words, there are lot of things happening in this collection, and if you don't like one of the stories, the next one will be completely different. I hope you'll give it a try.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Millions, Nichole Bernier reports on The Point of the Paperback: "A look at a paperback's redesign tells you a thing or two about the publisher's mindset: namely, whether or not the house believes the book has reached its intended audience, and whether there's another audience yet to reach. Beyond that, it's anyone’s Rorschach. Hardcovers with muted illustrations morph into pop art, and vice versa. Geometric-patterned book covers are redesigned with nature imagery; nature imagery in hardcover becomes photography of women and children in the paperback."

Shortening

2013-05-03T18:08:00.000-07:00

There's a secret ingredient to my current editing pass that I didn't mention in my post last week. Right now, my manuscript is problematically too long, and my goal is to get it down to acceptably too long. I wasn't sure if I'd actually be able to accomplish that this time through, but so far it's going very well.

I'm not removing anything you'd notice -- not taking out any scenes or altering the plot. Occasionally I'll find a chunk of dialogue or a whole paragraph that can go because the information is repeated elsewhere or is no longer relevant. But mostly I'm tightening sentences and conversations to say the same thing with fewer words.

I wanted to offer a set of tips on how to do this, but I'm finding it hard to formulate guidelines that are generally applicable. If this advice would be useful to any of you, speak up, and I'll work on coming up with something.

Rather than a tutorial, I thought I'd provide a before-and-after example. I've picked out a short excerpt that I trimmed by twenty percent. Perhaps it will suggest some strategies.

This isn't an especially interesting piece of text on its own, but it serves its role in the story. It's a conversation between a husband and wife in which they are both thinking about things they aren't sharing. As further context: they've recently moved to California, and it's 1963.

The original passage, 305 words:

I sat down opposite her. "Are you going to start the Christmas shopping tomorrow?" I wanted Bonnie to remember how much she normally loved the holidays. I wanted to stay upbeat. Usually when an affair was over, I felt better.

"I hadn't really thought about it."

"Well, you should take advantage of your day off, shouldn't you?"

She sighed and settled her head back into the corner of the chair. "I suppose I should."

"Don't you want to? You love buying presents. You love all the decorations."

"It doesn't feel very much like Christmas here. Maybe I'll wait until we get to Pittsburgh."

"That's not leaving yourself a lot of time. I'm sure they have Christmas displays here. Probably with lots of fake snow. It'll get you in the right frame of mind. I think it would be a good idea for you to start tomorrow."

She scowled. "You don't need to nag me about it. I promise all the presents will be ready by Christmas Day."

"I'm not--" We couldn't argue. She was my wife, and I loved her, and she was all I needed to be happy. "What would you like for Christmas?"

Bonnie squeezed her eyes shut and pursed her lips.

"It's not that I'm relying on you to tell me what to buy you. I already have several ideas." I didn't, but there was time. "Are you crying?"

"No." She wiped her eyes. "I'm fine. I'm tired." She'd been tired all week, and acting as though our modest Thanksgiving dinner had depleted all her energy.

I went to her side. "I don't want you to get angry about my saying this, but after our trip, we need to reevaluate whether it's really a good idea for you to work four days a week. It might be too much for you."

The edited version, 243 words:

I sat down opposite her. "Are you going to start the Christmas shopping tomorrow, since it's your day off?" I wanted Bonnie to remember how much she normally loved the holidays. I wanted to stay upbeat. I usually felt better when an affair was over.

She sighed and settled her head back into the corner of the chair. "I suppose I should."

"Don't you want to? You love buying presents. All the decorations."

"It doesn't feel very much like Christmas here. Maybe I'll wait until we get to Pittsburgh."

"That's not leaving yourself a lot of time. I'm sure they have Christmas displays here. With fake snow. It'll get you in the right frame of mind. You should start tomorrow."

She scowled. "I'll get it done. You don't need to nag me."

"I'm not--" We couldn't argue. She was my wife, and I loved her, and she was all I needed to be happy. "Do you know what you want for Christmas?"

Bonnie squeezed her eyes shut and pursed her lips.

"It's not that I don't have ideas." I didn't, but there was time. "Are you crying?"

"No." She wiped her eyes. "I'm fine. I'm tired." She'd been tired all week.

I went to her side. "I don't want you to get angry, but after our trip, we need to reevaluate whether it's really a good idea for you to work four days a week. It might be too much for you."

You can see that I've removed a few sentences that didn't add anything important. I also made many sentences shorter by taking out unnecessary phrases and words. Additionally, I rephrased some sentences so they sound better to me, though that doesn't always involve shortening. It's still the same conversation, but it's a little snappier. This exchange needs to happen in the story, but it's not a super exciting, so there's no reason to devote a lot of space to it.

So that's how one page of editing went. And that's how I'm shortening my manuscript.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Kathy Crowley at Beyond the Margins discusses how to handle flashbacks: "Just as parents are advised to frame their children's 'quirks' in a positive way, I like to think of my struggles with flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks with a slight nod to the future, as some almost spiritual aspect of my inclination to write. My time-space continuum is dense and intense and... special."

Dispossession

2013-04-29T11:49:00.000-07:00

I heard Chaz Brenchley read the beginning of DISPOSSESSION at FOGcon, and I knew I was going to have to buy the book so I could find out what happens next.

At the start of the novel, Jonty wakes up in a hospital and is surprised to discover that the woman cradling his aching head isn't the one he's loved and shared his life with for years but instead a complete stranger. His surprise turns to utter confusion when this mystery woman claims to be his wife.

Jonty soon discovers that he's been in an accident and lost all memory of the past three months of his life. They've apparently been busy ones. During this missing time, he's not only married a woman he can't remember, he's also become involved in a host of nefarious activities that make no sense with what he knows about himself. The story unfolds as a fascinating mystery in which a man investigates his own recent past.

I previous read the author's HOUSE OF DOORS and was impressed by the storytelling, so I had no doubt that DISPOSSESSION would be a satisfying read. Jonty's mystery becomes more puzzling the deeper he delves, with more strange factors coming into play, but by the end, all questions are answered. There's a good deal of graphic violence along the way, so this is not a story for everyone, but if you have the stomach for it, I recommend it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Lydia Netzer looks at the backlash against literary fiction: "I read a lot of books last year including scifi, historical, 19th century, memoir, and yes nonfiction and even instruction manuals. My favorite books were the ones I could preface with this much-maligned and apparently dangerous adjective 'literary.' Literary scifi yes please! Literary historical thank you! Literary southern hello! 'Literary memoir' tells me this is not a celebrity tell-all or political expose. 'Literary thriller' tells me I can enjoy my sentences while I scramble through a plot."

Beyond The End

2013-04-26T16:44:00.000-07:00

Since I announced that I reached the end of my novel rewrite, people have been curious about why I'm not in fact finished revising. I know there's a danger I could tinker forever in the search for perfection, but I promise that's not what I'm doing. (Right now. That might come later.)

For the past two years, I always kept myself moving in a forward direction, partly to avoid that trap of endless tweaking. As a result, I would sometimes find that I needed to do something such as establish three chapters back that the characters had a previous discussion about the topic at hand. I'd make a note of it and keep going. So now it's time for me to write in all those little changes specified in my careful notes.

The three-stories-in-one nature of my novel also introduced some issues that I need to deal with. For various reasons, I started revising with the story that occurs chronologically last and finished with the one that happens first. That meant that when I deviated from my outline, I sometimes ended up with characters referring to past events that I altered when writing about that part of the past. For example, in the storyline I just finished, which is the earliest one, I gave the narrator's wife a whole subplot that I hadn't even thought of until I started working on that story. The subplot makes the whole story far richer (I can't even understand how I didn't think of it sooner), but it does mean I have to adjust all the places where the next narrator talks about this aspect of his childhood so that it makes sense with the new reality.

As I've been rereading what I've written over these past two years, I'm mostly pretty happy, which is a relief, but I am finding occasional sentences that are painfully convoluted and overcrowded with information. I'm looking forward to fixing all those before any other human being has to be subjected to them.

There's other stuff to do which is vaguer and therefore less easy to explain, and I honestly can't state how long it's going to take to make these changes. But I promise I will stop myself short of perfectionism and work on getting a draft that I can call finished as soon as possible.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Robert Brockway offers 5 Tips for Punching Writer's Block in the Face: "Writer's block comes from the panic of potentiality: There's too much you can do, so you do nothing. Push that thought out of your head and put something down on paper that you know, as a fact, is going to be garbage." (Thanks, Lauren!)

Birthday Book Haul

2013-04-22T12:28:00.000-07:00

Because it was my birthday last week, as well as to celebrate reaching the end of my revision, I went out and bought myself some books at my two favorite local bookstores, Books Inc in Mountain View and Leigh's Favorite Books in Sunnyvale.

Not that I need any more books, or have any room left on my shelves. I'm going to have to do a bit of culling and give some of my old books to the library in order to fit these new ones. And while I expect to read some of these soonishly, others may sit on the shelf for years before I get to them. And, yeah, I'm already in the middle of a couple books on my Kindle right now, and plan to buy a few more recent releases in digital format, but I'm not giving up on paper yet.

For one thing, I love a good cover, so I couldn't resist this watery beauty:

→ HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA by Mohsin Hamid, in addition to having a cover that makes me want to dive in, keeps intriguing me the more I hear about it. It's written with the unusual second person narrator and pretends to be a self-help book. I listened to a Fresh Air interview with the author and have come across praise from several critics. I'm looking forward to reading this one soon.

→ TENTH OF DECEMBER by George Saunders was proclaimed "the best book you'll read this year" by the New York Times Magazine. This was at the beginning of January. That's a pretty impressive piece of hype to live up to, but I do think I'm going to enjoy this short story collection after listening to Saunders interviewed approximately everywhere, including The Colbert Report and Bullseye.

→ A couple of months ago, I read and linked to an essay by Benjamin Nugent and learned about his debut novel, GOOD KIDS. The story sounded entertaining, so I added it to my to-read list, and when I spotted it in the store, I read the first page and decided to go ahead and buy it.

→ The folks at Bookrageous, one of my favorite podcasts, have raved repeatedly about MR. PEANUT by Adam Ross, so I've been meaning to read it a couple of years now. I figured if I picked up a copy, that might be marginally more likely to happen.

→ I have been kind of interested to read every book by Curtis Sittenfeld, and she was on my mind because she has a new book coming out soon. The one that appeals to me most is PREP, and when I saw it in the store, I thought it was finally time to give her work a try.

I also ordered another new book that wasn't in stock:

→ THIS CLOSE is a short story collection by Jessica Francis Kane, author of THE REPORT, which I devoured. I have been hearing good things about it, and I adore the paint-sample cover. (While browsing the store, I was amused to see the same element on the cover of a completely different book.)

When my order comes in, I'll need to go back into a bookstore. And maybe I'll just have to come home with a few additional books.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ John Barnes explains how to Diagnose and Treat Lifeless, Wandering, and Other Problem Dialogue: "In good dialogue, as often as possible, (1) A character makes a demand on another, (2) the other character's response shows that the demand either fails or succeeds, and (3) both characters have a reaction to the way that the demand and response changed the relationship."

The End Is Here

2013-04-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

Recently this blog has been mostly reading and not much writing and revising, but lots of writing and revising has been going on behind the scenes. And as a result of it all, I am very happy and relieved to announce that I have reached The End.

You should feel free to cheer and applaud now. I'll bask.

Yes, it's true: I have finished the last chapter of the novel that I started revising more than two years ago. This revision has taken so much longer than I expected, and I have made so many predictions that proved to be laughingly inaccurate. But I see in that post from the beginning that I wrote, "At this rate, I'll be finished approximately never." So I came in ahead of deadline after all!

This is not the first time I've completed THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE. I originally wrote the story in a month for NaNoWriMo, and later I started over from scratch and wrote a much stronger novel based on the same ideas in eight months. I didn't anticipate that I'd be starting from scratch again this time, but I ended up changing far more than I left intact.

When I was making plans for this revision, I thought the second version was sort of close to what the story ought to be. That didn't really take into account that I was already intending to make big, big changes, and I came up with plenty more changes as I went along. Plus, while writing this draft, I worked more carefully on the quality of my prose than I ever have before (or than I ever had the ability to before, since I keep improving as a writer the longer I write). That all took time.

But I'm very happy with what I've produced. I think it's good -- and I hope I still think so once I read it! I know many of you are eager to read as well, but it's not quite ready. As I warned you too long ago, I need to fix some continuity errors and other uneven parts before I share it. I've learned my lesson, and I'm making no predictions whatsoever about how long that's going to take.

For now, though, I'm giving myself the week off to relax, celebrate my birthday, and spend some more time reading.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Hal Duncan demonstrates How to Write a Sentence: "There are many things you want to say in a sentence, but you can't say them all. Decide between them. There are many ways a thing might be said. Decide between them. There are many words on the shelf, close enough to hand that you could grab any one of them and just chuck it in there. Don't. Stop. Look at those words. Decide between them." (Thanks, Effie!)

Starting Margaret Atwood

2013-04-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

The second author in my START HERE project is Margaret Atwood, and this time I get to be much more enthusiastic than with the first author. However, I hardly needed an introduction to Atwood, because she has been one of my favorite authors for decades.

Even though she's a favorite, I haven't read close to all of her many books. So I was pleased to see that the reading pathway (created by Brenna Clarke Gray) has only one book I'd read before (and wanted to reread anyway) and two I hadn't tried yet.

→ I first read THE HANDMAID'S TALE when I was probably a teenager, and maybe another time since then. I was glad for the opportunity to read it again and glad to find it was just as good -- and just as horrifying -- as I remembered.

The novel speculates an America that has been taken over by religious fanatics who want to put women back in their Biblical place. The narrator, who until recently had the life of a modern woman with a job and a husband and a child, has been forced into the role of Handmaid to a Commander and his Wife. (There are a lot of new and repurposed capitalized terms under the regime.) As a Handmaid, she is supposed to bear a child for this infertile couple, in the manner described in the book of Genesis.

To be clear, this story is brutal and depressing. The moments of happiness are nearly all in the flashbacks to the time before and serve to make the narrator's present even more awful. But the book is amazing in the way it unfolds, the style of the storytelling, the care taken with the details of life in this dystopia, and the moments of humor and wordplay.

While this is a work of speculative or science fiction (Atwood has frequently commented on these classifications), it feels strongly rooted in reality and is often far too plausible for comfort. The text isn't specific about dates, but it seems to be set not long after its 1985 publication. The narrator grew up around the 1970s with a mother involved in the feminist movement of that time. At one point she imagines saying to her mother, "You wanted a women's culture. Well, now there is one. It isn't what you meant, but it exists."

Atwood wrote in her 2011 essay collection IN OTHER WORLDS (my review): "Someone graffitied on the Venice Beach seawall: 'The Handmaid's Tale Is Already Here!' It wasn't already here, not quite, not then. I thought for a while in the 1990s that maybe it never would be. But now I'm wondering again. Of recent years, American society has moved much closer to the conditions necessary for a takeover of its own power structures by an anti-democratic and repressive government." This book is perhaps the most chilling horror story I've ever read. It's also an impressive and beautiful work of fiction.

I watched the 1990 movie adaptation not long ago (but before my reread). I knew it was poorly received, so my expectations were low, but in fact I thought it was a good movie, and I'm not sure why it was panned. In my opinion, it's an effective and relatively faithful adaptation, taking much of the plot and even dialogue directly from the novel. Of course many parts of the book had to be left out, as is always the case, and the movie has to do without the narrator's voice. Still, the horror of the premise is fully conveyed, and the film medium allows viewers to experience the unsettling visuals suggested by the book, such as the seas of Handmaids in their identical red cloaks. The movie is no substitute for the book, but it's worth watching.

→ POWER POLITICS is a collection of poems. I have enjoyed some of Atwood's poetry in the past, but most of these didn't appeal to me much.

The poems in the collection are all addressed to "you" and are a woman speaking to a man. The relationship between the two characters (if they are meant to be the same characters in every poem) is not a happy one, and the poems explore the many ways that people can hurt each other. There are also a few poems concerned with how humans hurt the earth, foreshadowing Atwood's more recent association with environmental causes.

→ In ALIAS GRACE, Atwood takes the story of a real historical person and fills in the blanks that have been lost to time. Grace Marks was a young servant in a village near Toronto who in 1843 was accused of participating in the murder of her master and the housekeeper who was known to be his mistress. Another servant was hanged for the murders, and Grace was sentenced to life in prison and considered possibly insane due to her claims of not remembering her role in the events. The case was a popular scandal in the press, and Grace remained a subject of curiosity for decades afterwards.

To inform the reader of all this information at the beginning of the book, Atwood uses the clever technique of starting with a ballad of the sort that might have been passed around at the time to sensationalize the murders and the trial. After that, we get the "real" story as Atwood imagines it, from Grace's perspective. She is interviewed by a doctor who wants to determine if her gaps in memory are real and whether or not she is mad.

In telling her story, Grace gives detailed accounts of her day-to-day life at various points prior to the murders, minutely describing her work as a servant and her personal interactions. These long descriptions are the sort of thing I would have expected to find boring. Instead, I was enthralled by both the historical information about a very different time and the constant undercurrent of tension as I waited (as eagerly as the doctor) for Grace to get to the day of the murders.

The novel's narrative style is less straightforward than I've described it, with multiple points of view and sometimes a disjointed chronology. In other words, it's a very Atwoodian book, which I consider an excellent thing. This is a fascinating take on the life of a fascinating woman, and I'm glad I was finally prompted to read it after having it in my bookcase for years.

Other Atwood novels I especially recommend are THE BLIND ASSASSIN, THE ROBBER BRIDE, and CAT'S EYE. I loved these all when I first read them, and I hope to find time to read them again soon.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In the Slate Book Review, Matthew Kirschenbaum identifies the first novel ever written on a word processor: "A few weeks later, [Len] Deighton stood outside his Georgian terrace home and watched as workers removed a window so that a 200-pound unit could be hoisted inside with a crane. The machine was IBM's MTST (Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter), sold in the European market as the MT72." (Thanks, Nathan Bransford!)

Suggested Shorts

2013-04-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of February, I wrote about making an effort to read more short fiction. Part of my inspiration has been a project by Ann Kingman of Books on the Nightstand to read a short story every day. I haven't been as dedicated or consistent as that, but I have been enjoying a short story with my breakfast more mornings than not.

Ann has been keeping track of all her reading, with wonderful write-ups of each story on the BOTNS blog, and that's where I'm finding many of the stories I read. Since I already spend a lot of time tracking and reviewing novels, I decided to take a more relaxed approach and not worry about recording what stories I read or where the suggestions came from. The one thing I do want to document is the short stories that really stand out for me.

These are the stories I read during the first part of the year that made the biggest impression:

→ In my review of Sherman Alexie's work, I noted that my favorite story in the collection I read was "The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor" (PDF). It's about how a wife reacts to her husband's cancer, and it's very funny and very sad at the same time. After thinking about how much I liked it (compared to most of the rest of the collection), I realized that somewhat oddly, the story has a similar theme and tone to the favorite story I mentioned last time, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" by Amy Hempel.

So far this year, the Alexie book is the only short story collection I've read, but I anticipate getting to more of these soon.

→ "Six Months, Three Days" by Charlie Jane Anders won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, which led me to learn that a novelette is a work of a length between a short story and a novella. I loved so many things about this story. It has an amazing premise: "The man who can see the future has a date with the woman who can see many possible futures." It's wrenching and hilarious (do you sense a pattern in my tastes?), and it's full of geeky details that make the world of the story a comfortable fit for me.

→ In "Nine Inches" by Tom Perrotta, chaperoning a middle school dance leads a teacher to consider the life he might have had. This one is more sad than funny, but I was drawn in by how realistic and sympathetic the characters and situation felt.

→ "One-Horned & Wild-Eyed" by Manuel Gonzales is about what happens when two men who have been friends since childhood encounter an unearthly creature. I liked how the story attained a good mix of the mundane and the fantastical.

→ "Nanny's Day" by Leah Cypess speculates on the future of child custody battles. It's a tense, gripping story and sort of a legal thriller. This was my favorite among the nominees for this year's Nebula Awards, but I read and liked all the other nominated short stories.

→ "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin is a quite short story that manages to make a couple of satisfying turns in the space of a thousand words.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Edan Lepucki at The Millions asks novelists what they try to figure out with their first drafts: "What, I asked them, do you need to know before you begin? And what do you try to solve as you're working on that first draft? Their answers were as brilliant and as varied as I expected."

In the Water

2013-03-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

Once or twice a week, I swim laps at the Y. Here in California, we're lucky to not have harsh winters, so the heated outdoor pool is open year round.

Today was beautiful and warm, perfect for swimming. I let my mind roam free over this and that: my plans for the weekend, a friend's story I'm reading, the next scene I have to write. I worked out the flow for this blog post, which I've been meaning to write for a long time.

Sometimes I get in the pool with a specific writing problem to mull over. As I swim, I might set my mind to a difficult tangle of plotting or the question of where to set a scene. More often than not, by the time I've finished my half hour of laps, I have an answer. Or else it will come to me in the shower afterwards. Most of the good ideas I've ever had occurred to me in the shower. I'm convinced that ideas require water to grow.

There are no distractions in the water. There's nothing to look at except the pattern of light on the pool floor, and while that's pretty, it's monotonous. I have no task I need to perform except the automatic motions of swimming. I can't switch on a podcast or take my phone out of my pocket or click over to check Twitter. The water is the only place this happens, except for in bed when I'm trying to fall asleep, and then I'm supposed to be falling asleep. In the water, all I can do is think.

Christopher Gronlund linked to an article today about the constant distraction of smartphones and how they might be sapping our collective creativity. He often writes about distraction, and he makes a concerted effort to regularly disconnect. I'll admit that I don't really like disconnecting, at least not for long. But I do appreciate the time I spend alone with my thoughts in the water.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Chris Brecheen looks at the kind of advice writers receive and how to tell when good advice isn't: "Strangely inflexible advice is usually bad advice. Humans are a species with large genetic diversity and huge cultural diversity. There really is no version of a one-size-fits-all advice once you get past things like 'Drink enough water,' 'Avoid standing in fire,' or 'Don't text in the theater.'"

Starting Sherman Alexie

2013-03-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

Back in January, I announced a reading project based on START HERE: READ YOUR WAY INTO 25 AMAZING AUTHORS. I began the project right away, but since I read three suggestions for each of the first two authors, while also reading various other books, it's taken me a while to get to the point of reporting back.

The first recommended author is Sherman Alexie, whose work is championed in an essay by Kevin Smokler. I've heard Alexie several times on radio and podcasts, and I always find him an entertaining speaker, so I was glad for an impetus to finally read some of his books.

After reading one of Alexie's short story collections and two novels, I can say that he's a good writer with a style that doesn't suit my tastes very well. Sometimes it worked better than others, as I'll explain. Here's the reading pathway for Sherman Alexie, and my reactions:

→ THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN is a collection of short stories, most of them set on the Spokane Indian Reservation and featuring the same set of characters. I like Alexie's writing style, humor, and characters, but the majority of the stories didn't grab me. In general, I prefer novels to short fiction, and while reading this book, I was feeling eager to move on to a novel-length work by Alexie so I could see his talents at work with a stronger plot arc and more room to develop.

A few of the stories did appeal to me more than the rest. Many of the stories have surreal or fantastical elements, but "Distances" is the most removed from reality, set in a post-apocalyptic world. "Jesus Christ's Half-Brother Is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation" is a beautiful story about a troubled man who adopts an orphaned child after saving him from a fire. The story that stood out for me most is "The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor," (PDF) a sad and funny tale about how a wife reacts to her husband's cancer.

After reading this, I watched the movie Smoke Signals. Alexie wrote the screenplay based on the stories in this collection, especially "This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona." It was interesting to see the events acted out on screen and to notice where details and lines from other stories were woven in.

→ At the start of RESERVATION BLUES, blues guitarist Robert Johnson arrives on the Spokane Indian Reservation in 1992, seeking an escape from the pact he made with the devil. His guitar ends up with a group of friends from the reservation (characters who also appear in THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN), and as a result, they start a band. The novel follows the band's successes and failures and the effect these have on their friendships and their relationships with other people.

I found this to be a reasonably good, entertaining story, though I wasn't wild about the rambling style. Any time a new character appears, there's a long exploration of their backstory, and this sometimes made me impatient. Much time is spent inside the characters' dreams, which I'm not a big fan of. As you might expect from a book that supposes Robert Johnson really did make a deal with the devil and didn't really die in 1938, certain things that happen in the story are of a magical or mystical nature. This worked okay for me but will be a turnoff for some readers.

I liked the book's characters and felt an emotional connection to them. The story was sometimes sad and sometimes funny, a combination I appreciate. This is the best of the Alexie work that I've read, and I would consider reading another novel of his in this vein.

→ I was really looking forward to reaching THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN. Since it's a young adult novel, I expected it would be more focused than RESERVATION BLUES, and since I've heard a lot of praise from adults, I thought it would have enough substance for grownup sensibilities. Alas, the book was a big disappointment.

I did like the main character, a geeky boy who's an outcast on his reservation and makes himself more unpopular by transferring to the local white school in order to get a better education. But I found the plot simplistic and not especially interesting.

I imagine the book would appeal to middle school readers, and it's certainly valuable to see characters from backgrounds that aren't usually represented in fiction. I'm going to have to go against prevailing opinion, though, and disrecommend this book for adults.

I wish I were starting my Starting Here project with a more enthusiastic set of reviews! But I'm glad to have satisfied my curiosity about Sherman Alexie, and I want to be clear that I only read three of his books because I found things to like in all of them.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Juliette Wade suggests strategies for Dealing with Chronological Breaks in Your Story: "instead of focusing on the flow of external events, which might make me feel obligated to include them all, I turn inward to the state of mind that my character is in when the time break is happening."

Ereading Update

2013-03-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

On a recent episode of Bookrageous, one of my favorite book podcasts, the hosts revisited their attitudes toward and experiences with ebooks, because a couple of years had elapsed since they last discussed the topic in depth. Now that I've spent almost a year with my Kindle (after a couple of years of ereading on my phone), I thought it might be time for an update of my own.

I had this thought, and then before I got around to writing this post, another one of the podcasts I listen to also focused on ebooks. I haven't recommended The Readers yet because I only started listening to it a few months ago, but it will definitely be in my next list of podcast picks. One of the show's two hosts has often voiced his opposition to ebooks, but he admitted that he recently got a Kindle. The podcasters spent much of an episode discussing this big event and the list of Kindle commandments that Simon set for himself (and immediately started breaking).

My own Kindle ownership hasn't significantly changed the pattern I'd fallen into when I was only using the Kindle app on my phone: I'm still doing about half my reading digitally and half in print. Lately I've upped the number of books I have going at once in both formats, and that may be partly because of spending more time with the Kindle, but it's also because of so many reading projects. I read on my Kindle device more than on my phone, but not as much more as I might have expected. My phone still has the advantage of being in my pocket, so even if I'm at home and my Kindle is only in another room, I might not bother to get up and fetch it.

When I first started ereading, I wasn't buying too many books in Kindle format because I wasn't sure I wanted to commit. I downloaded a bunch of free public domain classics, and I split my purchases between Kindle and Google ebooks bought through my local independent bookstore. After Google discontinued their independent reseller program, and after I acquired a Kindle, I accepted that I would lock myself into a digital library controlled by Amazon. I have many mixed feelings about Amazon as a company, about the impact they've had on the bookselling and publishing industries, and about the good and bad things they've done for readers. Modern life is complicated.

Some people get a Kindle or other ereader, and they never buy another print book again. I'm not ready for that yet. I know that what matters about a book is the words, but I'm too much in love with books and covers and bookstores to abandon them. So every time I want a book now, I have to decide what format I want it in. This was a big point of discussion on both podcasts.

I have a not-huge-but-not-small collection of books that at this point just barely fits onto my available shelves. It's still the case that I haven't read most of them. I'm not getting another bookshelf, so I shouldn't buy any more physical books until I read and give away some of the existing books. But I haven't convinced myself to make all my new purchases digital.

Bookrageous pointed to an article by Amanda Nelson at Book Riot, The Largely Irrational Reasons I'm Not Ready to Go All-Digital, in which she expresses concern about her physical book collection becoming frozen in time and only reflecting what she read before she got a Nook. I hadn't specifically looked at it that way, but I do think this is one of the reasons it weirds me out to think of no longer adding to my shelves.

As a result of all this, there's a whole heuristic around my book buying. I consider the rather nebulous question of whether I want to possess the book on my shelves as evidence for the future and/or guests, which has partly to do with anticipated quality and literary merit. I guess at whether I'll want to loan the book, and to who -- I share my Kindle library with another member of my family, but for anyone else, a physical book is more sharable. If I have a personal (read: online) relationship with the author of a new release, I'll probably buy a hardcover to show maximum support (though I don't actually know if this is an accurate motive). In other cases, if the book is only available in hardcover, I'll buy it digitally because I find hardcovers less comfortable to read than paperbacks. If I want to start reading the book right this minute, I'll download it to my Kindle -- and I have a rule that I only buy ebooks when I'm about to read them, not because I want to read them someday, which more sensibly should be my rule for paper books. If I'm in or near an independent bookstore, I'll buy a book. If I'm having a bad week and need cheering up, or a good week and deserve a reward, I'll put in an order to pick up at my local independent bookstore. Oh, and if I need to read a book but don't expect to be excited by it, or if it's out of print, I'll borrow it from the library.

Basically, as with much in my life, I don't want to choose. Right now I'm in the middle of an exciting book on my Kindle that I'm eager to get back to after I finish this post about my ereading habits. But now that I've written all this, what I most want to do is visit a bookstore.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Livia Blackburne gets her first editorial letter and learns how to be a better critique partner: "When I critique manuscripts, I tend to focus on things that I don't like. But I've come to realize that it's equally important to be look for good things so they can be emphasized -- for example, noting an intruiging character trait that be brought out more, or pointing out intriguing themes that are hinted at but could be developed."

Slow River

2013-03-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

I read SLOW RIVER by Nicola Griffith because it was the selection for my panel at FOGcon. I'd never heard of the book until it was suggested, but it won several awards after its 1995 publication, including a Nebula. It's a strong work of science fiction that weaves together a variety of interesting and disturbing subplots.

At the beginning of SLOW RIVER, a young woman named Lore is acquiring the identity implant of a dead stranger in order to apply for a menial and difficult job at a wastewater treatment plant. Lore is immensely overqualified for this position, but she has to keep her true identity a secret so that she can remain in hiding. Through flashbacks, the reader learns about the series of horrific events that led to this point, and meanwhile Lore uses her expertise at the plant to uncover corruption and prevent a water contamination disaster.

This is one of the most exciting novels about water pollution that you will ever read (ZODIAC by Neal Stephenson is another top contender). I love stories in which the tension comes from science, either real or fictional. SLOW RIVER delivers that with a carefully explained, plausible system that uses bioengineered bacteria to remove contaminants from wastewater and send it back the drinking supply -- provided nobody ignores procedures or tries to cut costs. One of our panelists called this "the best fiction that I know of ever written about project management" (she also has some notes about what we discussed during the panel).

In addition to biotech, the science fiction in the book involves a lot of cybertech, with plotlines focusing on hacking and data theft. I enjoyed that the story had several completely different plots going on, some about various kinds of technology and some about Lore's relationships with her family members and romantic partners. For the most part, these fit together well, though I was disappointed by the way some of the subplots resolved.

Overall, I would recommend SLOW RIVER. The story does contain a number of types of sexual violence that could be disturbing for some readers, so it won't be a good choice for everybody. But if you can handle the content and you like the sort of science I've described, give it a try.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Hilary Smith addresses the myth that "writing is a job like any other": "It's okay to work in bursts and zigzags. It's okay to have a pace that doesn't conform to industrial time. It's okay, and maybe it's even important. Maybe it even has a value."

FOGcon Fun and More Adventures

2013-03-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

I'm back from FOGcon, where I had a ton of fun and not much sleep. This was the third year the con was held and the third year I attended. I had such a great time in 2011 and 2012 that it's hard to say for sure, but I think this was my best FOGcon yet.

FOGcon is mainly about participating in and listening to in-depth discussions of stories, fictional worlds, and the things these lead us to consider about our own world. I love getting to geek out about these topics for three days. I also love meeting and hanging out with other people who find this an enjoyable way to spend a weekend. This year most of my outstanding con experiences were informal conversations at meals or in the hotel bar, rather than official programming sessions.

I did attend some great panels, though, and I had my first experiences as a panel moderator, which went well. My panel about dystopias was a lively discussion of what elements are necessary parts of dystopian stories, why these stories are perennially interesting to readers, how they reflect the era they were written in, and so on. We had a good-sized audience that contributed helpful comments and questions.

My other panel was a book club-type discussion of SLOW RIVER by Nicola Griffith. We selected the book and announced it a month in advance, but unfortunately we only had three audience members show up, one of whom hadn't read it. However, the five of us on the panel were so excited to talk to each other about the book that we didn't mind too much. We pulled our chairs into a circle to include our few attendees, and we had a fabulous conversation.

FOGcon isn't a writing conference, but because the set of people who care this much about fiction includes many people who also write, there are numerous panels about the craft and business of writing, plus writing workshops run by professionals. This year I only attended a couple of the writing panels, but I got the notes from some other ones I didn't make it to, and it seems like it was a particularly strong year for writing-related offerings.

And there was karaoke. I don't attend FOGcon merely for the karaoke, but it's always a highlight.

Tomorrow night I'm off on another adventure, flying to Florida to spend a long weekend with family. I made this trip at the same time last year and it was more of an adventure than I'd planned, since I ended up stranded overnight at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. (That post from a year ago turns out to be incredibly cringe-inducing, because I talk about how impatient I am to finish the revision that I still haven't finished now.)

This time my layover is somewhere else, and the weather forecast is nonthreatening, so maybe I can have a pleasantly uneventful journey, but you never know. Whenever I make it home, I'll be getting back to my normal writing schedule, and I'm really looking forward to that. I'll also resume blogging more regularly. I have lots of books to recommend and writing thoughts to share soon.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jennifer R. Hubbard shares her advice on common places to cut back a manuscript: "In real life, we exchange hellos and how-are-yous; we comment on the weather and the traffic and the fact that the coffee machine is broken again. But nobody wants to read those exchanges, unless the weather or the traffic or the coffee machine are directly involved in the murder/love affair/political plot that is the subject of the book."

Small Victories

2013-03-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I voiced some fears about my novel, but I wouldn't want you to get the impression that it's all doom and gloom around here. I am in fact still feeling quite optimistic about the quality of my story and pleased with my recent progress.

Nothing major has changed since my general update of a couple weeks ago, but today I'm celebrating small victories:

→ I was displeased with the chapter I'm working on and concerned that it would mess up my whole structure, and then I thought of a crucial addition that fixed all my problems.

→ Several people have asked me for writing advice lately. Like I'm some kind of mentor or something!

→ Also people keep acting as though I'm an example of discipline and focus because I've been working on this novel forever. I try not to laugh in their faces, because I've been working on this novel forever. Most of the time I think if I were truly disciplined, I'd be much further along in the process. Many days, I lose the focus game. And yet...

→ The past month has been full of fun distractions, and I managed to stay focused and get a good amount of work done while also taking time to play. So that's something.

→ This month is shaping up to be at least as hectic, but I've figured out a (hopefully) realistic plan to schedule writing time in the midst of everything else that's going on.

→ Since the start of the year, I've been imagining some deadlines for myself, and while I've had to make adjustments due to the aforementioned hecticness, the deadline thing has been working better than it usually does when I know the target is only in my head.

→ Lastly, and which I guess might even qualify as something major: I wrote a short story! Of course it was right after complaining about my inability to write short stories. I'm not ready to share it yet, but I expect I will be eventually. Just as soon as life isn't so distracting.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Kristina L. Martin at the Amwriting blog repaints her dining room as well as her manuscript: "I found myself seeing my novel in much the same light as my dining room's paint job. The novel worked. But it could work better. There were areas with too much and others with too little."

Would I Like My Own Novel?

2013-02-27T17:37:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a novel that I'm not enjoying as much as I'd hoped, and one of my complaints falls into the category of "wanting to read a different story than the author chose to write." I consider this a less valid or useful type of criticism than commenting on, for example, problems with pacing or believability, but it's a common reason that readers fail to connect with a book.

In this case, the story starts with a big disaster, and my complaint is that so far I haven't learned much about how the general public experienced the disaster or how the city is coping with the event. The reason I don't know these things is that the story is about one specific person and the unusual things that happen to him as a result of the disaster. It's not a flaw that the other stuff is backgrounded, because that's not the point of the story, but unfortunately, I'm feeling like I'd rather be reading about the other stuff than about what the author chose to focus on.

Even more unfortunately, as I was thinking about this problem I'm having with the book I'm reading, I realized that what I have described is exactly the problem a reader could have with the book I'm writing. How does the description of my novel start? "When an earthquake devastates the Bay Area." How much does my novel focus on the disaster scenario of the earthquake? Not a whole lot. The protagonist of that other book at least faces obstacles that originate in the disaster, whereas my characters mainly ignore the earthquake and whine about their family dysfunction.

Would I find my own novel supremely irritating? This isn't the first time I've been gripped by this fear. These are some reactions I've had lately to novels I encountered descriptions of and decided not to read: "Oh, it's about someone going home to see their parents, so of course they have to uncover some deep dark secret." "Ugh, it's misery heaped on misery. That sounds way too depressing." If you're not sure why I'm feeling like a big hypocrite, take another look at the description of my novel.

One thing that frequently annoys me in stories is when a problem could be easily solved if people would simply communicate. I'm one of those people likely to yell at the TV, "Just tell them what's going on!" And yet I've written a novel with a plot that revolves around people keeping secrets from each other, lying, misunderstanding, and repeatedly failing to divulge the crucial piece of information that would make everything okay. I'm in the middle of a bit right now that's all about Character A believing that Character B agreed to something that B didn't understand he was agreeing to. Just communicate better!

I would like to think that in all cases I've sidestepped these peeves and written something that transcends the potential flaws. I would like to think that as a reader, I would enjoy my own novel. But sometimes I'm afraid that I'm writing a story I couldn't stand to read.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ On the Office of Letters and Light blog, Susan Bell sings the praises of the revision stage: "Editing is not the clean-up, it's the meal. Look forward to it, because when you edit, the discovery of problems is cause for celebration (where else in life is that so?). Rejoice each time you find a sentence or character or chapter that doesn't work, because if you don't find a flaw, you can't fix it."

Any Day Now

2013-02-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

ANY DAY NOW is a novel by Terry Bisson, who will be one of the honored guests at next month's FOGcon.

At its core, this is a coming-of-age story about living in a particular time and a particular subculture. Clay grows up in 1950s Kentucky and develops an interest in the beat poets. After a short attempt at college, he moves to New York City, where he briefly encounters Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol. He does a bit of demonstrating against the Vietnam War, but it's Clay's friends who are more immersed in the various youth movements of the 1960s. Eventually Clay winds up living in a hippie commune in the southwest. The political events and cultural changes of this tumultuous period of U.S. history unfold in the background of the story, occasionally coming to the front as they impact Clay's life and friendships.

The writing style in this novel appealed to me. It's straightforward, with simple sentences and lots of dialogue. Some might imagine this indicates a lack of sophistication, but they would be mistaken. Bisson has masterfully crafted every paragraph.

There's another major thing to mention about ANY DAY NOW, but I've been avoiding it so far because I think it's better to encounter it unexpectedly. If what I've said already is enough to interest you in this novel, then stop reading this review and go pick up the book. If you're not convinced yet and are willing to forgo the surprise, then keep going.

Everything I've described so far is accurate, and for about the first third of the book, it really is just a story of a young man's life. The occasional references to current events are exactly what you'd expect from anything set during this time, especially once Clay and his friends start becoming politically active. The big spoiler is that the current events in the story start to become disconnected from history as we know it. This may have started with more subtlety than I had the knowledge to notice, but it soon becomes clear to any reader that Clay's world is taking a different historical path than our own. It's fascinating to see what happens as a result of the changes. It's also fascinating that even as this novel evolves into a different genre than it started as, it remains primarily a personal story about the life of one young man.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Chuck Wendig covers 25 Things You Should Know About Narrative Point-Of-View: "How intimate is the reader with the story, the setting, the characters? Once we begin to explode out the multiple modes of POV (objective, subjective, omniscient, etc.) it relates to how intimate the reader gets to be -- is she kept close but privy to the confidence of only one character? Is the reader allowed to be all up in the satiny guts of every character in the room?" (Thanks, Book Riot!)

Where I'm At

2013-02-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

I heard back from Lit Camp, the juried writing conference I applied to in December. I wasn't accepted, but I did get a place on the wait list. That means if some accepted writers have to turn down their spots, I may get to attend after all. I'll know within a few weeks. It also means that my writing isn't so shabby. Making the wait list is a nice bit of recognition, even if it's not the great news I was hoping for.

I can still look forward to attending FOGcon, which is less than a month away. This year I'm going to be moderating two panels, something I've never done before. One panel is about dystopias, and the other will be a discussion of the book SLOW RIVER by Nicola Griffith. I'm reading it now, and so far it's an exciting story about a woman who is forced to go into hiding and change her identity. It's also about wastewater treatment facilities, which I think is pretty cool.

Revision has been coming along nicely since the start of the year. I'm sure I've said this too many times, but the end is in sight. At this point I've shattered my narrator's life, and now I get to shake up all the pieces and see how they come back together. Fun times.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Benjamin Nugent ponders the Upside of Distraction: "I tried to make writing my only god, and it sickened my work, for a while. The condition endemic to my generation, attention deficit disorder, gave way to its insidious Victorian foil: monomania." (Thanks, The Millions!)

World War Z

2013-02-11T16:26:00.000-08:00

I like zombie stories, but I like them in a specific way. I'm not into monsters in general, and I don't especially care about action sequences in which humans fight the zombie horde. My interest in zombies is all about my fascination with and terror of epidemic diseases.

From my perspective, a good zombie story focuses on the science of how the zombie disease spreads and the sociology of how humanity responds. Mira Grant's NEWSFLESH trilogy pays a lot of attention to these topics, and that's why I was absorbed by the story despite my complaints about the writing. ZONE ONE by Colson Whitehead doesn't have much science in it, but it's heavy on the societal response, so I found it a satisfying read.

As soon as I started reading WORLD WAR Z by Max Brooks, I could tell it was going to be exactly what I wanted from a zombie story. I suppose there were plenty of tense action scenes in which people fled from zombies or armies faced down the approaching horde. But this book is almost all epidemiology and sociology. It starts with a physician's account of a local Patient Zero and continues with stories of how different governments around the world react to the growing threat.

The novel, which is subtitled "An Oral History of the Zombie War," is presented as an organized collection of transcribed oral accounts chronicling the epidemic and war. Because of this format, the story doesn't have any main or frequently recurring characters, other than the almost invisible reporter who conducts the interviews. Writing a novel in which each character only appears for five or so pages is a major dramatic challenge, but Brooks pulls it off well. Every speaker has a strong, specific voice that's perfect for their background, and each detailed experience comes at the right time to answer the reader's questions about what happens next.

Brooks clearly did substantial research for this book and spent a lot of time imagining how events might play out. The story is packed with both explicit and subtle examples of what the zombie war does to society. The political ramifications are huge, leading to changes in the world's map and balance of power. Most of these repercussions never would have occurred to me, but it all feels utterly believable.

WORLD WAR Z is a gripping read and a well-considered, plausible look at how a disease spreads and the effect it has on the world. I highly recommend it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ My blog buddy Christopher Gronlund, a regular commenter here, has launched a new podcast with fellow writer Shawn Kupfer. The first episode of Men in Gorilla Suits is great and is all about growing up geeky. (Future episodes may have a writing focus.)

Getting Short

2013-02-06T17:35:00.000-08:00

Inspired partly by Books on the Nightstand's Year of the Short Story, I've been reading more short fiction lately. (As it happens, this month's read-along story is "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" by Amy Hempel, which I've loved since high school and would recommend to everyone.)

Reading short stories from various authors and genres is an interesting and useful experience, but I just can't get into short stories the way I do novels. Maybe that's an obvious statement, because there simply isn't as much there to get into. But what I mean is that usually I don't find the short story length satisfying. Either the few pages of the story leave me wishing I could read a longer work focusing on those characters, or there's not enough there to make me care very much.

I know I have read short stories that are rich and well-crafted enough to feel like the perfect length -- "In the Cemetery...", for example, and probably many of the other frequently anthologized stories I read in classes. But it's a rare thing. I remember that after first encountering the Hempel story in the anthology we were using for an English class, I got the collection it appears in, and every other story by the same author left me disappointed.

So I feel as though I'm somewhat lacking an appreciation of short stories as a literary form, which is one reason I've been reading them. And I'm definitely lacking the ability to write short myself. Lately I can't even think up a story idea that would be interesting and short, let alone execute it well.

When I was a teenager, I wrote short stories all the time, though in retrospect many of them were more like opening scenes of novels. I don't know if any of the stories were any good, but at least they must have been based on ideas. I guess now my brain is just too busy generating novel-related ideas to think about unconnected characters in unrelated situations.

Last time I posted about short stories was two years ago. In that post, I resolved to revise and share my most recent short story, from two years before that. I never did get around to that project. I still haven't even looked at the story (which continues to be my most recent). Maybe I'll get to this eventually, but I'm not promising anything this time.

I do promise to let you know about any especially good short fiction I read as the year goes on. And I'd love to get your short story recommendations.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Alan Levinovitz looks at the challenges of making books into movies: "And so, if we accept that books aren't formally superior to movies and adaptations aren't necessarily ruinous, a new question arises: what is it about the process of adapting a book that so often leads to disappointment?"

Everyone's a Hero

2013-01-31T18:45:00.000-08:00

The latest episode of Writing Excuses features a great discussion of side-character arcs. This is a topic I find especially interesting, and I've written about it before. I pride myself on making secondary characters real by hinting at pasts and presents that unfold beyond the pages of the novel.

Do I create a detailed backstory and arc for every character who appears? No, although for the first novel I wrote, I had a detailed character database which included where all the main character's friends' parents went to college. Some of the parents of some of the friends only had a few lines of dialogue, so this was probably overkill. I'm no longer quite so unnecessarily thorough.

For example, one character in my current novel with no arc is a coworker who my narrator flirts with in a few scenes. I've given this woman a name and a little bit of a personality, but nothing about her changes over the course of the story, and I don't know anything else about her. I don't think my narrator knows anything else about her, either, and I imagine that the scenes she appears in are approximately all the interactions they've ever had -- these are two good indications that a character doesn't need an arc.

On the other hand, a character who has an ongoing, complex relationship with the protagonist should appear to possess an ongoing, complex life of their own. If the best friend doesn't seem to have anything going on besides serving as the ever-faithful best friend, readers will notice that one-dimensionality. This is true even if the main character is too wrapped up in their own problems to ever directly ask the friend what's up in their life.

My narrator and his wife have best friends, another couple in their neighborhood. This other couple appears (together and individually) in a large number of scenes, and it's established that my main characters interact with them even more frequently than that. These are characters who need arcs.

I've indicated a bit of their backstory (no, I don't know where they went to college), and some stuff happens to them that's independent of the main characters. The arc of their lives during the story involves making choices that contrast with the choices of the protagonist. Additionally, their arc impacts the arc of the main character's family, creating obstacles and complications that have to be dealt with. These are good ways to develop a side-character arc: find points of connection with the main plot, and highlight differences.

As they say in the podcast, everyone is the hero of their own story. Let your secondary characters have lives of their own.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ On the Amwriting Blog, Jason Black discusses the language of world building: "Easily the single biggest problem I see with world building in my clients' novels is characters who live in places that are different from modern-day America (sometimes radically so), but whose English is indistinguishable from that spoken here, today."

Start Here, and Continue All Year

2013-01-28T13:17:00.000-08:00

START HERE: READ YOUR WAY INTO 25 AMAZING AUTHORS is a fantastic guide to approaching potentially intimidating literature. The book, edited by Jeff O'Neal and Rebecca Joines Schinsky of the great site Book Riot, is a collection of essays from contributors who each champion the work of a different author.

Every essay offers a reading sequence through three or more of the author's works. A best known or most ambitious novel isn't always the best starting point, so there's a suggestion for a first book that serves as the ideal introduction, then a progression for continuing that will provide a solid foundation. The reading pathways take various approaches, with some building toward a major work and others offering samples from different parts of a wide-ranging career.

It's a wonderful idea, and it's very well executed. The START HERE page at Book Riot lists the 25 authors featured and includes ordering links. The book is currently only available as an ebook because the initial small print run sold out, but there may be another print run in the future.

As I was reading START HERE, I found myself thinking that one could use it to structure a reading plan for 2013, if one were the sort inclined to do such a thing. I might be, but I also had another plan in mind for the year, which was to make some serious headway on reading the many unread books on my shelves. My collection is arranged alphabetically by author, so I thought I'd go through them in that order. I really don't expect to get through the whole alphabet, especially since I'm sure to also read a whole bunch of other books that come to my attention, but it would be a start.

Well, as it happens, START HERE is also arranged alphabetically by author, and there's a certain amount of overlap with books already on my shelves. So, I thought I might combine the projects. Again, I don't expect to get through all of START HERE this year, and I'm not necessarily going to do the full pathway for each author, but I'll try the first suggested work for each author I get to (or another one, if I've already read it).

Anyone else want to join me in Starting Here?

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Beyond the Margins, Dell Smith offers an Anatomy of a First Chapter: "I knew I had to approach the first chapter in a new way. I started by reading it over, and making a few small changes. Nothing major, just getting my feet wet. Then I broke down the structure of it. It's only 11 pages, but it needs to introduce the main character, show his roadblocks, let us know what he wants, and set him in motion."

Talk About Random

2013-01-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, I made a vague resolution to go through my blog idea files and turn some of these notes into posts. As I mentioned, many of the ideas don't lend themselves to any further elaboration beyond the brief note I made, but I found some of these still interesting enough to share. So, miscellaneously:

→ For a while now, it's been the case that when I think of some detail or bit of dialogue I should add to one of the storylines I've already revised, more often than not I discover it's already in there. This seems like a good sign.

→ A while ago, I was talking to a friend who teaches music. She said many of her students don't like having to repeatedly practice the same section of a piece. They're only interested in playing the whole piece through. She has to explain that in order to improve, it's necessary to keep working on a section until it's right. "It's just like revising!" I said. (I say that a lot. Also, as a piano student I never had any patience for practicing either.)

→ In other analogies, writing a first draft is like packing for a trip in a station wagon: There's plenty of room, so you can throw in everything you might possibly want. Revising is like packing for a backpacking trip: You'd better make sure you're only carrying stuff you really need.

→ Recently I saw a movie that had a tense conversation between two characters before one drove away, accompanied by overdone music. "We really didn't need those dramatic strings to know that was a dramatic scene," I said aloud. (I'm annoying when I watch movies at home.) I've noticed I have a bad habit of doing the equivalent thing in my writing: My narrators frequently have a moment of emotional reflection about what's just happened. In trying to underscore the significance, I'm accidentally weakening the scene. Time to get rid of those dramatic strings.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Alicia Rasley at edittorrent looks at the difference between subtle and obscure exposition: "The more sophisticated the writing and plotting, the less obvious the exposition. But that doesn't mean there's no exposition, only that it's done subtly and carefully through the characters in a way that is consistent with the way they think, speak, and interact."

This Is Just To Say

2013-01-23T14:26:00.000-08:00

I leave a lot of notes for myself. Occasionally the notes are on paper, stuck places where I'll see them ("Car needs gas!"), but mostly they're typed into my computer in a ridiculous number of applications and files.

I make detailed to-do lists and use them to plan my days. Because of all my lists, I more or less accomplish what I need to, and I rarely forget stuff.

I write down ideas for my novel whenever they occur to me. I keep these carefully organized so I can consult the notes and incorporate the ideas when I get to the right place in the story.

All these notes get to serve their purpose in life when I eventually act on them. But I've also been creating a very large body of notes that sadly never get to progress to the next stage of existence. These are the ideas for future blog posts that I record and never look at again.

I have multiple files containing notes for blog posts, I guess so I can feel organized as I type things into the appropriate black hole. Obviously I'm posting to my blog on a fairly regular basis, but it's never thanks to these notes. Most of what I post (besides book recommendations) is sparked by some thought I get inspired to write about immediately. That's just fine, but I'm curious about all those other topics I wanted to explore.

I've started looking through my notes, and there's some decent stuff in there. The ideas I've noted for later are mainly either too big (they'll take a lot of time and maybe multiple posts to cover well) or too small (I may not have more than a sentence or two to say). It's the medium-sized ideas that most often make it to actual posthood.

What with it being the beginning of a new year, I thought I would try digging through my idea files and turning some of them into posts, even if the writing situation that provided the original spark is now lost to the mists of time. I think I'm sometimes reluctant to go back to the old ideas because they feel too random if the topic isn't currently on my mind, but since I'm sure that for you the readers, this whole blog is pretty random, that's a silly concern.

That said, if there's any particular subject or type of post that you the readers would like to see here, please let me know. I'll make a note of it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Evan V. Symon presents 10 Deleted Chapters That Transformed Famous Books: "Bram Stoker's iconic novel is by far the most influential horror book. But what many don't know is that the final chapter was taken out by Stoker at the last minute. In the deleted chapter, Dracula's castle falls apart as he dies, to hide the fact that vampires were ever there." (Thanks, Louise!)