Reading, Writing, Revising

Book Club Podcasts

2012-02-14T16:05:00.000-08:00

I wanted to call attention to a couple of podcast book discussions that I enjoyed for books I read in the past few months:

→ I'm not a regular listener of the Fuzzy Typewriter podcast, but I'd heard they run a book club and had downloaded some episodes about books that I intended to read. I finally got around to listening to the discussion of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan, which I read in December.

The GOON SQUAD episode is a great conversation about the book as a whole and its individual chapters. After listening to the podcasters talk about some connections between the stories that I'd missed, I appreciated the book more than I did initially. In particular, I'm reconsidering my opinion that the book is linked short stories rather than a novel. I think A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD is definitely a book that could benefit from a second read.

I see that the Fuzzy Typewriter book club has a recent episode on HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu, another book I read and enjoyed, so I've downloaded that episode to listen to next.

→ I mentioned that ZONE ONE by Colson Whitehead made my reading list because it was the first book club selection for one of my favorite podcasts, Bookrageous.

The episode about ZONE ONE was a fun book discussion, followed by a conversation with the author. I especially recommend the section with Whitehead to those who have read the novel. (The first section of the podcast, following the regular episode format, is a rundown of what the hosts have been reading, so isn't relevant to ZONE ONE.)

→ Unrelated to any of the above, since it's Valentine's Day, I thought I'd point my newer readers to a post I made a year ago that I'm still rather proud of: What We Write About When We Write About Love.

Love is tricky. Writing about it, even more so. I wish you all a Valentine's Day that's exactly what you want it to be.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Nathan Bransford writes on The Art of Being Unsentimental About Your Characters: "We writers can get really, really attached to our characters. They become almost like family members. We want the best of them. And sometimes it becomes difficult to see them make mistakes and to see their flaws and to let those bad qualities shine through from time to time. We can be far too nice to them."

→ Publishing Trendsetter offers A Publisher’s Menagerie: Stories behind Publishers’ Animal Logos. (Thanks, The Millions!)

My Latest Book Haul

2012-02-10T14:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to my favorite local bookstore, Books Inc., to pick up a book order. Because, obviously, I don't have enough books. I'll be reading a couple of these right away, but the others will join the many unread books on my shelves, and it's anyone's guess whether I'll read them next month or not for years.

→ GATHERING OF WATERS by Bernice L. McFadden - I learned about this new release from the blog White Readers Meet Black Authors. I was drawn in by a video of McFadden reading the first chapter, which introduces the narrator of the story as the town of Money, Mississippi. I'm interested in novels that involve real historical events, and this book centers on the murder of Emmett Till, which I only know a little about.

→ CHILDREN OF THE WATERS by Carleen Brice - Brice is the proprietor of the White Readers Meet Black Authors blog, and since I've enjoyed several of her recommendations, it occurred to me that I should check out one of her own books. CHILDREN OF THE WATERS is about families and secrets, two of my favorite literary subjects.

It's a pleasing coincidence that these first two books have similiar titles and covers.

→ THE MIRAGE by Matt Ruff - One of the books on this month's reading list, and I can't wait to start it. The book was released this week, and it's been getting quite a bit of media coverage. Ruff is an author who should really be more widely read, and I hope with this novel he'll become better known.

→ HALF LIFE by Shelley Jackson - Another from February's book lineup. Jackson is one of the honored guests for FOGcon, and all of her works sound intriguing to me.

→ DEAF SENTENCE by David Lodge - I'd placed an order for the other books, but as long as I was in the store, of course I had to browse the shelves, and I found this on sale. I previously read and enjoyed Lodge's THINKS.... This more recent novel features linguistics (my college major) and deafness (an area of interest), so I couldn't resist.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ The Intern offers several reasons why it's best to avoid writing dreams into stories: "Dream sequences are easy to write and dastardly difficult to cut. They sometimes contain the most beautiful writing in the entire manuscript--or it can feel that way to the writer, who poured every gorgeous image that wouldn't fit in other parts of the novel into the dream sequence."

Starting Tactics

2012-02-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

Nathan Bransford blogged yesterday about How to Return to Writing After a Long Break. He discusses some great advice, including "Know that your first day back will not be productive" and "Badger yourself into opening up your novel and getting started again even if it feels like you are peeling off your own skin."

I was thinking about how most of this advice is applicable even when the break from writing has only been as long as a couple of days, or the hours since the night before. I usually find it really hard to get started on a writing session. I might be absolutely convinced that I never want to write another word in my life, right up until I wring out a sentence and think, "Oh, that's not so bad. It's even kind of fun."

Recently I've had a lot of productivity success (where "productivity" means "time-consuming systems for tricking ourselves into making better use of our time") by telling myself, "The next few hours are only for focusing on the novel, but as long as you don't think about anything else, you don't even have to write anything." When I'm intimidated by what I have to write next, it's comforting to know that I can just sit there for a few hours trying to figure it out. Inevitably, before too long I'll start writing, because for one thing, it's kind of boring to sit for hours not doing anything, and for another thing, thinking has a tendency to lead to ideas.

As Nathan says in his post, and as I've written about previously, the going is always slower at the beginning. But by the end of any writing session that I determined might not result in any actual writing, I always have plenty of words to show for myself.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Eleanor Brown posts at Beyond the Margins about Exposing the Dark Questions: "There were scenes in the book that made me cry as I wrote them, because writing them forced me to call upon emotions that I had, for a long time, tried to bury. I hadn't set out to write those scenes, hadn't set out to walk among those ruins, but there they were, and I could see that, painful as the process was, it was also catharsis." Today is the paperback release of Eleanor's THE WEIRD SISTERS, which I enjoyed a year ago.

February Reading Plan

2012-02-03T15:22:00.000-08:00

For the past couple of weeks, I've been reading books that I wasn't super enthusiastic about, so I'm excited about having a personally thrilling lineup for this month:

→ THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION by Michael Chabon - Left over from last month's list, when I didn't get to it. In the meantime, I've received a couple of glowing reviews from people I know. One friend said that Chabon's earlier book, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, is even more amazing, so in her opinion I'm doing the right thing by saving it until after this book.

→ THE FLAME ALPHABET by Ben Marcus - This novel has been getting lot of attention in the literary blogosphere. The premise is intriguing, but as I suspect it might be the sort of book that it's better to read without knowing too much, I'll just say that it involves language and an epidemic. If you want to know more, watch the haunting animated book trailer. After hearing about THE FLAME ALPHABET several times, I was interested but unsure if I actually wanted to read it. I picked it up in a bookstore, read the first paragraph, and made up my mind to buy it because of the way the opening dives right in.

→ THE MIRAGE by Matt Ruff - I've been eagerly awaiting this book for about six months. Well, more accurately, I've been waiting for this book since finishing Matt Ruff's last book in 2007. I can't say enough good things about Matt Ruff, and if I try, it's just going to be embarrassing for everybody, so let's move on. THE MIRAGE will be released next week, on February 7. It has an incredible mirror-history premise that I know Ruff has the skill to pull off. I can't wait.

→ HALF LIFE by Shelley Jackson - Jackson will be one of the honored guests at FOGcon, the speculative fiction convention I'm excited about attending next month. HALF LIFE is a story about conjoined twins, and it sounds fascinating and fantastical.

With all these great books to read, how will I manage to get any writing done in February?

Good Stuff Out There:

→ A friend of mine is working on an impressive project: Rereading Every Book I Own. She's reading them in chronological order and writing entertaining reviews of each. Here's the introduction.

January Reading Recap

2012-02-02T15:16:00.000-08:00

Last month I read three of the four books on my list:

→ MAN IN THE WOODS by Scott Spencer - This novel is about guilt and secrets, two of my favorite themes. I posted some thoughts on the book already from a writerly perspective. The richly drawn characters are wonderful, and the plot weaves together in an interesting and usually surprising way. This is a book I'll be looking at again to learn more about constructing a story, and I recommend it to readers interested in a suspenseful, character-driven novel.

→ THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides - I'm sorry to say that I didn't like this book as much as I wanted to. I loved MIDDLESEX, Eugenides's previous novel, and this one didn't engage me in the same way. However, since MIDDLESEX won the Pulitzer Prize, it's naturally a hard book to top. THE MARRIAGE PLOT still has fascinating characters and an interesting story, and other readers might connect with it more than I did.

The story follows three characters in the year after their graduation from Brown University in 1982. Madeleine is an English major with a thesis about "the marriage plot" and its gradual disappearance from Western literature. She's in love with Leonard, a manic-depressive biologist. And she's firmly not in love with her friend Mitchell, who travels to Europe and India seeking spiritual fulfillment and an escape from his unrequited love of Madeleine.

I eventually became attached to the characters and their various adventures. I was less taken in by the novel's digressions into cerebral topics such as semiotics and literary theory. Perhaps if I'd read the authors who are name-dropped in the story, I might have found these sections more engaging. I was startled to find this apt and possibly self-conscious passage near the end of the novel:

The experience of watching Leonard get better was like reading certain difficult books. It was like plowing through late James, or the pages about agrarian reform in Anna Karenina, until you suddenly got to a good part again, which kept on getting better and better until you were so enthralled that you were almost grateful for the previous dull stretch because it increased your eventual pleasure.

Does this mean my experience of reading THE MARRIAGE PLOT was exactly what Eugenides intended? Even if not, coming across this sentence increased my pleasure in the book.

→ FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley - I expect it will not be news to anybody that this is the story of a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who assembles and gives life to a monstrous creature. It was written almost 200 years ago and is considered one of the earliest works of science fiction.

FRANKENSTEIN is a fairly exciting tale, but with my modern reading sensibilities, I couldn't help but notice all the places where a different storytelling style would have better highlighted the excitement. The pacing and structure seem less than optimal, though I imagine they are in keeping with the conventions of the time. I was less impatient with this story than with some of the other old books I've read, and it's kind of cool that a 200-year-old novel can still be read and enjoyed.

A side note: I thought I'd read this book before, and in particular I recalled that I'd read about two-thirds and then stopped for some reason. My paperback has a bookmark around that spot, confirming this theory. But nothing in the book was familiar, and I would have concluded that I didn't read it after all, except that I recently reread another book and found that I didn't remember a thing about it. I think of myself as having a good memory for what I read, and I can remember details of many books that I read decades ago, but I guess I only retain some books and lose others.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Livia Blackburne shares what she's doing differently as she starts her second novel: "While I love my cliffhangers dearly, they can only take you so far. I now see cliffhangers as part of a larger set of tools to keep readers invested. If readers build an emotional connection to the character, they'll keep reading -- plus, they'll keep thinking about the book after they finish."

Loaded Dialogue

2012-01-31T13:21:00.000-08:00

Last week I wrote a scene that's either brilliant or a ridiculous mess. Perhaps both. I think much of the writing process involves believing a draft is brilliant when you're in the middle of it so that you can sustain the enthusiasm necessary to continue, and then afterwards realizing how much is wrong with it so that you can rip it apart in revision.

Anyway, the scene from yesterday is a conversation between two characters. For the sake of simplicity, I'll call them Barthélémy Göstav III and Vvlkjasfdsmxxxwehny.

(I'm sorry. Really I am. I have very few opportunities for amusement as I sit here alone in my garret.)

So, in fact this scene is a conversation between the narrator of the current storyline and his brother, whose role in the story I was worrying about a while back. In earlier drafts, the brother didn't do much in the story as an adult, though he's important as a child in the chronologically earlier storyline. In this draft, he has a few key scenes in which he makes important contributions. This is the final major appearance of the brother, and I ended up having him contribute even more than I intended.

I'm a little boggled by how much I packed into three pages of dialogue. In maddeningly vague terms, here's what happens in the scene:

→ the brother reveals a secret from his past that nobody in the family knows about

→ the brother discusses an aspect of his life that relates to the storyline that takes place in their future (which the reader realizes but the characters don't)

→ the brother brings up an incident from the narrator's infancy that the reader witnessed in the earlier storyline but the narrator didn't know about

→ during the conversation, the narrator's internal thoughts focus on his current life catastrophe, unrelated to what they're discussing

→ the whole conversation encapsulates several of the novel's major themes

I'd planned for the scene to do a few of these things, and I'd thrown notes into the outline about another couple that I didn't know if I'd really be able to work in. When I finished writing the scene and saw how much I'd done with it, I was pretty darn pleased with myself. And entirely unsure whether there's such a thing as overloading a dialogue. I guess this is yet another thing my critique partners will let me know.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Christopher Gronlund talks about the concern that you're Writing the Same Story as someone else: "Here's the thing about stories: no matter how much we like to think something is new, it really isn't -- at least on a thematic level."

Great Stuff Out There, January Edition

2012-01-25T13:56:00.000-08:00

At the end of most of my blog posts, I include a section of links called Good Stuff Out There. These are usually posts or articles by other people who have something interesting to say about writing, books, or related topics. I offer these links because when I find something I like, I want to tell more people about it, as we all do.

Sometimes I encounter undertakings of a literary nature (or otherwise) that I want to highlight more prominently than a link at the end of an unrelated post. So I'm introducing a new recurring feature called Great Stuff Out There. In this first edition of Great Stuff, I have two exciting projects to discuss:

→ FOGcon 2012 - Last year I attended the first Friends of the Genre convention, and I had a blast. The con focuses on science fiction and fantasy literature, and it will be held March 30 to April 1 in Walnut Creek (in the San Francisco Bay Area).

This isn't a writing conference, but a gathering of enthusiastic readers (some of whom are also writers). My knowledge of genre fiction is limited compared to most of the attendees, and I was a bit nervous about that last year, but I still felt welcomed and able to participate. You can look through the long list of suggested programming to see what kind of panel discussions and workshops will be offered.

I'm looking forward to attending FOGcon 2012, and I hope I can talk a few people into joining me. Interested? Register here!

→ Flamingo Rampant - My longtime friend S. Bear Bergman is launching a line of children's picture books that celebrate the fluidity of gender. Bear is a wonderful writer (may I recommend his essay collection THE NEAREST EXIT MAY BE BEHIND YOU?), and since becoming a wonderful dad, he's been thinking about subjects that are underrepresented in children's literature. Bear has written two picture books and located artists to illustrate them.

Visit the Kickstarter page and watch the video to learn more about the project and the books. The fundraising campaign has been so successful that almost all the money required to publish both books has been raised in only three days, but pre-orders and donations are still being accepted.

Busy, Back Soon

2012-01-19T16:22:00.001-08:00

This week I had to do some terrible things to my characters. I arrived at my novel's most horrific event and revised the scene that destroys the characters' lives. As I got closer and closer to this scene, I'd been both dreading and looking forward to revisiting and improving it.

I'm glad that I got through this scene, and I'm pleased with the way it turned out. The aftermath is shaping up nicely, with some good new changes from the previous draft. I have some hope that the rest of this storyline will flow out pretty quickly from here, so it might not be so very long until I move on to the next and final storyline.

All of which is to say, there's been a lot of intense revising around here recently, and not too much else. I'll work on coming up with some more interesting blog content for later in the month.

But I figure this is a good time to ask you, my loyal blog readers: Is there any particular topic you'd like me to discuss? What types of posts are you interested in seeing more of? Please weigh in with any feedback, and thank you so much for reading!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Henriette Lazaridis Power writes at The Millions about acknowledgements: "Everyone reads the acknowledgements. In fact, for many of us, the first thing we do when we pull a book off the store shelf is to flip to the back. The writers among us might be searching for the agent or the editor we can query, or we might be seeking our own name in the list. But we certainly read the acknowledgements for the drama and the human story revealed therein."

The Right Amount of Backstory

2012-01-13T13:16:00.000-08:00

Last night I finished MAN IN THE WOODS by Scott Spencer, a fascinating novel that deals with issues of violence and guilt and faith. And features a very sweet dog.

Near the beginning of the story, the main character commits an unintended but horrific crime, and most of the rest of the book is about what happens to him and his family afterwards. Occasional sections focus on a different set of characters involved in the investigation of the crime. What most stood out to me about the book was the richly detailed backstories that Spencer gives to every character in the novel.

After I read IF SONS, THEN HEIRS by Lorene Cary, I wrote about how I was impressed that the book included a level of nonessential detail that I would have expected to distract from the story but instead enriched it. Similarly, MAN IN THE WOODS presents many details and events from the pasts of even minor characters that provide no necessary plot information and don't obviously illuminate any specific character trait that needs to be set up. My own editing tendencies would have been to cut most of these out, but in fact I didn't find any of them boring or distracting as I read, and they increased the realness of the characters and their community.

For example, the main character's family is acquainted with, and doesn't particularly like, another family in their small town. This irritating family gets about five small appearances or mentions in the course of the novel, but they could be removed from the story with no impact on the plot. I like that they're in there because it makes the world rich and real: in life, we deal with not only the people we care about and the people who create our main conflicts, but also plenty of people who cause minor annoyances. The characters in the family aren't caricatures but are sketched out in depth, with a whole constellation of traits to bother the protagonist.

Early in the novel's other storyline, involving the detective investigating the crime, the detective meets with a landlord who has some information. In this scene, Spencer lets us into the thoughts of both men, and we see that both of them are seriously distracted from the conversation by a personal problem. The landlord is uncomfortable because he's spotted a man he had a one-night-stand with a year ago, and the detective is struggling to overcome his binge eating habits. I was amazed by the amount of attention given to the inner conflicts in this scene, especially because the landlord never appears in the novel again and the cop's eating disorder doesn't turn out to have any bearing on the plot. But these problems greatly increase the tension of a scene that's otherwise just a transfer of information, and it works.

MAN IN THE WOODS made me think more about my recent musings on giving backstories to secondary characters, and I'm realizing that I can dare to reveal even more detail about my characters' pasts.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Beyond the Margins, Anna Solomon explains Why Princesses Really Drive Me Crazy: "For me, resolution isn't about neatness, or even closure, it's about resonance: the ending of a story has to make everything that came before it ring. Princess story endings seem to deny everything that came before them: whew, that was awful, let’s just forget it ever happened, shall we?"

→ Alex George charts the evolution of his novel from first draft to publication in A Story in Five Photos. (Thanks, Christopher Gronlund!)

Back To Work

2012-01-11T17:08:00.000-08:00

My holiday travels concluded right after New Year's, but I took all of last week off from writing so that I had time to catch up on various life tasks and tackle some "not urgent but it sure would be nice to have this done" projects that there's never time for. That was the theory, anyway. Mostly what I did last week was sleep and read, but I'm not going to complain about getting to do that.

On Monday, I returned to the novel after more than two weeks away. It was nice to get back to it. Sort of. Writing is rarely more fun than reading and napping, and my brain hasn't been enthusiastic about switching out of vacation mode. I've had to force myself to sit down at my desk. And then force myself to stop looking at Twitter. And then to finish the paragraph instead of looking at Twitter again.

But at the moments when my willpower is stronger than my urge to procrastinate, I've put some words down, and they're good words. I made it through a couple of troublesome scenes and into a section that will change relatively little from the previous draft. I'm writing again, whether I want to be or not, and writing is never as horrible as I imagine it will be when I'm faced with the prospect of doing it. I guess I even sort of enjoy it.

Maybe that's why I've chosen to keep plugging away at the work of writing a novel. Oh yeah, duh.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jonathan Gourlay sends a dispatch from his time In the Land of the Non-Reader: "After a week of non-reading, I said to myself that I was busy. So busy. Too busy, really, to start a new book. After three weeks of non-reading, my brain felt a bit numb. I told myself that I was working so hard that I couldn’t engage with a book." (Thanks, The Millions!)

→ Jennifer R. Hubbard wraps up her series of authors' "second book" stories by sharing the tale of her own upcoming second novel.

January Reading Plan

2012-01-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

Here's what I have lined up to start my reading year:

→ MAN IN THE WOODS by Scott Spencer - I put this book on my list for December but didn't get to it then. I started it yesterday and had to drag myself away after 50 pages in order to get other things done. This is going to be a gripping but distressing read.

→ THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides - I'm often hesitant to read the books that all the literary media goes crazy over, because I'm contrary like that. But I received this book as a holiday present, and since I loved Eugenides's previous book, MIDDLESEX, there's no good reason to avoid this one. It's partly set at Brown University in the early 1980s, and I must admit I'm curious about that, since I attended college there, though over a decade later.

→ FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley - Shelley is the Honored Ghost (posthumous honored guest, you see) at this year's FOGcon, the speculative literature convention that I had so much fun at last year. I believe I read FRANKENSTEIN many years ago (actually, I have a feeling I read about three quarters of it), but I don't remember it well, so I thought I'd read it again. Then I should probably read some more recent works relevant to this year's FOGcon theme, The Body.

→ THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION by Michael Chabon - Selected semi-randomly from the large collection of books I own but haven't read. It has a great alternative history premise: After World War II, a Jewish state was set up in Alaska. I'm curious to see where that idea goes, and this will be my first Chabon novel.

December Reading Recap

2012-01-05T18:28:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of 2011 I decided to start planning out my reading on a monthly basis and announcing each month what I intended to read. I said that I wasn't going to commit to finishing all the listed books every month, and I haven't, but stating my reading list publicly in advance has motivated me to make more time for reading so that I'd have more books to report at the end of the month.

I read 30 books in 2011. I know that's not a very impressive number compared to many other readers and writers, but it's a good number for me. It's about the same number of books as I read in 2010 and significantly more than in the preceding years. I didn't read every day, but I read most days, and I count that as a resoundingly successful result to this experiment, which I intend to continue. Maybe my number of books will be higher in 2012, and maybe it won't -- after all, there are books to be written, too.

In December, I only had time for two of the books on my list:

→ BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I finished the final book in the Mars series and enjoyed it just as much as the first two. The story went in a bunch of interesting new directions in this last installment while also continuing with the familiar plots, topics, and characters. This is an incredible saga with well-developed characters in a highly detailed, believable world. The books are a dense read, full of descriptions and scientific explanations, and for that reason I'm sort of surprised that I liked them as much as I did.

I spent just over a year reading the Mars trilogy, while reading many other books at the same time, and I think that was a good way for me to approach such a quantity of challenging text. I'm thinking about taking on another large reading project for 2012, and I'm open to suggestions.

→ A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan - This is a creative and well-written book, deserving of the acclaim it received, but I don't think it qualifies as a novel because it doesn't have a unified story arc or much sense of beginning, middle, and end. I'd call this a book of closely linked short stories, and while I appreciated each story, I didn't feel as satisfied at the end as I do after a good novel. It seems an unlikely candidate to be optioned for an HBO series, but if the network makes it, I'll watch with fascination.

However you categorize the book, it's full of intriguing characters, many of them involved in the music industry and all of them coping with disappointments and difficulties in life. The chapters, or stories, jump around in time and feature a variety of narrative styles, including a chapter consisting entirely of PowerPoint slides. I love that kind of thing, but it's not for every reader. Each chapter features a different main character, who might have appeared or been mentioned in an earlier story or might have a more distant connection. Part of the fun of reading is figuring out how each new story relates to what has come before and finding out more about events that have been alluded to. Taken together, the chapters present snapshots from the lives of a loosely connected web of characters while tracking the development of music and technology over time. Recommended for readers open to unusually structured books, particularly those with a passion for rock and roll.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jacket Copy collected literary New Year's resolutions from writers. I particularly like Marisa Silver's: "Use fewer commas."

As The Year Turns

2011-12-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of this year, I expressed optimism. I boldly predicted that in 2011, I would move beyond being an amateur writer who sits at her desk talking to herself in obscurity. I declared that this year, I would finally become an agented writer who sits at her desk talking to herself.

I made this prediction with the fully admitted knowledge that for quite a few years now, I've been telling myself that this year, this time, really for sure now, I'm going to get my big break. So I'm neither surprised nor especially disappointed to realize that once again, I was mistaken. This wasn't the year.

It was still a good year. I started with a manuscript that I thought needed a little more work, and I discovered how much better I could make it. I continued to have the wonderful luck and support that allow me to pursue writing full-time. I read many great books and learned more about the craft. I connected with writers and readers around the world. I carried on having a pretty terrific life.

I'm still optimistic. 2012's going to be the year, for absolute positive sure.

Now I'm off to spend time with some of the important people in my life, while I think fondly of the other important people who I'll be missing. The days get longer from here on out. Happy new year to everyone.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Julie Wu writes at Beyond the Margins about overcoming her Fear of Revision: "[I]t has taken me ten years to write my first novel. I have revised it countless times--a little when it first didn't sell, then more and more. Eventually, I changed its structure, its point of view, its tone, its style. With each revision I received comments and started over, page one. Each time, I learned more, until I could revise without fear. And it was then that I sold the book."

Important Irrelevant Details

2011-12-16T15:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes in the interest of realism in my fiction, I get hung up on these details, and I don't know if I'm being ridiculous. Today I was worrying about whether readers would notice or care how much time passes in the story without a visit from the grandparents.

The storyline I'm working on involves a couple with a baby, and it takes place over several years. Sometimes in the gaps between scenes, months pass during which the characters go about their lives with only the most relevant occurrences reported to the reader when the story picks up again. This is convenient for me as the author, because it means I can safely assume that while I'm ignoring the characters, they have time to take care of things that are important to them but not the story. Things like getting in some quality time with that grandmother who lives in another state and doesn't do anything in the story until the kid is a year and a half old.

But today I became concerned about the fact that there's no mention of this grandmother between soon after the baby's birth and that one scene she stars in. I'd been imagining that a visit or two happens off the page somewhere and that the reader could imagine that as well, which is fine, but I figured that for my own peace of mind, I should decide when those visits are. But there's also the other out-of-state grandmother. She's more important to the story and has more scenes, but they still might be spaced farther apart in time than this character would believably go without making sure she saw her grandchild. So I needed to schedule visits with her for my own reference, too.

Having arranged all these imaginary travel plans (which, thank goodness, didn't involve the headache of searching for imaginary flights), I saw a way to relevantly mention these grandparental visits in the story with a few words of summary, so I went ahead and did that. Now I can stop worrying that any reader will note the sparseness of grandmotherly visits during the baby's early life.

But now I have to wonder whether there's any chance that any reader would have spared a moment of thought on this issue. What do you think? Am I being thorough in crafting a believable world for my characters, or am I wasting time obsessing over pointless details?

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Mary Kole explains what is and isn't involved in Big Revision: "She'd been doing something that I see a lot of writers do without meaning to or realizing it. I call it a 'tinkering revision.' Instead of going completely back to the drawing board, she'd just been mucking around with what she'd already written and, while she was technically revising, as in, switching words around and making cuts, she was getting nowhere." (Thanks, Becky Levine!)

→ Chris Abouzeid at Beyond the Margins shares thirteen opening lines he tried for different drafts of the same manuscript.

The Pace of Progress

2011-12-14T14:06:00.000-08:00

My challenge to myself last month resulted in serious progress on my novel. I set my goal high because I wanted the motivation to work more hours than usual, and I was successful in that regard. As far as I can tell, revising for longer hours didn't result in any loss of quality, and that's good news for both the work I produced in November and for my future writing.

The unstated goal of last month's experiment was to help me figure out some new methods for working more productively. Should I give myself a revision hour goal every month, or set up some other kind of metric to reach? How many hours of writing are in my optimal working day? Since last week, I've been trying out a couple of ideas, and the results are good so far. I'm going to wait until I've had more time with them before going into detail here.

When I reviewed the stats on my November progress, I also consulted the record of my time and output in the preceding months. I was happy to discover I'd been keeping these records since the start of this round of revision. I was even more happy when I realized that my overall progress hasn't been as glacial as it feels.

At the beginning of this revision, I had some thoughts about how long it might take to complete. Reviewing the stats, I saw that my actual progress hasn't been so far off from my guess -- if you take out all the long and short breaks from writing. Some of these breaks were anticipated and valid, such as vacations. Others were the unanticipated but unavoidable interruptions of real life, some of which legitimately prevented me from writing and many of which were convenient excuses. And I'm sure there were a lot of days when there was no good reason that I only wrote for an hour.

So, on the one hand, it's nice to know that I am revising this novel at a pace that feels reasonable to me (however arbitrary that acceptable rate is), and that I can use that pace to estimate when I'll be finished. On the other hand, wow, I've wasted a lot of time, and that's disheartening. I'm hoping that my latest "This Is How I'll Be Super-Productive!" scheme means I'll waste less time in the future so that I might have a chance of meeting my estimate this time.

But, you know, now it's the middle of December, and nobody can get anything done in December.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Christopher Gronlund crafts exquisite Italian fig cookies and ponders the connection to writing: "I love taking the time to get each cut just right, just as I love taking my time with writing. Why would I rush a first draft when it -- and future drafts -- can be stronger if I step back and think about things more, instead of racing to the end?"

→ Kim Wright at The Millions tries to figure out what constitutes genre: "My conclusion: if genre was once a signal to the reader that certain things would happen in a certain way and at a certain pace and to a certain kind of character, that definition is dead. As dead as a Scottish warrior turned zombie searching the criminal underbelly of modern day New York for the only woman he's ever loved."

December Reading Plan

2011-12-06T14:05:00.001-08:00

Here are the books I have lined up to close out my first year of monthly reading lists:

→ BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I've been reading this a lot during the past week, after setting it aside for a while, and I'm excited to see how the rest of the story is going to unfold. I expect to finish this month, completing a year-long read of the trilogy.

→ A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan - All the book people were talking about this book at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. It won a Pulitzer Prize and a bunch of other awards. I've been intrigued because I understand it features a variety of narrative styles and gimmicks, and has sections set in different time periods, which are two of my literary attractions. I didn't read it earlier because I also understand it might qualify as linked short stories rather than a novel, which doesn't appeal to me. Okay, yes, and maybe I also didn't read it earlier because everyone else was. But I picked it up at a bookstore the other day and decided to give it a try. Despite hearing about this book for months, I have no idea what it's actually about, so I get the relatively rare treat of starting a book with no story expectations.

→ MAN IN THE WOODS by Scott Spencer - I hadn't heard of the book or the author until the recent rebroadcast of a Fresh Air interview that intrigued me. This book starts with an ordinary man who takes an ordinary walk through the woods and ends up doing something terrible and unexpected that he has to decide whether to cover up. I was particularly interested because the basic premise has a lot in common with Will Allison's LONG DRIVE HOME, which I read recently, and I'm curious to see where a different author goes with a similar scenario.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Becky Tuch at Beyond the Margins discusses a writing problem I've struggled with in Zen and the Art of Withholding Information: "Perhaps your protagonist is not the kind of person who blabbers about every feeling he's ever had to anyone who will listen. Still, in order to convince your reader of his/her pain, in order to get your reader to empathize with him/her, you will not want to withhold key facts about your character's life. Nor will you want to withhold major aspects of your character's emotional experience. Take it from me--your readers will only feel cheated and confused."

November Reading Recap

2011-12-05T18:39:00.001-08:00

Now that I'm rested and recovered after completing my November writing challenge, it's time for a report on last month's reading list before I get back to revision.

→ ZONE ONE by Colson Whitehead - I like and recommend this book, but it's not going to be for everybody, due to both the content and the style.

The premise of ZONE ONE involves zombies, but don't base your expectations on that, because you might be either disappointed or unnecessarily turned off. For a zombie book, there aren't that many gory, action-packed encounters with reanimated corpses -- but there are some. The story is perhaps more accurately described as a detailed, plausible exploration of a civilization trying to rebuild after global catastrophe. It's just that the catastrophe happens to be a contagion that causes the dead to shamble around seeking human flesh. You'd be better off deciding if you should read this book based on whether you like post-apocalyptic or survival tales, rather than whether you like zombie stories.

The narrative style is a prominent feature, with meandering passages that often halt the advancement of the plot. I became irritated by how often the protagonist lapsed into memory right as something exciting was about to happen, but overall I liked the slow and nonlinear way the story unfolded. You'll need to judge whether a book in this style is likely to appeal to you or get on your nerves.

Without giving anything away, I want to especially praise the ending of ZONE ONE. It's hard to end a novel, and I'm often disappointed by endings, but I found this one satisfying and fitting.

→ WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys - To explain this book, it's necessary to provide a spoiler for JANE EYRE, so if you aren't familiar with Charlotte Brontë's classic and don't want to know its big secret, skip the next paragraph.

The 1966 novel WIDE SARGASSO SEA is Jean Rhys's imagining of the life of Rochester's first wife, from her childhood in Jamaica to her sad fate as the madwoman in the attic. It's not a retelling of JANE EYRE -- the events of that book are compressed into only a few pages of madness at the end. For that reason, it's not necessary to be familiar with the source material before reading this book, and I can understand why I was assigned it in high school without reading the Brontë first. (Even though I'd read this before, nothing was familiar during my rereading.) The book is a beautifully written, but sad and disturbing story.

→ BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - Still in progress. Until last week, I don't think I'd opened this book since mid-October, so it took some reorienting to get myself back into the story. But now that I'm back in, I've been reluctant to put the book down. The characters and situations in the third book of the trilogy are just as fascinating and compelling as in the first two, and I'm glad to be engrossed in the world again.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jason Black tries to figure out the minor characters in his manuscript (as I did recently) and talks about swimming to find your characters: "You cannot see the rest of the iceberg until--and unless--you get into the water. You must swim down, under the cold water, to see the whole thing. The water, in this metaphor, is the writing. I will also argue that you cannot truly come to know who your characters are, in all their multi-dimensional glory, until you plunge in and get wet."

Made It!

2011-11-30T18:11:00.001-08:00

I'm pleased and relieved to report that I have completed my November challenge of revising for 65 hours this month. Phew!

I didn't manage to distribute the hours as evenly as I was hoping, so these last few days have been a little fuller of revision than my brain was prepared for, and I'm ready for a couple of days off to recharge and reflect. But I'm able to report that I did a lot of work on my novel this month, it was good work, and I made some serious progress.

No, the manuscript isn't done yet. I'll keep you posted, I promise!

Congratulations to my friend who joined me in this revision challenge and reached her goal, and to my many NaNoWriMo buddies who made it to 50k or beyond!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jennifer R. Hubbard is a willing reviser: "...I think of my words as less precious than the story itself. I start out with something I want to say, a point, and that's the precious part. If I can move a scene around, or cut out a symbol that isn't working, or combine two characters who are doing the job that one could do, it's all going to make the story better."

The High Cost of Realistic Dialogue

2011-11-28T16:57:00.001-08:00

I've always prided myself on my dialogue. Maybe that's why I put so darn much of it in my stories. Since realistic dialogue is important to me, I hold myself to high standards when writing it.

I'm usually satisfied with how my dialogue sounds after I've taken the all-important step of reading an exchange out loud a few times to determine whether the words could naturally emerge from somebody's mouth. If the lines aren't flowing, I employ some of the useful tricks I've learned, including dropping beginnings of sentences ("Do you need anything at the store?" can become "Need anything at the store?") and adding the nonlinearity that's part of normal conversation.

But I often get hung up in doubt when it comes to the content of what my characters say to each other. I'm deathly afraid of writing dialogue that might come anywhere near the realm of "As you know, Biff, I worked with you at the DMV for thirty years before you embezzled all those vanity plate fees and fled to a country with no extradition treaty." It seems simple enough to avoid writing dialogue that has characters telling each other things they both know. Yet in practice, the problem is often much subtler.

Today I was working on a scene in which some characters get together for a visit. I needed them to discuss one character's job, and it seemed reasonable enough for the topic to come up since they hadn't seen each other in a while. But as soon as I started writing, I began to second-guess myself: "They're talking about this over dinner, but it's so important to the character's life, wouldn't it have come up earlier in the day? And we know the characters talked on the phone recently, so is it really possible they'd have new information to cover in this scene?" I honestly don't think any reader would have questioned the validity of the topic, but I couldn't make myself buy it until I changed things around to a scenario that satisfied me.

In general, I probably spend the majority of my staring-into-space time trying to figure out how my characters can believably start discussing whatever topic I need them to talk about in a particular scene. The topic always belongs in the scene because the characters have something to say about it, but I get stuck on how to bring it up. I may have an outline for their conversation, but I need my characters to behave like real people, who rarely sit down to talk with an agenda in mind.

In the same scene with the update on the character's job, I also had to find a justification to discuss a different character's health, plus include a callback to an earlier scene. It was a complicated maneuver, and there was a lot more staring than writing before I got through the scene. The conversation now all fits together to my satisfaction, and I hope it will appear natural and effortless to the reader.

So that's one page of dialogue completed. And as I said, there's a lot of dialogue in my novel. Now you have some idea of why this is all taking so long.

Still Here

2011-11-22T15:26:00.001-08:00

A short and boring update so I can get back to revision: I'm still revising, still working hard, and still making exciting progress.

My November challenge to myself is to revise for 65 hours this month. Last week was jammed with non-writing tasks that needed to get done, so I didn't complete as many hours as I was hoping, putting me behind. But I've been catching up and working extra extra hard, and I still anticipate making my goal by the end of the month.

Whether your plans for the next few days involve enjoying food with family and friends, catching up on your NaNoWriMo word count, a little of both, or none of the above, I wish you the best of luck!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Millions, Michael David Lukas recounts the adventure of meeting his Number One Fan: "I brushed aside my concerns about being kidnapped or scammed somehow, tried my best to push those scenes from Misery out of my head, and I got on the plane to Cincinnati."

Giving Life to Secondary Characters

2011-11-15T17:42:00.001-08:00

On Friday I was musing over whether a certain scene in my manuscript should stay the way I wrote it in the previous draft or if the story would be better served by making a different choice in revision. Over the weekend, I had a couple of ideas about the brother character that answered my questions about the scene.

You'll all be glad, or sorry, or indifferent to hear that the brother still won't be present at Thanksgiving. He has a good practical reason for missing the holiday, and also a slightly selfish reason that will be revealed in a later scene.

These new developments in the character's life will have almost no bearing on the plot of my novel. The character will appear in the same number of scenes as I'd already planned (a significantly larger number than in the previous draft, where he was problematically ignored). He'll serve the same function in the story and offer just about the same brotherly advice to the protagonist at key moments. These changes I put so much thought into will result in maybe a page worth of different text overall.

In the hypothetical story featuring the brother as the main character, what I decided over the weekend changes everything. This imaginary person has a whole new set of miseries in his past and possibilities in his future. Nobody will ever appreciate the depth of these changes, because this poor guy isn't a real person, and he's only a secondary, even tertiary, character in a novel starring someone else.

I like knowing too much about the lives of my secondary characters. It makes the characters and the story feel more real if there's evidence that the people the protagonist interacts with have their own lives when they're not on the page. It's better when the text doesn't imply that the best friend exists merely to listen to the protagonist's problems, but instead hints at rebellious teenagers at home or concern over aging parents or a devotion to French cooking.

I like imagining that every character is the protagonist of a novel that occasionally intersects with the one I'm writing.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Kathy Crowley at Beyond the Margins studies crime fiction to learn about plot: "I've never had a lot of interest in crime fiction or other crime-related activities such as watching CSI or knocking off liquor stores. And even in my current state of renewed appreciation, I don’t like stabbings, shootings or even hard-boiled hard-bodied cops. BUT blood, gore and unsavory characters notwithstanding, good crime writers are authorial yogis who can bend, twist, flex, unravel and reravel themselves around a plot."

Does It Have To Be This Way?

2011-11-11T12:51:00.001-08:00

One of the most difficult parts of revision is asking yourself, "Does this scene/character/plot point/detail have to be this way? Is this the strongest choice for the story, or does it feel right merely because that's what I wrote in the previous draft?"

I've been mulling over an upcoming scene in my manuscript. It's not one of the most significant or memorable scenes of the novel, but it does serve a purpose, and I intend to keep it. In the scene as it currently exists, the family has gathered for Thanksgiving. The narrator's brother is the only person not present, so after the meal they call him, and during the speakerphone conversation, an important piece of family history is debated.

I have some fondness for this scene because when I added it to the second draft, with no particular plans for the content of the phone call, I had one of those out-of-author experiences where the characters start saying things I didn't know I'd thought of. I decided to run with it, and a whole new section of plot resulted.

Unplanned sparks of potential brilliance always deserve serious scrutiny in revision -- "Does this actually improve the story, or do I only like it because I was excited when it emerged from my brain?" In this case, I've evaluated the conversation and its consequences, and I think it adds to the story. But as I think ahead to what changes the scene might need, I'm wondering why the brother isn't there for Thanksgiving with the rest of the family.

I can't remember if I left him out for a reason in the last draft. It was probably because I wasn't sure what to do with him in general. The character plays an important role as a child in one of the storylines, but in previous drafts he grew up to become curiously absent for no particular reason, which was a problem pointed out by my readers. In planning this revision, I've given the adult brother more to do, but I'd forgotten about this event.

So I'm asking myself if the scene has to be this way. I don't think there's anything about the brother's absence that leads to the scene's important conversation, so maybe he should be there to discuss it in person. Or maybe for other reasons, it is better if he doesn't come for Thanksgiving, in which case I need to justify -- at least in my own mind -- why he's missing the holiday. Or perhaps the scene doesn't need to take place on Thanksgiving at all. Everything's open for change.

Revising requires second-guessing everything in a story. It's easier to keep things as they were, but the easy option means the story might not become as strong as it could. Don't shy away from looking at every element of your manuscript and asking, "Does it have to be this way?"

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project offers 8 Writing Tips from Flannery O'Connor: "Try arranging [your novel] backwards and see what you see. I thought this stunt up from my art classes, where we always turn the picture upside down, on its two sides, to see what lines need to be added. A lot of excess stuff will drop off this way." (Thanks, Louise!)

Putting in the Hours

2011-11-07T17:58:00.000-08:00

One week in, I'm doing pretty well on my non-NaNoWriMo challenge of revising for 65 hours during the month of November. I had one day when I slipped and didn't work when I intended to, but other than that, I've been putting in more hours than usual because I have this numerical goal to achieve.

I'm making great progress on my second storyline, and now it really is going more quickly than the first, as I hoped. Part of the reason for the different speed is that the overall shape of this storyline is staying the same. I'm still writing a lot of new scenes -- awesome, exciting scenes that I can't stop gloating about -- but often entire sentences are surviving into the new draft nearly intact.

Another important factor is that I'm spending a bit more time each day on revision. And that means not only do I get that same bit more accomplished, but I get extra work done, due to the phenomenon of increasing output that I've noticed before. If I could only write all the time with the effectiveness of the final hour of a long writing session, I'd be done with this darn thing by now.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Editor Alvina Ling describes her process for editing an author's manuscript: "Sometimes, right after the first read I think, 'there's nothing I could do to improve that novel!' But inevitably things will come to the surface during that 'sitting' time: issues with the plot or believability, questions about certain characters, solutions (suggestions, I should say) to problems I've been having with the book, resolution to how I've been feeling about the ending, etc." (Thanks, Nathan Bransford!)

November Reading Plan

2011-11-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

Two in progress and another short book should do it for this month. After all, I have a lot of revising to do.

→ ZONE ONE by Colson Whitehead - As I said yesterday, I'm excited by this book so far. It's the first pick for the Bookrageous book club, and I'm looking forward to the discussion.

→ BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I'd like to finish this last book in the trilogy before the end of the year, so I'll be giving it more attention this month.

→ WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys - This novel is narrated by a small but important character in Charlotte Brontë's JANE EYRE, so I figured it would make a good follow-up read. I actually read WIDE SARGASSO SEA before, when I was in high school. I remember it being assigned in English class, but I'm not sure why we would have studied it without first reading the original, so I could be wrong about that. I'm sure my reading of Rhys's book will be very different now that I've read Brontë's. However, I have no memories of my first reading, so I won't really be able to appreciate the difference.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ More useful revision advice from Theresa Stevens at Edittorrent, this time on unnecessary scenes with characters dressing and dining: "Sometimes it happens that the characters are having a meaningful conversation as they eat or cook or get dressed. The purpose of the scene is to have that conversation. The purpose of the scene is not to eat or cook or get dressed."

October Reading Recap

2011-11-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

I did a lot of reading last month, getting through most of my planned list and even adding an extra book.

→ LONG DRIVE HOME by Will Allison - This novel starts with a fatal car accident, and the situation just gets worse from there. At the beginning of the book, the narrator is driving his daughter home from school when a chain of incidents leads to an accident in which a stranger dies. The accident is a fluke, but the narrator isn't entirely without fault, and in his attempt to cover up the truth, his life spins out of control. I inhaled this story in about twenty-four hours and then wondered why I've read so many depressing books lately. The writing is powerful and heart-breaking. Recommended if you're up for a harrowing read.

→ JANE EYRE by Charlotte Brontë - I keep feeling uncultured because there are so many classics I've never read. Then when I do read a classic, I feel uncultured because I usually don't like it very much. So although it may not reflect well on my tastes, I must confess that I wasn't a big fan of JANE EYRE.

I did enjoy some aspects of the novel: Jane is an interesting character and narrator. I was fascinated to learn about life in mid-1800s England, particularly the strong class distinctions and very different etiquette (it apparently wasn't rude to openly comment on someone's unattractiveness). The middle section of the book has a quite engaging story.

Unfortunately, the overall pacing left me and my modern expectations bored and impatient. For example, if I were editing this book, I'd cut out Jane's entire childhood (one-fifth of the book) and start the story with her arrival at Thornfield. I'd explain to Charlotte Brontë that all that backstory about Jane's abused childhood and education is great for her to know as the author, and that she could sprinkle references to it throughout the novel, but that the reader doesn't need to see it all unfold on the page since the incidents have little specific relevance to the plot and only offer some insights into Jane's character.

Like I said, my expectations are modern ones. JANE EYRE will still be revered as a classic long after my work has been forgotten, even if I don't understand why. I'm interested in understanding, though, so I still hope to discuss the book with some more enthusiastic readers and learn what I'm overlooking.

→ THE EYRE AFFAIR by Jasper Fforde - After I finished JANE EYRE, I realized that it's featured in this first book about literary detective Thursday Next, so this was a perfect time to check out Fforde's series, which I've heard a lot of good things about. What I knew was that this is a humorous mystery series set in an alternate world where books are both more important to society and less separated from reality than in our world.

I know I've already alienated a bunch of readers with my disrespectful remarks about JANE EYRE, and now, alas, I must provoke the disappointment of some more: I wasn't impressed by THE EYRE AFFAIR. The book wasn't as funny or clever as I'd been led to expect, but more than that, I found it unfocused and uneven. There were intriguing concepts, such as the whole mechanism behind the villain's evil plot, and some great scenes, like the brilliant Rocky Horror Picture Show-style performance of Richard III. But the story took too long to get to the point, and it went off into many unrelated tangents that irritated me.

Here again, I'd like to hear from fans who can tell me what I'm missing. This is the first book in a long series -- maybe they get better, or I'd appreciate this book more in the context of the whole?

→ BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I didn't make much progress this month because I was busy with the other books.

→ ZONE ONE by Colson Whitehead - I've read about a quarter of the book so far, and I'm enjoying it. This is a zombie novel, but it's the farthest possible book from the other zombie novels I read this year, the Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant, which I've praised and ranted about for being an exciting story poorly told. ZONE ONE, on the other hand, is unequivocally a work of literary fiction, with the requisite long, carefully crafted paragraphs and an endlessly musing protagonist. Those are the facts about the style, and maybe it doesn't make this book sound very compelling, but I assure you that I'm fascinated by the main character and his post-apocalyptic world, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Beyond the Margins, Stuart Horwitz tackles the difficult problem of story endings in How Not To End Things: "For those of us who have struggled to end a piece of writing, we know that there are a series of pitfalls that the ending can fall into."