The Literary Lab

Thank you

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:14:00 +0000

Dear friends and fellow writers,

Today is Sunday, and the three of us are sad because we have decided to close down The Literary Lab. The time feels right for letting go of something that we have put a lot of heart and energy into.

We are so grateful to everyone who has been a part of our community: reading, commenting, guest posting, and sharing your writing. Our hearts and minds have grown because of you. We have built friendships. We have become fans of your work. We thank you so, so much.

Because of you, we've also been able to put together some anthologies that we are really proud of. The energy we felt as we put your work out into the world was amazing. To top it off, we were able to donate money to some cool organizations and give some of you writers well-earned payment. We thank Becca for being our partner-in-crime for all of our anthologies, and C. N. Nevets for being our Tweeter for a time.

On a personal note, I'd like to deeply thank Scott and Michelle for being willing to take part in this with me. Both of them are going places, so I hope you will keep a close eye on them.

Michelle blogs at her site, Michelle D. Argyle, and her next book, The Breakaway, will be officially out on May 1st, followed by Bonded coming out in November.

Scott blogs at Six Words for a Hat, and his novel The Astrologer will be coming out in March of 2013.

As for me, I'm excited about the opportunity to start something new. I'm taking a little bit of time to reflect on what will be most meaningful to me, and if you're interested in finding out what I come up with, you can sign up on my mailing list. I'll be sure to let you know.

I sincerely hope that all of you writers out there will continue to remember what you love and strive to fill your life with those things. We'll probably be putting up a few more updates as we get the blog organized for any future readers who stumble upon it. (We have over 700 posts!) Writing is an amazing art form worthy of everything we put into it.

with love,

The Literary Lab

Friday Filler! So You're a Writer, Are You?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:41:00 +0000

I think a lot of the folks who read this blog are writers. I don't know where I get that idea; it just popped into my head. I keep trying to focus the conversation on pro sports but you guys keep talking about books and stories instead. Well, if that's the way you're going to be, then fine. I can go with that. I'm not a difficult person. Okay, that's a lie. I am a difficult person, but I can talk about writing if you want. Really, I can. Here goes:

So you're a writer, are you? If you're a writer, what are you writing? This is the last chance you'll get to pimp your work here, because I won't be asking again. See above about how I think we should talk sports.

Me, I'm working seriously on two projects:

1. The Astrologer, a sort of postmodernist historical fiction that mashes Shakespeare's "Hamlet" up with the possible murder of famed astronomer Tycho Brahe in 1601. It's a page-turner and philosophical treatise in one! It can't miss, I tell you. The MS goes to the publisher in July for editorial, so I have a couple of months to tweak with it. And tweak with it I am. I'm making changes on nearly every page, almost all having to do with sharpening the language, making the sentences say exactly what I mean. I see that I was more vague than I should've been back in 2010. This sort of painstaking, line-by-line work is slow going and I don't enjoy it much, but the book will be much better for it. Mighty Reader, naturally, looks over at all the red ink and opines that I've once more gone mad with revisions.

2. Go Home, Miss America, a sort of modernist Great American Novel in which I'm a bit past the halfway point in the first draft. The narrative is made up of two alternating stories that intersect about 2/3 of the way through with interesting results. The leading male is a 50 year-old mid-level manager at a university who's troubled because his real life fails to match his self image. I know: white guy fiction, right? But it's deep and funny, I swear. The leading female is a 30-something with a master's in Public Health who flees to Africa to do charity work when her fiance dumps her, and she fails to find herself in the Congo. I know: Heart of Darkness in reverse, right? Sounds like an MFA program project. I think it's got Pulitzer written all over it.

So that's what I'm working on. Davin Malasarn is finishing up revisions to his Cyberlama novel. Michelle Davidson-Argyle is working on a new one that sounds very cool. She just sent a MS to her publisher for something that'll come out next year, and she's got a novel that comes out any day now that you can pre-order already. She can tell you more about that if she wants. That's not the point, though it could be.

The point is, I'm asking you: So you're a writer, so what are you writing?

That Invisible Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 14:58:00 +0000

It's a simple test, and unfortunately my wrong world view often resists simplicity. But every once in a while I'm reminded of how well it works and how rarely books pass it. I'm talking about the goosebump test, when people judge the quality of the book they're reading by whether or not it gives them goosebumps. (It works for other things too: love, hairstyles, puppy cuteness, frozen dinner commercials.)

I'm revising Cyberlama--tentatively titled The Monuments--and I'm finally remembering to let the goosebump test guide a lot of my decisions. I was working on a scene that felt pretty boring. I tried to expand it to create more of an experience, but at some point I just felt like I was making a boring scene longer and still boring. Then, I ran through some possibilities in my head, and suddenly, I got them. (Goosebumps, that is.) And I was excited enough to stay up far past my normal bedtime, despite the fact that I knew I'd have to get up early to walk Peanut.

For me, the goosebump test helps to distinguish between when my brain is saying, "Yeah, this is logical and the flow is nice," and my heart is saying, "Ooh, yes, yes, yes! Yes, yes! Yes!" I think readers prefer the latter most of the time.

It's an invisible thing. The right words and the right ideas don't always add up to goosebumps. So for me, someone who often has to fight being too analytical, it's a great test, and I fully endorse it.

1. Don't forget our anthology is available!

2. If any of you ever have a chance to see a ballet choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj, I highly recommend it. I've seen three of them now (last Saturday I watched Blanche Neige at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion), and each time I'm left driven to make my writing more creative, beautiful, and emotional. Preljocaj has sold out by letting Air France use a scene from his ballet Le Parc--which, funnily enough, was the first ballet I saw of his and one I've mentioned here before. It gives me a chance to show it to you.

And if you have 8 minutes to spare. Here's the same scene in context. For me, this passes the goosebump test while the first one does not.

Variations on a Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 15:09:00 +0000

Happy Monday, everyone!

Don't forget, the Variations on a Theme Anthology is available now!

Friday Filler! Therapy Session on the Virtual Couch!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:44:00 +0000

This morning I was waiting for a bus in the University Street Metro station when I saw Jon Evison, best-selling author of West of Here and All About Lulu, walking along on the opposite side of the station, pulling a suitcase and garment bag behind him. Jon’s on his way to the Virginia Book Festival. He spends a lot of time on the road, giving readings and meeting readers and encouraging up-and-coming writers from coast-to-coast. I could’ve yelled Hey, Evison! across the big gap between us and even though he and I have only met twice in the last three years, Jon would’ve remembered not only where and when he’d seen me last, but also what my name was and that I was a writer. Jon Evison has that sort of memory, and he’s that sort of people-loving guy. So while I’m sure he misses his family when he’s on the road, he’s also made friends all over America and he really loves meeting new people and he loves doing readings. Still, I had the disturbing thought later this morning that Jon Evison, best-selling author, is now sort of a traveling salesman, and I think of him standing alone with his suitcase and garment bag on the Metro platform, off to SeaTac and nine or ten hours of traveling to get him to his hotel in Virginia. It did not strike me as a good thing. But it’s the artist life, isn’t it? Mozart toured Europe, conducting his symphonies and giving recitals and dedicating new works to various crowned heads, hoping that someone would give him a decent regular gig. A self-employed artist must constantly hustle his wares, it seems. Not much new there.

Yesterday, in the comments of a blog dedicated more-or-less to reading 19th-century literature, someone mentioned that her husband only reads “classics,” working through a list provided by Clifton Fadiman (I assume it's Fadiman's "Lifetime Reading Plan"). She went on to ask, partly in jest, why we should read anything being written now? Most of it’s probably crap; let time sort out which will become classics, and let readers of the future enjoy them. We have more “classics” available right now than anyone will have time to read in a lifetime.

This gave me pause. I’m one of those people writing novels now, and I have no way of knowing if my novels aren’t part of the “most of it’s crap” pile. I think it would be nice if tens of thousands of people bought my books, but I can’t honestly say that my books are worth the time to read. None of us can honestly say that about our own books. No, we can’t, no matter what you might think. No, we really can’t say. So I have no real idea of the “worth” of my books. I agree with you that terms such as “worth” and “classic” are poorly understood and indefinable, but let’s pretend they do mean something and move on.

So, I can’t claim that my books are worth reading. I also can’t claim that most of the books I read are books written by living authors. I’m one of those people who read capital-L “Literature” (another very slippery term) and most of my bookshelves are full of books by people who are long dead, some having gone to their graves thousands of years ago. It’s a constant struggle for me to find living authors whose books I want to read, so I’ve got Bulfinch and Walter Scott and Nabokov and Chekhov and O’Connor and Faulkner on my “to be read” list right now. I can depend on those people not to waste my time. All of this might make me think that I have no justification behind asking living readers to give my books a try. And yet I will. This line of thought confuses me. Why am I writing when, maybe, all the good books have already been written? When’s the last time a really great book came out? No, I can’t tell you what I mean by “great,” either.

This is all pretty grim stuff for a Friday morning, and I apologize. Very likely it’s just that I’m in the vasty emptiness of the middle of a new novel and being there always makes me question the value of my own writing. Why this book? I ask myself. What’s the point? Who’s going to want to read this, for gosh sakes? It’s just a phase. I’m in a chapter that’s hard to write, introducing a new character and a significant plot point and I worry that I’m going to screw it up so I put off working on the book and pretend I’m doing research or that I’m too busy to finish the chapter. So I should just finish the damned chapter and move on with my life. So, yay me. Problem solved. So glad we had this chat. Happy Friday.

Variations on a Theme Anthology is Available!

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle D. Argyle) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:57:00 +0000

Get it while it's hot! Literally hot! Variations on a Theme has gone live on Amazon. Sorry, but the anthology is not available for Kindle or any other ebook format. We've decided to take the Kindle version down for Notes From Underground as well. Why? Mainly because the Kindle versions never really sold and it's a lot of work to format those manuscripts just for a few sales. So print only! Makes them more special if you ask me!

And trust me, if you're a fan of The Literary Lab, you want this anthology, and probably all three of them. I won't say why yet, but you do!

Go purchase your copies now. It's a beautiful, exciting, and entertaining anthology. I can't wait to get my final copy!

Also, it should be noted that Notes From Underground has been reformatted. We fixed a name spelling and made the text a bit bigger (it was just a bit small before). It's still the same price as it was before. All three anthologies are $8.56 each. We feel this is a pretty reasonable price for a nice print book.

THANK YOU, EVERYONE, FOR YOUR SUPPORT OF THE LITERARY LAB. None of these anthologies would have been possible without you!

2011

Variations on a Theme is our third anthology. This year, we asked writers to create work inspired by one of two stories: “The Tinderbox,” a classic fairy tale, or “The Huntsman,” by Anton Chekhov. The result is a wonderful, tight collection of magical stories.

Authors in Variations on a Theme:

Yat-Yee Chong

Judy Croome

Julie Slezak
Jason M. King
Alyne de Winter
Jean Miernik
Judith Mercado
Aimee Jodoin
Cee Martinez
Elizabeth Marcellin
Chuck Hocter
Christina Mitchell
Judy Stokesberry
Sierra Gardner
Yvonne Osborne
Rick Daley
Lisamarie Lamb
Anne Gallagher
Mary Campbell
Donna Hole

Purchase Variations on a Theme

PAPERBACK COPIES through Amazon

$8.56 each
click here

2010

Notes from Underground is our second anthology. Created by allowing writers to fill up 10 pages with whatever they wanted, the anthology is an amazing, diverse, and unique read.

Authors in Notes from Underground:

Cee Martinez
Beth Overmyer
Anne R. Allen
Judy Croome
Anne Gallagher
Taryn Tyler
B.A. McMillan
J.B. Chicoine
Erin Leigh Harty
Lisa M. Shafer
Loren Eatons
Michelle Miernik
Summer Ross
Nevine Sultan
Candace A. Ganger
Yvonne Osborn
Rachel Becker
Aerin Bender-Stone
Matt Zandstra
Simon C. Larter
R. Mac Wheeler
C.N. Nevets
Lavanya Krishnan
Susannah E. Pabot

Purchase Notes from Underground
**past proceeds from this anthology have gone to charity**

PAPERBACK COPIES through Amazon

$8.56 each
click here

2009

Genre Wars is The Literary Lab's first anthology. Containing a wide variety of stories, Genre Wars defies the traditional anthology which centers around one genre.

Purchase Genre Wars
**past proceeds from this anthology have gone to charity**

PAPERBACK COPIES through Amazon

$8.56 each

click here

Happy Birthday, Michelle!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:01:00 +0000

Hey everyone,

It's Michelle's birthday today! AND, she's been working really hard on the anthology, even today, so a big thank you to Michelle! I hope you have a mega-super day!

Happy First Day of Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 15:47:00 +0000

It's the first day of Spring, the season of rebirth and renewal and all of that. It snowed here on Saturday and Mighty Reader worried about the daffodils, tulips and crocuses that are all just pushing bravely up into the world. On Monday morning the world was covered with frost and Mighty Reader took photographs of the ice-crusted parsley and thyme out back. Today it's gray and windy. March is not, as they say, going out like a lamb.

All of which I say to no point, and I don't have a metaphor to flog this morning. But it is the first day of Spring, and I for one am glad to say "so long" to Old Man Winter. Some day I'll wake up and the furnace won't have kicked on. That'll be nice.

In my writing world, Spring isn't necessarily signaling any sort of rebirth or renewal, alas. I'm currently reading Volume 6 of Tales of Chekhov in my attempt to finish the entire 13-volume set this year, and I'm also reading the Norton Anthology of Poetry in my ongoing search for English-language verse I both understand and like to read, and I've got a couple of non-fiction titles going as well. Business as usual for me. Mighty Reader and I just finished our two-person read along of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend. Some time this summer, I think, I'll read Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and maybe Mighty Reader will read along with me for that, too. I like it when we can talk about books in common. We have thousands of books in our house but sadly we don't have all that much overlap in our literary Venn diagram, but I'm working on it.

One other thing I'm doing lately is re-reading a couple of my old novels. I haven't looked at them for some time and I have, happily, forgotten a great deal about them so this is a chance to come at them as a stranger, sort of, and it's enlightening. I'm delighted with some of what I see and disappointed with other bits but all in all, it's encouraging. The delight encourages me to keep writing and the disappointment likewise, because it means that I've grown and am becoming a better writer year-by-year. The bad thing is that I have an urge to rewrite these old novels, but I won't. One of them's already been sold to a publisher and the other one is fine as it is; I'd do it differently today but it's not badly written so I just need to keep my fingers off it and move on with my life.

Which is, maybe, the metaphor for Spring I didn't know I was looking for. We rise from the soil, which isn't dead and dirty but is rich and earthy and full of nutrient and we come up into the air and light and we try again to be what we are as best as we can. Things germinate, gather strength and then burst forth to do what they're meant to do. I've been gathering my strength to write the second half of my novel-in-progress and to do a load of carpentry work in the upper floor of the house Mighty Reader and I have been finishing. What have you been waiting to burst forth and do?

I need me a Yoda

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:22:00 +0000

Happy Monday, everyone!

Rarely do I trust myself to make Star Wars references properly. But I've been beating around the bush on this for a few weeks now, and I want to make the announcement official.

I am looking for a mentor.

In both my science life and my painting life, I've benefited dramatically when I happened on a mentor that perfectly suited me. In my current job, I'm also lucky to have a mentor that is making me a better technical writer.

The perfect mentors, for me, are able to hone in on issues I know I've been struggling with and clarify them for me. Often, with the best mentors, a single sentence or critique can save me months of struggle.

I feel like I'm nearing the completion of my WIP, Cyberlama. And, as I am, it's becoming clear to me that there are patterns of mediocrity in my writing that I had yet to be able to solve. I'm also fairly certain there are issues I don't even know I don't know, and learning those always makes me feel great.

So, I'm looking for a mentor. Or, to put it more generally, I'm looking to learn from writers who are better than me. If anyone has any suggestions on how I might find them, please let me know. AND, I'm also open to advice such as "You don't need a mentor, just spend more time writing."

On the rare occasions when I've

Friday Filler: Match Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:17:00 +0000

Today is Match Day at medical schools all across America. I work at one of these schools, and this morning I stood in the school lobby and watched a class of 200 students open their envelopes and discover where they'll spend the next four-to-eight years of their lives. It's very exciting, the atmosphere like unto a carnival.

Some graduating seniors do not get accepted into the residency program they want. So while hundreds of students with their friends and families are leaping for joy and celebrating, here and there people draw into themselves and, in some cases, weep openly. Yes, these people are all going to have medical degrees in a couple of months, and even those students who don't get into their program of choice all have jobs lined up for them come summer, so they're lucky, right?

Still, it must be disappointing, to have your hopes pinned on being a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins only to learn that you'll actually be a family medicine resident at Denver General or wherever. That's not what I wanted to do with my life, you might moan, while all around you there are people who are going to go off and do exactly what they wanted to do with their lives. Maybe some folks weren't meant to be surgeons, and that dream was ill-founded in the first place. I don't know. I'm not here to draw conclusions or turn this into a lesson. Mostly, it's Match Day in America, and a lot of people all across the country are having a really good day. Good days are rare, and cool. So have a really good day.

Focused Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:35:00 +0000

I'm spending about 90 minutes a day reading Love in the Time of Cholera. Most of the time I'm immersed in the story, not really paying attention to the techniques used. But yesterday I came upon a section of the book that did what I've been struggling with. It captured the moment of mental change for one of the main characters.

Most people would say that change is important. Characters are supposed to grow or change from the beginning of the story to the end. I had written a couple of novellas that tried to capture that change, but I had a hard time actually describing it. My problem was that they were more showy stories, rather than telly. Most of the writing focused on the external. In that view, it was hard for me to show the change.

But in Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez often goes internal, and so it was very organic when he described the moment of change that happened in the character's head while he was sitting, having a conversation--a relatively action-less scene.

I realize that I need to do more of this focused sort of reading, where I pay more attention to how other writers are doing specific things that I am having trouble with. In this case, it was a bit irrelevant because of the difference between show and tell, but I did find it educational. Now, I can go back to books like Old Man and the Sea or The Road to see how those authors accomplish the same thing, assuming they do.

I'm still wondering if a character's change can be shown in external action. The answer is yes, but it hasn't happened in any of my stories yet. I think that has to do with the stories I choose and the characters I choose to live them.

Anthology Update

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle D. Argyle) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:48:00 +0000

I'm being a responsible girl and ordered a print proof copy of the anthology, even though this adds like a freaking week-and-a-half to the waiting for publication. So, I apologize, but I don't apologize, because those of you being published in the anthology will appreciate me holding it before publication and looking for errors. Right? Right. I thought so.

So, the news is that I still haven't received the anthology in the mail (the postal service is interminably slow - I ordered it like a week ago). I'm hoping it will come today, but our mailman doesn't deliver our mail until 5-that-is-ridiculously-late-o'-clock. I really need to get a P.O. Box so I can get my mail sooner. Or something. But I'm actually out of town dog-sitting for my parents, and will need to drive back to my place to get the anthology as soon as my hubby says it has come.

The truth is, we really have been quick about getting this anthology published. It's just that I'm impatient! And the other truth is that I really hope a lot of you spread the word about this anthology because it's special for a lot of reasons, some of which I cannot publicly say yet. So...spread the word. It's a beautiful book, I'm telling you. The stories are connected in a really cool, literary, and entertaining way.

Now I must go eat some breakfast.

Transitions

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:00:00 +0000

I know it's a matter of taste, but when I'm writing a piece of fiction, I don't like to use section breaks. Section breaks are those skipped lines between scenes or passages that act almost like chapter breaks but aren't chapter breaks. They allow a writer to skip directly from one thing to another without writing a transitional passage.

I don't like section breaks, as I've said. I like the narrative to flow unbroken from one thing to the next within a chapter. I also like to write fairly long chapters. As a devotee of three-part structure, more or less, my chapters tend to be built around three scenes, each built from three small acts. I don't jump directly from scene-to-scene; the narrative has to flow smoothly from one to the next in an unbroken line of prose. That means I have to write transitional passages.

Yesterday at lunch I was trying to get from one scene to the next. The physical action of the scene is minimal: a guy sits in his kitchen, eating a sandwich and drinking a beer, thinking. The previous scene was the guy sitting on the patio outside his kitchen, thinking. Yes, I know: action packed! So all the real action is internal, and most of it is thematic. So I'm moving from a scene that's mostly a comic adventure (the scene about the guy on pain pills I wrote about last week) to a scene that's more serious and having to do with ideas from the very first chapter of the book. I'll need to remind the reader of those images and show them from a different angle in this new scene, to give the images a broader meaning. But first I have to get there.

When I'm writing a chapter, I usually scribble down a short list of things I want the chapter to contain. Sometimes those things are actions, sometimes they're symbols, sometimes they're themes. On my best days, I think of all three classes of narrative element and write them all down. These things are usually not directly related to each other. My lists will look like this:

Davin at the centrifuge

Where's the disk with the data?

Davin searches boss's desk

Close call

Flowers

Is my sister having an affair?

Everything is dead once you separate it from its mother

I don't necessarily know how I'm going to work all of the symbols/themes in the right-hand column in with the physical actions in the left-hand column. And this is just one scene; usually a chapter of mine will have three scenes, each outlined by a similar vague little list.

Since I just now made up the list above for the sake of this post, I can't tell you how I solved any of those problems because I never did. But I will say that nothing bugs me in quite the same way as does a jarring or clumsy transition. Everything should flow from what came before it, at least in my stories. I can tell you my basic technique for transitioning between elements: I look for something in common in the elements and build a bridge out of it.

That's pretty simple, no? If you are talking about cats and then you want to talk about bananas, you'd do something with, I don't know, maybe the color yellow. Or the idea of something being peeled. Or how old, bruised bananas might look like calico or tortoiseshell cats, maybe. Use that imagination, you know. Given time I could find something actually clever and subtle. The idea is for the newly-introduced narrative elements to seem like they actually are connected to what's already there. The best way to accomplish that is to actually connect them, right?

I wrote about this same thing something like two years ago, but I'm writing about it again because I've just spent the last couple of days staring at the outline for the scene I'm writing and having no idea how I was going to make my way from the scene I'd just written into the scene I wanted to write. I had, for a time, forgotten my own basic technique. So it's always good to remind ourselves about the rudiments of our craft once in a while.

How Pure Are You?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:07:00 +0000

Happy Monday, everyone!

In my painting and my writing, I've always considered myself a purist. As a painter, I don't get into collage or other mixed media forms. Truth me told, I don't even really like my paint to get too thick on the canvas because it starts to feel too sculptural for me. In writing, I've never really gotten into unusual formatting or graphics in my stories. For me, there was something about having those rules that kept me creative.

But for the first time I am getting a bit experimental with my WIP, Cyberlama. I'm revising a scene, and without really paying attention, I started inputting graphics. Inside my head, I told myself it was no big deal because I could always take them out again. But once I started doing it, I realized that they were affecting what details I chose to include or not include. The graphics were becoming integral, and if I change my mind about them, it won't simply be a matter of cutting them out. I'll have to rewrite this particular section.

I'm not getting into too much detail about this because I'd rather not influence any future readers by telling them ahead of time what I've done. But I'm curious how people feel about doing those types of things in general. Unusual formatting, graphics, maybe even multi media stories. Do you do it? Have you tried it? Do you read it? Would you eat it in a house?

Friday Filler! Tell Everyone You Know

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:35:00 +0000

Last night I was supposed to take a last look at the laid-out Variations on a Theme anthology and tell Michelle if I saw anything she'd need to tweak. Yes, the book is in its final round of page proofs! And no, Michelle, I didn't see anything, once I finally got around to actually looking at the file. I admit that for the first half hour (or longer) of my dedicated "proofing" time, I was actually watching youTube videos of the great English punk band, the Stranglers. If you don't know the Stranglers, you don't know great English punk music. Gosh, they were fabulous. Now I feel old and nostalgic. Well. Anyway.

So the Variations anthology is coming soon, and I know you're all excited to buy a dozen copies each, and I know you'll forgive us if it doesn't actually make it to the virtual shelves on the 15th as promised. It might be a few days late. I warned you, I really did, so no complaints. Don't make me turn this car around.

I've been sort of half-looking at the MS for my book The Astrologer (previously titled Killing Hamlet), which someone foolishly wants to publish. I'm gearing up to go through the whole thing once or twice more because I keep seeing things that I'd write differently today and since I have the opportunity to spruce up the prose, I'm taking it. Mighty Reader warns me that that way lies madness, as I am liable to rewrite the whole damned thing once again, which is unnecessary and would, you know, only add to my growing writerly madness. So I'm going to try to keep it to a minimum. Besides, I have a new book I'm writing, don't I? Yes, I do.

I've also been gathering examples of book covers I like, to send to the cover artist who'll do my book. There'll be a cover by this summer, I'm told. Which is soon, you know. I confess that I'd thought I'd be insouciant, blase, laid back as it were, about this publications process: "Oh, cover art? Whatever, I don't care. Just spell my name right." And so on. Turns out I was wrong, and the process is pretty cool and fun and, dare I say it, exciting. I am also telling everyone I know that they have to buy my book when it comes out. That sort of thing gets easier to say each time you say it; you just have to start. If you've got a book, or you've got one coming out, start telling everyone you know to buy it. This means you. And if, say, you were the author of a story in a certain anthology that comes out next week or so, I'd also tell everyone I know to buy a copy of the anthology. This means you.

j a zobair

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:51:00 +0000

Hi everyone! Head on over to j a zobair's blog if you haven't already heard the great news! She's a beautiful writer. And a pretty funny tweeter!

When Do You Let Go of a Story?

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle D. Argyle) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:22:00 +0000

I have this little theory about writing books. It's not based on anything factual or scientific. I've simply observed over time how writer friends of mine learn to move on from a specific book they're writing, or have written, or even published. First books, it seems, are the hardest to let go. I know because I've only barely begun to let go of my first book after seventeen years. Issues, I'm telling you. And it's not just that I think it's a problem when you can't let go of a book; it's that I think the more quickly you let go, the better writer you're becoming.

The reason I'm saying any of this is because I've noticed that after my sixth book - which was a beast to write, I'm telling you - has already been easier to let go than any of my other books. It was the hardest, emotionally, to write. I put more of myself into that book than any other book I've ever written. You'd think I would be completely 100% attached, right? Wrong. I've already begun to let go of that book. In comparison to my other books, it has felt like an easier process to finish that book and move on.

I'm not sure why this is because I don't think any writer learns to love their craft less the more they write. And I don't think stories become less important to a writer. I think it's a point we reach in a professional career, published or not, to step back and see things through a different lens. If you want to keep writing books and put yourself completely into them, I believe you have to let go of each previous one you've written. For instance, I couldn't let go of Monarch, even after it was published last fall. It took me months to let go of that book even after it was out there being read and reviewed by people. It hurt to keep holding on. I couldn't work on anything major, and decided to go back to my first book for major revisions (the one I was still holding onto so tightly). But Monarch was so close, and then I jumped into this other book I was still so attached to, and I became quite a bit of a mess, unable to write anything new for the longest time. Finally, I let go of Monarch. I'm not sure how I did it, but I did, and I was able to write new material again.

I don't really have any advice. This is just an observation I've had with my own work. I've also watched friends go through this, so I'm not alone. I don't think it's healthy to hold onto a book too tightly after a certain period. It's certainly important while you're writing. I won't argue with that!

Look a Little Harder

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 17:21:00 +0000

I have only the vaguest idea what I'm about to write about. But I have that vague idea so I'll charge ahead and see what happens, okay?

I've never really given much thought to the idea of having an individual style as a writer. I've always concentrated on figuring out what I think will work for whatever book I happen to be writing at the time. The Astrologer is written in a sort of modernized Elizabethan English, very rhythmic and clipped and careful. Cocke & Bull is Colonial American English as informed by the King James Bible, thick and heavy and always rolling forward. The Last Guest was my attempt to write like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Virginia Woolf at the same time, all startling modifiers and jangling description and long stretches of interior worlds. I never cared--and I still don't care--about having an identifiable authorly voice. If nobody ever points to a passage of my prose and says, "That's Bailey; I'd know him anywhere," then I'm still happy enough.

But for the last several years I've had a sort of idea about a type of writing I'd like to be able to do. I've only been able to describe it to myself in an imprecise manner because I didn't know how to do it so I didn't really know what it was. What I've hoped to be able to do was create a narrative that somehow expands to fill the whole physical world, that casts the reader's eye (and imagination) not only to the inmost thoughts of the characters, but also to the physical world around them, both in broad strokes and in finely-observed detail. But I also wanted a unity in all of this. I didn't want layers of description atop the essential actions and themes. I wanted it all to be One, all to interconnect and for all of the narrative elements to be necessary and singing in tune, as it were, as if the novel was a symphony maybe.

I'm certainly not there yet, but a few days ago I got a step closer. I'm writing a scene which is basically a guy sitting in a chair on the patio behind his house, his mind smeary with painkillers as he recovers from knee surgery a day or two earlier. He's home alone, his wife at work and his daughter at school, and he's drifting along under the influence of narcotics. Not much happens. A neighbor drops by and then leaves. He nods off a lot. He forgets where his wife is. He daydreams. This goes on for 5,000 or so words.

Certainly I could've summarized the entire chapter into a paragraph, but of course his daydreams are important and I want them to be vivid. I also wanted the feeling of being outside on a summer afternoon to be vivid. The other thing I wanted was for the boundary between the real physical world of the back patio with the Adirondack chair and the sun umbrella and the flower beds, to be blurred into the character's internal world of daydream and painkiller-induced confusion.

The technique I seem to be using is to think of the scene in terms of the interior action, the confusion and the daydreams, and to sort of pull that scene into bits and fill the gaps with visions of the real world. For example, David (the guy on the patio) halfway remembers that one of his neighbors has dropped by for a few minutes but during his recollection of the visit he's also sort of hallucinating, or he's remembering hallucinations he had when the neighbor was there; he can't tell which is which. What actually happened? What did he say? What did she say? David doesn't know, not really. During this poorly-remembered sequence of events, David looks around and sees the patio. It's sunny, and there are flowers. I wanted the flowers to be vivid and weird, real and surreal, so I describe them as opening their arms in supplication to the sun like virgins offering themselves up for sacrifice to the high priest of some primitive cannibal religion. So you get the reality of the flowers and the sunlight, but you get the weird narcotic effects, too. The bees are buzzing from flower to flower, and David sees them as mechanical beings made of onyx and amber, and the air around the bees seems to change shape and warp as they fly around in the flowerbed. And so on.

The internal action, which is mostly imaginary, is described as realistically as I can, while the external action is described as weirdly and slantwise as I can, to draw it all together into a single unified thing. It's pretty easy when you're making all of the world hallucinatory, I just realized, but in order to use this technqiue of mixing the inner and outer worlds into a single narrative thread while writing a more realistic passage, I'm going to have to work harder. The thing (I just realized) about the chapter I'm writing is that little of the external description has real meaning; it's mostly just setting and extension of David's mental state beyond his head. Maybe that's not enough.

This has been something I've struggled with for years, though. I want my narratives to have an expansive feel, all-encompassing writing that gives the reader The Whole World. I think that I get there in isolated paragraphs once in a while, but I just can't manage to make it a habit, something I can reliably produce. I really don't know what I'm doing in that regard. For now I'm trying to stop during scenes and look around, look some more, look a little harder and see what I see. It's not the best way to accomplish what I'm going for (which, as you've seen, I can't even define very well), but it's what I've got right now.

Maybe what I should've written about today is how reading poetry is making it possible for me to come up with things like the line about flowers being virgins prepared for sacrifice. That might be useful. Well, maybe later this week.

Exaggerating your character

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:39:00 +0000

Happy Friday, folks!

So, I'm curious about character exaggerating. I've been reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, and his style is to exaggerate his characters and their situations in a way that makes me recall reality. He's not writing about reality directly. And I know other writers like Shakespeare do that too.

In my own work, I feel like I exaggerate my characters a little to make them more interesting and more dramatic. I might combine two characters, for example. And I always make sure they run into difficult situations more frequently than I hope one would run into them in real life. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning that I don't exaggerate my characters at all over what I consider to be "reality," I'd say I work at about a 3. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I'd say, works at about a 6.

Where are you?

I'd love to see a scene with one or more of your characters, followed by a little indicator of how much you think they're exaggerated. I'll do the same this afternoon.

Book Deal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:05:00 +0000

I am uncomfortable with self-promotion but I've been advised by Davin and Michelle to mention here on the blog that I've signed a contract with Rhemalda Publishing. My novel The Astrologer will be published in March 2013 unless those Mayans turn out to be right about the end of the world. Rhemalda is the publisher of Michelle's novels, and she assures me that I'm in good hands. That is all. Like I say, I'm not comfortable with self-promotion, and you needn't write congratulatory comments or anything of the sort; I just thought I should mention it. We're here to talk about writing craft, not about my books. Have a swell day.

Oh! I almost forgot! The really cool book, Variations on a Theme, an anthology of stories, will be published by us, the Literary Lab, in two weeks, so save your pennies/shekels/drachma/pence/kopecks and buy a couple of copies when it hits the stands.

5 Steps to Write an Ending

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle D. Argyle) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 14:22:00 +0000

These things I'm about to list may or may not work for you, but I thought it would be fun to give a list of what exactly works for me as an author when I'm about to finish a book. When I talk about the "ending of a book", I mean the last 1/4 of the book.

DO NOT RACE
One thing that is most detrimental to my writing is racing to the end. If things are blurring by at a crazy pace, I'm going to miss things. All those plot lines to tie up - I'm going to miss them completely if I'm not paying attention, and they will not be easy to bring back in with revisions. More than likely, I'd have to completely rewrite the last 1/4 of the book if I rush through it.

READ THE BOOK W/ NO "PENCIL"
When I reach the last 1/4 of the book, I usually load the entire manuscript onto my Kindle and spend the next few days reading it from start to finish (well, what is finished so far). I try to do this in as little time as possible, even one sitting if possible. I like to do this because as I do so, I get a good feel for the book as a whole without making any changes at all, without even making notes. I just want to see it from a distance, if that makes sense.

READ THE BOOK W/ A "PENCIL"
Once I have the entire book in my head, I go back and read it again, this time with my computer in front of me as I make notes about typos, errors, plot holes, inconsistencies, places that need filling out/cutting down, etc. I also make a very, very important list called the THREADS TO TIE-UP LIST. (I know that title is brilliantly creative...*cough*).

WALK AWAY
At this point, the book is pretty close to me. I've read through it twice in a very short space of time, and I need a break from the dang thing. So I walk away for a week to several weeks depending on what I think I need. I have to let things simmer.

Now, you may be asking how I know when I've reached the last 1/4 of the book. I know because I outline. But! Let me make it clear that my outline is a lame little two pages of loose summary-type notes about main plot points, character attributes, and ideas of scene placement. It is by no means a detailed outline. I have to have freedom, so to speak, but I also have to know where the heck the book is going and where I'm at in writing it.

WRITE
So the last thing I do is sit down and write that last 1/4. It seems like by the time I've reached this point, I'm kind of dying. In fact, I'm usually dead and the ending is the most difficult part of the book for me to write. I think this is why I have such a specific set of rules of what I do to get there. I've found over and over that this routine helps prepare me for what I feel is the most important part of any book. If an ending doesn't satisfy the reader, the rest of it can simply fall apart. So I place a lot of weight on the ending. I want it to be just right.

So how do you write your endings? Do you rush to the end and then fix stuff later? Or do you have a more methodical approach? I'm interested to know!

Drawing Attention to Things

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:29:00 +0000

I've read a bunch of short stories in the last couple of months, and over the last week, I've had the interesting experience of editing a bunch of short stories all written by different people. One thing I've noticed is that many writers have the same technical difficulties.* That's not surprising, considering that we're all trying to do more or less the same thing (writers like Lydia Davis notwithstanding).

I've noticed particularly that writers are having difficulty emphasizing passages in their stories, and I've seen similar techniques attempted to draw attention to things, techniques that don't quite work. There are two ways writers tend to accent passages: set the line off typographically, or turn up the amplitude on the prose.

Typographical emphasis:
What I mean by this is when a writer makes a sentence or a sentence fragment into a paragraph of its own. You've seen it before, I'm sure. The story is going along, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

And then there's this sentence.

The story then continues, blah blah blah blah blah. This tactic generally fails, for two reasons. The first reason is that we've all seen this done a bunch of times before. It's a cliché and so it doesn't surprise us (and therefore doesn't move us emotionally). The second reason this fails is because it likely doesn't solve the real problem in the story's structure. More on that in a minute.

High-amplitude prose:
What I mean by this is when a writer wraps the bit of prose they want to emphasize up in florid or ecstatic or frenetic language, to heighten the emotional intensity of the passage. You know, the story is going along and Johnny walked down the corridor, moving against the tide of his fellow students, making his way to his locker. He had only a minute before his next class began and he was in a hurry. Johnny found his locker, spun open the combination lock and found his chemistry text. As he angrily slammed the uncaring locker shut, he heard the metal hinges' high-pitched squeaking that scraped tinnily with all the rushing agony he felt for his young life, a miniscule wail lost in the terrific indifferent din of the echoey corridor and so on and so forth for fifty or sixty words and really Johnny's just slamming his locker door but we want to show that he's upset.

This doesn't usually work because in general there's a stylistic shift into the purplest of prose and the actual meaning of the sentence gets buried under all the modifiers and editorializing. In the sentence above, every noun has at least one adjective, every verb at least one adverb, and I'm also telling you how Johnny felt and about what. More effective would be "Johnny slammed his locker door." Really it would, especially if you've solved the structural problems of emphasis.

I promised to talk about structure, didn't I? Yes, I see that I did. Anyway, the biggest failure when writers attempt to emphasize something is structural. It's not the sentence's fault that it doesn't jump off the page the way you want. You need to leave that sentence alone. There are two good rules that I try to follow when I want to emphasize a passage:

1. Use the simplest, plainest language I can in the emphasized passage, because it's the story event that I am trying to highlight, not my godlike prose style.

2. Prepare the event in the preceding passages.

Rule Number 1 is very important, and you can easily lose momentum by throwing a lot of poesy prosey at your ~~victims~~ readers at an important moment. Be clear. Focus. Let the characters and the premise and the emotion carry the moment. If your characters and premise and emotions can't carry the moment by itself, you have probably ignored Rule Number 2.

The thing is, a story is an object. It's a thing, that takes up space and has a discrete size and a set beginning, middle and end. It's right there on the page; you can see it for yourself. And within this object are traffic patterns and forces at motion. You've put them there yourself. Sometimes the forces don't go anywhere, or they don't go in the direction you want. This means that your story is broken.

This object of a story should have a single most important moment in it. It can be the Joycean "epiphanic moment" where the protagonist sees something and his life is forever changed. Or it can be simply the moment where the central conflict of the story is either resolved or not, the "crisis moment." Whatever you're doing, be it Joyce-style or Chekhov-style, you should know what the One Big Moment in your story is. And all of your storytelling should aim to set up that moment. The prose on either side of that moment should not muddy the issues, should not lessen that moment, should not for God's sake comment upon that moment. If the moment you're going for does not stand out, does not create emotion in your reader, you should look at the shape of the story. You should look for movement within your story that contradicts what you're attempting. You should look for vagueness that muddles the meaning of your One Big Moment. Don't just look at your Moment, look at the whole story. Very likely, the sentence you are laboring over for hours and hours is not the real problem.

It's hard to really illustrate this without an actual example or two, I know, but time is short and I have stuff to do at the office, so I'll just leave you where you are. The structural lessons are hardest to learn, so if you're just starting out writing stories, I push Rule Number 1 at you and suggest you work with that for a few stories.

*Or, perhaps, I have aesthetic differences with most writers and I label those differences "areas to improve" in other writers.

I do not have cholera

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 07:24:00 +0000

Happy Monday, everyone!

I had planned a different post, but this morning it didn't seem very good. Instead, I will just say that I am reading Love in the Time of Cholera, and this morning a lot of people were staring at me on the bus because I was smiling so much. It has been so long since I read One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I am reminded again of how much I admire Gabriel Garcia Marquez's talent.

Oh, and you tell me if this is a sign of low self-esteem. I had my writer's group meeting this weekend, and after I read my scene to the group, two people said something to the effect of "So, you just made this up all on your own?" and I took it as a grand compliment.

Oh and oh, I am spending a lot more time trying to come up with a real title for Cyberlama. Here are some ideas. Let me know, please, if any of them strike your fancy...given that you probably know nothing about the book other than the fact that the Dalai Lama is in it, and all of the main characters are 350 years old.

The Ancestors

The Monuments

The Reincarnation of Diana Foster

A View From Lhasa

The Perfect Distance

Friday Filler: The Lameness Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:25:00 +0000

I got nothing for you today! That's right: nothing. I'm really busy at work and busy at home and oh so tired most of the time.

We're moving forward into the production phase of the Variations on a Theme anthology, and we still plan to have it available on March 15th. That's a very aggressive schedule and if it doesn't show up for sale until, say, March 16th or 17th, I don't want to hear any complaints. Don't make me turn this car around. Don't.

Also, though I have nothing for you today, I might have something exciting and self-aggrandizing to tell you next week. We'll see. We shall see.

Meanwhile, I have written a whole paragraph of my work-in-progress's Chapter 9. I read it back and realized it was in the style of Charles Dickens. Right now I'm reading Dickens' final novel, Our Mutual Friend. Should I worry that the style of my Chapter 9 is that of Dickens? No, I don't think I should. It's just a rough draft and doubtless there are passages in the styles of Nabokov, Chekhov, O'Connor and who knows who else right now. I'm a writer of inclusion, you know. And it all gets shaken and ironed out in the revisions. Still, I was very amused. Though I doubt Dickens ever wrote, "His mind was smeared with painkillers."

Happy Friday and happy weekend, kids!

"Variations on a Theme" Cover Reveal

noreply@blogger.com (Michelle D. Argyle) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:40:00 +0000

We're excited to reveal the cover for our latest anthology, soon to be published next month (by March 15th)! The title is Variations on a Theme because the anthology contains 20 short stories inspired by two classic fairy-tail-ish short-stories: "The Tinderbox", a classic fairy tale and "The Huntsman" by Anton Chekhov.

Honestly, I'm more excited about this anthology than any we've done before. I'm not sure why, but I think it's because all the stories are so tied together. It's a really tight and fascinating read! Also included as part of the 20 stories is my short story written from the prompt, as well as Scott's and Davin's. These will be included at the end of the anthology.

The anthology will be available in paperback, Kindle, and PDF. We hope you will check it out!