For me, the world seems somehow more balanced with book 2 off the shelves. I just realized this and wondered if it’s why I haven’t pushed for it to happen this year.

I will release it, of course, and I have recently started back to work, but today I stopped to examine why I, as an author who likes having an audience, am perfectly happy to keep this one to myself.

Other readers may disagree, but I actually enjoy this book more than TWW. The writing is more mature, the secrets are bigger, the mythology is deeper, and the final payoffs are huge — but beyond that, it’s much more personal, at least to me.

Those who know me well also know that I used this story to write away some of the demons that plagued my young adult life. I caught these dreams and figures that were wound up so tight in my head, then coaxed them onto the paper where they eventually unraveled and began to live on their own. I suppose they’ve found a permanent home there, because one day I discovered that they had left me in peace.

So when I read certain chapters of this book, it’s like watching little nightmares (or “maras” if you will) captured in tiny snow globes and going about their stories without any idea that they used to be my nightmares and my story. I really like it that way.

Somewhere deep down I feel that it’s appropriate to leave them there, bottled up, where no one can recognize them or trace them back to me, but on the other hand, I haven’t cared enough about it to identify that feeling until now.

What is much stronger is the feeling that Agatha, Tergiver, the boys, and the many people still in shadow deserve to have their story told. I also feel that the characters in book 3 grow more impatient every day.

So I’ll continue on until I’ve finished. Currently, the plan is to replace TWW with an expanded second edition, and then release TSOTM, as well as a 1-volume set of both, which makes the most sense to me, as they were originally conceived together as one long novel.

To all three of my fans, thanks for being patient, you’re the best.

My daughter Athena is 2, and this is common in our house:

Parent, exasperated: “Athena, you can do what I tell you right now or go stand in the corner!”

Athena, contentedly, almost sing-song: “Staand in tha cor-ner.”

…and off she goes — happily. She stands in the corner for about 20 seconds, upright and nose to the wall, then announces, “I’m done!” and then proceeds to do what she was asked to do, untouched by shame or the punishment itself.

Suddenly she’s Omar from The Wire; she’s been arrested enough times to not take it personal.

It says something about the power of embracing your circumstances. Her brother hates the thought of being punished, and every punishment is an ordeal. I try to remember Athena when I think about my colorless corporate job — that my choices put me there, but it doesn’t have to be or feel like a punishment. I can simply do it until I want to do something else, and I can do it with a good attitude — even enjoy it.

Athena’s perspective might have something to do with the fact that her severe allergies and eczema leave her always uncomfortable and scratching her fingers and ankles to shreds; but despite being controlled by her very skin at such a young age, she’s willful, funny, bossy, and talkative, so … I don’t know; she’s an enigma.

… and her latest discipline-thwarting technique has me at a loss:

Me: “Athena, if you don’t get up and walk up the stairs to bed, I’m going to make you do it.” (This often works, as she would rather do everything herself.)

Athena, staying floppy on the landing and refusing to move: “Dad?”

“Yes, Athena?”

“Will you make me go up the stairs?”

*sigh* “O.K., Come on” (and she gets carried the rest of the way.)

Maybe we’re just getting owned by a 2 year old.

Here’s something for a rainy Saturday. This would be a note on Facebook if Facebook let you embed songs. I’ve doubled up on a couple categories and omitted others.
And now, headphones up, if you please.

1. Your favorite song

Watch the World (Box Car Racer)

It took some time to figure out, but I always come back to this one. I love the spirit of it and the percussion-driven verses.

2. Your least favorite song

Big Yellow Taxi (Counting Crows)

3. A song that makes you sad

Personal (Stars)

4–5. A song that makes you happy

Vox Populi (30 Seconds to Mars)

The whole album is majestic. The intro stops around 1:00, and if you make it to 3:00, that’s one example of what the end of The Wanderers series sounds like in my head.

100 Suns (same album), which combines emptiness and unity in a beautiful way. Is this what an atheist youth group would sound like?

6. A song from [a] favorite band

I don’t know how many poignant rock songs exist, but this has to be one of the best. Great band.

7–8. Songs that remind you of somewhere

Sitting on Huntington Beach in the fog; watching greenish waves and the power station’s smokestacks appearing and disappearing, my 2 years in Southern California, putting Maras on the page, lots of photography, and sculpting a muse out of a recurring nightmare

Somebody’s Child (Dave Burkum)

A set of old couches in a South Dakota lodge, hanging out with Dave with his guitar, talk about fathers, this song in its raw form sounding like the only thing in the world, and what I think of when anyone says ‘ministry’

9. A song that you know all the words to

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Iron Maiden)
(in 2 parts on YouTube)

This 13-minute retelling of Coleridge’s poem was one of my earliest introductions to literature. For me it’s inseparable from Dore’s illustrations.

10. A song you can dance to

United States of Pop 2009 (DJ Earworm)

25 pop songs combined into something great

11. A song that reminds you of someone

All that’s left of a best friend/ship, and a reminder of how very different everything was in college.

12. A song that’s a guilty pleasure

Ponyo remix (Noah Cyrus and Frankie Jonas)

Listen to this 35 times with a happy, dancing, two year old girl, and you’ll sing along with your favorite fish too

13–14. A song that makes you feel guilty

Shitty, emotionally poisonous hair metal ballads from the early 90s (I’m looking at you, “Love Aint Enough”.) And there’s a number in The Little Mermaid that, though I couldn’t begin to tell you what it sounds like, acts like a pinhole memory through which I can see years of teenage dumbassery brought to a fine point (don’t ask). I can’t tell you how much I love being an adult.

15–16. Song[s] no one would expect you to love

I didn’t know this was an old hymn until I found 75 lesser versions of it when writing this post. “When the Saints,” by the same singer, is also a quiet favorite.

It’s a Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door (Underoath)

This is the only album of its kind that I like, and it’s amazing. This particular song has exceptional texture, contrast, and atmosphere. The album also contains one of my favorite songs:

17. A song that describes you

The Kid (David Wilcox)

18. A song you used to love but now hate

Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been (Relient K)

…and no, I didn’t see the terrific irony in this pick until 3 days later. I could add all of the whiny Christian guilt-rock I used to like to this category.

19. A song from [a] favorite album

Floating in the Forth (Frightened Rabbit)

20. A song that reminds you of an event

Blue Angel (Squirrel Nut Zippers)

listening to this tape while cruising around Ocean Beach, San Diego with Sherri, in a convertible, at night, after surprising her with a ring in a seashell on the beach at Sunset Cliffs

21. A song you listen to when you’re happy

Young London (Angels & Airwaves)

“I’m not the one to admit it’s helpless / I have a sense that we will be alright…”

22. [What] you listen to when you’re sad

Top 40 radio or classic rock.

In this example, I become sad that someone has started playing top 40 radio or classic rock. It’s a terrible circle that only ends when I pay for my groceries and leave the store.

23. A song you listen to when you’re [melancholy]

Wrapped in Piano Strings (Radical Face)

24. A song you want to play at your wedding

Dave Burkum played:

Shadowlands

25. A song you want to play at your funeral

and pan slowly to the stars…
One of my favorite songs, from an unlikely source.

26. A song that makes you laugh

Business Time (Flight of the Conchords)

that’s why they call ‘em business socks

27. A song you can play [almost recognizably] on an instrument

Say It To Me Now (Glen Hansard)

This is why acoustic guitars and voices got together in the first place. I can’t really play it (or … the guitar, really), but I’m working on it in my free time, which … is to say I’m not working on it

28. A song you wish you could play

Flight of the Bumblebee (Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov)

I’d settle for being able to type that fast.

29. A song from your childhood

Spectre Man

loved this show as a kid

30. Your favorite song at this time last year

Two (The Antlers)

It’s impossible to do this and not learn something about your tastes. Apparently my perfect song:

• varies greatly in speed, often slowing to a stop
• has intricate, nonstandard drums
• has multi-layered vocals / choirs
• has a thoughtful, serious baseline (sorry, all funk music)
• has intelligent, introverted lyrics (you know, like the Ponyo song)

Thanks for the idea, Beth.

I wrote lengthy posts about The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, but I find that I don’t have much to write about Mockingjay — or rather, that I have just one thing to write.

The ‘Young Adult’ genre label doesn’t do the book justice. It’s much closer to All Quiet on the Western Front than Harry Potter. But this is science fiction at its best; the author has created a fantastic world that distances us from ourselves so that we can better see our own reflections.

Collins creates a compelling argument in three books, and long before she puts her message directly on the page, we have plenty of evidence to believe that “something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences.”

The book was exhausting, satisfying, aware of its own culpability, and it closed the series in a powerful, quiet way, just as it should have.

I’ve had this post sitting around for a while but hadn’t posted it. I remembered it yesterday when, a friend sent me a link to the NYT write up, called “Suzanne Collins’s War Stories for Kids.” It’s worth a read.

(On a side note, I’m happy to see the possessive form of “Collins” written as “Collins’s.” That’s not so scary, is it?)

You know how your body can shut down after you finish a particularly daunting schedule? That has happened with my will to edit, I think.

For so many years I’ve worked on these first two books, and when I finally stopped and sent out the proofreading drafts of book two, I found that I wanted to do anything but look at that story again.

I realized this just as I was getting some great feedback. Lisa in particular gave useful suggestions about how to level one character’s arc and how to restore some humanity to another character that I had apparently come to despise — but the thought of digging into that text again is something I haven’t been able to stomach.

These first two books — and perhaps the sequels that will complete the story — feel like the books before the books. If I have the good fortune of writing more novels, I think these will become, in hindsight, my equivalent of those early works that help authors purge the overt, self-indulgent autobiography from their art and give them the closure they need to start something truly fresh.

For example, the first chapter of book three has a much different feel to it in that I’ve taken a large step out of myself. Even the extra chapter I added to book 2 last year has that same quality.

C.S. Lewis said he wrote his space novels largely to get science fiction out of his system, and I’m starting to feel the same way about swords and horses. The truth is that, like 80% of the people who’ve read my book, I don’t usually read “that genre” either. Fantasy is great, but I will be happy when people no longer compare my very non–magical work to The Lord of the Rings because that’s their only mental reference.

That said, I’ve decided that my next project will, in fact, be the completion of this series. I thought about jumping into one of the more modern ideas I have, but I’m now of the mind that they can wait and that they will ultimately be better for it.

I don’t have a schedule for returning to finalize book 2 just yet, but it will likely be in the next few weeks. Until then, I’ll continue to enjoy my time away from the story, reading and pursuing other things.

Without realizing it, however, I’ve actually written a decent sized children’s book over the last couple months, thanks to my son’s request to tell him stories at night, and the feeling that I should write them down. I thought I was taking a break from writing, but apparently not. That’s a good thing.

A few streets over, there is a skull-covered truck that advertises the end of the world on May 21, 2011.

I want to scoff, I want to take a picture and post it online in June, but tonight I’ve been reconsidering that.

This is not because I think it’s true (I think it’s ridiculous) but because I don’t want to be a hypocrite. So far I’ve been blessed with terrific health and everything a person could fear to lose, and every couple years, when I recognize some mystery pain, or a family member has some undiagnosed illness, I immediately go to the worst scenario and inhabit it.

Shortly after my son turned 1, we rushed him to the emergency room because the doctors feared that he had meningitis. During the spinal tap, I was in a bathroom down the hall, mentally attending his funeral and suffering mightily for it. Tonight I found myself feeling unwell, looking backwards a couple weeks, and diagnosing myself with the black death (am I the only one who does this?)

It’s my own personal armageddon story, based on nothing. Will I be here on May 21? It’s no less shameful. I may not be here tomorrow for all I know.

I’m pretty logical and can pull out of it (writing this helps), or at least I know how to question my thoughts, but I don’t think I can judge people who believe in the doomsday truck so harshly anymore, because even if I don’t think such an outlook is warranted given past experience and the lack of knowledge on the subject, I can see how they might say the exact same thing to me.

What I would say to both of us, and one thing I try to remember, is that reality is what it is, and nothing we say or believe about it in the darkness will change it. What we can do with our beliefs is either terrify ourselves, or give ourselves peace.

The Poisonwood Bible contains as much philosophy as plot and description, and they are so tightly wound that it’s difficult to isolate only one facet. Nonetheless, here’s what I liked best:

• The intricate colonization metaphor, which is multiplied on every level: the family, the village, the country, Africa, the tyrannical way our own thoughts colonize our lives, and the hardship of revolution on all fronts.
• From the omniscient eyes in the trees, to Ada’s cerebral assessments of her predicaments, there is a depth of thought and intelligence I rarely read in fiction (although I am trying to branch out…)
• Each of the different voices is unique, especially by the end of the novel, when each woman has grown firmly into her own personality. Ruth and Ada’s first chapters were especially effective for being quirky and enjoyable, while Rachel’s last chapters were effective for the opposite reason.
• As a child, I was no stranger to the oppressive, fanatical Baptist religion portrayed in the book, and for a short time I lived under the tyranny of an equally cruel stepfather. The family dynamic in the book felt familiar, and gave the whole thing an air of authenticity for me.

This story was rewarding, but exhausting. In many ways, it was like spending time with a friend who cannot stop talking, but you listen because they’re intelligent and interesting.

Specifically, the prose has a manic intensity that I found distracting, mostly because the book is so charged and symbolic that description for its own sake felt extraneous to me — but that is just my taste; I am often content to read:

She crossed the room and picked up the walking stick.

rather than:

Her footsteps tapped like a spring rain as she crossed the aged cedar baseboards and retrieved the knotted cane from its bed of dust in the corner.

I’m undecided about the plot structure. On the one hand, the main plot ends after 300 pages or so, leaving over 200 pages of seemingly endless epilogue, but this gives the text an undercurrent of willfulness. These people survive and persist, as life persists long after the events that shape us have happened, and this book is as much about the recovery as the incident.

Overall, I feel more informed and perhaps a little wiser for reading it, which is to say that I was momentarily ushered into a foreign arena about which I know very little, and now, I have that to consider too.

One last note: I listened to the audiobook, and one acting choice stood out; The more racist, misinformed, and stupid a certain character became, the more pronounced her southern accent became, and the opposite was true for those characters who grew wiser and gained a better understanding of the world. Being from Georgia, I hope the day comes when this stereotype will no longer resonate with people.

Next door, a colleague is singing the praises of some writer’s handbook, so full of wisdom:

• “Your characters must experience a crisis in the first 10 pages of act 1!”
• “Use a specific object repeatedly in the story!”
• “The audience will lose interest if you don’t [whatever]”

This is when my headphones go on. I’m sure these formulas work, but to what end? They’re so inorganic — like blueprints for a commercial product.

Maybe some find these patterns useful, but I can’t approach a story like an Ikea bookshelf: “Here it looks like I need to connect sad event A with unexpected challenge A to produce audience empathy 1.”

Editors and education are critical, and I understand that preparing a manuscript for a mass audience requires a respect for that audience — this is different.

All this pervasive writing advice speaks to something else. It says, “Your goal in writing is to please others, and the procedure we’re selling is more valuable than what’s inside you.” It seems like such a cynical place to start creating anything. To me it sounds like dieting advice. I say either exercise, or don’t; Write, or don’t; Everything else is procrastination.

This is why I’ve never considered writing workshops or conferences — because in their session descriptions I hear echoes of the sure-fire formulas and motivation rituals that advertisers sell to aspiring authors with the promise of making them real (published). I object, both to these systems and to the insecurity they create by implying that writing does not make one a writer.

Of course, I’ve never been to a workshop, so this is my projection. I know that I unfairly judge the kind people who really care about writing and other writers, by associating them with the detestable moat of schemes that inevitably surrounds their gatherings.

But this feeling extends at least to some communities I’ve seen online. Across  so many blogs and forums, there is an entire writers culture out there that feels alien to me, and for all its aching for legitimacy and validation (“I write because I HAVE TO! Because I’ll positively die if I don’t!”) I just can’t stand it. There is writing, editing, reading, and then the publication chase, and the more I see, the more I’m convinced that a lust for the latter can be distracting and poisonous.

What struck me most about Catching Fire was the amount of thought that must have gone into it — and in particular, the diabolical creativity that built such a world of horror for the protagonists. This is, of course, how great fiction is made. While reading the book, I came across this quote on another blog:

The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story. ‘Janet Fitch

I think that was actually said best, years ago, in the advice of the legendary Dr. Martin Crank. I couldn’t get this video out of my head for much of the book, because it’s exactly what’s happening.

Layers

Collins is clearly an expert at torturing characters, but she does some interesting things with the concept of audience sympathy. In my post on The Hunger Games, I alluded to the fact that there are multiple audiences in the book, and that part of its strength is that our judgments about the viewers in the Capital can only reflect on our own enjoyment of the book.

This book pushes the dynamic even further, as we see certain events and forces work upon the cruel Capital audience, manipulating them into more humane, open-eyed responses. The parallels are even more blatant, but no line is crossed. We get closer and closer to reading our own experience, but we remain distanced at the same time via our close association with the protagonists, and all the while, Collins — the voice and conscience of Katniss, is also the quiet voice of President Snow. She is the foreign tribute who throws the spear — the ultimate Gamemaker behind it all.

This, I suppose, is the heart of engaging fiction and the suspension of disbelief. But it’s still a wonder to read a book with one eye peeking behind the curtain and watching the amazing mechanics of it all.

Misdirection

Without going into spoilers, (and really, if you’re concerned with that, you shouldn’t be reading this) I’ll say that there are three huge, gravid moments that I thought were brilliant. They are the one action that shocked the Gamemakers, and the two moments shortly after, during the interviews.

Much earlier in the book, I had guessed the last plot point that would emerge in the interviews, but I suspect it was what Collins wanted, because I had since dismissed and forgotten it. Misdirection, which she delivers through the naïvety of Katniss, is an important part of mysteries and revelations. I learned how this works years ago while watching the first season of 24. (24 spoiler coming)

The writers made a point to challenge Nina’s loyalty early in the show, and it had the effect of dismissing her as a threat. She was tested and deemed innocent. This is why the big reveal at the end worked so well. We had been fooled. Collins is terrific at this.

_____________________

Goodreads Review

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This series is one book away from achieving His Dark Materials and Harry Potter status on my bookshelf. I continue to be impressed by the author’s skillful manipulation of emotion, attention to themes, creativity, and the way she incorporates measured, patient story construction into such a fast pace narrative. I was kept off guard and surprised throughout the book, and I’m sad that there is only one more to go. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews

I almost quit The Hunger Games at chapter 3 — not because it’s bad — it’s exceptional, but for the same reason I still haven’t seen Schindler’s List. Why would I want to read a story about 24 children thrown into a ring to murder each other for the pleasure of others? I certainly wouldn’t watch a snuff film, why fill my head with this?

Don’t misunderstand me — It’s precisely because I get it. I see that people have equal capacities for cruelty and love; that both extremes shine brighter in opposition to each other, and that the continuing miracle of our daily existence is that, given our natures, we are not all slaves.

However … last week, before I put the book down, I came across this in another book I’m reading, and forgetting for a moment my own plans to quit THG, I posted it to Facebook:

[If a dogmatic reader] restricts his approbation to works [he agrees with], he will probably find himself subsisting on a very poverty-stricken literary diet. … [he] will not be submitting his beliefs to the test of imaginative experience. In literature, ideas leave their cloisters and descend into the dust and heat to prove their virtue anew.
‘Brooks, Warren: Understanding Fiction

Understanding this, I decided not look away, and I finished The Hunger Games with memories of Lord of the Flies, 1984, and The Long Walk — which must be a close relation to, if not an inspiration for it.

A couple days later I came across “The Lottery” in a collection I’m reading. In this short story, a group of villagers: men, women and children, draw lots to see who will be stoned to death by everyone else as a sacrifice for a good planting season.

Unable to escape these themes, I’ve been thinking about the way we blithely sacrifice strangers to preserve our own rituals and comforts — how these stories occur every day.

How might the districts in The Hunger Games correspond to third world manufacturing countries and poor Chinese provinces?

In our own communities, what individuals are alienated and persecuted in the name of ancient superstition because random chance has singled them out to be different from the herd?

Reading The Hunger Games, it’s easy to hate the sadistic audience that craves the violence of young people destroying each other — but isn’t that The Jersey Shore, and are we not that audience?

All of these thoughts answer my question “why read this?” They remind me that it’s important to be disturbed, challenged, and uncomfortable. They remind me that if we have the courage to test our ideas instead of protecting them, they can either break altogether (which is merciful and grand when it happens), or they can emerge stronger and more informed.

————————

Goodreads review

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a writer, this book humbled me. It’s powerful, clean, simple, and sharp. It’s disturbing in important ways, and the plot is handled expertly. The story construction is clever and unpredictable for the most part, and the telling has a kind of simple, elemental quality that I like. There are no superfluous details (no sun-warmed flagstones) but there is water and trees and fire and cold, and all serve the story. Highly recommended.

View all my reviews