Being Shy Might Be A Good Thing

Since a lot of us consider ourselves to be shy or introverted, I thought this article from the New York Times might be interesting. It's an opinion piece that discusses how there are some situations where being the person sitting in the periphery might be helpful, and I think it can actually be applied to the changing world of publishing.

In a nutshell, the people who are always aggressive and throw themselves into new things also risk being the first victims of these new things. The people sitting on the sidelines have the chance to watch those first brave people experiment. On the other hand, there are situations where adapting quickly could also be helpful.

Here are some quotes from the article:

"[I]t's also possible the young woman is 'just shy,' or introverted -- traits our society disfavors. One way we manifest this bias is by encouraging perfectly healthy shy people to see themselves as ill."

"Shyness and introversion are not the same thing. Shy people fear negative judgment; introverts simple prefer quiet, minimally stimulating environments."

"[B]usiness self-help guides often suggest that introverted leaders practice their communication skills and smile more. But...it may be extrovert leaders who need to change, to listen more and say less."

"But had the sitters taken Zoloft and become more like bold rovers, the entire family of pumpkinseed sunfish would have been wiped out."

"If we continue to confuse shyness with sickness, we may find ourselves in a world of all rovers and no sitters, of all yang and no yin."

Reading and Writing With Neil Gaiman

On Sunday night Mighty Reader and I (along with 800 or so other Seattle folks) went to Town Hall where Neil Gaiman read from and was interviewed about his latest release, the 10th Anniversary edition of American Gods. It's the "author's preferred text," which means that Mr Gaiman's publisher gave him the opportunity to add in all the stuff his original editor made him cut a decade ago, plus make whatever other changes he wanted to. The current edition, if I understand Mr Gaiman correctly, now clocks in at better than 200,000 words.

I'll come clean right up front and say that I am not a huge fan of Mr Gaiman's writing, though I enjoyed Neverwhere and I've read all the Sandman comics and I follow Mr Gaiman's blog. He's very charming and funny and he seems like a Really Nice Guy and I wanted to go last night because a) Mighty Reader is a NG fan and she bought the tickets, and b) Mr Gaiman has attained nearly legendary status as a fabulous reader and I wanted to see what that was all about. Plus, you know, he's funny.

It was well worth attending, and my advice to you is that if you ever get the chance to see Mr Gaiman in person, go see him. He reads aloud, frankly, beautifully. The biggest lesson to learn from Mr Gaiman's reading? Read Slowly And Distinctly. When he began I thought, "Gosh, he's moving at a snail's pace" but after a minute you fall into his rhythm and maybe it's his dreamy English accent or the dreamlike mood of the piece he read, but time really did stand still. The second bit he read was more dialogue-heavy and he did American accents for the characters and he also read slowly to great effect. I should note that these were pretty long excerpts he read, too. He could have skipped the interview and the questions from the audience and just read all night and that would've been fine with Mighty Reader and me.

Except, of course, Mr Gaiman's reading all night would've deprived us of his "advice to a novice fantasy writer." That was good stuff, and I'll paraphrase for you. First, his general advice to writers: "Write. Finish what you write." More specifically, his advice to genre writers: "Write. Stop reading your genre; read everything else and become influenced by the whole world of fiction. If you are interested in a specific mythology/religion/time period/alternate reality, then read primary sources, not other genre fiction about it. Read the Book of Kells or the Vedas or Homer or Dante or the stuff that Bram Stoker read when he was researching Dracula. Don't be one of those people who fall in love with Lord of the Rings and then decide to write Lord of the Rings, because Lord of the Rings has already been written, a lot better than you could ever write it. Tell the stories only you can tell." There was more, and it was all funnier than I relate it, but in sum Mr Gaiman gives good advice. Write a lot. Finish what you write. Read widely. Rinse and repeat.

Mr Gaiman, Amanda Palmer and singer/accordionist/pudding fan Jason Webley are apparently going to be together in Seattle, back at Town Hall, on 11/11/11 for a Big Event of some kind. Mr Gaiman and his wife, pop chanteuse Amanda Palmer (of the Dresden Dolls) are maybe going to do some kind of tag-team tour up the west coast between Halloween and November 11th, so for those of you who live along the Pacific Ocean, there'll likely be another chance to hear Neil Gaiman read aloud. You should go.

JK's Self-publishing?

Happy Monday, everyone!

I'm not sure if it's just because I haven't had a chance to scour the internet, but I haven't seen much discussion over JK Rowling's announcement that she'll be releasing the eBook versions of her Harry Potter books on her own website Pottermore.

What do you all think?

As I read through an article on wired.com (that, incidentally compared Rowling to Radiohead, the best band in the world), two thoughts came to my mind. First, I wondered how she had the foresight so many years ago to keep the digital rights for her books. Was that just a bit of luck? Second, I thought how fortunate she is that she gets to "self-publish" in such a majestic way. One of the things--probably the only thing I regret about self-publishing so far--is the fact that I would have liked to have a matte cover for the book. I wish I had the ability to make the print version exactly how I would have wanted it if I had more money and more popularity. It's so cool that Rowling has the resources to produce a wonderful interactive website and probably format the books beautifully. She has the publishing control that I would have liked myself.

The more I think about the choice to self-publish versus publishing through a small press or a big press, the more I see it personally as a choice between control and visibility. I have really liked the opportunity to design my own cover for Wild Grass. I've liked the choice of which stories to include in the book and in which order. I haven't liked trying to get the book into the public eye. Having to talk about it always makes me feel a bit phony, even when I'm not being phony. What I think is wonderful about Rowling and several other writers is that they have people coming to them, asking for their work. I think being in that position gives you a lot more artistic freedom.

Note added later: I see now that Rowling is getting help on the eBooks, so it's not exactly self-publishing.

Friday Filler: Save Bookstores, Go To A Reading, Et Cetera

I remind you all that tomorrow is Save Bookstores Day and it is your moral obligation as writers to go out and buy a book or five from a local bookseller. Yes, it is. Mighty Reader and I have planned to visit Elliott Bay Book Company and the Seattle Mystery Bookstore and maybe some other places if the time permits. You?

Also, Mighty Reader and I are going to go see Neil Gaiman's traveling circus on Sunday night, where he'll discuss/read from the new edition of his novel American Gods. Neil seems like a right decent chap and his accent, as everyone knows, is just dreamy, so it should be a good time.

And now, I owe Davin and Michelle an email so I'm off to write that. Happy Friday, you pixies!

UPDATE: The results of our excursion yesterday. Mighty Reader and I pumped about $300 into the local economy. And then we had crepes for dinner. No photos of the crepes, but they were magnifique.

To Say Yes and No

Here
Surrounding the island
There's sea.
But what sea?
It's always overflowing.
Says yes,
Then no,
Then no again,
And no,
Says yes
In blue
In sea spray
Raging,
Says no
And no again.
It can't be still.
It stammers
My name is sea.

This is the first stanza of "Ode To the Sea"" by Pablo Neruda


Yes and no. They seem simple enough, but as I write I often have trouble expressing how my characters say yes and no. Because characters don't always use the words, do they? "Yes," for instance, can sound too formal at times. "No" can be too hard.

So, I sometimes have my characters shake their heads. To me, this means "no," but I've had people tell me that shaking one's head can mean either yes or no. What do you think?

And what about those grunts that people use. How do you spell "Uh huh" and "Unh unh"? Do you trust that people will understand you?
_____________________________________________

Just an ever-so-gentle reminder that there are a few days left to enter if you want to win a novel critique by me, with some extra help by Scott and Michelle. The contest runs until the end of the month!

What the Average Person Is Like

A few nights ago, Mighty Reader and I were talking about fictional characters. At some point I was talking--I think--about one of the characters in my work-in-progress (a philosophical detective story) and Mighty Reader asked something like, "Would the average person act that way?"

My first response was to sort of mentally trip over my own feet because the question seemed to have nothing whatever to do with writing novels. "What the average person would do," I nearly said in my loathsome pedantic manner, "Has absolutely nothing to do with what characters in novels do."*

A few of my friends who are bright folks and smart readers but who are not writers have, over the years, talked about what "the average person" would do when I've been describing my own novels. Usually these friends have been attempting to give me good advice, to keep me from writing something really stupid, to guide me toward verisimilitude and all of that. For which, you know, I thank them, but the fact remains that good fiction has very little to do with average people.

Which might seem counterintuitive, because--especially as a writer of literary/interpretive fiction--I claim to be writing about topics that concern real people and "ring true to life." I should be awfully concerned with the average person in that case, right? Well, no. I am concerned with compelling and believable characters, with interesting characters who have interesting problems, but not with average characters.

(At this point in this post I realize that what I'm saying is obvious and likely doesn't need to be said. But posts don't write themselves so I continue and apologize for wasting your time.)

This rejection of "the average person" doesn't have to do with the claim that we need to create "memorable" protagonists with idiosyncrasies or any of that (which too often leads simply to protagonists who are just like the author but with purple hair, a rad tattoo and a habit of ending every sentence with "dammit" or whatever). What I mean is that characters need to be believable--we accept that such a person could actually exist and the fictional character displays consistent behavior within the novel--but fictional characters need not represent the middle of the bell curve of whatever society you belong to.

The other important thing to keep in mind is, I think, the stunning fact that none of us is actually "the average person." We might be statistically normal in many ways but there are ways in which we each deviate from that norm. I'm a middle-aged, middle-class white guy who works in an office and has a mortgage. That seems pretty average. But none of that (O, I am a unique snowflake!) is what makes me interesting (let's pretend for a moment that I actually am interesting in real life) and none of that is something that would make a good novel, I don't think.

(I repeat my apology for having wasted your time. These days, whenever I write a post about writing, I seem to be saying nothing that's either new or useful: "Write interesting characters!" Ground-breaking advice, that.)


Added: Aha! What's missing from this ramble is the real idea behind it: that actual fiction about "real life" does not actually imitate real life! That when we fictionauts talk about the world, we do so using art and artifice and our puppets only have to catch the imagination and hold it for the duration of the show; they don't have to look, talk and act like the audience's cartoon mental image of "real people," which is likely oversimplified and inaccurate anyway. Or something. Readers, that is, don't realize that what they are reading is an abstraction rather than a mirror. A commentary rather than a photorealist portrait. And stuff.

* NOTE: Mighty Reader points out that she knew what I meant right away and that she is not the dunce this post makes her out to be. I apologize to Mighty Reader for implying that she's a mere reader, not Mighty Reader.

Too Much Beauty

Do you always try to create beauty when you write?...Should you?

When I was in my earlier stages of writing a few years ago, the organizer of a writer's group I joined told me that my writing was too beautiful all the time, even the scenes that had to do with conflict. What he meant by that was that I was always choosing sounds that sounded good together and describing scenes that were full of nice things like gardens and clear skies. He argued that too much beauty made a reader numb to it, like how a marmot might take a rose for granted after living its entire life in a rose garden.

He told me to listen to Shostakovich.

If you've never listened to Shostakovich (aside from at least one arrangement of "Tea For Two" that he did very prettily as the result of a bet), I'll say that he can be a bit ugly at times. His violin concerto No. 1, for example, begins with dark cello sounds, interrupted by the tense violin that sounds as if it is in great pain. Swampy clarinets come in. Low strings pulse. The violin continues to suffer. It grows quiet. It grows delirious. Really, listening to it sometimes, I just want to pinch the last bit of its life away.

But, eventually, if you do stick with the music, following it through several minutes of sadness mixed with some more barbaric sections, there comes a moment when Shostakovich gives us a few seconds of a truly beautiful run. It surfaces unexpectedly, all the more special because of the dark journey we have taken to get to it.

In a way, the darkness becomes the set up for that fleeting moment of beauty, and, at least for me, hitting the rewind button to skip back a few seconds to the nice part doesn't ever create the emotion as well as coming to it after listening from the very beginning again.

I realize, after yesterday's discussion, that this lesson of including the ugly things between the beauty has always stuck with me, even though I don't consciously think about it anymore. I was caught off guard when I heard that my writing made people uncomfortable or upset (as someone else put it), but as I think back on it, I realize that I had chosen that path while I was creating these stories. I let myself put some ugliness in because I liked the way it contrasted against the beauty. And, I realize now that everything I've written recently follows the same approach. That's why I wrote about a cannibal, and a lot of sections of Cyberlama delve into the ugliness as well.

Not every book has to be like that, though. I'm currently reading Judy Croome's Dancing In The Shadows Of Love, that has consistent beauty, in my opinion. And, within that story, I can still see an emotional range. It's like the marmot can live in the rose garden but still notice that one rose is more beautiful than all the other ones. Instead of contrasting the rose to the mud, the contrast occurs between a pretty rose over a less pretty one. Or something. The experience of reading it is different in a sense that I'm not as afraid that my shoes will get dirty. It is a more comfortable journey.

I guess, then, that there's sort of a basal level of beauty that a writer builds into the foundation of a story, and then, based on that basal level, it is her or his job to create a dynamic range that can rise above and sink below that level. As long as the range is there, the writer can choose (or maybe the writer can't choose?) where the middle of that range lies. Without any range at all, the writing might feel monotonous.

As far as deciding just how much beauty to put into it, that's something that I'll often wonder about. Maybe it's an arbitrary decision. I don't really know.

Where are you on this? Do you think about beauty when you write? Do you try to contrast it with ugliness? More generally, is beauty important at all?

How Davin's Book Makes Me Feel

I've been reading Davin's new collection of short stories he just put out (The Wild Grass), and although I've read some of these short stories before, I must say that the collection as a whole has struck me as something quite different than what I've experienced in Davin's work before. I had not read the first story, "The Burning Girl," before, and I hope Davin doesn't take offense when I say, "Huh?"

There was something I have missed in that story, and I can't wait to talk to Davin about it. The thing is, I still enjoyed the story. Davin's descriptions and honest portrayal of human emotion and the complexity it shares with connections to the outside world and close cultural experiences are some of my favorite things about his writing. Usually, starting a story of Davin's, he slowly pulls me in, as if I'm on a string led lightly by his hand, and he always leads me somewhere familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. It's uncomfortable most of the time, but fascinating. When I read the end, I'm always left breathless and wanting more. Maybe that was the whole point of "The Burning Girl."

Scott once described Davin as "...bright and crystalline and my chest always feels a certain way, almost like I'm holding my breath, when I read it. Davin is carefully laying out a mosaic, maybe, with the pieces all end-to-end in a well-lit space, every once in a while looking up at me and saying "You get how all the pieces fit together, right?"

I recently read a post from a friend of mine about how we remember people from how they make us feel, not what they said or did or looked like. I think that is very true, and I think writing is the same way. The books I love the most dearly are books that make me feel a certain way. Sometimes I forget what they're about, really, and sometimes I forget who wrote them or what the title is, but I always remember how they make me feel. This is why I return to certain music when I want to get in the mood for specific scenes in my writing, and why on Sundays I listen to religious-themed music to get me in the right emotional place to attend church. There's something about emotions and how things make us feel that affects our thoughts and behavior. For example, whenever I hear Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 (Moonlight Sonata), I invariably feel soft and reflective and vulnerable. Good fiction - solid, well-grounded fiction I can sink my teeth into always leaves me with a feeling similar to eating a healthy, filling meal. I want to sit back, relax, and contemplate the experience over and over. Davin's book that does to me, and it's one I'll pick up off my shelf repeatedly through the years when I want to feel a certain way.

As a whole, the collection is a stunning reminder to pay close attention to the details and people in our lives, even if they are fleeting. Things like a dead rabbit, a missing ring, a dog barking "I love you!" For a moment, when I read Davin's work, I feel like I've finally grasped onto those fleeting things in my own life, and it feels full and satisfactory and victorious.

Friday Filler: Unlaughing with the Lama

The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza parlor and asks, "Can you make me one with everything?"

The Dalai Lama did not get this joke.

Live from New York, it's Friday Filler!

So, tonight I'm meeting a man named Professor Vibul who heads up the Thai Community Arts and Cultural Center. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to say to him when I meet him, but I'm going to give him a copy of my book and see if he somehow wants to buy hundreds more for the Los Angeles Thai community. (He probably will not want to.) Did you know that 80% of the Thai population in the U.S. lives here in L.A.? Did you know that the last time I went to a potluck I brought two curries, a green curry and a masaman curry, and one of the guests told me they were the 1st and 2nd best curries he'd ever eaten?

I got an e-mail from my cool German friend Lars who said he liked the image of the rodent with fat legs on my book cover. I'm not quite sure which image he's talking about.

And, because of my new job, I've found myself watching television in 3 pm lately. This week, Tyra Banks said something about being a verb instead of a noun. Yes, it was in the context of very tall, skinny models with dramatic bone structure, but I think it also applies to writers.

You might have been born a writer. That makes you the noun. But do you continue to work hard as a writer? Because that makes you the verb.

Yes, I was watching Tyra.

Happy Bloomsday!

Happy Bloomsday, everyone! Bloomsday is June 16th, the day upon which James Joyce's epic novel Ulysses is set. It's also, not coincidentally, the date of Joyce's first date with Nora Barnacle, who went on to become his wife. Yes, Barnacle was her real last name. Anyway, here are some ideas for celebrating the holiday. Me, I plan to have a pint of Guinness at some point. Possibly at lunch.

And now, because it's traditional, I quote some Ulysses. This is the opening passage:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of
lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown,
ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He
held the bowl aloft and intoned:

Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:

--Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about
and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the
awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent
towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat
and shaking his head.

**********

In case you're wondering WTF that was, you should maybe know that Ulysses is a sort of version of Homer's Odyssey and that Joyce's opening salvo mimics and mocks that of Homer:

Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many devices, who wandered full many ways after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy. Many were the men whose cities he saw and whose mind he learned, aye, and many the woes he suffered in his heart upon the sea, seeking to win his own life and the return of his comrades. Yet even so he saved not his comrades, though he desired it sore, for through their own blind folly they perished—fools, who devoured the kine of Helios Hyperion; but he took from them the day of their returning. Of these things, goddess, daughter of Zeus, beginning where thou wilt, tell thou even unto us.

Homer uses a typical Ancient Greek invocation and Joyce, via Buck Mulligan (medical student) uses a parody of a Roman Catholic invocation. And the book goes on like that for 650-odd fabulous pages. Haven't read it? Why the heck not?

Have a swell day, folks! Don't forget the pints!

Plots, Subplots and Nonplots

Davin's post of yesterday, about tying up all the subplots in a longer work, got me thinking about the novel I'm currently writing. Tara Maya has thoughtfully supplied the term philosophical detective story to partially describe what I'm doing, and I'm going to use it from now on, any time I talk about the book. Anyway, I'm writing a philosophical detective story that has some odd things going on in the way of structure. I've created a little diagram for you:



The big arrow pointing from left-to-right is the main plot, the through-action of the detective story and that's all very straightforward (as detective stories go). It serves as the 12-chapter, three-act framework onto which I'm hanging all my literary experiments. This plot provides the primary forward motion of the novel, the story question ("who killed George Pullman?") and the overall dramatic arc. There is also a fairly normal sort of subplot involving the emotional life of the detective that will be resolved in a fairly normal sort of manner. All of that's represented by the black arrow in the diagram.

You've noticed by now that there are also 10 colored dots through which the plot arrow passes on its way from page Start to page Finish. These represent individual characters in the novel. Every one of the characters has his/her own story that is separate from the mystery plot. But these characters' stories are not subplots, because they do not develop over time and are not resolved within the confines of this novel. They are more like lengthy character sketches through which the detective story passes while the detective investigates the crime. Since they are, plotwise, fairly static, I have decided to call them Nonplots, which sounds a bit derogatory so I'm open to a better name.

The inspiration for this Nonplot substructure of the book comes from, first of all, Agatha Christie. Last year I was reading her Poirot mystery Halloween Party and I was struck by the long digression Christie took in the middle of the novel to talk about landscaping and gardening. It's some of Christie's most beautiful writing and had nothing really to do with the story going on around it. I thought it would be cool to do something digressive like this in a detective story. I also have been inspired by Louis de Bernieres' Birds Without Wings, which is a long historical novel containing a bunch of character arcs that intersect but don't necessarily tie together in a direct way. Finally there's the work of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, who wrote brilliant stream of consciousness novels where the internal action is very dramatic and compelling while the external action is fairly simple.

My Nonplots, then, are explorations of the characters in my novel, places where the plot slows down and the characters are expanded through internal monologues and suchlike stuff. The drama of these sections comes about through the use of conflict. The book is charactered with a bunch of couples of different ages in different stages of couplehood, and each Nonplot is a rumination by one half of the couple about the relationship. So you get both halves of the couples eventually (in my diagram A and F, for example, could be one couple while B and J are another), and each member of the couple will have their own point of view regarding their marriage/relationship. So I'm examining pairbonding, but not really telling full stories for each couple.

What this means is that the Nonplots overlap and connect and form little miniature arcs in the narrative, but there is no resolution, no thing that happens with these characters. Of course things happen to some of the characters related to the primary murder mystery, and there are of course connections between those events and the internal monologues in the Nonplots, but the connections for most of the characters are pretty tenuous. In a lot of ways, I have just realized, the book is like eating with a bunch of strangers in a resort dining room, where you chat at breakfast and maybe again at dinner with the charming couple from Nantucket and you never do learn how things will work out for their nephew in medical school or whatever. But deeper and more immediate than that. Maybe it's more like walking through the National Gallery and looking long at each painting and then moving on. Not sure, frankly, nor am I entirely certain how this structure will play out when the book is finished. I'm excited about it, though. It could be really cool if it works. And none of this stuff I've talked about today is the "philosophical" part of the philosophical detective story. That's an extra layer of ubercoolness atop all of the aforementioned coolness.

Conflicting conflicts?

Happy Monday, everyone!

If you haven't already heard about The Wild Grass and my giveaway for a Literary Lab Critique (and you want to), go here. Also, there's a news story about pink dolphins like the ones on the cover of my book here.

I'm a lover of epic stories and often try to create epics of my own by setting up multiple storylines with multiple characters and conflicts. In the beginning of these stories, I usually don't encounter any problems as I jump from one scene to the next, slowly developing each subplot. But, nearer to the end--like where I am now with my current WIP, Cyberlama--the different storylines have a way of suddenly hitting their climaxes at the same time, or at least close enough to each other where one tends to mute another and vice versa.

I try to downplay one in order to make another one shine, but, honestly, I've never been able to figure out exactly how to accomplish this with any sort of grace or self-satisfaction.

One solution I see is to simply have each subplot reach its climax at different times in the story. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer does this, but I found myself being a bit bored near the end of the book because some of the storylines had already played themselves out (at least in my mind). When I think about how Tolstoy handled it in Anna Karenina, I think instead of having each storyline reach a climax, he basically just stuck to one, that of the title character, making it outshine the others.

Does some sacrifice have to be made?

Maybe I'm just being greedy when I try to have all of my subplots build up to climaxes at the end. I want to have it all. But maybe the end result of such greed is just a tacky book that's dressed for too many parties on the same night. I don't know.

Do you think a book can trample on itself in an attempt to have too many conflicting conflicts? Have you dealt with this before, and, if so, what was your solution?

Friday Filler Substitute

Scott is too busy to post Friday Filler today, despite my pleas. I can post Friday Filler, but it's more fun when he does it, just like it's more fun when my mom makes me Ritz cracker sandwiches than it is when I make them for myself.

Since I published my book under "Davin" instead of "Domey", I've had a few people ask me what they should call me. You can call me either, as I answer to both. I usually don't even hear a difference to be perfectly honest. I was starting to use Domey more because I was worried my writing and my day job were interfering with one another on the internet. But I've gotten a new day job as a writer, so it sort of all works out now. This was why I decided I could publish under my formal name.

Moving on!

Last night I had dinner with someone from Russia and someone from China, and the Russian said, "When I was a kid I remember we would play in the schoolyard and run around the statue of Stalin." And the Chinese person said, "We had a statue of Chairman Mao in our schoolyard, but we weren't allowed to run around him."

I don't know why I get a kick out of that, but I do.

I made Thai fried bananas for these friends, which were a hit. And then a neighbor with her cute French Bulldog visited, and really that just made everything that much more special.

How I decide what to tell other people about

First, have y'all been to the Google website? It's musical today, and you can record your own little diddy. Check it out!

I've been oddly lucky this week to have won two of the two blog contests I entered. I'll be receiving Tess Hilmo's With A Name Like Love and Beth Revis' Across the Universe. I was already excited about getting WANLL because I really admire Tess' writing, and I already have a copy of ATU. But having two copies of each will let me pass on one copy to some other reader--or let me read two copies at once.

The duplicates got me thinking about how I decide which books/things I tell other people about. It's more complicated than me simply liking the book.

Over the last year or so, I'd say there were 3 things that I really pushed. These are the things that I told many of my friends about, that I tweeted about, that I blogged about, etc. One was the Not So Humble Pie blog, which now has over 3500 followers. I think I was one of the first 10 to follow it, but I'm not going to click through them all to find out for sure. This blog talks about baking and also has a lot of really beautiful pictures of the products. I remember passing images around and telling my friends about it, as almost all of my friends eat.

The second thing I told a lot of people about was a television show called Raising Hope. I just thought it was hilarious, and I wanted to make sure it stayed on the air.

And the third recent thing I told people about was a band called Foster The People, which, really, if you haven't already heard them, you should.

Why did I decide to talk about these things? Well, I liked them all. That was definitely an important criterion, but it wasn't the only one. After all, I also found this guy on YouTube after watching Bjork perform "Unison" about three hundred times, which was something else I really liked. I even contacted the YouTube singer and had a short exchange about what inspired us in art. He's really nice.

I realize that I tell people about some things more than others because I have to figure out how to communicate my message to the people I think will care, and some things are easier to talk about than other things. It's much easier for me to say, "You can dance to Foster The People" than it is to say, "This guy's cool because he covered a Bjork song, and has a really simple and elegant voice and accompanies himself with a soprano saxaphone." I don't feel like I can properly sell the second guy in a way that will motivate people to check him out.

So, it's a two step process. I have to like something, and I have to know how to sell that something to the people who might like it. And a lot of things get lost in the process. The strange and sad result is that I keep the things I like the most to myself sometimes.

Let's talk books.

Here are some books I have loved in the last few months: Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Never Let Me Go, Too Much Happiness, Moby Dick.

Here are some books I have pushed on people in the last few months: The Lovely Bones, Water For Elephants, The Book Thief, Never Let Me Go.

There's an overlap, but for the most part, the two lists are different. For the second group of books, I had to feel like I knew people who would like the product I was trying to sell.

For me, then, there has to be some sort of short message associated with the project that teaches me how to talk about it. I don't think that short message has to be about plot or about character or anything specific. But it does have to be about something. As part of my new journey to match writers with their Right People Readers then, my challenge is to figure out how to come up with those messages so that I can get more of the books I love into the right hands.

And, I should say, that I'm not always right about my predictions ahead of time, so maybe it's just a matter of me trying to communicate what I love, even if I don't feel like I know how to sell it. Have you checked out the YouTube singer I mentioned? Did I manage to sell him?

So tell me--and yes, this is for selfish reasons--what makes you tell other people about a book?

And also...
Oh, and also also, February Grace interviewed me here, and Tara Maya put up my first official book review here.

Humility as Growth

Lately I've found that when I read a novel I have a deeper understanding of what the author's doing, at least on a technical level. I might also claim to have a greater understanding of themes, but theme is a slippery slope where we often bring an idea to a book that the author hasn't put into it so let's just stick with the idea that nowadays I think I have a better understanding of the craftsmanship of the novels I read. When I read Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway I was able to see right off what she was doing with perceptions and narrative-through-character rather than narrative-through-plot-action. I saw how she used that particular device to highlight the dramatic ironies of her story. When I read Graham Swift's Waterland I saw that he was coming from a postmodernist angle, where history is not linear and the narrative was a looping thing with the river Ouse as a metaphor for the circularity of history. I also saw--on a more practical level--how Swift was able to incorporate long stretches of history (nearly non-fiction writing in these chapters) into his narrative to create the larger structure against which the "modern" actions took place. I saw lots of other cool stuff in these books, but that's not the point of this post.

What I'm noticing in me as a writer (because, as Mighty Reader is happy to remind me, I'm never so happy as when I discuss myself) is that all of a sudden I seem to have a greater awareness of the really tricky things authors are doing, and I'm aware of just how difficult these tricks are to pull off. Which must point up something in the way of growth in my personal writing ability, but frankly the immediate result is that I see now just how damned much work there is to do in order to write at the same level as a Booker Prize-winning author.

I admit that I was feeling pretty cocky for a while. "I'm as good as anyone else out there," I told myself. "My books are just as deep, mature and well-written as the best books." And then a month or so back I read The Great Gatsby and saw how this short novel is better than anything I've ever written. Happily, I also saw why it's better, and I'm seeing why Woolf's book and Swift's book are better than the books I've written, so there remains hope for this egotistical author.

This reminds me, in a way, of learning to play in tune on the violin. First one has to become aware that one plays out of tune, and by how much. You do that by practicing scales (a lot) and one day you suddenly hear how poor your intonation is, and for the longest time your playing sounds absolutely dreadful to you. It's awful and humbling but it's a necessary step to playing in tune. Because it's only when you can hear the out-of-tune notes that you can tell them from the in-tune notes and so manage to hit the in-tune ones more often (it's not that simple, but that's close enough). So possibly my awareness of how much better the best books are than what I write is a form of my suddenly being able to hear how out-of-tune my writing is. I am actually listening to myself for the first time, maybe (to continue this lousy violin analogy). Anyway, as I say, on the one hand it's cool to be able to really understand a great novel in a deeper way, but it's damned humbling to see the gulf which separates my work from those great novels. On the other hand, it's nice to have concrete ideas for technical growth because that will give me something to do.

Writing Well Without Writing Perfectly (A guest post from Lisa Kilian)

I have been struggling with a short story for the past six months. 6,000 words continually elude me — well, not the words, the characters. Just when I think I’ve figured them out, I go to sleep, and wake up with a whole new realization.

Now let me clarify: I haven’t just been working on this story for six months. I’ve had other stories come and go, other projects creep up and wash away — but this story just refuses to be finished.

I long ago met the am-I-crazies, and I’ve said howdy-doody to the wouldn’t-it-be-better-if-you-just-gave-up-on-this-ones several times. But the thing is — I LOVE this story. Absolutely 100% love it. And I love the characters, however confusing they may be.

This weird, wicked, twisted love triangle of sorts had been frustrating me entirely until just recently. A few weeks ago, I went home to Austin, TX to hear Robin Black speak on her book, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This, a collection of short stories I still to this day salivate over even though I read them last October.

Robin’s stories may qualify as longer than usual for short stories, but the prose is still as tight and succinct as can be. Every word carries weight and leaves me reeling. Naturally, I want to be just like her. And naturally, this is why my own story has eluded me for so long. I am well aware of the it-isn’t-perfect-yets.

Robin read an excerpt of one of her stories and then went on to answer questions. I let a few people go first because I’m always too terrified to start off any Q and As. But I knew what I was going to ask before we even started. Finally, I raised my hand.

“It took you eight years to write these eight stories. What’s that like?” How do you survive? is what I meant. How do you not want to pull your hair out of your head every time you sit down at the computer?

She gave me a great answer. “When I was first starting out, I used to produce stories all the time. They would just appear, one right after the other. Now that I’ve gone to school and learned the craft, these things take much more time because every decision is a much more conscious decision.”

And that about sums it up. Right there.

I started writing a long time ago. Stories have come and gone. I’m nowhere near learned. I’ve never taken any creative writing courses. But after hearing her answer, I couldn’t help but feel like I was on the right track with this story.

So far, I’ve written four drafts. Now I’m on draft five, and I’m rewriting the entire thing from scratch. The difference is that I’ve gotten to know my characters and their story so very well, that I do believe this will be the last draft — even though it’s an entirely new draft.

For six months, I’ve struggled with these characters in my mind, but my struggles are now clearly defined, and more importantly, they’re validated. I’ve been fighting for the right reasons, so to speak.

There’s a fine line between writing consciously and writing perfectly — and I’m in a constant battle to find where that line lies. It’s thin, like a string, and most of the time, I’m certain that I’m straddling it.

But here’s how I know I’m not falling into the perfectionist trap:

Every day I move forward in my drafts.

It may be slow work. It may be tedious. But every day, I progress just a little bit. I’m not on draft one — I’m on draft five. And I’m not confused anymore, I’m informed.

Perfectionism tends to take the shapes of drafts that never end, words written and then erased over and over, and time spent with characters that leave you perpetually confused and frustrated. Confusion and frustration aren’t bad — but after hours spent with your characters, they should never leave you completely in the dark.

I’m confident I’m staying away from the perfectionist trap. I’m really trying. And miraculously, I’ve kept all my hair on my head. I’ve only pulled out a little. At the reading, I noticed Robin didn’t quite answer my internal question of survival — but that’s because we each have our own methods.

My method? I focus on the ending, the feeling that I will be done, and I will have done a great job. I focus on the joy of daily discovery, on writing something that gives me just a little chill.

And when I’m sitting in bed waiting to go to sleep, I read something perfect, and dream.

Lisa Kilian is the author of the blog, What Not To Do as a Writer. Her essays on writing have appeared at Beyond the Margins, Fear of Writing, and Best Damn Creative Writing blog, among others. She plans on drinking lots of expensive champagne when she finishes her 6,000 word story.

Dark Literature and Young Readers ... or, You Know, Readers in General, Too

There's been a kerfuffle in the YA community over an article in the Wall Street Journal about the current trend of darkness in young adult literature. Is darkness a current trend? As far back as I can see in literary history, there has always been a fuss about what's published - for young readers, adult readers, whoever. This article, however, seems to have sent the YA writing community into quite the huff. My Google Reader has been bombarded with blog posts stating their opinion about the article. I haven't seen one blog post yet that stands up for what Miss Gurdon says.

Sometimes I look over at my four-year-old daughter and I freak out inside. I think about what she'll be exposed to in the future, even what she's exposed to now. I recently sat through a short class about addictions, and let me tell you - it was eye-opening. I discovered that children as young as four years old can get addicted to pornography. FOUR YEARS OLD? That shocks me to no end. I almost cried when I heard that because it's sad how even children are not immune to things we often consider only adult issues.

Then I calm myself down and tell myself, "You're a good parent, you're a good parent." I will raise my daughter with things like morals and standards and lots of love and a home that is safe and parents she knows she can come to about anything. Unfortunately, lots of children don't have those things, and that's where all that dark YA fiction comes into play.

Most of the blog posts I've read countering the article linked above have made the claim that teens need this kind of fiction because (1) it's the only place they can feel safe in their life, (2) there is usually a positive POV despite the dark subject material, and (3) teens need to be prepared for the real world.

Rather than going into my opinions on each of those, I just want to make the point that our world seems to be getting increasingly darker. It's sad, but true, and what I see as the real issue here isn't what's permitted to be published in YA fiction (or fiction in general), but how we're dealing with all these "dark things" in society. I see the issue that so many authors feel a need to write about these dark things as a reflection of what's going on in teens' lives right now. That's the problem. If there are so many rapes and drugs and awful things surrounding young adults - and authors feel the need to address these things and deal with them through fiction - then the problem doesn't lie in the fiction, now does it?

I recently read a book by our one and only Scott G.F. Bailey, and I was shocked at the darkness in it. I wrote to Scott and said, wow, this is really dark. He said, yeah, I know. It's an adult novel, and it disturbed me not with the subject matter, but the tones of the novel. Honestly, I have never read a YA book with such dark tones. Usually, even in YA novels that deal with darker subjects, the tones seem to be handled on a lighter level. Maybe, though, Miss Gurdon is really talking about tone in her article, not subject matter. Maybe there are YA books out there that I haven't read that are really, really dark in tone. Teens can handle subject matter. Adults can handle subject matter. I think it's tone that can really make the difference. I appreciated Scott's book. It was amazingly well done. I appreciated the darkness he portrayed because it contrasted the world in a way that helped me appreciate what he was really saying in that book - and I think he did it through tone. I wouldn't have seen those things otherwise.

So, with all this dark YA fiction talk, I think it's important to first realize where the problems really lie. If parents have issues with all that dark fiction, they should first realize that the world is a dark place, and to raise their children in such a way that helps them make their own firm decisions on what they should/want/need to read instead of freaking out that the dark fiction is going to destroy them in a world where they're going to face all of that anyway.

Filler Friday: Fill Up On Doughnuts

It's apparently National Doughnut Day. I've always been a doughnut lover, except for jelly doughnuts, which forever branded a rather traumatic childhood experience into my brain. Michelle, on the other hand, doesn't like doughnuts very much, if I recall correctly. And Scott, well, I'm not sure. How does Scott feel about doughnuts?

Thank you to everyone over the last couple of days, first for helping me spread the word on my book and also for passing along your thoughts on yesterday's topic. After a good night's sleep and some more communication, I'm feeling better about everything. The person whom I had offended ended up being totally awesome and I think we're communicating on the same page again. I will still be formulating a set of simple rules for myself, though.

So, tell me something random.

Apparently, I need to accidentally hurt TWO people before I learn my lesson

I said a stupid thing to another blogger whom I admire last night. And in the past I've done a similar thing to another blogger whom I also admire. I hurt them both, and I feel bad, and I'm sorry to them both, and I'm trying to fix things so that I don't do this in the future.

So, today is dedicated to me trying to organize my thoughts on how I will proceed with my internet behavior from now on (until my next revision). I didn't get much sleep last night, so today's work might not be very effective, but I want to get this started because it's sitting heavy in my heart. This post is meant to be amorphous and will evolve throughout the day. Feel free to leave comments at any time and help me with your wisdom!

Here's the deal. To begin, I don't really view The Literary Lab as my blog. Well, I sort of do, but I also sort of don't. What do I mean by this? I mean that I feel at liberty to do whatever I think is best here (and I hope Michelle and Scott do too, because I also think of this as their blog). At the same time, I want all of our readers to feel like they can say whatever they want in the comments. What do I mean by "whatever they want"? Yes, that's what I mean. You can, for example, say that you hate me, that you hate my writing, that you think my new book sucks. It may hurt my feelings, but it's still playing by the rules as far as I am concerned. I doubt I would even argue with you if you said any of those things. This is how I see The Literary Lab. *Note added later* Okay, I changed my mind. You can say anything you want about me, but I might delete stuff if you say hurtful things to other people. New rule #6. Commentors here can say whatever they want about me, but they shouldn't say things that personally hurt other people.

BUT, I have made the mistake for at least two people now of thinking that other comment sections play by the same rules. They don't. Why should they? They're just MY rules after all. So, I have gone to other comment sections and said inconsiderate things, not because I was trying to be hurtful, but mostly because I was careless or rushed, and this was wrong of me. Other blogs do not belong to me. I need to respect that.

New rule #1: I will do my best to not go to other people's blogs and say hurtful things to them.

New rule #2: Sometimes I may still say hurtful things on other blogs because I'm being careless in some way, but I will try to be much more conscious of this, and I will apologize if I screw up.

If you've been reading some of my posts over the last few weeks, this may feel contradictory to what I have been saying before. Here's why I think there's contradiction. While I think it's good to be considerate and nurturing to my fellow writers, I'm also very concerned that the current writing culture is making writers feel so scared that they can't even be honest or have personalities. I hate that a writer got internet mobbed for reacting to criticism on her book. Why must thousands of people make her feel bad? I also hate that some writers feel like they can't be critical of any other written work. This feels soulless to me, and it makes me sad. I want writers to be passionate about the art form. I want writers to be passionate about their own work.

So, somehow, I need to figure out a way to be nurturing and supportive of everyone's work on one hand while also nurturing and supporting writers and their courage to be honest and opinionated on the other hand.

New rule #3. I am going to do my best to always be only honest on blogs. I want to only say true things because I think that gives my words power.

New rule #4. While I am going to be honest, I'm NOT going to allow myself to say everything that's on my mind. This makes me a little sad because it feels stifling in the way that I think the culture is trying to stifle writers. I'm going to have to think more about this. How do I talk about a book I don't like, for example? Should I just not mention it? As a writer, I want others to mention what they don't like about my work, though. And I don't think I'm alone. So, I'm conflicted here. Any thoughts from anyone on this please?

New rule #5. (This change has been happening for awhile now, and I'm pleased with the direction that it's going.) I'm not going to treat our readers here as a network or as a group of potential buyers or as people who are here for my use, nor will I expect the reciprocal. What does this mean? I think it means a lot of good things, although not all of it is well-defined. It means, for example, that you can disagree with everything I ever say and it won't hurt your chances of me reading your work. I know myself, and I know that this is true. So, you don't have to feel like you have to behave a certain way to make sure you keep me in your audience. If I like your thoughts and/or your writing, and I know you have work available, I'll try and read it, even if you don't want to read mine. It also means for me that I can help be better at New rule #3, which I think is very important. I won't try to sweet talk you for the purposes of getting you on my side. I won't give you B.S.

New rule #5.5. (This is inspired by Havi Brooks from The Fluent Self, who I discovered yesterday. And, really, much of this blog post is inspired by her and also by F.P Adriani and others.) I am going to try to help put writers (including myself) in touch with their Right People readers. This is something I've been understanding for a while now, but Havi put a name to it, and I think that makes it easier to explain. What do I mean by Right People readers? My Right People readers are the people who like the type of writing I do. It doesn't mean that they have better taste than anyone else. Or worse taste. It just means that our preferences somehow align. For me, those are the people who should be reading my fiction. I want them to know that. I got a really nice email from someone who read most of my new book last night. It was obvious that she was a Right Person for me. If you're not a Right Person reader for me, that's totally okay! The beauty of this idea is that if we both know that, I won't try to get you to spend money and time on something you're not going to enjoy--my book. I don't hate you. I just understand that we are different. That's cool! And if I know your tastes, I might be able to help put you in touch with books that you would like. That would help other writers and other readers. I think if everyone did this it would be spectacular, but in the end, these are my rules, and people can choose to follow them or not.

So, this is where I am at the moment. My heart hurts a little and my brain hurts a little. I'll be coming back. Feel free to help me if you can. I hope by the end of this that I can just have a nice clean set of working rules to guide me.