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.

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.

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.

Friday Filler: Talking and Talking

It's Friday Filler because I want one!

Scott, Michelle, and I were up until the late hours of the night talking about books and our next anthology project and food. We'll be explaining more on this soon, and I'm excited!

I've also been hatching plans with the fantastic deWishes delights to make a fun custom-made writing-related cake truffle set for some blog reader to coincide with the release of my short story collection in June. deWishes delights is co-founded by the most wonderful and passionate and animal-loving person, Michelle "Mishy Fishy" Tseng, who also works as a physical sciences and reading teacher. Really, she's the coolest! Hi Mishy! (If you want more updates on my book, sign up for my mailing list over on the right. I'd appreciate it.)



Lastly, for anyone who's in the area, I'll be reading this Sunday at noon at the Silver Lake Jubilee. I'm going to surprise the organizers a little bit by reading an unpublished story from my collection called "Dogs: Wet & Dry" that describes a love triangle between a French woman, a dog, and a goose. If I get up the courage I'll be using different voices! (The fact that they anticipate 35,000 people at the Jubilee probably means I won't have the courage.)

What cool and quirky and awesome and ridiculous and scrumptious things is everyone up to?

Adapting To The Changing World (Of Publication)

I didn't get a cell phone until 2009.

I don't have a Kindle or a Nook or an iPad.

I don't even have a computer. (Okay, this last one's not true, but it helps me make my point.)

For the most part, I've approached technology with the mindset that if it isn't broken, don't fix it. As a writer starting out ten years ago, I wanted to write a good book, send it to a literary agent, have the agent find me a publisher, and then have the publisher get the book to my favorite book store. This model worked for other people, and I figured it would work for me.

As I learned more about the current publishing climate, though, I understood that I needed to be more willing to promote myself. So, I started a blog. That was fun! I met people I liked exchanging ideas with. I liked the support system.

But, then I was learning that there was more to blogging than just blogging.

You could, for example, respond to other people's comments. You could have blog tours. You could have blog awards. Slowly, I forced myself to learn about each of these things. Then, Facebook came along.

And Twitter.

There were people promoting their books all over the place. I set up a Facebook account. I found "friends." I set up a Twitter account. I talked about things like peanut butter and book shelves. But, you know what? Book trailers came along. eBooks came along. Goodreads came along.

It was very overwhelming for me to educate myself about these many different avenues through which writers could sell themselves. I was frustrated because I couldn't figure out which route was the best one to take. For me, this led to paralysis. For three years I couldn't decide if I wanted to self-publish or publish through a publishing house. I couldn't decide if I wanted an agent or if I should try to find an editor on my own or if I should publish on my own. I couldn't even decide on what I wanted to write after being told no one buys short story collections or novellas or epics or books written in third person omniscient. While I continued to write through this frustrating time, I stopped making any effort to make my work available to the people who mattered to me most: readers. I was doing everything and nothing. All possibilities tempted me, but I couldn't commit to any one because I was always afraid that another path was better.

Finally, though, I've come to understand something. The thing I'd been searching for, the "right" choice, didn't exist. I had fooled myself. Instead, what I was facing was a series of viable paths, some of them diverging for a while, some of them converging again. And, what was key for me to realize was that there was no end point to any of these paths. In other words, I had been trying to reach a destination that didn't exist.

It's not, "Choose the right way to publish and everything will work out." Rather, it's more like, "What worked for someone today may or may not work for someone else tomorrow." And, the equally important, "What didn't work for someone today may or may not work for someone else tomorrow." And, the equally equally important, "What may or may not work for someone today may or may not work for that same person tomorrow."

The path to success is a path, not a destination. Making yourself happy, sharing your art, or whatever your goals are, requires constant adjustment along this changing path. We will all be making decisions in our writing careers. I challenge you not to see those decisions as right or wrong, but as just another span in an ever-flowing path that is your writing career. It will ebb and flow but it will never freeze unless you let it.

Really Really Cool and Awesome Mailing Lists

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to mention today that I created a mailing list for myself, and if you're interested in receiving the occasional newsletter from me you can sign up for it over on the right side of this page. Since I'm planning on publishing some of my own work in the upcoming months, I've been thinking it would be nice to have the list for announcements. (I think I'll be keeping the self-promo on this blog to a minimum.) I'll also be including other content that I hope is useful to both writers and readers. And, there will likely be prizes thrown in there somewhere as well.

You can also see over on the right that Lit Lab and Michelle both have mailing lists available. The Lit Lab mailing list will keep you updated on our annual writing contests and anthologies (and other projects that are currently in the works)!

Thank you very much to anyone who signs up. I really do appreciate your support. For those of you who have been with me from the beginning, you'll know that I've been thinking of self-publishing ever since I started this blog. I'm finally taking the plunge, and I'm grateful to anyone who thinks it's cool rather than stupid.

Finally, for those of you who didn't see on Facebook, I wanted to show off my nice new cannibal mug that Scott so kindly designed for me. Woohoo! I have yet to drink from it because I want my first time to be really special. Thanks, Baimonster!

Truth vs. Verisimilitude

Do you think some parts of fiction have to adhere to fact?

Check out Scott's posts on Truth versus Verisimilitude on his blog Six Words For A Hat.

Start here.
Then go here--and check out Tara Maya's excellent comment (there's nudity involved) on the matter while you're at it.
Added later: There's now a third post here.

I'm also excited to announce that my evening as featured writer with The New Short Fiction Series has been announced. On July 10th, five actors here in Los Angeles will be reading some of my short stories to coincide with the release of my upcoming collection The Wild Grass and Other Stories. I'll definitely be talking more about this as we get closer to the date. I'm very excited!

Getting myself to read more

I have a new strategy to get myself to read more. I've fallen into the bad habit of only reading books partway through--usually until I get bored--and then giving up on them and moving on to something else. So, now I'm going to leave a glass of water on my nightstand. I'm not allowed to replace that water until I am done reading a book. No matter how dusty and gross it gets, I must drink one gulp every night until I finish. Sounds good, doesn't it?

If this doesn't work, then I'll replace it with milk.

Seriously, though, I've been doing pretty good this year by my own standards. In the last couple of months, I've read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Breakaway, The Book Thief, a novella by Nina Barberova, and I'm partway through Cocke & Bull and Falconer.

I'm trying to figure out how to review these books in a way that writer's might appreciate. Maybe I'll do an analysis of the writing techniques or something.

Does anyone have any ideas?

The Two Best Books

So, given what we've been talking about this week, I'm curious:

What book have you read that displays the best writing technique?

What book have you read that displays the most emotion?

For me, the best technique can be found in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. I haven't read the entire novel, but I've read the first volume of it, and Proust just blows me away by how many new things he invents and executes well. His characters are all strong. His details are all deep. He captures a time and teaches me about very well.

The book with the most emotion for me is probably Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (although Foer's Everything is Illuminated is a close second). As I write this, I realize that the reason these books were so moving probably has a lot to do with my own personal situation when I was reading these books. So maybe for me the emotional connection is much more fluid.

Friday Fille...

Phew! I'm too tired to even write the "r" in Friday Filler. It has been an exciting week here, and thank you to everyone who has supported the anthology, either through taking part it the contest, contributing, cheering us on, advertising, buying a copy, helping us run the contest (Becca) or even just saying hi. I think all three of us are really just blown away by how much everyone is willing to let us have so much fun.

We're already talking about what we're going to do for Anthology #3. We're so excited about it, we might just play along this time and include our own stories tucked away in the back somewhere. Is that selfish of us?

We were all pretty exhausted by the time we got the book out. Michelle, who always works especially hard on these things, deserved a round of applesauce.

And, I wanted to apologize to Yvonne because it did turn out that we spelled her last name wrong in the table of contents. We're really sorry, Yvonne. I'm glad that your name is correct in front of your story though!

So, it's Friday and on Friday anything goes. Someone entertain us!

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson


Happy New Year, One and All, from the cast and crew of the Literary Lab!

Michelle Davidson Argyle
Domey Malasarn
Scott Bailey

Do your characters sound different?

I'm keeping this short since I'm throwing it out to you rather than talking about it myself. Are you able to create characters that sound different when they speak? This is something I don't think about very much as I write, and I'm wondering if anyone has any tips.

I'm curious to know:

1. what techniques you use to make your characters sound different and

2. if you, as a reader, are bothered when characters DON'T sound different.

Does your story have a hypothesis?

First off, if you missed Scott's last post, please check it out because it's a great one!

There has been a big hullaballoo in the science world because some researchers recently claimed to have found a bacterium that is able to substitute the phosphate in its DNA with arsenate. You don't really need to know those details, but suffice it to say a lot of people are skeptical. Another scientist wrote a blog post arguing the different reasons why the original research can't be trusted. She includes this great line, which I think applies to fiction writing (at least MY fiction writing):

"There's a difference between controls done to genuinely test your hypothesis and those done when you just want to show that your hypothesis is true."

For me, each story I write has some sort of "hypothesis" or at least a question that is unanswered when I start the story. My hypothesis for my novel Rooster, for example, was that the world could sympathize with a man who was seemingly unlikable. My hypothesis for Bread was that a man could reach such a low that self-sacrifice was the best solution for him.

I start out with a hypothesis, and the job I assign to myself is to test whether or not that hypothesis is true. To do that, I expand on my story, I let it progress in directions that feel natural or "real" to me.

I try not to force it.

But, sometimes, when I do force it--when I suddenly throw in a bad twist in the story or when I make my characters do things that are inconsistent with their personality--that's the point when I stop genuinely testing my hypothesis and start trying to show that my hypothesis is true. I see this sort of thing in a lot of mediocre books and movies, when there is some point in the story where I feel like the creator is suddenly just trying to get to the finish line. I sometimes use the word sincerity to describe this sort of thing. When a story is forced, it doesn't feel sincere to me. The writing suddenly become a manipulative device to try and show a hypothesis. I don't know if other writers feel this way, but it captures my thought process as I'm working through a story.

As I write these days, the biggest challenge I face is to keep from forcing my story, especially when I get near the end. I'd say I haven't succeeded in doing this yet. I need to keep genuinely testing my hypothesis instead of trying to show that my hypothesis is true.

Random Wednesday Thoughts

I had SO MUCH fun with the giveaway yesterday! I loved the funny comments sprinkled throughout the questions and the various guessers of answers! Woohoo! Thanks to everyone who stopped by.

This will be my last chance to post before Christmas, so for those of you who celebrate it, Merry Christmas!

I'll be working through the holidays, but I still enjoy this time of year. I like the lights, and I really like the fact that there's no more traffic on my commute, nor is there a problem parking! Yay!

Luckily, though, I will have more down time than usual in the evenings, and I'll be working on my new novel, whose working title is--sadly--Cyberlama. An equally bad alternative is Let Me Go, Dalai Lama. Yeah, did I mention it took me about five years to come up with the title Rooster for my last novel? I'm excited about this story, though. I feel like I've finally latched onto something after working through about a dozen other story ideas.

Your characters offstage

Do you keep track of what your characters do offstage?

In many of my stories, I follow multiple people, through multiple times. I love epics, and I've always dreamed of successfully writing one. But, one of the biggest challenges to writing an epic isn't only keeping track of my characters when I'm writing about them. I also have to keep track of my characters when I'm not writing about them.

Has Veronica been away for six months while I'm writing about Markus and Sissy? Well, what has Veronica been doing?

I'm sometimes successful at keeping track of the offstage characters, but then there's the added challenge of figuring out how that time offstage has affected them emotionally. If Veronica was fuming mad at Markus before leaving for a year-long sabbatical in Zurich, is she still fuming mad when she returns? Or, has the time away made her forget her anger, or at least push it down into the pit of her belly so that she can seek her revenge more systematically?

For me, the best epic writers (ahem, Tolstoy) are able to account for offstage characters and their continued emotional journeys, even though we as readers don't experience it directly. This skill not only makes the characters seem more believable, but it also helps to make the world of your fiction more believable.

Oddly enough, the time when your character isn't on the stage is also an opportunity to develop them.

This weekend I watched The King's Speech written by David Seidler, and one of the vital details about Albert, the protagonist, was that he would make a better king than his older brother. The audience doesn't get to see exactly why Albert would make a better king, but based on the other characters' opinions of him, we assume that he has proven himself offstage.

I'm currently dealing with a similar situation in my current book. I'm trying to portray seven characters that are much wiser than I am, and to do that, I'm making claims that their wisdom has shown through during times that I don't actually write about. I support this by having other characters chime in about their wisdom, a technique that helps to support many character details.

We may jump through time to keep from having to include unimportant details that happen between important scenes, but that doesn't mean we can't make those spaces work for us.

Do you have an example of great things your characters did offstage? What do you do to keep track of it all?

Transforming History: Tomorrow We Dance by Tara Maya

Happy Monday, everyone!

I wanted to talk about the novelette, Tomorrow We Dance by Tara Maya. (Tara didn't ask me to mention this as part of any favor. I volunteered to do this because I think it's a fantastic read, and I hope you'll give it a chance.)

Tomorrow We Dance tells the story of a young boy who becomes a follower of the Bone Whistler, a man who claims he can bring back the dead. The boy is willing to risk everything for this dream, and it's possible that he could lose it all.

That alone is a compelling and exciting story, but Tara Maya doesn't stop there. Tomorrow We Dance also revitalizes literary history. Reading this work reminded me of the strange addiction people have to the classic fairy tales and how they work. This contemporary story makes you see the classics in a different light and somehow manages to unify this long lineage of storytelling while also transforming it into something new. You'll feel yourself propelled forward and backward at the same time.

Tomorrow We Dance is available as a stand alone novelette or as part of a larger anthology called Conmergence. I sincerely think this is a great story that will appeal to the majority of people who visit TLL. So, check it out!