Writing Advice From Agatha Christie

Well, not really advice per se, but this is some good stuff Christie wrote in the introduction to her novel Passenger to Frankfurt. I loved it, and I thought it worth sharing.

The Author speaks:

The first question put to an author, personally, or through the post, is, "Where do you get your ideas from?"

The temptation is great to reply, "I always go to Harrods," or "I get them mostly at the Army & Navy Stores," or, snappily, "Try Marks and Spencer."

The universal opinion seems firmly established that there is a magic source of ideas which authors have discovered how to tap. One can hardly send one's questioner back to Elizabethan times, with Shakespeare's

Tell me, where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head,
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.

You merely say firmly, "My own head."

That, of course, is no help to anybody. If you like the look of your questioner, you relent and go a little further.

"If one idea in particular seems attractive, and you feel you could do something with it, work it up, tone it down, and gradually get it into shape. Then, of course, you have to start writing it. That's not nearly such fun--it becomes hard work. Alternatively, you can tuck it carefully away, in storage, for perhaps using in a year or two years' time."

A second question--or rather a statement--is then likely to be, "I suppose you take most of your characters from real life?"

"No, I don't. I invent them. They are mine. They've got to be my characters--doing what I want them to do, being what I want them to be--coming alive for me, having their own ideas sometimes, but only because I've made them become real."

So the author has produced the ideas, and the characters--but now comes the third necessity--the setting. The first two come from inside sources, but the third is outside--it must be there--waiting--in existence already. You don't invent that--it's there--it's real.

You have been perhaps for a cruise on the Nile--you remember it all--just the setting you want for this particular story. You have had a meal at a Chelsea cafe. A quarrel was going on--one girl pulled out a handful of another girl's hair. An excellent start for the book you are going to write next. You travel on the Orient Express. What fun to make it the scene for a plot you are considering. You go to tea with a friend. As you arrive, her brother closes a book he is reading--throws it aside and says, "Not bad, but why on earth didn't they ask Evans?"

So you decide immediately a book of yours shortly to be written will bear the title, Why Didn't They Ask Evans? You don't know yet who Evans is going to be. Never mind. Evans will come in due course--the title is fixed.

[I know that Christie's comments about setting won't apply to those of you who write SF/F, but a lot of this rings true for me. Discuss.]

A working weekend

While some of you probably had a nice long weekend to relax, I spent much of my time working for The Literary Lab.

Living in Southern California, I'm pretty used to warm weather all year round, but I braved the sub-zero temperatures (or at least it felt like that) of Seattle, Washington for The Literary Lab.

I rarely like to talk about writing, but I got into some hot debates over outlining vs. not, reading e-books vs. print books, and the value of having cyborgs in your stories for The Literary Lab.

I even confronted a man who beat up T.C. Boyle (in a dream) for The Literary Lab.

Yes, that's right. I went and visited...Mr. Bailey!

I had a great time meeting Scott real life and in person this weekend. We met in downtown Seattle for crumpets, then toured Volunteer Park, including a climb up some cool water tower and a thorough survey of moss. I got to see Scott and Mighty Reader's beautiful home and meet their cat, Mighty Meower. We talked of writing and rock stars, notebooks and Kindles, Michelle and Michelle*. Mighty Reader, who is an absolute delight, even made us some most excellent raspberry scones and tea.

And, we made an important new decision for TLL. We now have an official alcoholic Literary Lab beverage for those of you who partake in such things. The Moscow Mule from Blackboard Bistro contains vodka, lime juice, and Cock & Bull ginger beer and is served in the coolest faux copper mugs.

Cheers!

*Michelle was very missed this weekend. It's not The Literary Lab without her. My next plans are to encounter her somewhere soon. Watch out, Michelle!

All Those Dinners...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope all of you celebrating the holiday are safely tucked away with friends and family and good food!

I got to thinking about writing and holidays last night. I've had only one book so far where the characters have celebrated traditional holidays as we know them. This was a contemporary piece, of course. How important are holidays to your characters? Even in fantasy, do you create holidays? I think it's an important human factor to consider, but of course, some of you don't even write about humans...

Oh, wait, in Thirds I have a very important holiday everyone celebrates and from which my main character is excluded. When I read Scott's Killing Hamlet, I particularly enjoyed the Christmas decorations he describes around the castle. I liked the descriptions of Christmas and a puppy in a box in Davin's short story, Paris Was Good - unless he's renamed it by now.

What holidays have you put in your stories?

And I'd just like to say how grateful I am for our 501 followers!  I can't believe we've reached that many. You guys all rock!

Houellebecq And I Research The Same Way

I am currently reading Michel Houellebecq's Atomised, which I will tell you reminds me of Antonia Byatt's Babel Tower series crossed with, maybe, Gunter Grass's Local Anaesthetic. Possibly the similarities I see are only superficial: something about the way Grass shows the inner life of his protagonist, and Byatt's interest in and use of biosciences and the way she'll slip long passages about the biology of snails (for example) into her narratives. Other readers will of course make connections between Atomised and authors other than Byatt and Grass, and it would be easy for me to sort of digress into a discussion of how what we've already read informs what we are currently reading, but I'll leave that for the literary theorists who believe in reader-response theory (take it away, boys...).

Where? Oh, Houellebecq. So I'm reading this book and you can see that the author has done a lot of research, on biology and physics, on the history of science and scientific writing, on the life of Aldous Huxley and his family, on the sociopolitical changes in Europe during the 60s and 70s, et cetera. Houellebecq takes on some pretty big themes here and has clearly spent a lot of time reading and thinking about these things.

But I wonder if that's how he began this book. At the heart of the novel is the story of two half brothers, Michel and Bruno, who are externally very different but deep down very much the same. Each of them is an aspect of a sort of 20th-century Everyman living in an "atomised" or isolated society, looking for love but unable to go about it in anything but destructive, meaningless ways. I think that Houellebecq began with these two brothers (one an artist, one a brilliant scientist), started to research and stumbled across the larger ideas he's incorporated into the novel. I get the feeling that he, like Antonia Byatt, lets his reading take him where it will, and he reads to find out, to see what he can see, to learn what's there to be learned and to be able to write what he doesn't know, because writing about what we don't know is always more interesting than writing about what we do know.

Now, it's entirely possible that I assume this about Houellebecq because that's how I go about my own research for novels, and I like to generalize from my own behavior because I've got this massive ego and so everyone must be, at root, just like me because I am the very measure of normality. Likely I'm wrong, and not just about the way some French guy researched a book in the late 1990s.

But, as I say, that's how I research: I begin with vague ideas for my characters and then I try to learn about what sort of daily lives they'd have. That reading always leads down surprising paths and ideas begin to present themselves for inclusion in the book. For example, I am currently researching stuff for my next project, Nowhere But North. This book is the story of an expedition to Antarctica in 1914, based very loosely on the expedition of that year by Ernest Shackleton aboard the HMS Endurance. So I've got a stack of books about that expedition because I want to know what it's like to live on a sailing ship that's trapped in the ice off the Antarctic coast in 1914-15. I also want to know about the expedition leader, because my book has an expedition leader (who is only partially modeled on Shackleton).

I have three other main characters: my protagonist (who is the quartermaster of the expedition, and works in an office at New York Harbor before he joins the ship's crew); Lilly, the expedition leader's daughter (Lilly is bright, educated and in love with the protagonist); and a guy named Fitzgerald (I think) who is the second-in-command on the expedition. Fitzgerald is the villain in the piece.

So I am reading books about New York City in 1900-1914 because 1/3 of the narrative takes place there. I am reading about Greenwich Village in 1914 because that's where my protagonist lives. I picked The Village because I've been there, and because I stumbled across some interesting books about it when I was shopping for books about old New York. Reading about Greenwich Village in that period led me to a bunch of women activists of the era which has told me a lot about who Lilly is, and has given me an idea for one of the big themes of the book: the social activism of women in 1914 versus the self-aggrandizing vainglory of men at the end of the Age of Exploration. That theme found me, as did a bunch of other stuff I'll work into the book.

And I'm nowhere near done with my research yet, and I have no idea what other ideas are sitting around out there waiting for me to see them and decide they'll work in this narrative.

My book Killing Hamlet prominently features the astrologer Tycho Brahe because it occurred to me one day that Brahe died the same year Shakespeare wrote "Hamlet" and I thought I could connect them. It was never a part of my original idea. My book Cocke & Bull has a hurricane because I was researching Norfolk, VA and I stumbled upon the fact that the big sand bar at the mouth of the river was dredged up by a hurricane in October of 1749, so I shifted a few things around so that I could use the hurricane and the date because a hurricane is a really cool thing to have in Act Three of your novel. The second half of the book's middle is set in the Great Dismal Swamp along the Virginia/North Carolina border because I saw the name on a map and who can resist that? As I say, I sort of let my research treat me like the ball in a pinball machine: I go where it sends me and I stay open to whatever cool ideas I'm knocked against.

So now to you: what's a surprising thing you stumbled upon that you've used in a book/story, something that was not part of the original idea but pushed the story into a cool new place you never would have thought of on your own?

National Cashew Day

Michelle has just alerted me that today is National Cashew Day! You might not know this, but she and I are bonded by our uncontrollable love for that squirrelly little nut. (I bet you thought it was writing, but no.)

In honor of the day, I am posting my Rooster excerpt that describes the emotional impact of the cashew:

She inspects the cashew she picked up, the delicate curled shape, the soft flesh-colored surface. The nut reminds her of a fetus curled in her palm, and she finds herself cradling it gently--she cannot eat it.

Unfortunately for our international readers, you are not allowed to participate in the day's festivities.

Lights, Camera, Ostriches

Yesterday I helped a friend scout out a location for a scene in his book. We went to an ostrich farm. He had originally planned for the scene to take place on a non-ostrich farm, but he thought a few of those amazing birds could spice things up a bit.

And, I think they will.

It got me to thinking about my own settings in my stories. Most of the time my scenes take place in pretty ordinary locations. A Pasadena condo, a suburban home, a bakery in Paris. Even when I set my stories in places that most people wouldn't know about...say Thailand or Brazil, I often downplay the "exotic" nature of the place because I thought it might make the story too gimmicky.

But, lately, I've been realizing how exciting it is for readers to experience a new location while they are going through the story. It helps the story work double duty, taking readers on a physical trip, along with the emotional trip I hope I've managed to create. It makes me think much harder about the settings in my stories.

I don't think a setting has to be exotic to work, but I do think the place where your scene occurs should affect the actions and emotions of your characters. A neutral setting may serve to establish your characters in space, but chances are the details about that setting will feel extraneous. If the setting has an impact on the story, it feels much more important and more well-thought out. It also feels more real.

If it's a place many people might already be familiar with, I now try to focus on unexpected details about the place. For instance I recently wrote about a scene that took place in Notre Dame Cathedral, and instead of only focusing on the beautiful stained glass windows, I had one of my characters fixate on the checkered floors.

If the scene in your story takes place somewhere I'm not familiar with, a bit of research will usually be called for. Then, it's up to me to share the facts I learned without making the details feel too forced.

Setting was something I didn't pay much attention to for a long time. But, now I see it as an exciting new element to work into my stories.

What about you? How do you come up with the settings in your stories? What sort of impact would it have on your story if you moved a scene from one setting to another?

Made of Awesomeness

Friday! Filler! Grab a cuppa tea.

Last night Mighty Reader and I went to a midnight showing of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1." It was amazingly made of awesome and I don't care if you've read the books or not* or seen the first six films or not: you have to go see this one. It's the absolute best one yet. The cinematography, costumes and direction are great. The special effects have leapt forward in realistic portrayals of whatever you can imagine. It's all I can do to stop myself from talking about it and giving things away. Just go. Do it.

Has anyone else seen it yet? Does everyone plan to go?

*I confess that I've read all seven books, and I can't for the life of me remember much of anything in them. So almost every scene in the film was like-new for me, and that added to the awesomeness. Mighty Reader has a much better memory, especially for details, and she's also just re-read The Deathly Hallows so there are changes and omissions, I tell you in the spirit of full disclosure, that might upset you if you're a true Potter fan. Me, I just thought it was ubercool.

So You Write YA, Who Cares?

The other day a fellow writer, Beth Revis, put up a post about age limits in Young Adult literature. While I happen to agree with some of the points made in her post, I had a hard time agreeing with others. I'm not here today to argue with Beth, however, or try to make a point that one genre is better than another. Our intention here at The Literary Lab is to try and show readers that literary fiction is not so much a genre as it is a part of all writing. My intention today is to strike up a healthy discussion along these lines. So read carefully!

Beth made some points in her post that I'd like to talk about. We'll  focus on what Beth says Young Adult literature is. Her first point after she quotes Jack Martin: "Teen books are like adult books without all the bullshit."

YA fiction is fast paced. Beth makes it clear that there is no wasted space in Young Adult literature. She also says Proust would not have cut it as a YA author.

Michelle: Most Young Adult fiction I've read is fast paced, but I'm not entirely certain that is because there is no "wasted space." I think part of it may be subject matter, the expected length of YA novels, and the fact that many YA novels I've read deal with highly appealing subjects to their audience, namely subjects that invite a fast paced plot. Teenagers like new, exciting things, exploration, and experimentation. They aren't settling down. They're just getting started with life, and many adults like to stay in this active phase so it's no wonder they love YA fiction, and it's no little wonder that for a long time the YA fiction style/themes/etc. have been crossing over into adult. I personally think this is fun and exciting, especially for adult readers who wouldn't be reading fiction otherwise.

Davin: Using Proust as the representative for adult fiction in this discussion is a bit extreme. Think of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Tolstoy, who all manage to write incredibly tight fiction. I'd argue that Proust isn't even that bad, given that his words actually add precision to his stories. Stephenie Meyer could learn pooper scooping from any of these writers, just as she could learn from J.K. Rowling. Both YA literature and adult literature can be focused. Honestly, I'm mad about the Jack Martin quote. It's much more accurate to say, "Good books are like bad books without the bullshit."

Scott: There are entire books I don't want to read. There are entire genres I don't want to read. Are they "wasted space?" Swann's Way is something like 180,000 words long, and not a single one of those words is wasted.

Beth's second and third points are that YA fiction has interesting characters and that YA fiction will get the reader emotionally involved in some way, whether that's negative or positive emotions.

Michelle: Absolutely! I've read many YA novels that support this claim. Of course, I've read adult books that support the same claim. Beth says YA readers don't put up with uninteresting characters. I don't think adult readers do, either.

Davin: Dit. to.

Scott: Trit. to.

Beth's final point is that Young Adult literature supports story above tradition.

Michelle: I will admit that YA fiction does seem to throw around extreme genre bending much more than adult literature dares to. This is a really fun side of YA, but I don't think it's unheard of to see this happening in adult literature, as well, as Beth says in her post.

Davin: In a way, genre bending is a bit of a tame art anyway, isn't it? Why simply bend a genre when you can smash through it the way some classic adult fiction has done? Yes, romance combined with sci-fi can be a fun read, but think of the books that totally make you see writing in a different way. One Hundred Years of Solitude did that for me, as did Light In August, Lolita, and Dante's Inferno. None of those books suffer from the need to conform to tradition.

Michelle: Yes! Davin, I agree. Annie Dillard blew me away with her philosophy and literary style. I changed my major from technical writing to creative writing because of her. Flannery O'Connor pretty much made her own genre. I don't think adult literature suffers from tradition. I think some writers might, but not the genre.

Scott: I am not attacking YA, and I would appreciate it if we didn't attack other genres to defend our own. But as Ms. Revis has thrown down the gauntlet, I ask her to show me the YA writers who are as brave and adventurous, as "genre-bending" as Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, A.S. Byatt, Iain Pears, David Mitchell, Virginia Woolf, Laurence Sterne, Iris Murdoch, Irvine Welsh, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov, Victor LaValle, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Voltaire, Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood et cetera ad infinitum. Don't make me go on because I could all night. If you want to write YA then do it and don't apologize for it, but don't pee on me to make yourself feel better. [End of Scott's ranty rant.]

Michelle: So as I've thought more and more about all of this, I feel bad that Beth says she doesn't care that YA is slapped onto her book - she's happy just writing what she writes. I feel bad because it doesn't matter what label a book has. There can be exceptions, of course. An example is that my novella, Cinders, is sometimes categorized as Young Adult. I get a little upset about this because the main character is married, so she deals with things some younger readers might not be ready to read about. I think the book is more appropriately labeled as adult simply so younger readers don't pick it up thinking it's something completely different than it is. This, to me, is a good reason for a label/genre classification.

Scott says it's a marketing term, not a literary term. That's exactly what it is. It's CONVENIENT to categorize books into categories. It's CONVENIENT to say, "Yes, this book has a 16 year-old protagonist so let's call it YA". It's convenient because it works for marketing, for bookstore layouts, for giving awards, gifts, for determining if a book might be appropriate for certain readers.

We should all own what we do and what we write, but it's certainly not fair for anyone to say one genre is better than another. I've often felt looked down on for writing adult fiction since I live around and am friends with so many writers who write Young Adult, and I've gone through my little spells of woe-is-me because I feel I'm looked down on for self-publishing a novel. Nobody, however, has ever once said out loud to me that my fiction sucks because it's adult or that my novella sucks because it's self-published. All of that emotion is coming from myself. Even if someone does tell me these things to my face, it does not, nor will it ever make it true.

So you write YA, who cares? I personally think it's awesome! Write any genre. Tell a good story like any good writer, and readers and writers will respect you as just that - a good writer.

What do you all think? We're not trying to start an argument, but a bit of good-natured debate is always fun. We noticed Beth's post got a ton of supportive comments.
___________________

Beth Revis is the author of the novel, Across the Universe, which will be out January 11th, 2011 by Razorbill.

Stop and Go Sentences

I remember intensely studying Banana Yoshimoto's novella Kitchen and trying to figure out why her story was so unputdownable. The plot was forgettable, at least to me. The characters were also forgettable. Yet, each time I read it, I found myself propelled from beginning to end. That's how I figured out that she was using a great technique on the sentence level of her prose.

Take this generic passage as an example:

The family lived in a house. It was an oddly-shaped house with two large bedrooms at either end and a squat windowless kitchen in the center. Emil Lacadally chose it because of its symmetry, a quality which he valued over anything else when it came to matters of architecture.

Taken step by step, the sentences do not propel the reader forward. Each one holds its own idea and doesn't lead into the next, even though they logically follow each other. The first sentence sort of just sits there with nothing of interest contained inside of it. The second sentence is a bit more interesting, but it also feels like a complete thought that doesn't push the story forward. And so on.

The paragraph could be rewritten like this:

The family lived in an oddly-shaped house. Two large bedrooms sat at either end, and a squat, windowless kitchen was wedged in the center--it was the obvious choice for Emil Lacadally. He loved symmetry. It was a quality he valued over anything else when it came to matters of architecture.

Here, the first sentence prompts the reader to ask the question, "How is the house oddly-shaped?" The second sentence answers that question, and sets up a new question: "Why is it the obvious choice for Emil?" The third sentence answers THAT question and prompts the question "Why does Emil love symmetry?"

Instead of each sentence feeling self-contained, it instead pushes the reader forward by setting up a question that the reader wants answered and answering the question that was set up before it. I'd argue that, even if the story itself is boring, this type of knitted prose can successfully snag a reader. It's hard to find a stopping place in a paragraph like this.

And, notice that the second sentence is actually two independent clauses. It could have easily been broken up into two sentences, but I think this construction, avoiding the momentum-stopping period, helps to keep that forward movement going. (And, yes, I'm pro-semicolons!)

There's also a level of predictability in this. The reader can sort of predict what the next sentence will be about, assuming that they expect their questions to be answered. This creates a logical flow pattern for the prose that feels smoother and faster-paced. If you are able to write these sort of "go" sentences and mix them up with "stop" sentences like in the first paragraph, you will gain a good level of control over manipulating your reader in the best sense of the word.

So, if you want self-propelled prose, consider having each sentence work to answer the question set up before it and inspire a new question to be asked. Be sensitive to a reader's expectations, and work to meet them. This is an easy technique to master, and I've found a lot of use for it in my own prose.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Malasarn!

Today, whether he likes it or not, is the birthday of Davin/Domey Malasarn. Perhaps he wanted this to be a secret, but a little bird told me all about it so the secret's out, Big D! So let's all wish him a happy birthday today. I have yet to meet Dr. Malasarn in real life, but he's still one of my absolute favorite people, and if only for that, this whole invention-of-the-internets thing is worthwhile.

Happy Birthday, Davin! XXXOOO

The Good Thing About Too Little, Too Late

Happy Monday, everyone!

I'm back from my trip to DC where I helped decide how three million dollars worth of government funding was being spent (after reviewing about sixty million dollars worth of proposals). My ulterior motive for putting myself through this eye-melting chore was to possibly figure out a way to make this my permanent job.

The morning of the second day, we were greeted by one of the big wigs in the organization. He spoke eloquently about what they were trying to accomplish, and I thought to myself, he sure would be a good person to get to know.

Fast forward about ten hours, to where we are all having dinner at a local (and delicious) Vietnamese restaurant. I find myself sitting across the table from this big wig, and lo and behold I don't have anything to say to him along the lines of small talk.

I've never been good in these types of situations. After all, I work in a lab and spend the majority of my free time writing. I'm focused on drinking my ice water when he makes eye contact with me and says, "So, you write quite well."

I paused to let my red face fully develop. For a second I thought I might be able to pass this off as a science-related comment, but by his smile it was obvious that he had discovered my fiction.

I nodded.

He asked me to tell him about my awards.

I did, briefly. (Most of the people on my half of the table were now quieting down to listen.)

He asked me how many novels I had published.

I was happy to report that I had published none. This, at least, was a sign that I did spend at least some time working on science!

"But I've read several of your short stories, and they are quite strong," Mr. Big Wig said.

"Thanks. I try to fit them in when I can."

"I bring it up because--as most of my colleagues know, I'm sure--I am an aspiring writer myself."

Scrreeecchhh! Crrkrkkrkkrkk! Huh?

Yep. It turns out he had always wanted to get into fiction. We spent much of the evening talking about our favorite writers and how a novel could be completed in fifteen minute sessions even while one is writing a dissertation. We even got into details about revising to make sure your voice is consistent. And, yes, he had read some posts on The Literary Lab.

I have been spending the last few months trying my best to introduce my pen name and get my writing-related information off of the internet. Well, in this case, it turned out, the fiction writing helped to make a nice connection with my science colleagues.

So, huh.

Friday! Filler! A Stolen Meme!

It's Friday and I got nothing for a post and I have deadlines at the office (because yesterday was a national holiday for us Yankees and I wasn't exactly diligent on Wednesday either, truth to tell) so I'm very busy. But! But, I say, but! On Michelle's personal blog, she talks about how she originally had a mental image of the writing life and the publishing world that were, let's just say, a bit on the fantasy side. Though it was a pretty fantastic fantasy.

Anyway, today I'd like to hear your answers to this question:

What's the most surprising thing you've discovered about being a writer or about the publishing industry?

I'll start: The most surprising thing I've learned about publishing is how little money there is in it for writers. I thought that you wrote a good book, a publisher paid you enough for it to live on for a couple of years while you wrote your next book, and that was the way the rest of your life went. Hah. Also, things in the publishing business move Very Slowly.

Do You Write Big or Small?

Lately I've been looking at my work and wondering why it feels so boring when I prop it up next to other stories. I finally realized it's because I've been comparing it to other stories that aren't even in the same realm. You know, that apples to oranges thing. Here's the thing: I write small.

I was having dinner with a friend last night and we touched on the subject of ideas. She told me her latest idea and my mouth dropped open. It was so...sparkly. I was a bit dazzled and then I thought about my own ideas and they just looked seriously lame.

You see, big is not better than small. Apples are not better than oranges. Sparkly ideas are not better than matte ideas. It pretty much means we are all different and like different things. I like intimate settings, small groups of characters, stories about small changes. The sparkly ideas seem to work on grander scale settings and deal with larger groups of characters (or at least characters interacting with larger groups) who bring about big changes either in their world or themselves.

I don't mean to say every story can be categorized as big or small. Some of the best stories incorporate elements of both. On the whole, however, I do think most writers tend to lean more toward one or the other. Which one do you lean toward?

A Tale of Two Hamlets

Pictured above is a stack of paper about a foot tall, made up of most of the versions of my novel Killing Hamlet. There have been, I think, twelve major revisions of this book since the first draft was finished, back in 2007. After revision number eight, I realized that the story just wasn't working at all and I told my agent that I was going to rewrite the whole story from scratch. And I did, and now it's drastically different and I've revised that version four times.

Originally the story was called Ophelia's Ghost. Then it was The Secret Parts of Fortune. For a while it was So Honest A Man. Now it's Killing Hamlet and I'm sticking with that because, I think, that title actually works for the book.

I'm telling you all of this because yesterday I sent the current version off to my agent so that he can (I hope) fall in love with it and start submitting it to publishers. I suppose that at a time like this it's natural to sit and reflect on the road taken to get here, so that's what I'm doing. I really don't have any specific point to this post; I just wanted to take the photo above and post it because it amuses me. The spiral notebooks on the top of the stack were used to write the two first drafts (all my drafts are done longhand) and the printouts were for revisions (because all of my rewrites/edits are done longhand).

Michelle can tell you that taking a book and rewriting the whole thing from scratch is not only a huge pain in the ass and a scary undertaking, it's also a strangely liberating activity. Once you see that none of your work is set in stone, that none of it is permanent or sacred, you're freed up to take risks and push the story into territory you'd never have considered if you were just working over the same material again. My first version of the book, for example, was essentially a prose retelling of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," with a few twists and told from the point of view of Horatio, Hamlet's best friend. I kept thinking, while working on that version, that if I were to write the book again, I'd do a bunch of stuff differently. Which is what I ended up doing. It's now no longer Shakespeare's story at all, but a new tale that winds through and around Shakespeare's Denmark, pulling the old story into new shapes and sending familiar characters into unfamiliar, uncharted areas. I think it's really cool now. But it's taken me almost three years to get here.

Anyway, there is no rest for the wicked and I have lots of other projects. I have one new novel in first draft form, and I have another novel in the planning stages, and I have at least two more that are still just ideas. I'm going to begin a serious outline of the novel currently "in planning," and then write a first draft of it. That should take me until the spring to do. I'll set that first draft aside and turn to the first draft I've already written of that other book (Cocke & Bull is its title) and see about revising the heck out of it. I've been making notes for the last seven months.

Like I said, I really have nothing useful to say in this post. I just want to give some kind of update on what I'm doing to sort of demonstrate that I'm not just some guy who writes about writing; I actually write as well. And, you know, I think it's important that people who are moving through the publication process talk about how it's going so it can be demystified.

I was tempted to write something about my agent, and how things have gone with him while working on this book, but today I'm posting about that on my own blog. So you can look here if you want to read that story.

Do We Love Specific Books Partially Because of the Hype?

Davin is gone this week to D.C. so I'll be filling in for his days. Hope you have fun, Davin!
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There are a lot of popular stories out there. I've read several of them - Harry Potter, Twilight, The Secret Life of Bees, Romeo & Juliet...

My question today is something I've wondered for a very long time. When you pick up a book that you know has received a lot of hype, can you possibly read it without any preconceived notions? I think one of my biggest pet peeves is someone fawning over something to the point of ridiculousness. Mac products are the absolute best products on the planet. You just HAVE to see Inception because it was the best movie EVER made. EvvvErrr.

Yeah, okay.


First of all I don't think there is a best movie ever made or a best book ever written or a best product out there. When something gets too much hype, I tend to get really annoyed and tune it out and sometimes refuse to take part in it at all. For instance, I still haven't seen Inception. I probably won't watch it for three years. I might not ever watch it

This means I'll pick up a popular book with a relatively clean slate. I will try not to bring to the table every wonderful amazing thing (or sometimes it's negative hype, which is still good hype for marketing) I have heard about it. I like to form my own opinions. Most of the time the popular opinion isn't something I agree with.

Yet...

I happen to think classic literary pieces like Macbeth and The Great Gatsby are simply wonderful. They are hyped up in my world, but is it because I love them or because I love that millions of other people have loved them before me and I was socially conditioned in a way to think they are high quality masterpieces? Talk about eating my own words above! I get annoyed by current hype, but call it a classic 20 years old or older and I'm all over it. Sometimes I wonder if we can separate ourselves at all from what (for today) I'm calling hype. Sometimes I wonder how many other masterpieces are out there that I'll never read because they didn't catch any hype so I never heard about them. Sand through the cracks...

What do you think?

There Can Be Only One

The title of this post is a lie. There can be lots of ones. There can be an infinite number of ones. But I'm going to ask you to narrow things down to one each.

"One what, Scott?" Did I forget to mention that? I'll start over.

I was thinking this morning* about advice I'd give to beginning writers, and my best advice would probably be "read a lot, write a lot, read a lot more." And then I thought about Francine Prose's excellent book Reading Like A Writer, which has a list at the back called "Books to be Read Immediately." So I asked myself which one book of fiction, if I had to choose one, would I tell a beginning writer to read immediately.

The short answer is that I don't know. I discount the idea that there is a single book I read in my youth that triggered the dormant "writer gene" and pushed me onto the path of being a novelist. And I completely dismiss the idea that there is one novel or book of stories that stands head-and-shoulders above all others. And I have no clue at all what the "most influential" book on my writing has been. So the idea of "best" or "important" or whatever gets thrown out the window, too. And I certainly don't mean simply to point to my favorite book, either.

Which leaves me, I guess, with this: What's a pretty good book that I think a beginning writer could learn something useful from?

Again, I don't know. But I'll give it a shot:

Dubliners by James Joyce. Beautiful short stories that are perfect jewels and every one of them is worth reading over again and studying for technique. Deep characters, humor, sympathy and insight. All perfect, as I say. The collection includes "The Dead," one of the greatest short stories in the English language. Say, I'm really pleased by my choice. And here I thought I was going to come up with nothing but excuses.

Now it's your turn. Pretend that someone has told you they want to be a writer. You hand them one book and say, "Then read this; this is writing." What's that book? Say what's good about it in a couple of sentences. All genres allowed, but you only get one entry on the list. Books about writing are not allowed.

*and since I write this on Thursday, I was actually thinking yesterday morning. It's almost like time-travel, but not quite.

I Don't Want to Cut You Off

Yesterday I got stuck in traffic. I started yelling at everyone in sight even though they couldn't hear me. Sometimes I think I have a sign on top of my car that says "CUT ME OFF AND MAKE ME SLAM ON MY BRAKES SO I CAN HONK MY HORN AT YOU AND CONSIDER FLIPPING YOU OFF BECAUSE YOU ALMOST GOT ME AND MY FOUR YEAR OLD IN A SERIOUS CRASH!!!!"

Okay, that's a bit dramatic, but still, every time I get in the car people cut me off or pass me on the shoulder or something ridiculous of the sort. Is it my driving? Is it that my car is silver and irritates people?

I honestly think it's because as soon as we get behind the wheel of a car we think we've got some sort of power that actually doesn't exist. Most of us don't feel as fragile as we do without a ton of steel surrounding us.

You know, a lot of times in writing I think we do the same thing. Some of us have written books and lots of other stuff. Some of us are published. Some of us are zooming around the road cutting people off because we think we aren't as fragile or we think we have more of a right to get somewhere faster. Not that there are RULES in writing, but there are rules of courtesy, I think. This applies more to myself than I ever thought it did. I've found myself getting quite the ego lately because I have a book deal with a publisher and because I've self-published a book and because I can edit things and write good stuff. This does not, however, give me any right to go around thinking I have the privilege to tell others how to write well or what to change in their writing or judge whether or not their writing is good according to my standards, etc.

Lately Mr. Bailey has helped me realize (probably without his knowledge) that writing is a 100% personal journey and no writing book or conference or class is ever going independently make us a better writer  No beta reader or editor is going to improve us. Nobody but ourselves and our own pounding away every day is going to make us better, and even more importantly, knowing what's better is also completely personal. There is no measuring stick or touchstone to put our work against that will automatically determine its greatness.

It's an interesting task to get behind the wheel of my well-driven writing mind and zoom around determining what passes my little tests of greatness, but I hope I'm not cutting anyone off. I'd hate to get in the way of where others are trying to go. I do think it's important to share our writing knowledge, but it's also just as important for those of us reading the knowledge to remember it's another person's way of writing. We should glean from it anything we think is of value, but never take it as rules laid in stone unless it has to do with grammar (and even then some things are negotiable)...

I suppose this is all just another way to say there are no rules in writing. So as you write - especially those of you doing NaNo at the moment - remember you're on your own path. If you want to use the passive tense, use it. There is nothing wrong with the word "was" no matter what anyone has told you. Maybe it was wrong for their writing, but you can pull it off with gusto. There is nothing wrong with a flashback unless it's wrong for you and your work. Go forward. Experiment. Write. And if someone cuts you off don't let it end in a crash.

Getting out of a jam

I'm making a promise to myself that I can't post more here until I write the next paragraph of my recent story. I've written myself into a corner, and my solution lately has been to not think about it. But, I'm excited about the piece as a whole. I know I just have to press on. So, if you don't hear from me...you know why!

Later...

Okay, the paragraph is a little clunky, but at least I got the story going again. I was in a jam, I think, because I am writing this story in first person, and it has been a long while since I did that. I started the story with a bunch of telling. "My name is so-and-so. I work doing such-and-such..." and I was having a hard time transitioning from that sort of declaritive voice to one that brought the reader into more of a scene.

My solution was to write a hybrid paragraph to make the transition smoother. "I was doing such-and-such when I met a person named so-and-so. So-and-so worked in a desk in the same office as me. It was the fifth floor of a squat building bustling with people."

I'm not sure this transition paragraph has much emotional impact, but I'll go with it for now. But, I find lately that I'm revising much more as I go along than I used to. I haven't done a vomit draft in awhile.

Has your technical approach to writing changed much from when you started? Do you outline now when you didn't before? Do you revise now when you didn't before? Do you let your writing rest longer than you used to?

The Wrong End of the Telescope

A writer I know was telling me about some trouble he had once with a novel. It seems that the protagonist, despite my writer friend's best efforts, would not come into focus for the reader. He was a shadowy, vague figure who resisted my friend's efforts to see him clearly.

"I just couldn't figure out who this guy was," he said. "It's like he was invisible."

Predictably, my writer friend complained about his troubles to his wife. "No matter how hard I try, I just can't see my main character. He's like this fixed point around which all the action of the story moves, but he himself is always out-of-focus."

"Maybe that's the problem," his wife said. "He's a fixed point. He's not really a character."

"Huh," said my writer friend.

"Maybe," his wife continued, "If he was a character in someone else's story, you could see him better. You could figure out who he is."

"Maybe," my writer friend said.

"Why don't you write the story from the point of view of the villain--the antagonist guy? You know him pretty well, right? If you have to look at your protagonist as a moving object--a character, you know--in the antagonist's story, you'll have to flesh him out, won't you? You'll have to make him 3-dimensional, I think."

And she was exactly right, and that's exactly what my writer friend did: he thought about the novel as being more from the antagonist's point of view. For the first time he really looked at his protagonist from the outside and could see who he was and what made him tick. The novel got a whole lot better when he rewrote it, and was eventually sold and published and my writer friend is working on another book now.

Also! You Americans out there! Don't forget to vote!

Vulnerability

In our daily interactions, we often skirt around topics that make each other feel vulnerable. If a friend has just gone through a divorce or a death, for example, we'll probe around first to see if it's okay to talk about it before bringing up the subject directly.

As a reader, though, I love the experience of reading about a topic that makes me feel vulnerable. I love feeling as if the writer knows something deeply personal within me: my fears, my secrets, my weaknesses.

Sometimes stories shy away from this. It will feel like a missed opportunity. I once wrote a story about a relative who lost her mother. While I was writing it, I got scared that I would dredge up too many strong emotions in my relative, so I didn't go as deep as I could. As a result, my reviewers called the story "death-light." The material was there, but the depth and the heat of the emotion was not. For me, the result was something rather forgettable.

This weekend I started a new story that dealt with aging. As I was working on it, I could feel myself shying away from the emotions that might make a reader feel vulnerable. I caught myself in time, however, and decided to dig deeper and dare to face the consequences. As a result, I found that I was making myself feel uneasy. I began to question my own ideas about aging and its consequences. It was both scary and thrilling...and something I plan to do more of.

How do you feel about vulnerability? Do you make yourself vulnerable in your writing? Do you dare to make readers feel vulnerable?