storytelling

In this part of the world, there's a definitive sign of spring, and today -- the last day of February in this leap year -- I saw it. Coming around a corner I had my first sighting of a middle aged man in a two-seat convertible with the top down. On beautiful summer days I have had up to twenty-seven sightings of this particular species during one fifteen minute drive, but the first one is always special. This one was bald, and wore sunglasses. Thus I mark the calendar.

Posted by at 4:50 PM | Permalink

Because I'm working with little space, I didn't include author or screenwriter, and I've color coded novels and films. Many novels and films won't fit into any of these categories, of course.

Posted by at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I wonder if I could adapt it. Probably not; it's just too good on its own. Thanks to Robyn for the link.

Posted by at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Have you encountered any "genre prejudice?"  That is, I hear that some genre writers feel they don't get as much respect as those who write "literary fiction," whatever that may mean.  Do you think that "literary" and "fantasy" are mutually exclusive genres? 

Yes, I do encounter genre prejudice. I think every genre writer does. Many people assume that genre writers are not “serious” writers, or that the fiction they produce is by definition inferior, or that it’s somehow easier to write than “real” literature. There are also the people who are surprised when I tell them I research my novels, because they think that with fantasy you can just “make it all up.” It’s irksome not just on a personal level, but because it closes off potential audiences. For instance, I think that anyone who enjoys historical novels would enjoy my latest book, in which history, culture, and tradition is as important as magic and adventure. But most mainstream readers never go into the sf/fantasy section of the bookstore.

Link via Elizabeth Bear by way of Sillybean.

Posted by at 10:49 AM | Permalink

I had been thinking about what to say about getting an agent (a good portion of email that comes my way asks about this very problem) when Teresa Nielsen Hayden beat me to it, and did a better job than I would have, or at least a more thorough one. See this longish entry called, appropriately enough, on the getting of agents.

My agent history is short and sweet. My first agent dumped me because she couldn't sell Homestead (somewhere in the discussion of why it wasn't selling, she mentioned that it 'wasn't the kind of book that you'd see men reading on the subway'). More than that, she didn't want to try to sell the other manuscript I had sitting there. So I did what most people do, I asked somebody who had an agent and she kindly pointed me not to hers, but to somebody else, and one of the junior people at that agency took me on. Thus was the happy match made; Jill promptly sold both Homestead and Into the Wilderness within three months of each other, for a combined very healthy mid-six-figure advance. Jill went off and started an agency of her own in partnership with another excellent agent, and they take care of everything. I'm very fortunate (1) that my first agent dumped me and (2) that I found Jill.

When I signed the Bantam contract I sent my first agent a postcard (I did want everybody in the office to read it, I admit) with the gory details on how much money was coming in. I sent another postcard when Homestead won the PEN/Hemingway award. Yes, now that you ask, I do have a mean streak if you prod me hard enough. But in my defense you should also know that I admitted to her she was right: to this day I have never seen a man reading Homestead on the subway.

Posted by at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Chris and Meredith made some interesting comments to the February 23 post regarding happy vs. happily-ever-after and hollywood tragic vs. genuinely tragic endings.

Meredith's definition of a Hollywood-tragic ending is "tragedy culminates for emotional effect rather than to progress a narrative", and her examples are good ones (Saving Private Ryan vs. The Bronze Horseman --a novel she liked and I wanted to like, but couldn't).

The UVic Writer's Guide has a good entry on tragedy, which starts:

Tragedy depicts serious incidents in which protagonists undergo a change from happiness to suffering, often involving the death of others as well as the main characters, and resulting from both the protagonists' actions and the inescapable limits of the human condition.

At the moment, I'm more interested in examples of happily-ever-after vs. (for lack of a better term) genuinely optimistic endings. I'm thinking about examples. Yell if you've got some.

Posted by at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. An article from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (this is the abstract):

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

First, when I taught at the University of Michigan, every now and then I came across a particular mindset that was especially difficult to deal with. These students (a scattering of them every year) seemed to be unable to grasp the difference between an opinion and a demonstrable, observable, fact. Statements as diverse as the earth orbits around the sun and democracy is flawed got the same reaction: that's your opinion; my opinion is just as right. It was hard work bringing them to the point where they understood that in the first case, it was possible to prove or disprove the statement while in the second, it was only possible to form arguments based on subjective evaluation and critical analysis.

In terms of fiction, the unskilled/unaware personality is damn hard to write, simply because it's almost impossible to make such a character likeable or even sympathetic. An unskilled character -- even a severely limited character -- can be complex and interesting in a variety of ways, but as soon as you add in a lack of self awareness the tendency is to slide over the line into unlikable or ridiculous. Or both.

Mostly you run across this type in comedy -- Ted in the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, for example, or some of the contestants on American Idol (and yes, I do watch it; it's priceless in many ways). I can't think of any unskilled/unaware characters outside of comedy, either in print or on film.

Posted by at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Maybe more people are now prepared to accept unhappy endings, but as usual it probably has more to do with commercial formulas and market research and temporary trendiness. Or perhaps a few talented filmmakers decided to tackle somewhat more challenging subjects and just got lucky.

For the record: I don't always have to have a happy ending (or even an ambiguous one), but I don't like being force fed unhappy endings because they are supposedly good for me. And I reject out of hand the assumption that an unhappy ending is somehow more challenging to write than a happy one.

A critic (and somebody tell me who it is, please, if you remember) called this preoccupation with doom and gloom The Culture of Ugly. I suppose I could take some comfort in that idea, because if that's all this no-pain-no-gain approach to storytelling is -- a cultural phase -- then eventually it will pass. Like acne.

And before you ask, I do have better things to do than be irritated by this. I'll go do some of them now.

Posted by at 3:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The casting of Bill Murray as Bob Harris was inspired. He brings a gentle self-mockery and a sadness to the role which are palpable. In his hands the character is likeable because he knows that he's teetering on the edge of the ridiculous. His lonliness is all the more real because of that self-awareness.

So these two people are thrown together by their insomnia, and they provide for each other a way out. Out of the bar, out of the hotel, out of the bubble they have each been inhabiting as they float through a neon lit, frantic Tokyo. Out of preoccupation with disappointment to a place where each of them comes to understand better where they want to be.

There is no sexual encounter, and in fact the lack of that encounter is the turning point in the story; Bob Harris turns to a lounge singer (there's a very funny bit where the woman is doing her rendition of Scarborough Fair, ala Murray's recurring lounge lizard character on Saturday Night Light so many years ago). I had the idea that he did it in part to establish a certain boundary between himself and Charlotte. She reacts badly ("I guess you two have a lot in common. You both grew up in the fifties. She probably remembers you from the seventies, when you were still making movies.") In negotiating this crisis, their friendship is solidified.

The ending of this movie was especially fine. Neither of them know how to say goodbye, and so they settle for platitudes and half gestures. But in the end that's not enough, and the scene where Bob gets out of his limosine to hug a trembling Charlotte was one of the most understated and powerful I've ever seen.

Posted by at 12:08 PM | Permalink

At any rate, recently people who have been wandering the web for information about perfectionist disorder landed here. Oh dear.

Posted by at 12:17 AM | Permalink

Yagoda quotes Twain, always worthwhile: "When you catch an adjective, kill it." Twain was, of course, the master of hyperbole and of adjectives, too (from Tom Sawyer):

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while -- plenty of company -- and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

Go forth and be profligate no more.

Posted by at 12:05 AM | Permalink

The title here is thematic and concrete, both. James Reece is a man in that gray area between youth and solid middle age; he was born to a Mexican/Indian father and a blond California mother and brought up by adoptive white parents. He makes his living as a border guard sending illegal immigrants back to Mexico, again operating in the borderlands, always second guessing himself and where he belongs.

The novel holds loosely to the conventions of a mystery -- or multiple myteries -- about his own past, his parents, his father's death -- and the discovery of a the body of a little boy in his adoptive father's flower fields. What struck me most forcibly about this novel is the strength of the main characterization. James Reece is a complex and conflicted man, but within about fifty pages I felt I had a real grasp of the way he thought and the things that moved him.

It's hard to imagine the kind of research that must have gone into this novel, as the circumstances and setting are so foreign to me personally. Yet the details have the gritty feel of authenticity, due in part to prose that approaches the lyrical in passages. I should say that it does feel at times as if Palmer is on the verge of loosing control of a detailed and complex plot -- the scene of the fire in the canyon comes to mind. Also, there are many crucial characters here, almost too many to develop fully. The two that I would have liked to see more clearly were Mercedes (James' wife) and Richard Serrano, the Coyote who preys on the illegals he shepards over the border to the extent of robbing them of their shoes.

Posted by at 11:59 PM | Permalink

The novel is beautifully written, clean and clear and bright in its prose, but it's also a really good story. Of the three main characters, I was most engaged by Harlan Desonnier, a Cajun just released from prison and Glory Wiltz, a white nurse with a young son who is separated from her husband, a black musician. Father Frank -- a Catholic priest dealing with a loss of faith -- is the least well drawn of the three characters, though I still haven't been able to figure out why he doesn't quite work for me.

This novel has a flow and rhythm that feels almost effortless, and the resolutions were striking for their simple elegance. There is not so much a happy ending here as a thoughtful and a hopeful one. One final note: Glory's relationship to her son strikes me as pretty much perfect, and reads as though the author understands the emotional complexities of motherhood from a deeply personal source.

Posted by at 11:22 PM | Permalink

Jim Macdonald is by all accounts an excellent teacher, and now there's this thread he started at the AbsoluteWrite on-line forum. It looks to me very worthwhile. Lots of solid advice, including a spattering of useful laws, ala:

Watt-Evans' Law: There is no idea so brilliant that a sufficiently ham-handed writer can't make an unreadable story out of it.

Feist's Corollary to Watt-Evans' Law: There is no idea so stupid that a sufficiently talented writer can't make a readable story out of it.

My only quibble with Uncle Jim (actually, I don't know much about him -- I may be older than he is, but I'll call him Uncle anyway; I also answer to Auntie Ro) is his ten pages or about 2,500 words a day. That's just not the way some people work. Me included. But he knows that; he starts out with a proviso that says, basically, what any honest teacher of writing must say (and I paraphrase): take what works for you and leave the rest.

Posted by at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You can learn a little about Catalan here (also the source of this map; click for a larger version); check out the Catalan version of the page as well.

Posted by at 3:23 PM | Permalink

"How very ill Eliza Bennet looks this morning, Mr. Darcy,'' she cried; "I never in my life saw any one so much altered as she is since the winter. She is grown so brown and coarse! Louisa and I were agreeing that we should not have known her again.''

However little Mr. Darcy might have liked such an address, he contented himself with coolly replying that he perceived no other alteration than her being rather tanned -- no miraculous consequence of travelling in the summer.

"For my own part,'' she rejoined, "I must confess that I never could see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin; her complexion has no brilliancy; and her features are not at all handsome. Her nose wants character; there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes, which have sometimes been called so fine, I never could perceive any thing extraordinary in them. They have a sharp, shrewish look, which I do not like at all; and in her air altogether, there is a self-sufficiency without fashion which is intolerable.''

Persuaded as Miss Bingley was that Darcy admired Elizabeth, this was not the best method of recommending herself; but angry people are not always wise; and in seeing him at last look somewhat nettled, she had all the success she expected. He was resolutely silent however; and, from a determination of making him speak she continued,

"I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed we all were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, 'She a beauty! -- I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time.''

"Yes,'' replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, "but that was only when I first knew her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.''

He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.

The other thing to point out here is the masterful balance between direct and indirect dialogue; some of what Darcy says is summarized, because it's Miss Bingley we need to hear just then, without distraction. When he speaks up finally, he is given the floor with devastating effectiveness.

Posted by at 9:07 AM | Permalink

POV is one of those things that beginning students of creative writing find hard to understand. The simplest way to determine POV (the one that I use when I'm confused in my own writing) is this: who's got the camera? We're seeing and experiencing this scene through somebody's eyes -- who is it?

For a long time it's been fashionable to write in limited third person POV, which means simply that only one character at a time is holding the camera. You're inside Joe's head, watching a car accelerate toward a brick wall; then you're in Jane's. The contrast between how two characters experience the same event is one of the ways to use contrast to build tension. Mostly my work is in limited third person POV. Here's Albany in 1794 seen through Elizabeth's eyes:

The roads were crowded with housemaids swinging baskets on red-chapped arms; peddlers hawking sticky peaches, sugar-sweet melons, wilted kale; young women in watered silks with feathered parasols tilted against the sun; River Indians dressed in fringed buckskin and top hats; slaves hauling bales of rags and herding goats. It was not so dirty and crowded as New York had been, that was true. There was a pleasing tidiness to the brick houses with their steeply tiled roofs and bright curtains, but still the humid air reeked of sewage, burning refuse, pig slurry and horse dung. Elizabeth swallowed hard and put her handkerchief to her nose and mouth, wondering to herself that she had forgotten what cities were like in such a short time. Three months in the wilderness had changed her, stolen her patience for the realities of a crowded life.

Because they did not have any other molds, Run-from-Bears had melted down about twenty pounds of the Tory gold in a makeshift forge and cast a fortune in bullets. These Nathaniel had been carrying in double-sewn leather pouches next to his skin since they left Paradise, ten pounds on each side. In Johnstown this unusual currency would have caused a stir, but Albany was a town built on some two hundred years of high intrigue and trading shenanigans. Comfortable Dutch and British merchants had made large fortunes running illegal furs from Canada, reselling silver spoons stolen in Indian raids on New England families much like their own, and bartering second grade wampum and watered rum for all the ginseng root the native women could dig up, which they then traded to the Orient at an outrageous profit. A sack of golden bullets would raise nothing more in an Albany merchant than his blood pressure.

It used to be that authors wrote almost exclusively in first person POV (David Copperfield, for example) or in omniscient third. Jane Austen is a good example of the latter case: the author sees all, knows all, and tells all. She sees simultaneously into the heart and mind of of Jane, Darcy, and Miss Bingley and understands each of them perfectly. She is, in other words, their god. Along with what they are thinking and doing, Austen gives us a running editorial (and a sharp-edged one) on the greater society in which this is all happening.

And to state it clearly: I have over-simplified here. For a more detailed look at POV and the way it can be carved up, have a look here.

Posted by at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

You're The Handmaid's Tale!
by Margaret Atwood
An outraged feminist, you have been oppressed and even silenced in your life, fueling your fury against the society as it stands. Your role has been strictly defined by society and you are almost certainly unsatisfied with it. You have some vague idea of how this has come to be, but insufficient power to stop it, let alone reverse the trend. And somehow you blame yourself for everything because people ask you to. Beware people renaming your nation a Republic.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Posted by at 4:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

to pursue this obviousity, hop here.

Posted by at 9:24 PM | Permalink

some interesting suggested reading came up (thanks, Sillybean) in the comments to yesterday's post, and I began to think more about first person narrative. So I went and looked on my bookshelves and found a few first person novels that are (in my estimation) well written and good enough to re-read (which is my ultimate test).

John Mullen wrote a thoughtful essay on first person narration for the Guardian as part of a larger analysis of Donna Tartt's Secret History. That novel didn't make it onto my list, because I have no urge to ever re-read it.

"The choice of a first-person narrator must have seemed natural for a novel whose central character helps commit a murder. From Moll Flanders to Lolita, the first-person narrative, where the voice of the novel belongs to one of its leading characters, has been the means of drawing a reader into disturbing sympathy with that character's misdeeds. Confession has long been a form in which fiction is cast."

Posted by at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is not to say that first-person narratives can't excel. They certainly can, despite the fact that they almost never do. Examples of excellent first-person narratives are easy enough to list. But I think they require a writer of unusual talent to do well. And I consider myself only a writer of usual talent.

Certainly students I've worked with seem to gravitate toward first person narrative, out of fear or familiarity, I'm not sure. What I do know is, I chase them out of that yard as fast as they can run. I don't accept any first person work when I' teaching an intro to fiction course. The same way I make them submit all their work in double spaced Courier 12: because I want to make them focus elsewhere, and forget about the way the print looks on the paper.

Which reminds me of one of the funnier things I ever heard a faculty member say. This was at Princeton, when I was a grad student. Imagine a bald, serious professor of medieval literature with a heavy German accent saying: "No, this word processing nonsense, this will never do. If the sentence looks nice on the paper, an undergraduate thinks it must automatically mean something."

And since I'm on the subject, the funniest thing I ever heard an undergraduate student say at Princeton. A crowd of them were coming out of a seminar in the German department and one turned to the other and said: "I don't get it. Why was Nietsche so hung up on cows?"

The last word is the key. Pronounce it with a German accent; it's worth the effort.

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edited to add that the link to Caitlín is via Sillybean. Silly me.

Posted by at 1:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

To this I say: hogwash. Hogwash, say I.

I will admit that not every genre lends itself equally well to the kind of stylistic flexibility that produces these so-called sentence fragments. Legal documents, I suppose, really are better off without them. But that's about it.

The important thing for those of us who write fiction to remember about sentence fragments is this: people don't talk in classically defined sentences. Written dialogue will sound stilted if you insist on making your characters toe the line that your fourth grade English teacher drew in the sand. For example:

The kids always go crazy just about now. This kind of summer night.

Characters talk in melodious fragments and riffs. It's a complex process, getting the right. It has to do with syntax and tag words and a good balance between direct and indirect dialogue.

Elmore Leonard, who is a master of written dialogue, put it like this: "The main thing with my dialogue is the rhythm of it -- the way people talk, not especially what they say."

A character who insists on toeing the line and speaking Stilt probably doesn't belong in your novel. Another interesting quote from Elmore Leonard, which comes from an NPR interview:

"From the very beginning, my purpose was to [let the characters talk]," Leonard says. "To first of all establish the characters, as many as possible in the first 100 pages and audition them. Let's see if they can talk. If they can't talk, they're liable to slip from view or get shot early on.

"If I have several bad guys, and I only want to end up with one of them, then I have to decide which one I want in the end. Normally, it's the one who's the most interesting talker."

"Bless me, Fatha, for I have sin. Is a long time since I come here but is not my fault, you don't have Confession always when you say. The sin I did, I stole a goat from close by Nyundo for my family to eat. My wife cook it en brochette and also in a stew with potatoes and peppers."

"Last night at supper," Terry said, "I told my housekeeper I'd enjoy goat stew a lot more if it wasn't so goddamn bony."

The goat thief said, "Excuse me, Fatha?"

"Those little sharp bones you get in your mouth," Terry said, and gave the man ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. He gave just about everyone ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys to say as their penance.

Posted by at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Viable Paradise is a unique one-week intensive workshop in writing and selling commercial science fiction and fantasy, taught by professional authors and acquiring editors. Now in its eighth year, Viable Paradise is a one-week residential workshop that concentrates on the art of writing fiction that people want to read.

I've never been to Viable Paradise (why does that sentence make me laugh?) but I am always tempted to order some of the stuff they sell at Cafe Press.

I’m A Professional Writer. I Tell Lies To Strangers For Money.

You can get farther with beautiful prose and a plot than you can with beautiful prose alone.

Writing is about a lot of things, but being kind to the characters is not one of them.

If you don’t entertain your readers they won’t stick around to hear your message.

Your readers can always tell when you're bored.

Posted by at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I was fascinated by the runaway slave woman's skirt/map in Lake in the Clouds.  Can you tell me anything about the source of this idea?  Have you ever seen one, or seen photos, or was it an idea, a likely thing to have existed? 

I liked the idea of women using textiles to communicate with each other, and so I adapted it for Selah's journey out of Manhattan by having her sew a map onto her skirt.

Textile history is something that has always interested me (Martha Ballard's diary is a treasure trove of such information), and I am very active myself in mixed media textile art and (to a lesser extent) quilting. I do write regularly for Quilting Arts Magazine. A little known fact: the detail from a crazy quilt seen on the cover of the Premiere issue (about to be reissued, by the way) is my work. And since we're on the topic of things I do when I'm not writing, there's also my dabbling in mail art.

Posted by at 1:54 AM | Permalink

You've used that image before. You've done this storm before. You've been here; you're recycling.

This idea has led me into temptation, once again. Apparently Norton has released all twenty novels in a matched set, hardcover (ISBN: 0393048403). I do have a weakness for sets of novels, I confess. So I popped over to Campus and had them compare bookstore prices. The cheapest price for the set new is $470 and used, $360. As a rule I won't buy used copies of novels that are still in print (call it a matter of solidarity with other authors) but there are a few exceptions, such as in this case, when the author is deceased. So I'll be thinking about this and contemplating what else I could do with $360 in an effort to stop myself.

Posted by at 7:20 AM | Permalink

We (I go where she goes) are teaching a workshop at the Gig Harbor, Washington Writers Conference, April 30th-May 2nd 2004.

Posted by at 5:52 AM | Permalink

My only quibble: rejections are sometimes (if rarely) personal. It does happen that an author has a history with an editor or a house. I once was confronted with accepting or rejecting something written by a former student of mine, somebody who had not endeared him/herself to me. How can that not be personal on some level? And before you ask: I rejected it. It just wasn't good enough to make me swallow my dislike. And no, I didn't use a photocopied rejection letter. And yes, s/he almost certainly felt affronted/insulted/poorly used.

My own personal favorite rejection letter was from the editor of The Atlantic Monthly, two lines long (and refering to my Other Name) "The Lippi-Green in a story-teller. Try us again?"

Posted by at 7:42 PM | Permalink

Here's an article I read this morning in the Seattle Times about the writing staff for HBO's series The Wire. (Be aware please that the link won't last long). The Wire's producers are bringing more novelists onto the writing staff, specifically Dennis Lehane and Richard Price. While I really like the series and I am in awe of Lehane, the key paragraph for me is this:

"This show prides itself on being a haven for writers who are committed to storytelling, regardless of the medium, just as HBO is a haven for anyone in television who is trying to tell stories in a different way," series creator David Simon says.

This is why HBO is so successful at putting together quality programming. This is the key, and they've got it. Hats off to them, and may it long continue. Now, if only (1) HBO would pick up Farscape and fund it appropriately; and (2) they knocked on my door to ask me to sit in on the writing sessions... my gawd. What else could a storyteller ask for?

Posted by at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In response to an email I got today (you know who you are) I quote Jennifer Crusie's answer to this question which is asked too often.

Are you ever going to give up romance writing and start writing real books?

No. I like writing fake books. It gives such joy to those who need to feel intellectually superior.

No. I prefer to write to entertain. You know, like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens.

No. I think it's important not to trash the taste of those who read and supported you while you were learning your craft by announcing that, now that you've established your name, you're giving up romance to move onto bigger and better things. ...

And let me take this opportunity to remind you that Bet Me (Jenny's new novel, which I reviewed here) will be hitting the bookstores tomorrow. Also, I point all parties yet again to this essay of hers, In Praise of Scribbling Women.

Posted by at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

has anybody else noticed this trend in junk mail? in an attempt to defy the usual filters, the spammers are putting random words in the subject line. They must be auto generated, but the results are sometimes quite startling. I like to go through the junk mail folder to see what jumps out at me, for example:

I actually opened that last one because I thought it was somebody writing to complain about this blog. But alas, it's just another baleful ode to viagra.

Posted by at 12:18 PM | Permalink

Smythe: That's puttering, sir.
Stew: No! Well well well! That's all right if you like it. Can anybody do that?
Smythe: Oh no, sir. Some people are natural putterers. Others can never master it.

From a writer's perspective, I like this dialogue because

...it's witty in a way that adds to characterization (you'll have to take my word on that, unless you want to find the movie and study the entire scene in context), and

(this is a pet theory of mine) it points out a truth that is seldom made concrete by means of a dash of the absurd.

Posted by at 10:40 PM | Permalink

...are generally seen as tight-fisted, narrow-minded philistines only interested in the profit margin. But of course that's not always true. Mine, for example, really likes to read, and she calls me now and then, as she did today, to say kind and encouraging things. It's always a little strange to hear her voice on the phone. This is a very big name, and a very busy person, and here she is calling to tell me that she loved the first three chapters of Queen of Swords. When contracts are being negotiated I have nothing to do with her or the process -- I am very happy to leave all that to my agent, because the idea of these two women head to head makes me want to go hide in a closet. On the other hand, the occasional phone call is very welcome.

Posted by at 12:15 PM | Permalink

* I wish more people didn't care. The Book Review Section, like the Times generally, matters to the extent we let it matter. Might we not be better off letting go our fixation on it? Do you find it as strange as I do how seriously many people take the section -- as though it were some revered public trust? It's a very professional review of books, but I find reading it like being stuck back in some nightmare English class where everyone's smart and eager -- the antithesis of why I bother with books in the first place.

Posted by at 12:46 AM | Permalink

A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
Vintage Books: June 1991
ISBN: 0-679-73376-0
Winner 1991 - Pulitzer Prize

Clear. I have washt, done hous wk and knit. mr Petengail took [ ] our Cow for Taxes. what we are to do God only knows.

Cloudy, raind at Evng. I was Calld by Levy Cowen to go and See his wife in Labour. Shee was Safe deld at 4h am of a Son which Expired at 5. Shee had a fall not long Since which probably was the Cause. Hannah & Nabby wint to hear mr Tappin this day & Evng.

The whole diary is available at this website, where you can explore materials about Martha's life and world. It never fails to amaze and teach me something.

Posted by at 6:27 PM | Permalink

... to make a public service announcement. This isn't something I do lightly, please note, but here is a link to materials I have written that might be of use to those persons who are supporting Howard Dean's bid for the Democratic nomination, or who are thinking of supporting him. Or for anybody else who is interested. An excerpt:

We can focus on the issues, or we can let ourselves be caught up in hype and trivialities. We can let the media tell us who is going to win, or we can choose the next president. We can talk to our neighbors about the things that matter most to us - jobs, health care, education, the environment, Iraq - or we can talk to them about polls. We can take the country back, or we can reap the consequences of another four years of Bush's destructive policies at home and abroad. The choice is up to us. It's up to you.

Posted by at 12:56 PM | Permalink

Robyn sent me a poem by Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961) called Love 20¢ the First Quarter Mile. I'm not sure why it struck such a chord with me, but this is the kind of poetry that I love best. The first stanza:

You can read the whole thing here.

Posted by at 10:50 AM | Permalink

Some years ago there was a little book in circulation called Shrinklits. I believe it's out of print but wait here while I go check.... wow, it's still in print.

The author -- Maurice Sagoff -- died in 1998 but the book is still going strong. I can't hear the name Beowulf without remembering these immortal lines: "Monster Grendel's tastes are plainish.... for breakfast? Just a couple Danish." And I remember this take on The Hobbit, too (though this is from the middle of the shrink-ed version, I think): There's a magic ring, of course, And a final show of force. Where the bad guys, overthrown, Yield the fabled Arkenstone; Bilbo scorns it, bless his soul, He just craves his hobbit-hole. Which sums up the whole thing pretty well, as I recall. A story where everybody really, really wants a ring and then they really, really want to get rid of it.

The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"
The Queen asked the Dairymaid,
The Dairymaid
Said, "Certainly,
I'll go and tell the cow
Now
Before she goes to bed."

Posted by at 8:20 AM | Permalink

I've been writing this series of historicals for ten years now, and in that process I've come to understand a little about how my mind works in terms of plotting. I start out with a mega-plot, a lot of which comes from historical fact -- I can't change the outcome of a war to suit my characters. Not that they don't ask, on occasion.

So I have a general idea of major things that will happen in the course of the novel. I plonk the characters down and I wait for them to lead me off, and then I write the story in a line, no jumping around. That sounds straight forward enough, but in truth, there are two layers to this.

The obvious outer layer is the daily me who sits down in front of the computer, reads what I wrote yesterday, and tries to pick up the thread and carry on. Right now I have to get three characters from point A to point B, and so I'm listening to them each obsess about what's going on, what they're worried about, what they want. One of them has a big secret she hasn't revealed yet and I can feel her getting ready to spill the beans. So she's sitting at a table, and on that table is the notorious Bent Spoon.

A bent spoon is a flag from my subconscious, which I envision as a woman behind a door, very business-like, almost faceless, and she dresses better than I do. Call her Lilith. So Lilith has an agenda of her own. She's behind that door puttering, working on something I won't know about until the door opens up one day without warning and she shoves the finished idea out and onto the page. But I know something is cooking, because she whispers in my ear, and it's usually something like this: there's a bent spoon on that table, see? Or a letter in a pocket. Or a scar on a cheek. Some little detail that wants to be made clear on the page, but why? I have come to trust Lilith. All will be revealed in time.

The best way I can explain this is by example. The first time the full force of this process hit me was when I was writing ITW. I had Elizabeth walking around the corner in the dark, on her way to meet Nathaniel, lost in her worries and anger about her father. So imagine me writing this, concentrating on the night and her frame of mind, and then suddenly she looks up and Kitty is standing there. She's clearly come out of the barn, and clearly, she wasn't in there alone in the middle of the night.

I remember the feeling of surprise and even shock I felt at that moment. Kitty was sleeping with Elizabeth's brother. It immediately made sense. Julian, immature, self-indulgent, isolated from all his usual self-destructive behaviors, and Kitty, a little simple minded, lonely, angry. Julian is a healthy young man of twenty-seven, one who has never before hesitated to get his itches scratched, and without delay. Of course. It made perfect sense, it moved the plot along in the right direction and provided a complication that I could work with. How long has this been going on? I demanded. Lilith answered: from the very beginning. Don't you remember the ribbon? Of course. In an early scene Julian kept playing with the ribbon on Kitty's hat, I remember him doing that and me saying, would you stop fidgeting? That was Lilith, setting me up with a Bent Spoon. Looking back, I saw the signs.

That's the long answer to where my plot ideas come from: some are imposed on me by history, others come out of my reading, most of them arise from letting the characters interact, and once in a while, Lilith hands me a bent spoon.

Posted by at 7:47 AM | Permalink

I had high hopes for Inspector Robinson, and find myself disappointed.

Posted by at 7:10 AM | Permalink

Soy lectora suya en España.

 He leído su libro "En tierras lejanas", me gustaría mucho saber si ya se ha editado el libro "Dawn on a Distant Shore" en castellano y en qué lugar se puede conseguir.

 Le ruego me conteste al siguiente e-mail...

And yet, I pursue the map. (Link in the right hand column, in case you've somehow missed it.) My newest scheme for getting people to jump in: that's how I'm going to give away an ARC of the new novel. It's less work than a trivia quiz and more fun, for me at least. On a date yet to be determined, I'll set up a new map and the first hundred people to put themselves on it will be entered into a random drawing for a signed ARC, and I'll send it anywhere, airmail.

Posted by at 5:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The trick to making a convoluted or complex plot work is (I think) pacing. You've got to keep things moving quickly enough to keep the viewer (or reader) running at an easy jog, too intrigued to give up, but breathless. I have been thinking about this since we watched Identity on DVD yesterday (John Cusack leads a great cast, well worth seeing), and trying to put together a short list of movies that have (for lack of a better term) a corkscrew plot that ends up someplace you don't see coming.

The obvious film in this category is The Sixth Sense. I have never run into anyone who went into the movie unprepared, and guessed the twist (at least, nobody I believed). The same is true of M. Night Shyamalan's next movie, Unbreakable (which I liked better than The Sixth Sense, but I'm pretty much alone in that camp.) Other movies which raised the confounding of expectations to an art form include Arlington Road, 12 Monkeys, Brazil, and The Usual Suspects (although TUS is flawed by an shift in POV toward the end that is, really, a cheat). Having said this, I realize that the twists in all these movies all have something in common, in that not one of them has what you'd call an uplifting or happy ending. I expect some people might disagree with me about Unbreakable, but I do find that ending rather dark. Running around Philadelphia wearing a rain slicker while you're being pelted with humanity's worst thoughts, well. It just doesn't strike me as a happy career choice.

[digression] It's no coincidence that my husband loves these movies, as he always roots for the Dark Forces. In fact, we've had an argument going for years about Brazil, in which he says the ending is a happy one and I insist it is absolutely the opposite of happy: a man driven insane by torture is not my idea of a good time. But, sez the Husband, he's finally where he wants to be. I don't know, maybe this is a mathematician vs non-mathematician view of things. [/digression]

Writing this I come to a realization: for me, the test of a really well done corkscrew plot is the fact that I am forced not only to accept the inevitability, but to embrace a Bad Ending as the only possible and true resolution. And more than that: I kinda like it.

Posted by at 2:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)