BIBLIOGRIND
The Life of a Wordsmith — Read … Live … Write
Archive for January, 2012
January 7, 2012 at 6:26 pm · Filed under The Letters of Mark Beyer, The Prague Blog
I only just signed up with Twitter today: @bibliogrind ….
My first “tweets” went to a poet in brooklyn, ny (she likes Norman Rush’s “Mating”; a literary fiction society; my Chamonix mate, Chris’s “Living Websites” blog (as a thanks for promoting THE VILLAGE WIT); and to Alfred A. Knopf publishers (“Yes, writers need to tweet to show what human lies behind the written word, the characters, the wonderful lies&makebelieve”) ….
The word “tweet” reminds me of Tweetie Bird from the Warner Bros. Loony Toons shorts of the ’60s-’70s. It fits, though, because at a mere 140 characters, any message is the sound of bird in a cage.
Short messages — or super-short-short short stories — also remind me of the anecdote by Ernest Hemingway, who said the saddest story he ever heard was the six words he read in a newspaper’s classified ads: “For Sale, baby shoes. Never used.” A factual story or not, Hem summed up devastating emotional pain in 33 words.
January 4, 2012 at 1:42 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
It’s more like spring in Prague, and far away from the winter wonderland I had expected (and dreaded). No worries though; I’ll take blue skies and 45-degrees all Jan & Feb.
Meanwhile, the idiots at the Czech national health insurance have inexplicably denied my application. Turns out having marriage rights to an EU citizen means little in this fucked up country. Ironically, what I pay in a private policy is cheaper than what I’d pay for Czech’s shitty NHS; and I’ll get better service, too!
I’m immersed in marketing “Mark Beyer : author” as a brand. This sets up better coverage for THE VILLAGE WIT novel; the upcoming WHAT BEAUTY novel; and all work in the future. I’ve recently learned that trad pub houses are now offering as little as $5k advanced, with no mrktg budget, and demanding rights to this, that & the other to basically own the author and his work for perpetuity. Yes, they are running scared, and like all tyrants, they’re fighting to the death.
Meanwhile, WHAT BEAUTY is with SleepyGirl Solutions and Lia, whose design will be ready in a month or so. And me? I’m thinking ahead, to the next novel: Max the Blind Guy
January 3, 2012 at 8:40 pm · Filed under The Letters of Mark Beyer
There is always a lot of talk online among writers and editors about the importance of having one’s manuscript “professionally edited.” I couldn’t agree more: this question is of the utmost importance, and can decide for you whether your manuscript gets published or not (or is even publishable). Writers are often on the fence; editors always say they’re ready to do the job. So far, pretty obvious opinions and responses.
But all of this leads to many more questions than solves this riddle: Who do you trust to edit your manuscript?
New writers seem to think they can get away with doing little, once they’ve finally wrenched the words from their brains. They often send out manuscripts that shouldn’t have even found the bottom of a drawer for two years before they came to their senses and used it to stoke the fire.
Seasoned writers understand that, at the very least, someone who knows books and can read critically must have a go at their “readable” draft before they take (another) “final” look at the manuscript. This could be a literary friend, or a professional editor. The difference between these two methods shows that new writers are yet married to their words, while seasoned writers accept that their first good effort (which could be the 4th draft!) may need a lot more work than they had thought.
This brings us to The Professional Editor.
While editors are schooled in the art of editing (you’d better believe that editing is an art — my 20 yrs of experience has taught me at least that much) — seeing the global picture, understanding structure, how characters work, how narrative flows &etc — they are human beings, with all the potential for error in judgment, aptitude, and practice. We writers want to believe in editors; we want to trust our editor. But in the end, our story is our creation; few of us want to be told to cut this, change that, take out this character, or build a new character from scratch, as these (one or all) “can make your book better!”
“Better” is a loaded term. So are “marketable” and “readable” and “great!”
Professional editors may be just as suspect as pub houses these days (and their contracts). You can group agents in this same category. While an agent will want you to get your book edited before they take you on (they have lots of names “on file” that they’ll gladly “share” with you) this brings in all possible scenarios of suggested changes. Are you ready, or willing, to make those changes? Next, the pub house an agent helps you to sign with will then assign you an editor, who, likely, will see the book in yet another light, and suggest (or dictate) further changes.
Are you seeing what can happen to your book? Do you understand how your story can suddenly be written by committee?
There is a different approach to the trust question. Writers need to understand that they need to be their own best editor; to understand what the story is about, how the characters fit and work, and then how to properly write and re-write that story (as a wordsmith, not a story typist). Only then will writers understand how to judge professional editors. Remember, editors are just like any other human, but who (hopefully) have read more and can understand a manuscript and a story (AND, especially, your story). Oftentimes, editors are not the best of writers (that’s why they’re editors). I learned that the best editors are also pretty damn good writers themselves.
The famous Scribner’s editor, Maxwell Perkins, barely touched Hemingway’s novels; made various minor suggestions to Fitzgerald; and worked hundreds of hours with Tom Wolfe. If you read their work, and know them, you’ll understand why. Should we all be Hems and Fitzes? Yes, why not; they knew their characters, they knew what they wanted to say, they did it in a concise (or at least needful) manner.
Here, then, are my four most important tips on how to chose an editor:
1. Be your own best editor, first of all (you can do this by being a damn good writer); understand your book and all that it is supposed to do for the audience. If/when you work with an editor, you can explain what you’ve done with your story, why, and why it works as you have written it. (of course, the story should need no explanation)
2. If you use an editor before you send out that ms to an agent or publisher, find an editor with a professional track record; an established House he/she has worked for helps; better yet, get referrals from authors, and read the authors’ stories the editor worked on.
3. Ask the editor if he/she writes; if the editor doesn’t write, tell him/her to have a nice day, and move on; for the editors who do write, ask to read their work.
4. Find an editor who edits your type of writing. If you write literary fiction, don’t work with a genre editor; and vise-verse.
January 2, 2012 at 4:25 pm · Filed under Ways of Seeing
At a dinner party over the holidays, we got to talking about Samuel Beckett through the ebb and flow of conversation. I mentioned that people can surf to websites and download the text of many of Beckett’s plays, including “Waiting for Godot,” “Krapp’s Last Tape,” and “Endgame.” A dinner mate brought around the comment that Beckett’s plays were not meant to be read, but performed. I couldn’t agree more, yet actor’s must first read the play before they can perform a part. Likewise, director’s must gain an insight of a play—ideally to what the author had in mind while writing it—so they can stage the drama to its greatest affect.
I read Waiting for Godot before I saw it performed at London’s Old Vic Theater in 1997, with Ben Kingsley as Estragon. I wanted to “get a handle on it,” as I thought at the time. My reading was quick, as I remember. This wasn’t a mistake, per se, but it did show me something about the difference between reading a Beckett play (perhaps any play) and seeing it performed. I had little knowledge of Samuel Beckett beyond survey courses at college, or what I would pick up in the bookstore while browsing the stacks. Then came the stage performance at The Old Vic.
The silence that stretched between one spoken line and the next astonished me. It wasn’t the silence itself, actually, but what was happening during these periods between Estragon and Vladimir’s dialogue. I saw reflection—on what was said, what was meant by what was said, or what could be meant by what was said; I saw where a piece of dialogue had taken a character into his present condition, and nowhere else. I saw expressive countenance, the enlightened eyes or frown-in-flummox. I saw the dramatic gesture, an act with meaning all of itself. I saw the ponderable and the imponderable between Estragon and Vladimir. Silence says so much, Beckett was telling us.
In an interview with Kingsley and Alan Howard (Vladimir) near the end of rehearsals for the Old Vic performances, of which I’ve only today been able to read thanks to web archives, Kingsley and Howard had this to say:
Ben Kingsley: We’ve done such a lot of talking during rehearsals. There comes a time when things have to be allowed to settle. Where our brains ought to be now is veering towards silence.
Alan Howard: We’ve had to dig and delve. It’s the nature of the beast. Godot is made up of millions of fragments and connections.
[ . . . ]
Howard: I think it would be very difficult for actors to do this play unless there was a natural aptitude for each other . . .
Kingsley: . . . to be in on the same joke.
Howard: It can’t be arranged or structured. There’s such an astonishing musicality in the text and rhythms of speaking, intonation and connection, quite apart from what is being said. [Becket] uses simple language, which becomes more and more involved. A simple line can carry great complexity with the way it is timed, intoned. The way in which it rubs up against the line before and the line after it. It is a piece of material constantly moving, with 10,000 interweaving strands.
Kingsley: It eats you up. You go home in a take-away bag.
Howard: It’s very, very exacting.
In 1985 Samuel Beckett directed his three most famous plays—Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape, and Endgame—for film productions, grouped under the title “Beckett Directs Beckett.” I’ve read several accounts of Beckett’s directorial involvement, including that, during rehearsals, he made many textual changes to the “acting text” of the plays. At one point in the rehearsals for Endgame, Beckett stopped the actor, Rick Cluchey, and asked him to wait a few beats of silence between one word and the next. The silence, Beckett told him, would be all important for the audience to understand.
Who but the author has the last word on interpretation? Some would argue that answer. Especially when you take into context the fact that Beckett made changes to his originally published text for those 1985 performances. We’re talking as much as 30 years between publication (and first performance) and these new productions. What had Beckett seen? Did that come from hindsight, or just a practiced (practical?) sense to squeeze the most out of the language for better effect? No one knows for sure. Beckett didn’t enlighten anyone, although the change to his plays will undoubtedly contribute to an answer, as insufficient as that may be for some people.
What is clear, I think, is that Beckett never lost his sense of the absurdity of life—or life’s absurdities: take either for what they say. And in Beckett’s vision, there was silence.
January 1, 2012 at 2:45 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Good tidings to all.
AsiaMark feasted on shrimp scampi, sauteed asparagus, mushrooms w/dill, a crispy salad, and warmed bread. Champagne to start, with a toast to love, prosperity, gentle moves, and longevity of life and creative thought; in the new year and beyond.
But before all of this, I cooked: the mushrooms in olive oil and dill; hot-sauteed asparagus w/hints of salt & pepper; and garlic fried in oil then shrimped dropped on top for a fast sear before getting to the table. Asia fixed up the salads, and a nicoise dressing. What fun!
The fireworks had already begun across town, and we could hear window knockers from time to time. We listened to some music, a mellow Spanish guitar. With food on the table, we began to eat with purpose.
Odd, how cooking can take long, but eating is a little-piggy-in-the-trough episode. We finished with some chocolate (me, dark; Asia, milk) and a few gingerbread cookies. Now nicely fattened, we made a clean up, and then a repast to the movie theater area of the house, where we watched a scintillating drama, “Shrink” … about a psychiatrist in free-fall, staring Kevin Spacey. Highly recommended by Mr Rabbit & The Foxling.
We paused the late-rr movie to toast the NewYear; watched the bells and fireworks on TV from Copenhagen (of all places), and then saw some bright pops in the night sky down our block coming from the park. Not much, this year; it was sleeting.
After midnight, we got to talk with Matt & Jen, out in Utah, then it was onto finishing the movie (Good Will Hunting). We went to bed, woke around 10am., and now leading a nice lazy (but proto-productive) day.
Good wishes to all! May your hangovers be cured by the hair of the dog!
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