BIBLIOGRIND
Adventures in Writing, Reading & Book Culture
Archive for Ways of Seeing
March 12, 2013 at 7:33 pm · Filed under Ways of Seeing
In one of those chance meetings between writers we hear about, this meeting taking place on the web, I learned of a poet named Cedar Rey who hails from a distant place and doesn’t quite stay in one place (by all accounts, which is only one—mine, via his voice). He has talent, and I asked him if he’d like to share a poem on this website. He happily agreed. And in the spirit of place, and re-place-ment, and also of origins, I give you …
Meeting in the Darkness
In the booming ballet of fireworks
she was a tiny spark
yet soaring over the heads
of the event-woven strangers
she fell in love with a star.
The star said: “Your body is brief
and close,
while mine is distant
and eternal—
our love is not possible in this world.”
“I am the other world,”
said the spark
and vanished.
– Cedar Rey
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
March 4, 2013 at 4:04 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, Ways of Seeing
On Feb 15th, Lucien Zell hosted his monthly poetry/prose & musical series, SECRET CORDS, at Přátelé Stepního vlka in Prague to an audience of 25 or so. I think the five writers and four musicians made everyone happy with good verbal and musical entertaining for that cold Friday night in the dead of Prague’s winter.
Lucien opened the performances with his trademarked harmonizing number, set to the sounds of box concertina. When he croons he looks like a lone wolf in the forest, or the midnight crier from a far-off village. The song is a wonderful lead-in to readings. A tone of seriousness has been delivered; a bell has been tolled.
Cal Rambler led off the reading with several of his poems, linked by the theme of love, anguish, lost friendship, the potential for lust.
Jan Bičovský played guitar and sang folk tunes with an energy symbolic of the street-musician.
Elise Klein entertained us all with a stirring accordion song, and later played an unbelievably temperamental piano.
We also had a poet from Canada, whose short poems captured couplet-ed themes.
And then there was yours truly reading from my first novel, THE VILLAGE WIT.
Lucien read a few poems as well, naturally. One strong poem I recall is a villanelle, whose linking lines are strong on light & darkness, and the desire to write. (he’ll have to comment on this post and treat us to the entire poem (if he dares) or those two scintillating lines)
What is unique about SECRET CORDS is the blending of music and the spoken word. Art comes at us in different places under various forms. To have two of those forms together, in one evening at a single venue, places us in a position not used so often these years. Actually, it reminds me of something one reads about in the diaries of a Bloomsbury Set, or Gertrude Stein’s Paris salon, maybe NYC West Village in the ’50s (or the Bowery!).
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 22, 2013 at 9:06 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, Ways of Seeing
Guy Kawasaki has just self-published a book on self publishing. It has some good advice, about all the advice that you can already find from hugely varying sources, without much effort. Why is Guy’s book significant? Because he’s Guy Kawasaki.
If you don’t know Kawasaki, you probably aren’t particularly tapped into the computer/digital world. He made a name for himself as the “resident guru” to Apple Computer (before it had changed its name simply to “Apple” –– maybe that was one of Guy’s suggestions). He’s highly intelligent, personable, extremely generous with his experience and thus-ly acquired wisdom, and is a funny man, to boot.
About a year ago I read a similar article about Kawasaki’s self-publishing venture. He gave a long list of helpful hints for self-pubbers. But within these hints was also a hurdle. It was almost a caveat: to be successful in your book-marketing campaign, you should expect to pay around $10,000 to really get the word, your name, and the book’s title/cover art out to book buys. Of course, even shelling out money doesn’t mean you’ll sell more than a handful of books.
Unless, of course, your name is Guy Kawasaki.
There’s a new article about Guy on Forbes, and through the Cliffnotes highlights, I could see that Guy is capitalizing on his name and self-pubbing success. The hints, tips, and hard-edged advice are all there. Just what every writer who’s considered self-pubbing should consider before writing another word.
I had to respond:
While I appreciate Guy and Shawn’s advice, they (or at least, Guy) already has a name, and a reputation. Whereas 99% of people now writing (fiction or non-fiction) and are contemplating self-pubbing don’t have a name, reputation, or a track record behind them. Nor do they have the money to do as Guy suggests in order to “get the word out”. I read his early foray into successful self-pubbing (about a year ago?) and, basically, he said it takes a good $10,000+ to do a book up right vis-a-vis marketing plan (the number could be even higher). Now, for Guy to suggest that a no-name writer without a track record, no matter how good a book is, can get traction by simply throwing money around, is hardly helpful advice.
In fact, one of the best things a writer can still do in this mass-digital environment (with all its distractions) is to get a book reviewed. BUT… reviewers DO NOTICE THE PUBLISHING COMPANY, regardless that book buyers may not. And if the book is not from a big-name pub, and the author doesn’t have a name, the book will not be reviewed in the mainstream press.
My small press publisher (Siren & Muse) did all it could for me and my second novel (WHAT BEAUTY), as I did all I could for my own book: we put together galley letters, sent out multiple press releases (and follow-ups), sent ARCs to 45 review sites/newspapers/magazines. The result: Not one of them reviewed the book. But week in and week out, they all reviewed the same five or six books that had just come out that month—from the same 5-6 big-time publishers. Can anyone say “payoff!”?? Meanwhile, reader reviews across the different sales platforms have likened my book to “reading a classic” and other extremely flattering comments.
I absolutely agree with Guy and Shawn that self-pubbers must take their career into their own hands. That means they need to become professional book marketers as well as continue to write books. Fortunately, for the good authors writing quality books, we will not let adversity dissuade us from continuing what we’ve been working on for 10, 20, or sometimes 30 years.
Thanks for a good article.
My lament is not a bitter one. It’s merely, and lightly burned around the edges with, experience. I continue to market my book(s) and am always seeing good numbers come through the sales each month. I’d love for those to be higher. And by good, I mean … more than a handful.
Hey … where are all the readers!?
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 12, 2013 at 10:29 pm · Filed under Ways of Seeing
I’ve been on a LinkedIn discussion, which began as a “why to writers trash each other?” but changed into all manner of discussion, one of which was holding up the use of a freelance editor (or allowing editors to really have at your work). I’ve written about editors before (I was an editor, of non-fiction and fiction) for 10+ years. It’s really a thankless job, and yet if anything goes wrong (like low book sales, for starters), the editor is blamed, not the writer (oddly enough).
But on this thread I had to take answer one comment regarding putting much stock, trust, MONEY, and hope in the competence of an editor:
1st parry: We all need to beware the mystique of editors. They are, predominantly, insecure people who are afraid for their jobs (an exceptionally high-stress career, acquisitions is, at the mid-to-higher levels) and who feel they must “edit” to justify their existence. We writers need to be our own best editor: learn what your story is about, how it best needs to be told, and who is the best character to tell it. From there, the story all comes down to the writing: if you can write, you can make any story read well; if you can’t, then you’ll make the best idea read like shit.
2nd parry: Actually, Pete, your guess is incorrect: I’ve not had a “bad experience” with an editor. In fact I’ve had only good experiences with editors of my work, mostly because they are people whom I have the utmost trust and confidence in. Finding one of these is as difficult as finding one’s wife or husband. Which takes me to your second point: “this is the best time EVER to be a freelance editor.” Frankly, freelance editors (whose pedigree is always suspect—why don’t they have a mid-to-top job with a house?) are particularly suspect. What is it that makes a person think they can edit a book? Do they write books themselves? Do they read books? Do they know what helps (or harms) a character, narrative, dialogue, metaphor/simile/analogy? Aspiring writers shouldn’t go to editors to “fix” their work (because if the work needs enough editing to call it “fixing,” then it shouldn’t have been written in the first place). For a further disquisition on editing, take a look at J.C. Guest’s comments (above).
3rd parry: Alice, after you differ with me, you seem to say as much to defend my own position as “writer-as-own-best-editor” with your comment about reading aloud and re-reading (and thus re-writing & editing). I’d go further by suggesting writers understand what the editing process involves, which is not simply a second set of eyes on the story. Likewise, a good writer doesn’t look at his/her own work and see what they expect, they see what a reader sees and expects, thus making adjustments accordingly. Finally, re my “mystique” comment: since the early 20th C editors have gained such a quality (think Ezra Pound of T.S. Eliot, Maxwell Perkins of numerous authors) and some justified but many not so much. If you’re connected with the biz, you can count on two hands the number of editors who’ve been hailed as outstanding. And that’s not saying much, given the number of books published (before the advent of self-pubbing). But further, by you saying editing is “just another job” (and Gary saying “editors have to make a living”) … then I’m terribly suspicious about editors. Why? Because what I write is not just another book, and therefore I don’t want a person who thinks his/her time between waking up and going to bed “just another day at the office.” And this is where my point becomes its most sharp: don’t trust just anyone to read your work, and those you trust you should be ready to argue your point and make them defend their criticism; and … the investment in writing a work of art, literature, something that a writer could think will last 400 years, should only be put in the hands of someone that shares that view. Anything less is merely clocking in for a few coins at the end of the day.
And the final frame: Hey, writer … I appreciate all your opinions. And your caveats about (and advice for choosing) whom edits your work are spot on. Many young (and older) aspiring writers have commented abundantly on bad experiences with editors whom they’d evidently chosen poorly (one had said the editor had continually confused characters; others have complained about almost no editing done, while paying a hefty up-front fee). I have always taught (and preached) that good writing is essentially good re-writing and excellent self-editing.
Keep on writing!
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
January 1, 2013 at 6:39 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, The Prague Blog, Ways of Seeing
In 2011 I was able to read 49 books (mostly novels) and don’t know exactly why that count fell to 27 in 2012. I called 2012 The Year of the Big Book because the average page count was 436. By today’s publishing standards, that’s nearly double the book — and double the pleasure.
For commentary on each of the 27 books, look at the Books Read string. Otherwise, the stats for and my chronological list of books read for 2012 follows:
2012: 27 books – 11,776 pages – apprx words: 5.1 million ….
Biggest surprise enjoyment: “The Magus” (it took me back to carefree years of college) … Biggest Disappointment: “Polite Sex” (missed opportunities; perhaps poorly edited) … Weirdest Story: “One Big Damn Puzzler” (life on a Pacific island) … Best Drama: “The Kindly Ones” (life of a Nazi SS commander) … Best Writing: Philip Roth’s books simply kill me, how good a stylist, storyteller, and ear for dialogue he has … Biggest Surprise: “East of Eden” (Steinbeck can write some character!) … Most Memorable Character: Lucy Nelson in “When She Was Good” (Roth) … Funniest: “Solar” … Best Sex Scene: “Rabbit at Rest” (actually, one of only a few in all these books) … Best Narrative Story: “Suttree” (McCarthy can lay down scene & place like few others) … Widest Use of Characters: “Middlesex” (everyone simply worked and was needed) … Oddest Use of Characters: “The Philosopher’s Pupil” (Murdoch’s characters sometimes do the oddest things!) … Most-Traveled Character: Augie March … A Little Disappointed: “Amsterdam” (I expected more, of everything) … My Favorite Book – Maybe: “Rabbit at Rest”
1/10 In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike (488)
2/6 The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow (611)
2/28 The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (250 – fired)
2/29 Reading Myself and Others by Philip Roth (300)
3/15 Suttree by Cormac McCarthy (465)
3/31 The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow (295)
4/4 Polite Sex by James Wilcox (270)
4/8 Solar by Ian McEwan (386)
4/21 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (320)
4/29 The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (390)
5/20 The Philosopher’s Pupil by Iris Murdoch (550)
6/5 Rabbit at Rest by John Updike (425)
6/30 The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (975)
7/4 The Secret Life of Words by Henry Hitchings (343)
7/12 Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (278)
7/22 One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding (450)
8/16 The Magus by John Fowles (642)
8/24 I Married a Communist by Philip Roth (323)
9/2 Basic Bech by John Updike (303)
10/10 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (510)
10/19 All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (438)
11/7 East of Eden by John Steinbeck (590)
11/15 A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis (609)
11/24 Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer (274)
11/30 When She Was Good by Philip Roth (291)
12/4 The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem (440)
12/30 The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch (560)
In 2013 I want to read some of my contemporaries, including several Indie authors who have put out books that sound good and read very well. Otherwise, I have lots on my plate, as I’m working on a first draft of my next novel, “Max, the blind guy”.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
November 14, 2012 at 8:47 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog, Ways of Seeing
This happens almost naturally. I read an article via an iGoogle link. And its subject gets me thinking about what people have written about the article. During the recent USA prez campaign, I noticed the vast majority of comments were Obama-negative. I truly thought he was in trouble for re-election. When he won — damned near a landslide, when you take into account the swing states he nabbed — I realized that so many more RED-STATE KNUCKLEHEADS w/LITTLE EDUCATION were the ones spewing such vile opposition. Frankly, this was hard to tell, given that few enough people identified their party affiliation.
I rarely comment myself. What’s the point? It’s like talking to a wall, or a dumb cousin who’s “seen the light” after years of cocaine abuse (and killing innocent animals).
Today’s article was titled “Obama’s Opening Bid: $1.6 Trillion” — a simple, journalistic, rundown of what B.O. has proposed to Congress. Granted, Obama — just like any president — has no revenue/spending authority. That’s left to the Congress. Likewise, what Obama has tried to do over the last 4 yrs is admirable, though there is plenty of room for criticism. Mainly: he’s just not a very good steward of America’s needs. Particularly: he doesn’t yet know how to wield the Bully Pulpit, one of his best weapons.
Anyway, the vitriol from the Right flowed from the very beginning. Words such as “moron” and “idiot” and “socialist” were used — evidently forgetting who was in the White House b/w 2001 & 2009. This time I decided to answer a few. You’ll easily find context, I think.
What strikes me continually is how poorly educated Americans are — of all stripes. The USA truly is filled with people who wave their high school or college diplomas as if those have given them all they’ll need to for life, and therefore have shut off their minds.
My responses to some posts:
1) Corporate welfare = … capitalism? Wake up, alan, you’ve been fed bad info since birth. And apparently you’ve never questioned it as poison.
2) By “destroy” you do mean during GW Bush’s 8yrs, right? When he took office the USA was the greatest creditor nation in history. After two wars worthy of putting him in changes and hanging him along with his W.H. and most of Congress, the USA became history’s greatest debtor nation. At least Obama’s trying to do something. What would you have gotten with Romney? A big fat dead country.
3) Not talking about the poor, just the NATION that was neglected under your boy BUSH. Wake up. Learn some accounting. Wall Street and Romney’s pals aren’t going to do anything for the likes of you.
4) Those aren’t “entitlements” alan — people have put their tax dollars into these insurance systems. It’s gov’t that uses the money for “general purposes” (read, “wars” and “corp bailouts”) that have hurt those programs. Neither FOXnews nor corp-owned broadcasting will teach you these things.
5) They’re not tax increases, “Captain” … simply bringing rates back to what they were before BUSH gave away the house to his buddies. Were you one of them? If not, then you’re in the river as everyone else. Learn some history; don’t expect to be spoon fed your whole life.
6) Before cell phones were invented, people didn’t known they COULD exist. Try another argument, such as: cut all corporate welfare, invest in renewable energy, and costs come down. Look up in the sky. See that big yellow ball? Unlimited energy … and with the right tech: FREE
7) So cash in your life’s winnings and live as Romney does, Biff. What? Don’t have millions in the bank? Must be your own damned fault.
8) Watch more FOXnews … you’ll get the clear picture.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
October 13, 2012 at 9:01 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture, The Prague Blog, Ways of Seeing
That’s right … I’m reading three books at once. “All the King’s Men” by Penn Warren, “Through the Language Glass” by Guy Deutscher, and “The Ecstasy of Influence” by Jonathan Lethem. Good books, all—a fabulous novel, a thought-provoking meditation on language-culture influence, and essays on books & arts culture.
These are mood-related books for me. And time-space related, as well. As I’m trundling around Prague, or writing at home, and always trying to avoid everything re socio-politico-televistic, I have options. Lately, one option has not been wholly engrossing/intellect-grabbing. And since I’m very story oriented, I’ve wanted to read more non-fiction to fill out my philosophical cravings. Novels pull me into their world and don’t let me go. That’s okay. I prefer the ephemeral stage than the actual. Life would be terribly boring for me without the written story.
But here’s where I become contradictory. This love of story comes from passion for language. Deutscher has this fascinating theory about “why the world looks different in other languages.” This is not science, but culture, politics, the passage of time, and … science, too! He begins with the concept of color. Sounds as easy as primary and secondary. It’s not.
Likewise a deflection from fiction is Lethem’s collected essays. I’d read his journalism in Harper’s and the NYT and elsewhere. While I’ve tried to stay away from criticism and cultural essays over the past 8 months or so (mainly because what I’ve found written is done poorly, in my opinion, or taking such esoteric angles on subjects, that all I could do by the middle of such essays was to sigh. Sigh.) there’s that other tug at my conscience that asks me to “please” keep up with society (or at least with one of its subheadings, “culture”).
The Lethem essays focus on art and writing and book culture topics. I hadn’t known Lethem was a science fiction writer. And a good writer, too. His passion for the works of J.G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick are enough to draw me toward that genre. Which, well said by many before me, in their capable hands transcends any notion of genre. On the other hand, both of those authors are dead, and their greatest stories were written between the time I wasn’t even a twinkle in my parent’s eyes (they hadn’t even met each other yet, in Dick’s case) and while I was in my Stephen King phase. Which makes it fortunate that good stories transcend contemporary and, especially, pop culture.
At some point soon I’m going to dive back into “King’s Men” to finish this masterpiece. It’s worth savoring, actually, so I’m not un-happy that I’ve had it going so many weeks. (to confess, I put it aside when I found a copy of “Cloud Atlas”) Also, I want to begin “East of Eden” soon; it’s a story I’ve wanted to read for many years. As for the other two: books on language and of collected essays can be read just about anywhere; and on those odd days where I find myself torn between fantasy and uber-reality, the short-form comes in handy.
September 1, 2012 at 10:31 am · Filed under Ways of Seeing
I was engaged in a short (for me) but bitter (for some commentators) dialogue on LinkedIn two weeks ago that, at once, encouraged me to drop that group (The Writer’s Guild) and come to understand what I believe about writing.
The discussion began with my string “If You Have a Thick Skin, You Might Want to be a Writer” for which I included the edgy, and intentionally provocative question, “Do too many people think they can write books? (I mean GOOD books…)”.
To make a long story short, the majority of posts took exception to my making myself some paragon of good taste, which I had not, only posed that question. People got nasty, said I was a snob, said I didn’t have the right to say what was “good writing” — or what was not. They said, as a major block of like-minded voices, anybody who finished of book, or story, or … anything … was a good writer and that — their reasons never extended as far as explanation — no one could tell them their writing was BAD WRITING.
To me these people sounded like amazingly stupid interlopers onto my turf. Yes, some of them had written books. Yes, some of them have been professional journalists for years. Yes, some have even “sold lots of books” and got “great reviews” on Amazon. But all of this really doesn’t mean anything, because unless you can make statements about WHY a book is good or bad, and WHY writing lacks everything needed to tell a story, and WHY the sales figures for books merely computers units sold, then you cannot be considered a reasonable judge of literature, of quality, or even literary taste.
I believe this because there must be some standards placed on GOOD, GREAT, BAD, OKAY, and AWFUL. “If you don’t know it, you can’t be taught it,” is not a fair statement about judging literature, because the teaching of standards is no less possible than the teaching of speaking or reading a language. Both have rules, and there have always been rules about what is literature and what is genre fiction — at least until the advent of Amazon publishing, and those writer manqués with thin skins who like to spout off. Listen: just because people say something over and over (“any book is good, who are you to question that?”) doesn’t make it true.
As an egalitarian micro-society, Amazon publishing lives up only to Robespierre and his blood-soaked henchmen. Their indictment of French society and opening the gates of prisons and letting loose the “freedoms of man” only served to, finally, murder a lot of people. This is what happens when you put the mob in control of government, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad, and even taste.
“Fifty Shades of Gray” isn’t so bad!
Yes it is, and here’s why: the sentence structure is B-class; its imagery is pedestrian or not there at all; its dialogue is fatuous; the scenes are repetitive; the characters are lifeless (this, for a sex-laden story!); and its sex scenes are ridiculous and highly un-erotic. These aren’t merely opinion, or a matter of taste. If you like these books, like them for the story, if there actually is one there, but don’t claim the writing is what grips you.
Have books been dummed-down so much that most people don’t know the difference between good and bad? And that good and bad is NOT a matter of taste? That most best sellers are not good simply by virtue of selling a lot of books? It seems to me that, these days, to scale the proverbial “bar” once set to determine quality writing, one must walk downstairs into the basement.
Let me end this here: it is more than opinion that determines good writing, and love for craft is part of that, as is love of language, as is using dialogue that speaks to theme as much as drives story, as characters are fully realized without a reader’s need to “add” his own interpretation of who/what the character is, as scene is developed with an eye toward imagery that brings the five senses to play, as language is thematic and playful with the subject, as sentences are coherent and develop a coherent story that has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. No, not all stories that contain these are good (because then “taste” does play a part) but that’s a start. The authors that practice this craft? Roth and Updike, Atwood and Murdoch, McEwan and Bellow, Banville and Ackroyd, Naipaul and Theroux, Stead and Lessing … to name a few. Most of them are dead; where are today’s?
Someone in the thread made a comment directed at me, “You’re riding a very tall horse and I wouldn’t want to be you when you get knocked off it.”
This is my answer to that bit of wisdom: The horse on which I ride IS high, well high above the mud and slop and shit that a good portion of “writers” now stand, sit, or wallow around like pigs. I write strong literature, books that make you question why we are who we are; characters who challenge your self-identity; narrative that is striking and poetic and asks you to bring some level of intelligence to the page. And on this horse I hardly ever look down, for that is not my need, and my eyesight is on the horizon, where the scepters of writing-Kings and writing-Queens await me, where Knights-of-writing stand tall abreast of my steed, helping to keeping safe the idea, and my honest practice, of GOOD WRITING.
I hold my own books up for such scrutiny as anyone might make a challenge.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
August 18, 2012 at 10:21 pm · Filed under Ways of Seeing
We writers have a conundrum that is our life-blood and our life-long bane: how much time can we reasonably spend writing each day?
If given carte blanche, our “job” would be to write, read, correspond w/book journalists (some might call them “compassionate critics of my books”), and go on literary tours that take us to major cities and small towns across our home country and every country in which our books have been translated. And what’s more… okay, stop!
Wait a minute. Is this what all writers want, or just me? Honestly, it must be somewhere in between. But even as a somewhere-in-between notion, we’re talking the second conditional for 99.999% of writers. Yet that’s still me I’m talking about. So let me talk about this, The Writing Life, as a Way of Seeing.
You must understand that this life I’ve proposed in not so far fetched, even in the real time of working for a living, being married, contemplating buying puppies (two sausage dogs, bitches, great companions, though sometimes noisy), and moving to yet another country (my fourth in 7 yrs).
Here’s how this The Writing Life works (for me): I’ve long-ago ditched the concept of “carving out time” to write, read, love, travel; instead, I’ve carved out time to “make a living” in between writing and reading and writing-about-reading, and travel and love and thinking about the puppies. My world is mostly a fictional world, lived inside my head while I walk, while I eat, while I talk with friends, while I read, while I fuck (hey, you never know when a great idea will pop up), and, especially, while I make a living.
Let me clear on this one point — Nothing gets in my way of this … except when I cross the street, wherein I take time to look both ways.
I do this — all of this — successfully because at the time I am living outside my present writing project, I’m actually allowing the writing project to live inside my everyday life. And when I’m inside my writing project, I feel some of the way through it by negotiating with my memory of life outside the writing project (present, past, past perfect, and even the future tense). Stay with me here, because this concept is not so difficult ….
Eudora Welty spoke glowingly of being receptive to her world when she wrote, and taking whatever happened in her day — verbatim events and speech, or metaphorical or as fictional constructs based on the former — for use in her fiction. It didn’t matter what these were: dialogue, scene, place, gesture, group dynamics, memories or dreams or anecdotes or jokes told by people. All of this could be used at will or discarded if useless. And … this is the best part, as I brought Welty’s idea into my own writing life … all of what lands in my net can be changed to suit whatever I need it for to make my story good, better, and the best my abilities can make it after draft, re-draft, third draft, fourth, fifth and onward until every written word makes perfect sense for its position and holds true to the world of its creation and the story for which it lives.
That’s the long and short of this concept. The only adjustment to it is how much you want to continue interacting with the “real” world in place of the “fictional” world where you are happiest (or happy-ERRR, if that helps soften the disconnection with so-called society that you might think I’m proposing; which I am; sort of).
The one drawback to this The Writing Life concept is that it’s terribly selfish to most of the outside world. On the other hand, if you don’t want much to do with the so-called outside world, then this concept begins to look better and better. For one single example, I give you TELEVISION. I gave up TV nearly seven years ago. In that time I’ve been more creative, more dynamic, more ME, and more productive than I had been for 25 years previous to that conscious decision to kill the machine that spews out mindless mush. I have no guilt over it’s murder.
The only time I need to compromise with this The Writing Life is when I’m spending time with my wife, us two alone, time for each other, time set on our own private terms, time for which we don’t need to negotiate or compromise because this TIME takes place on the go and in-between and over-and-back-on-time; this is time that I truly cherish because, without it, I might just leave the real world for the fictional altogether.
Which, on the face of things, can be scary. But let’s face it, for a writer, there’s not much else we want to do anyway.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
August 7, 2012 at 8:55 am · Filed under Ways of Seeing
“Literature and Fiction” — You’ll find this category listed on a plaque in the major bookstores. These titles are the industry’s marked division between contemporary/historical-themed stories that have been divided from the genres typically titled “Horror” or “Mystery” and “Thrillers” or “Science Fiction” — plot-heavy stories whose characters are, well, part of the plot. Oh, and then there’s one of the newer categories, “Dark Romance” (love that has an obsession with fangs, is my guess).
“To Categorize” has been an ordering device since Caxton’s day. Cervantes based his most famous character on the delusional fantasies one gets from reading too much — in Quixote’s case, Chivalric Novels. You need only jump a few generations to find what LeCarre and Fleming had developed on top of Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” … and how Steven King brought back what Edgar Allen Poe had begun with most of his short stories a hundred years earlier.
Are there differences between the “literature” of Cervantes and LeCarre and Conrad and Poe and the “genre” of King and Fleming and (most recently) Larsson and Meyer? I can only answer with my opinion, not any difinitive answer. And my answer is…
Yes, but less are the differences in writing quality as there are with intent. You can investigate this yourself by going to the library, bookstore, or look through your own shelves. Pull out several genre-category books you know well, and the same for literature-category titles. How does each begin? How are the stories sustained? What happens at the end? Easy questions to answer, really. The more difficult questions to answer are What do you know about the three main characters? How did the beginning make you feel; and how was that different compared to the ending? What is the turning point in the psychology of the main character? Do the characters represent real life, and does the story say anything about the culture in which it was written?
If you answered the first series of questions with details about the events that take place, in which a character must do something in order to prevent, or make certainty, something happening; and if you can tell me only that this character lives in a particular city, likes wine over beer, and eats sandwiches standing up at the kitchen sink, then you’ve probably gathered the definition of genre fiction: plot heavy, light on character introspection, with “twists” at the end, or beginning, of each chapter.
If you answered the second series of questions by focusing on relationships, emotions, character action & re-action to each other, dialogue rich with introspection and investigating each others’ motivations and emotions, then I think you’ve gathered a good definition of literature: little or no obvious plot (or that which doesn’t turn every other chapter), focus on characterization and motivation and emotional connection to events/other characters, and an overall relationship and association with contemporary culture. Also, information that is left out is as important as that which is given. Likewise, on nearly every page you’ll find something wise.
But let’s face it, lots of classic AND contemporary “literature” sucks because its intent is not well planned and then poorly executed by a less-than-competent wordsmith whose best-formed sentences often begin with “The…”. On the other hand, such well-plotted — and highly crafted sentences — can be found throughout the novels of Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, Sophie Hannah, Larry Niven, John LeCarre, Tom Clancy, King and Straub.
However, they won’t be found in James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwell, John Grisham, Dan Brown, or Sue Grafton. Heavy names on the Best Sellers lists every year, right? That’s true. But that doesn’t mean they write good story, nor good prose.
What people read is as personal as who they marry. This makes sense. Yet even a marriage has its ups and downs, and must evolve over time; evolution that’s not so much going toward something “better” by anyone’s definition, but at least something different.
My marriage with genre fiction ended shortly after I finished writing my second novel. It was crime fiction, and it was pretty good: lots of story, plenty of twists, some blackmail and murder, and sex that was less gratuitous and more in line with the plot. But I had found that, with this second novel, there was nothing more I could “say” to readers.
My divorce with genre happened because I married too young (first novel, 18; second, 24). And then I realized there was far more to talk about, and the stories in which I could say so much more, in the “category” of literature, where characters reigned, not plot twists; where life could be investigated against the backdrop of contemporary society; and, finally, a place and “person” whom I could love over and over, finding more inside her, getting more from her, giving more of myself to her, than anything from that youthful, whimsical love.
post-script…
Lit-Fict: if the “plot” can best be explained by ITS THEME, then it’s literary (eg, “A man thinks the world is against him and his revolutionary ideas about architecture, but in the end he is proven wrong by his success.” — “The Fountainhead”)
Genre Fict: if the “plot” can best be explained by WHAT HAPPENS, then it’s genre (eg, “A vampire tells his life story to a journalist, and we learn the chronicles of vampirism over a two-hundred-year period.” — “Interview with the Vampire.”)
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available as an ebook, too.
The Village Wit (2010) is a humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love intersect. Read an excerpt here. This book is also available as an ebook.
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