BIBLIOGRIND
Adventures in Writing, Reading & Book Culture
January 16, 2013 at 9:19 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
A good editor — an experienced reader who understands ALL aspects of a book, fiction or nonfiction, as specified by his particular expertise — will be able to look deeply into the story, right down to the sentence level (the prose). This is “close reading” — and for a good “reading” of your work, you’ll need to pay. In fact, a good editor is worth the money. But finding a good editor is difficult.
Now what I mean by “all aspects of the book” includes far more than structure (in fact, structure is merely a look at the surface, and, frankly, a close-reading high-schooler can do this well). The seasoned, sharp, intuitive-minded editor will understand each of your characters and his/her position in the book. He’ll be able to tell you which character is the most useful, and perhaps could be given more page time, and which character(s) can be excised. This editor will be able to direct you to your best pages of dialogue, and then compare that to your worst pages (the best editor can NEVER tell you how to write, or be a better writer, per se). The editor will be able to look deeply into your narrative abilities and (again) point out the strong vs the not-so-strong. The editor will be capable of feeling your theme and seeing where it can be strengthened through strong imagery, dialogue, metaphor, foreshadowing, the odd phrase and off-hand (seemingly so) comment by narrator/character. And then, the editor will be able to look at your structure and tell you if there’s a possibility to shuffle chapters (not like a deck of cards, mind you) to get more punch up front and better drama at the end.
All that I’ve said here is but a fingernail’s scratch against the breadth and depth of the value a good editor can bring you. Of course, if you’re a capable writer, you can see into your own ms for starters. Being (or becoming) your own best editor is about being able to, firstly, identify all aspects of your story, and, secondly, understand how each fits—as a puzzle piece or an intra-related part (from a distance or page-by-page)—and then, thirdly, when you spot something that’s “wrong,” being able to fix it. Let’s face it: if an editor can show you 5 things that are “wrong” but you can’t fix any of them, or the most important of them, then the story is no good. This can be a real problem, and there are so many ways to get oneself into a problem like this if you, the writer, are not careful with your story all the way through the writing process.
Good luck, everyone, and … 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 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.
December 16, 2012 at 9:21 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
“My best scenes strike at the worst time to write them down.”
“My best dialogue comes to me when I’m on the toilet.”
“My best ideas come when I’m in the shower!”
“My best edits come when I’m walking down the street.”
_______________
The easy answer to these laments is to have a notebook at your side at all times. But in the shower? Okay, a tough sell, perhaps, but I’ve done it (near the shower, not inside). Let me assure you, wet paper and the idea secured is better than no idea.
However, this post is not about HOW to keep that idea no matter what the circumstances. My focus here is to get you to allow your mind to be fresh and ready for ideas at any time … and ALL THE TIME.
I say this because, for many novice writers, keeping the story strong—and fresh—is a struggle. Ideas wrap around us like the wind, often enough, but the wind is made of millions of particles. Within all those ideas is the ONE you need, not the dozens that don’t have glue, or sense.
Part of correcting when your story ideas come, and how they come, develops through story preparation and consistent writing progress. Here’s what I mean.
When we work on a story, our minds need to continually ask our “story brain” particular questions. What is the story about? What is the purpose of this scene? What can this character say, and what shouldn’t he/she say? When does this moment take place? How do these characters connect to the overall story? When should this scene end? How should the next scene begin?
Such questions are not only appropriate for the opening days of story development. They are questions that need to be asked of yourself each day, before you open the file to start the day’s writing. Here’s what I’ve learned works for me. I print a pamphlet that lists the major characters and their background, their motivations, and where I expect them to be by the end of the story. Then I list the minor characters, who they are, and how they connect to the major characters AND to the story (if you have trouble answering the questions, or haven’t an answer, you probably shouldn’t be writing the story yet). I also have “notes” on story progression, lists of possible scenes (already developed in some fashion, or a 2-sentence “nudge,” a snatch of dialogue, or a developed scene that needs fleshing out and MORE development), and other “lists” that are part of the development of the story in my mind … that might or might not get into the written story.
Notice the layering of this plan: characters, overall story, scenes or scene-by-scene development, dialogue, lists of ideas about story/place/sensory perception/character traits & etc to keep in the forefront of your mind before, during, and after the writing day. When this “plan” is followed (and in many ways, I’m not even talking about the day-to-day story-development process) I always have my story with me.
When your story is always with you, day after day, all the hours in the day, and even in your dreams, ideas for that day’s writing AND what you wrote yesterday OR the day before (or six weeks before), or what you intend to write tomorrow or next month (or haven’t even thought about writing yet!) becomes first-nature, becomes intuitive, becomes part of your life, becomes part of your thoughts as much as the thoughts of crossing the street, or sitting down on the train, or waiting at a stoplight or opening up a book or making a cup of coffee … or sitting on the toilet.
One the other hand, IF YOU DON’T WRITE EVERY DAY OR MOST DAYS IN THE WEEK, your story is simply not with you enough to encourage strong and consistent story ideas … no matter where you find yourself in a given day. I could be wrong on this, but after 15 years of teaching fiction writing and 25 years of writing fiction, I’ve found consistency in my observations.
So then, the big lament: “My best ideas come when I’m in the shower!” Maybe, but what really matters is that your ideas come at all, and, if you’re prepared, they’ll come at you like decks of cards, not birds shitting on you.
BTW … most often during the day I stop myself before stepping off a curb, wherein I turn my mind to the present and the REAL, or else risk being run over by a bus.
BTW–BTW … have a notebook and pen in your pocket at all times. It only takes a minute to jot down a sentence that should jog your memory at a future time. Also, have an ink refill in your bag.
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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.
December 10, 2012 at 7:23 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
I’ve written about the difficulties of finding time to write day in and day out. Jobs, family, pets, books to read, and … what else? … oh, yes! … wife and friends. The priority list can be long.
Or it needs to be short.
The question is, How serious are you about your writing career? Hours in the day can be shaved; you can learn to write a AT LEAST a few paragraphs every day. Remember, “one page per day and I’ll have 7/8 of a book in a year.” That’s the pattern, that’s the goal, that’s the priority that must top the list. And you’ll still have time for everyone else in your life. Reading good books, too!
Today I had my 3rd writing day in a row. Saturday & Sunday morning, and Monday afternoon (stretching into early evening). That’s a total of sixteen hours or so. Today I was hot because yesterday I took a few afternoon hours to set myself up for today’s writing. When I got home from teaching two classes (money!), I had a snack and then sat down.
Did the blank screen frighten me? NO! I didn’t have a blank screen because I had a place where I had left off, and I had notes and story chunks to bring me further. This is all part of the preparation and continuance of deep thinking about your project. If you never let it go (for long), then it’s always going to be with you … and, with a project that can take two years or more, I need to live with my characters, the places in which they live and move, the ideas and emotions they encounter.
When writing is good, try to follow it up with more writing. The next day; the next afternoon; or the next evening. Just a few paragraphs on a scrap of paper while on the train can be a great encouragement for that upcoming day where you have a whole block of HOURS to write.
I’ve quoted her before, and here is an especially good time to do that again: Isak Dinesen – “I write every day, with neither hope nor despair.”
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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.
September 22, 2012 at 8:23 pm · Filed under A Commonplace Book
I first read Penn Warren’s politics-of-America novel 15 years ago. Many of its images have stuck in my mind since then. Penn Warren has sight-heavy scenes of high drama and deep introspection. It’s a book of America, a story of politics, and characters of high (and low) character. No much less or more than America has ever seen; but maybe more poignant today than every.
Where have all the books like this gone? Too few exist. Where have all the characters gone? They’ve come alive.
The flavor of “All the King’s Men” is politics of all sorts, in all guises. Penn Warren never lets up. This is a abject lesson for every writer, young & old, new or seasoned: whatever your story is about, every page and every line of dialogue must have its blood on its words. Here’s a sample:
” ‘Friends, red-necks, suckers, and fellow hicks,’ he would say, leaning forward, leaning at them, looking at them. And he would pause, letting the words sink in. And in the quiet the crowd would be restless and resentful under these words, the words they knew people called them but the words nobody ever got up and called them to their face. ‘Yeah,’ he would say, ‘yeah,’ and twist his mouth on the word, ‘that’s what you are, and you needn’t get mad at me for telling you. Well, get mad, but I’m telling you. That’s what you are. And me—I’m one, too. Oh, I’m a red-neck, for the sun has beat down on me. Oh, I’m a sucker, for I fell for that sweet-talking fellow in the fine automobile. Oh, I took the sugar tit and hushed my crying. Oh, I’m a hick and I am the hick they were going to try to use and split the hick vote. But I’m standing here on my own hind legs, for even a dog can learn to do that, give him time. I learned. It took me a time but I learned, and here I am on my own hind legs.’ And he would lean at them. And demand, ‘Are you, are you on your hind legs? Have you learned that much yet? You think you can learn that much?’ ”
– Robert Penn Warren, “All the King’s Men”
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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.
September 13, 2012 at 3:05 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
I’ve been working on “New Project #3″ since late August. I have 93 ms pages. I’ve learned far more about my two protagonists (who also serve as the novel’s antagonists) than I had thought I’d needed to know when I finally started the book, after six months of notes-cum-scene development. I also know a lot more about other characters, scene progression, pacing, and what the story is about.
This is where the fun REALLY begins; this is where the angst REALLY launches from the shadows.
Philip Roth has said that the first eight months of any new project filled him with doubt and anxiety. What is the story about? Who are all of these people I have given name and voice and body to? What is the connection that gives this story sense, and meaning, and energy? Such thoughts, and the problems that go with the territory of writing a novel, have stopped many great writers, and more-so the fledgling type, in their tracks. And while I’m often slowed in my progress by the story’s difficulties, or simply the process of understanding one thing (or five) before going on to the next, I’m no longer “stopped” … and I’m never “blocked” (I don’t believe in writer’s block).
For my first two published novels I used a specific methodology that helped me write the story from a first-to-last chronology. It’s success taught me that I shouldn’t look for some other “way” to get into, sustain, and finish a novel. I haven’t even entertained a different method; the previous five mis-fired novel starts never got this chance, and perhaps that is for the best. Whatever the case, I had found a way that suited me best to stay focused.
The short answer to what I do is … I take six months before starting at Page 1 to find dozens, even more than one-hundred, scenes that can fit into the book. These come to me as character thoughts, dialogue, narrative, story movement, metaphors & similes, setting location descriptions, short-profiles of particular characters, wholly developed scenes amounting to five, ten, even twenty pages. Most are less than half a page: sketches of scenes that are the kernel of a fully developed scene; bits of dialogue; two images with a gesture; a line of narrative to set place and story moment.
At some point I begin to see patterns, and to find a narrative arc (the beginning, middle, and end; the rising action and how the story can close). This is where the story takes firm hold in my mind as “written” material (where before it was mental imagery and “heard” voices). Then I place the scenes in some sensible (but not concrete) order, a chronology of character events. At this point dozens of spaces exist between these islands of story. Nevertheless, the characters have begun speaking amongst themselves in my head, and I know it’s time to begin the real task of laying down the story from the beginning. I call the process I’ve just described The Stepping-Stone Method.
Some might call this an outline (I do not). It is a sheaf of specifically linked scenes that need to be filled in. For this current book, I figure I have 150 potential scenes cataloged. That’s not enough, evidently, because, as I’ve been writing this past week, every day I find new ways to tell a particular part of the ongoing story. These were all in my mind, and many were sketched out on paper, but getting them into the story, as story, has made me effect changes — to character, to scene (new scenes!), and to place. However, the intent of the story (what the story is about; how to hold to this theme/vision on every page, in every sentence) hasn’t changed; it grows with increasing awareness, focus, and edge.
Here is where discovery is made: threads of dialogue, the character action-reaction that is the heart of any piece of literature, who says what (sometimes I switch what one character says to the other; don’t always give the best lines to one character), taking three paragraphs to tell a short background moment/memory, references to this event or that person or some piece of music/film/news-event, &etc. We writers are in the midst of artistic creation, and that happens every time we sit down and get to work.
This happened to me while I wrote The Village Wit. It happened while I wrote What Beauty. It’s happening again with “New Project #3″ … and yet I still feel the anxiety of wanting to make-things-right-before-I-move-ahead-or-otherwise-I’ll-fuckitallUP! But I don’t allow myself too much of that type of thought; only late at night, or while I’m trying to remember a date that is important to the scene because this-that-and-the-other links to it further on (or way back at the front). AHHHHHHH!
You see what I mean?
All of which is to highlight that I’m on the right trail of a story. My stepping-stone method prevents me from straying into something (or some place) that is tangential to the story; this method lets me look ahead, make needed changes, add a whole scene or a sentence (a single word!) … and … always, always, always … find the thread of what this story is about. I take my time because I can, because this is literature, this is art, and therefore I know a light exists at the end of this long, sometimes dark, trail of a story.
“Write something every day,” encouraged Isak Dinesen, “without hope or despair.” I primed myself with these words this morning; I’ll be repeating them two years from now. The work has only just begun.
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What Beauty is my newest novel, a story of art, obsession and ego. Read an excerpt here. It’s available in print and 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 available in print and as an ebook.
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 27, 2012 at 5:15 pm · Filed under THE LETTERS OF MARK BEYER :: reading & writing & book culture
Lots of jokes start something like this — “So a guy walks into a bar …” — and away you go, into the story, often 3 sentences, and then the punchline. Ha-ha … hee-hee … guffaw-guffaw.
So why are jokes written in the present tense? Two thoughts on that, and shorter than any joke: Action — Immediacy.
Now for the big question: How many novels or short stories have you read (notice the tense) that were written in Present Tense Prose? Not many, I’d venture to guess. Most “stories” have already taken place, and the narrator is recalling the events, complete with insight, self-argument, the long-look-ahead-while-death/love/birth-suddenly-happens-in-the-past-of-the-story. Pheew! Take for example this sentence: “I didn’t know it then, as John dug the ring out of the thick shag, but twenty years later I realized he had known who I was all along.” That’s saying a lot, past, present, and future.
Stories told in the present tense have a certain immediacy to them that gives writers lots to work with, and also allows them to leave things out that cannot be known; may never be known (unless there’s a sequel). Likewise, the use of verbs in present tense manages to convey strong imagery: “A man pushes through the waiting crowd, climbs the stairs two at a time, and walks into the bar…” We readers see this vividly because of the activeness of “pushes” and “climbs” and “walks.”
We writers see the vividness of present-tense verbs all the time, as we write, because we invent the story as we see it happen(ing) in our minds. So why do we take that active moment and change its tense when we get to the page? Perhaps this is tradition. Perhaps the story is a reminiscence and therefore requires past tense. Or perhaps there are a half dozen or a dozen more reasons. Ask the writer. He or she may know, or may not know exactly. It’s often a feeling.
Which is to say, then, how you feel the story takes hold of you might be the impetus behind trying a narrative form you haven’t tried before. See what happens between what you see in your mind and what happens on the page. Feel for the verbs that work and those that don’t work as well. This is always a battle anyway, so if you’ve been on the battered side once more often than you’d like, try a different strategy.
In my present Work-in-Progress, I am writing the “present” story in present tense, while for two stories-within-the-story that give the two protagonists time to reflect, to tell the story of their lives together, I’m writing in the past tense (these are stand-alone pieces that follow a meandering chronology). This structure is how I am able to keep the many balls in the air for this particular juggling act. And the narrative forms allow me to shape the story in a way that the reader will know what’s happened in the past, but not know exactly what’s happening in the present (thought they’ll have teasing guesses). The characters experience this same riddle, which mirrors life far more than we often give it credit for: Do you know what’s in store for your life tomorrow? Do you understand all that is happening to you right now? Are all your memories “correct,” “right,” and “true”?
These are the questions that authors struggle with on a daily basis. The WHEN of the tale is integral to the HOW.
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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 27, 2012 at 3:42 pm · Filed under A Commonplace Book, The Prague Blog
One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding
Last Christmas I gave the John Harding novel “One Big Damn Puzzler” to my wife as a Santa gift. She read it and told me I had to read it, for its laughs and oddities, and its anti-American (or, really, anti-modern world) slant, and because so many of the scenes had stuck with her. This last week I read the 200K-word book, and my wife was spot on: this novel has so many odd adventures, characters, and themes inside, that I shall remember it, and its “idea” of life vs. art vs. existential breadth, for a long time.
[quick synopsis]
On a small Pacific island, Managua, one of the village elders — and its only literate member — is translating “Hamlet” into the local pidgin English, a language “gift” from the American army that had used the north half of the island as an aerial bomb proving ground. Enter William Hardt, American foreign-claims attorney, who descends on the island to get them compensation for the harm that America has done to the island, and the so-many-legless people (from late-exploding ordnance).
What Hardt discovers is a society that is entirely unreliant on the outside world, and which has its own view of life, death, sex, society, and love. While many fine scenes exist for excerpt, one of the shining lights in the novel is the Shakespeare-to-vernacular that Harding has accomplished for Hamlet’s soliloquy.
The Magus by John Fowles
The stranger the book, the better I like it. And this book is strange. As all stories — well-written stories — have some overriding mystery, we readers are pulled along by characters who don’t much know themselves why they do what they do; not exactly, anyway. It’s call “personality.” Now isn’t that the essence of life? So for THE MAGUS, the mystery is a step onto a wire, a thin wire, that gets longer and thinner, and higher, as you move with the characters.
What I liked most about the story was that, once I realized there was a veil between what I thought I knew (dramatic irony) and what was really happening (fictively), the more I liked the book. Not all books can do this effectively; not just any writer can take the care which this kind of story needs. THE MAGUS is a well-written, well-crafted, and thoroughly original book that should be on your reading list. It has history, psychology, love, sex, intrigue, betrayal, and redemption.
I Married a Communist by Philip Roth
The story of the rise & fall of Ira Ringold, a hood in his youth, zinc minor to escape his youth, Communist to escape the mines, and discovered-radio-personality to bring the good word of REVOLUTION to America. I liked this book for many reasons, but mostly because Philip Roth knows how to write a descriptive sentence AND dynamic dialogue. As a story heavily laden with politics — and America’s disastrous treatment of Communist-leaning (or not) citizens in the 1950s during the HUAC hearing and RED SCARE days — some readers might think this is a difficult book. It is, if you’re uninterested in 20th-century American history. Otherwise, the reward of this book comes through the story of human beings living in these times, experiencing the emotions of the day, re-living those emotions, and attempting to come to terms with them. Also, this human puzzle (if there’s not a puzzle, this isn’t a Roth book) comes together in the last 20 pages. And that ending is as satisfying as any book I’ve read in 10 years.
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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 20, 2012 at 4:12 pm · Filed under Food for Thought
“Eat it, it’s good. That plate is filled with homemade food.”
“You made gnocci?”
“I boiled it properly.”
“You raised the pig?”
“No, I didn’t raise the … Do you see pigs in my house?”
“You could have a sty out back you’re hiding from the neighbors. Did you grow the tomatoes.”
“No.”
“The carrots?”
“No.”
“The peas?”
“NO. Hey, I didn’t say home-grown or home-raised, I said home ‘cooked.’ Don’t you know the difference? Now eat before I take your plate away, send you out back to pick wild carrots and dandelion leaves for a mud-yard salad.”
“Hey, this is good chow!”
“See!”
“A bit cold though.”
Drama can be about the misunderstanding of words, actions, and intent. Great comedic moments can come with a simple (often universal) interaction b/w characters. It becomes cliché only when the context is left ungiven and scene shortened just to highlight this moment.
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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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