On the Thirteenth Day of Chrischannukwanzamastivus

In celebration of the holidays, here's a list of my twelve favorite books on writing.

But wait, if you read this RIGHT NOW, I'll include a thirteenth book at no extra cost!! (Just pay separate reading time and brain processing.)  The list is in no specific order and reflects my favorites as of today.  At this very instant.

1. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, by Janet Burroway.  Probably the most widely used textbook for creative writing courses, it is wonderfully detailed and a great foundation for any writer and an ongoing reference for those writing their tenth novel.  It's expensive but you can find used versions of earlier editions for a fraction of the cost and they're just as helpful as the latest edition.

2. The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, by Noah Lukeman.  Lukeman is a brash young New York literary agent and his book tells it like it is: agents (and editors of journals) develop an early warning system that allows them to not waste time on submissions they recognize as failures in the first five pages.  He shares all, so read it and do your tough revisions and get good critiquing on you mss before you submit.

3. Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, by K. M. Weiland.  Yep, that old conundrum, to plan your novel or go seat of the pants.  Can you guess which one Weiland recommends?  The more I write, the more I recognize the value of conscientious planning for longer works.

Eye Dialect and Cliches and Rejections, Oh My!

Wanna betcha eye dialect is purty much gonna be a dead giveaway of amateur or lazy writin' these days?

Sure, I can hear all the protesting that "we all talk that way," and all those favorite bestsellers where rich and famous authors use apostrophes and "gonna" and "gotta" from time to time and still make millions.  How can THEY get away with it?  And shouldn't we emulate success?

Well, it's like that old TV add for some financial firm--those writers did it the old fashioned way: they've earned the right to be a bit lazy.  Yes, LAZY.

Most of those bestsellers are so fabulously plotted they carry the reader along, flipping pages as fast as they can, paying as little attention as possible to such mundane details.  And that bestselling author has another deadline looming for their next six or seven figure advance, so they can't take the time to dig deeper and avoid a little cliche now and then, right?  Boy, don't we all wish we were there!

But, for those of us nudging our way toward publishing a novel, or even a story or two, the bottom line is that eye dialect is one of those "three strikes and you're out" elements that agents and editors talk about when they read the first few pages--if that much--of your submission.  So why is that, and how can we avoid falling into the trap of all too easy eye dialect?  And how, then, can we really characterize our creations with their speech patterns if we can't use it?

Flying Islands of the Night

From the latest eBlast from Barb Shoup at the Indiana Writers Center:

"Flying Island," the Writers Center's literary magazine was founded in the 1980's by director Jim Powell, and provided a publishing opportunity for Indiana writers well into the 1990's. It was always fun to see who in our writing community would be represented in the magazine. If I'm remembering correctly, there were some pretty groovy launch parties at the Alley Cat in Broad Ripple, which was the scene for many readings in those days. 

It morphed into "Maize" for a while. Then David Hassler revived it a while back and did several broadsheet editions. It was great to see the magazine back in print and to read the works of IWC members and friends, but...print is expensive. We just couldn't keep it going. 

Enter online magazines, factor in David Hassler's determination to make "Flying Island" work one way or another, thank those who contributed to our power2give project, "Where's the Next Kurt Vonnegut" and, shazaam, it's back. 

We're excited to announce the launch of the online version of "Flying Island," which is now accepting submissions on a rolling basis from residents of Indiana and those with significant ties to Indiana. Editors David Hassler (fiction), Julianna Thibodeaux (nonfiction) and JL Kato (poetry) are waiting to hear from you!

Fiction: up to 2,000 words

Nonfiction: up to 1,000 words

Poetry: up to three poems, no more than 30 lines each.

Check it out—and please submit your words—at:

http://flyingislandjournal.blogspot.com

The link is also on the left under “Check out These Great Links.”

By the way, "Flying Islands of the Night" is the title of an obscure poem/play by the Hoosier Poet, James Whitcomb Riley, of course.

Speaking of Balance

“Writing is not a matter of time, but a matter or of space. If you don't keep space in your head for writing, you won't write even if you have the time.”
― Katerina Stoykova Klemer

“What is joy without sorrow? What is success without failure? What is a win without a loss? What is health without illness? You have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. There is always going to be suffering. It’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.”
― Mark Twain

Suffering.  Time and space.  Concerns about making sure one's writing is good enough or unique enough or special enough.  The fear of having others read our work and make an insightful comment that stings, leading us to perhaps even abandon a promising and beloved project.  And even to hold a wad of spite for the evil workshop terrorist who saw through our work and pricked us right where it hurt the most since it was deadly accurate.  Critiques as a form of abuse.  Friends who hate us because we write.

Holy shit!

Many writerly discussions thoroughly explore a blivet* of these lovely downers and, yes, they are indeed out there.  But, as Mark Twain so aptly put it, "There is always going to be suffering."

So, how do we deal with suffering, and where's the balance in all that horror? 

Of Hell and Heaven

So this famous writer dies and is waiting reassignment to some future existence.  He's offered a tour of both heaven and hell, so he figures "What the...whatever."  His first stop is in hell and it's packed with writers, tearing out their hair in frustration, crippled with writer's block, unable to get out a single word, or even worse, hating anything they do get down on paper.  Stunned, he next visits heaven and finds it crammed with writers, tearing out their hair in frustration, crippled with writer's block, unable to get out a single word, or even worse, hating anything they do get down on paper.

The writer turns to St. Peter and asks him why hell and heaven are identical.  St. Pete replies, "Oh, no, the agony is the same, but in heaven they get published."

Yet we still have this innate need to write.  And suffer, it seems.  Why would anyone subject themselves to such torture?

Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, gives one of the best theories on our shared passion, compulsion, obsession, fixation.  First, he suggests that every narrative contains within itself the writer's vision of the individual and her relationship to the universe.  Second, the writer has an innate need, not always consciously recognized, to communicate or share her vision with the world.

Pretty simple, really.  We're moved to show others how we see the world.  To do the challenging, frustrating, frightening, yet hopefully rewarding work to achieve it in black on white.  And what are those rewards for all our sweat and tears?  Not money, not fame or adulation, or even tenure, although each of those might be great for those very few writers who attain them.  No, we do it so a reader, someone we've never met, will pick up--or tap on--our book and read it, hopefully understanding and maybe even learning a bit or expanding their perception of the world through our vision.  Simply that.

As writers, then, what do we owe each other in recognition and acknowledgement of our common desire to share our visions?

Very simply, to read.  To read consistently and closely in not only our favored writing genre but widely, exploring and broadening our own understanding while adding tricks and tools for our own writing.  As Robert Adams says, in his wonderful A Love of Reading, "To read is to share the writer's risk."  That risk of showing how we view the universe, a showing that bares so much, if we let it.

So, I ask you, what are you reading?

This Madeleine's For You

Have to admit it never occurred to me till I read a recent post noting that a writer's compromised sense of smell--or, for that matter, color blindness, or a hearing issue, not to mention the deadened taste buds from excessive smoking--could be a real handicap when it comes to writing description. 

So sad. 

Imagine a Proust doppelganger stubbing out his Gauloises in the ashtray on the kitchen table, wiping his lips, smiling at his mother, then dunking his petites madeleine in that cup of tea, from which touch of tea and cake to palate . . . springs . . . nothing but cardboard and tepid gruel, stone and crumbling chalk.  So, alas, Marcel doesn't stop, intent upon the extraordinary changes taking place.  No exquisite pleasure invades his senses, the vicissitudes of life fail to become indifferent for him, and no new sensation gives the effect of filling him--as love does--with a precious essence, an essence that wasn't simply in him, but was him.  No feeling of something starting within him, leaving its resting place, and attempting to rise from his depths where it was embedded like an anchor.

No recognizing that, no matter how often we may see an object, it is with more vitality, a more unsubstantial yet more persistent, more faithful rendering, that the smell and taste of things remain poised a longer time, like souls, ready to remind us, amid the ruins of all the rest.

No recapturing the old, dead moment, no return to Combray.

The taste of cake and tea, that archetypal involuntary memory or deja vu, wasted, and no monumental 3,000 word search for lost time.

But fortunately, Marcel, even though he probably smoked, could still draw on his senses--all five of them--and "Proust's madeleine" has become a touchstone in twentieth-century literature.  And draw he does, creating masterfully evocative settings and descriptions that entice and embrace the reader.

And it turns out that this month is the 100th anniversary of the publication of Swann's Way, the first volume of his In Search of Lost Time.  So grab a copy of Swann's Way and treat yourself, at the very least, to the opening "Combray" section, usually titled "Overture," and learn from a master how to evoke the senses and use setting and description to ground the reader in the story.

Next time, once I finish Swann's Way again, we'll chat some more on how to use setting and description to evoke the senses and bring our fiction to life.

Enjoy your madeleine . . . .

The Greatest Gift

As others bloggers often say, submitting your work and receiving criticism can feel like watching your darlings as they wait on death row--that fearful anticipation of shoving your luscious and inspiring prose into the broiling oven of a critique group that's preheated to char your creations into oblivion.  Sounds horrible, doesn't it?  Letting others jab and poke and prod at your well thesaurused words, your lovely sentences, your brilliant paragraphs, your perfect story.  Who in their right mind would submit themselves to such, lying on the carpet like a frightened puppy, legs akimbo, belly exposed, and tail wagging as you wait to see if the hulk standing over you will pet or kick.

And yet.

And yet, we realize the real writing is in the revision, as Mike said recently, and no writer can be their own best editor.  Okay, maybe if you're Henry James and just walk around your studio dictating a single perfect draft of your really, really long and incredibly complex novel to a typist.  Maybe.  But for most of us, getting feedback from readers we come to trust is the surest way to the most productive revision.  Even though it may sometimes sting, a thorough critique is the greatest gift a writer can receive--or give.  Remember what we tell our kids when we smear the iodine on their cuts...

So, what makes for a good critique group and what's the process?

Two Plus Two Equals What?

Speaking of creating and rendering antagonists in our fiction, one of the most important considerations is to make sure we don’t end up with a flat character that’s almost a cliché.  So how do we accomplish that?

First, as Mike noted, we can try to find what Clint McCown calls the emotional core of our characters.  In the case of the antagonist, that isn’t as simple as saying they’re evil or villainous or any other generic placeholder.  The real emotional core has to tie into and spring from some much deeper and more complex why?  Childhood abuse, bioengineering, religious zealotry—or even a combination of low pressures and moisture from the gulf that can yield some perfect storm.  And those are only the clichés!  The more complexity we can develop into this character infrastructure, the better, of course.  We also need to recognize that our understanding of the antagonist will change and grow more complete and subtle as we draft our story, keeping in mind the iceberg and our need to know far more about all our characters than we ever include directly in our narrative.

Second, we need to let our yeasty antagonist actually rise a bit to avoid that dreaded flatness.  That can mean giving our character some traits that conflict with the darker elements of their personality.  We can show that internal conflict through what Blake Snyder calls a “save the cat” moment, a moment where the antagonist does something to show a glimpse of heart, a level of concern that makes them human and just might balance their evil tendencies.  Might.  Snyder’s term comes from a famous scene in the first Alien movie where Ripley, in this case the protagonist, but a very tough minded and brutal one, actually saves the cat to show us she has a softer, rounder side and to strengthen our empathy with her.

Finally, we can give our antagonist a bit of a twist to show them not only as dislikeable, but also maybe as somewhat off balance, or a bit of a fool.  In my drafting of my civil war manuscript, A Single Hour, I struggled with an antagonist who was just not rising on the baking sheet.  One day, at a business conference, I was sitting in the back of the hall and, frankly, working on some revision to my manuscript and only half listening to the presentation.  Eventually, my attention shifted to the speaker and I realized I’d been drawn to a syntax habit he overused—one that annoyed the hell out of me.  The fellow turned every other sentence—or so it seemed—into what he may have thought was a rhetorical question.  He would say something like “Two plus two equals what?  Four.”  Not even a pause between question and answer.  Over and over.  What a jerk!  Finally, I realized I’d stumbled onto a gem and I granted this speech habit to my antagonist.  The workshop readers loved to hate it and the antagonist, and hate it they did since I overused it on my first rendering just as the speaker had done.  But once I’d diluted that salt to a tasty level, the trait worked to both strengthen and soften the antagonist’s character.  Thank you, Mr. Annoying.

So remember, sometimes two plus two just might equal what?