May 2011

In this month’s Stuff I’ve Been Reading post, it looks like I’ve read about the same as in the past; but there were actually two four-day stretches of no reading at all.  Shocking.

As is the fact that this month, all you get is the list.

1. Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler
2. The Norton Book of Science Fiction edited by Brian Attebery and Ursula K. Le Guin
3. Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood
4. Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan/Feb 2011
5. The Scroll of the Dead by David Stuart Davies (80%)
6. Number9Dream by David Mitchell
7. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
8. Embassytown by China Miéville
9. Napier’s Bones by Derryl Murphy (65%)
10. When the King Comes Home by Caroline Stevermer
11. The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner
12. The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
13. The Truth by Terry Pratchett
14. Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
15. Pearls Sells Out by Stephan Pastis

May 22

In my recent quest to read through my backlog of books, I remembered a title I’ve had for a decade: The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers by Betsy Lerner.

I vividly remember purchasing this book as an early teenager.  I had just made the miraculous discovery that people wrote books about writing (an obsession that has grown to the size of three shelves full of writers-on-writing acquisitions) but I hadn’t the faintest idea about which ones were worth anything.  So I asked a bookseller at the independent bookstore I used to frequent, and she handed me this one.

Which, as it turns out, was not at all what I was looking for at the time.  I needed something about mechanics and also discovering style, but I was too ignorant to know it.  So I took the book home, flipped through it, and realized instantly it was not right for me, and thus it sat on my shelf for ten years.

It was written by an ex-poet turned editor who knows a thing or two about authors.  Part one, which is all I’ve read so far, is about different types of authors: the ambivalent one who doesn’t know what to write, the shameless self-promoter, the so-called natural writer, and so forth.  Each of these has strengths and weaknesses, and Lerner runs a kind of diagnostic about each type.  If this is you, here’s some advice to make things go a bit more smoothly.  Some of the advice is applicable, some not, but all of it is entertaining.

Part two, which I’m rather looking forward to, is about the business of writing, about the author-editor relationship.  I hope Lerner has some tips about professionalism, a kind of What to Expect timeline for editing a novel after it’s been purchased by a publisher.  In any case, this book seems just right for me now, ten years later.

All of this is really just an exemplary argument for why I should go ahead and buy it: I really will read it eventually.

May 20

I will be writing a novel-in-a-month in June.  This is the second time I’ll be tackling this particular novel, so in an effort to keep myself from deciding three years from now to redo it again, I decided to write a brief plot treatment.  This is a narrative of what happens in the novel chapter by chapter.  It was hard, especially for me, but I’m astonished at how much it’s helped.

The way that I write is often very much by the seat of my pants.  I’ll have an idea, an image, a character, and a couple of sentences–sometimes less–when I sit down to write.  I discover the words as I’m writing them and am often surprised by the way things come together at the end.  I’m even more often surprised by the way they don’t, of course, but that comes with not knowing where I’m going when I type “Chapter One.”

I often write quantitatively–racking up the word count as much and quickly as possible–before I write for quality.  I’ll edit a short story several times, often paring down hundreds or  even thousands of words or rewriting large sections, as part of my process of discovering what the story is really about (something I probably should have known before I wrote it).  With a story of even a few thousand words, that’s a time-consuming process, especially if the number of rewritings is ten or more, and if they take place several months apart from each other.  With a novel, I just didn’t want to go through all the pain.

Perhaps it is surprising that a person who meticulously outlines an academic essay down to the contents of each paragraph would not take the same care with her fiction; but I like to defy expectations.  For the first time ever, I know my whole novel before I’ve written any parts of it.  That thing that happens in chapter six that the characters didn’t know was important?  It will become essential knowledge in chapter eleven.  And what the bad guy alludes to in chapter three?  It resurfaces in chapters eight and twelve.  Plus, I have every character already named!

I feel a little silly to be so excited about discovering the ins and outs of the plot of the novel with my own name on the byline, but I usually complete a manuscript first and then wade through all the structural problems caused by the beginning not matching the ending.  That shouldn’t happen this time.

In short, a light bulb has switched on over my head.

Writing the novel before you write it is a novel idea indeed.

May 19

1. Hello, A Week Later.  Consider this the obligatory apology for not being a more faithful blogger.

2. Embassytown.  I just finished reading China Mieville’s newest book (and by new, I mean released Tuesday), and it was spectacular, of  course.  Avice Benner Cho is a resident of Embassytown, a ghetto on a planet where the native Hosts speak Language with two mouths.   When a strangely different Ambassador arrives and sends the Hosts into an unexplained frenzy, Avice must learn to play Embassytown politics in the same way she used to spacetravel the immer in order to save her strange city.  This book will appeal to fans of Mieville, Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels, the genre “weird,” and Ferdinand de Saussure.

3.  Vacation Mode.  In the interim week, I have failed to find a house to rent, read hardly any books, had a job interview, and slacked on laundry and dishes.  Today I am setting things to rights by reading a lot, cleaning things, and resigning myself to more apartment life.

4.  The Buzzer Just Went Off.  Ah, that would be the dryer.  Until next week, I remain yours truly, etc.

Good

Here are four good things that happened today, and one bonus good thing.

1. After 41 job applications, I finally have an interview.
2. I got a free lunch at Panera Bread because their computer ignored my order.
3. My second rejection letter arrived from a journal where I sent my fiction.*
4. I unexpectedly wrote two thousand words.
5. I’ll probably even keep most of the words I wrote.

*Rejection is good, because it means I’m actually submitting stories instead of saying I will, plus it thickens my skin and gives me experience.  Also, after I get five rejections for the same story, I can send it to The Rejected Quarterly, a journal I aspire to get rejected from.

Stolen Meme

1. The Book I’m Currently Reading

Number9Dream by David Mitchell.  Eiji Miyake has come to Tokyo to find his father but becomes embroiled in impossibly twisted complications including, yes, mobsters.

2. The Last Book I Finished

The last book I didn’t finish was The Scroll of the Dead by David Stuart Davies, a “Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” book.  And before that, I read a magazine, which isn’t properly a book.  So the answer to this one is Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood, a collection of seven lectures/essays about writing and writing theory.

3. The Next Book I Want to Read

This is always the hardest question.  I’m considering reading my most recent acquisition (see below), or else rereading the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin, or else rereading the Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner.  Or I’m also considering changing my mind several times before I choose.

4. The Last Book I Bought

“Bought” here reads more like “acquired,” since I obtained When the King Comes Home by Carolyn Stevermer by trading in other books and receiving store credit.  It’s fantasy, I’d enjoyed the Wrede & Stevermer books, and the first page caught my interest well enough.

5. The Last Book I Was Given

You’d think that my imminent graduation would have produced more books for this category, ahem, but the last book I received as a gift came from my mother: A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley, the third in the delightful Flavia de Luce series.

Things Not to Do in a Coffee Shop

I was in a locally owned coffee shop this morning, a really nice place that shares its location with upscale secondhand furniture, of which patrons can avail themselves while studying and sipping some chai.  My zen-like productivity experience was destroyed, however, by my fellow customers’ and even the shop’s failure to observe these five simple rules.

1. Please do not play bad Christian music.  I’m glad you’re playing Christian music, but let’s keep it to songs written in the last decade, and no choruses.
2. Please do not hum to the Christian music.  Especially not off-key.  Especially not loudly.  Especially not for all three hours that I’m there.
3. Please do not have a long and loud conversation on your cellphone.  Other patrons do not care whether the files were or were not received in a timely manner.  Also, you are not an ostrich.  Just because you can’t see us doesn’t mean we can’t hear you.
4. Please do not spontaneously sing “Happy Birthday” to Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was clearly not having his birthday party at your coffee shop, so there is no need to go on about it.  People who do not know Jeremiah should not feel the need to join in.
5. Please do not play your guitar.  Other people are working, plus there is already way too much music happening.  A coffee shop is not a recording studio.  Shall I repeat myself?  A coffee shop is not a recording studio.

If humanity would just observe these simple rules, or even, say, half of them on any given day, I would be inclined to revisit said local coffee shop.  Unfortunately, guitar girl was the Last Straw, and I have officially brushed the dust off of my sandals or whatever metaphor of moving on will suit your cultural and/or religious ideologies.

When I am angry, I speak in a flat voice and use long words.