Great Stuff Out There, January Edition

At the end of most of my blog posts, I include a section of links called Good Stuff Out There. These are usually posts or articles by other people who have something interesting to say about writing, books, or related topics. I offer these links because when I find something I like, I want to tell more people about it, as we all do.

Sometimes I encounter undertakings of a literary nature (or otherwise) that I want to highlight more prominently than a link at the end of an unrelated post. So I'm introducing a new recurring feature called Great Stuff Out There. In this first edition of Great Stuff, I have two exciting projects to discuss:

→ FOGcon 2012 - Last year I attended the first Friends of the Genre convention, and I had a blast. The con focuses on science fiction and fantasy literature, and it will be held March 30 to April 1 in Walnut Creek (in the San Francisco Bay Area).

This isn't a writing conference, but a gathering of enthusiastic readers (some of whom are also writers). My knowledge of genre fiction is limited compared to most of the attendees, and I was a bit nervous about that last year, but I still felt welcomed and able to participate. You can look through the long list of suggested programming to see what kind of panel discussions and workshops will be offered.

I'm looking forward to attending FOGcon 2012, and I hope I can talk a few people into joining me. Interested? Register here!

→ Flamingo Rampant - My longtime friend S. Bear Bergman is launching a line of children's picture books that celebrate the fluidity of gender. Bear is a wonderful writer (may I recommend his essay collection THE NEAREST EXIT MAY BE BEHIND YOU?), and since becoming a wonderful dad, he's been thinking about subjects that are underrepresented in children's literature. Bear has written two picture books and located artists to illustrate them.

Visit the Kickstarter page and watch the video to learn more about the project and the books. The fundraising campaign has been so successful that almost all the money required to publish both books has been raised in only three days, but pre-orders and donations are still being accepted.

Busy, Back Soon

This week I had to do some terrible things to my characters. I arrived at my novel's most horrific event and revised the scene that destroys the characters' lives. As I got closer and closer to this scene, I'd been both dreading and looking forward to revisiting and improving it.

I'm glad that I got through this scene, and I'm pleased with the way it turned out. The aftermath is shaping up nicely, with some good new changes from the previous draft. I have some hope that the rest of this storyline will flow out pretty quickly from here, so it might not be so very long until I move on to the next and final storyline.

All of which is to say, there's been a lot of intense revising around here recently, and not too much else. I'll work on coming up with some more interesting blog content for later in the month.

But I figure this is a good time to ask you, my loyal blog readers: Is there any particular topic you'd like me to discuss? What types of posts are you interested in seeing more of? Please weigh in with any feedback, and thank you so much for reading!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Henriette Lazaridis Power writes at The Millions about acknowledgements: "Everyone reads the acknowledgements. In fact, for many of us, the first thing we do when we pull a book off the store shelf is to flip to the back. The writers among us might be searching for the agent or the editor we can query, or we might be seeking our own name in the list. But we certainly read the acknowledgements for the drama and the human story revealed therein."

The Right Amount of Backstory

Last night I finished MAN IN THE WOODS by Scott Spencer, a fascinating novel that deals with issues of violence and guilt and faith. And features a very sweet dog.

Near the beginning of the story, the main character commits an unintended but horrific crime, and most of the rest of the book is about what happens to him and his family afterwards. Occasional sections focus on a different set of characters involved in the investigation of the crime. What most stood out to me about the book was the richly detailed backstories that Spencer gives to every character in the novel.

After I read IF SONS, THEN HEIRS by Lorene Cary, I wrote about how I was impressed that the book included a level of nonessential detail that I would have expected to distract from the story but instead enriched it. Similarly, MAN IN THE WOODS presents many details and events from the pasts of even minor characters that provide no necessary plot information and don't obviously illuminate any specific character trait that needs to be set up. My own editing tendencies would have been to cut most of these out, but in fact I didn't find any of them boring or distracting as I read, and they increased the realness of the characters and their community.

For example, the main character's family is acquainted with, and doesn't particularly like, another family in their small town. This irritating family gets about five small appearances or mentions in the course of the novel, but they could be removed from the story with no impact on the plot. I like that they're in there because it makes the world rich and real: in life, we deal with not only the people we care about and the people who create our main conflicts, but also plenty of people who cause minor annoyances. The characters in the family aren't caricatures but are sketched out in depth, with a whole constellation of traits to bother the protagonist.

Early in the novel's other storyline, involving the detective investigating the crime, the detective meets with a landlord who has some information. In this scene, Spencer lets us into the thoughts of both men, and we see that both of them are seriously distracted from the conversation by a personal problem. The landlord is uncomfortable because he's spotted a man he had a one-night-stand with a year ago, and the detective is struggling to overcome his binge eating habits. I was amazed by the amount of attention given to the inner conflicts in this scene, especially because the landlord never appears in the novel again and the cop's eating disorder doesn't turn out to have any bearing on the plot. But these problems greatly increase the tension of a scene that's otherwise just a transfer of information, and it works.

MAN IN THE WOODS made me think more about my recent musings on giving backstories to secondary characters, and I'm realizing that I can dare to reveal even more detail about my characters' pasts.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Beyond the Margins, Anna Solomon explains Why Princesses Really Drive Me Crazy: "For me, resolution isn't about neatness, or even closure, it's about resonance: the ending of a story has to make everything that came before it ring. Princess story endings seem to deny everything that came before them: whew, that was awful, let’s just forget it ever happened, shall we?"

→ Alex George charts the evolution of his novel from first draft to publication in A Story in Five Photos. (Thanks, Christopher Gronlund!)

Back To Work

My holiday travels concluded right after New Year's, but I took all of last week off from writing so that I had time to catch up on various life tasks and tackle some "not urgent but it sure would be nice to have this done" projects that there's never time for. That was the theory, anyway. Mostly what I did last week was sleep and read, but I'm not going to complain about getting to do that.

On Monday, I returned to the novel after more than two weeks away. It was nice to get back to it. Sort of. Writing is rarely more fun than reading and napping, and my brain hasn't been enthusiastic about switching out of vacation mode. I've had to force myself to sit down at my desk. And then force myself to stop looking at Twitter. And then to finish the paragraph instead of looking at Twitter again.

But at the moments when my willpower is stronger than my urge to procrastinate, I've put some words down, and they're good words. I made it through a couple of troublesome scenes and into a section that will change relatively little from the previous draft. I'm writing again, whether I want to be or not, and writing is never as horrible as I imagine it will be when I'm faced with the prospect of doing it. I guess I even sort of enjoy it.

Maybe that's why I've chosen to keep plugging away at the work of writing a novel. Oh yeah, duh.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jonathan Gourlay sends a dispatch from his time In the Land of the Non-Reader: "After a week of non-reading, I said to myself that I was busy. So busy. Too busy, really, to start a new book. After three weeks of non-reading, my brain felt a bit numb. I told myself that I was working so hard that I couldn’t engage with a book." (Thanks, The Millions!)

→ Jennifer R. Hubbard wraps up her series of authors' "second book" stories by sharing the tale of her own upcoming second novel.

January Reading Plan

Here's what I have lined up to start my reading year:

→ MAN IN THE WOODS by Scott Spencer - I put this book on my list for December but didn't get to it then. I started it yesterday and had to drag myself away after 50 pages in order to get other things done. This is going to be a gripping but distressing read.

→ THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides - I'm often hesitant to read the books that all the literary media goes crazy over, because I'm contrary like that. But I received this book as a holiday present, and since I loved Eugenides's previous book, MIDDLESEX, there's no good reason to avoid this one. It's partly set at Brown University in the early 1980s, and I must admit I'm curious about that, since I attended college there, though over a decade later.

→ FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley - Shelley is the Honored Ghost (posthumous honored guest, you see) at this year's FOGcon, the speculative literature convention that I had so much fun at last year. I believe I read FRANKENSTEIN many years ago (actually, I have a feeling I read about three quarters of it), but I don't remember it well, so I thought I'd read it again. Then I should probably read some more recent works relevant to this year's FOGcon theme, The Body.

→ THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION by Michael Chabon - Selected semi-randomly from the large collection of books I own but haven't read. It has a great alternative history premise: After World War II, a Jewish state was set up in Alaska. I'm curious to see where that idea goes, and this will be my first Chabon novel.

December Reading Recap

At the beginning of 2011 I decided to start planning out my reading on a monthly basis and announcing each month what I intended to read. I said that I wasn't going to commit to finishing all the listed books every month, and I haven't, but stating my reading list publicly in advance has motivated me to make more time for reading so that I'd have more books to report at the end of the month.

I read 30 books in 2011. I know that's not a very impressive number compared to many other readers and writers, but it's a good number for me. It's about the same number of books as I read in 2010 and significantly more than in the preceding years. I didn't read every day, but I read most days, and I count that as a resoundingly successful result to this experiment, which I intend to continue. Maybe my number of books will be higher in 2012, and maybe it won't -- after all, there are books to be written, too.

In December, I only had time for two of the books on my list:

→ BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I finished the final book in the Mars series and enjoyed it just as much as the first two. The story went in a bunch of interesting new directions in this last installment while also continuing with the familiar plots, topics, and characters. This is an incredible saga with well-developed characters in a highly detailed, believable world. The books are a dense read, full of descriptions and scientific explanations, and for that reason I'm sort of surprised that I liked them as much as I did.

I spent just over a year reading the Mars trilogy, while reading many other books at the same time, and I think that was a good way for me to approach such a quantity of challenging text. I'm thinking about taking on another large reading project for 2012, and I'm open to suggestions.

→ A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan - This is a creative and well-written book, deserving of the acclaim it received, but I don't think it qualifies as a novel because it doesn't have a unified story arc or much sense of beginning, middle, and end. I'd call this a book of closely linked short stories, and while I appreciated each story, I didn't feel as satisfied at the end as I do after a good novel. It seems an unlikely candidate to be optioned for an HBO series, but if the network makes it, I'll watch with fascination.

However you categorize the book, it's full of intriguing characters, many of them involved in the music industry and all of them coping with disappointments and difficulties in life. The chapters, or stories, jump around in time and feature a variety of narrative styles, including a chapter consisting entirely of PowerPoint slides. I love that kind of thing, but it's not for every reader. Each chapter features a different main character, who might have appeared or been mentioned in an earlier story or might have a more distant connection. Part of the fun of reading is figuring out how each new story relates to what has come before and finding out more about events that have been alluded to. Taken together, the chapters present snapshots from the lives of a loosely connected web of characters while tracking the development of music and technology over time. Recommended for readers open to unusually structured books, particularly those with a passion for rock and roll.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jacket Copy collected literary New Year's resolutions from writers. I particularly like Marisa Silver's: "Use fewer commas."

As The Year Turns

At the beginning of this year, I expressed optimism. I boldly predicted that in 2011, I would move beyond being an amateur writer who sits at her desk talking to herself in obscurity. I declared that this year, I would finally become an agented writer who sits at her desk talking to herself.

I made this prediction with the fully admitted knowledge that for quite a few years now, I've been telling myself that this year, this time, really for sure now, I'm going to get my big break. So I'm neither surprised nor especially disappointed to realize that once again, I was mistaken. This wasn't the year.

It was still a good year. I started with a manuscript that I thought needed a little more work, and I discovered how much better I could make it. I continued to have the wonderful luck and support that allow me to pursue writing full-time. I read many great books and learned more about the craft. I connected with writers and readers around the world. I carried on having a pretty terrific life.

I'm still optimistic. 2012's going to be the year, for absolute positive sure.

Now I'm off to spend time with some of the important people in my life, while I think fondly of the other important people who I'll be missing. The days get longer from here on out. Happy new year to everyone.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Julie Wu writes at Beyond the Margins about overcoming her Fear of Revision: "[I]t has taken me ten years to write my first novel. I have revised it countless times--a little when it first didn't sell, then more and more. Eventually, I changed its structure, its point of view, its tone, its style. With each revision I received comments and started over, page one. Each time, I learned more, until I could revise without fear. And it was then that I sold the book."

Important Irrelevant Details

Sometimes in the interest of realism in my fiction, I get hung up on these details, and I don't know if I'm being ridiculous. Today I was worrying about whether readers would notice or care how much time passes in the story without a visit from the grandparents.

The storyline I'm working on involves a couple with a baby, and it takes place over several years. Sometimes in the gaps between scenes, months pass during which the characters go about their lives with only the most relevant occurrences reported to the reader when the story picks up again. This is convenient for me as the author, because it means I can safely assume that while I'm ignoring the characters, they have time to take care of things that are important to them but not the story. Things like getting in some quality time with that grandmother who lives in another state and doesn't do anything in the story until the kid is a year and a half old.

But today I became concerned about the fact that there's no mention of this grandmother between soon after the baby's birth and that one scene she stars in. I'd been imagining that a visit or two happens off the page somewhere and that the reader could imagine that as well, which is fine, but I figured that for my own peace of mind, I should decide when those visits are. But there's also the other out-of-state grandmother. She's more important to the story and has more scenes, but they still might be spaced farther apart in time than this character would believably go without making sure she saw her grandchild. So I needed to schedule visits with her for my own reference, too.

Having arranged all these imaginary travel plans (which, thank goodness, didn't involve the headache of searching for imaginary flights), I saw a way to relevantly mention these grandparental visits in the story with a few words of summary, so I went ahead and did that. Now I can stop worrying that any reader will note the sparseness of grandmotherly visits during the baby's early life.

But now I have to wonder whether there's any chance that any reader would have spared a moment of thought on this issue. What do you think? Am I being thorough in crafting a believable world for my characters, or am I wasting time obsessing over pointless details?

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Mary Kole explains what is and isn't involved in Big Revision: "She'd been doing something that I see a lot of writers do without meaning to or realizing it. I call it a 'tinkering revision.' Instead of going completely back to the drawing board, she'd just been mucking around with what she'd already written and, while she was technically revising, as in, switching words around and making cuts, she was getting nowhere." (Thanks, Becky Levine!)

→ Chris Abouzeid at Beyond the Margins shares thirteen opening lines he tried for different drafts of the same manuscript.

The Pace of Progress

My challenge to myself last month resulted in serious progress on my novel. I set my goal high because I wanted the motivation to work more hours than usual, and I was successful in that regard. As far as I can tell, revising for longer hours didn't result in any loss of quality, and that's good news for both the work I produced in November and for my future writing.

The unstated goal of last month's experiment was to help me figure out some new methods for working more productively. Should I give myself a revision hour goal every month, or set up some other kind of metric to reach? How many hours of writing are in my optimal working day? Since last week, I've been trying out a couple of ideas, and the results are good so far. I'm going to wait until I've had more time with them before going into detail here.

When I reviewed the stats on my November progress, I also consulted the record of my time and output in the preceding months. I was happy to discover I'd been keeping these records since the start of this round of revision. I was even more happy when I realized that my overall progress hasn't been as glacial as it feels.

At the beginning of this revision, I had some thoughts about how long it might take to complete. Reviewing the stats, I saw that my actual progress hasn't been so far off from my guess -- if you take out all the long and short breaks from writing. Some of these breaks were anticipated and valid, such as vacations. Others were the unanticipated but unavoidable interruptions of real life, some of which legitimately prevented me from writing and many of which were convenient excuses. And I'm sure there were a lot of days when there was no good reason that I only wrote for an hour.

So, on the one hand, it's nice to know that I am revising this novel at a pace that feels reasonable to me (however arbitrary that acceptable rate is), and that I can use that pace to estimate when I'll be finished. On the other hand, wow, I've wasted a lot of time, and that's disheartening. I'm hoping that my latest "This Is How I'll Be Super-Productive!" scheme means I'll waste less time in the future so that I might have a chance of meeting my estimate this time.

But, you know, now it's the middle of December, and nobody can get anything done in December.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Christopher Gronlund crafts exquisite Italian fig cookies and ponders the connection to writing: "I love taking the time to get each cut just right, just as I love taking my time with writing. Why would I rush a first draft when it -- and future drafts -- can be stronger if I step back and think about things more, instead of racing to the end?"

→ Kim Wright at The Millions tries to figure out what constitutes genre: "My conclusion: if genre was once a signal to the reader that certain things would happen in a certain way and at a certain pace and to a certain kind of character, that definition is dead. As dead as a Scottish warrior turned zombie searching the criminal underbelly of modern day New York for the only woman he's ever loved."

December Reading Plan

Here are the books I have lined up to close out my first year of monthly reading lists:

→ BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I've been reading this a lot during the past week, after setting it aside for a while, and I'm excited to see how the rest of the story is going to unfold. I expect to finish this month, completing a year-long read of the trilogy.

→ A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan - All the book people were talking about this book at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. It won a Pulitzer Prize and a bunch of other awards. I've been intrigued because I understand it features a variety of narrative styles and gimmicks, and has sections set in different time periods, which are two of my literary attractions. I didn't read it earlier because I also understand it might qualify as linked short stories rather than a novel, which doesn't appeal to me. Okay, yes, and maybe I also didn't read it earlier because everyone else was. But I picked it up at a bookstore the other day and decided to give it a try. Despite hearing about this book for months, I have no idea what it's actually about, so I get the relatively rare treat of starting a book with no story expectations.

→ MAN IN THE WOODS by Scott Spencer - I hadn't heard of the book or the author until the recent rebroadcast of a Fresh Air interview that intrigued me. This book starts with an ordinary man who takes an ordinary walk through the woods and ends up doing something terrible and unexpected that he has to decide whether to cover up. I was particularly interested because the basic premise has a lot in common with Will Allison's LONG DRIVE HOME, which I read recently, and I'm curious to see where a different author goes with a similar scenario.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Becky Tuch at Beyond the Margins discusses a writing problem I've struggled with in Zen and the Art of Withholding Information: "Perhaps your protagonist is not the kind of person who blabbers about every feeling he's ever had to anyone who will listen. Still, in order to convince your reader of his/her pain, in order to get your reader to empathize with him/her, you will not want to withhold key facts about your character's life. Nor will you want to withhold major aspects of your character's emotional experience. Take it from me--your readers will only feel cheated and confused."