Are We There Yet?

I'm really tired of writing this novel. I get up every morning and sit down at my desk, and when I finish for the day, I'm a few pages closer to the end of what may be a viable manuscript. But only a few pages, and the end is still very far away. And I've already written this novel twice, and it's taking too long, and I'm not having any fun, and whine whine whine.

I've never been particularly patient. Some might say that can't be true and that nobody impatient would have the discipline to write for years with little external motivation or reward. Still, I maintain that I'm not very patient. I get bored easily, and I tend to give up on activities when I didn't quickly show aptitude or improvement.

I guess the reason I haven't given up on writing is that I really, really, really want to attain success and I'm convinced I have a good shot at reaching my goal. The journey has been long, and there's a long way yet to go. I understand that the journey is what makes the goal possible, because I've only become a competent writer by writing and revising and sitting down at my desk every morning.

But how much longer is it going to be? I'm ready for this journey to be over. I'm really looking forward to the day that the navigation system announces, "You have arrived at your destination."

Good Stuff Out There:

→ A wonderful, painfully familiar essay by Dani Shapiro about the struggle of writing while the internet beckons: "In the time it has taken me to write these first two paragraphs, I have had the impulse to check email. I have had the impulse to look up the year that voice mail was invented." (Thanks, The Millions!)

→ Wendy MacNaughton researches and illustrates Snacks of the Great Scribblers. (Thanks, Louise!)

Remembering William Sleator

William Sleator, author of dozens of science fiction novels for kids and teens, died yesterday. When I was young, I read every book of his that my library had, often more than once. That was in the late 1980s. I see that his list of works continued to grow steadily in the decades since then. I'm going to have to catch up.

In most of Sleator's books, regular kids encounter some science fictional phenomenon or artifact that messes with their life. The stories were often scary in the same way as my nightmares about infinite numbers. I still get chills thinking of SINGULARITY, in which twin brothers find a room where time passes much faster than outside and one twin makes himself older so that he can overpower his dominant brother. Maybe I have unusual fears. William Sleator clearly had similar ideas about what was creepy.

Sleator once paid a visit to my middle school, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to meet one of my favorite authors. He told us some amazing true stories from his life. The one that made the biggest impression on me was about the manuscript of THE GREEN FUTURES OF TYCHO that he submitted to his editor. In the published book, there's an early scene where Tycho's siblings torment him. In the draft that Sleator submitted, during that scene, the siblings tie Tycho to a tree, put kindling underneath, and threaten to set him on fire. Sleator's editor said he had to tone that down because it wasn't believable for kids to be that cruel. Sleator disagreed, since it was an event taken directly from his real childhood. Nonetheless, the scene was changed. Reality can be less credible than fiction.

Thank you, William Sleator, for filling my early reading years with wonder and terror.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Becky Levine offers advice on Creating Space for the Lightbulb Moments: "I do believe inspiration exists. I also believe there are things we can do to help it along."

→ Darryl Campbell suggests Book Review Clichés I’d Like To See: "Borrow Buzzwords From Other Industries: For example, turn bestsellers into 'results-driven novels,' and debut authors into 'entrepreneurial writers.'" (Thanks, The Millions!)

August Reading Plan

The first book on this month's list is a holdover from the previous list. I'll just add two more this time.

→ 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - This didn't end up being my vacation reading, so I'm looking forward to diving into the story now. I've been told it's a fun and funny book about philosophy.

→ BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - This month I move on to the final installment of this trilogy. I'm eager to see what's next for life on Mars.

→ JANE EYRE by Charlotte Brontë - I have an ongoing feeling of inadequacy about my lack of familiarity with the classics. I also have an ongoing habit of buying the paper versions of books despite wanting to have something to read on my phone. Many classics are in the public domain, meaning that digital editions are available for free, so I can deal with both my issues at once. I've heard good things about JANE EYRE. It's about an orphan or something.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Theresa Stevens at Edittorrent offers strategies for cheating melodrama: "If the response is larger than the stimulus, we say that it's melodramatic rather than dramatic. Melodrama is all about exaggeration, spectacle, and sensationalism."

June/July Reading Recap

Due to one thing and another, I skipped a month in my regular book roundups, so this recap covers both June and July. During these two rather busy months, I read:

→ THE CITY AND THE CITY by China Miéville - This book is astounding, and I can understand why I've heard so much about it from so many people. The premise is a difficult one to wrap your head around, and even after finishing the book, I'm not done musing about the concept: Somewhere in Eastern Europe, two cities occupy the same physical location. It's an idea from the realm of the imaginary, but Miéville presents it so carefully, and with so many mundane and realistic details of the logistics of life in the cities, that the book mostly doesn't feel fantastical at all. This is by design, because the story is a pure police procedural that just so happens to occur in this unusual setting.

I highly recommend THE CITY AND THE CITY. It's a challenging read, with a lot of invented terms that the reader often has to figure out from context. The premise is a bizarre one, and it won't appeal to all readers, but if you're intrigued by the idea of two cities co-existing, you won't be disappointed.

→ GREEN MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - After several months, I'm nearly finished with this second book of the trilogy. I'm enjoying it just as much as RED MARS, and I continue to be impressed by how much research and world-building Robinson had to do for this trilogy. Like the first book, GREEN MARS has fascinating characters grappling with the problems of building a civilization on Mars. The book contains a lot of politics and a lot of descriptions of geology and machinery. If you're excited by that combination, then this is the trilogy for you.

→ THE IMPERFECTIONISTS by Tom Rachman - If I'd realized that this is a collection of related short stories rather than a novel, I might not have picked up this book. Each story features a different staff member of an international newspaper based in Rome. Early in the book, there wasn't much connection between the stories, and the characters weren't holding my interest, so I was considering abandoning it (which I hardly ever do). I kept reading, though, and by the end I had a more positive feeling. The later stories drew me in more, and the book did form a coherent whole, though not in as satisfying a way as a novel with a unified plot. A well-written book that didn't match my tastes very well.

→ DEADLINE by Mira Grant - The recently released second book in the Newsflesh trilogy. I previously posted my opinions about the first book, FEED, and I feel the same way about this one: It's an exciting, compelling story with a writing style that constantly drove me crazy. While the first book is roughly a political thriller with zombies, DEADLINE is a medical thriller about the zombie disease, and that aligns even better with my interests, so I was hooked even as I imagined taking a red pen to the text. Recommended according to your tolerance levels.

→ THE SPARROW by Mary Doria Russell - I'm in the process of listening to this as an audio book along with my family. We started it during the long car rides of our recent vacation, and we're now a few chapters from the end. The story is about the discovery of intelligent life on a not-too-distant planet and a first contact mission organized by the Jesuits. At the start of the book, we learn that the mission was ultimately a disaster, and the story revolves around trying to understand what happened and what went wrong. I like the characters and much of the story, though there are certain parts I think are too drawn out. I'm eager to find out how it ends. The narrator of the audio book, David Colacci, does a good job portraying the many different accents of the characters.

I didn't end up getting around to one of the books I announced at the beginning of June, 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, so I'll put that on my August list.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Ian M. Dudley asks, Are You Critiquing My Novel, Or Do You Just Hate Me?: "Given the level of impersonal rejection that an author faces when attempting to find someone to publish their book, you need to have a pretty thick skin to succeed in this racket. Thick enough to endure that rejection, and thick enough to not only face down this sort of critique, but to say 'Thank you!' afterwards, even if you're choking on your own bile as you say it."

→ Julie Isaac finds an 1893 article on The Writing Method of Louisa May Alcott: "Not only did she make do without a computer, but her most famous work, Little Women, was published two years before the first typewriter was sold commercially."

Happy Release to Anna Scott Graham!

I'm thrilled to offer congratulations to my friend Anna Scott Graham, who has released her first independently published novel. THE WAR ON EMILY DICKINSON is an emotional, non-linear story that follows a relationship and a family through thirty years as AIDS devastates a San Francisco community.

Anna has been a friend, supporter, and NaNoWriMo buddy for years. She is a constant source of inspiration and awe, because Anna churns out words and novels at a staggering rate. Check out the writing timeline in the sidebar of Anna's blog to see how many manuscripts she's written and how quickly she churns out first drafts.

Bravo to Anna for completing all the revision and work required to release THE WAR ON EMILY DICKINSON into the world. I know many more novels will follow!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jennifer R. Hubbard writes about the bookstore as destination: "Those of us who like bookstores don't just like the shiny covers and the sweet-smelling pages of a printed book. There's just something special about a bookstore as a place, especially if it's a store with comfy chairs."

Write & Rewrite: Plot

This post first appeared as the July "Write & Rewrite" column in WritersTalk, the newsletter of the South Bay Writers branch of the California Writers Club.

 

Plot is arguably the most important part of any story. Even complex characters in a richly detailed world won't hold a reader's attention if they don't do anything significant. A plot can be subtle and compact, as in a short story consisting of a single tense conversation, or it can burst with exciting incidents that build to a revelatory conclusion, as in a thriller novel.

To discuss plot, let's consider a highly simplified outline that could serve as the basis for either a short story or a novel:

1. Married couple Ella and Art have both lost their jobs and can't afford to pay their mortgage.
2. They put their house on the market and move in with their grown son, Mike, and his family.
3. Living in Mike's house leads to tension and arguments.
4. Art finds a new job, and the couple is hopeful that they can get their house back before it sells.
5. Ella also secures a job, and they're able to reclaim their house just in time.

The outline opens strong: The characters are in a tough situation that they will have to struggle to get out of. This can be a great way to begin a story, but only if things get worse from there. In this plot, life does become more difficult for Ella and Art. However, the additional problems follow as a direct consequence of the starting situation rather than arising from new obstacles, so while the first half of the outline has promise, it could be better.

Now, Where Was I?

In June, I reached the blogging milestone of one year since my first post. After much deliberation, I decided that the best way to celebrate the anniversary would be to completely ignore the blog for over a month.

No, of course that's not exactly what happened. In June, my regularly scheduled creative endeavors were interrupted by higher than usual levels of reality. These conditions persisted right up until some previously planned weeks of vacation. For the sake of my sanity, I let the blog lapse into an unannounced hiatus.

I'm back now. And I'm just as unsure how to go about this blogging thing as I've been all along. As I feared at the beginning, I'm a slow blogger, and the time I spend writing posts usually comes at the expense of time I would have spent on the novel. After a year, blogging hasn't become easier or turned into a more natural part of my routine the way I hoped it would.

Still, I'm glad I started this blog, and I intend to continue. I'm happy with the posts I've written this year. I think some of them have been useful or inspirational for other people (and I always like hearing when they are, hint hint). Some favorite posts:

→ Index Cards for Fun and Planning

→ Getting the Story Right

→ Why I Quit NaNoWriMo But You Shouldn't

→ Recommended Books on Writing

→ What We Write About When We Write About Love

→ Just 10 Minutes

→ All of the columns originally published in WritersTalk, which are longer and more in-depth than my standard blog posts

I'm pleased with my system of monthly reading plans and recaps that encourages me to read more books and post about what I read. I still find it tricky to compose more detailed book recommendations, but I'm gradually figuring out how to review and discuss books.

I have some vague ideas about possible new directions for my blog. For now, though, expect things to remain as haphazard as always around here. If you, my loyal readers, have any thoughts about what you'd like to see more of (or less of), please let me know. Thanks for reading.

The Right Amount of Detail

As I read IF SONS, THEN HEIRS by Lorene Cary, I was struck by the number of nonessential but delightful details and moments that were woven into the story without ever bogging it down. I call these details "nonessential" because each one individually could have been omitted without losing crucial story information. Yet they aren't the pointless, boring descriptions I railed against in a recent review and column. These are specific, compelling little pieces of narration and dialogue that enrich the world. They make the characters more identifiable and the situations more believable, and they never last long enough to detract from the plot's momentum.

I'll give an example, though I'm not sure it's meaningful out of context. In one scene, a boy interrupts a serious conversation between adults to pester his dad about soda. In the next scene, an elderly relative scolds the boy about the way he's throwing away the soda cup. There's nothing important about the soda, and what's shown about the characters in these interactions isn't substantial new information. It all could have been cut without impacting the story. But there are subtle reasons for including the soda: The interruption makes the serious conversation more palatable for both the characters and the reader, and the boy's realistic behavior adds credibility to a novel that's partly about raising children. None of these purposes stick out. On the page, it all blends naturally into the action.

I wish I was capable of analyzing exactly how Cary achieved the proper effect so that I might offer some writing advice more useful than "Include the right amount of detail." I'll try to expand a bit: First, notice when you've included details that don't directly move the story forward. Next, don't edit out all of them.

I have a rather spare writing style and a tendency to expunge any line that I can't justify as serving a clear and necessary purpose. In revision, I agonize over the revealing but tangential moments, fearful that I love them too much to impartially judge whether they are superfluous. IF SONS, THEN HEIRS served as a good reminder that some of my beloved nonessential details may still have a place in my novel.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Nathan Bransford deconstructs How to Craft a Mystery in a Novel: "A character's desire + Consequences/stakes + Obstacles + Delay = Mystery"

→ Melville House bestows the Moby Awards for the best and worst book trailers. (Thanks, The Millions!)

June Reading Plan

I'm carrying two books over from May:

→ THE CITY AND THE CITY by China Miéville - Looking forward to starting this, after hearing a lot about it.

→ GREEN MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I'm a little less than halfway through this big book. I'd like to try finishing it this month.

Since I know I have a busy month planned, I'll just add one more book to the list:

→ 36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - Eleanor Brown did a joint book event with Goldstein a few months ago. My mom attended, bought this book, and recommended it. It's a novel about academics debating religion. Flipping through the book, I see lots of typographical gimmicks like email messages and lists, and I love that sort of thing.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Jessica Francis Kane, author of THE REPORT, which I wrote about in April, discusses the label and nature of historical fiction. (Thanks, The Millions!)

→ Artist Chip Zdarsky presents posters for children's stories reimagined as Hollywood films. (Thanks, Nathan Bransford!)

May Reading Recap

Writing and real life have been taking precedence over blogging lately. But it's a new month, so let's see what I read in May:

→ THE INTUITIONIST by Colson Whitehead - This is a novel about elevator inspectors, set in an alternate version of 1950s New York in which elevator inspection is a really big deal. The Department of Elevator Inspectors wields significant political power in the city, inspectors graduate from the Institute for Vertical Transport, and tension is building between those who inspect empirically and those who test the machines through intuition. The book's protagonist, Lila Mae Watson, is a black female Intuitionist who is forced into a confrontation with the Department's old-boy network when she becomes the target of an investigation. It's a weird, fascinating premise, with a plot that gets quite exciting as Lila Mae uncovers a series of conspiracies and secrets.

→ IF SONS, THEN HEIRS by Lorene Cary - The book opens with a family tree charting the many members of the Needham family, who are descended from slaves. The novel is set in the present day, with some flashbacks to other eras, and concentrates on a few members from one branch of the tree. But all the other relatives are important because the story's main conflict concerns a piece of heir property, land owned jointly by all descendants of the original owners. The characters and storytelling in this book are fantastic. There's a wonderful balance between big issues -- the property, a character finding the mother who abandoned him, concerns about an aging relative -- and minor everyday problems like how to keep a small boy entertained.

→ GREEN MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson - I got through another chunk of this book early in the month, but I haven't picked it up in a while. Maybe I'll focus and finish it in June.

I also read a manuscript for a friend who is getting ready to self-publish. I'm looking forward to announcing her release sometime this summer.

I didn't get to the final book on my May reading list, THE CITY AND THE CITY by China Miéville, so it rolls over to June.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ The Intern explains how a plot is different than a series of events after musing on "how funny it is (and how perplexing) that you can write an entire novel (or even several drafts of a novel) and only realize at the very end that -- oops! -- you forgot to give your story a plot."

→ Nicholas Tam presents a detailed essay on fictional maps: "So when we open up a novel to find a map, we can think of the map as an act of narration. But what kind of narration? Is it reliable narration or a deliberate misdirection? Is it omniscient knowledge, a complete (or strategically obscured) presentation of the world as the author knows it? Or is the map available to the characters in the text?" (Thanks, Pimp My Novel!)