Best Laid Plans

My day-to-day life is pretty routine and predictable. Wake up, read, go for a walk, avoid writing for a while, get some writing done. Not too much variety -- I even eat the same things for breakfast and lunch most days. I like the consistency. It works for me.

As I've discussed before, when my life deviates from the usual, I get all thrown off for much longer than the interruption warrants. I just returned from a trip, and I didn't plan to even mention it here because I was going to have blog posts all ready to go last week so nobody would notice another hiatus. Obviously, that didn't happen.

I was also going to finish revising the current storyline before I left on my trip. Okay, no, I would complete this chapter, and then I'd have the remainder done before the end of the month. Well, at least I'd get through this scene...

Back in the fall, I would have said the entire revision would be completed by now. But while I'm very good at following a routine, I'm very bad at anticipating that life doesn't always conform to my routines and intentions.

I couldn't help but ponder the fate of best laid plans on Monday night as I sat stranded at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport along with hundreds of other travelers due to heavy storms. After a lovely trip to Florida to visit with my grandmother and parents, I was supposed to get home in time for dinner in California. Instead, my layover in Dallas coincided with the arrival of a vicious thunderstorm that closed the runways for four hours.

When planes began flying again, I experienced a series of hopes and disappointments as I watched the cancellations and delays on the flight schedule board. Finally around midnight, I boarded a plane that made it as far as attempting a takeoff, but an engine problem sent us back to the gate. In the end, I spent an uncomfortable night in the airport. I made it back to California at noon on Tuesday.

It wasn't the journey that I had planned, and it took a lot longer than I would have liked. Similarly, I would prefer to be done with my revision journey and have the polished manuscript out to all the kind friends and family who are so eager to read it. But things take as long as they take. Eventually I'll reach my destination.

In the meantime, it's some consolation to realize that revision is rarely as unpleasant as roaming around a chilly airport at four o'clock in the morning yearning for my toothbrush.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders reveals How Not to Be a Clever Writer: "Because what matters isn't cleverness, but the actual storytelling. If you're not telling a story that rocks, then all the cleverness in the universe won't matter."

→ Nancy Kress considers the connection between Jane Austen and Gregor Mendel: "Good novelists intuitively understand the composition of real families. And real characters -- rounded, believable, interesting -- do not exist in a vacuum. They have, or at least had, families, which they were partially shaped by."

The Significant Scenes I Didn't Write

As I work through revising the latest chunk of manuscript, I've been noticing that often the parts I leave out of the story are very important events to the characters, if I consider them as real people. But since they're fictional creations of a sadistic author, these significant scenes sometimes take place off the page. And it's not because in a moment of kindness I'm giving the characters some privacy for their big moments. The reason these events occur during the chapter breaks or in summary is that sometimes, the important episodes are repetitive or boring on the page.

You've probably seen a movie in which something tragic happens, or a character does something terrible, and when the bad news has to be broken to another character, the camera pulls back and the soundtrack covers the conversation, so all we get is the initial tears or expression of horror before the scene cuts away. The rest of the breaking-the-bad-news scene so often occurs offscreen for a couple of reasons. First, if the audience already saw the event in question, another scene in which the same event is described would only be a weaker rehashing. Second, unless the character is going to react to the news in an unusual manner, the audience can accurately imagine the grief or anger that's sure to occur, and leaving it to the imagination may be more powerful than what the script and acting could portray.

Along similar lines, I was recently trying to figure out how much to include of the fallout from my narrator's bad behavior. He did something stupid that was going to upset his wife, and I'd planned on a scene where she confronts him about it, but then I started having second thoughts. As in the breaking-the-bad-news example, a scene in which characters discuss the events of the previous scene is dangerously repetitive. I'd already given readers enough information about the characters that they could imagine how this conversation would go. So maybe it was better to leave it out.

That felt kind of strange, though, especially when I started thinking about how for the characters as people, this conversation and its impact on their relationship would be a lot more significant than the event that prompted the conversation. But I realized that's okay. Throughout the story, I gloss over important moments for this couple, such as their wedding, while dwelling on conflicts they might later forget about. Crafting a good story is all about deciding what to leave out, and it's not only the mundane occurrences that fail to move the plot forward.

As it turned out, I did give my characters a chance to deal with the narrator's actions on the page. After a bit of summary in which I established that there was a week of unproductive arguing during the chapter break, and then hinted that maybe things were improving, somebody got drunk and finally said what they'd really wanted to say. Things are in motion now, both for the relationship and the plot. And I'm not entirely certain it's going to end up where I need it to, but that's a topic for another time.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Christopher Gronlund advises writers, Don't Answer Every Question: "There's often a tendency to answer everything as we write in an effort to ensure we get our points across. If the question isn't a big thing, though, it’s usually best to leave the smaller questions unanswered."

The Mirage and Meeting Matt Ruff

I'm excited to talk about the newest book by Matt Ruff, who has been my favorite author for about twenty years, since I picked up THE FOOL ON THE HILL in a bookstore because I was a Beatlemaniac and attracted to the title. His five novels are very different from each other, and I recommend any of them. The latest, THE MIRAGE, is a strong, ambitious addition to his work.

THE MIRAGE opens with a prologue set on the morning of November 9, 2001, in the bustling city of Baghdad, industrial capital of the superpower nation, the United Arab States. Life changes for the citizens when planes crash into the Tigris and Euphrates World Trade Towers, hijacked by Christian fundamentalists from one of North America's warring third-world countries.

The rest of the novel takes place eight years later, in the post-11/9 world. A team of Arab Homeland Security agents is tracking a cell of crusaders, who have been a problem in the UAS while the long War on Terror continues in America. When they capture one would-be suicide bomber, he tells a crazy story: The world they are in is a mirage, a backwards version of what he claims is the real world, in which America is the superpower and the terrorist attackers are Arab. As the agents investigate further, they discover that many crusaders are telling this story and that their own government seems to be involved in a cover-up.

It's a challenging premise, but Ruff pulls it off. The mirror world he presents is a carefully researched and imagined setting, enhanced by encyclopedia entries throughout the book from The Library of Alexandria: A User-Edited Reference Source. The characters are real and sympathetic, each struggling with personal problems that complicate the investigation of the book's central mystery. The story is full of both humor and big ideas to ponder. If you're intrigued at all by the premise, pick up a copy. Matt Ruff should be much more widely read.

Last night I was thrilled to have the opportunity to attend an appearance by Ruff at Borderlands in San Francisco. He talked about the book's genesis, performed a great reading of the opening section, and gave thoughtful answers to questions from the audience.

Afterwards, I asked him to sign my well-loved copy of THE FOOL ON THE HILL, and he recognized me from Twitter! I think I just about nearly almost kept my cool and uttered a few more coherent sentences before returning to my friends and squeeing. Thanks, Matt, for making a fan's year.

Hello Again

I'm back from my blogging hiatus. I missed you all! And I missed writing the blog while I was away, so I hope I'm returning with some new energy to inject into the project. I have various post ideas lined up, including several book recommendations for the upcoming weeks. (I'm going to skip a monthly recap and cover two months of books at the beginning of April.)

No, I didn't finish revising my novel while I was away. I didn't even complete the current storyline, but I did accomplish a lot of good writing and planning that will take me through to the ending of this story. As I've written about before, endings involve plenty of extra thought and notetaking, so they tend to go slowly.

Well, I should specify that it takes time to craft a reasonable, satisfying ending. When I wrote the very first draft of THE EXTENT OF THE DAMAGE back in National Novel Writing Month 2007, I whipped out the three ending chapters in a single day, because it was November 30, and I had to.

My notes from that day explain: "I wrote all day long, except for breaks for meals, and it was my wordiest day EVAR (8597 words). I wrote the final chapter to each of the three novel storylines, producing three rather cheesy endings. I finished with only 15 minutes left in the month. Woo hoo the end!"

We're talking endings so weak and implausible that one character is basically like, "Well, I have this drug addiction that was supposedly ruining my life, but you and I kind of started this relationship a couple of days ago, so maybe I could get over it and be okay." In the current version of the novel, none of the plots resolve the same way they did in the first draft (and thank goodness for that).

Writing a decent version of that novel I originally bashed out in 30 days is obviously taking a little bit longer. And then a little bit more. But it's going to be so worth it when I'm done.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Anna Solomon writes at Beyond the Margins about why focus is overrated: "I've gone on countless runs, determined to figure out a problem in a story, and every time, it's the same: only when I get so bored that I forget my purpose does the answer come to me. At my last residency, I spent as much time staring at deer as at my computer, yet I churned out a record number of words on a daily basis."

Brief Blog Break

I have a couple of chapters left to go on the revision of my novel's middle storyline, so I've been focusing a lot of time and attention on getting the words out. Most days lately, I've also been planning to make blog posts, and even more interestingly, planning to contemplate some bigger ideas for the blog, but those items keep rolling over to the next day's to-do list.

My obsession with fiction often extends to the time-management expectations I fabricate for myself, but I think it's time to inject a bit of realism here. I'll be taking the next week or two off from the blog to concentrate my energy on the novel.

When I return, I'll get to the reader requests from last month's call for feedback. In the meantime, feel free to leave additional ideas.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Gabe Habash writes at PWxyz about The Wonderful and Terrible Habit of Buying Too Many Books: "There are just too many books to read. And while one might make the very good point that you could just wait to buy them when you have more room, there's something about putting them in a row with other books, read and unread, that creates the cumulative impression of your reading self."

Book Club Podcasts

I wanted to call attention to a couple of podcast book discussions that I enjoyed for books I read in the past few months:

→ I'm not a regular listener of the Fuzzy Typewriter podcast, but I'd heard they run a book club and had downloaded some episodes about books that I intended to read. I finally got around to listening to the discussion of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD by Jennifer Egan, which I read in December.

The GOON SQUAD episode is a great conversation about the book as a whole and its individual chapters. After listening to the podcasters talk about some connections between the stories that I'd missed, I appreciated the book more than I did initially. In particular, I'm reconsidering my opinion that the book is linked short stories rather than a novel. I think A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD is definitely a book that could benefit from a second read.

I see that the Fuzzy Typewriter book club has a recent episode on HOW TO LIVE SAFELY IN A SCIENCE FICTIONAL UNIVERSE by Charles Yu, another book I read and enjoyed, so I've downloaded that episode to listen to next.

→ I mentioned that ZONE ONE by Colson Whitehead made my reading list because it was the first book club selection for one of my favorite podcasts, Bookrageous.

The episode about ZONE ONE was a fun book discussion, followed by a conversation with the author. I especially recommend the section with Whitehead to those who have read the novel. (The first section of the podcast, following the regular episode format, is a rundown of what the hosts have been reading, so isn't relevant to ZONE ONE.)

→ Unrelated to any of the above, since it's Valentine's Day, I thought I'd point my newer readers to a post I made a year ago that I'm still rather proud of: What We Write About When We Write About Love.

Love is tricky. Writing about it, even more so. I wish you all a Valentine's Day that's exactly what you want it to be.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Nathan Bransford writes on The Art of Being Unsentimental About Your Characters: "We writers can get really, really attached to our characters. They become almost like family members. We want the best of them. And sometimes it becomes difficult to see them make mistakes and to see their flaws and to let those bad qualities shine through from time to time. We can be far too nice to them."

→ Publishing Trendsetter offers A Publisher’s Menagerie: Stories behind Publishers’ Animal Logos. (Thanks, The Millions!)

My Latest Book Haul

Yesterday I went to my favorite local bookstore, Books Inc., to pick up a book order. Because, obviously, I don't have enough books. I'll be reading a couple of these right away, but the others will join the many unread books on my shelves, and it's anyone's guess whether I'll read them next month or not for years.

→ GATHERING OF WATERS by Bernice L. McFadden - I learned about this new release from the blog White Readers Meet Black Authors. I was drawn in by a video of McFadden reading the first chapter, which introduces the narrator of the story as the town of Money, Mississippi. I'm interested in novels that involve real historical events, and this book centers on the murder of Emmett Till, which I only know a little about.

→ CHILDREN OF THE WATERS by Carleen Brice - Brice is the proprietor of the White Readers Meet Black Authors blog, and since I've enjoyed several of her recommendations, it occurred to me that I should check out one of her own books. CHILDREN OF THE WATERS is about families and secrets, two of my favorite literary subjects.

It's a pleasing coincidence that these first two books have similiar titles and covers.

Starting Tactics

Nathan Bransford blogged yesterday about How to Return to Writing After a Long Break. He discusses some great advice, including "Know that your first day back will not be productive" and "Badger yourself into opening up your novel and getting started again even if it feels like you are peeling off your own skin."

I was thinking about how most of this advice is applicable even when the break from writing has only been as long as a couple of days, or the hours since the night before. I usually find it really hard to get started on a writing session. I might be absolutely convinced that I never want to write another word in my life, right up until I wring out a sentence and think, "Oh, that's not so bad. It's even kind of fun."

Recently I've had a lot of productivity success (where "productivity" means "time-consuming systems for tricking ourselves into making better use of our time") by telling myself, "The next few hours are only for focusing on the novel, but as long as you don't think about anything else, you don't even have to write anything." When I'm intimidated by what I have to write next, it's comforting to know that I can just sit there for a few hours trying to figure it out. Inevitably, before too long I'll start writing, because for one thing, it's kind of boring to sit for hours not doing anything, and for another thing, thinking has a tendency to lead to ideas.

As Nathan says in his post, and as I've written about previously, the going is always slower at the beginning. But by the end of any writing session that I determined might not result in any actual writing, I always have plenty of words to show for myself.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Eleanor Brown posts at Beyond the Margins about Exposing the Dark Questions: "There were scenes in the book that made me cry as I wrote them, because writing them forced me to call upon emotions that I had, for a long time, tried to bury. I hadn't set out to write those scenes, hadn't set out to walk among those ruins, but there they were, and I could see that, painful as the process was, it was also catharsis." Today is the paperback release of Eleanor's THE WEIRD SISTERS, which I enjoyed a year ago.

February Reading Plan

For the past couple of weeks, I've been reading books that I wasn't super enthusiastic about, so I'm excited about having a personally thrilling lineup for this month:

→ THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION by Michael Chabon - Left over from last month's list, when I didn't get to it. In the meantime, I've received a couple of glowing reviews from people I know. One friend said that Chabon's earlier book, THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, is even more amazing, so in her opinion I'm doing the right thing by saving it until after this book.

→ THE FLAME ALPHABET by Ben Marcus - This novel has been getting lot of attention in the literary blogosphere. The premise is intriguing, but as I suspect it might be the sort of book that it's better to read without knowing too much, I'll just say that it involves language and an epidemic. If you want to know more, watch the haunting animated book trailer. After hearing about THE FLAME ALPHABET several times, I was interested but unsure if I actually wanted to read it. I picked it up in a bookstore, read the first paragraph, and made up my mind to buy it because of the way the opening dives right in.

→ THE MIRAGE by Matt Ruff - I've been eagerly awaiting this book for about six months. Well, more accurately, I've been waiting for this book since finishing Matt Ruff's last book in 2007. I can't say enough good things about Matt Ruff, and if I try, it's just going to be embarrassing for everybody, so let's move on. THE MIRAGE will be released next week, on February 7. It has an incredible mirror-history premise that I know Ruff has the skill to pull off. I can't wait.

→ HALF LIFE by Shelley Jackson - Jackson will be one of the honored guests at FOGcon, the speculative fiction convention I'm excited about attending next month. HALF LIFE is a story about conjoined twins, and it sounds fascinating and fantastical.

With all these great books to read, how will I manage to get any writing done in February?

Good Stuff Out There:

→ A friend of mine is working on an impressive project: Rereading Every Book I Own. She's reading them in chronological order and writing entertaining reviews of each. Here's the introduction.

January Reading Recap

Last month I read three of the four books on my list:

→ MAN IN THE WOODS by Scott Spencer - This novel is about guilt and secrets, two of my favorite themes. I posted some thoughts on the book already from a writerly perspective. The richly drawn characters are wonderful, and the plot weaves together in an interesting and usually surprising way. This is a book I'll be looking at again to learn more about constructing a story, and I recommend it to readers interested in a suspenseful, character-driven novel.

→ THE MARRIAGE PLOT by Jeffrey Eugenides - I'm sorry to say that I didn't like this book as much as I wanted to. I loved MIDDLESEX, Eugenides's previous novel, and this one didn't engage me in the same way. However, since MIDDLESEX won the Pulitzer Prize, it's naturally a hard book to top. THE MARRIAGE PLOT still has fascinating characters and an interesting story, and other readers might connect with it more than I did.

The story follows three characters in the year after their graduation from Brown University in 1982. Madeleine is an English major with a thesis about "the marriage plot" and its gradual disappearance from Western literature. She's in love with Leonard, a manic-depressive biologist. And she's firmly not in love with her friend Mitchell, who travels to Europe and India seeking spiritual fulfillment and an escape from his unrequited love of Madeleine.

I eventually became attached to the characters and their various adventures. I was less taken in by the novel's digressions into cerebral topics such as semiotics and literary theory. Perhaps if I'd read the authors who are name-dropped in the story, I might have found these sections more engaging. I was startled to find this apt and possibly self-conscious passage near the end of the novel:

The experience of watching Leonard get better was like reading certain difficult books. It was like plowing through late James, or the pages about agrarian reform in Anna Karenina, until you suddenly got to a good part again, which kept on getting better and better until you were so enthralled that you were almost grateful for the previous dull stretch because it increased your eventual pleasure.

Does this mean my experience of reading THE MARRIAGE PLOT was exactly what Eugenides intended? Even if not, coming across this sentence increased my pleasure in the book.

→ FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley - I expect it will not be news to anybody that this is the story of a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who assembles and gives life to a monstrous creature. It was written almost 200 years ago and is considered one of the earliest works of science fiction.

FRANKENSTEIN is a fairly exciting tale, but with my modern reading sensibilities, I couldn't help but notice all the places where a different storytelling style would have better highlighted the excitement. The pacing and structure seem less than optimal, though I imagine they are in keeping with the conventions of the time. I was less impatient with this story than with some of the other old books I've read, and it's kind of cool that a 200-year-old novel can still be read and enjoyed.

A side note: I thought I'd read this book before, and in particular I recalled that I'd read about two-thirds and then stopped for some reason. My paperback has a bookmark around that spot, confirming this theory. But nothing in the book was familiar, and I would have concluded that I didn't read it after all, except that I recently reread another book and found that I didn't remember a thing about it. I think of myself as having a good memory for what I read, and I can remember details of many books that I read decades ago, but I guess I only retain some books and lose others.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Livia Blackburne shares what she's doing differently as she starts her second novel: "While I love my cliffhangers dearly, they can only take you so far. I now see cliffhangers as part of a larger set of tools to keep readers invested. If readers build an emotional connection to the character, they'll keep reading -- plus, they'll keep thinking about the book after they finish."