Inching Ever Closer

Great novel progress this month. Among the recent achievements:

→ Every morning, I continue to be quite enthusiastic about getting down to work. (Okay, nearly every morning.) It has really made this whole endless revision thing far less painful than it was becoming.

→ I've sprinkled in a bunch of new backstory that either makes all the character motivations much clearer or bogs the entire story down. Can't wait to find out which!

→ I spent a long time studying TV Tropes (warning: not safe for productivity) in an attempt to figure out whether a particular scene in my novel is inadvertently an uncomfortable cliche. Still not sure, and I went back and forth about a thousand times on whether to remove it. Keeping it in for now, with the recognition that whatever it is, it's no longer inadvertent.

→ Remember how at the Squaw Valley workshop I received a suggestion about adding a prologue to better set up my novel? I wrote one, and I think it's pretty cool, but it's possibly just as problematic an opening. I've sent it off to a few of my workshop buddies to get some reactions.

→ Again, so much obsessing over paragraph breaks.

That's all I have to report this time. I can almost see the end from here!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Jacket Justice, book cover designer Allison Strauss analyzes the covers of bestsellers and suggests improved designs.

Tampa

Alissa Nutting's TAMPA gets to the point right away, and it's a disturbing point: The narrator, 26-year-old Celeste, is an eighth-grade English teacher who is sexually obsessed with 14-year-old boys. In fact, she becomes an eighth-grade teacher for that reason alone, and from the first day of school, all she thinks about is identifying a student who can fulfill her urges while not telling anyone. Celeste soon selects Jack as her target, and he proves himself a compliant participant in the extreme sex acts she craves.

This sounds horrific, and it's supposed to be. Nutting's book is an impressive, powerful, and fascinating work because the despicable character of Celeste is so skillfully rendered. The first-person narrative forces readers to experience Celeste's thoughts in all their specific and gruesome detail, and they only become more repulsive and shocking as the story unfolds.

The inevitable comparison is to LOLITA. It's been a while since I read Nabokov's novel, but my recollection is that Humbert Humbert is a pathetic character who I felt sorry for. The dirty trick of LOLITA is that I found myself sympathizing with, even rooting for, a character I considered morally objectionable. By contrast, Celeste never elicits any sympathy. From the first paragraph to the last, she is unrelentingly loathsome. She's a narcissist, she is intolerant of every flaw in the people around her, and she cares nothing for Jack's feelings except to the extent that they might pose a risk. The uncomfortable pleasure of TAMPA is being inside the mind of a character who keeps sinking to greater depths of awfulness.

For readers who can stomach the premise and the highly graphic descriptions of Celeste's actions and fantasies, I recommend TAMPA. Furthermore, all this depravity is packaged in a wonderful fuzzy hardcover. When I brought the book to the counter to buy it, the bookseller hadn't handled the copies yet, and she flinched as she touched it. I figured that was the desired effect. In a Daily Beast interview, though, Nutting said of the cover, "It's a security blanket. When the book gets too scary, you can close it and pet the cover until you're brave enough to open it and start reading again." Either way, the cover makes the book worth owning.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ In the New York Times Magazine blog, B. C. Edwards advises, Don’t Write What You Know: "In fiction, the believable is infinitely more important than the actual. No matter how grounded and real something is, if it doesn't fit in the story, it can't live there."

Tenth of December

The stories in TENTH OF DECEMBER by George Saunders are wonderfully weird, compellingly readable, and darkly funny. Saunders creates idiosyncratic characters -- often people preoccupied with their rich fantasy lives -- and makes them relatable through a narrative style that's close and casual.

Every story has a strong voice (or several), and while there's a similarity to many of them, each is specific and carefully rendered. A representative excerpt: One of the main characters in "Puppy", a stressed mother trying to sell an unwanted dog, thinks to herself,

So what she'd love, for tonight? Was getting the pup sold, putting the kids to bed early, and then, Jimmy seeing her as all organized in terms of the pup, they could mess around and afterward lie there making plans, and he could do that laugh/snort thing in her hair again.

Why that laugh/snort meant so much to her she had no freaking idea. It was just one of the weird things about the Wonder That Was Her, ha ha ha.

There are some truly disturbing situations in most of these stories, and yet the voices, the details, and sometimes the banality assigned to the extreme scenarios makes this book a hilarious, rather than a horrific, read. If you've heard much about the collection already, you probably heard about "The Semplica Girl Diaries" (a somewhat shorter version of the story is available from The New Yorker). In that story, a father who wishes he had the resources to give his children a better life comes into some money. He uses his windfall to purchase a set of Semplica Girls, a high-status lawn ornament consisting of women from third-world countries who are strung up on a rack and hang there, alive, providing decoration. It's a barbaric and bizarre concept (Saunders has explained the idea came to him in a dream), but reading the story, I laughed often and felt the protagonist's joy when he presents this gift to his family.

As that premise suggests, Saunders's settings aren't always quite of our world. A couple of the stories feature personality-altering drugs with names like Verbaluce^TM, and there are some other science fictional elements. But the plots generally revolve around normal human problems such as family conflict and the difficulty of fitting in. Financial status is a recurring theme, with several stories focusing on the gap between those who have money and those who don't. There are a lot of down-on-their-luck characters in this collection, typified by this passage from "My Chivalric Fiasco":

Based on my experience of life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it's not broke, don't fix it. And would go even further, to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you'll probably make it worse.

A good ending is important in short fiction (well, in long fiction, too), and while some of these stories wrapped up perfectly, several of the endings left me unsatisfied. On the whole, though, I was impressed by every story in the collection, and I recommend this book.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Juliette Wade urges writers to ask the scariest question, Why should I care about this story?: "So what is it that makes a reader care? This is a tricky question, and not everyone will answer entirely the same way. However, the best place to look is at the protagonist and their goals, and what will happen if those goals are not met."

Reply Hazy Try Again

It's been mostly all novel, all the time around here, which is pretty great. The forecast for the rest of August is more of the same. I expect blogging will be on the light side for the next little while.

I know that my legions of loyal fans (which is to say, my parents) are clamoring for an answer to that fateful question, "When can we read your novel?" I know that my eternal response, "When it's done," is not a satisfying one. I know that this blog doesn't really need another post which revolves around my unwillingness to provide a more precise answer.

But here's what I'll say: Since getting back from the writing workshop, I have made progress like whoa. I am cranking through this revision pass. Notes on "todo" cards are turning into notes on "done" cards, or I'm realizing the ideas don't fit into the story after all. Pointless sentences are meeting their swift ends at the sharp point of my delete key. (Ditto awkward metaphors like that one.) This stack of manuscript pages is going down.

In other words, I'm busy with my other words. Outlook good.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At the Opinionator blog, Ben Yagoda tackles the question, Should We Write What We Know?: "In all cases, the idea is to investigate the subject till you can write about it with complete confidence and authority. Being a serial expert is actually one of the cool things about the very enterprise of writing: You learn 'em and leave 'em." (Thanks, Beyond the Margins!)

→ Rebecca Joines Schinsky at Book Riot makes The Case for Reading Bad Books: "Reading bad books and learning to identify what makes them bad has helped me identify what makes the good ones good."

Starting Jane Austen

It's been a while since my last post related to my START HERE project, but I've been proceeding with the next couple of authors, though it's taken a while to finish in the midst of all my other reading, writing, and conference-attending.

I started reading Jane Austen prior to embarking on this project, but it was only last year. When I read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a classic that I actually enjoyed.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is funny. It has a nicely constructed plot that keeps the story moving along in a compelling way. It offers a look at the stifling social customs of 200 years ago, and while these are strange and foreign to readers today, the commentary on the annoying ways people behave is perfectly relevant and identifiable. (For those familiar with the book, I recommend this Slate Book Club discussion of the story and why it remains popular.)

The reading pathway for Austen, suggested by Amanda Nelson, starts with SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and puts PRIDE AND PREJUDICE second. Now that I've read SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, I have to disagree with that ordering, because if it had been my first Austen, I wouldn't have the same feeling of finally understanding why her work has stood up through time.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is Austen's first novel, and maybe that's why it didn't hold my attention nearly as well as her next book. I often found the story slow going, and I wasn't as invested in the outcomes of the various romances that form the plot.

Still, the sarcastic social commentary is in there and is the book's big strength. I enjoyed cringing along with the main character as she experiences the unpleasantness of being forced to spend time with tiresome people. I just would have preferred that the novel didn't dwell quite so long on making this point.

I guess I haven't mentioned what either of these novels are about. Most people are probably already aware that both focus on the question of who is going to marry who, while demonstrating the economic importance to an upper-class woman of making a good match. In my opinion these aren't particularly romantic stories -- the characters never have an opportunity to get to know each very well before declaring their love, because that's how society worked at the time -- so I don't recommend either reading or rejecting Austen based on whether you're interested in a love story. The books are really about how a particular part of the social structure works and how people manage to find even a little bit of love within its constraints.

The third book in the pathway is EMMA. I do intend to read it, but not right away.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Ann Morgan completed A Year of Reading the World and relates what she learned from the experience: "In the hands of gifted writers, I discovered, bookpacking offered something a physical traveller could hope to experience only rarely: it took me inside the thoughts of individuals living far away and showed me the world through their eyes." (Thanks, Louise!)

Not Bad At All

I'll admit I had some concerns that when I got back from Squaw Valley and looked at my novel in the light of everything I learned, I was going to want to rip it apart and embark on a new giant revision. You'll all be relieved to hear that this is not the case. I'm still pleased with the state of the manuscript as it stands. I do plan to make some changes to the beginnings of the storylines based on feedback I received, but beginnings are always problematic things that need a million rounds of tinkering, so this is no big setback.

It took me a while after returning from the conference to actually get back to work, but I've been plugging away these last couple of days, and it's going great. What I'm doing now is what I've been doing for the past few months (with quite a few chunks of time off for travel and other activities): fixing continuity errors and tightening things up and dealing with all the other miscellaneous issues that crop up during two years of rewriting. I'm making excellent progress, and it won't be long now.

Today I added in a bunch of minor details that needed to be set up sooner than they were. I was pleased with how I worked these in. I trimmed some conversations that went on too long and fixed some sentences that didn't quite mean what I wanted them to.

Most excitingly, I read a scene that made me teary-eyed and another that made me laugh. I think I've got something good here.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Scott Lynch offers a strongly worded reminder that there is no shortcut to being good: "How long does the process of hard work + self-awareness + perseverance take? I don't know; how long is a string? There is no RIGHT path. There is no IDEAL way. There is no PROPER length of time. There is only your right path, your ideal way, your proper length of time."

Wisdom From Squaw Valley

Last week I made a series of posts about my experience attending the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. To wrap up my conference reporting, I'm going to present some of the many, many bits of wisdom I scribbled down over the course of the week.

I'm attributing these ideas to the people who shared the advice or inspiration, but nothing should be considered a direct quotation. I've taken what I wrote down in my notebook, which was usually a paraphrase to start with, and then transformed the notes into actual sentences. It's also possible I've made some attribution errors if I noted the wrong speaker during a panel or if a person was passing on a suggestion from someone else. So approach this list as a general impression of things that were said rather than a transcript.

With that caveat, enjoy these lessons from Squaw Valley! (For even more, check out Squaw Valley's WRITERS WORKSHOP IN A BOOK.)

On living the writing life:

→ Amanda Eyre Ward: The people who go home from the conference, write every day, and believe in themselves are the ones who will succeed.

→ Martin J. Smith: Writing is the worst-paying career he's ever had, but the best-paying hobby. He's always kept his other day job, because it gives him freedom in his writing by separating the money part from the creative part.

→ Janet Fitch: The people in your life will respond to your level of seriousness about your writing. Make clear that you find your writing time valuable, and they will find it valuable and allow you to have it. Much of writing is defending your time.

→ Martin J. Smith: You need a hide like a rhinoceros, and you need persistence. You know what you're trying to do in your story. If feedback rings true, take it to heart. If not, let it bounce off your rhino hide.

On getting the words out:

→ Amy Tan: She isn't good at explaining what her work-in-progress is about. It's like performing an autopsy on a story coming alive, and she fears the story will die of exposure.

→ Martin J. Smith: His magic formula for what it takes to pursue your dream can be conveyed in four words: "Ten hours a week." That's enough to accomplish something.

→ Janet Fitch: You can't think about writing a whole novel. Instead write a scene, and a scene, and a scene.

→ Teresa Jordan: Her father would say everyone should be allowed to have an experimental child and then drown it. For novels, this is actually practical to do.

→ Janet Fitch: Writing develops a shell when it sits for a while, and it becomes harder to crack into. Check in on your work every day, even just to clean up a few sentences.

Feedback From Squaw Valley

Yesterday I wrote about how the workshops are structured at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. As I mentioned, we had a wide variety in our group in terms of writer experience level and the style and content of the work under consideration. Approximately half of the manuscripts we critiqued were short stories and half were chapters from novels.

Though I spend most of my time noveling, I've been getting more interested in short stories lately and have been trying to read and write more of them. I was aware that it's less complicated to workshop a complete story rather than a piece of a larger work, so I decided to challenge myself to write a new story I could bring to the conference. I wrote one during the couple of weeks beforehand. I thought it was pretty good and was curious how others would respond.

When I arrived at Squaw, I learned that my story would be workshopped on the final day. At first I was concerned that I would spend all week in nervous anticipation, but I soon decided it would be nice to wait and hear feedback after already knowing a lot about the general tastes of each group member. And honestly, since I'd written the story so recently, I didn't have as much invested in it as I might have if I'd submitted a chapter from my novel. So I didn't stress about it.

During the conference we received some great advice about workshops from several of the staff members. We heard that while there's value in having your work critiqued by others, it's by far more useful to be the one giving feedback. The reason for this is that when a writer suggests improvements to a story, they are really stating how they would change the piece if they were writing it. But the author under critique doesn't want to write more like someone else, and the advice often doesn't wind up being applicable to their manuscript as written by them. The advice giver is the one who benefits, by thinking about an assortment of stories and forming opinions about strengths and weaknesses that can later be applied to their own writing.

This isn't to say that all workshop feedback should be ignored. It's up to the writer to decide what suggestions to take and how to implement the ideas. We heard that the best advice might be the stuff that resonates right away (you already knew it was a problem), but it can also be the feedback that you're angry about hearing until two months later when you realize it was right (deep down, you really knew it was a problem). One leader said that if we use five percent of the critique we receive, we had a really good workshop.

So, what did I hear when my story was workshopped? Overall, people liked my story, and they had a ton of suggestions for how to make it better. I think that's the best possible outcome of a workshop. There was some good debate about various aspects of the characterization and plot, and I've written down a bunch of conflicting opinions about scenes to shorten or lengthen or add or delete. It'll take me some time to go through all the notes and marked-up manuscripts and compile all the information, and then I expect I'll put the story aside for a while, but I think eventually it could become something much stronger than it is.

Squaw Valley Overview

I spent last week attending the writers workshop run by the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Yesterday I reported on some highlights, and today I'm going to cover the basics of how the conference is run.

First off, as I discussed a couple months ago, I did have to apply and be accepted in order to attend this program. Then I had to pay a sizable fee for tuition and housing. I feel fortunate that I was able to afford this (and even pay extra for my own room and private bathroom), and I'm happy to say that I also feel I got my money's worth. Scholarships are available, and from talking to people I got the impression that financial aid was offered to a fair number of participants. Details about all this stuff is available on the FAQ.

The conference was held at the Squaw Valley ski resort, with all the events taking place in one large building that serves as the main dining and drinking area for skiers during the winter. Lodging is either at the Squaw Valley condos (The Village) or in vacation rental houses nearby. I had very convenient housing in the condo building closest to the meeting area, so my commute was the shortest possible, about a two-minute walk. Some people were a mile or more away and had to either walk that or drive in each day. I shared my condo with two other women, and we had a good time hanging out in the evenings.

Each morning from 9 to noon was spent in workshop. I was with the same group of 12 workshop members all week, but every day we had a different staff member lead our discussion. This gave us the opportunity to benefit from a variety of perspectives and discussion styles. The organizers clearly took great care in arranging the schedule of group leaders so that every workshop had a chance to work with an editor and an agent as well as several types of writers.

For each workshop session, two manuscripts were up for critique, and the bulk of the morning was devoted to discussing these, though often the leaders also gave some time over to a small lecture or writing exercise. The schedule of manuscripts was set in advance, and again there was a deliberate system behind which participants were paired with which professionals.

I'm sure effort also went into assembling a workshop group that included a variety of backgrounds, writing styles, and experience levels. As I said yesterday, my group worked together very well despite having such a mix of people. Over the course of the week, we got to know each other's tastes and opinions, and many of us left with ideas about who we'd like to exchange work with in the future.

Squaw Valley Highlights

I'm back from the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, and wow, is my brain full. I had an amazing time, and I learned so much.

Before I start reporting on my week, though, I have to mention something even more exciting. Yesterday, my new nephew made his way into the world. It was very thoughtful of him to wait until I was home and had the day free to do nothing but wait eagerly for news of his arrival. I'm looking forward to going back east to meet him -- and play with his big brother again -- later this summer.

I have so many things to say about Squaw Valley that I plan to do a series of posts over the next few days. I thought I'd start off with a list of high points, and later I'll go into more detail about various aspects of the conference.

In no particular order, the highlights:

→ I spent three hours every morning with a dozen people tasked with pointing out faults, and it was wonderful. I really lucked out in having such a smart, insightful workshop group that got along well.

→ I got to speak casually with several authors I already admired and some others I didn't yet know I was in awe of.

→ A successful novelist read the first chapter of my novel, praised it repeatedly, and then told me why it's not the right place for the book to start. She blew my mind with her brilliant idea for a better opening, and now I can't wait to get back to work. The best news? It doesn't involve changing everything!

→ For eight days, pretty much every conversation I had was about writing and books. It was heaven.

→ The writers, editors, and agents who make up the staff shared their wisdom and talent in panels and readings so compelling that I attended almost every one, despite the warning that it wasn't possible to do everything.

→ I witnessed Amy Tan playing the ukelele and chatted with her about The Rock Bottom Remainders. (She also gave a couple of inspiring talks.)

→ Whenever I went outside, I got to gaze at gorgeous mountain scenery, and during our afternoon off, I had time to both visit one of the peaks and get down to the Lake Tahoe shoreline. Photo album here.

More to come about the format of the conference, the process of receiving feedback, and the knowledge I gained.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Beyond The Margins, Kim Triedman offers advice on how to prepare your loved ones for your book release: "People will take umbrage at things you never even imagined could be offensive. Your agent will quietly bristle at the way you describe the inner workings of the publishing world. Your neighbor will take offense at the ugly living room furniture you describe, recognizing it -- correctly or incorrectly -- as her own. Your sister will assume that all the emotional dysfunction you've heaped on the fictional sister in your book is your way of getting back at her for being the free-loader in the family."