Even the Good Lord Can't Get You Out of Jury Duty

For the past couple days, I've been trying to figure out how to relate my recent jury service to writing - other than the obvious real life drama as a source of inspiration blah blah - but then I realized that I was only doing it so that I could blog about it. Well, what the hell. Here I go blogging about jury service:

I've served on a jury before. In fact, I was jury foreperson, which means that I read the verdict (guilty) to the court and, more importantly, to the defendant. At that time, I really enjoyed jury service. The trial was only five days, the crime not particularly serious, deliberations took only one additional day, and I was unemployed at the time so being paid $15 a day to fulfill my civic duty by participating in the justice system was a pretty good deal.

Now... not so much. I've got a full time job that does not pay me for days spent during jury service, and a desk with work piling up in my absence. So, frankly, I'd rather not serve.

In fact, no one in my pool wanted to be on this jury. It was a murder case, expected to take at least two full weeks of trial before deliberations, and the witness list included the medical examiner. I don't care how much Law & Order people watch, it's quite different knowing that the death being described was an actual person and not just some made up TV scenario. Who wants to hear that testimony?

So, each time the court clerk began calling juror badge numbers, it was as if the entire room were holding its breath. There was a nun in my pool, and as numbers were being called she was fondling her rosary and praying. A bus driver who sat next to me was taking notes about what each potential juror was saying in response to the judge's questions so that he could figure out what was the right thing to say to be dismissed. A stock broker kept shaking his head and repeating over and over that this would be his third case in eight years. Third case in eight years! What's your excuse? he'd challenge.

After three days of hearing every excuse imaginable, the judge and attorneys had found their jury plus four alternates, and I was released. I've never been so happy to be back at work. Now I can return to my Law & Order watching with the blissful innocence of a TV viewer.

As for the nun... she's juror number twelve.

On a Roll!

Friend and writer colleague Erika Swyler is picking up some steam! Her short story, The Light Touch, has been published in the most recent addition of Semaphore magazine. The current issue is available for viewing online here. I hope you'll take the time to read her excellent writing - and if you do, please also take one more moment to survey the issue, and in particular Erika's work, here. Giving the editors feedback is a great way for them to know what writing is speaking to you and sparking your interest, and helps support writers and colleagues like Erika.

Congratulations, Erika!

The Banned Book List - A Meme Thingy

Two of my favorite reading/writing blogs, Stusplace and Tripping Toward Lucidity, recently posted this list of books that have been banned in one time or place. I found the list very intriguing, as it is simply a list and provides no information about where or when each book was once banned. In searching for the information to match the list (which I did not find easily enough) I was yet again reminded that book banning is not a thing of the past, but is ongoing.

If you're interested in current book banning a good place to follow issues of ongoing censorship is with the National Coalition Against Censorship.

That said, while I don't support censorship of books, I think we need to do more than read banned books. I think we need to recognize the power of language in shaping and defining our world, and we need to engage in ongoing dialogue about how difficult ideas and powerful language is taught in our schools and how it affects our communities.

It's one thing to make a sweeping statement that a book should never be banned from schools, and it's another thing to actually engage the mother who's concerned about how reading the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn will affect her child, or to discuss with a holocaust survivor the banning of a holocaust denial book. I think the discussions that these books can promote are just as important as the reading of the books themselves.

Here is the list with the books that I have read listed in bold:

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

It's also possible I've read portions of some of the philosophers included here, Kant, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, but since I can't remember specifically, I'll consider them unread. Perhaps they're worthy of a revisit.

Do You Want to Read My Blog Post?

I am starting an organization that I think you might be interested in joining: People Against Passive Aggressive Language (PAPAL.)

My office - in particular my co-workers - have caught the passive aggressive bug. Evidence of said bug can best be demonstrated by sharing the following sentences recently heard in my office:

Do you think we should call the copy guy?

No, we shouldn't call the copy guy, because we can't do anything together. I will call the copy guy.

Is the copy guy coming?

I don't know if the copy guy is coming, however, if you're curious you might ask me if I have called the copy guy to come.

Do you want to call the copy guy?

If I want to call the copy guy, I will. You might simply ask me to call him, instead of asking me if I want to call him.

It's as if we all learned at some point that being passive aggressive was the same thing as being polite. It's not. It's just vague and ambiguous. Being polite is saying "please" and "thank you."

I humbly suggest the following as a simple and direct replacement for the above passive aggressive sentences:

Stephanie, will you please call the copy guy about the bad copies?

Yes, I would be delighted to.

Now accepting membership applications for PAPAL.

There Can Be Only One: A Literary Smackdown

It's a beautiful spring in Los Angeles, and this is a beautiful week for writers. On Wednesday, LA Weekly released their 2008 literary supplement issue. The issue is overflowing with good stuff - John Banville writing on Belgian mystery novelist Georges Simenon; a Salman Rushdie excerpt from The Enchantress of Florence; an introspective on bookselling by Los Angeles bookselling legend Doug Dutton; and a check-in on the health of the novel by Joe Donnelly - among many more.

For my money (*cough*LA Weekly is free*cough*), the most enjoyable of the articles was a humorous complaint about the mystery surrounding the awarding of literary prizes and a commentary on what the author thinks should be the future of prize giving - "The Brief, Wondrous Tournament of Books" by Nathan Ihara. In the article, Ihara discusses The Morning News' Tournament of Books, a critics and readers showdown that pits books against each other in a March Madness NCAA style single-elimination tournament. You can see this year's tournament results here.

I've got a lot of links going in this article, all of them worthy of your perusal. Get to reading everyone!

Watership Down by Richard Adams

I have finally come to the end of the rabbity journey that was Watership Down by Richard Adams. Overall, I found the book delightful. On its surface it is a thrilling survival adventure, but it's also a story about community, faith, fearlessness, and oral histories.

Throughout the narrative, Adams pauses to allow the bunnies to tell stories of their bunny ancestors. I think it would be easy to dismiss these narrative breaks as momentum killers or unnecessary nuisances, but for me they added a complexity to the story that made the rabbit characters feel more real and more alive than if it had simply been a children's-book-style narrative with complex human thoughts ascribed directly to the animal characters.

It actually reminded me of the original epic poems that A.S. Byatt wrote for Possession and ascribed to her Victorian era epic poet characters. By taking the time to write and include those, it added a completeness to the book that would have been missing if she simply referred to single lines here and there.

Watership Down wasn't at all what I was expecting, and while the ending thrilled me, it left me with that bitter sweetness that I would never spend any more time with those characters.

Goodnight, Hazel-rah.

BRAIN FREEZE

I have writer's block. It's official. I've been working on one scene for nearly three weeks now. I can't move on until I figure out what happens in this scene. I know the problems:

1.) The scene is centered around dialogue instead of action.

2.) There is no conflict in the scene.

3.) I still don't entirely know what I need to accomplish with the scene, I just know that I need to accomplish something.

While I've uncovered some interesting nuggets while writing said scene, it's still just a sketch of something, and not coming to be anything.

What action can replace this dialogue?

What conflict could arise from this action?

Where do I want my character to go?

I'm hoping that stating these problems and questions plainly will assist me in thinking about them in a new way.

In Pursuit of "The End"

Why is completing a draft so difficult?

Even when I know where I want to go with a story, sometimes getting from plot point to plot point is painful and grueling. Every word feels like I'm carving it into wood rather than simply typing it to the screen. When I work on longer pieces, I feel like every scene contains a potential boobie trap, where I'll realize that all of the careful plotting I've been doing doesn't make any sense, and the scene crumbles beneath my feet or sends poisoned darts flying at my neck.

So there is always something to be said for completing a draft. Just push through, no matter how good or bad you think the writing is and get to the end of the story. Once you have that first draft out of the way, you have a foundation on which to build the perfected story.

Last week, a friend left me a rather jubilant and exhausted voicemail message after finally completing a first draft on a project he'd been working on for more than a year. It was fantastic and inspiring to hear him get to that point after a very long journey. You have climbed a tall mountain, my friend, and I bet the view looks good.

Congratulations!

I Got Bupkes

I love it when the sound of a word evokes the same feeling as the word's definition. I don't mean straight onomatopoeia (e.g., boom, bang, etc.), though I'm fairly certain there's a word for what I'm describing and I just don't know it yet. Help dear readers?

Examples of what I mean can commonly be found in musical terms. For example staccato, meaning shortened or detached when played or sung, sounds like its definition with its three short syllables. Another example might be the word whine, which sounds a lot like the act of whining itself, helped along by the long I vowel sound (that usually kicks off a good whine session).

I'm certain that I'm not the only person who thinks about the way a word sounds when I write, though I imagine this is even more important in poetry, which I have no experience with. However, I do believe that word selection is very important in any writing to evoke the proper gut response in your reader.

Last night, my roommate mentioned using the Yiddish word kvetch, which means to complain a lot, and strikes me with the same sound/meaning effect, and I couldn't help appreciating how many Yiddish words fall into that category.

For your reading pleasure, here is a list - maybe not so well transliterated - of Yiddish words and phrases that you may or may not know that sound like their meanings:

alter cocker - an old and complaining person
balabusta - a bossy woman
bupkes - nothing or worthless
chutzpah - nerve, gall
ferblunjit - mixed up
fercockt - fucked up
kibitz - tease or joke around
klutz - an uncoordinated person (favorite example, Jack Tripper from Three's Company)
mishuggena - crazy person
nebbish - a nerd, loser
nudnik - a pest, an annoying person
pisher - literally a bed wetter, but used for an insignificant person
shlep - carry, drag from place to place
shlimazel - an unlucky person
shmooz - to gossip, chat
shnoz - a nose
shvitz - to sweat

More Yiddish words and phrases can be found here.

I half wonder, though, if I don't feel this way about these words because I learned them very early in my childhood and so subconsciously connect the sounds with their meanings. I would love to know what you all think.

How to Combat Gloom with Literature

I have recently been fighting a vicious battle with the blues. Of course, that means that my "fighting" consists of lying in bed and resisting the urge to listen to Tom Waits or Tori Amos or other similarly melancholy "T" named artists.

I know I have the blues because this weekend I cried through an entire episode of Bones, a normally witty and humorous crime show that was having one of their rare serious episodes.

Thinking about ways to pull myself out of my funk, I started thinking about the comfort of my favorite children's literature. As a kid, my favorite books tended to be those of the fantasy persuasion. I am a rather enormous fan of The Dark is Rising Sequence written by Susan Cooper - a series of five books that I highly recommend to your fantasy loving 'tweens - and I have read my paperback copies worn. Those books, in particular the ones that featured Jane Drew, a heroine I could connect with, are deeply tied to my young adulthood. So I find myself returning to them, again and again.

I don't think it's the book itself that comforts me. I think it's reconnecting to the wonder and escapism of my youth. Because, of course, it was a simpler time. I can still remember lying in the fluffy pillows in the corner of my room beneath the windows, a rare rainy day outside, and reading for hours upon hours.

I'm certain that this has been written about extensively in the context of all things Harry Potter. The why of Harry has always seemed obvious to me. He connected with so many people, because so many people yearned to reconnect with those feelings of their youth: simplicity, imagination, adventure.

So as I lick my wounds, and try to recover from my blues, I'm looking forward to surrounding myself in the comfort of my childhood. It'll be me, my teddy bear, and some good old fashioned adventure tonight.

Daily Harpoon to the Cerebellum

In a moment of excessive enthusiasm I decided to read Moby Dick by Herman Melville as my introduction to the DailyLit service. DailyLit, if you recall, is a subscription service that sends users a daily portion of a book of their choice via e-mail or RSS feed.

I scheduled my daily portion of Moby Dick to arrive in my inbox every day at 4:30. I now dread 4:30. I'm five portions behind, and the e-mails are taunting me.

At this point, I'm not ready to blame the DailyLit service. It's all Melville's fault. I'm nine chapters in and Ishmael is not even on the boat yet. It's just... moody.

A friend has repeatedly called my decision to read Moby Dick masochistic. I've been insistent that it's not that bad, thank you very much, Monsieur de Sade.

But yes, it is that bad. In fact, it's torture, and not of the sublime kind. As a result, Moby Dick is being temporarily suspended until I'm ready to embrace my inner masochist.

I Can Haz Humanness? Anthropomorphizing in a Post LOLCat World

Last month I opened up my book pile for a vote to help me select my next read. The winner, which I am currently reading, was Watership Down by Richard Adams, a heroic tale of adventure centering around a group of rabbits that abandon their doomed home and begin a harrowing journey to find a new place to call their own.

What I find fascinating about Watership Down is the way that Adams uses distinctly rabbit-like behavior to tell his story. His bunny protagonist is not treated like a burden. Instead, Adams relishes the opportunity to explore bunny obstacles, bunny problem solving, and even bunny mythology and oral tradition. It is not a human story that uses bunnies in order to create a thinly veiled allegory. It is a story about rabbits. Though I do acknowledge that the book has themes about resisting totalitarianism, it is not nearly as obvious an allegory as say George Orwell's Animal Farm. These are not walking, talking bunnies (and certainly not revolutionary farm animals). These are rabbits living out their lives in a very rabbity way.

It is obvious that before writing this book Adams spent considerable time reading about and thinking about how bunnies actually behave. While he allows them a certain amount of human-like thought - feelings of brotherhood, affection, fear - he does his best to preserve their animal reasoning. More than once the protagonist bunny has described the terrified freeze that comes over him when confronted by the head lights of a car, a fear that he has little to no power to resist, or the emotional exhaustion of being frightened and exposed for long stretches of time without a hole in which to hide.

As I've been thinking about anthropomorphizing animals, I can't help but be carried from the elegance of Watership Down to the silliness of icanhascheezburger, the home for all things LOLCat. What is it about adding poorly worded captions to cat pictures (among other animals) that is absolutely hilarious?

I think the humor comes from knowing that cats do not think or behave in a remotely human way, while at the same time we secretly suspect that they are capable of much more complex thought than we allow them in our minds. In film school, an acting teacher once taught me that one of the most difficult things for an actor to do on camera was simply to indicate to an audience that their character was actively thinking. That lesson comes to mind sometimes when I watch animals. Occasionally, I'm convinced that we are watching the animals think. Like watching a cat work out how to get from the floor to the top of the cabinet where that tasty looking fishbowl sits. What makes it funny is imagining that they are thinking just like us (only with poorer grammar).

Perhaps that's the beauty of what Richard Adams has done in Watership Down. He's not forced the rabbits to be creatures they are not. He has simply allowed them to think, allowed them to tell us their story, their thoughts instead of ours, their problems instead of ours. From where I sit, if you're going to anthropomorphize, this is the way to do it.

Festivals, Festivals and More Festivals

You can hardly turn around in Southern California these days without stumbling across a Festival. It seems that we're all eager to begin enjoying the spring weather. Last weekend had the Coachella Music Festival and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, both which were estimated to attract between 140,000 and 160,000 attendees. It's exciting to hear that many people interested in books and reading.

A much lesser known festival, in a town that I'm rather fond of is beginning tomorrow and carrying on through the weekend. It's the Ojai Storytelling Festival. Ojai is a pretty little town, just an hour north of Los Angeles in Ventura County. It sits in a bowl of low mountains that turn pink at sunset. The majority of its cute shops line one short block, but great hikes are everywhere. If you get up in the mountains you can take in gorgeous views of the Ojai valley, with its orange groves and white wood-fenced farms. It's very hot in the summertime, but this time of year should be perfect.

The Ojai Storytelling Festival is a great event for families, but there is an adults only event on Saturday night. Let me know if you end up attending!

Reading Like the Tortoise Instead of the Hare (How Aesop is to Blame For My Slow Reading)

I am an exceptionally slow reader. If I read an entire five page chapter in a thirty minute sitting, I'm pretty pleased with myself. As a lover of literature, this leisurely tortoise stroll of a pace does not make for very effective use of my time. I'm forced to look on in green jealousy as other hare-like readers go jogging by me, juggling multiple books like taunting retired circus clowns.

Of course, there is something to be said for my current tortoise style approach. I will eventually complete every book I pick up, and when I'm reading I'm entirely devoted to that one story, that one author, that one tone - but how many other books do I simply not have time for as a result? This plagues me. I will always feel inadequate when I compare myself to other "well-read" brethren.

I blame Aesop and his silly fable. Slow and steady does not always win the race. However, in thinking about my reading pace, I've boiled it down to a few key contributing factors:

1.) Distractions - You can't deny it. There are a lot of distractions in this modern world, like the easily accessible internet, my ringing cell phone, and the conversation at my favorite coffee place that is just a little too loud. Distractions mean that I'm often reading the same paragraph or sentence over and over. It's a real pace killer.

2.) Time Commitment - At best, I have only an hour and a half of real reading time carved out of every day - an hour of which is on my lunch hour which is sometimes shared with a companion instead of reading or involves many distractions (see above). With all the things I want to accomplish post work, including cooking dinner, exercising, catching up on phone calls, there isn't very much time left in the day for reading.

3.) Narcolepsy - The last thing I do before I go to sleep every night is read in bed. Which means that when I read, I tend to get sleepy. It's a Pavlovian response. I open the book, read a few paragraphs and start to nod off. If the book is exceptionally good, it will keep me awake, but when Neal Stephenson is in a marathon paragraph description of Baroque Paris, I'm usually not getting very far.

I've heard from a lot of people that if you cut out television watching you have more time to read. I'm going to do something different. I'm cutting out my commute.

You read it here folks. No more sitting in traffic. I pledge to commute at least three times a week on the bus, thus allowing me at least an hour a day more to read, giving the environment a break, and my pocketbook a break from gas purchasing. After all, I'd rather my commuter dollars go to the Los Angeles public transportation budget than Exxon Mobile.

This is my pledge. This is my experiment. Look out fellow readers, I'm about to speed past you on the bus!

Textual Inspiration #5 & DailyLit Follow-Up

If you may recall from this post, I am testing out the site DailyLit, a website that sends daily portions of books to subscribers' inboxes. I chose Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Perhaps not the wisest choice, however, I'd never read it before, and it being an American classic, it felt important to tuck it under my belt.

I confess to being only on portion number eight of 260. It's gonna be a long read. However, very early on, this passage struck me. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I have bolded my favorite phrase. It's the first paragraph:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Passing on Passover

Tell your children of it and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.

As it turns out, I'm Jewish. This past Saturday night marked the beginning of my favorite holiday in the Jewish calendar: Passover. One of the primary reasons that I love Passover is that it is a holiday centered around storytelling.

On the first night of Passover each year, Jews gather to have a ceremonial feast called a seder, during which a story is retold, taken largely from the section of the bible called Exodus. It is a story of liberation, beginning with the Jews living as slaves in the land of Egypt and ends with their dangerous late night escape to freedom.

Particular importance is placed on telling the story as if it were experienced first hand ourselves, reliving the pain and bitterness of slavery, and the joy of redemption. We tell the story as if it happened to us. This is about when I was a slave in Egypt. Personalizing the story makes us appreciative of the freedom we enjoy, and grateful to our ancestors who came before us.

As Jews have survived persecution through the years, storytelling has only increased in importance. Memories of the Nazi holocaust are carefully recorded and repeated with the hope that passing it on to each generation will keep us from allowing history to repeat itself.

While storytelling in this way is not unique to Judaism, it is worthy of our attention, especially as writers. Oral traditions - stories passed on from generation to generation - are really how writing began.

What's beautiful about traditional storytelling, like the story of Passover, is that it reminds us of and connects us to who we once were. Whether that's in the context of a religion, a country, or even a family. Telling stories of our past reminds us that we are all a part of an ongoing story.

The quote I began the post with is written on the opening page of my grandfather's memoir, his self-published life story about his childhood in a Polish shtetl, fleeing the Nazi holocaust, being imprisoned in Russia, his marriage to my grandmother, their journey to Israel, and eventually settling in the United States. In many ways, this story that he has told, and preserved, is the beginning of my story. In many ways, his story is my story.

Trash Fiction vs. Short Fiction Demolition Derby

I've been doing a lot of what I call trash fiction writing: working on writing projects that have no particular future, at a low level of difficulty that require a lot of time and concentration but do not challenge my skill, language mastery, or general intelligence.

I go back and forth in my thinking over whether this is a problem. Yes, it's good to turn out material, even if it's not elevated, and even when you're writing something off hand, at least you're writing something and honing your craft. On the other hand, trash fiction writing is wheel spinning.

So in order to get back in touch with the literary me, the me that is inspired by language and story telling, I did a little memory lane search. I decided to see if an old writing professor, one who taught me quite a bit, had a blog. I took Rob Roberge's short fiction class at UCLA Extension last year; From his website I found a link to one of his short stories that was published in ZYZZYVA which happens to be one of my favorite literary journals, and one of my big time writing goals.

After all the trash fiction I've been writing, reading Rob's story felt like getting hit on the head with one of Wile E. Coyote's anvils. Enough trash fiction. This short fiction makes my heart lurch and my stomach clench in all the best ways. This is what I want to write.

So please enjoy Swiss Engineering by Rob Roberge. It's well worthy of the ten minutes it will take you to read it. It begins like this:

I enter Skip's Volvo into the Crawford Raceway's Saturday Night Amateur Demolition Derby. I'm dizzy from the heat and the fact that I've had maybe five hours sleep in the last five days.

Exploring Your Inner Semicolon

Grammar is not my forte. I remember learning sentence analysis back in junior high; we had these tiny little text books that were a quarter of the size (size not length) of all the other text books, the implication being that grammar just wasn't important, especially when compared to the American history tomes we dragged around in our backpacks. So my writing style, as you can see demonstrated in the previous sentence, has evolved into a mess of commas and hanging phrases driven mostly by an assessment of whether something sounds right.

It was with pleasure and amusement that I stumbled across this article a couple months ago in the New York Times devoted to the semicolon, inspired by a recent use of the mysterious punctuation in a transit system public service advertisement. For a grammar challenged writer, the semicolon has always seemed to me like a vague shadowy tool. What exactly is the semicolon for and why would I ever need it? The linked article actually provides a rather clear explanation:

Americans, in particular, prefer shorter sentences without, as style books advise, that distinct division between statements that are closely related but require a separation more prolonged than a conjunction and more emphatic than a comma.

Semicolon sightings are rare for me indeed. When I spot one in a text, I find myself compelled to roll back and forth over the sentence, trying to ascertain exactly what compelled the writer to use it. When I've seen one in the prose of a fellow writer, I've thought to myself, "he must be a genius!" Because it must take exceptional confidence in oneself to utilize this strange half-breed tool, the semicolon.

At the website for Purdue University's Online Writing Lab I found this page about the comma vs. semicolon. At the bottom, they provide links to two short comma vs. semicolon quizzes that you can take and score. After getting 100% on each quiz, I am emboldened with more confidence in my semicolon usage.

What I still haven't found an answer for is why? Why use a semicolon? What emotional elements or prose context for your sentences would indicate that you need a half stop instead of a full stop? Until I find an answer to that question for myself, or within my prose, I will continue to throw my commas around willy nilly and bring all sentences to full stops, reserving the semicolon for winking emoticons. ; - )

Reading for the Time Impaired

Not too long ago, I posted about the evolving way that literature is being consumed, and how that affects us as writers. All of the comments on that post, including a recent one that has me revisiting the topic, acknowledged that as a culture we seem to be moving towards consuming our entertainment in short bursts.

Well, apparently, we're not the only people who think so. Established about a year ago, DailyLit is a website that allows subscribers to receive daily portions of books in their e-mail inbox or RSS. In this way, reading some of those classic monstrosities that have always been intimidating (I'm looking at you War and Peace) suddenly seem not so scary.

Classic works in the public domain are offered free of charge, but now with over 100,000 users (Newsweek), DailyLit is charging for new releases offered in the same way. Unlike what we were talking about, the novel is written in the usual format, only it's parceled for consumption. Think how successful a novel could be if it were specifically written to be consumed at this pace, with hanging moments and well planned drama. See, we're wrapping back around to Charles Dickens, and the serial.

This idea appeals to me in some sense. I'm at my desk/computer for 80% of my day it seems, so why not have that bit available to read while I'm taking a break from my work, or waiting for something to upload? On the other hand, I'm still not sold on reading without having that book in my hand, or being able to curl up with it in bed.

So, in order to form an educated opinion on the site, I will be selecting a free classic to subscribe to, and I will see how I like the service. At the moment, I'm choosing between Moby Dick (260 parts) and A Tale of Two Cities (170 parts), both classics that I have not read.

As always, I will keep you updated with my progress. I hope if any of you decide to try it out, you'll let me know how it goes.

Textual Inspiration #4

In honor of the recent announcement that Bob Dylan has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, please enjoy this special music edition of textual inspiration:

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
She came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed.
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love.
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an' they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Shelter from the Storm from Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan

A Little Bit of Housekeeping

You may have noticed the shiny new masthead that went up late last night. In my on-going efforts to make this blog more like my blog and less like a blogger template, I'll be tweaking things here and there, adding various items, and shifting things around. My HTML knowledge is limited (read that as non-existent) but I'm not too shabby at googling.

If you ever have a suggestion, or strong feelings about a change I've made, feel free to just drop it in whatever comment box is handy.

Hope the new masthead is more inspiring than the last!

How to Write a Killer Synopsis - Part 1

A writer friend was recently faced with the terrifying task of writing a synopsis of his novel to submit to a potential agent. Part of the reason why writing a synopsis is often so daunting for writers is because there is no singular standard for a synopsis; no set amount of pages; no consensus on style; no set word count to page length ratio. No, you just have to wing it, or follow whatever guidelines are provided by the person who requested the synopsis.

But the real challenge of writing a synopsis is trying to shrink everything you're attempting to do in your novel - all of the brilliant themes, character backstory, and complicated plot twists - into just a page or two of entertaining dramatic summary.

Before I jump in and start trying to tell you how to write your synopsis, let me briefly run down my qualifications. You may or may not be aware, but the person who is likely to read your synopsis first, the first hurdle to get an agent's attention, is going to be the assistant. For six years, that person was me. For four years I opened the query letters on an agent's desk in the New York publishing industry (both fiction and nonfiction), and for two years I did the same on a motion picture literary agent's desk in Hollywood (directors and screenwriters). So I know what worked for me, and subsequently what worked for the agents.

GETTING STARTED

When I began working on this post I did some cursory google searching to see what other guidance was out there, and I came across this article by Dee-Ann Latona LeBlanc which I think makes an excellent suggestion right up front. Before you begin writing your synopsis write a single sentence that describes your book. In reference to a screenplay, this is called a "logline."

This idea should not scare you. Yes, you have an enormous book with lots of themes, a big complex plot, and kitchen sink full of characters. However, you should still be able to boil it down to one singular idea. Sometimes that idea will be plot oriented, and sometimes that idea might be theme oriented.

Try this exercise: think up a story that you are very familiar with and try to describe it in one sentence.

A young hobbit joins up with his friends to make a difficult journey to destroy a powerful ring before it falls into the hands of the dark lord who pursues him.

A young hobbit learns the meaning of true fellowship as he and a band of friends make a dangerous journey to save their home from the clutches of a dark lord.

A dark lord is gathering power, threatening the whole of Middle Earth, and it is up to one small hobbit and his fellowship of friends to carry the key to the dark lord's power, a ring, to its destruction.

As you can see, there are many different ways to approach this challenge, but at this point you may be asking yourself, why waste the time?

Because knowing what your book is about in one concise sentence will help you write your synopsis the same way that a thesis statement helps you write an essay. As you write you can refer to that logline to ensure that everything you are including in the synopsis is in support of that one main idea. Have too many plot points and ideas and are unsure of what can be considered extraneous? You simply need to ask yourself, is what I'm writing supporting the logline? Is this detail necessary to tell the story I promised in that one sentence?

So take some time to think about it, and write that single sentence that captures everything you're trying to do with your novel. A complete synopsis won't be that far behind.

Weekend Wrap-Up

Well... the weekend was not as productive as I had hoped. Friday's post has left me in a position to put into very strong words what happens when I don't carve out the time to work on my writing: I did not further my writing career over the weekend.

Friday's playful list has become Monday's difficult lesson - I must set aside specific time to work on my writing. Even when the tax man must be paid, social events must be attended, errands must be run, and relaxation feels like necessity. Just because there's no time card to punch, doesn't mean I shouldn't take writing as seriously as work. It deserves that attention.

So last weekend's list becomes this week's list, and I am even more determined to work on more than one item. Tax man, be damned!

Because Every Blog Needs an Occasional List

Top Five Things to do This Weekend to Further My Writing Career

1. Submit short story, California Five Cent Redemption.

2. Finish tweaking Father Leo, current short story in progress.

3. Submit Father Leo.

4. Review failed screenplay and scavenge it for parts.

5. Begin brainstorming novel.

The Pile

I think most people have heard the famous saying from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross "A. B. C. - Always Be Closing." I take the same approach to reading - minus the cursing, the testosterone and the gold watch. I say, A. B. R. - Always Be READING.

If you want to be a writer you have to read. Read everything. Read best sellers to see what's working in the literary marketplace. Read prize winners to see what critics like. Read classics to see what will stand the test of time. Read. Read. Read.

Unfortunately for me, I am a slow reader. Because of that, I rarely read the same author more than once, no matter how much I loved their book, so that I can experience different styles and voices and learn different things. I generally go back and forth between what I consider "work reading" and "pleasure reading." Some of my favorite books have been slow paced, dense, or otherwise very difficult to get through, requiring patience and effort. But more often than not, the pay-off when I reach the end of those books makes it well worth my investment. However, I generally need to recover by reading something light.

I'm just finishing a rather consumable mystery at the moment and need to select a new book from my growing pile of to-reads. So I'm opening it up to a vote. Here are the options:

1. Watership Down by Richard Adams
2. Wicked by Gregory Maguire












3. Underworld by Don DeLillo
4. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen












5. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
6. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber












I certainly have more in my to-read stack, but these are the ones that I currently have in my possession without a trip to the book store (there might be more actually, but these jump to mind without re-organizing my book shelf).

So if you have an opinion about what should be next up, please vote in the comments. I'll be sure to tell you what I think when I've finished reading!

Textual Inspiration #3

...By that time clouds had begun to pile, working in over the whole sky, except toward the west, beyond the pines, where the light struck through the break. The water was very still, and suddenly dark with the darkness of the sky, and away across the bay the line of woods looked black now, not green, above the whiteness of the line which was the beach way over there. A boat, a catboat, was becalmed over in that direction, nearly a mile away, and under the sky and over the dark water and against the black line of the woods, you never saw anything so heart-breakingly white as the sharp sail.

"We better get in," Adam said. "It's going to blow."

"Not quick," Anne said, "let's swim again."

"Better not." Adam hesitated and looked off at the sky.

"Let's," she insisted, and pulled at his arm. He didn't respond, still scanning the sky. All at once she dropped his arm and laughed and began to run toward the water. She didn't run directly to the water, but up the beach, toward a little spit, with her bobbed hair back loose on the air. I watched her run. She ran with her arms not quite outspread, crooked at the elbows, and with a motion of her legs which was graceful and free, and somehow awkward at the same time, as though she hadn't quite forgotten one kind of running, the child's running, and hadn't quite learned another kind of running, the woman's running. The legs seemed to be hung too loose, somewhat uncertainly, from the little hips, which weren't quite rounded yet. I watched her and noticed that her legs were long. Which I had never noticed before...

...The fifth time I caught up, she didn't dive. She rolled over with a light, lounging twist of her body, and floated on her back, looking up at the sky, her arms spread wide. So I turned over, too, and floated, about five or six feet from her, and looked at the sky.

The sky was darker now, with a purplish, greenish cast. The color of a turning grape. But it still looked high, with worlds of air under it. A gull crossed, very high, directly above me. Against the sky it was whiter even than the sail had been. It passed clear across all the sky I could see. I wondered if Anne had seen the gull. When I looked at her, her eyes were closed. Her arms were still spread out wide, and her hair wavered out free on the water from around her head. Her head was far back, her chin lifted. Her face looked very smooth, as though she were asleep. As I lay in the water, I could see her profile sharp against the far-off black trees...

...What happened was this: I got an image in my head that never got out. We see a great many things and can remember a great many things, but that is different. We get very few of the true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind which become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk among the unanswered letters.

The image I got in my head that day was the image of her face lying in the water, very smooth, with the eyes closed, under the dark greenish-purple sky, with the white gull passing over.

That is not to say that I fell in love with Anne that day. She was a kid then. That came later. But the image would have been there if I had never fallen in love with her, or had never seen her again, or had grown to detest her.

- From All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
This quote has been abridged by me. The complete passage is beautiful
and can be found towards the beginning of Chapter Three.

Follow-up: Literary Quotables

As it turns out, the history of literature is full of writers who weren't too fond of their fathers.

After encouragement from three friends who each in turn reminded me that I am supposed to be something of a writer (and the last simply refusing to take "no" for an answer, thank you, Dave) I decided to write my own "quote," if you will, for my dad. Its reception was decidedly underwhelming. My father seemed rather bemused by all three of his gifts, all three of which I thought were very good, including mine.

In the meantime I should say that a trip up the California coast was just what the doctor ordered. Inspiration abounds in the beauty of the sea. It was cold and windy, but the wild flowers were blooming. I'm a failure at my attempts to capture it, but here are a handful of pictures for your own inspiration, if unfortunately minimally inspiring:

A misty morning view of the sea with reddish ice plant on the cliffs.

A California wild Poppy. Maybe.
If you can otherwise identify this wild flower, please feel free to contact me.

Misty morning mountainside, trail with bridge and wild flowers.

Sunset at the shore with driftwood.

A California sunset*.
*Sunset to the left. Washed out poor digital photo straight ahead.

Literary Quotables

I had been working on a post most of the week about a technical aspect of writing concerning dialogue. After backing and forthing over it a few times, I decided that I needed some time to really research the topic and instead of letting it continually hold up a new post I should put that one on the back burner and post something new.

And so here we are.

This week, I've been working on a gift for my father's 60th birthday - which is tomorrow. For those of you who know me, this kind of procrastination can hardly be a surprise. However, I assure you, I am well on my way and will have my little gift complete in time.

As part of the gift, I have been searching for a literary quote about fatherhood or love or family to go with a picture. At first I pursued the Ernest Hemingway route, prepared to fail of course because of Hemingway's masculine, action-oriented prose. Then I moved on to Tolstoy, then Robert Penn Warren, Shakespeare. All turned up nothing.

However, I think it's obvious that the source of my quotation troubles is that I'm searching on the internet. For all of the internet's fine inventions, the complete lack of a quotation search engine is pretty disappointing.

Is it that much to ask to be able to search a selection of literary quotations for key words?

There must be some middle ground between a Hallmark card style quote from "Anonymous" and something written by Goethe.

I'll keep you updated on my search, and am open to suggestions.

Absence

My apologies for my extended absence and failure to post anew in more than a week. Life has been lobbing some giant curve balls my way recently.

Work has been exceptionally busy with a big deadline swiftly approaching on April 1st.

I have managed to secure internet in my apartment, thanks to my determined roommate, but I am now without a cell phone which presents a whole other world of headaches that were unanticipated.

I promise to return to you with new posts soon!

Urgent Message to Publishers: Stop Being So Naïve

Though I had no intention of writing two entries today, in my check-in over at the UCLA Writers' Programs Blog written by Corey Campbell, she referenced this story about yet another highly acclaimed memoir revealed to be fabricated, and I felt compelled to comment. Apparently, Margaret B. Jones, author of Love and Consequences was not even remotely the foster child/gang member/drug runner that she claimed to be in her memoir. In fact, she grew up rather close to my own hometown in the San Fernando Valley, in an upper middle class white family (with her birth parents) and attended private school. It wasn't until her sister spotted her in a NY Times House & Home article and outed her to her publisher that she admitted her fabrication.

I don't feel the need to explain why I find this never-ending stream of mendacious authors appalling. I think it goes without saying. I will say however that it's about time that editors wise-up and start doing some background checking. It's one thing to embellish actual events. It's another to make up an identity.

At the end of the International Herald Tribune article (linked above), the Love and Consequences' editor, Sarah McGrath, says of a recent conversation with Margaret B. Jones about the fabrication that "She seems to be very, very naïve..." Really? Since when are 33 year old women naïve?

Let me tell you Sarah McGrath, Margaret B. Jones couldn't possibly be as naïve as you. Wise up and start doing some basic background checks. Then you won't have to do this.

The Ice Cream Scoop

I have a friend that I will occasionally share a dessert with when we're out at a restaurant. In recent months, we've discovered a strange phenomenon: waiters who don't know what à la mode means. For those who don't know (why not?!?) to order something à la mode means to order it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. The first time there was confusion over the phrase à la mode I found it funny. How amusing that the waiter had never heard that before. After all, isn't it a part of the American English lexicon? There's a whole moment devoted to it in When Harry Met Sally:

Sally: I'd like the chef salad, please, with the oil and vinegar on the side. And the apple pie à la mode....But I'd like the pie heated, and I don't want the ice cream on top. I want it on the side. And I'd like strawberry instead of vanilla if you have it. If not, then no ice cream, just whipped cream, but only if it's real. If it's out of a can, then nothing.
Waitress: Not even the pie?
Sally: No, just the pie. But then not heated.

When a second waiter was confused over à la mode, I found it downright disconcerting. Has à la mode fallen out of use? How did it come to its meaning in the first place?

First let me warn you that I found no reliable sources for what I'm about to share with you, so I hope you'll forgive me for an unusual lack of citations.

As any French speaker will tell you, the literal translation of à la mode is "of the fashion." It's generally used to indicate that something is particularly fashionable. It has been suggested that the American English usage originates from the phrase à la mode de (insert town or region) to instead mean "as they do it in (town or region)." In other words, you would be asking the waiter to have it prepared as it is prepared in a particular place.

However, that still doesn't explain how the phrase came to be used in the United States, and came to mean "with ice cream." The only explanation I could find was a mention that the famous New York restaurant Delmonico's perhaps first added "apple pie à la mode" to their menu in the 1920s. It being an incredibly fashionable restaurant, perhaps the usage caught on from there.

I'm sure if I looked beyond the internet, I could track down a more accurate source of the American use of the phrase à la mode. In the meantime, I should probably just take it as a sign that my friend and I should be ordering less dessert à la mode for us to share.

Literary Life in Los Angeles

I am pleased to have recently stumbled across yet more evidence of Los Angeles' lively literary scene. Red Hen Press is a non-profit publisher of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, dedicated to supporting "quality writing that is being ignored or overlooked by large or commercial publishers." In addition to their catalog, Red Hen Press is involved in promoting literary happenings in the city, including a series of readings at the Geffen Playhouse and public author events.

Since 2003, Red Hen Press has also published their own literary journal, The Los Angeles Review. Back issues are available for order here, along with information about how to submit your own writing (though it's a bit difficult to tell whether they are currently accepting submissions).

For those of you not in Los Angeles, the Red Hen Press home page offers a Poem of the Day for a quick treat during your work break.

As soon as my busy schedule allows, I'll attend one of their live events and report back on it here. Until then, I'll peruse their catalog, and let you know of any other tidbits I discover.

PUBLISHED!

A hearty congratulations to good friend and colleague Erika Swyler, whose short story, "Transcontinental," has been published in the latest edition of the online literary journal anderbo.com. Not only has her writing been included, but she is featured on the main page!

You can link directly to "Transcontinental" here.

Congratulations, Erika!

And While We're on the Topic of Plagiarism

In case you missed this story, I felt compelled to share it with you here. A few weeks ago, a columnist with the Daily Toreador, the student newspaper at Texas Tech University, was fired for allegedly plagiarizing a blog on which he based two of his articles. What was the topic of the plagiarized articles? Plagiarism.

The announcement as it appeared in the Daily Toreador can be found here.

When you've finished chuckling, as I did, you'll be interested to know that the Daily Toreador articles and the blog from which they were allegedly plagiarized, both lifted the text from the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective publication, Days of War, Nights of Love. Thus the plot thickens.

To make matters more complicated both the blog writer and the columnist claim that CrimethInc. encourages plagiarism of their materials, and in particular, in Days of War, Nights of Love. I have not yet been able to confirm that - not having read the book - but I think what we've stumbled upon here, yet again, is the complex nature of plagiarism.

The question then becomes: is it a matter of obtaining the author's permission, or is it a matter of citation? I think it's the latter. I don't think being given permission to plagiarize absolves you of having the responsibility of citing the work. I am, however, willing to see a separation between plagiarizing an idea (a particular position on a topic), and plagiarizing the specific words used to express that idea. Now that is a lot more than I am willing to tackle in my little blog.

Textual Inspiration #2

...we therefore commit their bodies to the deep.

It would rear up howling and hissing, ice like marzipan on the forward deck, the bows plunging and whacking, so it seemed you didn't need another enemy to fire off shells and torpedoes at you, the sea was enough. Or it would stretch out broad and big and quiet as moonlit night up above, the convoy spread like ducks on a lake. Floating coffins. Which was worse, a calm or an angry sea? Or you wouldn't see it, only feel it, through the swing and judder of steel. You joined the Navy to see the sea but what you saw were the giddy innards of a ship, and what you smelt wasn't the salt sea air but the smell of a ship's queasy stomach, oil and balaclavas and ether and rum and cordite and vomit, as if you were already there, where you might be, any moment, for ever, in the great heaving guts of the oggin.

- From Last Orders by Graham Swift

Politics and Plagiarism: Ghost Writing for Change

It is no mystery that most politicians use speech writers. Since the radio era, I don't think that any President has ever sat down to write out his inaugural address or his state of the union all on his lonesome. Which makes this election season's focus on rhetoric - and recent accusations of plagiarism - particularly interesting.

There have been several recent accusations that Barack Obama has regularly plagiarized language in his speeches. Most recently, he has been accused of lifting a passage in a speech at a Democratic Party dinner in Wisconsin that was originally spoken by Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick. Obama acknowledged using the passage saying he should have cited Patrick as the source, but claims that he and Patrick are friends and discussed using the language before he made the speech.

For more detailed information about the accusations, please see the following New York Times Articles (they're all extremely concise, and yet each tells a slightly different story):

Clinton Fingerprints on Plagiarism Flap
Clinton Camp Says Obama Plagiarized in Speech
In Politics, Inspiration or Plagiarism Is a Fine Line

No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, Clinton/Obama/McCain/No Confidence, plagiarism is not a matter that should be taken lightly, especially as a writer. The written word is not free. There is sometimes an attitude about words, that since they are free to any speaking person, that we should all have access to them in any form.

However, try to think of it like this: Words are like tap water. Writers take words, run them through a filter, send them to a bottling plant, design a label for them, market them, and distribute them. So when it arrives at your local convenience store, you're willing to pay a few dollars for the fancy new water in this nice cold bottle.

Payment for writing can come in two forms - financial payment or writing credit (or in the best of all worlds, both). Political speech writers get paid for their work - they don't get credit. When you suggest language to a politician for a speech, even if you are not on his or her writing staff, you can't imagine that you will get credit for it. What would a speech sound like if the politician had to incessantly give credit to each phrase?

Plagiarism is a serious accusation - but it only demeans the true problem when it is wrongly applied. Sharing language and ideas with political friends is not the same thing as taking a written word without consent and repeating it or publishing it as your own.

The irony of course is that the co-opted text was about the power of language itself:

“Don’t tell me words don’t matter. ‘I have a dream.’ Just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’ Just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ Just words? Just speeches?”

- Barack Obama or Deval Patrick?

Short (Very Short) Fiction

Had lunch with Pops today. He asked me if I was working on any new writing. I told him that I am trying to focus on an idea for a novel. I shared some of the different ideas I have been toying with, and expressed my opinion that if I want to be a career writer that at some point I know I have to write something long form.

Pops' response surprised me. Instead of being supportive about the idea of turning my writing efforts towards a novel, he seemed to think I should put my creative time into exploring new writing mediums. He talked about writing webisodes (his description of which sounded eerily like blog entries). He rambled on about the changing consumption of written materials in the world of new media, dropping terms like "text-messaging" and "podcasting" as if those were ways that even he had been consuming media. It's as if he imagines the future of writing to be nothing but an endless series of flash fiction pieces texted regularly to your phone.

I could imagine a similar conversation happening way back in literary days of yore when some crusty old editor had to explain to Charles Dickens that readers no longer wanted to wait a few months for the next installment of a story to appear in the newspaper, and instead they wanted the full story in one volume. (Try telling that to the writers of Lost).

I'm not sure what motivated this speech, but if an old lover of all things literary is telling me to abandon the game, let me tell you, I'm a little bit scared. Funny enough, in this case, I prefer to think that Pops just doesn't think I have a novel in me.

The best the rest of us writers can do is to keep supporting each other and our industry by buying books.

To MFA or to LSAT?

That is the QUESTION.

MFA

Pros: Spend two years (or more) focusing on my writing; workshopping with peers at or above my level; learning to teach writing; graduate with novel outline or manuscript; and creating more relationships in publishing.

Cons: Likely rejections requiring multiple application attempts over the next few years leaving the future very uncertain; possible deep debt or if I hold out for a school that offers me significant scholarship combined with aid, possible longer wait for admission to right program; graduation with only a manuscript and no real career potential; and slim job odds for MFA holder without publication.

LSAT

Pros: Secure financial future; clear goals and road to accomplish said goals; returning to challenging academia; future will be settled within the next year or so; financial assistance from parents (offered but only if necessary); and ability to someday actually buy property (house/condo) as a single woman without relying on being part of a dual income relationship.

Cons: Eventually, I'd be a lawyer.

WGA Votes to Accept Deal

As art trips forward into the uncharted world of new media, it's incumbent on all of us to find the balance between enjoying the greater dissemination of work technology offers and ensuring that artists are properly compensated for monies derived from work accessed through new media. If you have been following the Writers Guild of America strike over the past few months, you know that new media has been touted as one of the largest sticking points (as closed door negotiations keep the media from knowing the exact nature of the issues on the table).

This weekend, the WGA East and West voted to approve the current deal offered, that was largely modeled after the deal that was approved by the Directors Guild of America in January.

Both deals essentially double the rates paid for TV shows and films sold as Internet downloads, once certain break-points are reached. And they require studios to work with union talent on content produced specifically for the Web, though lower-budget productions are exempt.

Both pacts also set new "residual" fees for ad-supported online streaming of TV shows. But the WGA gained a modest improvement over the directors' deal in the form of a higher potential residual in the third year of its contract.

Excerpt quoted from Reuters, February 10, 2008.

Textual Inspiration

Ben's gait was the hop-skip-and-jump – proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance - for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and engine bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane deck giving the orders and executing them:

"Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

"Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.

"Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! Ch-chow-wow! Chow!" His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles - for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.

- From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Beautiful Los Angeles

The view from my desk on a clear day. The one bonus of my going-nowhere-nine-to-five job is having this for daily inspiration.

The Serial and the Hanging Ending

There is nothing I hate more in a book than a hanging ending. When I select a book at a bookstore, I am entering into an agreement with the author. I will pay for the book, devote time to reading, and in return the author will tell me a complete story. On the last page I will be left with the cherished feeling of both satisfaction and wistful regret that the book has come to an end.

However, there is an epidemic amongst certain genres that seem to be insisting that a hanging ending is acceptable. I'm looking at you The Golden Compass. It is not. If you need to leave your readers in suspense on the last page in order to ensure that they pick up the next book, you are not doing your job. Every book in a serial should have its own ending. Yes, the series can work on a larger overall plot (e.g. Voldemort), but you should still feel a satisfaction at the end of each book. A book in a series should be like a battle in the context of a war. The battle ends decisively, but the war continues.

In support of this argument, I present a list of ways to keep readers interested in your series:

1.) Characters - It's always important to have strong characters, but it's even more so in a series. Spend time exploring your main characters. Give them distinct personalities. Work on their charm. Make them accessible to readers. Write about real people. If you do that, people will want to continue with them on their journey.

2.) Romance - While it's important for characters to change somewhat in each book of a series, they are on a slower path than characters in a single novel. I would encourage you to build interpersonal relationships for your characters that grow from book to book. In particular, providing your character with a romantic interest is a great way to carry readers from book to book.

3.) World/Universe - Be creative! Since most serials are in the Sci-Fi or Fantasy genre, it is of utmost importance that you be creative. Draw your readers into the landscape of your book. Fill it with exciting and fascinating things. Make it a place that they want to return to, a place that they want to escape to, a place they would want to be lost.

4.) Plot - As mentioned above, a serial book should be like a battle in the context of the war. Take the time to think this through. Your war-plot should be compelling and exciting, and if you do the above three items, your readers will want to read through until the very ending.

Self-Assessment and Writing

This weekend, I sat down to read Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen, a young adult novel that had been on my to-read list for quite a while.

In discussing the book with NWF (who, it should be mentioned, has recovered from his recent rejections admirably), I commented that it's a book I feel like I could write, unlike a lot of the literary fiction that I usually read.

Books that I admire most, such as All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, feel out of reach to me as a writer. They feel as if the language flows almost from a divine place, not the scrabbling in the dirt work that it feels like to me.

As I try to assess what kind of writer I am and what kind of novel I am capable of, do I need to aim for the level that I think suits me, or the level I admire? How much does self-assessment factor into what you write and how you try to write it?

The Painful Rejection

My novel-writing-friend (NWF) recently had a partial manuscript rejected by another agent. A particularly painful bruise, NWF revealed that he's received almost 30-plus agency rejections for this project over the last two and a half years. NWF has never taken rejection well, and I've often had the thought that he's just not cut out for the constant rejection that comes with being a writer.

So how do I bolster him?

I've tried to reassure him that this rejection does not bear on his writing, and that it does not bear on his book. I tell him that it's all just subjective.

There are two important things I try to impart to him:

1.) SELF-EVALUATE - Instead of feeling like you're shit, your writing is shit, and the entire book was a waste of time, focus on what you have learned. How has your writing improved? This is particularly true of first-time novelists. What do you know about writing a novel that you didn't know before you started? What do you know about querying agents?

I think if you take the time to really answer those questions, you'll be surprised how important it was to have that experience - whether your book sells or not.

2.) THINK OF YOUR CAREER IN THE LONG TERM - Becoming an author is not a sprint. It's an extremely long term goal, and if you can't handle the idea that you may not get published for a very long time, then perhaps a writing career isn't for you.

Writing is filled with rejection and self-doubt. There are few rewards. There's less and less of an audience. When people say empty tin-sounding things like "you have to really want it" what they really mean is "you might never get it" and "wow, you can take a lot of shit."

So - ask yourself - how much shit can you take and for how long?