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?

The Great Story Hunt

In two weeks I have to present a new story to my Short Fiction class. I was halfway through a first draft of a story when I realized that there was no story in my story.

Sometimes trying to find a story is like being on the hunt for the elusive Nebraskan white-billed finch. You put on your rubber highwaters, and your camo hat, you've got your binoculars hanging around your neck, and you've got the bird-call-kazoo almost permanently attached to your lips, as you try to trample quietly through the reeds of the low waterlands, stalking the ultimate sighting... your story.

Come to me story! Don't you hear my call!

Stooooorrrrryyyyy!

Stooooorrrrryyyyy!