Boxing the Octopus

Wisdom for the week ahead: "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."

2010-03-21T00:27:00.001-05:00

From "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

Click here to read the rest of the essay.

No Place Like Home (Saturday afternoon nostalgia with Les Paul and Mary Ford)

2010-03-20T18:00:00.000-05:00

AlphaAlpha

2010-03-19T09:41:00.005-05:00

This morning, something to inspire you (in addition to Colleen's excellent post on painting with words, below). Alpha/Alpha is a netbook devoted to the art and beauty of letters themselves. Refresh yourself with the glory of our medium. The letters. Our tools are marvels.

Why Paint-by-Number Writing Never Works

2010-03-19T08:29:00.003-05:00

Before I began putting my stories down on paper, I absolutely loved to spend long hours drawing and painting. Since both my great-grandmother and my uncle were talented amateur painters, my parents had some inkling how to encourage me. So from an early age, there were pads of paper, watercolors, brushes and even a couple of art lessons and an easel.

Then they clapped onto the idea of buying me some of those nifty new paint by numbers that were still quite popular in the early Seventies. The idea, I'm sure, was that ladling the "correct" colors into the numbered spaces would not only making painting a "masterpiece" easy, but would teach the child (or adult) creativity.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I found them horribly disappointing. The end result looked flat and lifeless, and I didn't get any real satisfaction from the dumbed-down task of coloring in someone else's drawing with someone else's choices.

Paint-by-number writing, where writers attempt to blindly follow a formula for creating marketable fiction (often genre fiction) without making it their own, doesn't work any better. Without creative choices, without that most important, least-quantifiable ingredient, love, swirled into the mix, the work comes out as flat, lifeless, and in many cases condescending as the worst of the boxed art kits. The reading audience instinctively knows when it is being talked down to, and agents and editors are particularly good at sniffing out this sin... and issuing lightning-swift rejections.

But a writer aiming for a particular marketing niche can go too far with creative choices -- so far that the painting spills far beyond the frame. That's why it's so important to read, read, read recent examples of the type of book you're writing. If you don't, you'll fail to absorb the basic audience expectations. You can bend, tweak, twist, and play with these parameters, but ignore them at your own risk.

So if you're writing toward a particular market, try to ferret out the boundaries. But paint with those distinctive colors that only you bring to the process, and don't be afraid to bump playfully, joyfully, or even defiantly against the borders of your frame.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

2010-03-18T00:03:00.008-05:00

The last few days have been a roller coaster ride for me and Mark, as we've been tuning in to the ongoing discussions about the funding of NASA (for whom he subcontracts), making a lot of difficult financial decisions, and watching our amazing neighbor finish the extensive renovation of our house. To top it all off, Tito, our diabetic cat, collapsed suddenly yesterday while I was writing, and Mark came in to tell me. "Tito's not doing well," was all he could say, and we were off to the vet, tears streaming down my face, with a limp, eleven-year-old cat.

It turned out his sugar had just gotten low, so several hours and several vet techs later, he was happily gobbling down kitten food, and we were back at the urgent care animal clinic to take him home. And somewhere in the middle of this, it hit me: my writing anxiety was almost completely gone. It's like in the face of all these other, bigger issues, all my doubts and fears about the novel evaporated. I had real problems to contend with. On the other hand, I don't want to make light of the writing anxiety itself, because when I experience it, it's very real to me.

So today, when Mark convinced me that yes, it was really okay for me to leave the house and stop watching Tito, I took some pages of the book to a local Chinese place, and ate lunch while doing some line editing. I've been making hard decisions about the novel, including modifying some of my newly planned structure in order to go back more towards my original structure. I've been realizing that as much as I'm trying to up front the more salable aspects of the novel (the psychological horror, the Gothic tropes, the vampire imagery), it still is deeply nuanced and fairly literary. I can call it mainstream, and it might fly that way, but it will never be a heart-stopping, pot-boiling thriller.

Yesterday morning, before Tito fell over in the floor, I was in tears about this and wailing that I was "hopelessly literary." Today, in the warm, spring sunshine spilling over the pages at the Chinese restaurant, I saw the book for what it was. I've written a good book, a deep book, and I have to embrace it. Sure, I can line edit it and make sure it moves as quickly as it can, and sure, I can rework the structure to draw the reader in and drop the right cues and clues, but ultimately, it is what it is, and to change it too much would be to adulterate my original vision.

As I realized this, I opened my fortune cookie, and actually high-fived God (in the air, in front of people) when I read this fortune.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

For someone writing a novel about pathological liars, this resonates for me in so many ways. But I think it's true for all of us, that if we just tell the truth, if we just stay true to the vision that we have, within the world we've created, that's really the most important thing. We can't impose a structure on our novels that doesn't work for them. Nor can we write in a genre that doesn't draw on our natural gifts. We have to go with the gifts we have, and make the very best use of them, and that is exactly what I plan to do: Make the novel the best whatever kind of book it is--and send it.

Answering Pub Perspective's Q of the day: "Has Digital and Self Publishing Devalued Authorship?"

2010-03-17T08:01:00.000-05:00

Today on Publishing Perspectives, Edward Nawotka asks, "Has Digital and Self Publishing Devalued Authorship?" The gist of it:

...the very definition of “author” is changing. It is no longer merely used to describe a solitary writer working away in a room for hours on end. Today, it means the leader of a “tribe,” someone with their own community which they may have developed through their writing, blogging, Tweeting, et al. What’s more, technology has put the would-be “author” on equal footing with publishers: the cost of publishing — online or even in print — is free and/or accessible to most.

As a talented dabbler who developed into a person who writes books for a living, I’m not overly sensitive about other talented dabblers calling themselves “authors.” In my humble opinion, the definitions of “author” and “publishing” set forth above are more a devaluation of the important role others play in the production of a well-crafted book.

Writing a book without an editor is like applying lipstick without a mirror; I suppose a few people can do it, but they never look as good as they think they do.

The art of book design is something people don’t usually notice unless it’s done poorly, but a great design — from flap copy to font selection — makes a huge difference in the life of the book and the experience of the reader. (I was lucky enough to have Chip Kidd design the cover for my memoir, Bald in the Land of Big Hair, and I’m incredibly grateful for his contribution to that book’s success.)

The PR, sales, and marketing people I’ve worked with from Random House to the small presses are smart, business savvy, hardworking missionaries for the books they work on. The anal retentive copy editors and eagle-eye legal reviewers have vigilantly held my feet to the fire. My agent is my advocate throughout the process, keeping everything on an even keel, pushing for better positioning of the book, and shaking the money tree when needed. The head honcho at the publisher keeps the corporate boat afloat. Packing and shipping staff tote proverbial barges and bales. Bookkeepers tabulate royalty statements and (ideally) cut the checks that allow us all to do it for another day.

Of all the ridiculously unfair things about the publishing industry, perhaps the most egregious is that books don't have a rolling list of credits at the end. It takes a village. To dismiss the work of all these people as unnecessary is disrespectful and naive. If any one of them is sub-par, the book suffers for it. It’s scary to think people don’t know the difference, or worse yet, don’t care.

Catch Up with Colleen

2010-03-16T14:23:00.004-05:00

I'm chatting online at Romance Reviews Today on Wed. (St. Patrick's Day) at 9 PM EDT. I'll be giving a signed copy of Touch of Evil to one lucky participant! Plus, I hate hearing crickets, so please stop by and say hello!

I'm guest blogging, too, this week. If you'd like to hear about the romantic suspense authors and books that inspired me to join the genre

For those of you in the Greater Houston area, I have some upcoming events, and I'd love to meet you.

March 20th at 4:30, Murder by the Book, Houston. Q&A and autographing my latest, Touch of Evil.

April 3rd from 1:30-3:30, Katy Budget Books, Katy, Texas. Autographing.

April 10th from 2:00-4:00, Good Books in the Woods, The Woodlands, TX. Autographing and special character naming rights presentation.

Hope to see you if you're able!

Spring Break a la Tintin: Chateau de Cheverny is an adventure in comic book history

2010-03-15T09:04:00.002-05:00

My girl Jerusha is adventuring in France for spring break, hanging out with her cousin, Jenny, who works as an au pair for a family in Paris. They spent Saturday at the Chateau de Cheverny, which you'll recognize (if you're as big a nerd as I am) from the Tintin comic books.

Belgian author/artist Georges Prosper Remi, writing as "Hergé", used the iconic French estate as a template for Marlinspike Hall, which first appeared in The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure. The Tintin books were known and loved for their meticulous research and sly political satire. There's been controversy over the years about the anything-but-PC undertones in the series, but that's part of what I loved about Tintin books, which I discovered in my geeky early teens. Hergé is one of those rare and wonderful children's artists like Maurice Sendak who whispers in the ear of a kid and is heard by an adult twenty years later.

Marlinspike Hall was home base for Tintin and his friends and a perfect backdrop for their shenanigans. With a recent resurgence in the popularity of the Tintin series, the Cheverny estate and the Hergé Foundation came together to create a permanent exhibition, The Secrets of Marlinspike Hall, at the Chateau. It's a brilliant idea that brings together art, architecture, and history -- and hip globe-trotting twenty-somethings.

Starting from Silence

2010-03-14T19:38:00.003-05:00

First, I must apologize to my blogmates, and to our readers, for not having posted in some time. I've been on the road, my thinking muddled by long hours, long miles, and vapid, floral motel rooms. But now, at last, I'm home again, in my own office, with my books around me, a familiar view of snowcapped mountains outside the window, and my feet tucked under my antique pine desk. (The desk is made from the floorboards of an old house; when I rest my hands on it, I travel along the path of ghostly feet.) I have every reason in the world to be happy, at peace, and to do good work.

And that's just the problem.

After weeks or even a few days away from writing, the silence that falls between me and the page is loud. Yesterday, my first day home, I did everything I could to avoid sitting at the computer with it. I unpacked. I looked around. The metal patio furniture urgently required a good wiping. The yard needed raking, the porches needed sweeping, the garage and the outbuildings needed cleaning, or rather none of these things were necessary--it's still winter, after all, and doing spring cleaning now is like setting poppies on ice--but each seemed a likely enough reason for not going anywhere near my office. Where the silence waited.

How quickly it can accumulate, the space between self and work. Into that space all sort of stiffenings and rheums creep, and questions that hang in the air like frost, and won't go. What if I have nothing left to say? What if I go back and look at what I last wrote, and it is terrible? What if it simply isn't as good as I thought? What if I can't get back in? What if I've lost the thread? What if I get lost, am already lost, and I just don't know it?

Surely it would be better not to find this out.

And so I find reasons to stay outside, bundled in my coat, examining the fruit trees for signs of budding, taking inventory of dead limbs that need to be cut down.

I consider going to work for County Extension. It would make more sense than writing.

I peek into my office, still considering.

But no. I sit down. Here in this chair. The silence stretches. It doesn't mock. Or dare. Or titter. Silence--at least my silence (perhaps yours is different?)--doesn't do that. It is simply a line that it would be easier to stay behind.

Deep breath. Don't think so much. Thinking is the enemy of action. Thinking is always being done, while you walk, while you cook, while you sleep, while you drive a car from state to state, while you shower, while you dither, while you fret. Thinking takes care of itself. Pick up your fingers the way you would pick up a lamb fallen on snow. Don't hesitate. There is no reason to. Pick your fingers up. Warm them. Bleat. Make a sound with them. Go.

And so.

--MD

Writing Past Doubt

2010-03-14T10:06:00.005-05:00

"...Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. "
-Sylvia Plath

How does one banish self-doubt in a sea of rejection, ridicule, and criticism? One thing is for certain: you can't trust to your self-esteem to others, depending on their pronouncements to keep your head above the water (or drag you under by your ankles.) Somehow, you have to find your buoyancy yourself.

You do it by immersing yourself in the written word, reading, reading, and reading until you to absorb the alchemy of storytelling, the magic of well-crafted prose in your pores. The reading is a continual process, not something you quit once you start writing or when your first book is published.

Equally important is the ongoing act of writing -- every day, or as close as you can come. Only with repeated, concentrated practice will you break through to those moments when you finally hear your own words singing the way the best of what you're reading does. In those sweet, still moments, you'll begin to recognize that yes, you really are a writer, that you have something to say that's worth the listening, that's deserving of the struggle to share your words with others.

Those moments and that knowledge have the power to keep your will afloat through the days that threaten to submerge you. Those moments make the battle worthy, whether or not it's ever won.

The Problem with Agent Blogs

2010-03-12T01:05:00.003-06:00

I have a new obsession: literary agent blogs. Now that I'm in the final stages of novel revision, I'm hard-core researching agents and compiling a back-up list in case my target agent says no. Through all this research and reading, I've learned so much that will be helpful no matter whom I query, and I'm learning a lot about how the business works. But there's a problem here, and that is that writers (including this one) are prone to fantasizing and conjuring up dream outcomes. We're also prone to paranoia.

Case in point: Literary agent A says something about word count in her blog, so then I'm up late trying to figure out if I've miscalculated my word count. Then I go into "ohmygodmybook'stooshort, noagentwilleverwanttoreaditImightaswelljustdie" mode. Then Literary agent B says something about noticing the misuse of repetition, and I think about the use of repetition in my third chapter and how people in my workshop liked it, but then I think "wait, but is that too literary? Am I being too lyrical? Is Agent B going to stop reading the book and put it down right there?"

And then there's another problem, a sort of authorial fallacy problem. If an agent reveals too much about him or herself on a blog, a writer may start to feel a kinship with that agent that doesn't really exist. There are a couple of agents right now that I'm not sure I want to query any more because they've revealed so much of themselves that now if they reject me, I think I'll feel weird about continuing to read their blogs. I mean, it's one thing to be rejected by some name in a directory or on a list online, but to be rejected by someone whose blog you've come to enjoy, well, that would be a particularly personal ouch.

Except that it's not personal at all, at least not for that agent, and therein lies the rub. We may be reading their blogs, but to them, we're still just that wannabe writer, kind of like the geek in Sixteen Candles who suddenly finds himself alone with Molly Ringwald. I think the reason that I'm fifteen in that recurring agent dream is that this whole thing makes me feel like that again, like I'm back in high school trying to get the attention of the cute boy across the room. And I try to look at it as a business, but in what other business are professional relationships so fraught with these kinds of tensions? In what other business can a life's ambition turn on one small decision by just one person?

It's heady stuff, but ultimately, we have to remember that it is a business, and that it's still not personal. And we don't know these agents, no matter how thoroughly we research them and no matter how regularly we read their blogs. They are not our friends. And while an agent may make a pronouncement one day about not wanting x or y in a query or not wanting to see z in a first chapter, that doesn't mean the advice is universal. We have to be savvy about how we handle all this information, and we can't let it make us paranoid. If I compiled a list of every rule I've read in every blog lately, I'd probably just give up in despair and never send anyone anything, because it would all just seem too hard. Above all, we still have to be true to our own visions, and we still have to place our writing first. This means putting our vision above any literary agent's, and putting the biggest percentage of our time into our own writing. Reading industry blogs isn't bad, but we can't let it substitute for our own hard work.

And remember--the geek did end up with the prom queen. ;)

After a Million Words of Crap... the Right One

2010-03-10T11:21:00.004-06:00

The other day, I received a lovely compliment from a reader and aspiring author, who told me how much she wants to write like me.

Flattered as I was (and I can tell you no one laps up praise more happily than I do) I quickly thanked her and hastened to add that that's the wrong idea. Because no matter which author you admire, you'll never be more her than she is. But you're the very best at writing like yourself.

The trick is, writing enough words (Raymond Chandler is said to have insisted that every writer has a million words of crap to produce before getting to the good stuff) to break through to your authentic voice. More than likely, you're imitating other voices, other styles, and/or those you perceive as big successes for about half a million of these. You spend a few hundred grand more floundering, and the last ones grinding out some pretty decent prose that's not quite ripe yet. (When I go back to my old short stories, I see the raw material for what I'm still becoming. And believe it or not, I'm grateful for the rejections that gave me more time to develop.)

At some point -- and this point comes at a different time or number of words for every one of us -- you'll start to realize where you're different from whatever else is out there. You'll recognize the things you're good at, and how you sound in your own head.

Only then, can you capitalize on the uniqueness you bring to the table. You'll wrestle that individual voice into a marketable form.

Will you sell it? There are no guarantees on that one. But there's an intrinsic reward with finding that after your proverbial million words of... let's be kind and call it compost, you've finally grown the perfect crop. Even if no one else ever reads them, you've still written them, and that's worth something.

Because how many people find their own voice in the chaos of this world?

The Truth about Rejection (and why we keep on fighting)

2010-03-08T23:28:00.006-06:00

I'd finished writing for the night and finished prepping for class, and was just about to head to bed. Then I decided to check my facebook one last time, and there it was, a young friend's status: "feeling insanely butt-hurt by the rejection letter I just got in the mail." I started to join the chorus of well-meaning comments after her status. I thought of all sorts of hopeful, cheerleaderish things to say. But as I typed in that tiny little box, I thought about my first rejection, that first moment when I realized the world would not shift because of the words I wrote. And I remembered the sting, the hurt, the black despair.

So I told this writer--who I've no doubt is very talented--that she shouldn't try not to feel this. And I'm telling her and myself and everyone else who does this job and takes it seriously: There is no point in pretending rejection doesn't hurt. There is no point in conjuring up a thick skin if by nature you are too sensitive to grow one. There is no point in telling yourself that this is just another part of the game (even though it is) and that this means you're playing it. There is no point in doing any of that, but what you do have to do is move through the hurt and keep yourself from stagnating. You have to wrap that grief around yourself and take it in and hold it, then channel it into fuel, fury, ferocity and fight back as hard as you possibly can. Fight by sending out another piece. Fight by sending that one out again. Fight by taking a hard look at yourself and seeing if, perhaps, they might be right, and maybe the piece needs another revision. And by all means, fight by going back to your notebook or your computer and writing something else, something new, something that can only come from you.

Because in the end, the only reason we hate rejection so much is that we so crave acceptance. We want someone to like our writing enough to publish it, to put on it their stamp of approval. We want our writing in the world, to grow and inspire and challenge and entertain. If we don't get that, we think that the work is somehow lacking, that we are somehow lacking. And the sad truth is that sometimes they are right. But sometimes, the rejection has nothing at all to do with the quality of the writing--it's just the tightness of the competition and a matter of personal tastes. I've read for some of these magazines. I know! Often, strong pieces are rejected because the editors do not agree; the piece resonates with one but not another, or one loves it, but another thinks it's too controversial, or any number of other reasons. This is why whole websites are given over to the discussion of rejections, and why countless famous writers will tell their rejection horror stories.

But of course, none of this matters when you hold that post-it note little F-You in your hands. None of this matters, and you will feel it. But if you let it, it will make you better. Hang in there.

Staggering genius Dave Eggers (I bet he gets really tired of that) talks about reading, writing, and the power of paper

2010-03-08T12:17:00.000-06:00

My daughter Jerusha and I have been involved in a heated back and forth about my Kindle usage, which she considers nothing short of treason. I'm afraid to share this great article from the Guardian, in which Dave Eggers is optimistic about paper and ink:

"I only read on paper. I don't have an e-reader or an iPhone. I have the best time reading newspapers. I don't believe books are dead. I've seen the figures. Sales of adult fiction are up in the worst economy since the Depression."

He's not s'much on the internet:

"Writing is a deep-sea dive. You need hours just to get into it: down, down, down. If you're called back to the surface every couple of minutes by an email, you can't ever get back down. I have a great friend who became a Twitterer and he says he hasn't written anything for a year."

Read the rest here.

Oscar winner Mark Boal on the psychology behind The Hurt Locker

2010-03-08T10:57:00.002-06:00

Yes, of course, I'm thrilled that a woman finally won a Best Director Oscar, but I love that so much credit for The Hurt Locker went to writer Mark Boal last night. (Was there even a mention of the guy who wrote the book The Blind Side?) Anyway, here's a great interview with Mark Boal on Vulture, and below, he speaks to the psychology of why men fight.

Overall, I think it was a pretty good night for writers. The next sound you hear: an outboard motor gunning into high gear on Sapphire's career.

The future of Books on iPad, courtesy Penguin UK

2010-03-07T08:58:00.001-06:00

What I find fascinating here is how brief the segment dealing with fiction is.

Sunday Morning Cartoon: The Best Book Ever

2010-03-07T08:43:00.001-06:00

Saturday morning cartoon: French Roast (fully caffeinated and Oscar nominated)

2010-03-06T09:47:00.001-06:00

More about French Roast and The Pumpkin Factory.

Gotta see "The Ghost Writer"

2010-03-05T00:11:00.011-06:00

Okay, how am I NOT going to see this movie today? Two lines from the trailer that got a big "True that!" from me:

"I interview you and turn your answers into prose." An exactly correct explanation of what I do for my clients.

And I have no trouble believing: "It was the book that killed him!"

I'll let you know how it goes down.

The Historical Novel: An Unscientific Prognostication

2010-03-04T09:13:00.004-06:00

I have this thing I do. When I notice my my mind bending a certain way, when I feel myself tending toward one thing and not the other, I stop and wonder if my proclivity is a purely personal one, or if it might reflect some participation in a larger trend. I've been wondering this lately as I turn more and more toward the historical novel for reading interest and pleasure.

"Historical novel" is a broad category, so let me give my recent bent some specificity when I say that stopping by my local bookstore recently I passed over contemporary nonfiction (which I enjoy), and contemporary fiction (which I write), and picked up instead Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant (about an 18th-century British marine who is among the first colonists in Australia). As I passed by other books to pick up this one, I sensed something in my choice: something that wanted not just novelty, but a particular kind of experience that modern media, with all its access, all its video and audio and links and wikiness and mashes, couldn't give me: the best possible access to a world older than my own. And it struck me that if my urge might be more than personal, and instead part of a larger impulse, that the historical novel should continue to do very well in the years ahead.

For those of us who write novels about the contemporary world, it is sometimes hard to compete with, well, the contemporary world, which is already doing a rather remarkable job of documenting itself through various media. But the world of the past, of Sydney Harbor when it was nothing but mangrove and a few huts, is--for this writer at least--much better summoned by older techniques. Interactive pastiche would only serve to remind me that I am NOT in the 18th century; old-fashioned storytelling gives me a better chance of appearing to participate in a world that no longer exists (and, of course, this isn't because storytelling is less constructed than a remix on YouTube, but because by now it is such an old construct it is nearly invisible. Eventually this will happen to new media, too. But not yet--or at least not yet for this reader).

And then there is my strong desire to "participate in a world that no longer exists." I find the strength of this urge, at this moment, interesting. I suppose it could signal nothing more than a chicken-hearted retreat, on my part, from the modern world, but it feels more like this: that the modern world, so busily and so relentlessly and so easily representing itself, frankly begins to pall a bit, and I turn with admiration to those writers who take the painstaking trouble to conjure up an older world in an old form, while still telling me important things I would like to know, right now, about being human, alive, thinking and feeling. I find this . . . refreshing. I find this curiously . . . original. It's not something just anyone with an iPad can do.

And so I make my unscientific prognostication, based on no research whatsoever but on the simple awareness that I am in no way unique, and that it's likely that if I am buying something, other people are buying it too: the traditional, historical novel as a genre will in the foreseeable future continue to rock.

What do you think?

The Literary Gothic: Why I Love Scary Stories

2010-03-04T08:53:00.003-06:00

So it's official: I just got my teaching assignment for the summer, and it's a class in The Literary Gothic. This is a class I created for the Humanities program, ironically because I'm teaching it in a prison, and they don't have access to that many books. I always have to be creative when working with their inventory, and Lit Gothic was one of the easier sells. It's also a fun class to teach in a prison, for a variety of reasons, some of which you'll get to hear in the next few months.

But it got me thinking: why do we love scary stories? What is it about the Gothic that gets us? Out of every kind of literature, I always end up gravitating towards a literary sort of horror, along the lines of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, or Bram Stoker's Dracula. And Poe. Wow, talk about a literary crush. I could dig him up and marry him.

What I most love about the Gothic is the way it deals with the psychological. I love the way it takes our anxieties and toys with them, the way it teases and pokes and prods. I also love its dark possibilities, the sense of mystery that lurks in those dimly lit hallways and those thick, dark woods. And it's the one realm of literary fiction where a writer can get away with bringing in the supernatural and not immediately get slammed. Through the Gothic and its war between dark and light, a writer can more comfortably explore issues of spirituality and religion.

And if you're looking for a quick, fun read, it's worth taking a trip in time back to 1764 and Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, which is widely thought to be the first Gothic (although I argue against that claim in my class, shhhh). It's a nutty book, as most prototypes are, and filled with what we would now call Gothic cliches. But you just gotta love a book that starts off with a groom being crushed on his wedding day by a giant helmet. And then there's his father, the evil prince, who corners his son's betrothed with the ominous "Since I cannot give you my son, I offer you myself . . . "

The Last Station is all about truth, love, and Tolstoy

2010-03-04T00:34:00.000-06:00

My son Malachi is in town for a few days, and we're trying to see a bunch of movies for which I haven't had time and he hasn't had money. I've recently been on a Kindle-induced Tolstoy binge, so I especially loved The Last Station...

Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren are up for Oscars as Mr. and Mrs. Tolstoy. It's a great script, beautifully executed. Laughed, cried, couldn't wait to get home and read more Tolstoy.

Storytelling Smackdown: Avatar vs. A Serious Man

2010-03-02T14:22:00.006-06:00

Predating our recorded history, storytelling has been part of what makes our species unique. Our stories help us make sense of the world around us and build our confidence by assuring us that even the humblest person can find the strength to overcome daunting troubles. Reading, listening to, or watching stories relieves stress, reaffirms core social beliefs (often telling us that love, family, and friends truly matter), and underscores heroic values, such as loyalty, self-sacrifice, courage, and hard work.

As a writer of commercial genre fiction, I argue that that's a noble tradition and something our audience has a right to expect from us. We may be able to "get away with" straying or (sometimes) be rewarded with critical acclaim for dramatically altering the story landscape, but it's tough to endear oneself to a large audience that way.

Case in point: two recent Academy Award Best Picture nominated films, James Cameron's Avatar, which for all its nifty special effects is as heart an old-fashioned, ultimately triumphant hero's journey, and the Coen's Brothers' film, A Serious Man, which defies audience expectations by showing us a poor, downtrodden schmuck who never does rise up against the massive injustices heaped onto him by God and his weird family alike.

I left the theater completely inspired after viewing the first. Shouted "What the Heck?"(okay, I said worse, but I'm not copping to it in print) upon reaching the ending (meaning the movie's "ending," not the story's, because it didn't have one) of the second. Though I've loved the majority of the Coen brothers' past efforts (O, Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men are two of my all-time favorite movies) to and found the characterization of A Serious Man very well done, this film, for my taste, felt maddeningly self-indulgent.

Now, I think it's fine for a writer to challenge readers (or viewers.) I love being forced to reconsider a long-held opinion, knee-jerk prejudice, or to see the world from a wholly-unexpected viewpoint. Within the parameters of the storytelling framework, we have the power to illuminate all sorts of dark places in a way that still offers the powerful cathartic experience thousands of years of evolutionary culture has trained us to expect.

But at the end of the day, if you're going to indulge anyone, shouldn't it be the people who are plunking down their hard-earned dollars rather than yourself? Don't we owe our audience not necessarily a happy, but a satisfying, emotional experience?

Anyone else care to weigh in on either the question or the films?

Sherman Alexie and the Loving Spoonful (a publishing parable)

2010-03-01T01:48:00.005-06:00

I've heard this little parable in various versions -- rabbi, priest, monk, generic seeker -- and I'm thinking we need to adapt it to the publishing industry:

A monk asked God to show him heaven and hell. First, God showed him a banquet table laden with a great feast. But the people at the table were shrunken and famished. They had spoons melded to their fists, and the handles on the spoons were longer than their arms, so the people couldn't put the food in their mouths.

"This is hell," said God.

Then he showed the monk an identical table with an identical banquet and the same spoons with impossibly long handles. But the people assembled were healthy and strong, laughing and feasting.

"This is heaven," said God. "They learned to feed each other."

Over a blog posse lunch at El Pueblito in downtown Houston yesterday, we were discussing how great it is when authors lift each other up when the opportunity presents itself, and we agreed it's something we want to do more of in this space.

A thousand years ago at my first BookExpo in LA, I stood in a long line waiting for Sherman Alexie's autograph on his novel Indian Killler and a collection of stories, The Toughest Indian in the World. He'd served as a judge for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award a few years earlier, and my debut novel was close-but-no-cigar. I'd been smitten with him since The Business of Fancydancing, so it was a serious thrill for me to think he might have read even part of my firstborn book.

"Mr. Alexie," I blurted when it was my turn, "I'm Joni Rodgers. I wrote this book called Crazy for Trying...about the Blackfoot guy...and it was in the Discover thing?"

"Joni!" He got up from behind the table and swept me into a big hug (swoon) as if I were his long-lost cousin. Then he turned to the long line of booksellers and said, "Have you met Joni Rodgers? Her first novel was about a Blackfoot. Joni, what are you working on now?"

I said my second novel was being released by a lesbian micro-press and my memoir had just sold to Harper Collins. Mr. Alexie deftly got the conversation rolling between me and the booksellers as he went back to signing. I have no idea if he actually recognized my book or not, but my confidence soared when this author I'd long admired treated me like a peer. And it gave me a whole new level of credibility in front of the booksellers.

That moment meant a lot to me, but I'd be surprised if Sherman Alexie even remembers it. I suspect that's just how he is; that moment has probably played out hundreds of times with hundreds of emerging writers who admire him. It's a perfect example of how an established author reaches out his long-handled spoon and makes the whole culture of publishing just a little bit healthier.

Appropriate Monday grooviness: Lovin' Spoonful "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice" (This one's for Sherman.)

My "Italian" writing

2010-02-27T22:31:00.003-06:00

The good news: I made lots of progress today on the replotting of the first part of my novel. The bad news: Mark sneaked up behind me and FILMED it. Here's a snippet. This is what he calls my "Italian side" coming out, which is pretty funny, because as far as I know, I have no Italian heritage. The other irony is that I was so into what I was doing I didn't even hear him, and he was right there!

Now you tell me: am I the only person who talks to her computer this way? :)