Stephanie Gayle

Yesterday I was reading a post on the Ward Six blog called, "Why I don't read mysteries anymore." It struck a note because recently all I have been reading are mysteries. Chandler, Hammet, McDermid, Evanovich, Rankin, etc. Lots of mysteries. I agree with some of Rhian's objections to the genre listed in the post. I don't care for serial killers and in-the-mind-of-a-killer stories tend to fall flat. But mysteries represent some of my earliest young adult reading memories. Phyllis Whitney, Agatha Christie, Josephine Tey (Brat Farrar, people! Oh, how I loved that book!) And there's lots of early, built-in tension. Will the puzzle be solved? Will the killer be caught? Of course, not all mysteries follow this narrative path. Thomas H. Cook writes mysteries that are more psychological in nature. They're more about how people react to a violent death or kidnapping. The tension has much less to do with 'who did it' than with 'is someone going to irreparably damage their family because of this'?

Having just reread Chandler's Lady in the Lake I was struck by how much his humor appeals to me. Sure, there's tough guys and sordid situations featuring loose women. But it's Marlowe's wry humor that brings me back time and again to those books. What a wiseass.

I myself would like to write a mystery, and not just because I want to hang out with other mystery writers. Though they do seem like fun people. I mean how can't thinking about murder for lots of days out of the year not translate into fun loving. Right?

Posted by Stephanie at 07:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is Patriots' Day here in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts (also in Maine and--oddly-- observed as a public school holiday in Wisconsin). Patriots' Day is celebrated with obscenely early-hour reenactments of the first battles of the American Revolution in Lexington and Concord. It's also the day the Boston marathon is run now. It's a day off from work few other people have, so it feels special. Today, to celebrate the consistent warmth of the past week I'm taking the insulating caulk and plastic off the house's windows. Nothing like fresh air! Of course, every year when this happens I expect a cold snap, just to teach me not to expect spring to show up anytime before mid-May. We New Englanders are a cautious lot when it comes to weather.

I have the day off from MIT. I think I might go for a walk later, but for now I think I'll do a bit of writing. Nothing affords the chance the get work done like a day off!

Posted by Stephanie at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I like cats. I don't happen to own one in part because the landlord says I can't and in part because my current level of pet commitment is fishsitting. But I like cats. I've had kitties as pets in the past and what everyone says about them stealing your breath and hating you and being less than stellar pets is a pack of filthy lies. But I think dogs tend to be a little easy with their love, so go figure.

I also like engineers. Probably because I'm surrounded by them and they've worn down my defenses over time (clever engineers!) But also because many of them are funny, smart people who can solder something for you if you need something soldered.

So today I found 'An Engineer's Guide to Cats.' Huzzah!

The video is a bit long, but the cat 'art construction' at around the 3.00 mark is well worth the wait.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was falling a bit behind on the whole, um, writing thing for a while. I'd finished a major editing project and decided to reward myself with time off. Then I got sick. Then Maclappy got sick (requiring an uninstall and new install of Office). Then I got...doldrummy and wasn't sleeping well. In part, as I came to realize, because I wasn't writing. When I'm not writing it's like a valve closes and all the crazy bits and stories and dreams and dialogue gets bottled up in me and...it leads to me not sleeping and other unpleasant side effects. Generally, I'm just less delightful when I'm not writing.

So I put myself back on the clock. KitchenAid timer rather. An hour a day...keeps insomnia away. Plus, I'm working on something new. New stuff is fun. I've got 38 minutes and 34 seconds left. Writing here doesn't count on the timer. It has to be my fiction I'm working on. I'm tough, but fair.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have 38 minutes and 34 seconds to fill.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two recent stories in The New Yorker got me thinking about tension and story structure. This week's "The Lie" by T. Coraghessan Boyle and "Great Experiment" by Jeffrey Eugenides, published on March 31st. Both stories start with men in ruts: ill-paying jobs and family pressures. Both men end up taking advantage of their jobs: one by embezzling and one by lying about a death in the family to avoid work. As the tension increases you find yourself thinking "this can't end well." And it doesn't. Both stories end with discovery (or the verge of it). Both leave you thinking about what will happen next. Coincidentally both seemed very locale-specific as well. Eugenides picks Chicago, Boyle chooses Los Angeles.

I was struck by both stories because they represent the tension ending I myself never write. I write stories in which some big tense event has just happened. I enjoy exploring the fallout. What happens after a small boy finds a dead body? How does a women react to her husband's leaving her? I could have written them inverse: end on the body floating face-down in the water or the woman's face watching the UHaul pull away. I tend not to because it confounds my admittedly traditionalist take on story narrative.

When I was in middle school we were made to read Guy de Maupassant's "The Lady, or the Tiger." I'll never forget it. At story's end we are asked: what door did the lovely, jealous princess send her lover to: the one with certain, bloody-toothed death or the one with a pretty bride? We aren't told. We're asked. Choose your own adventure books had more resolution. I hated "The Lady, or the Tiger." Supposed to guess the ending? Oh, my sixth grade anguish!

I was used to stories that ended happily ever after or at least ended with a resolution of some sort. Despite having read more widely and having learned that Guy's name is pronounced Gee in his native tongue, I still have to work to bend my mind to stories with less than traditional structures (though ocassionally I fall hard for them. For evidence see my deep admiration for Paul Aster and David Mitchell.)

Did I enjoy the two New Yorker stories? I did. I've been thinking on them long after I finished transcending the arc, and considering what happens next to the narrators. Hell, I even tried to imagine ways by which the embezzler character might escape his inevitable doom. What can I say? I've managed to transcend my sixth grade opinions. Well, some of them.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Oy. Sorry it's been a while, but after a grueling work week I came down with a hellacious head cold last Friday. I'm now in the hacking up a lung recovery phase. As a result I've not been writing much. This is not good for several reasons but the most important is this: it's ruining my sleep schedule. Every night I tumble into bed, physically exhausted, and oddly I don't fall off to sleep immediately. Then, at least twice during the night I wake up from a dream and start altering it (but by now I'm half-awake and then full on awake). Last night I realized I was writing. My little "Let's fix this dream" is really my poor writing brain screaming "Hey! Pay attention! I've got things for you! And if you're not going to bother while you're awake--consumptive cough or no--you'll pay attention now!" So I waste two hours each night writing mentally (but never on paper) while in bed. Bullocks to that. Starting today I'm going to write on paper and hope that my damn brain gets the signal and lets me sleep.

By the by, the sheer awfullness of this cold makes me suspect I may have somehow contracted a Man Cold. See below for explanation.

Posted by Stephanie at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems I haven't posted any erudite lessons on writing as of late. Since I'm sure you come here for more than my thoughts on botox (bad) and pandas (awesome) I'll help you out with some thoughts on why you should take your carefully worded story (or novel) and stick it in a drawer. No, don't send it out to The New Yorker or The Paris Review. Not just yet. Why? Well, I have some hard truths, friend. The story you just finished, the one you're quite proud of and that your mother has declared "Nobelable" may not be quite done.

As a frequent offender of the put-it-aside law, let me tell you a few things I've learned.

1. First drafts are just that. First fucking drafts. Not gold. Not Nobelable. You will need to rewrite and edit.
2. You notice mistakes more easily when you haven't looked at something every five minutes for the past week. Remember all those terrible clothes you wore decades ago that you look back at and say, "God, stirrup pants? Why?!" Those fashion mistakes are to your story mistakes what pandas are to awesome. You need time to see them. Give yourself time.
3. Waiting is hard. True. But there's something really annoying about rereading an old story you sent off too soon and that by some odd miracle got published and thinking "Why the hell didn't I stick that in a drawer longer before I let the whole world see this?" You can't take it back once it's published.
4. Every writer has stories about setting aside their stories or books for months or years. Now you can join that club of writers!

This is a lesson I have to teach myself on a regular basis. I've been enamored enough of a first draft to think it publishable (ha ha!) That's called delusion. Do better than I've done and go stick that story in drawer. (Closets, attics, cartons, under the box bins, and safety deposit boxes are all acceptable substitutes for drawers)

Posted by Stephanie at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So my Maclappy is back in action. I brought it to work so one of my genius MIT grad students would fix it for me, but that proved unnecessary. After a software update it seems to have resolved its ongoing issues with Word. So no sacrifices (animal, human, or chocolate) were required. Now I can work on the story I began while I was in Los Angeles. It starts with a dog. Why? I happened to be sharing a sunny deck with a white Labrador retriever. Sometimes I write about what I happen to be starting at. Inspired, no?

Posted by Stephanie at 02:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My laptop seems to have caught a flu. Or some such disease. It won't let me use Word. Or rather, it will let me open a document and use it for approximately 15 seconds before it crashes, again and again. I'm a writer. I don't ask for much in the way of applications. I ask for Word. Take PowerPoint! Take Quick Time! Take Final Draft! Anything but Word.

It's on days like this that I parrot my friend Maggie and say, "Ugh. What have computers done for me lately?"

Come back, Word. Please?

Posted by Stephanie at 07:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)