Stephanie Gayle

I'm beginning a new novel, which is not altogether new. I was writing it in parallel with the last novel I wrote but I had to abandon it when it became clear which book needed me more or was speaking to me more clearly. So I find myself with 90 pages of manuscript, which is a rather tidy amount. Enough for me to remember what my major character is like and why I created him in the first place. This time around, however, I am taking a novel (heh) approach. I'm outlining. I'm drawing diagrams and creating backstories and thinking it through before I write another page. Because I feel as though I've spent too much time in prior works letting the characters drive the story, unsure of the destination or changing the destination and then having to go back and rewrite all over the map. This is not to say that I think outlining will save me from rewrites. As bloody if. But I do think it might allow me to build a more solid framework and to be able to allude to future events in a way I've not been able to do in a first draft before. And honestly the whole kicking ideas around, thinking deeply about what I want for this story, is wonderful fun. I'm in no hurry to end it.

It reminds me of the poem, Ithaca, by Constantine P. Cavafy, which my first creative writing instructor Ann Boutelle, shared with me, and which took me many, many years to fully understand. I rather love it now.

Ithaca
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:46 PM | Permalink

Everybody's a critic.
Today my google alerts found that my book had been mentioned by the Maitland Public Library's blog. So, reckless in the face of potentially nasty reviews, I clicked through and found that Aimee had enjoyed my book. I can tell because my book is listed under Cheers, along with Bollywood Confidential by Sonia Singh and Double Whammy by Carl Hiassen. The counterpoint to Cheers is Chills, implying that the book met with a frosty reception. Only one book did. That book? Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Jean said of it, "This was, for me, a very depressing book. I will say though that it was very well-written.”

Olive Kitteridge won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize.

And that folks helps puts things into perspective.
Not everyone is going to like your stuff even if they can admit it's well-written. And that's more than most people will allow. Of course, Elizabeth Strout can hug her Pulitzer to her chest (Is it huggable? What's it look like?) at the end of the day for comfort. But, I think, most of us who give the world material to review should keep this in mind: criticism is influenced by a whole host of prejudices and preferences inherent in critics that you cannot and should not attempt to control for in creating your work.

Posted by Stephanie at 04:51 PM | Permalink

Every now and again in writing I hit a wall. I run into a plot problem or character issue that I can't resolve. And I recognize that I can't resolve it. So I stew. I've learned to let my brain grind away in the background, crunching on these problems while I work at other things (such as cleaning the bathroom). Brute force isn't much help with these larger problems. Any good solution is going to take time. I currently have hit a wall with my manuscript's end. The big reveal is no good but the actual last bit of ending (post-reveal) is okay. So I'm letting my mind crunch away, trying not to rush it. Rushing it, I believe, might explain the rather crap bit of ending I'm wrestling with now. So instead of worrying I am going to frost some cupcakes. And hope that in a couple of days' time the wall has come down.

Posted by Stephanie at 01:08 PM | Permalink

and I'll say it again.
When I am in full-on edit mode I'm a tougher reader.
I am in full-on edit mode and recently I stopped reading two books I started because they weren't good enough. On a different, non-editing day I suspect I might have finished them but I did not. During this same time someone handed me a short narrative they'd written and asked me to cast my eye over it. Inside I was thinking, "I am not sure you want this. Now is not the time." But in fact I focused mostly on grammar and flow and less on content because I am sometimes capable of lowering my edit gun to "stun" instead of "kill."
Yet it still strikes me as remarkable how my sensibilities change during these transitions.

One of my writing instructors told me he couldn't watch films because most were bad and he didn't feel he had the excess time to spend (waste) on them. I thought that was harsh at the time, but I have more sympathy for that viewpoint now.

Posted by Stephanie at 02:22 PM | Permalink

I'm editing, and it's going well. A little to well. No first draft is very good. Or at least no first draft of mine. So why am I finding so few problems? I suspect it's not because I have at last written a fantastic first draft (refer to earlier point). I suspect it's because my mind is being a wee bit lazy and registering "good enough" as "good." To be fair I am noticing some problems with the overall structure, things I need to change or shore up before it's a readable draft. I keep thinking that once I send it out to some fellow readers I'm sure they'll spot all the flaws I'm missing. But it nags me that I'm missing them at all...

Posted by Stephanie at 06:21 PM | Permalink

Lately I've been thinking it would be terrific to spend some time writing. Just writing. Not on top of everything else. Get away and write. There are places that let writers do that. They are called residency programs and depending on the program they will put you up for free (besides cost of travel to get to and from the place) and feed you and let you write. (Often in a wee cabin.) Awesome.

So this week I've been working on two residency applications. Both want to know some history, publishing credentials, etc. No problem. Both want to know what project I plan to work on. Good news: I have a new project so that dovetails nicely. But both also want a page all about me and my writing and that's where my metaphorical horse halts at the residency application hurdle. Damn, but that horse does not want to jump.

I admit it: I have a hard time writing about my writing. It makes me feel inflated and strange, and oddly I feel as if an outsider is better equipped to handle the task. How do I get out of my head long enough to describe the interior? I also tend to undersell myself because I'm the kind of girl who didn't vote for herself when I ran for school election because I thought it was cheating. Yeah, yeah, I know. Silly.

So tonight I have to once again edit my artist's statement so that it's unique and powerful and not so damn reticent. Good times.

Posted by Stephanie at 05:57 PM | Permalink

Hey all. I've disabled the ability to comment on my blog. The spammers have been crazy active and it isn't worth the effort of checking all the comments only to have to delete 99.99% of them. But don't worry! I'll think of all the potential feedback you might have to offer after I hit publish on my entries. And then I'll shrug, say, "Whatevs!" and go dance to the latest crazy fresh dance jam.

Posted by Stephanie at 05:53 PM | Permalink

Research. Some stories demand more than others. The current story I'm working on demands quite a lot. So I've been wading through books with brittle pages I almost fear to turn lest they crumble between my fingers and swimming through sheets and sheets of journal printouts. Always looking for elusive details, for the one sentence that will bring it all together for me. I think it happened two days ago. I read the sentence, and then made the fishy gaping face that signifies, "No fucking way!" Then I ran around explaining said phrase and significance to all my roommates who were probably confused and bored. Sorry about that! When you've spent weeks immersed in a problem you tend to overestimate other peoples' interest in said problem.

Now all I have to do is write the story. Heh.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:22 AM | Permalink

As a writer visiting bookshops is an event that can be fraught with peril. Do you casually stroll to the shelf where your books would be shelved and check to see if they are there? Visiting the kids, might not be such a good idea as the kids may be missing. What tremors I feel upon seeing that my book just wasn't loved enough to earn a spot next to William Gay! Sometimes, however, the kids are there, happily frolicking amongst other literary darlings. That's good. Thus it was when I visited the giant temple that is Powell's in Oregon I found my baby.

Here we are, together.

Good times.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:06 AM | Permalink

I know there's that whole drunk writer stereotype. But let me tell you, it's a myth. I've had two glasses of wine and I feel nothing but slow and easily amused. While I'm enjoying the latter I'm not finding the alcohol to be fueling my creative pursuits. In fact it's just creating a whole mess of typos. In the wine's defense, it's delicious. In my defense, I've hit a bit of a wall. It's never good when you (the writer) think the pacing is slow. Ah well, that's what first drafts are for, right?

Posted by Stephanie at 08:26 PM | Permalink

Just got a rejection from a journal on a short story I'd submitted.
The key bits: "I'm going to respectfully pass on this piece. A pretty harrowing story.
I'm afraid it's just not for us."

Often when you get rejections and they say "it's not for us" you don't know whether
it means "your piece sucked" or "we don't like your title" or "we don't dig stories
about mind-reading centaurs." But this one provided a nice clue. Harrowing.

I'm rather chuffed actually. I'd rather my fiction be harrowing than not.
Good rejection! (Yes, such a creature exists).

Posted by Stephanie at 03:15 PM | Permalink

Over the years I may have developed a crippling internet addiction. I said "may have." The other night our cable went out. TV and DSL. No interwebs. Here are the notes I kept on that experience for posting when I finally reached a haven that had access to the many tubes I have come to rely on so very, very much.

Notes
Why? Why? Needs Internets!

Okay. Not the wifi. It’s the cable. I don’t want to talk to a call center rep from Bangalore. I haven’t got time for that pain.

Roommate confirms it’s the cable. TV’s out too. Why does RCN hate us?

It’s raining outside. Not a storm to end all storms. Just rain. Way to go, cable connection to the outside. You’re so weak!

Wants my internets. My precious. Tricksy cable men want you, but you’re mine.

It’s so cold. So. Cold. No webs. Hold me.

God, did I really write 10 pages in under two hours? That’s amazing! Maybe not having the Internets is a good thing.

I kid. I want Internets. Please. Send help.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:17 AM | Permalink

I had asparagus for dinner. Some time later I had to pee. You know about the asparagus scented urine thing, right? As I was relieving myself I suddenly remembered that I meant to include a "science of asparagus pee" scene in my manuscript. As soon as I thought that I had a second thought: "I bet most people who aren't writers don't experience moments like these."

Do they?

Posted by Stephanie at 08:35 PM | Permalink

I've seen several articles that made mention of what authors listen to (if they listen to anything) while they work on book projects. Some listen to classical music (words interfere) others listen to music set in the period of their book and some go with thematic music. Me? It depends. But I do tend to develop a pattern of listening to one album obsessively while workin on a book because it can become background music for me (though it has words) and it sort of signals my brain that it's writing time. For the current novel that music has been by Copeland. "Eat, Sleep, Repeat" and "You Are My Sunshine" have been my writing music for lo these many months now.

You can check them out here. Your wiring mileage and enjoyment may vary.

Posted by Stephanie at 05:31 PM | Permalink

According to Google, I've written another book!
Follow the link! Keep scrolling....

Oh, except I didn't. What I know about Pots, Potters and Models is probably not what is contained within those printed pages.

It's nice that Google thought of me, though.

Incidentally if you thought the wrong entry was Nothing But Red, I had a story included in that anthology. So I can now claim to have been "anthologized." That always looks good on a resume, no?

Posted by Stephanie at 07:40 PM | Permalink

For a current writing project, I've been reading a lot about robots and robotics.
Sadly most of the reading is not as entertaining as this.

Or as easy to follow.

Posted by Stephanie at 06:51 PM | Permalink

As you might expect I like words.
I like my music with words. The wittier the better.

I used to have a real problem with news shows when they first began running text headlines along on the bottom. I couldn't look away. I have a very hard time not reading.

So words: love 'em.

In my current writing project (novel) I'm finding two word tools to be invaluable: The Oxford English Dictionary (online edition--I don't have the space or arm strength for the physical copy) and The Synonym Finder.

Both provide me with words. Lots of words. The OED gives me word histories too, which are sorts of stories. Yay. And The Synonym Finder is so much better than Roget's Thesaurus. All writers should own a copy.

If you like words, you'll love these two resources. Word.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:45 PM | Permalink

Some news articles make me say, "Ewww!" and others hit me straight in my "someone should write a story about this" muscle. This story did both. "Teeth found in wallet at Falmouth Wal-Mart"
Warning! There are pictures of the teeth. Ugh!

Yet another reason not to shop Walmart. Unless you like getting bonus human teeth with your wallet purchases. In which case, as you were.

Posted by Stephanie at 02:39 PM | Permalink

I mostly write on the computer these days, especially now that my handwriting is illegible and my typing speed is good. But sometimes I write in a notebook or on scraps of paper. As long as I can decipher my writing I'm in business. Two minutes ago I went in search of said notes. They spell out who killed whom and why. I can't find it. I thought it was in my green notebook. Oh wait. Maybe the Mr. Popper's Penguin notebook? Okay, no. The striped/dotted notebook? Um, it does have notes on the project I want but not the scene notes I'm looking for. In fact I'm finding all sorts of useful stuff I'd forgotten about but what I need are those notes.

You would think I'd have put them somewhere safe. Perhaps I did. This reminds me of the time I mislaid a novel outline and only found it two-thirds of the way through that book. Not that I ever follow outlines anyway. Damn it, where are those notes????

Okay, so I remember who killed whom. But I can't remember why. And that was on the notes. Bloody hell.

P.S. Update: while cooking a batch of ratatouille, it came to me! I very nearly shouted, "I know why he got killed!" In the nick of time I remembered that this is not something sane people shout in their houses. What's interesting is that I wasn't trying to remember the notes. I was concentrating on getting the veggies cooked.

Lessons learned: organize book notes better, in a pinch--cook something that requires full attention

Posted by Stephanie at 10:41 AM | Permalink

When you're a writer, people you encounter often say the following, "You know what you should write about?" And then they proceed to tell you what you should write about. Sometimes they'll add a joke about taking a small percentage of the profits you'll make from writing their award-winning idea.

The next time someone "gives" me an idea of what to write about I am going to "give" them an idea.

Here's a sample: "You know what you should do? Build me a bookcase."

You see, ideas don't cost much. But writing them down, fleshing them out, shaping the narrative, and editing the heck out of 'em? Plenty expensive.

So the bookcase comparison doesn't work, because it wouldn't take someone years to make a bookcase.

Here's a better response: "I have an idea. How about you build me a house? A beautiful house? And then, years later, when you're finished I'll give it a look. And maybe I'll say it's a nice house but the market is tight and there's a house down the block like it that already sold and so, sorry, but I can't buy your house or even show it to anyone."

Yeah, that's what I'm going to say the next time someone gives me an idea. That ought to close the Idea Factory down right quick.

Posted by Stephanie at 06:05 PM | Permalink

John Updike is dead. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.
You may think I'm a fan, judging by my reaction.
Not exactly.

I've read some Updike I've liked and some I've not liked.
But Updike was my go-to guy for complaints of a literary nature.

For instance, this evening when I had squandered two precious writing hours
submitting my short stories I thought,"I bet John Updike never does this. He just sends
a piece to The New Yorker, such as his grocery list, and they print it."
This, gentle reader, is called hyperbole.

John Updike was 76 years old. Not a spring chicken. But by god I thought I had
more time for more punchlines with him. I've tried other authors out.
"I bet Philip Roth never gets told to retitle his books!" It just doesn't feel right.

John Updike, you will be missed. For all the wrong reasons.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have not talked about writing lately. I'm sure this has been depressing as all get out for those of you who come seeking the crumbs of my authorial wisdom. So I'm going to give you what you crave: crumbs of authorial wisdom.

Currently I'm working on two books and a short story. This lesson is about the short story and a bad movie I recently watched. It was "The Lookout" and it starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Charming young Mr. Gordon-Leavitt. So good in Brick. You should watch that movie.

In "The Lookout" a blind Jeff Daniels teaches our brain-impaired narrator to start at the end of a story and think it backwards. This comes into play during the tense ending with the bank robbers. Only it wasn't tense because I didn't too much care whether any of them lived or died. Except for Jeff Daniels. I suspected he was going to die of embarrassment for having appeared in this film. And I felt for him.

My current difficulty with my short story is that I'm not enamored of the ending. I need to rewrite it. It occurred to me that it might be wise to rewrite the ending and then edit back, filling in dialogue and scenery to better fit the story's new conclusion. I don't propose to change everything, but I do think that a revised ending will necessitate some alterations to prior scenes.

So that's you lesson for today: mining bad films for good narrative advice. Try it!

Posted by Stephanie at 07:33 PM | Permalink

What were the best books of 2008? Search me. My reading is usually at least a year behind current. However, if you like knowing what reviewers think of this year's literary offerings, look no further. Here is a link to a compiled list of a lot of "Best of 2008's Books" lists.

Enjoy! As always, feel free to disagree. I encourage debate.

Posted by Stephanie at 02:40 PM | Permalink

The past few weeks have been hectic plus. Work has been busy and my free time has been curtailed by election volunteering activities. But now that we've elected our new president (woot!) I am free to return to that job I've been neglecting: writing. It seems luxurious to have more than thirty minutes to contemplate story lines and actually put words to page. Damn, I missed it. I don't expect I'll output anything like NaNoWriMo levels (50K words by month's end?) but that's no matter. It's good to be back, staring at my screen, singing off-key while I contemplate what happens next.

It's good to be back. Scratch that. It's fanfuckingtastic.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:53 PM | Permalink

Sorry it's been a while since I've shared a post with y'all. The temperature in the greater Boston area has been dropping, daylight has been disappearing, and I've begun to go into what I like to call "bear mode."
It's akin to hibernating bears in that I hate getting up in the mornings, I want to eat all the damn time and I sometimes roar with a mouth full of salmon. Okay that last bit is false. I don't even eat fin fish.

But lest you think I've only been eating and sleepy and grooming my fur, I present to you my latest short story. Go visit Third Reader and check it out.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have some dinner to eat.

Posted by Stephanie at 05:21 PM | Permalink

Now we begin a new series in this blog called "the best writers you've never read." Every now and again I am exposed to a wonderful writer whose star has either not risen or whose fame is now long forgotten. Our first writer falls into the latter camp. Margaret Millar is a Canadian who became a California transplant. Her work is marked by an interest in psychology and the dark motives of people. That sounds bad, but her writing is not. Millar's work often shines a light on the way people behave in a succinct, brutal manner. The mysteries in her work are engaging, page turning, but at book's end they matter less than the characters she's constructed. The main characters of Mermaid remained with me for months after I finished the book. That's one of the best compliments one can pay an author, I think.

Millar won an Edgar Award and was awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Sadly it's difficult to find much of her work, as most of it has fallen out of print. But given the ready availability of second hand books via the internet and the interlibrary loan borrowing capabilities, there is no excuse for you not to go find a book or two of her work. Try it. You might like it.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:30 PM | Permalink

I had an obsession with the first aid guide my family owned when I was young. I would stare at the photos of snake bite, arrow wound, and electrocution injury and treatments for hours. When I got old enough to read I'd read about snake bites, arrow wounds, and electrocution injuries. Some other favorites: falling through thin ice and fish-hook-in-your-finger problems. So it's no surprise that I continue to be fascinated by articles exploring medical oddities whether they be strange conditions or historical medical tales.

In fact, more than once I've read a story about a strange illness and wanted to drop everything and write a novel involving that condition. Of course, the story can't be just the illness. It has to be more. For this reason, I really dug The Echo Maker by Richard Powers, about a man afflicted with Capgras syndrome. Capgras sufferers believe that the people close to them are doubles or impostors. As if you suspected everyone you knew was a pod person.

Gerladine Brooks's Year of Wonders, about the plague, is also marvelous. It's tough for modern readers to remember or imagine what it would feel like not to understand the origins of plague contagion. (It's the fleas!)

Of course it helps that Powers and Brooks are both amazing writers with wide open eyes and a facility for beautiful language.

Maybe one day I'll find the rare condition or tragic injury that makes me devote a novel to it. Until then, I'll enjoy the works of others and continue fondly remembering the family first aid book. Oh, and if you get a fish hook through your finger, cut the hook under the barb and pull the now non-barbed end back through your finger.

Posted by Stephanie at 04:25 PM | Permalink

For all of you just waiting to get your hot little hands on an audio copy of My Summer of Southern Discomfort, I have wonderful news. Southern Voices Audio has released my book on CD and cassette. I'm not reading the book and that's probably just as well, because I'd spend half the time finishing a sentence to say, "Oh, hell. Can I change that? No, well, can I add a three-legged elf? I think this scene needs something more." This kind of behavior is what stands between me and an appearance on Oprah. Really.

Instead of me, actress Julie Dretzin reads the book, and from the sample audio I heard, she does a terrific job. She does a good Lala.

As I was thinking about recording and books I was imagining what it would sound like to record a book being written. I realized that would be dull. Very, very dull. You'd hear some paper rustling, furious typing, and then silence. Lots and lots of silence, broken by an occasional curse word and a muttered question, like, "Well, where is she buried?"

So I think I'll leave the recordings to the finished product and the readings to the actresses, unless someone wants to record me reading a fantastic story about a three-legged elf.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:01 PM | Permalink

Recently, Annie Proulx spoke about how much she dislikes people sending her fan fiction pertaining to her story that was the basis of the film Brokeback Mountain. The Guardian published that she finds the pornish rewrites people send her, "a source of constant irritation."

Here is my considered response.

Hey, Annie, I can understand not liking the alternate endings people send of your work, but I've got some advice. Don't read them. Also, what they are really rewriting is the movie version, not so much your story. Most people who saw the movie probably didn't even read your story! Which was goddamn brilliant, I admit. You're a hell of a writer.

This antagonism toward fan fic writers makes me recall you crying foul after "Brokeback Mountain" failed to win an Oscar. Yup, here it is. I understand the horror of having Crash win Best Film. Watching that movie was like being beat over the head with a junior high public service announcement (only more painful). However, it did seem a wee bit like what we call "crybaby son of a bitch behavior" to write a piece protesting your film's loss. Leave the public crying over lost awards to Kanye West. He does it better.

Today I came across this proposed fan fic alternate ending to Brokeback Mountain written by Gabe Delahaye of Gabe and Max's Internet Thing fame. I just had to share. It's glorious. It manages to emulate the original story's tone for just a moment before veering wildly into the happy fields of imagination. Proulx would be appalled. You will be amused.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:26 PM | Permalink

Remember those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books? Those were swell.
Well, I've got something similar. It's got choices and more than a hint of the macabre.
It's Virtual Autopsy, brought to you by the good folks at University of Leicester.

You can play here!

Just click on a case number (to the right), read a short description of the deceased's medical history and take a stab (heh) at cause of death. It took me just two guesses to get it right on case one.

Oh god! My eyes! Um, word of advice. Do NOT click on the interactive cadaver. Unless you like pictures of internal organs. In which case, it's your lucky day.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:28 PM | Permalink

There are moments when I'm writing or researching for a book that might make a sane observer go, "Um, the hell?" For instance, right now I'm researching cemeteries and muttering, "Yes, but could I get buried there now? Or are these just old graves? God, why is this so hard to figure out?" Before I know it I'm on a message board where people post where their clients would like to find a burial plot. It looked like Monopoly meets Death.

Right now I'm looking at coffin models. However typing coffin + models=not so useful. Apparently an Italian coffin maker promoted his line of wares by offering a calendar of scantily clad women draped over his coffins. Sexism beyond the grave. Wow.

So now I'm looking at discounted coffins, trying to figure out if they look even odder without a corpse. So, um, yeah. These are some of the moments that make up being a writer.

Now I'm wondering who names the different coffin models. There's a story right there.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:30 PM | Permalink

Once again, it's time to pay attention to banned books. Banned Book week will be taking place from September 27th to October 4th. Many libraries will feature displays of books challenged and in some cases, banned. It's quite interesting to see why the books have been challenged (and by interesting I mean infuriating).

You can find more information about Banned Book Week here. Note that one of the books highlighted is the fantastic Judy Blume's novel, Forever. My Mom busted my cousin, Megan, and me for reading it when we were young. I'm okay with parents deeming subject material too adult for their children. What I am most emphatically not okay with is parents deeming material unreadable for persons other than their children. So unless you're my Mom, no, you can't tell me what I can and cannot read.

Though I wonder if I ever told my mother that Forever's depiction of sex (as I remember it) was pretty unglamorous and fairly accurate, especially as regards what happened afterward. Let's just say it wasn't happily ever after.

So yay to books and boo to banning. If you see a banned book listed you haven't read, consider reading it. After all it's 100% guaranteed subversive!

Posted by Stephanie at 01:12 PM | Permalink

I was reviewing my submissions spreadsheet the other day. It's where I track where and when I sent my stories to journals, what the deadline (if any) for submissions was, and how long it took to get a response and what was the response once I got it. There's color coding involved. Usually it serves me well.

However, I noticed a few days ago that I did something not so bright. I submitted the same piece to the same journal I'd previously sent it to three years ago (and which said journal rejected). Oops. Admittedly, the piece has undergone revision, but...it's still very much the same story. A part of me (the perverse part) wants to see if they'll notice, or, better yet, accept it this time around. Another part of me thinks I should send them a message saying, "Oops. Sorry. My bad." I haven't decided yet what to do.

Suggestions?

Posted by Stephanie at 02:39 PM | Permalink

A new student stopped by my office today and asked for some help. It involved me entering a form online. As I was typing she said, "You're using two fingers!" Then she added, "And you're really fast!"

"I write books this way," I said.

It's true. I hunt and peck on my keyboard. Most days I forget I don't type like other people. Most people who "hear" me typing assume that I'm using all my fingers. But no. Why? Stupid public school. You see, when I attended high school the typing class was considered a "standard class" and it would have negatively skewed my GPA if I'd taken it. Instead I had to stay in Honors classes so that I could go to a "good college" and reap the rewards! (What rewards you ask? Indeed.)

So I never took typing. I did once or twice try to teach myself to touch type using this old school manual that belonged to my sister. I found it really hard not to look at the keys. To be fair, I still look at the keys a lot when I type. It feels sort of Zen when I'm typing fast.

I'm sure I'm in good company with two-finger typists. It's old school. Which is my way of saying that I'm never going to break this habit.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:28 PM | Permalink

When I finish a book I have another in the pipeline to work on. Inevitably I'll sit down, excited to start a new narrative and...I'll balk. Like a horse before a jump it doesn't want to take, I'll pull up short. Every time. My brain refuses. It says, "Too many words. I can't produce that many words. I can't." Untrue, obviously, as I just finished a book, but there you have it.

So what do I do? I start working on short stories (less words). It's a good time for me to review the stories I've written and have set aside for edits or wholly abandoned, unsure of their worth. My edit meter is on high, and I'm happy to work on stuff I haven't seen in months or years. In time (usually a month or less) I'll start thinking of the new book, and I'll return to it, no longer daunted by the amount of words.

I don't think I'll always work this way, but, who knows?

Posted by Stephanie at 09:56 AM | Permalink

for not writing down my 2:30 a.m. idea the other night. But I was sleepy and lazy and I thought,"I'll probably remember this tomorrow." Despite knowing that it was unlikely. Damn me! I can remember much of the first two sentences but not whatever nascent thought provided the twist to the story. I feel that such a twist existed, but what was it? Fuckity fuck fuck. I cannot remember.

Next time I am hauling my ass out of bed at 2:30 a.m. Because I hate this feeling.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:25 PM | Permalink

I'm a desk jockey by day so sitting at a computer typing? All in a day's work. However the past three days and today have been writing days. No day job. Technically I am on vacation. Hahahahahahahahaha. Sorry, I had a moment there. All better! Um, so I've been sitting at my desk at home and writing, editing, rewriting, etc. At the end of the day I run out of words. The other night I was desperately trying to think of the word sommelier but not only could I not think of it, I couldn't think of the words I'd need to describe it like "wine" or "restaurant."

The good news is that I am blasting my way through book two. The bad news is I might not be able to speak at the end of this little project. Perhaps I should work on my Charades pantomime skills.

Posted by Stephanie at 01:37 PM | Permalink

I moved all my bedroom furniture around this weekend. Except for dropping a very heavy bookcase on my foot it went well. My desk is now between two windows. In moving my bed I found half a dozen lost vitamins and bear-sized dust balls and one or two dropped pens. I expected more lost detritus. Oh, there was that hideous semi-boot I wore when I broke my toe. That was wedged under my desk. I had a notion I might need it again someday. Um, no. Yucky.

So now when I'm approaching my room everything looks different. I can't see my bed. There's a straighter path from the door to the window. Things feel newer, fresher. I like it. In fact, I used to move my furniture a lot. Every few months or so it seemed. When that book, Eva Moves the Furniture, first came out I thought it was about a woman who rearranged furniture a lot. It isn't.

What has this to do with writing? Perspective. When you see things from a different place you might still see the same things but they look as though they've changed or you're viewing them from a previously unexplored angle. When I'm writing a character I see things through their eyes. Sometimes I have trouble getting their perspective. So I'll think about their life and what would likely or not be their perspective or sometimes I'll decide to nix their perspective. I did that in book two. I was having a great deal of trouble with a certain character's motivation. Then I decided that the character in question shouldn't have much of his perspective shared because it would make certain questions too easily answered. So I pulled back, away from his view.

It's an interesting exercise to write a scene in your story, book, diary, whatever, from the perspective of a stranger idly watching your characters through a store front or inside a movie theater. Outsiders have different insights. Not surprisingly, I make up stories about the people around me (though not as often as you'd think as I'm too busy imagining the lives of the imagined, not the real). It's fun to imagine what other people are up to, right? And that in itself is a new perspective, which can be gained with a whole lot less pain and sweat than moving every piece of furniture in your room.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:11 PM | Permalink

Every now and then some kind person emails me to say that they enjoyed my book or a reading I've done. It's a nice surprise. Sort of like when you find a marshmallow Peep that you hid for Easter five months earlier, only less likely to break your teeth. Some time ago I got an email that began "I just finished reading your book." Aha! I thought! Peepish joy! Fan mail. But the end of that sentence confounded my expectations and the next sentences left me open-mouthed with amazement.

This was not fan mail. Quite the opposite. This reader did not enjoy my book. Oh, and this reader? Hated that other readers liked my book.

I thought, "Who takes the time to write to tell someone how much they hated their book?" I had never considered such a thing. Several friends expressed similar surprise. At best it's a cathartic exercise (you get to say 'I hate your story') but honestly? Why not stop reading? Wouldn't that save both time and frustration?

I got different feedback from people about this. Some pointed out that by inspiring anger, I had surely touched an emotional wellspring within the reader, and that was great. Others thought that I should send the reader a form email that read, "Dear Fan, I am so glad you enjoyed My Summer of Southern Discomfort. I would be happy to add your name to my mailing list so that you can be informed of the publication date of my next book. Thanks for your support!" That one gave me pause. Just snarky enough to appeal to me.

In the end, I let it go. There was nothing to be won by engaging said reader in conversation. The email contained questions but it was clear to me that no answer I gave would satisfy, except perhaps "Gosh I'm sorry I wrote such a terrible story. I promise never to do it again." And I sure as hell wasn't going to write that. Besides, I've heard and read horror stories of authors who got involved with angry readers. They never seem to end well. (Misery, anyone?)

Maybe getting the opposite of fan mail in my in box is exactly like finding a five month old Peep. No good can come of chewing it over and over.

Posted by Stephanie at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Next weekend I am editing like no one has edited before, but tomorrow, I go to day job and the close of the three-day, 300 attendee Scratch@MIT conference I've helped organize. Sorry for the radio silence lately, but I promise I'll be more frequent with the posts once I stop handing out ID badges and directing people to their conference session rooms.

And for those of you really interested in Scratch, MIT or the Scratch@MIT conference (and who isn't?) here's some video compiled by the amazing Nobuyuki Ueda and his team who were at the conference and shooting photos and videos every second or so it seems. I luckily escaped the lens most of the time. However if you watch the Qube Meta video I appear about halfway through the blur. I'm wearing a very bright yellow jacket. I'm also grinning like a fool in the photos taken underneath the giant cat poster on the 7/25 footage. I swear it's the same smile I sported in my kindergarten school photo. Some things never change.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:13 PM | Permalink

A very astute reader (the only kind I use) pointed out that my manuscript for book #2 seemed a bit off. She didn't understand the ending in the context of the character's emotional and narrative arc. I understood what she was getting at. And I knew what the problem was: I had written the ending alongside the beginning. That is, when I was writing scenes before I began writing the book, I had two that I quite liked: the opening and the ending. I edited the beginning quite a bit but the ending not as much. I should have, because, as my reader noticed, it seems incongruous given all the events that lead to it.

That's the danger in artifacts. You can grow attached to them and lose sight of what they are supposed to represent. I've noticed I'm always much more receptive to suggestions such as "change the ending" or "remove that major character" when I haven't seen the story in a long time (several months). Physical distance somehow begets professional objectivity. I trust the first reader's eyes, perhaps even more than my own, because they're seeing the story new and I never can at this point.

So I'm looking forward to destroying some artifacts...

Posted by Stephanie at 08:20 PM | Permalink

The writing is not going so well lately. All my words seem insufficient. Really. They're not doing the job I'm setting them to do. Worse, I have a conversation that just is not the tense, crackling exchange of wits it was meant to be. I find myself arguing with my characters. "Why are you suddenly being likeable? I did not cast you to be charming. Be a curmudgeon, damn it!" The characters then turn around and say I'm the one who wrote them, so it must be my fault. It's a good point. The kind of point that pliable characters would not make. They would apologize for the error of their ways and start acting the way I expected.
You would think that as an author I would have total control over my work, that the prose would flow from mind to keyboard in a tranquil stream of genius. You would be wrong.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I found myself looking about my room thinking, "My, this area could use tidying." No doubt it could. But what my clever inner-self recognized was that the cleaning urge was a procrastination attempt disguised as a good impulse. I only want to clean my room so that I don't have to do the somewhat daunting writing work I have before me to complete.

While it would certainly be nice to move those ice skates out of my room (the same ice skates I had when I was a teenager and cannot fit my feet inside now--super useful) I think it might be nicer to have some of the work I've been agonizing over done.

And to sweeten the deal I'll only allow myself lunch if I go work on the book. Yup. Carrot and stick. But not carrot sticks. That, friends, is no lunch for a working writer.

Posted by Stephanie at 12:52 PM | Permalink

Recently I watched the cinematic trainwreck "I Know Who Killed Me" starring Lindsay Lohan as both demure student Aubrey Fleming and potty-mouthed stripper Dakota Mars. Never mind the agony of seeing Miss Lohan play parts that reference her first great role, as freckled twin moppets in "The Parent Trap," in such startling and heartbreaking contrast: this film is terrible. I knew it would be, but I was hoping for entertainment-level awful of the kind afforded by such masterpieces as "Deep Blue Sea" or "The Wicker Man." Nope, this is run-of-the-mill lazy awful.

But it made me think (that's more than we can say for much of the cast and crew). Specifically, it made me think about crime suspects in regards to mystery novels. When the suspects barely make it onto the page and their identity(ies) revealed, readers feel cheated and with good reason. Now, I could see who the villain of the film was a mile off but it was still annoying that he didn't have more than eight minutes on film. That there was no investigation so to speak. And there really wasn't. The cops? The federal agents? About as present and useful as the fricking tooth fairy when you're thirty years old.

This made me realize that my novel's cast of suspects has to be more than mentioned and revealed. And my cops? Going to have to be more present than I had planned originally. Why's that? Because I was planning on being somewhat lazy. It's always interesting when I catch myself out in lazy-writer mode. It involves me scolding myself, resolving to do the right (write) thing, and then bitching about my naggy ass self to myself. Yup. It's a regular carnival in my head.

So thank you, Jeff Hammond (writer) and Cris Sivertson (director) of the worst movie I've seen in a looooong time. You taught me something. How to ruin a story, and, hopefully, how to avoid doing so.

Posted by Stephanie at 06:06 PM | Permalink

What have I got by the old bedside to read?
Aside from a stack of mysteries (now reading my first Lee Child novel) I've got Practical and Experimental Robotics, RoboSapiens and a charming article entitled, "Decomposition of buried corpses, with special reference to the formation of adipocere."
I sure do know how to have fun!

Posted by Stephanie at 07:41 PM | Permalink

Some days I read what I've been working on and a twisty feeling of unease works its way through my body. I find myself thinking, "This isn't very...good. I remember it being good. Why is it not good any more?"

Tonight I found that I'd remembered chapter one as better than it is.

When faced with the dilemma of unexpected suck you can do several things:

1.Drink
2. Go to bed
3. Work on something different
4. Quit writing entirely and become a go-go dancer

Some days, option #4 seems like a great idea. But that's just nonsense. I don't own go-go boots.

Tonight's solution to suck is to work on smaller problems with the narrative and research details. Little tasks to distract me from my "everything I write is awful" moment.

And soon enough I'll rework the entire chapter so that the next time I read it the unease doesn't slither up my spine. Or such is the hope.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:37 PM | Permalink

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if there was a school where writing was taught with specific subjects (such as characters, setting scene, endings) and I were in said school I would fail Plot. Plot is not my greatest strength. In the past I've simply made nice dolls of my characters and then stuck pins in them to see what happened (metaphorically, of course.) That's worked, by and large, but it's not going to work on the current book project. Why? The current book project is a mystery.

Mystries demand plot in ways other novels don't. The very first book I wrote was a mystery. It was bad. The plot was okay but it had little twists the reader couldn't possibly predict because the author hadn't seen fit to think them through until the very end. Those twists ended up being the ribbon to wrap up the story in a nice neat fashion. Unfortunately, said ribbon was rather terrible in the ways just-tacked-on bits of story usually are terrible.

Lesson learned? Sort of. I'm smart enough to know I can't pull that trick a second time with good results. Unfortunately, I have a hard time thinking my story lines through from start to end. That may strike you as odd. It may be. Being weird doesn't worry me. Writing a bad book does.

So today I made myself go running because that has sometimes made ideas bubble to the surface of my mind. Why physical exercise=mental breakthroughs I have no idea. But the run did help. I've got a kernel of an idea that explains why the corpse is where it is and how it got there and who put it there. Let's hope I can grow this wee idea into a plotline. Because the running? It kind of hurts on hot, humid days.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:19 AM | Permalink

Somewhere, some time ago I read a short piece by a writer on when, seasonally, he sets his books. I want to say it was winter. Hell, I will say it was winter, because the chances of me finding this piece are slim to nil. This wasn't a topic I'd thought much about, but when I read the essay I realized that both my books: My Summer of Southern Discomfort and work-in-progress we call book #2 begin in summer. Not coincidentally, that's also the season I began writing both books. This summer I'm beginning book #3. I don't know why it's always summer when I start books. Maybe I've just internalized that summer is when novels begin. The new project, however, starts in the fall, because it's based on an academic calendar.

This bubbled to the surface of my mind because the forecast here in and around Boston calls for four 90 degree days in a row. Yowza. Let me tell you, it's pretty easy to imagine a steamy summer Georgia when you're sweating it out in 90 degree weather. But imagining a crisp autumn day in which the color pallete runs to red, not green? I'll just have to use that imagination of mine. If I don't perish of heat stroke first.

Posted by Stephanie at 11:34 AM | Permalink

I just paid money for the privilege of being locked down for seven hours on a Saturday in June at Grub Street's headquarters in Boston. The idea is to encourage writers to write for seven hours (with food-provided breaks---you know I wouldn't participate if food were withheld). I'm quite excited about it, despite my strong suspicion that the day will probably be the most beautiful day of all summer in Boston simply because I can't go outside for most of it. This will give me a chance to get started on book #3, a project I've been looking forward to and made some small forays at, but haven't had time to really get into. I want to roll about in the prose, muddy my hands with too many adjectives, and then peel the unwanted verbiage from me like so many blood-sucking leeches (how's that for a word picture?)

Seven hours sounds amazing. I could write a chapter in seven hours. Only one chapter you ask? One good chapter, I say. Or one that doesn't suck. Sometimes that's the same thing, especially in the land of first drafts.

I'll be holed up with other writers, all looking to pound out more words in one day than they probably do in most weeks. It's hard to find seven hours to write in unless you're willing to forego sleep (not usually) or eating (never) or the day job (it pays my bills). The strongest lure of pursuing a MFA was, for me, the time it provided to write. The strongest repellent? Um, the money it was going to cost me. So I chose day job and carving our time to write when I could. And I was fairly good about it, what with the timer and all. But I've been feeling a bit guilty lately about not spending enough time amongst the words, and I think this lockdown is just what I need.

I'll let you know how it goes once it's over. Until now, it's just something to look forward to. Internment never sounded so sweet...

Posted by Stephanie at 01:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sometimes it's tough to be a writer. Such as when your royalty statement appears and you realize you sold negative books (it can happen!) or you get a rejection slip from an esteemed magazine addressed to someone other than you (I suppose an acceptance note addressed to someone other than you would be worse) or you're asked yet again, "So how's the book coming?"

What's with the third-degree inquisition? Do I show up at your job and demand to see the latest spreadsheet/hairstyle/auto repair/surgical scar? Et cetera and et cetera. No, I do not. But once people know you're a writer they'll ask how's it coming, how are sales, when is the next reading and it's great that they want to know. Except when you're not writing and sales suck (or you don't know--this is also very possible) and the next reading is never.

Sometimes (this weekend) I just want to eat foods grilled over firey charcoal chips (because the very handsome boyfriend does not believe in the blasphemy that is gas grills--don't get him started). Sometimes I want to go hiking through the woods and commune with Nature. Sometimes I want to go to the farm and buy lots of lovely food and watch movies and make drinking glasses from wine bottles and do anything but write. Sometimes. Those times, inevitably, are when people ask me, "So how's the writing coming?" I'm quite certain my agent is not paying them to ask (are you?). But it does keep me honest.

I say, "Right now, it's not really coming. But I plan to write more soon."
And I do.
Right after I finish this burger.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When people ask me what I do I have two answers:
1. I'm a writer
2. I work at MIT (If I feel like playing, I tell them I'm a nuclear physicist--just to scare them.)

I rarely told people I was a writer until I'd sold my novel. That made me legitimate, or so I felt. But when they'd ask about my day job I'd be vague. I might mention finances or admin work, but I wouldn't offer many details. I figured it wasn't that interesting. When confronted by someone who says, "I'm in insurance" do you really press to hear the details of what type of insurance? Okay, you're more polite than I am.

My current job is interesting--it's in a very unique space known as "The Cube" in the MIT Media Lab. I do a lot of things, from balancing budgets to getting travel visas to ordering food for meetings. It keeps me busy. Very damn busy. But I like seeing the amazing work "my" graduate students (I often refer to them in the possessive) are producing. Being around smart people is stimulating. And I don't attend unecessary, boring staff meetings, which I've had to do for prior jobs and which drove me mental.

Today on the way to work I thought of Wallace Stevens. Wallace Stevens won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and was offered a faculty position at Harvard. He turned it down because it would have meant giving up his vice-presidency at Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company where he had worked as a lawyer for nearly forty years. I thought of Wallace because I sometimes think of what it would mean to quit my day job and write full time. It isn't financially feasible yet, and it may never be, but more than that, I'm not sure it would suit me.

There is something satisfying in the work I do between 9-5 (and sometimes beyond). There is often human contact. As a writer I possess that splendid tendency toward escape. I worry that an all day opprtunity for fiction might lead to few (if any) human interractions on a daily basis. Not to mention I'm an absolute pill when bored. Sure, there are times I curse having to rise in the morning and abandon my work-in-progress for the daily commute but there's also something nice about working toward the return to home and story.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:40 PM | Permalink

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

So, did you get around to reading all the hyped books of 2007? Then We Came to the End, Run, On Chesil Beach? No. Don't worry. I won't tell. My reading list is often far behind the popular tide. I have a hard time reading what everyone is reading. It's pure and simple snobbery. And I have a real problem reading anything tagged with Oprah's big gold "O" though I did read The Road after the Oprah seal of approval had been affixed to it (and how mad was I to discover the stupid sticker with her name on it peels right off? Pretty mad, given that I didn't discover that until after I'd finished reading it). I hate reading books adapted for film that then use the movie's image for the front cover. Yes, I apparently live in fear of being labeled a Philistine.

Now that we've covered why I'm behind the curve, let's discuss how to amend it. Powell's Tournament of Books. Powell's applies the much beloved NCAA basketball competition system (bracketed teams) to books. They select some bookish judges, give them two books, and make them pick which book was better. The reviews are great because often the judges explain not only why they liked said book better but maybe what prejudices they had going in, or how they view genre. It's a delicious bite-sized review system I wish I saw more of, frankly. And fun! Did I mention fun?

The idea of two books paired off in a fight to the...um...win is excellent. The execution has thus far been terrific. It's most fun when a book not expected to do well rises through the ranks in a series of surprise wins. Last year Kate Atkinson's One Good Turn got a lot further than I expected, in part because it was pitted against such heavy (weight and weight-wise) candidates. If I recall, one of the judges last year confessed she didn't finish reading one of her books. Awesome!

Following the Tournament of Books always helps me decide which of last year's literary darlings I want to read. In their first tournament Cloud Atlas emerged as the winner and it's one of my favorite books. So check it out. Today's match pits The Shadow Catcher against An Arsonist's Guides to Writers' Homes in New England. Can you predict the winner?

Posted by Stephanie at 07:39 AM | Permalink

Over a year ago our landlord died. He was in his mid-90s and not in the best of health, though he still drove to the track to bet two or three times a week (down from his once a day habit of younger years). The man was deafer than a post. I got locked out once and stood at his back door, pounding on his door. I could see him (he was ten feet away from me) but he didn't hear me. I worked that door like it was my mortal enemy before he heard me (more likely he felt the vibrations). Holding conversations, as you might imagine, was difficult. By and by, we coexisted peacefully. He didn't mind the rare late-night party and we didn't complain when our kitchen was suffused by the smell of pizza and smoke on poker nights (yeah, he was a character).

But then he died, and younger relatives moved in downstairs. I think they might be deaf because the levels at which they converse and listen to music indicates hearing loss. Severe hearing loss. The teenage boy living below me makes mystifying very loud, room-shaking noises. It sounds as if he is hurling himself against his walls. He may be. I don't pretend to understand the inner workings of a teenage boy's mind (though I imagine sex takes up a lot of room). The upshot is that it's not creating a conducive writing environment. Hell, not a conducive living environment.

I think when Virginia Woolf wrote about having a room of one's own, she knew that room should not be perched above a heavy-footed teenage boy.

Sigh. I miss my dead landlord.

Posted by Stephanie at 05:04 PM | Permalink

It's possible to write oneself into a corner. I did that in book one by making Natalie qualified to practice law before she could be (I fixed that, after three teeth-grinding days). Today I found another corner. Actually, it's less a corner and more a tight turn. Having changed the dialogue in a previous chapter I found myself stumped at the beginning of my current chapter because suddenly the revelation happening, well, wouldn't. Humph. Moreover, the scene following lacks any reason for existing. Aces. So I did what any self-respecting author would do. I whined. Albeit, to myself.

After a few, "This is hard!"s I sat my butt down and began tinkering. I'm not done yet, but I've an idea that might make this crazy jigsaw puzzle fit together again. All well and good until I get a few chapters further in where my current rewrite creates future sorting-out issues. But that of course is just something to look forward to, for now.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:41 PM | Permalink

Did you watch the Oscars? I watched about half. Every year I yell at people, especially the people who get seated near the back (designer, art direction folks, writers) and who win awards because they never hurry to the stage. Hurry to the stage people! Hurry! You are not a celebrity so they will cue the walk off music faster than you can say "Thanks Mom." Oy! Don't these people know anything?

My thoughts have been drifting to Hollywood lately as it looks as though I will be traveling to LA next month. All pleasure, no business, but who knows? Perhaps some studio exec will overhear me dispensing wit and will think, "That lady sounds like she'd make a crackerjack screenwriter. Let's hire her for gobs and gobs of money!"

Then I could be like William Faulkner, typing in the sun.

Only I think I might choose different socks.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:40 AM | Permalink

I did something yesterday I wasn't supposed to do, inasmuch as multiple trained professionals have told me never to do it (again). I trimmed my bangs. They were hanging in and past my eyes and I wasn't feeling patient enough to make an appointment with my stylist and then pay $55 for a half inch trim. So I went at them with little scissors. I have tricky bangs. They have a little curl toward the middle so if you're not careful you end up with a very uneven, cringe-inducing fringe of hair. I think I did a good job. It's a little blunt but not bad. Certainly not, "Stephanie, we talked about this. Never trim your own bangs." talk worthy.

How does this pertain to writing, you ask? I'm so glad you did! Often, in writing classes or books you hear or read advice on the craft. Some of that advice begins, "Never" followed by an action. I've heard never begin stories with dreams or flashbacks. Never end a story with a surprise for the sake of surprise. Never write outside your gender, race, experience. Never write using dialect. Never write while slicing onions (that's just practical, folks). Now some of this advice can be useful and some of it can be, how shall we say, limiting?

Understand that you can write whatever you want, however you want. A lot of these old chestnuts were constructed by people tired of reading bad stories that began the same way or contained the same terrible similarities. They figured if they told aspiring writers never to do these things then they might avoid reading stories with those gruesome elements. But you're no chump! You know that you can write amazing stuff that violates any and all of these rules (except the onion one: safety first!) Heck, sometimes you can even trim your own bangs with success!

Posted by Stephanie at 04:21 PM | Permalink

The Guardian Unlimited ran an interesting section on writer's rooms. Click here to check them out.
There's quite a variety in spaces, desk configurations, and decor. But what matters most is that it's a spot where the writer can write. I remember reading that Stephen King, after years spent writing on a crappy table, purchased a beautiful desk and found that he couldn't work on it. It intimidated him. So he went back to his former set up. Some days I find myself ogling beautiful long tables of solid gleaming wood, but most days when I'm actually writing, I don't much notice. Unless something, such a mug or set of keys, is physically inhabiting me (to the floor!) I don't notice it. So my desk is a little cluttered and not, I'm afraid, very stylish. Unless you consider a bottle of vitamins, a box of tissues, and a Kitchen Aid timer de rigeur. The one thing I've added to my desk recently is a little stone gargoyle a friend gave me for a birthday a few years back. He's hunched over and when I look up he stares at me with his inset eyes and seems to say, "Eyes back to your work, missy." I think of him as my taskmaster. But I know I'll probably only keep him on my desk for as long as book two is in progress. He's serving a very specific purpose.
Perhaps later I'll post a picture of it, so you can see for yourself what my deskmate looks like.

Posted by Stephanie at 12:28 PM | Permalink

I've been a fan of John Green since February of last year, when I stumbled across the video blog he was running with his brother, Hank. It was called Brotherhood 2.0 and it was all flavors of awesome. If you have a week of spare time I recommend checking it out from start to finish.

John is a YA author whose award-winning novel, Looking for Alaska, has recently met a challenge in an upstate New York school community. His defense of the book says it best. Plus, as most of John's videos are, it's articulate, funny, and dead on.

If you'd like to support John and his book you may write a letter in support and send it to: sparksfly up at gmail dot com.

Posted by Stephanie at 01:03 PM | Permalink

Recently I had occasion to borrow and read a little book called The Battle of Dunbar, published in 1900. The book's prose wasn't particularly engaging, but its construction was of interest. You could feel the typed letters with your fingers and the pages smelled a little moldy but the best part came when I reached the middle of the book and discovered unopened pages. This means that the edges of some pages were sealed together and hadn't been cut. I had to open them using a sharp implement (though I've just discovered you're supposed to use a playing card and run it along the inside of the pages. Oops.) If you'll recall, in The Great Gatsby, Nick discovers Gatsby hasn't read any of the books he owns, because none of the pages have been cut. So what my discovery indicated was that in over one hundred years no one had read this entire book (and it was by no means long--40 pages perhaps). It felt awesome to be the first person to separate those pages and see those words. And this is why I'm a writer: because I adore book moments like these.

Posted by Stephanie at 12:53 PM | Permalink

Last night I dreamt that I was reading an email from my agent and editor. The gist was this, "Your new book is terrible." I still remember certain phrases of the nightmare email including, "you made a horrible decision to continue on this path" and "fair to middling at best." Um. Ouch. I think my anxiety is showing.

While my writing process has sometimes interfered with my sleeping (sometimes my characters don't understand my need for sleep and they'd much rather I think about them ALL the time and sometimes my idiot brain obliges and that prompts my very tired body to threaten my brain with divorce, or whatever the alternative is--decapitation?) I've never before had nightmares about the publishing/critical reception. Worries? Aplenty! Concerns? Barrels of them! But nightmares? No. Not until last night.

I hope this was an isolated incident.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:14 PM | Permalink

So it was Friday that I finished the manuscript of book #2. Remember how excited I was to have time to relax? Chill out? Do fun things (and necessary things like buy groceries and clean my damn room)? Yes, well, guess where I found myself at 12:15 PM today? Um, in the library, researching a new project.

What is wrong with me?

Am I categorically incapable of not working (two jobs) for more than three days? It would appear so. But on the bright side I found the *best* quote ever for the new project.

And anyway it's twenty degrees outside and the sidewalks are frozen so it's not as though I can enjoy myself out of doors. If I'm going to be indoors why not have ten reference books at my elbow and be jotting notes? Doesn't that sound almost cozy? It does if you add cocoa (with Fluff).

Okay, yes, I'm crazy. I'm also a work addict. Are there steps for me? Preferably less than twelve. I don't really have time for twelve. I'm busy.

Posted by Stephanie at 01:31 PM | Permalink

Draft two is done! I repeat: draft two is done! I just printed the manuscript (HEAVY) and now it's time to relax. I'm not sure I remember how, but I look forward to exploring the idea. I'm starting with a glass of red wine. Let's see where it leads!

Posted by Stephanie at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dear friends, you probably think I fell into a puddle of gravy on Thanskgiving and am only now just crawling out given my lack of posts. Not true! I have been consumed with editing. I'm truly putting the mental pedal to the metal here. And if it weren't for that thing I do every day that sucks up nine hours of my time (but provides health insurance and a salary) I'm quite sure I'd be done by now.

But no matter. The end is in sight. Eighty pages to go (give or take a few). And tonight I had a moment of inspiration. I sometimes think the general public labors under the false impression that we writers are just chock o'block full of inspiration. Not true. We're full of other things.

Anyway, as I walking home this cold evening I caught a whiff of body gel scent that punched me in the solar nexus and dragged me back in time eight or so years. Yes, I'm susceptible to scents. What amazes me is how my brain knows smells and actually makes me feel as I was when I smelled the scent originally. The best example I have is smelling something and actually feeling as if I was standing in the woods with my mother as a child (about four years old). I felt small, close to the ground. The smell was mud, but a very particular mud. I've smelled mud since and not had that reaction.

I decided that my character should smell dirt in an upcoming scene. It would help her remember something and, as a result, she'll reach a decision that was lacking in the text before. I think it's a good idea. It's almost inspired. And what's best is I know it's real, in feeling.

So there you have it. Inspiration. Now if only I could find a way to squeeze more hours out of the day...

Posted by Stephanie at 09:20 PM | Permalink

Lately I've been spending my lunch break at Hayden Library at MIT because I've discovered that I am capable of writing as long as I'm not in my office. If I'm in my office the temptation of the Internet or of doing more work while munching and the risk of interruption is strong. But if I physically move across campus and plop myself down at one of those long wooden tables whose surface is smooth like sea glass then I can write. It's been a great discovery. I feared I was a bit too attached to writing at my desk at home and becoming incapable of adapting.

At the Midwest Literary Festival I heard Deb Olin Unfurth say one of the best writing lessons she has learned is to be flexible, to be able to write anywhere. She put her money where her mouth is by attempting to write inside Walter Peyton's Roundhouse (adjacent to the Walter Peyton museum!) where she was accosted about four times by various guys asking her what she was doing. Oy vey. But she persisted. Whereas many of us threw up our hands that weekend and said, "No, we can't write. The distractions of Aurora are too plentiful!" Or some such.

I don't know that I'll ever become so flexible that I can write inside a smoky bar/restaurant with people interrupting me. but I aim to become better at it. The library is, of course, made for writing. Quiet. Lots of books. The soft rustle of turning pages. So it's a baby step. But it's a baby step that's increased my daily output by about 33 percent. Not too shabby.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:13 AM | Permalink

I just spent four hours rewriting my first chapter. It's five pages long. It was six. At this rate I should finish in, oh, three years.

Did I say I hoped to finish by Thanksgiving? Bwahahahahaha. Oh, foolish optimist!

I rarely question my decision to pursue my writing. But today? Is a very hard writing day. Made more difficult by writing-associated deadlines related to promotion and events. I think I need a patron of the arts. And maybe a glass of Lagavulin. After all, nothing makes me feel more authorly than a Scoth, neat.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:43 PM | Permalink

I am tired and on the verge of a cold, I fear. Three days of attending and holding forth on writing workshops/panels at the Midwest Literary Festival takes a lot out of a person. But the weather was lovely, the people very congenial and I got to met so many amazing writers that it's a miracle I didn't wet myself like an overexcited puppy. (I didn't!)

Having never done a festival like this before it was all very new to me, but the highlight truly was getting to hang out with other writers. Because famous writers are a lot like non-famous writers! And we tend to talk about the same things when you put us together. Come along and I'll share what writers such as Andrew Gross, Megan McCafferty, and Camille DeAngelis discuss in the privacy of the super secret "Author's Room" or in a very loud Mexican restaurant:

Writing
Agents
Editors
Publishing perils
Book covers
Book titles
Royalties
The New York Times Book Review (see related: sexism, genreism, classism)

Wow, you're thinking. Writers are boring! Yes, yes, we are. But in addition to talking non-stop about our work we also discuss:

Rap music (particularly the deft wit of Kanye West)
Collecting creche figurines
Getting drunk
Pop culture magazine covers
Places we'd never live
Which absolutely hoochie mama outfit we'd choose from the hoochie mama clothing emporium
Casinos/gambling
Fear of clowns

I was sad to leave this stimulating talk behind, but very happy to be going home (alas, home needs a serious cleaning). And if I can find the business cards people gave me perhaps we can continue these and other fascinating dialogs.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So, um, there have been difficulties, of a technical nature. We lost some blog posts. But don't cry. If memory serves they weren't terrific. Mostly all about my planned rigorous writing schedule, which I'm happy to announce has begun!

So book #2 moves apace and I spend lots of time in my room at my desk, typing. In fact my day is pretty tightly constricted into boxes of time, with little to none left for things that don't involve: eating/showering/working/putting clothes on/changing clothes/exercising/reading/writing/writing/writing/thinking about writing. In some ways, this compact schedule is almost liberating in its, you know, lack of freedom. Sort of how I envied kids in private school who wore uniforms because they never had to deliberate about what to wear in the morning.

Plus it's a lot easier to focus on your characters when your interactions with real people are limited. Of course I work 9-5, so it's not as though I'm holed up at home, seeing no one. Never fear. I haven't turned all Nicholson in The Shining just yet.

And yesterday, somewhat out of the blue, I had an idea for a new book. Even if it comes to naught it's good to have ideas and I was very mildly worried, because I've honestly had no ideas about what will come after I'm done with this one. Whereas the idea for book #2 came right on the heels of finishing book #1. Sometime I think half of this writing game is worrying. I suppose that's good news, because boy, am I good at that.

Okay. I'm gonna hit save and publish. Let's see what happens.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:47 AM | Permalink

The other day I was (admittedly) whining that revising book #2 was hard. So freaking hard. Was writing book #1 this hard? Then it struck me. Much as mothers forget how difficult, gory, and altogether painful childbirth is so they can do it all over again I must have managed to forget that writing/editing is not so easy! Huh. My crap memory is actually protecting me. Or not. Suppose it depends on how you look at it.

So here's a note to my future self: you don't loved editing your first drafts. You never have. There will be moments when you're contemplating chapter cuts and character removals and you will want to hand it all to someone else and say, "Please fix this. Please." But you won't do that. Instead you'll stare at your pages and think "I have no idea if I'm improving this." But take heart! Occasionally you will have moments of genuine insight or clarity. Those moments are good, very good! And the editing will get done, though not as fast as you hoped. It never happens quickly.

For a great post on revision, check out Maureen Johnson's blog entry on the topic. Not only does it have good tips, but it also has pics of Cary Grant. Oh so dreamy.

Like pregnancy, after the labor pains you have a baby (of sorts). Even better: if the baby is handsome enough, you can sell it for money and acclaim. Whereas the world generally frowns on selling real babies.

So there you have it: writing is like pregnancy, sort of. Only better.

Posted by Stephanie at 11:13 AM | Permalink

As previously discussed in December, thus far all my writing deadlines have been self-imposed (editing deadlines not so much--there I've been told by the publishers when to have the manuscript ready and returned). This, however, doesn't keep the deadline from assuming significance in my mind and causing me pain when I realize there is now way that I'll meet said deadline unless someone manages to create a wrinkle in the time-space continuum. Anyone? Anyone? No? Okay.

This brings me to missing deadlines. I don't like missing them. It makes me feel that I've failed, even though my writing instructor, Stratis, once told me that deadlines are guidelines and are supposed to serve as motivation, not punishment. I'm sure he's right. I just have a very hard time accepting that.

This brings me to the fact that I'm going to miss a deadline. Big time. I had hoped to have half the manuscript for book two edited by the time I leave for vacation in two weeks. Um...er...huh. That was ambitious of me! At the time I made that deadline I was, to be fair, cranking along at a good pace. I was also less busy with book promotion and other things.

So I'm not going to make it. Right now I'm 1/8 done with the manuscript. In two weeks' time I might be able to make it to 1/4. Might.

The trick now is remembering that speed does not equal quality and that, in two weeks, I will be on a beach, staring at an ocean, and missing deadlines will seem a much smaller thing.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:33 AM | Permalink

Is it just me? Or have literary magazines become, how shall we say, crazy? Last week I got a slip of paper from the North American Review. What I like about NAR is that they send you a postcard verifying that they received your submission and assigning it a number (sort of like at the deli counter, only you never get luncheon meats or cheeses). Anyhoo that's well and good.

What's not well and good is that the second part: the slip of paper I received, was the front page of my story, with a number written just below my word count. I thought they were telling me my story's word count was wrong. My word count was 4990 and the number they had written below was 3995. So I double-checked. Nope, my word count was right. Then I remembered the assigned number thing and put two and two together. They'd written that number on my page. Okay.

There was nothing else in the envelope. No tiny scrap of paper saying, "Sorry. Not for us" or "We liked it, but not this time. Please keep us in mind." Nothing. I'm not saying I crave rejection, but I do like the process to be simple, to be obvious. Even a big old "NO" in red pen across the top would've been better. Are literary magazines so tired of rejecting pieces that they've stopped sending rejection notices?

Posted by Stephanie at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As I was nuking another frozen dinner I realized something: my life is a seesaw. One on side we have writing and on the other side nutrition. When I'm writing a novel the seesaw tips down and oh look! There's nutrition, way up on the other side kicking her legs and shouting, "You need vegetables!"
"Nah, you don't," writing says, pushing his feet around in the dirt.
"Let me down. She needs vitamins."
"No doing. She likes it the way it is," writing says.

Sadly, writing is correct. When the writing is moving along in a steady, satisfying way, I'm more than happy to eat meals that take 3 minutes to prepare and 5 minutes to consume. Any more time and I get antsy, anxious to return to my characters. My breakfast and lunch patterns don't change, because those are structured around my day job. But dinner definitely gets sacrificed. In the past week I think most of my dinners came from the freezer and there may have been one that wasn't dinner so much as several mini-grazing trips through the pantry.

I wonder if other writers do this, or perhaps they have people that take care of them and feed them healthy meals.
Hmmm. I should get me one of those.

Posted by Stephanie at 01:21 PM | Permalink

I am predictable, terribly predictable. In times of stress or when I am feeling dissatisfied and bored I dye my hair. Not every time, of course, or my hair would change color like a chameleon. All this is a preamble to saying that I dyed my hair last night and I am no longer a redhead. I'm a brunette.

You know what? Brown hair dye is a lot less messy than red hair dye. Don't ask me why, but it's true. While rinsing the red dye the shower always looked like a scene from a gruesome horror film. Not so much with the brown. It also rinsed faster, much faster.

I read somewhere that you shouldn't change your appearance drastically when you're promoting a book (or people won't recognize you from your author photo?) Then I realized that my author photo is black and white. It gives the impression of dark hair, but the red was okay.

I also had a realization yesterday: it's a good thing I pursue my stress with hair dye and not tattoos. My mother would freak out and I'm not sure I'd have much space left for fresh ink.

Posted by Stephanie at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The other day I realized that all my problems with works in progress relate to time. It's damned difficult to manipulate. I had a two-day breakdown during draft #1 of MY SUMMER OF SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT when I realized that Natalie couldn't practice law in Georgia. Why? Because there was no way her fitness certificate could have cleared in time. That was a bad epiphany. It involved me saying "Fuck" a lot and clenching my hair in my fists. I worked around it, but man, those were a shaky two days.

Similarly, while working on some research for book #2 I was playing with the birth date of the father and realized that if I wanted a plot element (the Dustbowl) to be present I needed to adjust his age. This impacted the age of all the children, one of whom I'd drafted to Vietnam. Then I panicked, afraid I'd thereby made him too young to be draft eligible. Never mind that this is all back story. It makes my heart race. clench my hair and mutter obscenities. Damn Time.

I don't expect this will be the last time I battle Time. I just wish it didn't always have the advantage.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:29 PM | Permalink

There's a tool called gender genie. You copy a swath of text, insert it into the genie, and it tells you the gender of the writer. It has key words it defines as female or male, and bases the gender on the number of times you use these words. I've used it before and been greatly annoyed that most of the time it gets me right, whether I'm writing fiction or a blog entry.

I get annoyed because I don't like the idea of being defined as a "male" or "female" writer, especially not on the basis of preposition use.

But then I had the brilliant idea of using the genie for a new purpose: to 'discover' the gender of Hilary Tamar. Hilary features in Sarah Caudwell's mysteries and throughout the series his/her gender is never revealed. I always admired the trick. Caudwell did a damned fine job of never tripping up. So I inserted a lengthy passage from The Sibyl In Her Grave, a scene narrated by HilaryTamar, and the verdict was: writer male!

Of course, technically, Sarah was the writer, but she died in 2000 without revealing her the secret of Hilary's gender, so this is the best I can do.

Now go ahead and play with it.

P.S. If you like espitolary novels or old school British mysteries I recommend Caudwell's Thus Was Adonis Murdered. Plus the cover art is done by Edward Gorey, and who doesn't love some Gorey?

Posted by Stephanie at 12:02 PM | Permalink

I've not been spending much quality time in my kitchen. What with pre-launch and book launch, my time was dedicated to book promotion. This weekend I have a break, so what have I done? I've baked. I started with blueberry muffins and I'm now making banana coconut bread. The batter was delicious so I have high hopes for the finished product.

While I was baking I was thinking of writing (not too deeply, otherwise, trust me, we'd have problems). I've just finished editing my dolphin story, and I need to put it away for a week or so. Give it time until I can decide whether my new ending works or not. So now...new project. It's like the baking. I've made the muffin before but not the bread. And I was simply editing the dolphin story whereas now I need to write a new first chapter for my work-in-progress book that I last worked on in March.

I'm still waiting to get my marked up first draft from my writer friend, but that shouldn't stop me from beginning the new beginning as it were. I sense that I'm hesitating, and I think I'm hesitating because once I start...I won't stop. Not until draft two is done, and while that sounds productive I also know it means goodbye social life, ta-ta lovely summer weather enjoyment and hello to being sequestered in my room.

How long did my second draft take me last time? I can't remember. Months probably. And this manuscript is even longer than the first. Can I finish before I take vacation in late August? Will I be able to give myself up to a vacation fully if I'm not done? Did I write something good (please, please) or (God forbid) not?

The baking is a distraction from the writing and a means of satisfying my sweet tooth. But after the bread comes out to cool on the rack I think I'm going to have to take a mental journey back in time and start breaking new ground. Wish me luck.

Posted by Stephanie at 04:36 PM | Permalink

I got a thin envelope in the mail on Thursday. It had the address label I use on the envelopes I send out with story submissions. So I recognized it immediately for what it was: a rejection. I opened it to find a 2 inch by 4 inch piece of paper with the following: The Carolina Quarterly. Due to backlog of fiction submissions, we have been unable to read your manuscript in a timely fashion. We are very sorry for the inconvenience, and we encourage you to resubmit your work after September 1, 2007.

In pen someone had written the title of my story, "Lost Boy of Passadumkeag." Odd, I thought. I withdrew that story from other magazines once I got word it had been accepted by The Fourth River. And what the hell did the note mean? Did they ever read my story? It didn't indicate rejection in a plain manner. None of the 'not right for us' or 'good luck placing it elsewhere.'

So I went to the color coded submissions spreadsheet to discover just how untimely The Carolina Quarterly had been in not reading my manuscript before sending me a cryptic note. At first I couldn't find it on the sheets. I began doubting my system.

But then I found it, much further back in time than I expected to find it. I submitted to the magazine on November 9, 2005. Their note came June 28, 2007. Pardon?

If they were so backlogged, why didn't stop accepting new submissions so as to get caught up? Why not
give notice to contributers that it would be many, many, many months before they could expect to hear a response?

I understand that the running of a literary magazine is a time consuming, labor of love affair. You don't make much (if any) money and you receive very little thanks.

But that's no excuse for taking 18 and a half months to send not-quite-rejection notes to writers who are spending valuable postage money and effort on submitting to your magazine.

Had The Carolina Quarterly committed one offense I would have said no more but the combination of serious delay and cryptic note demands that I give them the spanking of the week. There! Now pull up your pants, and don't make me do this again.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:11 PM | Permalink

For all of you who want to preview the first few pages of my book, or who really enjoy reading the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, click above and take a look.

Posted by Stephanie at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Recently I wrote a story about a man and some dolphins. It started with a good first line and had some interesting bits. I quite liked it when I was done. Then I showed it to my fellow Master Fiction writers and they found flaws. Flaws? Yes, flaws. Dirty, little stains and huge gaping holes. Worst yet, these flaws, once revealed, became apparent to me. How had I not seen them? Could I mend them? Did I want to bother?

I let the story sit for some weeks. Major repairs, for me, require time away. Time not to think of dolphins or of how crappy my first drafts can be without my knowing it. I've been working on it the past few days and it's making inroads into my waking life. While doing something in the kitchen (not cooking--that I know) I had a realization about how the narrator should feel about something. It bordered on epiphany. Then I realized I had to work it into the story, subtly. I couldn't just write "He wants to feel exactly what the dolphins feel here."

Often that's the hard bit. Working meaning into something without hitting your readers over the head with it. Did anyone see the film, Crash? Crash beat you over the head with its message: racism is bad. Well, duh. I never want to write Crash or an equivalent of Crash. This may lead me to shy from meaning too much, also a problem.

Another thing I realized was problematic with the story were things I the writer knew and didn't convey to the reader. Just because it's in my head doesn't mean it makes it onto the page. Another reason an outside reader or many can be damn helpful. Getting that information onto the page without stopping your train at Exposition Junction is also important. Subtlety, finesse.

The good news is I that I have ideas for making the dolphin story better. It's a lot easier to sit and edit when you have the ideas for change in your mind, when you're fairly certain you can make things better and not just different.

So now you know what I'll be doing tonight. That and laundry. Ugh, laundry. I have found no way to make laundry better.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:21 PM | Permalink

When I was a young(er) writer, beginning to submit to the world of literary magazines, I had little guidance and few tools. Sure, there was Writer's Market, but it cost about $25 and its listings didn't always give a true sense of what types of fiction the magazines were seeking. The tubes of the Internet have made the game a lot easier, now that many mags have samples of stories online. There's nothing like reading a sample of published fiction to give you a sense of what the editors like.

I used to laugh when, in the submission guidelines, magazines would urge you to buy a sample copy. I understand the idea: it gives the writer a true sense of the publication and literary magazines die without monetary support but often new writers can hardly afford to buy a copy of every mag they might be interested in sending a story to. Hell, I remember that the postage costs for sending out stories and entering a few contests made a dent in my small checking account. A dent that doesn't bounce back when your story finally is accepted by a magazine, because the magazines I've been published in (thus far) paid me in copies.

So the Internets have made searching easier, as has Duotrope's Digest, a
site that allows you to search magazines by story length, payscale, and genre. They even allow you to exclude from your search magazines that are not currently accepting submissions. It is super useful. Go visit.

Another unexpected tool I learned to use in my Grub class taught by Ellen Litman are collections of best short stories such as the O'Henry or the Best American (if you're sending off to mainly US magazines). Often a magazine may have one or more stories represented in the collection which shows you: hey! good magazine! and what they've published in the past.

And talk to other writers. You may find out the widely respected Magazine X is notoriously late in response time though they demand your submission be exclusive. (Exclusives suck). Or you might discover that the editors of Magazine Y really dig your current fiction motif of animal chefs. Who knows?

Posted by Stephanie at 09:27 AM | Permalink

There are many, many books I didn't write. I didn't write Fun with Dick and Jane or Moby Dick. I didn't write Atlas Shrugged or Middlemarch. You know what else I didn't write? I didn't write a book called My Summer of Southern Comfort. But the MIT Libraries says I did. Of course they also say my first name is Stephani, which takes me back to filling out standardized tests in grade school when they never allotted me enough letters for my first name but more than enough for my last.

Anyway, I think we can all agree that there is an important difference between comfort and discomfort. And Southern Comfort? Um, yeah, that's an entirely different beast. My Summer of Southern Comfort sounds like an alcoholic's memoir. Possibly a fine book, but not MY book.

Also: I didn't write Dialysis: An Unanticipated Journey, though if you type my name into some online bookstores, it's the first book to show up because two of the books' authors have one part each of my name.

I'm glad we've got this straightened out.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:55 PM | Permalink

It's funny. I was just reading a lot of articles on bad reviews by authors, including a recent post by Jennifer Crusie. How to react to them: general consensus is don't react publicly no matter how incensed you are about the review. How to treat them: as one person's opinion. And today I discover that amid the very nice reviews my editor has been sending me there is a bad review, which she did not send me. I've been pestering the very handsome boyfriend to look it up for me via Harvard's library database because MIT doesn't carry the magazine that has the review.

So I just got email from him in which tells me he doesn't think I need to see the review as it isn't "exactly constructive" and it also "isn't pretty." By that I think he means "it's awful, horrible and it's going to hurt you to look at it." He's right to advise me not to look, but I'm not sure I can. I want to see how bad it is. I told him to send it along and promised him I'd turned on pandacam so that as soon as I finished reading I could get a dose of panda calm. Truly, Tai Shan is like opium. Soothing, soothing panda.

I'll let you know whether a panda can trump review rage soon!

UPDATE: I got the review. I read it. I thought, "Man alive. That reader really didn't like my book." I felt a little sad, but not truly gut-punched sad. It's a bad review, no doubt. But I don't buy what the reviewer is selling, just as the reviewer didn't buy my story. I guess we call it a draw.

Panda is still cuter than ever.

When the very handsome boyfriend sent the bad review, as I ordered him to, he also sent me PDFs of three very positive reviews to act as a chaser. So thoughtful.

Posted by Stephanie at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After our last Master Fiction class last week, my classmates and I headed to a local pub to quench our thirst and talk shop. (For a bunch of writers, there were a lot of non-alcoholic drinks consumed. In fact, I was the only one drinking hard liquor. Yay me! Keeping stereotypes alive!)

Ahem, as I was saying, we were talking shop. Some of us were discussing beginning a story and I realized that among those I was speaking with I go about it a different way. Not that I think my writing technique is original. But it was interesting to note the variance in approaching a story and writing the beginning.

First: Nearly all my stories come out of the left field of my imagination. This is not to say they have no basis in truth or my life, but that, more often than not, I don't experience something and think "I'm going to write about that." My characters emerge, muddy and half-formed, asking for something to do. Sometimes I gift them with an experience or conflict I've had, but often I make them endure a new conflict. It's more fun to watch.

Second: A lot of my stories start with a first sentence. Well, duh, you're thinking. Of course. No, what I mean is that lots of my stories start with a first sentence that pops into my head. If I like the sentence enough it's the start of a story. That first sentence doesn't always make it to the final draft. Editing sometimes proves that it's better to start 'further in' the action. But a few stories, including "Interior Design" start with that same first sentence. In that case it's "No one ever won at hide and seek but me."

Third: When I start I have no idea how a story will end. I may have an inkling, but more times than not I don't know how things will play out. That's good, because it leaves me feeling open and not boxed in. Claustrophobic writing is not good writing.

Fourth: I like to start with a tall glass of vodka. Kidding!

Fifth: I have several good beginnings that never made it to an end. These stories sputtered and died. I keep them around, thinking I'll untangle the yarn of the narrative, but I don't. They just clutter my computer folders.

Beginnings are great: they're full of promise and possibilities. It's the rest: the middle, the end, the editing, the critiques, the editing, and the submission, that demands endurance.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:03 PM | Permalink

So I've read Turn of the Screw by Henry James, at last. I'd recently read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which I very much enjoyed, and I thought, "Self. You should really read Turn of the Screw." So I did, and then I thought, "Self? What the hell was that?" and also, "Self. Don't listen to my ideas. They are often stupid and painful."

I had forgotten that I have a problem with Henry James and his mazy sentences of many commas that wind, labyrinthine, throughout the story, nearly losing the reader along the way. Sometimes I would reach the end of one sentence and have to reread from the beginning because I'd forgotten how I got there. Like some sort of bad public transport system, yup, that's James!

And the ending didn't work for me. I don't mind ambiguity or even games in which the writer is exercising mastery (Nabokov). By story's end I didn't feel surprised or shocked because I didn't feel invested. In part, it's timing. James' ghostly villains: an uppity man servant and his paramour governess just don't convey evil intention in today's times. They would need bombs strapped to their chests or a history of pedophilia. As is, they feel spooky at best.

And getting back to his sentences: often fear necessitates immediacy. There is no immediacy in a forty word, five comma sentence.

I'm sure I'll catch hell for this. People adore this story, and cite it as a masterpiece, a template for future horror.
Not for me. But The Haunting of Hill House? That I recommend. It had amazing characterization and a feeling of inevitability that was well executed.

P.S. I began reading The Ax by Donald E. Westlake (until I realized that I'd read it before) and lo and behold it starts with a quote from Henry James' The Art of Fiction. The last sentence quoted is, "The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life." And here I find myself in absolute agreement with H. James. Ours is meant to be a stormy relationship it seems. Right now I've called a truce.

Posted by Stephanie at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Word's been making it's way around the lab where I work that I wrote a book coming out soon. This has led several people to say, "So are you going to be writing about the lab? About people here?" They nudge me with elbows and wink.

No. No. I'm not going to write about people at work, or the place, especially not while I work there. This is for multiple reasons:

1. Lawsuits
2. I've never written a story in which my work setting would be an appropriate backdrop.
3. I tend not to write stories around a place; I write them around characters.
4. I spend eight hours of my waking life, five days a week, there. That's plenty. I don't want to revisit it during my off time.
5. You can work at an amazing place where crazy cool work is being done and have nothing new to say about it.
6. Lawsuits

So there you have it: why I'm unlikely ever to set a book or story in my work setting.
Oh, and there's that other reason. I generally resist people's efforts to tell me what to write about.

Posted by Stephanie at 10:10 AM | Permalink

This weekend I discovered that two reviews of MY SUMMER OF SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT were out, so I hied myself posthaste to said reviews and read as fast as I can.

The first, from Publisher's Weekly, refers to me "as short story writer Gayle" which I found odd, since I consider myself a novelist. Then I remembered that all the reviewer would have seen for publication credits would be short stories (stories I wrote after MSOSD). It's a good review. They take issues with some of my sentences (and then go on to cite an example which contains the phrase 'pubic hair'. Thanks PW! That won't make reading it to my parents awkward. At all.)

The PW review concludes, "Don't be fooled by the ditzy jacket art." Hahahahahahaha. Good one.

Today I found my Booklist review. Someday, sometime I must have done something wonderful, karma-wise, because here's how that review ends: "In this finely crafted debut novel, Gayle evinces a superb mastery of character development, rendering Natalie's various crises of faith with empathetic authenticity, endearing humor, and enviable grace."

I have to lie down now. That made my head spin. Wow.

I read that last line to Tracey and we both started laughing, because "enviable grace" is generally not a virtue I possess. You've never known anyone more likely to spontaneously injure themselves than me.

Now, if you'll excuse me I believe I have a cake to bake. Yes, yes, I was supposed to do it yesterday but I got bogged down with roommate interviews and editing stories and other mundane things. If ever, however, there was a reason for cake, that Booklist review is the reason.

Off to bake with enviable grace!

Posted by Stephanie at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This spring I decided to go back to class. I'm taking Master Fiction with Ellen Litman through Grub Street.
Last Tuesday was my first class. I knew it would be great to once again be surrounded by fellow writers and to talk shop. I thought I might even learn a thing or two. Wow, did I underestimate the class.

I forgot how much easier it is to see problems in fiction when you're closely line editing someone's work and how easy it is to then make the leap to your own less than perfect drafts. It leads to so many aha! moments. For that alone, the class is well worth what I paid.

But it's also just terrific to be among people who want you to succeed, who recognize the implicit struggle in writing (and publication) and whose criticisms are meant to make you and your stuff better. Facing my first book critics in the not too distant future, I doubt they'll have the same kind intentions.

I'm reading more carefully, and paying more attention to the rhythm of my words (possibly not on display here, since I've just finished editing two stories and revising my own for tomorrow's class).

It's good to be a student again.

Posted by Stephanie at 10:19 PM | Permalink

I'm applying for a fellowship. Though, thus far, my application has consisted of me staring at the form and saying, "hmmmm." Part of my problem is excerpting my work. Choosing one's best 25 page sample is challenging. Plus there are persnickety questions such as "List five important professional achievements." I can think of two, maybe three. Does learning to read count? Probably not.

As applications go, it's not gruesome. I often have a hard time with self-promotion, though, and this stuff tends to fall in that field. Show us why you deserve this. Can't you just call my Mom? She'll tell you how great I am. Endlessly.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:13 PM | Permalink

Today, in the car, bracing for impact (as you do every day in a car in the Boston area where people drive as if blind) I said, "Damn! I meant to look up the seven plagues of Egypt!"

The very handsome boyfriend asked why. A reasonable question. I said, "For a project." That's shorthand for I don't wish to discuss my nascent writing idea yet.

So he said, "Frogs and locusts and um..."
I knew the frogs and locusts. It was the other five that eluded me. "Famine," I said.
"No," he said.
"You're right. I'm thinking of the four horsemen of the apocalypse."
And so it went. Eventually we gave up.

So I came home and discovered via the tubes of the internets that there were ten plagues of Egypt. Wow.
The other plagues were: water to blood, lice, flies, dead cattle, boils, thunder and hail, darkness, and death of all the firstborns. I tell you that Old Testament God had one mighty temper. Makes Naomi Campbell look weak, though don't tell her I said that.

Anyway, I'm no longer sure my "project" such as I envisioned will work, but hey, I learned something new!
Something I might remember for the next few days, though don't count on it.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I'm really in the zone with my writing my brain works on the project at all times, often bubbling beneath the surface. The best evidence of this is when I've fallen asleep and I awake with an idea for a scene, or dialogue, or somesuch.

Then I drag my weary body out of bed and unhinge my sleep-stuck eyes and fumble for pen and paper. I have learned the hard way that I will not always (or often) remember these ideas in the morning and even if I do they're clouded. So I turn on the light and scribble what the Muse has given me and then I roll back into bed muttering, "Is that it? Can I sleep now?"

That's been happening lately. And while I bitch about having to wake up, the truth is I live for those moments because it means I've reached a certain plateau in my writing and the view is pretty good from there.

Posted by Stephanie at 09:15 PM | Permalink

In the latest book I have a character named Hyde of whom I'm rather fond. He's a cop with some anxiety issues and a soft side for his family. A sympathetic figure by all means. But is he necessary? I'm not sure.
He doesn't appear in the manuscript all that often. He could be eliminated.

Of course I like him so I don't want to delete him, but if he isn't serving a purpose, if his existence is a distraction, a hindrance, than he should exit stage left, never to be seen again. I've deleted characters before. Characters to whom I had a major affinity. Deleting Hyde would be easier.

But again, I'm not convinced it's necessary and I suspect I won't know until I'm done editing and still might not know until a test reader or two says, "What's this cop doing here?" or "Love the cop. Keep him."

Another odd thing about Hyde is he doesn't have a first name. Not even on my characters list I created to keep them all straight. He's just Hyde. Maybe with a name like Hyde (hide) you don't ever learn the first name. Or maybe he's waiting for me to promise to keep him before he tells me.

Posted by Stephanie at 04:18 PM | Permalink

I'm slogging through the editing of draft one of the current book, and it's been feeling sloggish. So the other day I made an announcement.

"The next thing I write is going to be a whole lot easier to edit. It's going to be a novella."

I mean people are crazy for novellas, right?

Posted by Stephanie at 08:11 PM | Permalink

Dear Ms. Rowling,

May I call you J.K.? I've read that your next book, the last in the Harry Potter series, is to be published and available for sale on July 21st. Congratulations on your achievements. Really, all the best. There's just one thing. Do you think perhaps you need to release the book on July 21st? Could you not perhaps delay release until say January 2008? You see, I too have a book being published. It's called My Summer of Southern Discomfort and it hits shelves July 1st. The thing is, well, your release date being so close to my own, well, it doesn't bode glad tidings for me. You see, I'm trying to hit a modest target of 10,000 sales in my first six months. No, please don't laugh. I'm quite serious. Yes, I know you made that many pre-sales in the time it took me to type this sentence. See, that's just it. While not everyone who reads Harry Potter is a potential buyer of my books (actual children won't enjoy my literary offering) your gigantic readership is such that at least many of my potential buyers will, I fear, be lost to Harrymania.

With the small amount most people spend on books it's clear where they'll be plunking down their July summer reading money. And when it comes to money, well, you're not hard up anymore, right? I doubt you still work a day job because you need health and dental insurance and rent money. I do. I spend the hours I'm not working that day job editing my second book and those hours not spent thusly working on booking readings at local bookstores because publishers don't arrange tours for ones such as me. I bet you tour all the time. You're probably touring right now.

Would delaying the release do anything but deny gratification to millions of readers? I thought not. And patience is a virtue in short supply. By teaching it you would be doing the world, and me, a great favor.

Thank you, J.K., for your careful consideration of this matter.

Sincerely,
Stephanie Gayle

P.S. If you tell me who dies in your book I'll tell you who dies in mine!

Posted by Stephanie at 09:30 PM | Permalink

So early this morning I was talking (complaining) about how much I had to do soon: start a new job, edit the mammoth manuscript of book #2, begin promoting book #1, and start working on a presentation for a February workshop my friend Julie signed me up for six or seven months ago.

I got home later to an envelope from Julie (her perfect and I mean perfect handwriting is a dead givewaway). I open it and think, "Huh. She sent me the Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau calendar of events. That's odd. It can't have anything to do with me, though, because why would my workshop be listed in such a big publication?"

Ha ha ha ha ha. Turns out that under "Activities" in February my workshop is listed. Julie attached a helpful stickie note telling me that they print 10,000 copies of this events calendar.

So if I was worried before about my lack of preparedness, I would now be beyond worried. So far beyind worried that worried is like a star I can't see because it is billions of light years away.

If you're interested, the workshop is "Getting Personal" Crafting the Perfect Personal Ad." I'm going to be teaching how to write a kick ass personals ad that will stand out from all (or most) others. It's Saturday, February 3rd at 2:00 PM at the Pollard Memorial Library in Lowell.

Come along. Me and 10,000 of my closest friend will be there.
Oh dear god I need a drink.

Posted by Stephanie at 03:40 PM | Permalink

I'm nearing the end of book two. At about this time friends will ask, "How long until you finish?" and I always say, "I don't know," because, in truth, I don't know. It could be fifteen pages or thirty. The ending has to happen naturally, so it grows into itself. Oh man, that sounds hippie-dippy, but it's true. I can't just slam the words "The End" after any given paragraph.

Though in this instance, as with My Summer of Southern Discomfort, I find the end happens more quickly than I anticipate. That is, once I get near it I realize I can speed the action considerably and resolve things faster than originally planned. Good thing too. I'm on page 519 now. I'd like this thing to weigh less than two tons when I print it out.

Posted by Stephanie at 04:44 PM | Permalink

Recently I had the opportunity to edit my page proofs and correct an error of fact I had learned of recently through my friend Mandy. Mandy is a lawyer, just like my character Natalie is a lawyer. In the context of a conversation she let drop that opposing counsel do not sit next to each other during depositions.
"Really?" I asked.
Really, really, she assured me.
I panicked because I had sat opposing counsel next to each other during the deposition scene in my novel.
Oh the horror! The wrongness of it all! I would be derided by all lawyers, laughed at by critics for this basest of law culture mistakes.

So when the proofs came I was happy to be able to fix this error. I read the scene, looking for the part where my lawyers sit down. I looked and then I looked some more. You know what? It wasn't there. Yes, they depose a witness. Yes, they are seated. But nowhere on the page does it mention where they are sitting.

That, my friends, was all in my head. It got me to wondering just how many other such scenes and situations exist in the novel that I could describe with perfect clarity, but which, in fact, exist not on the page. I know that as a reader I have committed the same action: settling characters where I like in a room where the author has not done so explicitly. If I get too far into a book without a character's description I make one up and if the later author's description conflicts with my own, too bad. Mine, having come first, usually lives on.

Posted by Stephanie at 10:02 AM | Permalink

A funny thing happens when people learn you're a writer. They approach you with ideas they have for books. Great ideas, only they don't want to/can't write them as a book, so would you, the writer, like to work the idea into a book?
Um, no, no, and no.

As a writer my problem is not generating ideas for stories. I think few writers have this problem. The problems I have are finding time to complete my novels, making sure my characters remain true to form, not losing track of my narrative thread, and creating an engaging world readers want to visit.

Besides, some of the ideas I have had launched at me are just awful. Even when they are good, they are often not compelling enough to me to write about. I need to feel passion for my subject, and the very fact that it's someone else's dims my interest.

The only exception to this rule is my mother. She once told me of an idea she had for a screenplay, and, typically, I said, "Yeah, yeah, Mom. Great idea. I don't think so." About a year later, I did develop her idea into a screenplay (that needs final revisions--that time crunch thing again). Her idea was great. But she's my Mom. So she gets special treatment.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:43 PM | Permalink

I was wailing about my need to complete the first draft of Book #2 by December 31st when the very handsome boyfriend interrupted to say "But that's YOUR deadline, right?"

Yes, I explained. My deadline. All my writing deadlines are my deadlines because I have not become so famous as to have editors saying, "When's the next book coming out and how many bags of money can we give you for it?"

I got his point, which was: the deadline is not carved upon stone. My point is: only because I don't have a chisel.

Deadlines are goals. Some go unmet. But without one I would have less to motivate me to get on with it. And towards the end, when you can see the goal and you're running toward it, it feels rather good. Sort of like an actual race, only without the muscle cramps and shortness of breath that follows.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:47 PM | Permalink

I've hit the point where I stop reading.
This happened during the last stretch of writing My Summer of Southern Discomfort. Rather unknowingly, I had stopped reading: fiction, non-fiction, magazines. I was in the zone and singularly focused on the goal of finishing the book.

Since I learned to read I have not gone more than a few days without reading (usually books, usually fiction). Until that is, the damn finish-the-book cycle kicks in.

Well, it's last stretch time for book #2, which means that until I finish the draft I am not going to read anything longer than a magazine article. On the one hand, it seems right to keep outside influences at bay, and on the other hand I practially drool everytime I walk past my local bookstore. Books! Sweet, forbidden books!

There's plenty of debate on whether writers read while writing or spurn reading alltogether. For me it seems to be that I read outside material until about the last six weeks. It's like some odd timer goes off inside my head. Stop reading, it tells me. Thankfully it doesn't go off earlier than six weeks. My reading addiction runs deep and detox, while good, also hurts.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:40 PM | Permalink

So November is National Novel Writing Month. Or, as I call it, "a month like any other." I think November is only National Novel Writing Month if you're not writing novels every month.

If you're not, however, doing as I do, you can check out what NaNoWriMo is all about here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

The goal is 50,000 words by November 30, technically a bit spare to be called a novel, but why quibble?
If I wrote 50,000 words a month I would have a lot more books done but probably a lot less else done (job, laundry, grocery shopping).

So good luck to the NaNoWriMo participants. After all, what's a month without clean socks?

Posted by Stephanie at 08:15 PM | Permalink

I am reviewing the copyedited version of my manuscript. It's my last look at the raw stuff before it becomes a real book. Reviewing the pages, I am appalled by the number of red pencil marks. I thought I knew the rules about typing numbers (nope) and time (nope) or how hyphenated words work (nope, nope). In fact, thus far I have only marked one thing STET and that was a question from the copyeditor.

I had written that a character is so smart, she can complete the Saturday New York TImes crossword. In the margin she wrote, "Sunday?"

"No," I wrote in the margin below her note. You see, the Saturday puzzle is ten times harder than the Sunday puzzle. I may not know how to hyphenate, write em dashes, or numerate, but I know my crossword difficulty rankings.

Posted by Stephanie at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I set my second book in 1978, because of its subject matter. Aside from the blizzard of 1978 that swept New England I don't have many memories of that year. I was three years old.

So I find myself challenged in creating the world in which my characters live. My reporter uses a typewriter, not a word processor or computer. My family's phone is a rotary phone attached to their kitchen wall, not some handheld device. This is easy stuff. Trickier is the details: what things looked like: avocado as a popular fridge choice, say, or how real people dressed (not just kitchy trendy stuff we shudder at) and spoke.

I intend to look through photographs and scan some magazines, though finding copies of 1970s magazines is harder now that libraries microfiche or electronically archive them. I want to see the paper, look at the ads, try to immerse myself in what somebody saw when they looked at the latest Life magazine.

I admit, however, to resisting listening to the music of the 70s. I remember how the Bee Gees sound.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:06 PM | Permalink

I don't know why it took me so long to pick up The Poisonwood Bible. Perhaps it was the size. Even in paperback, the book is hefty, making it an unpopular commuting choice for reading.

Whatever my reasons, I am so glad I read it at last. The story of a missionary family's move to Congo in 1959 and the way that experience shapes their lives is wonderful. By wonderful I mean gut wrenching, provoking, thoughtful, emotional, splendid stuff. This was a book that invaded my dreams. How else to explain that dream of trying to find the True Jesus in a grocery store?

What astounded me most was the leap this represented in its author's style. I have read previous work by Barbara Kingsolver and enjoyed it, but never been wowed. She manages a multi first person narrative with skill, and invests all of her character, no matter how small, with personality. She knocks it out of the ballpark.

And this leap--this grasp to a higher rung on the writing ladder-- inspires me. How wonderful to see a writer get better, become more skilled.

Kudos to Kingsolver. Next time she writes a book, no matter how big and clunky and difficult to fit in my bag, I will read it.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:57 PM | Permalink

Tomorrow is Labor Day. In honor of this holiday, I need to get to work. Big time. Book #2 has been languishing, and now that book #1 is off to the publishers, post-editing, I have no legitimate excuse not to be writing new stuff. Plenty of illegitimate excuses, heh heh, but none of merit.

I just wish I felt more connected to the story. I was going great blazes and then I had to put it aside and now, it's sort of awkward needling my way back in. Once I'm there it will be fine. (This is what I tell myself). It's just going to take me a few moments to remember my characters and their traits and why I invented them and how best to throw them into a panic.

Posted by Stephanie at 07:08 PM | Permalink

Okay, so after much back and forth with the powers that be at my publishing house, the title of my forthcoming book has been decided. It is: MY SUMMER OF SOUTHERN DISCOMFORT. The winner of the title suggestions is my mother. Yup. Mom said, "How about Southern Discomfort?" but searches revealed several books by this title, so I tweaked it. Still, the idea was Mom's and she wins a prize. I'll ask her what she wants when I visit her this weekend. I hope it isn't something crazy like finding wives for my brothers or making sure my stubborn sister rests during the final months of her pregnancy. I should emphasize that she should ask for something I can deliver.

Now that the title is out of the way, we can worry about cover art!

Posted by Stephanie at 10:11 AM | Permalink

When I was ten I declared I was going to attend Harvard Law School.
I didn't, but I sent my character, Natalie, there in my first novel.

Now I find myself working on book #2 and looking up legal definitions for conservatorship and reading case excerpts related to religious freedom.

I have friends who attended law school. Some practice, and some don't.
So maybe I have the best of both worlds. I get to read all the law I want, but I didn't have to give up three years to study it or take the bar or pay back student loans for law school.

I'll remember that the next time I'm researching obscure cases and thinking that I should have gone to law school. Besides, lawyers, like doctors, are always getting hit up by friends and family for free advice, whereas writers? Not so much.

Posted by Stephanie at 08:47 PM | Permalink

The last thing I do to stories or books is title them. I usually give them a placeholder title until I am done, something simple that will remind me what the story is about. When it comes time to name the baby, however, I almost always think, "Damn. What am I going to call this thing?"

Titling is hard for me. I tend to come up with cute, clever titles that are too cute and clever and must be chucked.

So you would think I might not be surprised when my editor informed me that there was some reservation about my novel's title THE WORLD V. NATALIE GOLDBERG.

Surprised? No. Upset? Hell, yes!

Continue reading "Titles--Got Any I Can Have?" »

Posted by Stephanie at 03:36 PM | Permalink

Some time ago I submitted a story, "The Lost Boy of Passadumkeag," to the Natick Center for Fine Art's fiction contest. And I won! Along with six other folks from the MA area. As a result anytime the name Natick comes up in conversation I interject, "They love me in Natick!"

While they didn't give me any cash, I was allowed to read before a public audience along with my fellow winners.
That was fun, except for the crazy lady who approached me at the end of the event and told me she objected to my use of first-person narrative. She found it "confusing." Uh-huh.

Anyway, here is a copy of the story, along with the other winning tales, which, if you believe my mother, stink when compared to my opus. That's my Mom: ready to malign others to make me feel even better about myself.
Read the story! Go here

Posted by Stephanie at 02:07 PM | Permalink

I've been talking about my forthcoming book, THE WORLD V. NATALIE GOLDBERG, to lots of folks as of late. Whenever I meet someone new who has heard I have a book under contract they ask, "Who is publishing it?"

"HarperCollins," I say.

Their face changes. Sometimes subtly, other times it's a full-on gape. "Wow," they say or "Ohhhh."
This is followed by, "So you're really getting published."

Continue reading "What's in a name?" »

Posted by Stephanie at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I write in my room at my desk most days. If I am away from home I will scribble in a notebook, only rarely lugging my laptop about to work on. On gorgeous weekends I have been known to take my coffee, notebook and pen out of doors, to the back steps where I commune with nature. Communing means sitting in the garden, scowling and scribbling, looking up to say, "Wow. There are a lot of bees here," and then getting back to it.

Continue reading "Where I Write" »

Posted by Stephanie at 11:33 AM | Permalink

I sold my first novel! Or, rather, my agent, did. Insert my racing heart, my proud parents and my complete, delirious joy at using sentences that begin, "My editor at Harper Collins says." Most everyone I know has asked the same thing: when does it come out? The current estimate is a year, but that could change.

What I was underprepared for was what happens next. Such as filling out the 16-page author questionnaire sent by the publisher with such softball questions as "please write a short autobiography (200 words) which we can adapt for use on the book coveror promotional activities for your book." Gah! Not only is a 200 word bio tough, but it's made tougher by the fact that I write fiction and like to make things up. When confronted with a daunting, serious task that impulse becomes stronger. So I have stopped myself several times from using the phrases "alligator wrestler," "nun" and "inventor of water".

Continue reading "What happens next" »

Posted by Stephanie at 05:24 PM | Permalink