Tell Me How You Really Feel

A few weeks ago I received a nice note from a reader who had enjoyed my book. She found me through one of those book networking sites, and so after I responded, I went to check out her page. Underneath her review of my book were several favorable reviews by other readers. As I scrolled down the page, however, I came across one reader who described my novel as “hands-down, the worst book I have ever read.”

Ouch. The review was so brutal, I found myself laughing in disbelief. Still, it didn’t seem to bother me all that much, not like it would have a few years ago when the book came out. Now, it seemed to kind of bounce off. I attributed my unusually mature reaction to the fact that the book is history to me. My focus is on the book I’m currently working on.

And yet, in the following days, I found myself chewing on those negative words. I was compelled to bring up the review to my close friends and family, which was a clear sign that the reader’s comments were bothering me. Their reactions were just as supportive as I’d hoped they’d be, calling into question the reviewer’s moral character, intelligence, and taste. My father wondered if the reviewer was angry and had an ax to grind. My mother—let’s just say I hope the guy never bumps into her in a dark alley.

While I so appreciate my loved ones coming to my defense, I just can’t join in on the demonizing bandwagon. There was nothing in the review that was abusive or deranged. He just didn’t like it. I, along with everyone else, have a list of the worst books, movies, TV shows, songs, etc. that I’ve ever come across—and surely those pieces are as dear to their creators as my book is to me. There’s no point in finding fault with someone for expressing his opinion. He is, after all, entitled.

Even if he's wrong.

Happy Inauguration Day!

I hope you've been enjoying the festivities on this historic day. Check out this creative marvel: The Presidential Inauguration rendered in Legos.

It's All Right To Think You're The Greatest--Just Keep It To Yourself

Tess Gerritsen has a great blog entry over at Murderati about how arrogance can kill your chances of getting an agent. The story she tells is not an isolated incident—in fact, it is all too common.

Querying an agent is a lot like going on a job interview. The agent isn't only interested in a writer's talent, but she also wants to know if this is someone she will enjoy working with. No agent wants to work with someone who is pesky, demanding, and think they're God's gift. A humble attitude goes much, much further than overconfidence.

Favorite Quotes

In going through my old papers, I’ve found several of my favorite quotes. These tidbits of wisdom have been taped to the edges of my monitor or pinned to my bulletin board since I started writing professionally, giving me a nudge when I needed it most. Maybe there’s something here that will give you a little inspiration as well.

The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow. –H.G. Wells

Exquisitely developed characters and heartbreaking stories are the obligations of any novel worth remembering. –John Irving

We must be the change we wish to see in the world. –Gandhi

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action; and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. –Martha Graham

Write a little every day, without hope, without despair. –Isak Dinesen

Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence? –Shirdi Sai Baba

Every act of love is a work of peace, no matter how small. –Mother Teresa

And my personal favorite, found in a fortune cookie:

Show-off always shown up in showdown. –Confucius

I also have a clipping that was given to me by a friend’s mom. It’s basically a crash course in grammar, with each rule humorously illustrating the point.

How to Write Good

Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.

No sentence fragments.

It behooves us to avoid archaisms.

Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.

Don’t use no double negatives.

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: Resist hyperbole.

Avoid commas, that are not necessary.

Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

Writing carefully, dangling participles should not be used.

Kill all exclamation points!!!

Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Take the bull by the hand, and don’t mix metaphors.

Don’t verb nouns.

Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.

Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.

--William Safire

If you have any words of inspiration you’d like to share, please do.

Cleaning House

Happy New Year to all! I, for one, was very happy to see 2008 go—it was not my favorite year by a longshot. I think 2009 is very promising. I’m feeling enthusiastic and energetic. Maybe this is the year I’ll have the time to make some serious headway on my novel. I’ve just spent the morning reading bits of what I’ve written and I’m really happy with what I have so far.

I’m not normally one for New Year’s resolutions. I agree with Puzzle Master Will Shortz—self-improvement can take place any time of year, not just on January 1st. That being said, I have a few simple writing-related goals in mind and now is as good a time as any to get cracking. Here they are, in no particular order:

1) Clean My Desk. As you can see from the picture above, it’s a bit cluttered. Unfortunately, I don’t have separate areas for writing and general household management, so my writing space has become a dumping ground for everything, including toys (note the Barbie on the far right). Normally, the mess doesn’t prevent me from writing, but just looking at it can drain my energy.

2) Speak Correctly. In high school, I made the conscious effort to sound more “folksy” so I wouldn’t be accused of being “nerdy”. Dumb idea. If I really wanted to avoid being nerdy, I should have quit the math team and the marching band. Instead, I developed a life-long bad habit of using words like “gonna”, which I’m finding impossible to break myself from. Someday, if Charlie Rose calls for an interview and I haven’t broken my habit, I’m gonna be mortified.


3) Read More. I am embarrassed to say that I spend very little time reading. Stephen King once said something along the lines of: “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have time to write.” His meaning, of course, was that writing and reading go hand in hand—you can’t be a good writer if you don’t read. Very true. I also take it as an affirmation: I have very little time to write and my lack of reading is proof. I actually read all kinds of things during the day—catalogs, magazines, children’s books, online articles—but what I truly need is more good fiction.

4) Write More. Sometimes I develop an all-or-nothing attitude toward writing. If I don’t have a significant block of time to write, it doesn’t seem worth making the attempt. While it’s hard to dig deep during short spurts, I think I need to try writing even when I only have ten minutes to spare.

5) Brush Up. I feel like there are giant holes in my general knowledge—particularly of history and grammar—that need filling. I’m going to dig out that old Strunk & White and some history books and try to plug the holes.

If you have any goals for 2009, I’d love to hear about them.

The Comedy of Delusion

One of my favorite comedic movie scenes of all time is the marching band scene from Woody Allen’s TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN. If you haven’t seen it (or even if you have) check it out.

When I watched the movie recently, I was curious to see if the scene would have the same effect on me as it did when I first saw it ten years ago. Sure enough, I was doubled over, laughing so hard I was crying. We all know that humor is an elusive, subjective thing that is difficult to nail down, but watching the marching band scene again after all these years made me wonder why it still worked.

In thinking about this, it occurred to me that the joke breaks over the audience in several waves. First of all, there is Allen’s masterful stroke of absurdity—a cellist in a marching band. Once the initial surprise of this begins to wear off, we are hit with the realization of the logistical implications of a seated musician playing in a moving group. Then we are hit again as the band passes by Virgil and he has to pick up the chair, move it forward, sit, and start to play again. And if that wasn’t enough, we are hit again and again as the band passes him and he repeats the whole silly routine over and over. Instead of getting tiresome, Virgil’s attempts at keeping up just get funnier and funnier. It’s funny because even though we know his actions are futile, Virgil seems to think he’ll eventually figure out a way to keep up. He’s continually doing the same thing but expecting a different result—a form of insanity.

Perhaps my favorite form of comedic insanity is megalomania, which is the condition of being deluded about one’s power and importance. If I wasn’t afraid of repeating myself, I would write only about megalomaniacs because of their rich comic appeal. Fictional megalomaniacs that most readily come to mind are Barney Fife from the Andy Griffith Show, Don Quixote, and my personal favorite--Ignatius J. Reilly from John Kennedy Toole’s A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES. Reilly’s snobbish disdain for nearly everyone and everything becomes hilariously ironic when juxtaposed against his own sloth and social ineptitude.

Delusion is the gap between who a character thinks he is and who we know him to be. Beyond the comedy, there is also enormous potential for self-examination by the audience. Who does he think he is? we ask ourselves. Becoming judge and jury, we are then forced to ask, Who do we think we are?

Try A Little Tenderness

A few posts back I discussed the issue of character likeability and whether a writer is obligated to create likeable characters. For the most part my answer is no, with one caveat: it is usually in the best interest of the story to make an unlikeable character sympathetic, particularly if he is immoral. As I mentioned earlier, giving immoral characters a sympathetic turn is one of the great hallmarks of skilled writing—especially when a writer convinces a reader to set aside his own moral code to root for the bad guy.

How is this done?

Character detail and depth are key, but the real secret is that an author must have a genuine affection for each of her characters. She must love them like her own children, mourning their failures and cheering on their successes, no matter how nefarious the goal. When everyone hates her character, the author has to be the one who says, “I know he did a bad thing, but give him a chance—he really is a good boy.”

It may seem like a stretch to expect a writer to be in love with murderers and thugs and all sorts of despicable personalities, but most writers understand that every character has their own point of view and a story worth telling. Better writing explores the nuances of moral ambiguity, gives voice to the voiceless, stirs compassion where normally there would be none.

In order to evoke sympathy, it’s not necessary to psychoanalyze and delve deeply into the past, though backstory can certainly help. Often, all you need to do to get a reader on your side is to show a little weakness. For example, in my novel, THE GREATEST MAN IN CEDAR HOLE, the main character, Francis is bullied by his oldest sister, Jackie. There is very little to like about Jackie—she is mean, emotionally stunted, greedy, and frequently uses threats and force to get her way. When I was writing the story, I knew that no one would really care for Jackie, but I still wanted to gently plead her case because she had been shaped by neglect, insecurity, and self-loathing. Despite her behavior, I knew that she wasn’t all bad.

To show her vulnerability, I constructed a scene between Jackie and her mother, Franny Pinkham. Franny tells Jackie (who is in her early twenties) that it’s high time she moved out and looked for a place of her own. Jackie does not take the news well, and in her typical fashion tries to run out of the kitchen. Franny blocks her, but Jackie plows through and ends up accidentally pushing her mother. Franny hits her head on the counter and falls to the floor. The head wound is small, but there is enough blood to make it look bad.

Given Jackie’s past insensitivities, it would not have been entirely unexpected for Jackie to leave her mother there on the floor, but really, only a sociopath would leave their mother alone and bleeding. This scene was a perfect opportunity to show Jackie’s fumbling humanity. Instead of running, she sinks to the floor and cradles her mother’s head in her lap. She still isn’t quite capable of an apology—at first she blames her mother for falling, then she says it’s an accident—but Jackie’s sudden gentleness shows the reader that she is truly sorry. Jackie becomes even more vulnerable when she says, “What do I do? I don’t know what to do.” It’s a refrain that refers not only to the urgency of the moment, but to the uncertainty of her future.

Action movie characters are often humanized by a love interest or friendship. While most of the time the hero’s actions are criminal, the audience will cut him some slack when they discover that he was once deeply in love or a very loyal friend. Usually, the love interest or the friend has been killed and our hero is a loner once again. Because he is capable of love, he becomes human in our eyes. The moral code is realigned toward this loss, and while we may or may not agree with how he handles his thirst for vengeance we can at least understand his motivation. He has now become a sympathetic character.