Story Workshop

Who'd have thought the New Yorker published horror stories?

Yet James Salter's excellent, "Last Night," from the November 18, 2002 issue, nearly qualifies. Read it here -- or listen online, where the 20-minute story is introduced by writer Thomas McGuane and Fiction Editor Deborah Treisman, and then followed by a discussion of the story's subtext and set-ups, which in my reading made the surprises well-earned.

Virtual Mentors III

I wouldn't have thought today's quote was necessarily true, thus its intrigue. But the reference to readers in the final sentence, a la "If a tree falls in a forest... ," clinches it.

From Flannery O’Connor's Mystery and Manners:

When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one. The meaning of a story has to be embodied in it, has to be made concrete in it. A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.

Virtual Mentors II

Today's quote comes from an online workshop I took years ago with author and writing coach Gloria Kempton. It's not a recommendation to write toward a market, but rather an insight into the psychology of reading:

The trick to creating great characters is to make the character as much like the reader as possible so that there's immediate identification -- while at the same time making the character different enough so as to make the reader curious to find out more, since unconsciously he really knows he's reading about himself.

Virtual Mentors

Upcoming: a few writing-related favorites from my quotes file, posted one a day to facilitate composting.

Today's, from The Paris Review interview with the late Christopher Isherwood, speaks to turning a real person into a fictional character:

When you’re writing a book, you ask yourself: What is it that so intrigues me about this person -- be it good or bad, that’s neither here nor there, art knows nothing of such words.

Having discovered what it is you really consider to be the essence of the interest you feel in this person, you then set about heightening it. […] trying to create a fiction character that is quintessentially what you see as interesting in the individual, without all the contradictions that are inseparable from [the] human being, aspects that don't seem exciting or marvelous or beautiful. The last thing you're trying to do is get an overall picture of somebody, since then you'd end up with nothing.

Good things grow from details...

The Surf Ballroom

Snapped a few years ago during a trip to Iowa, this photo shows where Buddy Holly (“That’ll Be the Day”), J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson (“Chantilly Lace”) and Ritchie Valens (“La Bamba”) performed just before boarding a tiny plane 50 years ago, the day the music died.

Forgo literal death for now, and consider something abstract or figurative that you watched die. Can you point to a physical place where it happened?

Darrel

I’ve blogged previously about The Oxford Project which, through photographs and interviews with the residents of tiny Oxford, Iowa, provides confirming evidence that everybody has an interesting life story.

But further, it suggests that people are complex characters in their interesting stories.* Consider this quote from a 75-year-old man named Darrel:

We lost one of our daughters to cancer two years ago. I still talk to [her] every day. She had a great sense of humor. Always did, even as a little girl. The loss of a child is about as bad as it gets. The last thing [she] said before she died was, “I love you, Dad.”

Darrel’s comments break your heart, yes? In a novel, he’d be a 100%-sympathetic character. But in real life, a few pages earlier in the book, we saw another side of him (and that daughter) through the words of a 35-year-old woman named Robin:

I met Karen when I worked at a theatre in Amana [Iowa]. A week later, we went on our first date. When I told my mom, I think she cried, but in front of me, all she said was that she was disappointed. Mom told my brother Ben, “You need to hate the sin, not the sinner.” My grandfather Darrel and I don’t talk.

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*aha: maybe the complex part begets the interesting part?

Abundance -- Proving Itself

OMG, see??

I just blogged about (re-)establishing a trust in abundance:

I'm stingy with pleasures, including books, saving them up instead of gobbling them up. But by giving myself permission (a mandate, really) to savor a bunch of books, I had opportunity after opportunity to notice that each time I finished one, another (two others? ten?) appeared in its place.

I no sooner posted that, then finished the lush Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics -- than I stumbled onto this thread about unique fictional narrators … and a dozen new books that call to me.

Sideways points of view* intrigue me; I love the twist of perspective that inspires a fresh look.

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*Yes, they’re easy to overdo. Witness Dan Wiencek’s satirical “Thirteen Writing Prompts” in the hilarious McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes:

Write a scene showing a man and a woman arguing over the man’s friendship with a former girlfriend. Do not mention the girlfriend, the man, the woman, or the argument.

A husband and wife are meeting in a restaurant to finalize the terms of their impending divorce. Write the scene from the point of view of a busboy snorting cocaine in the restroom.

Still … aren’t you tempted to try? :)

2009 Reading Preview

How, you’ve asked, did my 2008 reading challenge change me?

A couple ways come to mind, the first being that I learned how to (duh) read a lot. Not to read fast, mind you; I’m still slow, I sub-vocalize. But yet to read a lot. Mostly, I reallocated evenings to reading instead of wishing there was something good to watch on TV. By finding minutes to read whenever I waited in a line or for an appointment. And especially by paying attention -- if I wasn’t making progress in a book, I learned to eliminate distractions and dig in deeper until the pages took hold. If they didn’t (no time for that! either in the Challenge or in life), Plan C was to ease up by alternating the book with another, more engaging read … or finally by cutting bait altogether and abandoning the book to a pile for the Friends of the Library sale.

Second, I learned to trust in abundance. I'm stingy with pleasures, including books, saving them up instead of gobbling them up. But by giving myself permission (a mandate, really) to savor a bunch of books, I had opportunity after opportunity to notice that each time I finished one, another (two others? ten?) appeared in its place. (Ah, abundance: so many lessons still there for me. It was, after all, the stimulus for beginning this blog two years ago.)

Good changes!

And yet.

All that reading diverted me from my family ... friends ... homekeeping ... this blog. And my writing. For a year, I spent no time in the energy of my favorite magazines -- New Scientist’s curiosity, Martha Stewart Living’s lush images, O Magazine’s fun. While meantime, the deep immersion in long works (especially novels) explored ideas rather than incited them. My imagination turned dusty, a rare idea blowing through like tumbleweed.

Only recently have I felt a hint of humidity returning. Part of it must be a satisfaction at finally having read some of the books that are basics in literature or popular culture (Alice in Wonderland, for God’s sake!). Part of it is probably the year’s accumulation of some very good reading that is starting to compost. Whatever, a bit of it escaped in a little creative burp while I was in the driver’s seat on a road trip over Thanksgiving … and I suddenly connected the premises of two of my (languishing) writing projects and merged them into something new. Huh!

I have no better transition into this year’s reading than to simply admit I’ve taken on the 999 Challenge. Not for the volume of reading this time, but because organizing and list-making are forms of play to me. Heck, it was fun just to gather the Challenge books that I already own onto this separate shelf.

How about you? Any readerly learnings from 2008? Any solid or semi-solid plans for 2009?

2008 Reading Recap

Woohoooo, I slid in under the wire and finished my 888 Challenge yesterday:

Read 8 books in each of 8 categories during 2008

My reading list follows below and includes ratings and links to reviews I’ve written. (Edited to add: I've removed 12 review links that were problematic; will repost them when the code is repaired.) Brief comments about every book can be found on my Challenge thread.

That volume of reading is unprecedented for me; my previous annual high was 48 books. (I do confess to nearly a year’s worth of unread magazines at this point, though, heaped in three towering piles.) But what raised the difficulty factor even more was my desire to read predominately from the shelves and stacks of to-be-read (TBR) books that are overtaking my house ... and I finished with the proportion at exactly 50% (32 books) from TBRs. They’re each indicated by “#” in the list, and it’s why so many seemingly older titles are included.

Biography/Memoir
•Dewey: The Small-town Library Cat That Touched the World by Vicki Myron (****) (See review)
•Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman (*****)
•I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings# by Maya Angelou (****)
•Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison (****)
•Lucky Man# by Michael J. Fox (****)
•Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-word Memoirs (****)
•The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (****)
•The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan (****) (See review)

I’ve Started and Want to Finish...
•A Christmas Carol# by Charles Dickens (****)
•A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius# by Dave Eggers (****)
•A Thousand Splendid Suns# by Khaled Hosseini (***)
•Everything is Illuminated# by Jonathan Safran Foer (****)
•Like Water for Chocolate# by Laura Esquivel (****)
•The Song Reader# by Lisa Tucker (***)
•The Poisonwood Bible# by Barbara Kingsolver (*****)
•The Time Traveler's Wife# by Audrey Niffenegger (****)

By My Favorite Writers
•Airframe# by Michael Crichton (***)
•Testimony by Anita Shreve (*****) (See review)
•The Gate House by Nelson DeMille (***) (See review)
•The Gold Coast# by Nelson DeMille (****)
•The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley (***)
•Until the Real Thing Comes Along# by Elizabeth Berg (***)
•What Now? by Ann Patchett (****)
•When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (****)

Children's/YA
•A Tree Grows in Brooklyn# by Betty Smith (*****)
•Alice's Adventures in Wonderland# by Lewis Carroll (***)
•Confessions of a Closet Catholic by Sarah Darer Littman (***)
•Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers (***)
•Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz (*****)
•Holes# by Louis Sachar (***)
•The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (*****)
•When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale (****) (See review)

Nonfiction
•A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink (****) (See review)
•Bottomfeeder by Taras Grescoe (****) (See review)
•In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (***) (See review)
•The Omnivore's Dilemma# by Michael Pollan (*****)
•The Power of Now# by Eckhart Tolle (***)
•The Tipping Point# by Malcolm Gladwell (*****)
•The Zen of Eating# by Ronna Kabatznick (***)
•This is Your Brain on Music# by Daniel J. Levitin (***)

Anthologies
•Flash Fiction# ed by James Thomas (****)
•Labor Days# ed by David Gates (***)
•Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou (***)
•Letters to a Young Doctor# by Richard Selzer (*****)
•One Minute Stories by Istvan Orkeny (***)
•The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review (*****)
•The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted by Elizabeth Berg (***)
•Where I'm Calling From# by Raymond Carver (*****)

On Writing
•78 Reasons why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might# by Pat Walsh (****)
•Fingerpainting on the Moon# by Peter Levitt (***)
•Journal of a Novel# by John Steinbeck (****)
•If You Want to Write# by Brenda Ueland (***)
•Page After Page# by Heather Sellers (***)
•The Anatomy of Story by John Truby (*****)
•The Situation and the Story# by Vivian Gornick (***) (See review)
•Writing Mysteries# edited by Sue Grafton (***)

Discovered on LibraryThing!
•Food 2.0: Secrets From the Chef Who Fed Google by Charlie Ayers (**)
•Gardens of Water by Alan Drew (****)
•My Husband's Sweethearts by Bridget Asher (****) (See review)
•Schooled by Anisha Lakhani (**) (See review)
•Simplexity by Jeffrey Kluger (***) (See review)
•The Music Teacher by Barbara Hall (****) (See review)
•The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block (***)
•The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (****) (See review)

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My Overall 2008 Top 10:
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz
Testimony by Anita Shreve
The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver

Images of the books (including some off-challenge reads) appear below.

Next Post: 2009 Reading Preview

Meter

I listened this morning while -- for some reason -- a radio station's traffic reporter spelled her name on air:

L-E-S-L-I-E

K-E-I-L-I-N-G.

I wish my name had that kind of rhythm!

Season's Greetings

I wish I'd noticed this nativity scene earlier … before last weekend's warm weather erased the foot of Chicago snow beneath the palm trees.

Ah, well.

Greetings on this fifth night of Christmas!

Vacation Reading

So I’m headed on vacation to gaze at the ocean. But while most girls would obsess over which clothes to pack, I’m far more interested in choosing which books to take!

Six remain to be read for my 888 Reading Challenge, and five of them made it into my suitcase (the carry-on, mind you; I can’t risk them in checked baggage):

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens -- I’ve seen most film versions but haven’t read the book (nor -- gasp! -- anything by Dickens)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith -- I read this in childhood but can’t remember a thing about it; am looking forward to seeing what comes back as I re-read

Labor Days ed by David Gates -- I love stories set in workplaces, and this is an anthology of work-related short stories and novel excerpts

Letters to a Young Doctor by Richard Selzer -- personal essays by the surgeon forerunner to today’s Atul Gawande

Fingerpainting on the Moon by Peter Levitt -- combine the ocean with this book about artistic creativity … and who knows what might happen??

Of course, I’m still debating about a couple more…

Certain Things Must Happen

The plan isn’t foolproof. For it to work,
certain things must happen.

So begins Jack Handey’s bank heist piece in the Shouts and Murmurs column of this week’s New Yorker magazine.

He lists a series of highly unlikely (yet clever and hilarious!) coincidental events that must occur for a certain robbery to succeed. Improbable as the events are, a writer might be able to weave one or two of them into a story -- taking care to make them motivated and believable -- and end up with a rollicking good tale (for example, Ocean’s Eleven).

But if a writer substitutes “plot” for Handey’s opening reference to “plan,” the list becomes an effective refresher on the problems of deus ex machina and coincidence in fiction.

It's All Good

I miss the easiness of warm summer mornings. I'd pull on shorts and a t-shirt, then walk for coffee, thinking about stories.

But fall is good, too.

A Life in Cards

From the Chicago Tribune: The Topps Company will soon sell 90 baseball-style trading cards that document significant moments in Barack Obama’s life.

It’s a great exercise for anyone, especially a writer: What are 90 of the most significant people, places (be specific), moments, actions, and utterances of your -- or your character’s -- life? What image represents each? What stories emerge?

Search Power

The U.S. Government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continually tracks patterns of infectious diseases, including annual outbreaks of influenza. Data is gathered from a network of doctors, correlated by the CDC, then released weekly via FluView, which details the rates and geographic patterns of illness (scroll to see map at end). It’s a long-established process that tootles along.

Now enter Google -- specifically, google.org, a philanthropic arm created to glean socially important meaning from Internet-search trends. From the blog:

Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the [CDC], and we found that there's a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day's flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness.

Google data correlates strongly with CDC data, and can be tallied faster and with fewer resources -- automatically, even. For now, it’s fun to compare it against well-known disease patterns and trending processes. But the real excitement is its potential in epidemiology, if disease variations, including pandemics, emerge.

Who'da thunk?

Multi-dimensional Character

I resist negativity on this blog and aspire toward a playful space for creativity. So I won’t rant about the over-mortgaged homeowners in this article from the International Herald Tribune. Instead, I’ll fit one of them into a writerly challenge:

[Kenny], a data security specialist, moved into Mountain House [California] last year, buying a foreclosed property on Prosperity Street for $380,000. But the decline in values has been so fierce that he too is underwater. He has cut his DVD buying from 50 a month to perhaps one, and is waiting until the Christmas sales to buy a high-definition television. He does not indulge much anymore in his hobbies of scuba diving and flying.

The challenge: give Kenny some sympathetic character traits.

Original Story, v2

If you enjoyed my post about commonalities among submissions to writing contests, you're in luck: WritersWeekly publisher Angela Hoy has pulled all the pieces together from the Fall 24-hour Short Story Contest.

Take a look -- read the story prompt, consider the original story you'd write, then look at the commonalities among the submitted manuscripts and read the winning entries. (Interesting ... I liked the 3rd Place entry best in both the Summer and Fall contests.)

By Dad

Snipped from an online conversation about libraries:

Person A:
[My] library has just recently switched over to giving you a receipt with the due date, rather than stamping it in the book (I kind of miss that, not sure why).

Person B:
I miss the old stamping of the book, too. That, and the old circulation card with your name and due date from grade school.... It gave a sense of history to the book and its readers. You could actually see who had an interest in the book--and perhaps you even knew the person.

Me:
That reminds me ... when I was in grad school in the '90s, I requested my dad's PhD dissertation (from the '40s) through inter-university loan. I loved seeing the names/locations and dates of people who'd checked it out.

Person B:
WOW! What a wonderful feeling it must have been. And a fine tribute. What was the subject?

Me:
Title: "A Study of the Relationships Between the Secondary School Science Curriculum and the Contemporary Culture Pattern in the United States, 1918-1940"

My mom typed its 650+ pages (through several revisions), including formatting 75 data tables ... on a manual typewriter of course, through three carbons; think of how strong a typist’s hands used to have to be.

I now have Dad's personal carbon copy, and someone's eventually going to have to pry it from my cold, dead hands :) I confess that I’ve still only skimmed it. But I'm in the midst of a looong-book reading challenge (one 500+ page book each month) and still need a couple titles to fill it out...

Master Metaphorist

With the death yesterday of fashion snark Mr. Blackwell, so goes a master of the metaphor.

His descriptions were as over-the-top as the celebrity fashions he satirized, but admit it: there’s perfection in his evocation. Take a moment to visualize these:

1. A peeled grape on the end of a pipe cleaner.

2. She dresses like the centerfold for the Farmer's Almanac.

3. Half sequined scarecrow, half gaudy acrobat. Is it Abe Lincoln in drag? I'll leave it at that!

4. A boutique toothpaste tube, squeezed from the middle.

5. In layers of cut-rate kitsch, [her] look is hard to explain…she resembles a tattered toothpick -- trapped in a hurricane!

Now match Mr. Blackwell’s descriptions to the celebrities (answers in the comments):

a) Celine Dion (2003)
b) Goldie Hawn (1969)
c) Mary Kate Olsen (2007)
d) Martha Stewart (1999)
e) Elizabeth Taylor (1966)