Okay, so for the past three days I have had at least one meal a day at the Maine Diner on Route 1 in Wells, Maine.
And may I just say here that IT IS TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME.
Pictured above is their world-famous Lobster Pie (I should probably have capitalized world famous, but whatev.)
This is five ounces of hand-picked amazing lobster freshness baked under a crust of crushed Ritz crackers. And see that little thingie of melted butter? You pour that over the top.
This is a meal, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, which could make a cardio-thoracic surgeon kick a hole in a stained glass window.
Or, how about this:
This would be the Hot Lobster Roll. Note the lobster, and the melted butter. Are we noticing a pattern? A very very very good pattern.
Here’s part of the breakfast menu:
I admit I opted for the Irish Benedict. But my pal Rae had the Lobster Benedict, and it looked–you guessed it–FUCKING AWESOME!!!
Should you find yourself on Route 1 in Wells, Maine, I recommend just about anything on the menu (except for the biscuits and gravy, which are kind of lame.)
I especially think that the she-crab soup is a cup of feminist crustacean heaven, though Maggie preferred the seafood chowder, go figure…
Also, in Cornelia’s Islamic Republic, there would be no dessert but Indian Pudding:
This is described on the menu as an old New England favorite consisting of “corn meal, molasses, light cream, butter, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon” which is served warm with home-made vanilla ice cream. Trust me, it doesn’t suck. At all.
Anyway, I think you should all come eat here, at least once in this lifetime.
I have had wonderful summer road food in my life–Ambrosiaburgers at Nepenthe:
Fried clams in Ipswich, Massachusetts:
Where the building is almost as cool as the food:
I’ve had deep-fried artichoke hearts at the Giant Artichoke in Castroville, California:
Cuban food on Calle Ocho in Miami:
And yea, verily, I have eaten yak cheese in Kathmandu (also Tiramisu in Kathmandu, but that’s another story…)
Or “ring-sting” rijstaffel in Bali…
Daddy Bruce barbecue in Colorado…
Spiedies in Binghamton:
Manapua on Oahu:
Green chile pizza in Boulder:
It’s Its in San Francisco:
Manhattan Special…
And soup dumplings in NYC…
But I’m still pretty damn happy with the Lobster Pie.
What’s your favorite sentimental summer road food, O ‘Ratis?
I have a confession to make. I love the Twilight books. I am a hopeless Stephenie Meyers junkie. I’ve read them multiple times, and I reread them when I want an escape. I wouldn’t mind a book tour stop in Forks. I have previously voiced my dilemma – Team Edward or Team Jacob?
All right now, if you’re shaking your head or rolling your eyes, go ahead and step away. Because honestly, making fun of the Twilight saga is as de rigueur as blaming the previous administration for, well, everything. I get it. It doesn’t appeal to everyone. But the nastiness some employ in making fun of those of us who are fans borders on rabid dog territory.
Why? Because the literary elite thinks the writing isn’t up to par? What, are you expecting to get Tolstoy when you pick up a book about teenage vampires? Really? Or is it the fact that it’s another vampire story? Or is it just plain jealousy because Meyers created a world that people want to escape into, and has gotten very, very rich in the process? James Cameron did that with AVATAR and the snickers were at least kept to a minimum. And his people were massive mystical smurfs.
Now that three of the Twilight movies are out, the franchise’s mythology grows even bigger. The young actors are thrust into a limelight that’s nearing epic proportions. The soundtracks are amazing, and have helped bolster the careers of a bunch of great new bands. The movies themselves have improved with each installment – ECLIPSE is by far the best of the three. It has a bit of everything you want in a good film: love, romance, sexual tension, humor and a battle scene. The special effects were cool, and the acting wasn’t half bad. The tent scene, with Jacob and Edward talking, was probably the best moment in the movie for sheer anguish.
That’s what this series is about, truly. Anguish. Some call it teenage angst with a roll of the eyes, but the truth of the matter is, we’ve all been in Bella’s position – in love with someone and wildly attracted to another, feeling unbelievable guilt and confusion. It’s human nature. As we grow older, we learn to recognize the differences between lust ad love, between a true affair of the heart and a passing crush, and most of us act accordingly. You can’t tell me it isn’t fun to revisit those old feelings.
Guys may not have the same reaction to the film as women, for a wide variety of reasons. Randy was so obviously bored and uncomfortable at times that it made me uncomfortable. But that’s par for the course for most men with heavy duty romantic chick flicks. Rom Coms, the bane of every male’s existence. You need to keep your woman happy, so that means sitting through some torturous moments, I know. But we love you when you do it! And aren’t the rewards worth it?
I don’t know what everyone’s problem is with these books and movies. They’re fun. It’s escapism. There are even a couple of good messages for young women if you stop to look at it. Chastity until marriage? Perish the thought! I actually read something today that called that a Mormon ideal – I nearly spit out my tea laughing. Has our society been so seduced by the perceived ideals of Sex and the City that the concept of a teenage girl waiting to have sex is seen as backwards and wrong?
Oh, Lord, don’t get me started… well, now that I’ve opened that can of worms, I’m going to say something. Yes, there’s a vein of morality that runs through these books. They are read by millions of young girls, girls who are finding themselves in love for the first time, or dreaming about what that might be like. And there’s no sex. In a reversal that’s nearly Herculean in its methods, sex isn’t a possibility between the characters. Bella is a virgin, and Edward is bound and determined to keep her that way. A boy who isn’t crazed for sex? More importantly, a boy who isn’t pressuring his girlfriend to put out?
Now think about the message the young girls who are reading this book are getting. Not only is it okay to forgo sex in a teen relationship, the man you respect, love and cherish wants you to remain pure. Maybe, just maybe, these books can have a real cultural impact on our younger generation. Maybe pregnancy rates will drop, STDs will become a thing of the past, and children, because I’m sorry, even if they are burgeoning into adulthood, they’re still children, could focus on their studies instead of their pants.
Can you imagine? I’m probably dreaming, but wow, if these movies had been around when I was growing up? I know I would have appreciated being in a relationship that wasn’t a constant test, how far can I go, how far will she let my hand stray, when is it right to go to first base, second base, third, fourth?
I can’t imagine a better time for girls to be getting the message that it’s cool not to have sex. Meyers has done that, with a female character who’s hopped up on her own hormones and wants things she can’t quite comprehend. Edward keeps telling her how dangerous it is, but she’s willing to throw caution to the wind anyway, just like we all did. But he’s strong, respectful, and understands the consequences, even if she doesn’t. He exercises great restraint, to her benefit. Now that’s romantic.
And poor Jacob, fighting for the girl he loves. His emotional growth, being hurt and overcoming it, is another huge message – you can survive a heartbreak. It will make you stronger, and will help you understand when the real love of your life comes along.
There’s really more to the Twilight books than meets the eye. It’s more than some crazy romantic fantasy of girl meets boy, falls in love, marries him, becomes a vampire and then gets all the benefits therein. But you’ll have to find that for yourself, in the pages of Meyers’s world.
Another quick thought. The actors themselves have been I the news cycle constantly over the past few years. Rob Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are being held to a ridiculous standard, and I really feel for Kristin Stewart. I remember when I was starting out in publishing, and getting interviewed for the first time. I said some pretty stupid things, because I didn’t know any better. I told the truth about what I was thinking and feeling, just like she has. Her misstep about equating fandom to rape (but every single person out there understood exactly what she meant, even if it wasn’t a perfect analogy) really hurt her reputation, and I wish she had a great publicist like I had to tell her what not to say. But it’s overwhelming, going from simply creating your art to being the artist in the limelight. Her latest comment about her fear of the massive crowds is something I can totally relate to. I hope they start listening to her concerns and let all three of them step back from the craziness for a bit.
Whether you like it or not, Twilight is enmeshed in the fabric of our culture just like Harry Potter. And heck, even the Vatican came around on Rowling…
So what say you ‘Rati? Are you a Twilight fan, or a hater? (I’ll check in when I can today, so pleasant self-policing is encouraged.)
I’m feeling a bit glum at the moment. Daft, really, because I’ve no right to be.
Last week we came back from a mini-tour in the States for the US publication of KILLER INSTINCT from Busted Flush Press. It was a fun trip. We got to see some old friends, and spend a little time with fellow ‘Rati blogger JT Ellison – who came to the airport in Nashville just for coffee and a chat while we waited for our connection. How cool is that?
And we got to spend a lot more time with Toni McGee Causey and her highly entertaining husband, Carl, being given the tour of New Orleans that the tourists really don’t get to see, including the most amazing vehicle graveyard I’ve ever come across…
…And a bunch of black locusts that were huge and somewhat scary.
Carl also gave Andy his first taste of firing long guns during an afternoon at the local gun range – where, it must be said, a not inconsiderable amount of ammunition was expended.
In New York, it was great to have the chance to hang out with Lee Child and his web guru, Maggie Griffin. It was Maggie who very kindly told me about the terrific review for KILLER INSTINCT in last weekend’s New York Times. Hurrah!
Although I signed a lot of stock for Busted Flush while we were over there, I didn’t do a huge tour of bookstores. The ones I did visit gave us a very warm welcome, though, and it was lovely to make a return to the Velma Teague Branch Library in Glendale AZ, where I kicked off their Authors at The Teague program three years ago. I even managed to get my commemorative mug home in one piece! (And I’m drinking tea from it as I write this.)
Andy and I spent a day driving round Long Island, chancing upon a little diner, Joni’s, which we later discovered was recommended as one of the best casual places to eat in Montauk. I explored the beach area around the lighthouse at Montauk Point and found that one of the vital scenes for the next Charlie Fox book will indeed work if I set it there. In fact, the lack of large areas of open sandy beach make it work out better than I’d actually planned. I even got all arty with stones.
Yeah, all-in-all, it was a fun trip.
And now we’re back, the work’s coming in, I’ve managed to dive straight into the new book and seem to be making reasonable progress, the UK weather’s behaving almost like summer (meaning they’ve announced the first hosepipe bans) and, stunningly enough, while we were away the local rabbit population did not treat our newly planted flowerbed as an all-you-can-eat buffet.
So, why am I feeling a bit flat? Maybe it’s got something to do with the chest infection I picked up somewhere on the journey. Don’t you just love a double dose of nine-and-a-half hours of recycled aeroplane air? I’m wheezing and coughing and haven’t had an uninterrupted night’s sleep since we got back. (And, by the same token, neither has poor Andy!)
My own brilliantly plainspoken doctor is on holiday, but his stand-in told me on Monday “it’s a virus” which I suspect is medicine-man-speak for “we don’t know – go away” or something very similar.
So, I’m willing to accept any and all suggestions for pick-me-up remedies that you might have. In fact, I’m in need of them! Even just feel-good suggestions with no basis in medical fact. Just please bear in mind that I can’t have alcohol, or things will go downhill rapidly. (I know, I know, my inability to drink ought, by that fact alone, to preclude me from being a crime writer…)
This week’s Phrase of the Week is tarred with the same brush, which means to be part of a group sometimes unfairly regarded as all having the same faults and weaknesses. It comes from the farming practice of treating the sores of a flock of sheep. The sores were coated by a brush dipped in tar. The same brush would be used on all the infected animals, but never on a healthy one for fear of passing the infection on. Hence all infected sheep were tarred with the same brush. The mother of a friend of mine used to get this one somewhat muddled, and would often come out with this much-improved variation: “They’re all daubed with the same stick.”
As some of you may have noticed, I am NOT Robert Gregory Browne. This is Rob’s usual week, but he is, as they say, glutes-high in Alligator mississippiensis. Everyone else in the world seems to be at Thrillerfest. (Heavy sigh). So when Rob sent out a cry for help, I agreed to take his week, because…well, because I’m a hell of a guy. It was short notice, so if things seem a bit random and disjointed…well, it’s not like anyone can tell the difference from the way I usually post.
Anyway, here’s what’s on my mind recently:
Lately I keep seeing ads for a new Harry Potter-themed amusement park at Universal Studios in Orlando. “You can truly be part of Harry Potter’s World!” the ad promises breathlessly. I don’t know about you, but my first reaction was “I’m not sure I actually want to be part of a world where an immensely powerful magic user who looks like James Carville’s handsomer brother and who has a serious grudge against my family spends most of his days trying to figure out how to kill me.” But it did get me thinking, which is always a dangerous proposition.
Now, J.K. Rowling seems like a nice lady, and hers is one of the great inspirational stories for writers: deprivation, determination, rejection, perseverance, and finally riches beyond most people’s dreams of avarice (not beyond mine, but then I feed my dreams of avarice red meat, Wheaties, and steroids).I’m glad to see her continuing to do well.
But, I wondered, how is it fair that her characters get a theme park and others don’t? I mean, there are plenty of other writers who create vivid and intensely realized worlds. Why don’t we have them parks for them?
Imagine what forms some of these theme parks might take:
IAN RANKIN’S REBUSWORLD: Enter the world of Edinburgh’s most successful and most surly detective! Have a drink in the famous Oxford Bar. Make the climb up the full-sized replica of Arthur’s Seat. Have another drink in the famous Oxford bar. Take a refreshing dip on the Firth of Forth waterslide before having another drink, maybe several, in the famous Oxford Bar. Management not responsible for liver damage.
MICHAEL CONNOLLY’S BOSCHLAND: Ride a replica of the Angel’s Flight inclined railway to get to this LA-themed attraction. Explore the scary storm drains of LA in the Black Echo Fun House. Ride the wet and wild Narrows log flume ride. Hope you like jazz, though, ‘cause that stuff’s playing ALL OVER THE FRIGGIN’ PARK.
LEE CHILD’S REACHER-RAMA: there are a lot of great, thrilling and scary rides, but no matter how much cash or you take in or how many souvenirs you buy, you always walk out of the place with nothing on you but the clothes on your back and your toothbrush.
For you fantasy fans, there’s GEORGE R.R. MARTIN’S ICE N’ FIRE ISLAND: it’s going to be the most awesome thing ever if they can just get the damn thing finished.
Hmmm…okay. Maybe not such great ideas after all. But maybe some of you can pick your favorite fictional world (even your own) and make it into a theme park. Give it a try, won’t you?
Back when Ken Bruen and I shared Tuesday blogging responsibilities, he sent me a long white feather in the mail. “When a white feather crosses your path,” he wrote, “it means your guardian angel is nearby and watching over you.”
I found another white feather last week … a figurative one this time. It was a small miracle in my life.
Apologies to my Seattle friends for not telling you earlier, but I’ve been up in your fair city for the last three weeks moving my father-in-law into an assisted living center. Bruce’s death had undone him, “purely worn me down” as he described it, and he chose to move to a simpler existence.
That meant that I had three weeks to sell his possessions, get him moved and get the condo ready to go on the market.
He is a big bear of a man, with a face like George C. Scott and the heart of a Teamster. He spent forty years driving a laundry truck delivering linens and uniforms to restaurants, garages and hospitals. Today he has bad knees and a colostomy bag, and pores over every word in the paper looking for signs that his America is still alive.
Cleaning out the condo was not easy. Bruce’s older brother still had three rooms of belongings there, even though he’d long ago moved into his own apartment. And he’s a hoarder. Following the advice from a psychologist, we involved the brother in the decision making on each and every item. Does it go to Goodwill? Does it go to your apartment? Does it go to storage? There were one thousand shirts. Three hundred and sixty pairs of pants. Three thousand CDs. Each decision was protracted. Each item discussed.
Pat and Karen, Bruce’s lifelong Seattle friends, were unflagging in their energy and support, providing physical labor, local resources and expert advice. Karen, an antiques dealer in the city, sifted through every piece of jewelry, every Christmas bobble, every cookbook to determine what she could sell for him and what should go to charity. They made so many runs to Goodwill and the shredding company that the proprietors knew the name of their dog.
My father-in-law, Adolph, sat sad and calm as we loaded boxes, willing but unready to rush into this change.
There were dozens of boxes and bags of papers for the shredder. Old tax records. Paperwork from the estates of his sister-in-law and his wife, dead ten years now. Christmas letters from relatives in North Dakota two decades ago. Birthday cards from Bruce and his brother when they were kids.
There wasn’t room for all the papers at Ade’s new place, but he wasn’t willing to send them to the shredder until we’d had one final look. And so we did. We went through each page of the old tax records and he told me stories about that year, what new car he’d bought and where they went on vacation. We read old Christmas letters and he recounted the story of the son of that cousin, a saddlemaker, and how he lost his fingers when they got caught in the reins of a plow horse. We looked at old photographs and he remembered the night he’d first met his wife, Marian, and how she was supposed to be the blind date for the other guy.
Then came the miracle, the white feather wafting down in front of me.
I opened one old condolence card from April 2000 and read that “as a symbol of prayer, a votive light burns for Marian Goronsky at the Benedictine Monastery in Tucson, Arizona.” Funny, I hadn’t known that Adolph had friends in Tucson.
Then I recognized the handwriting. It was from my mother.
They’d only met once, on that day in 1985 when Bruce and I celebrated our marriage with a giant party in Tucson. The Goronskys drove three days to get there and arrived feeling like alien creatures in the dun-colored desert landscape. Tequila was new to them. The mariachis at the party did not sound like the Lithuanian music they knew.
My father died when I was sixteen, so it was up to my mother to welcome these new additions to the family and they became friends as well as new relations. Fifteen years later, when Marian Goronsky died unexpectedly only twelve hours after successful knee surgery, my mother sent a condolence card.
What she didn’t know is that she was sending it to me.
“Let me share what I know about losing a spouse,” she wrote. “A Greek writer wrote that ‘an excess of grief for the dead is madness, for it is an injury to the living and the dead know it not.’ I don’t know if it’s true, but at least that thought has helped me a lot through the years.”
It’s been sixteen months since I heard my mother’s voice. Sixteen months since I felt her arms around me.
Last week she found a way to be with me again. Thank you, Mom. It will help me, too.
We’ve all heard about the magic of a book’s first sentence. Melville’s “Call me Ishmael” or Orwell’s “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Some sentences stay with you forever. At the very least, we writers want our first sentences to set the tone for the novel and persuade the reader to give the book another few pages.
There’s no shortage of commentary about good first sentences: examples, why they’re important, how to make them good. I won’t try to add to those lessons since I’m not a great writing teacher unlike, say, for example, Murderati’s very own Alex.
Instead, I want to talk about the bad first sentences. No, not sad, pathetic bad. Funny bad. Intentionally bad. Hilariously bad.
“I have had it with these m-f’n’ snakes on this m-f’n plane! Everybody strap in! I’m about to open some f’in’ windows. “
Turns out there’s an award for worst imaginary first sentences. Named for the author of Paul Clifford (as in “It was a dark and stormy night”), the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest promises that its www stands for “Wretched Writers Welcome.” And wretched are the submissions indeed.
In the genre of detective fiction, the winner, from Steve Lynch (San Marcos, CA): “She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so.”
I somehow picture this guy as the lead in the film adaptation
I also enjoyed this “dishonorable mention” for purple prose: “Elaine was a big woman, and in her tiny Smart car, stakeouts were always hard for her, especially in the August sun where the humidity made her massive thighs, under her lightweight cotton dress, stick together like two walruses in heat.” -Derek Renfro (Ringgold, GA).
Like these guysOr maybe these (what can I say, they popped up in a search for “two walruses”)And the overall winner, from writer Molly Ringle: “For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”
Pretty good (meaning bad) stuff, right? But as atrocious as those first sentences are, I suspect we here at Murderati can reach even higher (lower?) levels of literary abomination.**
I’ll get this party started.
The first sentence of my next novel (NOT!): Harlow felt oddly detached from the sight of her own fat, rumbling inside the lipo hose like tapioca and cherry slurpee, as she wondered if her newly flat abdomen might bring Trevor back home.
Can’t wait to see what y’all come up with. Go for it!
*Shout out here to fellow law prof Stanley Fish for his excellent NY Times Op-Ed on first sentences of crime fiction novels.
**Hat tip to my bible, www.ew.com, for playing this game first.
Okay, this is SO not fair, but Alex stole my blog. Not about her book, but about the musical 1776! I figured since it’s Independence Day, I’d talk about my favorite musical–1776–and there Alex goes and posts a couple clips! I don’t know whether to thank her or curse her . . . but I’ll tell you, it is extremely eerie how often Alex and I are on the same wavelength. Downright scary at times . . .
I’m not a huge fan of studying history, except for American or California History. (The latter because in California, we learn about the gold rush and have mission projects, etc, from a young age–it’s a big thing in school–so I’ve always been interested in the gold rush and turn of the century California history.) (Hmm, I also really love Greek and Roman mythology, which is part history part literature. I may be one of the few people on earth who read THE ODYSSEY when I was 13 and enjoyed it . . . I also read THE ILIAD in third year Latin. I didn’t enjoy that so much, and can’t remember a damn thing about that story . . . )
When I first moved to Sacramento, a friend of mine had 1776 on tape and we watched it the night before the Fourth. I loved it! It was 1989 or 1990 when the movie came out (the original play was produced in 1969) and I’d just read PATRIOTS: The Men Who Started the American Revolution by A.J. Langguth which I greatly enjoyed because it touched on all the major events of the American Revolution, and included some interesting personal stories, but it wasn’t too “heavy”–it was very accessible. (Not as good as David McCullough’s 1776, but fun.) After I married, I took my husband to the stage production, the revival, in I believe 1997 or 1998 . . .
Anyway, 1776, a fictionalized but fairly accurate account of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, begins on May 8, 1776. (The continental congress didn’t keep good records, so much of the debate is not “official” and interpreted through the writings of those who were there. And as writers we know that POV changes everything.) The congressional custodian finds John Adams alone in the bell tower and tells him that everyone is looking for him for an important vote. Adams enquires, and the clerk says:
“Whether we should grant General Washington’s request to require that all members of the Rhode Island militia wear matching uniforms.”
Adams storms down to the floor, bursts through the doors, and says:
“I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, that two become a law firm, and that three of more become a Congress!”
As Adams rants about the injustices of the British Crown and the cause for Independence, the Congress debates the all important issues of . . . whether to open the windows up to relieve them of the stifling Pennsylvania heat. Half the Congress wants to open the windows for fresh air; the other half wants them closed because of the flies.
Some things never change.
(The State of California is $19 billion in debt–or more–and one of the important issues brought up is whether to rescind the honor travertine has as our state rock because it has asbestos in it and–if you grind it up and use it in projects, like roads, it can cause cancer. Which is why it’s not used in roads, but that hasn’t stopped the all-important debate. I mean, it’s obviously more urgent than the fact that we have NO BUDGET. I started my job in the legislature in 1992 and my first paycheck was an I.O.U. I think we’ve had one budget on time since . . . )
One of my favorite quotes in the entire musical is when Stephen Hopkins from Rhode Island comes in and the vote for debating the question of Independence is divided. He’s the deciding vote and says:
“I’ve never seen, heard, or smelled a subject that was too dangerous to talk about! Hell, yes, I’m for debating anything!”
I’ll admit, I love this musical. It’s idealized in many ways, but embodies our common foundation. We are Americans, the most free country, warts and all, and for the two hours of the musical I can believe in us.
We usually have a fourth of July party but canceled it this year. I leave tomorrow night for Thrillerfest; last week we had a big party with friends and family for my six year old’s birthday, and my daughter is at summer camp. Next year? We’ll have a big party! Today, we’ll have a quiet BBQ with family and shoot off fireworks in the driveway and watch the big fireworks from a great distance.
What are your plans for today? Comment and I’ll send one lucky winner the DVD of 1776 and any book in my backlist. 🙂
P.S. The DVD I’m sending is the “Director’s Cut” which really should be watched after the original, but I can’t find the original . . . why? Because it’s a lesson in editing. You’ll see that whoever decided to trim and edit out some scenes in the original movie production of the play were right. At least, IMHO. LESS is often MORE . . . in television, movies, plays and our own books. Kill your darlings 🙂
P.S.S. A special thanks to the men and women serving in our armed forced around the world. You all keep the Independence in Independence Day.
I’m the only one here, right? I can feel it. Every single other person in the Universe is on vacation. Hah. That means I can say anything I want.
I’m working this weekend, but it feels like vacation when there’s no one around to bug me. I love that. I get my work and play in at the same time.
Okay, so here’s the problem. I seem to be writing three books at once. How did that happen?
I’m supposed to know better than that, aren’t I? Wouldn’t I scathe a student up one side and down the other for not focusing on one project until it was done?
Well, I’m not exactly a student, though – and as a screenwriter I juggled multiple scripts at various stages of development all the time, I had to, it’s just the job.
But books are different. They’re so much bigger. Can you really compare the two?
I think I know how this happened, actually.
First, I’m in transition. The Universe in its wisdom has decided to revamp every single aspect of my life in a major, bone-shattering way, and it’s been – special. So it’s not all that surprising that all that upheaval from all directions would start to reflect itself in my writing life.
Second, I just turned in two projects, one right after the other, my paranormal that comes out this fall and a book I wrote with three fabulous other female authors, four interconnected novellas that make up an – apocalyptic – story of its own.
And everything always looks different, disorienting, when you are finished, truly finished, with the immense task that writing a book is.
So it’s not so very surprising that I’m not entirely sure which of the three projects I was toying with – before I had to power down and finish these last two – I want to go back to, now. I don’t even know who Iam, anymore – how the hell am I supposed to know what I want to write?
Now, some of this is just rhetorical. I KNOW which book I have to finish first. That would be the one that’s almost finished, duh. It’s unfortunate that I had to leave off on that one at the very worst possible time to leave a book – 3/4s of the way through a first draft, that Slough of Despond where you realize that you never had the slightest bit of talent to begin with, that in fact elves wrote your last four books, along with everything else you’ve ever written, and you might as well go do that other thing that you can’t do because no writer is really equipped to work at anything else, but you better figure something out fast, because your writing career is officially over.
I’m sure none of you has the slightest idea what I’m talking about.
But yes, that’s where I was, and that’s what I had to face when I picked that book up again. Sheer, unadulterated panic ensues.
Now, as I tell my students, as writers we have to push through that section, it is not optional, because it’s exactly the emotional and physical predicament that our CHARACTERS are experiencing at that point of the story… when there is no possible solution to anything in front of them, or us, and we have to have that experience together to get to the final battle. The process is cleverly, sadistically designed that way as part of the magic of storytelling.
And the truth is, I have hit this wall in every single script I’ve ever written, and all six novels, now, and I have always, every single time, gotten through it. That’s a pretty damn good track record.
But it still feels like dying, every single time.
And there are particular elements about this particular book that are making me more nervous even than usual. First, I’m adapting my own short story as a novel. So the gremlins are whispering: This is a short story. What ever made you think it could be a full length novel? You’re stuck because THERE IS NO MORE TO WRITE. Fool.
Also, it’s my first YA. And it’s way too dark to be a YA. Oh, I know, everyone says there’s no such thing as too dark for a YA anymore, but trust me, there is a limit, and I am it.
So that’s Book One. I had 170 pages when I stopped. Clearly need to finish that one first, but – see above.
Book Two is a huge departure for me. Agent loves story. Brilliant group of author friends love story. It’s something I’ve been thinking of for years but finally figured out how to actually do it. Okay, it’s a bit of a departure, urban fantasy, I guess is what I have to call it, and suspenseful, but not so dark as usual, but I was wanting to write something not so dark. Started it back before I had to finish the last two projects and got 85 pages pretty fast. Went to NY for BEA and researched locations, fabulous trip, lots of ideas, should be able to jump right in, no problem, right?
Except that this is the first thing ever that I’m writing in first person. What in hell made me want to do that? I don’t even READ first person. Add to that, it keeps feeling like it should be first person present tense. Aaaaah!! I am completely paralyzed. Go back and rewrite it in third? Push forward but switch to third? Push forward and try first person present tense? I’m not paralyzed, I’m comatose.
So, enter Book Three. Book Three was an idea I was toying with at the same time I was thinking about doing Book Two. More along my usual – very adult, very dark, half crime thriller, half supernatural, or maybe the characters are just crazy… there is an emotional core to it that intrigued me, characters that felt already real, but Book Two felt like a Bigger Idea.
Only once I came up for air from the two just-finished projects, I couldn’t get Book Three out of my head.
And you know how it is about that book you left behind, especially when you are struggling with your current project. I KNOW you know. A few weeks ago Dusty called it “the bright and shinys”, but let’s be blunt. It’s the ultimate forbidden fruit. You know you should be committed to your relationship, and you are, really you are… but….
So I was just toying with it, really, a little harmless brainstorming on the side, and suddenly, WHAM!!! That whole book is in my head. Can’t stop thinking about it. And Book of Shadows has just come out and I’m getting the reviews and the letters and realizing – oh my God, I really am writing a very specific thing and these people who are reading it are expecting that very specific thing – why on earth, when I’m just starting to hit my stride with my particular brand, would I want to suddenly jump track?
My readers would LOVE Book Three, it has everything that they say they read me for.
And it’s in third person. Unless I make it first person. Which I might.
So that’s where I am. Utter chaos. Confusion. When I know – I KNOW – that the only possible way to maintain a career as an author, or any kind of writer, is to FINISH WHAT YOU START.
Well, but this last week, the smoke is starting to clear. I think. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I have been writing five pages a day on Book One. Mind you, the book went off on a tangent that when I reread it might belong to a different universe entirely, but it was so fascinating I just had to go with it. And I was able to remember, barely remember, but remember, that THE FIRST DRAFT IS ALWAYS GOING TO SUCK. It doesn’t have to make any sense. Whole sequences can be thrown out. My only job at this point is to get to The End. Once I reach that happy place known as the Second Draft, I know I can make it happen. I always do.
And you know what? I think I needed to have the release of that illicit brainstorming on Book Three to break through my paralysis on Book One. The utter absurdity of juggling three books took the pressure off all of them. Maybe even Book One got jealous and stopped playing so hard to get when it felt like it was losing my attention. Yes, that sounds completely insane, but can YOU explain how writing works? I thought not.
So now I think I have a plan. Five pages a day on Book One until The End, no excuses, and after that’s done I can do whatever I want on either of the other two for the rest of the writing day. I can live with that.
And the moral of the story? Well, it just goes to prove my number one and only rule of writing.
WHATEVER WORKS.
Really. Whatever gets it written, is gold.
So here’s the question, if there’s anyone here. Have you ever cheated on one of your books? How’d that work for you? Humiliating disaster, or creative breakthrough? Can you have multiple projects going, or are you a True Blue?
Hope everyone’s having a great holiday. I know I am.
PS: If you’re looking for a little Independence Day spirit, and you haven’t seen it in a while, I just want to remind you of one of the best musical films ever made: 1776. I think I might have to hunt that one down myself.
Teaching is an art. I sometimes wonder if I’m up to the task. I believe that I am, but I also know that knowing how to do a thing and knowing how to teach someone how to do a thing are two very different things indeed.
Like, for instance, when I took private saxophone instruction as a teenager. I was lucky to study with the best saxophonist in New Mexico. This guy played every woodwind ever made, had recorded numerous solo albums, and was considered a jazz virtuoso. One day I asked him why I had trouble hitting the lowest and highest notes on my alto and he said, simply: “I don’t know. Just do what I do.” He played the low and high notes and I watched, and I tried, and I honked. Nothing had changed. He shrugged his shoulders.
I figured I had a bum sax. I played first chair in the jazz band through high school and I pretty much just faked the notes I couldn’t hit.
I spent my first college year at North Texas State University, which had an amazing jazz program. My saxophone performance instructor was also a student at the school, and he wasn’t nearly as accomplished as the teacher I had before him. The first thing he said after hearing me play was, “Ouch! Stop! Enough!”
When I recovered from the shock of such wonderful praise, he explained, “You’re not breathing from your diaphragm.”
I’m not say what?
It seems I had never learned to breathe. I was shamefully using my lungs when I should have been using my diaphragm. Before we could proceed with my musical instruction, I would have to learn how to breathe.
It required that I relearn everything. Worse, actually. Because I had to unlearn my bad habits first. If you’ve ever had to unlearn something and relearn it right, you know how difficult that is. And I wasn’t sure I could trust the guy because in the process of unlearning and relearning I found I’d lost the confidence to play. I had been reduced to a musical infant.
I stuck it out, and gradually my confidence returned. And, as I became more comfortable with…breathing…my musical “voice” came back, stronger than ever. Within a few months I could play the low and high notes equally well, and I had better intonation all around. When I returned to Albuquerque for winter break the friends I jammed with couldn’t believe the improvement. It was the result of spending three months with someone who paid attention, saw who I was, saw where I was at, and knew how to get me where I needed to go. A teacher.
I have tremendous respect for teachers who can do this, who can take something that no one else sees and turn it into gold.
Recently I’ve been thinking that I should play a more active role in this process. When I’m working with young writers on their story ideas, when I’m talking about plot and structure and character development, I realize that I’m teaching. It’s hard for me to see it that way because I prefer to think that two creative people are simply sharing ideas. But the fact is, when the things I’ve learned from years of working as a professional writer or development executive come into play, when I’m describing things I’ve learned that appears new to someone else, I’m teaching. And I realize that I love that. Teaching makes me feel good.
I did have one teaching job I can look back on to help determine if I’m the stuff that teachers are made of. It was traffic school. Not your parent’s traffic school, I’m talking Comedy-Magic Traffic School.
Now, understand, I am neither a comedian nor a magician.
Imagine you’ve received a speeding ticket and have been FORCED to attend traffic school. You are required by law to pay attention to every moment of the eight-hour class. An ad in the newspaper gives you hope – Comedy Magic Traffic School! And you figure at least you’ll be entertained. As the day closes in, you actually look forward to spending your Saturday laughing at jokes and watching death-defying magic. Take a moment now and imagine how you would feel after discovering that, well, you’ve been duped. To avoid lawsuits, my employers made sure I knew a trick or two…they gave me a wand and a deck of cards. They supplied me with inoffensive jokes that somehow managed to incorporate the basic laws of traffic. They taught me a traffic school version of The Hollywood Squares.
Now imagine me, trying to teach and entertain fifty pissed off traffic offenders trapped in a banquet room for eight hours.
But the most amazing thing happened…I enjoyed myself. I had fun. By the time those eight hours were over I had people coming up and shaking my hand, telling me they actually learned something, that traffic school hadn’t been a tremendous waste of time after all. That comedy and magic were overrated.
If I can do that with traffic, can you imagine what I might do with something I love?
I bring this up now because I’ve been invited to teach a course at the Omega Institute in Upstate New York called, “Story Development: How to Write Compelling Novels and Screenplays.” It’s not until June of 2011, so I’ve got a full year to prepare. However, I’ll be teaching a continuing class to the same attendees for a period of TWENTY-FIVE HOURS, over just seven days.
It might seem crazy, going from teaching traffic school twenty years ago to leading a twenty-five hour creative writing workshop at the Omega Institute. And I wonder if, somewhere around hour twelve or fifteen, I’m going to end up walking circles near the classroom door, scratching imaginary itches, twitching, and screaming, “Why are you all looking at me?! Don’t you people have better things to do?!”
And what if my students come back, years later, and say that they’re really doing fine now that they’ve managed to unlearn everything I taught them?
But I want to give it a shot. I want to be the teacher that I would want to have.
My fear is that I’m an intuitive writer, that the choices I make are mostly subconscious, that I will not be able to teach my process. I don’t want to be the guy who says, “I don’t know. Just do what I do.”
I want to be the guy who teaches people how to breathe.
Many of you have taught workshops, many of you have attended them. As writers, what do you expect to gain from a workshop? As teachers, what do you hope to impart?
Let’s face it. Newspapers in their current, printed form aren’t long for this planet. I’m talking about the mainstream, pay-per-issue kind. I think the free versions, such as LA Weekly here in Los Angeles and similar papers around the country, might be able to hold on. But those papers we grew up with, me the L.A. Times, won’t be there in a few years.
Why? Because the only people buying them are people over fifty-five, and even they aren’t buying them as much. Okay, there are probably some people under fifty-five purchasing a paper, but the statistics are pretty clear that the majority of customers are in the older bracket. This is the pre-computer on every lap generation. They grew up with papers, and they continue to read them. My parents, for instance, have a subscription to their local paper, and I have to tell you, each time I visit, that daily paper is thinner and thinner. Sure, my generation was mostly pre-computer on every lap also, but we were enough on the cusp that most of us have taken pretty readily to the digital age. I should say my parents have taken to the digital age, too, as have many of their friends. They email, surf the web, and play games on their laptops, but even though they do, they still like their paper.
We all know the papers are going away because of this switch to a computer driven society. Information is now at our fingertips. If we want to know something, we just check our laptops or smart phones or netbooks or iPads.
Sure, a lot of the traditional newspapers have websites now, and that might be how they figure out to stay relevant. There are also other news sites: CNN, Yahoo, BBC World just to name a few. These are all great, but for me, the opportunity is there for something more personal. Thankfully, the Interwebs have created ways for me to satisfy what I’m looking for.
In effect, I have my very own newspaper that I check everyday. The Brett Times, I guess, or the Brett Herald-Examiner. (I actually haven’t given it a name, but maybe I should think about it.) I’ll bet that most of you have one, too, these days.
What I’m talking about is using an RSS feed reader. Basically this is a web-based tool that gathers the latest posts from all the blogs I’m interested in reading, and presents them to me whenever I want. There are many of these readers out there. I use Google Reader. Though I’m sure there are better ones, I’m just too lazy to check around.
What is great about this new newspaper, and what makes it so much better than any of the printed papers I used to read growing up, is that it’s completely tailored to my tastes. I chose the blogs I want, I divide them into sections, and voila, the Brett Times.
I have a sports section completely focused on sports I’m interested in and my specific team (Go Angels!). I have a publishing section which includes Sarah Weinman’s blog, Ali Karim’s blog, some book marketing blogs, etc. I have a writing section which includes an interesting one I’ve heard of called Murderati. I have a Pop Culture section that has a wide breath of material from gossip, to film reviews, to humor, to Sci-Fi related things. I also have a Los Angles section where I get feeds from several Los Angeles based blogs. This last one’s great for not just my local news, but also for letting me know when there are shows and festivals around that I might want to attend.
The thing is, though the traditional newspaper might be on the way out, an even more personal, and (in my mind) useful digital paper has taken its place.
Okay, I’m not going to getting to the quality of reporting and that whole argument. Yes, I know there are some problems there that need to be figured out. But for the stuff I’m interested in, the info I’m getting is fine. And if I need more, I can go to the more traditionally based blogs.
So I thought I’d share a few links to some of the blogs I follow and enjoy, in case you wanted to follow them, too):
