What-Ifs and Creative Naps

Posted on April 11, 2008 by lalber

Last weekend I had an epiphany about the scene that will usher in my story’s resolution. I worked all afternoon for that darned epiphany. And thank goodness, because I’d been writing in fits and starts for a good three weeks, stymied by a lack of vision.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. I reluctantly employed the what-if brainstorming strategy. I say “reluctantly” because I first witnessed this technique at a writers workshop, and it struck me as lame. It didn’t help that the workshop facilitators were snide and sometimes just plain mean — a schtick meant to be funny but that left me cold. Until last weekend, I had obstinately refused to play the what-if game.

I jotted every cockamamie idea that popped into my head and forced myself to what-if my way past random nonsense. “Okay, back to the what-ifs. What if…?” After awhile, a deceptively simple thought arose: a surprise action from an unlikely character. Seemed so obvious I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.

So, good, but I still wasn’t THAT clear. I needed a visual. All I had was a maddened man floating in space. About then, I decided that a wee creative nap was in order.

I set myself to drifting in a conscious way. (Not that I didn’t fall asleep also — delicious!) Low and behold, a strange thing happened; the perfect scenic image drifted into my head.

I’m not a big believer in waiting for inspiration. Sometimes it arrives on its own, true, but more often it needs a little push by way of mind games that get me out of my own way.

Here Come the Book-Touring Novelists

Posted on April 8, 2008 by lalber

Springtime brings a flurry of book-touring novelists. Last week I decided to check out two of them. The first novelist I read regularly, and she’s enjoying such immense success that I was extra curious. Plus, she’s a friend of a friend, so I had an excuse to say a little something when my turn came around to have my book signed. I wasn’t as familiar with the second novelist though she’s also a branded name. We are separated by two degrees, so I dropped a name with her also in hopes of learning something very particular.

Sidenotes:

~ Mysterious Mr. M, who often comments on this blog, shines me on for being a brown-noser. Not fair! I’m just over-eager! Seriously, these days, I’m all about researching the business-side of publishing, so I ask whoever I can whatever I can whenever I can.

~ I’ve lately decided to make a study of book-touring novelists. About how many pages do they read? What kind of reading selection? What kind of introduction? How do they deal with the questions? Do they crack jokes? Do they wander off the topic? And so on. Call me ever hopeful for myself.

So, I’d like to share a few tidbits from last week’s book-signings.

JODI PICOULT. Latest novel: Change of Heart (S.W.: She passed on a big “hello” just in case she didn’t get a chance to see you in Seattle…)

First of all, I wasn’t expecting the utter chaos. Over 200 readers gathered to hear her speak, and the book store gave out numbered tickets so that we would line up in orderly fashion for the signing. This is a woman whose latest hardcover print run topped a million copies! That’s in the realm of Stephen King and his kind (now her kind also).

She read from many sections but from one character’s point of view. These snippets formed their own story arc, and she ended on the cliffhanger question that is the crux of the novel. It interested me that she mixed-and-matched from several sections; authors usually read the first chapter or from a couple of independent scenes.
She obviously gets the same questions all the time, no surprise. I imagine most novelists have their anecdotes down pat. In fact, I remember a writer-friend telling me I’d better have some good stories to tell about myself — even if I have to fictionalize them a bit to make them more interesting!
She’s a mom so adept at writing in 15-minute increments. Doesn’t believe in writers block. “You can always edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page.” Too true!
I love this quote because it’s so true about character voices inside our heads: “It’s a very fine line between schizophrenia and being a published novelist.”
Starts writing when has a general idea — usually a topic that stems from something she worries about — and knows the twist at the end. Her mystery is how to get from A to Z. Does this mean she’s not an outliner? I wished I’d asked…

LISA JACKSON. Latest novel: Lost Souls (R.V. and J.D: Thanks! She answered my particular question about publicity…)

Jackson is a local author, and her reading was intimate. Interestingly enough, she didn’t actually read from her latest novel. This was a first for me as an audience member. Our questions seemed to launch her off on different writing/publishing topics, and she rambled easily for the hour.

She writes mysteries these days, but she started off as a Harlequin romanticist. However, her books are still shelved under “Romance” in the book stores. Why? Because of her long-time readers, because her backlist is so extensive that it’s best to keep all her books together (for sales), and so on. Interesting, eh?
I’ve mentioned the current paranormal trend. Well, seems Jackson is starting to dabble also. Her editor had suggested vampires and a story started to grow from there. She seemed bemused by her paranormal dabblings. She said her current novel is a “different kind of novel” for her. The next book will feature ghosts. Just goes to show…market forces…
Ever wonder about those novels that seem to just end, just like that, disappointingly? She mentioned a novel by Laura Lippman and that deadlines are often the culprits. It’s not that the novelist wouldn’t like to take the time, she just doesn’t have it. I can see this being a challenge for novelists on the one-or-more-book-a-year schedule.
She writes a 50-70 synopsis before starting her first draft! But, she does veer off it. The closer she is to a deadline the closer she keeps to the outline. What interested me: Even given a detailed synopsis, she still doesn’t know her characters until about 150 pages in. She finds beginnings hard for this reason. (Reassured me: I’m the same way.)
Here’s a new concept to me: “marketing up.” She mentioned a paperback cover design that got “marketed up” from its hardcover version. This meant making it less “genre,” which in her case, meant taking the woman off the cover. Also, the idea of wanting the cover to “pop” when the book is on the shelf amongst hundreds of others.

I was a good student last week, wasn’t I?

Check in the Mail!

Posted on March 31, 2008 by lalber

Look what I received today! For the first time in my fictioneering life, I received dollars for my writing! I’m thrilled because this is a step in the right direction.

Alas, I suspect that by April 15th I’ll have handed off the money to our dear government…sigh…

But still! I’m smiley-faced today.

Addendum, 8-Apr-08: Taxes done, and the money I received is all mine, after all! Woo-hoo!

Do “Real” Writers Write in Cafes?

Posted on March 28, 2008 by lalber

I’ve received many a comment from friends about the time I spend in cafes. This blog is practically a tour of Portland’s coffee scene. I cop to it: Ever since my student days at Berkeley, I’ve loved a good coffee house. In fact, I started the habit back in high school when I was into concocting moody, hormone-laden poetry.

I had occasion to ponder the titular question because this week I re-discovered a cafe that could replace Kodi’s (this post): Grand Central Bakery, a local spot that’s been around forever, but that I’ve ignored for over a decade. I remembered strolling there on Sunday mornings with my then-boyfriend; I remembered it as over-crowded and small. I associated it with a particular era in my life, but now I’m glad to say that they rehabbed the space: expanded into a southern-exposed space. Very good for loitering.

I even made a new friend (Liz, if you’re reading this!). We bonded over our mutually cool eyewear and talked about collaging. AND I wrote four decent first-draft pages.

But, back to the question: Do “real” writers write in cafes? At a writers conference awhile back a novelist-instructor made a disparaging comment to the tune of NO. As if coffee houses only attracted dilettantes and amateurs and poseurs. However, I say that any trick that helps you get words on the page is legitimate.

What seems impossible for one writer is another’s perfect modus operandi. For example, Stephen King blasts heavy metal music. Susan Wiggs writes in long-hand. Bob Mayer writes in collaboration with Jennifer Crucie. Another novelist (can’t remember who, unfortunately) wrote his first novel on the commuter train to and from work. And how many Mom-novelists have you read about who get up at 5:00 a.m. or who write in bitty increments throughout the day as they get the chance?

All those methods seem impossible to me, but sit me down in a coffee house where I can woolgather while people-watching and somehow my synapses start firing. Besides, everyone knows that J.K. Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter in a coffee house. And look how that turned out!

Groggy But Writing…

Posted on March 25, 2008 by lalber

Last weekend, two friends mentioned that they read my humble blog regularly, and I was (absurdly) pleased to hear it. The point of these blogs is to be read, but still, I was surprised: A few people out there in cyber-ether keep up on me? One of them went so far as to mention that I have an exciting life. Hah! That goes to show that I’m a fiction writer — I can dramatize anything. My life is pleasantly dull, but if I can fool all of you then more power to me!

I have no deep thoughts today, but in honor of Jen and Carmen I thought I’d write anyhow. I know I’ll come up with something off the cuff, because writers can do that as well as dramatize…

Last week I didn’t write. However, yesterday was a gangbusters day, so I guess I did need a week to marinate. My friend Liz put in nicely in her comment to last Friday’s post: “It’s easy to outpace one’s creativity, especially toward the end. The mind needs some down time to assemble all the pieces correctly.”

Yep! Thanks, Liz!

Today I’m off to a slower start (time-out to write this post is the big clue). In fact, here’s an example of typical me on a typical writing day:

This morning, in bed, groggy, eyeballs gluey, stewing about today’s scene. I know its premise: two men looking for a woman who has disappeared, one of them the brother, one of them the love interest; plus, a dog they’re hoping has a decent tracking nose (it doesn’t). But what about this scene? I already know they’re not going to find her (yet)…So, what’s it all about? It feels boring — so is it meant to be a set-up scene for more to come? Is that kosher? What actually HAPPENS in this scene? What’s its plot? What’s going on? Why am I writing it? What the heck am I doing? (And so on.)

That was my groggy mind this morning. In the midst of these thoughts, the phone rang, a high-school buddy calling to remind me that I was supposed to have met her for coffee 20 minutes previously!

There you go. My hapless writer’s life in a nutshell.

Dropped the Writing Ball This Week

Posted on March 21, 2008 by lalber

Why is it that after a great writing roll, I lose momentum? I haven’t written a word this week, and I’m feeling overly critical of myself at the moment. I’m sure this happens to many writers, but I find it puzzling because nothing momentous occurred to throw me off my routines. In fact, it’s been a quiet week (perhaps too quiet for my own good?).

Admittedly, I’m on deadline for a freelance job, but this task only took over my afternoon hours. Every morning, I got up as usual…then didn’t get the writing done. This, even though my characters were the last “people” on my mind as I drifted off to sleep and the first when I woke up. And even though I re-read the last 60 pages that I’d written in a fast whirl to get a grip on them, brainstormed, and so on. It’s not like I haven’t been thinking about my story.

But still, I get itchy when there are no actual pages to show for my mental activity.

Three possible factors for this malingering week:

I needed to re-fill my creativity cup.
I’m on the home stretch and resisting “The End.” I’ve been living with these characters for so long…
I’m uncertain about the story’s resolution. Is something not right? Could be, but I won’t know what this something is until I write through to the end anyhow.

To quote a writer (can’t remember who, when, or where) I heard awhile back:

“Even if you think it’s crap, you gotta get it down on the page.”

A Guinness? Please!

Posted on March 17, 2008 by lalber

Saturday night I found myself at Kell’s Pub with a writer-friend named Bonnie. She was in town for a night, and we caught up on our gossip and writerly doings in the midst of partying 20-somethings. We’d originally met on the Maui Writers Conference circuit, and, speaking of St. Patrick and all good things Irish, we roomed together during an Irish writers retreat in 2006.

Here we are at the Rock of Cashel, County Tipperary.

We get on well for many reasons. We believe in each others’ writing (she’s the better artist, actually), aren’t drama-queens, and appreciate space and independent behavior. In fact, she’d heard the following through the small-world-writers-conference grapevine — it’s truly bizarre how insular and petty that world can be: Apparently, we earned ourselves a snobbish reputation during the retreat!

One evening after a day of writing and workshopping, a few of us decided to dine together. Word went around, and our cozy group of four turned into a loud and demanding 25. I couldn’t stand it. Neither could Bonnie. So we opted out with nice excuses and ended up at a local’s pub (no tourists there!). We ate our sandwiches and sipped our Guinnesses alongside a couple of old codgers we barely understood. This was perfect for us.

Were we snobs? Maybe, maybe not. Our flight wasn’t personal to any individual — it was the herd itself. Peer dynamics can be tough for those of us with lone-wolf tendencies. Besides, what difference could our departure possibly have had on the rest of the group? None. Or so we innocently assumed as we said our goodbyes.

I raise a St. Patrick’s Day toast to all “snobbish” individualists everywhere!

Slainte!

P.S. Check out this St. Patrick.

I snapped this shot in a village church during a 2004 novel-research trip. At the time, it struck me as, uh, colorful. Not the usual saintly statue so worth remembering. Low and behold, the image came in handy a few months ago when he made a surprise cameo appearance in my current first draft.

Ode to a Neighborhood Cafe

Posted on March 14, 2008 by lalber

An era has ended, and I hadn’t realized I was in a mini-funk until today.

I previously mentioned Kodi’s in this post. Alas, Kodi’s is yet another independent coffee house to bite the dust. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m at a loss. I mean really, how can a coffee house closure mean so much?

The answer is complicated because it relates to an internal conflict I face each writing day: I’m prone to restlessness (with routines), rebelliousness against “the man” (which means against myself since I’m my own boss), and nocturnal habits (yet I don’t write well at night).

The challenging part of my writing life is what I call “being a good girl,” which means me — the restless, rebellious, nocturnal woman — fashioning a work week around dull and clean-living habits. This requires more self-discipline out of me than the writing itself!

Unfortunately, to pseudo-quote The Shining by Stephen King: All work and no play makes Lisa a dull girl (with a blocked brain). I have to work with my restless, rebellious self, not banish it. I’ve tried banishment: disaster. Thus, my optimal writing life must also include room for impulsive, procrastinatory, random people-time, which pacifies my bad-girl tendencies just enough to keep me balanced, happy, and writing (happier still).

To this end, Kodi’s was the perfect outlet and therefore crucial to my writing life. Kodi’s was a neighborhood coffee house with a crew of regulars — at least one of whom was sure to be lounging around when I entered — and an owner who became a friend.

Last Thursday during the wake we held after Kodi’s final day, I realized that I wasn’t the only discomposed regular. Our talk over beers and fancy alcoholic coffee drinks revolved around the next nearest cafe and whether it had plush chairs and decent mochas and friendly baristas and WiFi.

My writing life aside, our conversation got me thinking that in our rush-rush-rush, depersonalized world, the break-up of any family — even our rag-tag crew of Kodi’s eccentrics — is ample cause for a mini-funk. I’ll find a new outlet to assuage my bad-girl tendencies; however, I wonder how easily I’ll find such a merry and welcoming coffee-house community.

A Million Little Pieces of Malarkey

Posted on March 4, 2008 by lalber

(Skip to the end of this rant of a post for two happy thoughts — gotta keep a balance.)

Remember the furor over James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces a couple of years ago? Namely, that he fabricated most of his memoir? And Oprah blew a gasket?

Memoirist — I take that back — novelist Margaret Seltzer one-upped Frey big time when she wrote a tale that did not remotely resemble her nice-white-girl life. A few nuggets of truth burbled below the surface of Frey’s fabrication while Seltzer’s book was 100% hoax. Here’s a link to the International Herald Tribune write-up.

In Love and Consequences, Seltzer depicted herself as a half-Native American foster child in South-Central Los Angeles, which led to a gang-banger life of violence and drugs. In reality, Seltzer comes from stable, well-educated, upper-middle-class family.

Apparently, she knows people from that area of Los Angeles, and she wanted to tell their stories. What a wondrous reason to fabricate “proof” of her fake identity! She snowed both her agent and publisher over a number of years. Congratulations to her for excellence in long-term subterfuge — a true talent, that.

Here’s the pity: The South-Central stories do deserve to be told, and Seltzer blew a marvelous opportunity. If she were truly altruistic she would have written the stories as theirs, not hers. I don’t buy her good intentions as quoted in the International Herald Tribune article. Anyone can generate positive spin after the fact. Besides, she’s already proven herself an expert liar.

We live in a 15-minutes-of-fame, reality-impaired era. I can’t help but wonder if this is the heart of it for Seltzer and never mind that in the process she diminished the true plight of many South-Central teenagers.

I don’t know why I’m surprised by a fake memoir. The blur between reality and fiction on all media fronts gets ever blurrier.

I salute the following wonderfully legitimate memoirs:

   Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
   Shutterbabe by Deborah Copaken Kogan
   The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
   Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
   The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr

Last but not least, here are my happy bits:

1. The last early-warning sign of spring and the best of all: The yearly return of a mallard pair to the stream next to my building!

2. I passed the 300-page mark of my first draft!

What I Learned From a Bestselling Novelist

Posted on March 1, 2008 by lalber

Last weekend during my impromptu Puget Sound writers retreat (I wrote 32 pages!) I spoke to New York Times bestselling novelist Susan Wiggs at a book event. That I’d met her once before and that we have at least one mutual friend went a long way toward alleviating my tendency to clam up in the presence of novelists of stature. It also helped that she is down-to-earth and friendly.

Ms. Wiggs was a font of information about what life can be like in the publishing big leagues.

For example, did you know that…

1. …publishng contracts can include bonuses for landing on the NYT bestseller list? Or that it behooves us to negotiate favorable reversion rights so that we can regain ownership of our out-of-print novels? This is especially true should our books gain a fan-base. On the other hand, once we become bestsellers all our old publishers will rush to reprint those older novels anyhow — money in the bank for everyone involved.

2. …there is a smoke-and-mirrors aspect to the business that publishers readily exploit for the greater bottom-line? Here are a few examples: Designing the cover art with the novelist’s name bigger and bolder than the title to lend it that “bestseller” look even though the novelist hasn’t attained that status (yet). Or, negotiating favorable positioning inside one of the major chains (in custom risers in the front of the store; you’ve seen them) for an entire first print run — which in essence also gives the novel a “bestseller” appearance.

3. …many novelists at Ms. Wigg’s level incorporate themselves? Recently, a friend told me that National Book Award winner Denis Johnson recently inc’d himself. My impression is that becoming a limited liability this or that (jargon unknown to me) is pretty standard. And it makes sense, too, for tax and personal liability reasons.

4. …steadily increasing sales over many books is often preferable for a long-lived publishing career than the bidding-war-big-bucks first novel? Second-novel syndrome in which the second novel can’t hope to compare to the phenomonal first has sunk many a novelist.

5. …at the bestseller-dom level, the novelist and publisher may engage in a collaborative roundtable to generate story ideas? These brainstorming sessions include the marketing department, which may have veto power because there’s so much at stake. Call it a symbiotic relationsip: publisher committing to marketing and publicity bucks (which land novelists on the bestseller lists when all is said and done) and in return author commiting to one or two novels a year to keep the momentum going.

Number five fascinated me, especially when Ms. Wiggs mentioned that she still gets rejected (at the idea level not at the written-manuscript level).

Besides rejection, Ms. Wiggs still faces her writing group with potentially crappy drafts and expects the truth from them; still gets red-lined by her editors; still battles with story ideas that don’t necessarily pan out in the writing.

She’s still a novelist writing one sentence at a time like the rest of us. And, she works hard. She mentioned that she’d be reading page proofs (a tedious task) after dinner on Saturday night and before breakfast the next morning. I forgot to ask her whether she ever gets an entire weekend away from her characters…