state of gloom

Most writers are in a state of gloom a good deal of the time; they need perpetual reassurance. - John Hall Wheelock

I feel you, Wheelock.


John Hall Wheelock. 1886–1978

Sunday Evening in the Common

LOOK—on the topmost branches of the world
The blossoms of the myriad stars are thick;
Over the huddled rows of stone and brick,
A few, sad wisps of empty smoke are curled
Like ghosts, languid and sick.

One breathless moment now the city's moaning
Fades, and the endless streets seem vague and dim;
There is no sound around the whole world's rim,
Save in the distance a small band is droning
Some desolate old hymn.

Van Wyck, how often have we been together
When this same moment made all mysteries clear;
—The infinite stars that brood above us here,
And the gray city in the soft June weather,
So tawdry and so dear!

Say wha!?

Yesterday, May 20th, was Eliza Dolittle Day, the day set aside each year to celebrate all the glory that is Eliza Dolittle and George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion and the movie My Fair Lady. No, I hadn't heard of it before yesterday either.

Theatre geeks and Audrey Hepburn fans will remember Eliza Dolittle as the Cockney flower girl taught to speak "proper" English by Professor Henry Higgins in order to pass as a duchess and win a bet for the good professor. Hearing about Eliza Dolittle Day on NPR yesterday made me start thinking about language: how it changes and when the "improper" or slang becomes "proper" and standard. PBS online has a great piece on language change, The Truth About Language.

This year it became okay to "unfriend" someone, especially if they became your most recent "frienemy." Last night I went online and bought a "groupon," a one-day only coupon sold exclusively online in groups (except that you don't have to have a group or purchase as a group, you can buy just one, which seemed odd to me). Last Saturday I sent off a "slice-of-life" story for a contest. The word limit was 1,500 words, which makes it too long to be a "short-short" or "flash fiction" but, to those holding the contest, was not to be mistaken with a traditional short story.

It seems like life is finite, objects are finite (even though we arrange, deconstruct, and reconstruct them in new ways all the time) but language has the potential of the infinite, the limitlessness (Is that even a word?). Case in point, recently I joked with my husband that I often felt nervous on social network sites like Facebook. Do I accept a friend request or ignore it? Are my comments clever enough? Why do I feel anxious when no one "likes" my status update? I coined this feeling Social Network Anxiety Disorder or SNAD, only to find out a few days later that SNAD has been diagnosed already, at least by sociologists if not psychologists.

My point is this. I may not like it when people drop there "g"s on words, as in "fixin' to" and "makin' a" or when "converse," as in "She and I conversed about the subject" becomes "conversate," as in "Yeah, we conversate." It's like fighting the tide. I even read in William Zinsser's classic on writing, On Writing Well, that's its okay to end a sentence in a preposition, lest one sound snooty.

So, I guess it's like this, yo. Say wha!? 'liza Dolittle Day waz yesterday? Na! Fer real? Damn! I gotta friend her. Strait up!

Thought for the Day

Today's thought comes from William Zinsser's On Writing Well.

Writing is like a good watch--it should run smoothly and have no extra parts.

Good News for the Book Industry

From Publishers Weekly - May 14, 2010

Bookstore sales rose 1.6% in March, to $1.01 billion, according to preliminary estimates released this morning from the U.S. Census Bureau. For the first quarter of 2010, bookstore sales were up 1.2%, to $4.32 billion. Sales for 2009 have been restated as were sales January and February. For the entire retail segment, March sales rose 10.8% and for the quarter were up 6.2%

.

Increased bookstore sales is great news for the book industry. If you're buying books, remember to spread the love around and purchase books at your local, independent bookstore. I love B & N and Borders, but don't forget to help the little guy (and gal) stay in business and compete with the big dogs. You'll often find a more knowledgeable staff and friendlier service at your local, indie bookstore.

Be part of the story with IndieBound.

Keep the Literary Faith

It's easy to get down on your writing efforts. To let things slide to the point that you wake up one day and realize you haven't written in weeks, months. The manuscript you've been working on is collecting dust, and you find yourself brainlessly answering friends' and family's inescapable inquires into "How's the book coming?" with a pathetic, zombified "It's coming." But, you're lying. It's not coming.

Let's band together to keep the literary faith. We must. We sit in our offices, at our kitchen tables, at the back booth of Panera alone, wandering the dark corridors of our psyches, opening doors, peering in at the memories and impressions heaped up, the treasures of a sentimental horder, in the darkest corners of our subconscious. We must keep the faith, keep writing, and keep connected.

In her essay "Better and Sicker," writer Loorie Moore writes:

Obviously one must keep a certain amount of literary faith, and not be afraid to travel with one's work into margins and jungles and danger zones, and one should also live with someone who can cook and who will both be with one and leave one alone. But there is no formula, to the life or to the work, and all any writer finally knows are the little decisions he or she has been forced to make, given the particular choices. There's no golden recipe. Most things literary are stubborn as colds; they resist all formulas - a chemist's, a wet nurse's, a magician's. Finally, there is no formula outside the sick devotion to the work. Perhaps one would be wise when young even to avoid thinking of oneself as a writer - for there's something a little stopped and satisfied, too healthy, in that. Better to think of writing, of what one does as an activity, rather than an identity - to write, I write; we write; to keep the calling a verb rather than a noun; to keep working at the thing, at all hours, in all places, so that your life does not become a pose, a pornography of wishing.

I write; you write; we write.
Keep the literary faith, friends.

Thought for the Day

Trust your writer's instinct. If a passage, a story, an element of your fiction seems unnatural or forced. It probably is. But, keep the faith, that writing is a craft, not magic, and everything can be fixed - even if that means throwing it in the trash and starting over.

The wastepaper basket is the writer's best friend. - Issac B. Singer

The same can be said for the backspace and the delete keys.

Setting in Fiction - and other stuff I got wrong the first time

So I haven't posted in over a month. I've been practicing major writing avoidance behavior. We'll lovely refer to these patterns of behavior collectively as WAB. WAB, as most writers have experienced at one time or another, involves such behavior as talking with others about writing but not writing, reading about writing but not writing, buying books about writing but not writing, writing in one's head but not writing on paper or screen, dreaming about writing but not ... You get the picture.

Much has happened. My WAB started a few days after my last post. The initial joy I felt after my editor's warm reception of my novel's first few pages was quickly followed by pain and heartbreak. Not about the novel concept. Well, not entirely. But, definitely about the novel's setting. I stubbornly tried to convince her and myself I could "layer in" details about the setting, or I could visit northern Idaho (I live along the coast of northeast Florida)and spend a week or so getting the "feel" of the place. Okay, okay, I know. It was a cheap trick. Pictures and websites on the Internet couldn't give me the experience I needed to write convincingly about the setting. The manuscript read like a weak echo of an echo of a sound. There was no there there.

Finally, I took her advice. First - because she's brilliant and I trust her. And, second - because that's what I'm paying her for. She was right. I needed to change the setting. But, to where? After much hand wringing and more than a few vodka and cranberries, I settled on Fernandina Beach, Florida on Amelia Island (renamed Leon Beach and Annabel Island in the novel. Right up the road from Jacksonville, Amelia Island is scenic and folksy, full of southern charm and some other aspects of southern history and culture I find offensive and distasteful. Most important, the setting is secluded, has the small-town feel I wanted, and lends itself to stories of both romance and the paranormal, which are all crucial to the story.

Of course, this means all but a handful of the pages I've written already are useless. To be fair, they're not useless. Writing the first draft did help me understand I need to keep the major themes of the work focused and few in number. I was taking on too much. But, I had over 32,000 words. I was getting so close to mid-point in the plot I could taste it. And, it tasted good.

Okay, breathe. If I keep thinking about it, I'll spiral into WAB again. On a good note, I did rewrite chapter one in the new setting and my editor loved the setting change and the pages. So, yeah! Since then, I've been taking on freelance writing and editing jobs to bring in some cash - because being a broke, unpublished novelist is sad and depressing. I haven't shopped seriously for clothes in months.

So, that's been my writing life this past month or so. Starting over is such fun. I plan on posting a brief description of the novel and a few opening pages soon. I'd love to get feedback. Just, please, for the love of all that is good and beautiful, don't tell me to change the setting.

These learned folks had the following to say about setting:

“The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” Flannery O’Connor

“Every human event happens somewhere, and the reader wants to know what that somewhere was like.” William Zinsser

“He [the writer] must create, stroke by stroke, powerfully convincing characters and settings.” John Gardner

“The size of the setting also defines the fictional dimension.” William Sloane