Today I sent off an application to Ledig House in upstate New York, a writing colony that seems to have a particularly international slant in that a large percentage of people attending come from outside the US. Starting the colony application process all over again has made me thoughtful...you have to answer those impossible Miss America-like questions such as "What is your book about?" or "How would you describe your creative process?" You're pulling together the recommendations and the SASEs and writing your little essays and then it begins to feel like you're the world's oldest and most hopeless high school senior applying to a "stretch school" like Harvard. Bottom line is: Everybody wants this. Why should they choose you?
But there was something different about it this time. Ledig House requested a sample of recently published work and I just took an advance reader copy of the book and plunked it in the envelope. That sure as hell was easier than torturing myself with some 25 page writing sample. And I was also thinking it was sort of a strategic thing to do - hard to say who will be reading the applications but it's another way to get my book out there, to have someone outside my small circle come in contact with it. For so long, being a writer has been about explaining what I want to be but at some point - maybe just holding the advance reader copy in my hands - it became more about what I already am.
So I sent off the book and said "I want to write a sequel to this."
There's also the matter of when to go. The book comes out March 29, 2010 and I feel like the Mayans, like my calendar suddenly ends with a set date. I honestly cannot imagine anythng beyond the publication of the book. For all I know on March 30, 2010 the sun will rise in the west. My experiences with my published friends has given me clear warning that problably nothing will change....the book will come out and my life will go on pretty much as it always has. To expect life changing events to follow publication is foolish. The cruel part is that your publisher wants you to be "available" for the first three months following the hardcover publication of a novel, presumably to deal with the flood of interview requests and reviews and demands for appearnaces on Oprah that are statistically unlikely to come. Hard to say what "available" means, but I think most writers interpret it as "at home, waiting for the phone to ring, and not working on anything else."
I know that I can't do this. I have to make plans for April of next year....and May and June and all the months beyond. So I hope that Ledig House says yes. Or MacDowell or Yaddo or Jentel or UCross or somebody.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
And then we sink
Is there something in the air? For the last week I have heard from a wild and random variety of my writing friends and everybody is in some sort of funk, driving themselves nuts with unanswerable quiestions. What should I be working on? How do I get myself motivated to do it? Why isn't my agent calling me back? My publisher? My publicist? My mother?
It seems during the last few months, agents and editors - never a chatty crew, even under the best of circumstances - have become more silent than ever. Is it the economy? If an agent knows that nobody's buying he's not going to feel any time pressure to sign new people up.....an editor with zero dollars left in the till isn't going to read books she knows she can't buy....and a publicist who's been unable to scare up any publicity in this time of folding magazinses and collapsing newspapers isn't eager to tell her writers that um, no, nothing's happening.
So they don't call us or write us or even call us back and write us back. And we writers - always a neurotic crew, even under the best of circumstances - are, in the absence of any real information, left to do what we do best: tell stories. We tell ourselves and our writer friends horror stories, dreaming up the worst scenarios we can. Our agent isn't really an agent, he's a sociopath who actually works at a chainsaw factory and pretends to be an agent in order to lure unsuspecting would-be novelists to his cabin deep in the snowy woods. Our editor has read the new draft and hates it and is busy trying to get our advance stopped before it leaves the accounting department. Our publicist is in rehab - where she's meeting people who have WAY better stories than ours.
Is everybody else out there in a funk? Or is it just my own little circle?
It seems during the last few months, agents and editors - never a chatty crew, even under the best of circumstances - have become more silent than ever. Is it the economy? If an agent knows that nobody's buying he's not going to feel any time pressure to sign new people up.....an editor with zero dollars left in the till isn't going to read books she knows she can't buy....and a publicist who's been unable to scare up any publicity in this time of folding magazinses and collapsing newspapers isn't eager to tell her writers that um, no, nothing's happening.
So they don't call us or write us or even call us back and write us back. And we writers - always a neurotic crew, even under the best of circumstances - are, in the absence of any real information, left to do what we do best: tell stories. We tell ourselves and our writer friends horror stories, dreaming up the worst scenarios we can. Our agent isn't really an agent, he's a sociopath who actually works at a chainsaw factory and pretends to be an agent in order to lure unsuspecting would-be novelists to his cabin deep in the snowy woods. Our editor has read the new draft and hates it and is busy trying to get our advance stopped before it leaves the accounting department. Our publicist is in rehab - where she's meeting people who have WAY better stories than ours.
Is everybody else out there in a funk? Or is it just my own little circle?
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Is a feedback, or merely an opinion?
Last week Dawn and I were talking about feedback - talking about it in the context of my visit to the independent booksellers trade show and the strange phenominom that once you have written a book people feel like they know you. They touch you, they talk to you in a sort of presumptious way ("You know what you should do? Here's what you should do...."), they analyze your book's title right in front of you as if you're either blind and deaf or not present at all.
It's a bit much and as I was trying to figure out how to process all this I said something about staying open to feedback and Dawn broke in and said "Well, you know, they're not giving you feedback. They're just giving you an opinion."
We began to mull over the difference between feedback and opinions and came up with these things.
1. Feedback is solicited. You pass out a chapter at your writing group or ask a friend to read through your manuscript. This is totally different from strangers who just come up and start jawing at you.
2. Feedback is specific. It speaks to certain flaws or strengths within the work - "The dialogue at the top of page 29 doesn't feel realistic" or "Maybe this chapter should end with the image of the melting ice cream." It doesn't reside in general statements like "I loved this book" or "I just didn't get it."
3. Feedback is directed toward a work in progress. You solicit feedback because the book/story/article is unfinished and the things you hear might help you make the work better. Once it's finished, published, and in the bookstores, it's too late for feedback. All anyone can give you at that point is opinion.
4. When you take all three of these points together, it's clear that indeed the sole purpose of feedback is to make a work better. The person giving feedback isn't trying to force the writer into changing their story or shifting POV or in any way writing the book that they secretly wish they could write. The person giving feedback wants to make this book more of what the writer envisioned, not change the writer's vision. Opinions, I suspect, are more about what the reader wishes was on the page.
So...you know the old rant about opinions. They're like assholes - everybody has one. And this is true, that you can't let opinions hurt you very much because they're not really about you, they're more about the person who is speaking. That's hard to remember in the heat of the moment.
Next time someone offers me their opinion, I'll smile and nod and say "Thank you for your opinion." But I'll also try to let that opinion run over me like water. Because unless their thoughts about my book are a) solicited b) specific c) timely and d) truly in service of the quality of my work, they have no relevance. There certainly are a lot of words in the world aren't there?
Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.
It's a bit much and as I was trying to figure out how to process all this I said something about staying open to feedback and Dawn broke in and said "Well, you know, they're not giving you feedback. They're just giving you an opinion."
We began to mull over the difference between feedback and opinions and came up with these things.
1. Feedback is solicited. You pass out a chapter at your writing group or ask a friend to read through your manuscript. This is totally different from strangers who just come up and start jawing at you.
2. Feedback is specific. It speaks to certain flaws or strengths within the work - "The dialogue at the top of page 29 doesn't feel realistic" or "Maybe this chapter should end with the image of the melting ice cream." It doesn't reside in general statements like "I loved this book" or "I just didn't get it."
3. Feedback is directed toward a work in progress. You solicit feedback because the book/story/article is unfinished and the things you hear might help you make the work better. Once it's finished, published, and in the bookstores, it's too late for feedback. All anyone can give you at that point is opinion.
4. When you take all three of these points together, it's clear that indeed the sole purpose of feedback is to make a work better. The person giving feedback isn't trying to force the writer into changing their story or shifting POV or in any way writing the book that they secretly wish they could write. The person giving feedback wants to make this book more of what the writer envisioned, not change the writer's vision. Opinions, I suspect, are more about what the reader wishes was on the page.
So...you know the old rant about opinions. They're like assholes - everybody has one. And this is true, that you can't let opinions hurt you very much because they're not really about you, they're more about the person who is speaking. That's hard to remember in the heat of the moment.
Next time someone offers me their opinion, I'll smile and nod and say "Thank you for your opinion." But I'll also try to let that opinion run over me like water. Because unless their thoughts about my book are a) solicited b) specific c) timely and d) truly in service of the quality of my work, they have no relevance. There certainly are a lot of words in the world aren't there?
Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
God, but there's a lot of people in this room
Just got back from California, a trip to Napa and Sonoma to celebrate my son Jordan turning 21. We had WAY too good of a time. Gorgeous weather, stunning scenery, fantastic food...and we sampled 102 wines in three days. Let me do the math for you. That's 34 wines a day. Granted, they were tastings, not full glasses, but once you multiply 34 times anything you get a friggin lot of wine.
Anyway, very fun trip. And the chance to see my son as not just my son but as also a friend/commrade/equal.
While out there, I read Bel Canto. I know, I know, I'm late getting to it but I wanted to read it for two reasons related to Ballroom. (Which is what I'm now calling the book which was previously cleverly titled Book Three.) First of all, Bel Canto involves a hostage situation, which is playing a part in the - and I use this term loosely - plot of Ballroom. Secondly, she uses a multiple third person point of view. I counted as many as eleven point of view characters until I got so overwhelmed that - somewhat like the wines - I simply stopped counting. She happily jumped from one POV character to another within the chapter and scene without space breaks or any structural clues. Someone in my writing group had warned me this would be hard to do but it seemed to work fine. As a reader I was never confused nor frustrated.
So I'm feeling that it's possible. Third person scares me a little. I'm more used to first person. But this book requires a lot of hopping around - a large part of the theme is that different things look different to different people. And there's no way to present this "fractured truth" theme without not only multiple POVs but also rapidly cycling POVs.
Wish me luck.
Anyway, very fun trip. And the chance to see my son as not just my son but as also a friend/commrade/equal.
While out there, I read Bel Canto. I know, I know, I'm late getting to it but I wanted to read it for two reasons related to Ballroom. (Which is what I'm now calling the book which was previously cleverly titled Book Three.) First of all, Bel Canto involves a hostage situation, which is playing a part in the - and I use this term loosely - plot of Ballroom. Secondly, she uses a multiple third person point of view. I counted as many as eleven point of view characters until I got so overwhelmed that - somewhat like the wines - I simply stopped counting. She happily jumped from one POV character to another within the chapter and scene without space breaks or any structural clues. Someone in my writing group had warned me this would be hard to do but it seemed to work fine. As a reader I was never confused nor frustrated.
So I'm feeling that it's possible. Third person scares me a little. I'm more used to first person. But this book requires a lot of hopping around - a large part of the theme is that different things look different to different people. And there's no way to present this "fractured truth" theme without not only multiple POVs but also rapidly cycling POVs.
Wish me luck.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Tell Them a Story
I'm in therapy now for the pretty much sole purpose of trying to figure out how to navigate being an author (which feels weird) while at the same time being an author (which feels normal). And while talking to my therapist Kevin it occurred to me that when people ask you a question they don't want you to answer that question.
Of course they don't. I don't know why I've been so slow in figuring this out.
I talked to my friend Jason today. An architect who lives in New York, one of my MacDowell buddies. And he said "When they ask you something like, for example, 'How does it feel to publish your book?" what they're really asking is 'How will it feel for me when I publish my book?'" In other words all anybody really is ever asking about is themselves - and I think he's quite right. He suggested I respond to questions with a question, i.e., when someone says "How does it feel to publish?" I should immediately turn it back around and say "How do you expect it to feel when you publish?"
And once again I think he's quite right - as long as I'm talking ot that person one on one, such as in an interview or as part of my role as a teacher in an MFA program. I owe people something in that context.
But if the question comes in a group, such as a trade show or public reading, I'm not sure I can afford to engage every questioner on that level. Both Dawn and Alison have warned me not to "give too much" and I am beginning to know what they mean. If you engage too personally with every random questioner you'll not only wear yourself out, but you'll also fail to please your listener.
So, along with Keven's help, I've devised another plan. A way to go into a public author persona that both protects me and satisfies the questioner.
And that's just to tell them a story. When someone says "What is it like...." they don't really want an answer to this question. What they want is for you to tell them a story, a nice encapsulated egg-shaped answer. I don't think this will be hard. I have already come up with 20 or so "official" stories about the creative process. The stories are accurate and engaging and interesting - but they're just stories. It doesn't wear me out to tell them. It doesn't make me feel violated to tell them.
So here's the new plan. Don't answer questions. Tell stories. That's what I am - a storyteller. It's a fair thing for them to ask me to do. It's a fair thing for me to do back. I know I've written about this before - bear with me, constant readers - but the idea is evolving and I'm trying to get my mind more solidly around it. I can't be expoed and public all the time. I can't parcel myself out in bits and pieces. Alison tried to do that and it almost wore her out. What I can do is tell them a story.
Of course they don't. I don't know why I've been so slow in figuring this out.
I talked to my friend Jason today. An architect who lives in New York, one of my MacDowell buddies. And he said "When they ask you something like, for example, 'How does it feel to publish your book?" what they're really asking is 'How will it feel for me when I publish my book?'" In other words all anybody really is ever asking about is themselves - and I think he's quite right. He suggested I respond to questions with a question, i.e., when someone says "How does it feel to publish?" I should immediately turn it back around and say "How do you expect it to feel when you publish?"
And once again I think he's quite right - as long as I'm talking ot that person one on one, such as in an interview or as part of my role as a teacher in an MFA program. I owe people something in that context.
But if the question comes in a group, such as a trade show or public reading, I'm not sure I can afford to engage every questioner on that level. Both Dawn and Alison have warned me not to "give too much" and I am beginning to know what they mean. If you engage too personally with every random questioner you'll not only wear yourself out, but you'll also fail to please your listener.
So, along with Keven's help, I've devised another plan. A way to go into a public author persona that both protects me and satisfies the questioner.
And that's just to tell them a story. When someone says "What is it like...." they don't really want an answer to this question. What they want is for you to tell them a story, a nice encapsulated egg-shaped answer. I don't think this will be hard. I have already come up with 20 or so "official" stories about the creative process. The stories are accurate and engaging and interesting - but they're just stories. It doesn't wear me out to tell them. It doesn't make me feel violated to tell them.
So here's the new plan. Don't answer questions. Tell stories. That's what I am - a storyteller. It's a fair thing for them to ask me to do. It's a fair thing for me to do back. I know I've written about this before - bear with me, constant readers - but the idea is evolving and I'm trying to get my mind more solidly around it. I can't be expoed and public all the time. I can't parcel myself out in bits and pieces. Alison tried to do that and it almost wore her out. What I can do is tell them a story.
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