Ideas, part 2: Keeping Organized
Go on, laugh! (If you know me, you know that I have absolutely no business offering organizational tips, because I am an incorrigible slob. HOWEVER, with three published books under my belt I figure I must be doing something right. Right?) So here's my 'system,' and I'm telling you about it partly to jump-start my own tush into actually using it again.
1. The Moleskine Notebook.
This is always the first point of capture—I never go anywhere without a notebook. I like Moleskine notebooks because they've got a pocket in the back for collecting loose notes, little inspiring things I find in my travels, or just things I like to keep with me (vintage postcards, a strangely-shaped leaf, my grandfather's prayer card). (Gee, I could really use a couple more for Christmas...haha.)
[Edit, 2013: My new favorite notebooks are Ecosystem, since they are made in America of sustainable materials. Moleskine notebooks are made in China.]
2. The Rolly File.
I wrote about the rolodex here. I haven't actually used this system in awhile, but I'll definitely be returning to it for my next adult novel. There are simply too many bits and bobs (period details, funny turns of phrase, historical anecdotes, &c.) to keep track of any other way.
3. The Brain Dump.
This is when you take a big sheet of paper (I used newsprint left over from a drawing class I took at Parsons a gazillion years ago), label it with your working title in the center, and start filling in the page with characters' names and their relationships to one another, their histories and motivations, along with anything else that occurs to you—plot points, epigraphs, research reminders or cross references...anything at all to do with your story. The brain dump is loads (har, har) of fun, not to mention a 'map' of sorts that you can refer back to again and again as you write. (I'll talk about how I outline in a future post.)
Mind map for The Boy From Tomorrow.
(I'm not giving anything away by showing you this, since I doubt this story will ever make it off my hard drive.)
4. Scrivener.
One of my Yaddo buddies, Cole, gave me a brief run-down of the features of this neat-o word processing and organizational program last year, and I eventually downloaded a copy of my own. It's got a virtual binder, so instead of having this unwieldy Word doc full of unfinished scenes, you give each scene its own page, so it's all that much easier to keep track of. I started another Scrivener project called "The Repository" and that's where I'm keeping my notes and ideas for all the stories apart from the one I'm currently working on. Infinitely better than a thousand Word docs across several dozen folders! (Also, it's going to make all the little pieces of Moon 2.0 SO much easier to manage—if I ever do get to write the second edition. SIGH. Still on hold indefinitely.) And there are a lot of other features I haven't even gotten around to exploring yet.
I swing back and forth between wanting everything in ink on paper (hard drive failure! DISASTER!!!) and having everything in a file on the laptop (too much gee-dee paper everywhere); it's like I always feel I could be more organized if I did it the other way from how I'm currently doing it. Ultimately the best method seems to be half and half: first scribbling each idea down in a notebook, then either inputting it into Scrivener (if there's already a place for it) or putting it on a rolly card for future use.
As disorganized as I am, I love hearing about how other people keep their ideas in order. Do you have a 'system'? Leave me a comment!
How the Lion Got his Name
Aslan means "lion" in Turkish. Cool, huh?(Above and below are pics from Hattuşa, the Hittite city.)
People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time. If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now. For when they tried to look at Aslan's face they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great, royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes; and then they found they couldn't look at him and went all trembly.
Aslankaya ("lion stone") in the Phrygian Valley. (The Phrygians were a seafaring race that conquered the Hittites and settled in Anatolia—way inland, which is odd, right?—possibly in the 12th century B.C.)
Ideas, part 1: Fill ’er Up
Last winter I gave a presentation to my friend Kathy's class on creativity at Temple. By 'presentation,' I mean I packed up all my bits and pieces from The Practice Novel to Petty Magic (notebooks, research materials, rolodex, printed drafts dotted with stickies), laid it all out on a table at the front of the classroom, and said this is how I work.It was an early morning class at the beginning of the semester (sigh, two strikes already). Kathy and I were the only people in the room who weren't looking like zombies. (Only one student asked a question: "Are you left-handed?") I was feeling all pumped up and enthusiastic and I kept thinking what a shame it was that nobody in the class was awake enough to be interested. Then I thought, duh, why not blog it?My notes from that presentation fell into three stages: where I find my ideas, how I organize them (or, ahem, attempt to), and how I eventually use them (this part's fun because I can show you a passage from the finished book and then tell you where the idea originally came from). So, onto part 1!Like I said, a huge part of preparing myself to write is 'filling up': reading on any topic that interests me, traveling in search of new experiences, savoring music and plays and art and movies. I hope this is obvious, but I feel the need to clarify here: when I say I get ideas watching a movie or reading somebody else's novel, I don't mean I use somebody else's ideas. The idea I get usually doesn't have all that much to do with the thing that triggered it; oftentimes it's a single word that sparks an entirely new idea. Either that, or it takes someone else's idea in a different direction (e.g., I made up 'Everyday Life in the Twenty-First Century: A Handbook for the Chronologically Displaced' in Mary Modern, and realized ages later that my subconscious must have been thinking back to the 'Handbook for the Recently Deceased' in Beetlejuice).Anyway, here's the list I made of places I find inspiration:1. Strangers (crazy or not) on public transportation.One evening on New Jersey Transit a wild-haired man ran through the car shouting "Beware the marsh bandits!" Someday I will use this.2. Pop culture--movies and television.
3. Reading eclectically.I read a lot of books about espionage before/while I was writing Petty Magic--until it's research, it's just for fun. Details are so important, especially when it comes to historical fiction, and it was neat to collect facts and tidbits I knew I could use later on (Allied planes dropping bits of tinfoil to jam Nazi radar, leaving messages in toilet roll dispensers, etc.) I also found the stories of individual spies (Violet Szabo and "The White Rabbit" in particular) really inspirational; it didn't seem plausible that my hero could escape the Nazis until I read that F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas had done it multiple times (and even when his escape attempts failed, he survived).(I think I'll write about research in a future post.)4. Music.I went to Berlin to do some Petty Magic research in September 2008, and brought home a 4-CD set of cabaret music from the 1920s. I popped in one of the discs and as soon as Irgenwo auf der Welt ("Somewhere in the World") came on, I knew it belonged in the book.5. Friends' funny lines.You know what they say about Irishmen: all potatoes, no meat.6. Things misheard."Lord of the slippy." If I could tell you what was actually said I never would have gotten the idea.7. Far-off places.
We were ushered through a doorway and up a spiral staircase, and a knight glared at us from a niche halfway up. We reached a landing and passed through a door into an inner courtyard. Here all the architectural periods in the castle's history converged—medieval, faux-medieval, and quaint half-timbering—so that if I hadn't known better I'd have thought I'd stumbled into a warren unawares. Vines of ghost ivy snaked across the stone and wood façades, and griffin-headed gutter spouts high above our heads unleashed the rainwater in roaring cataracts onto the cobblestones. The whole place would have been very charming in summertime, but that night, the last night of the year, the narrow windows reflected nothing but the storm clouds.
(A description of this place.)8. Art.In Petty Magic there's a whole chapter set at the Met. Also, I got the Leuchterweibchen (horned mermaid chandeliers) from a tour of Bunratty Castle and the fanged mermaids from a curio cabinet in a guesthouse in Ecuador.
9. Graveyards (names, histories, mood).It's so true, what John Hurt's character says in the film version of The Field: "I love the smell of a graveyard. 'Tis a sweet and peaceful smell." I like graveyards. Weird as it might sound, contemplating my inevitable demise has only ever spurred my creativity.
Stacked up and ready to go. (An Islamic graveyard outside Göreme, Cappadocia. Elliot took this one.)
(More on names in a previous post.)10. Your own life and family history.That's where the whole idea for Mary Modern came from. (See my author essay at the back of the paperback edition; if you have the hardcover or ebook edition, email me and I'll send it to you.)---Where do you find inspiration?(Next time I'll talk about how I organize my ideas using rolly cards, Moleskine notebooks, "brain dumps," Scrivener, and suchlike. Link to Part 2.)
Savoury War-time Pie
Grandmamma had heartened herself with gin now and again from a bottle produced from somewhere amongst her voluminous black skirts, and was game to the last, if a trifle maudlin.
(from a description of a Soldiers' & Sailors' Wives Club event)
Remember the war-time soup that called for everything in your compost bin? Here's another recipe from the book I was reading at the NLS last winter (Mrs. Dorothy Constance Peel's How We Lived Then, 1914-1918: A Sketch of Social and Domestic Life in England During the War). This time I actually tested it--veganized, of course--and my updated recipe follows the original.
Vegetable Pie with Potato Crust(Meat shortage)
2 onions, 2 carrots, 1 turnip, the outside sticks of half a head of celery, 1/2 lb. artichokes or two potatoes, 1/2 pint bacon-bone stock and 1 oz. lentils. For the pastry, 6 ozs. cooked potatoes (mashed), 6 ozs. flour, 2 ozs. cooking fat, 1 teaspoonful baking-powder.
Wash, clean and prepare the vegetables, cut them into small pieces and arrange them in a pie-dish in layers, putting the lentils, which have previously soaked for twenty-four hours, in the centre; pour over the stock and 1/2 pint of water; put into the oven with a dish over it and bake for 2 hours (or boil in a saucepan and put into a pie-dish afterwards if more convenient). For the paste, steam and mash the potatoes, rub the fat into the flour, then rub in the cooked potatoes, add a pinch of salt and the baking powder; mix to a fairly stiff paste with a little cold water, roll out and place over the vegetables in the pie-dish, trim the edge and mark it neatly, bake in a moderately hot oven for 3/4 hour.
And here's my vegan version:
filling:--two onions--two carrots--three sticks of celery--one turnip--one 6-oz. jar of artichoke hearts--two cups vegetable stock (I used Better Than Bouillon)--one cup lentils (soaked overnight)--salt and pepper--herbs and spices (rosemary, cumin) to taste
pastry:--one medium potato, mashed--1 1/3 cups flour--1/4 cup Earth Balance shortening (half a stick)--1 tsp. baking powder--dash of salt
Preheat oven to 375º. Finely chop all vegetables (including the potato skins!) and sauté with herbs in olive oil until soft. Take off heat and add vegetable stock and pre-soaked lentils. To make the pastry, follow the original instructions (mix the shortening into the dry ingredients, then add the mashed potato, mixing together with a little cold water. It should make a nice easy-to-roll dough). Spoon the filling into a casserole dish (will yield too much filling for a pie plate), roll out the pastry and cover, sealing the edges of the pie with a fork. Bake for 45 minutes, dabbing the crust with a bit of Earth Balance vegan butter if you have it.
Turned out mighty tasty, if I do say so myself!
Edit, 17 September: Kate and Elliot tried out this recipe using two standard pie plates, and as you can see it worked out perfectly:
All that high school vocab finally pays off
(Click on the screenshot for a better view.) How cool is this: today's Dictionary.com word of the day is melismatic, with a usage quote from yours truly. Am I the coolest nerd on the internet? At least for today?
Back to London
Through the shop window at Hope & Greenwood. Diarmuid likes to think of it as the magical sweet shop that only appears once a century--which, fortunately for all us sweet-toothed non-fairy folk, is only a fancy.
And speaking of Diarmuid and fairy creatures (the author, that is), I was delighted to find this marvelous book on display in the side window at Foyle's:
Kate and I arrived around lunchtime (on March 19th), so we met up with Seanan on his break at Foyle's and then went to the National Gallery for the afternoon. The next morning (our only full day in London) we had a big yummy breakfast in view of Tower Bridge, and then did the tour at the Tower of London.
Stealth shot! Seanan hates having his picture taken, but Kate managed to capture him on film (hmm, I guess that's a figure of speech now).
Then we met up with our cousin, Kate Scherer, for dinner. Kate S.'s grandmother Mary was our grandmother Dorothy's sister (you can see a portrait of all five sisters here). We had never met in person before, and as I explained the relationship to my Kate, 'This is like your granddaughter and my granddaughter getting together for dinner.' Once I'd put it that way we were even more excited to meet her.
It was a really nice way to end the trip!
Imaginary Girls: a Q&A with Nova Ren Suma
When I was a teenager I posted a picture from a Mary Engelbreit calendar on Kate's bedroom door. BE KIND TO THY SISTER, it says (it's still up there). Not many may know the depths of true sisterly love. And in the narrow white space above the illustration I wrote, HINT HINT! But my sister doesn't need the hint. We are grateful for each other every day.You may recall that I know Nova Ren Suma from our time at Yaddo last spring. I loved her even before we met in person, and her relationship with her little sister is a big part of why. It was something we had in common--Nova knows the depths, and her brand-new novel, Imaginary Girls, proves it. This lovely, haunting, heartbreaking novel simply could not have been written by a girl without a sister.
They forgot who she was:Something fantastic we could never explain. Someone better and bolder than every one of us. Someone to paint murals and build bridges for. Someone worth every ounce of our love.
So I've got two treats to offer up this fine Monday morning: a copy of Imaginary Girls (which Nova signed over dinner last week) and a Q&A with my friend the author. As you can see, Nova managed to pack a whole lot of awesomeness into only three questions!:1. Do you have any special writerly rituals and/or superstitions?I can be a bit superstitious about writing, and much of it has to do with a great and everlasting fear that all of this will disappear and no longer be "real." I don't like talking about novels in detail out loud before I'm sure they're going to be published. I think I learned my lesson--it felt so at the time--from talking about novels-in-progress before, or talking about an agent request, or something that felt "real" but turned out to burst into nothingness. So I keep my novels close until I feel it's okay to talk about them out loud, because I just don't know. (Really, you never know.)My writerly rituals have included writing with a scarf over my head, like a laptop-size tent, writing forward and never letting myself skip around--a rule I've since broken with the novel I'm writing now that I can't talk too much about since... you know why--and the usual caffeine-related routines to jump start the pages. Fact is, I could use a few magic rituals for when I'm feeling stalled... Taking suggestions! 2. Which do you feel is the very best line you've ever set to paper?A very long time ago, before I published a novel, I wrote a blog post about a paragraph that "I'd save from a burning building." By this I meant that it was the best thing I'd ever written, and out of the 500-page monstrous manuscript otherwise known as my first attempt at writing a novel, it was the only thing I couldn't live without saving. You can read my passionate treatise on the paragraph here. I felt so strongly about that paragraph, so deeply in love with it, that I vowed I'd do something with it.Maybe I wrote that whole novel only for this single paragraph, I told myself. I can't let it die.But... I did let it die. I had to. I had to move on and write other novels. (I hope readers of your blog remember your beautiful, important post about letting go of early novels.)So I think that paragraph I blogged about may be the best thing I've ever written, since I've never felt so confident about a piece of writing before or since. And maybe this unknown and unpublished paragraph feels more beautiful because I can't now find it on my hard-drive, even though I just went searching. Maybe that's how it's meant to be: the best thing I've ever written is a mystery even to me. 3. Desert island reading list. Five titles. Go!The Last Life by Claire Messud--I never tire of rereading this novelInvisible Cities by Italo Calvino--I could read this a hundred thousand times and always discover something newThe Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter--so lush and twisted, I want to read this again and again and againA collection of Alice Munro short stories--comfort foodAnd, especially as this one might give me some useful survival tips, Beauty Queens by Libba Bray [Ed: Funny thing--well, not really, because the book is amazing--The Bloody Chamber is on Deirdre's desert island reading list as well. Mine too. And thanks for all the other great recommendations, Nova!]
Nova's doing a blog tour (in which she reveals secrets related to the book--so fun!) through July 1st, so you can read more about Imaginary Girls on each blog along the tour and on her website. You can also read an excerpt here. And if you don't already follow her on Twitter (@novaren) or have her blog on your reader, you should definitely add it--you writers especially. Her posts are always thought-provoking and inspiring on that front.So to enter this giveaway, just leave a comment and tell me about something you've loved and lost (whether it's a friendship, a special piece of jewelry, something you once wrote and were really proud of...anything!) I'll leave it open through the end of the day on Wednesday, June 29th, then use the random number generator thingamabob. Good luck and enjoy!
Naming Names
Ten sources of ideas for characters' names:1. Former teachers.Me and Mrs. Delaney, my 7th-grade English teacher. I named a whole clan after her.
3. Grave markers.I go name-shopping every time I set foot in a cemetery. Can't help it. This one's from the pioneer graveyard in Munnar. ('Aged 32 ½.' I've never seen someone's age given that precisely on a tombstone.)4. Names you wish your parents had given you instead.Not that middle school would have been any easier for me with a name like Evelyn Harbinger.5. Classmates, friends, friends of friends, boyfriends...ex-boyfriends.'I'll name him Frank and then I'll KILL HIM OFF! BWAHAHAHAHA!'6. Characters in other books. This seems like a fair strategy so long as your character isn't too much like the one in said book. E.g., Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth (a name I used for one of the members of the Seventh Order of St. Agatha in Mary Modern).7. Luminaries, alive or dead.Henry What's-his-name...Henry Smith...Henry Jones? Henry Dryden! Done and done.8. Graduation programs.Something to do while the ceremony drags on. (No offense, Snookie.)
9. Your 19th-century New England farm girl alter-ego.Mine is Devotion Wicksticker. Someday it's going in a book.10. Mythological characters.Like the Morrigan.If you have other sources you like to draw from I'd love to hear them!
Great Book #38: A Passage to India
Noise, noise, the Europeanized band louder, incense on the altar, sweat, the blaze of lights, wind in the bananas, noise, thunder, eleven-fifty by his wrist-watch, seen as he threw up his hands and detached the tiny reverberation that was his soul. Louder shouts in the crowd. He danced on.India has a way of changing you. Every place you go is, as they say, 'an assault on the senses,' and every new experience has within it the potential for either sublimity or profound unpleasantness. It overwhelms you, you can't get a handle on it; and while you're questioning your surroundings you also begin to question yourself, and your reasons for coming here in the first place. You don't need to spend a month in an ashram to come to this point. You need only board a rickety old public bus on which every passenger is staring at you like they just saw you tumble out of a rocketship.[She] had learnt that Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.In my case, questioning myself and my motives led to a marvelous eye-opening experience of India. But I also live in a society that values cultural exchange, a society that, in theory anyway, that has long since washed its hands of colonialism and its attendant evils. I felt a little sheepish choosing A Passage to India for my trip reading (E.M. Forster being on the list and all), and then I figured that it's probably not a cliché unless you're as nerdy as I am. This novel made me squirm on every page, as it was written to; Forster obviously spent a lot of time among the ruling classes during his time in India, and in writing this book was reacting with a degree of sensitivity and insight that was forty years ahead of its time. (He visited India for the first time in 1912, and finished the novel in 1924.)At the beginning of the story plain, sensible young Adele Quested and her potential mother-in-law Mrs. Moore arrive in Chandrapore to meet the latter's son, Ronny Heaslop, the city magistrate. Eager for a glimpse of the "real" India, both English ladies chafe against the snobbery and hypocrisy so rampant at "the club," where officials' wives hide themselves to avoid dealing with the natives. After a chance meeting in the local mosque one night, Mrs. Moore makes friends with the bright, arrogant, capricious young Dr. Aziz, who in turn cultivates the friendship of English school principal (and social misfit) Cyril Fielding. These tender new connections lead to an excursion to the Marabar Caves; there an unfortunate misunderstanding culminates in Aziz's arrest and a farce of a trial, in which his fate has already been decided through his skin color. To put it succinctly in the thoughts of Hamidullah, a leading member of Muslim society in Chandrapore: "Here all was wire-pulling and fear."On every page Forster's prose snatched my breath from me. Each description is shot through with ruthless insight, whether he's describing a city or landscape (Houses do fall, people are drowned and left rotting, but the general outline of the town persists, swelling here, shrinking there, like some low but indestructible form of life), a national character (He was even tender to the English; he knew at the bottom of his heart that they could not help being so cold and odd and circulating like an ice stream through his land), or human nature by way of one pill in particular:
India had developed sides of [Ronny's] character that [Adela] had never admired. His self-complacency, his censoriousness, his lack of subtlety, all grew vivid beneath a tropic sky; he seemed more indifferent than of old to what was passing in the minds of his fellows, more certain that he was right about them or that if he was wrong it didn't matter.
This is the universal attitude of British officialdom in Chandrapore, and Forster shows a very different 'lack of subtlety' in revealing one by one the appalling racism and ignorance of virtually every soul in the club. Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die--one of the "ladies" actually says that. To find such disgusting sentiments expressed without censure, and everyone constantly manipulating each other under the guise of polite society and colonial order, all the snubs and missteps between people who only pretend they can stand each other--like I said, this is an exhausting book. Forster will show you a lovely moment of kinship, and in the next paragraph snuff it out in a twist of pettiness. A soldier with whom Dr. Aziz has passed a silent but very satisfying evening of polo on an empty playing ground later mentions the episode when the doctor is in prison--to the effect that the sportsman is the rare decent native, the prisoner a common monster--unaware, of course, that they're one and the same man; or when Aziz offers his own collar stud to Fielding, pretending it's a spare, and later Heaslop notices with snooty satisfaction that Aziz's collar is turning up.The novel ends on an odd note, with Aziz and Fielding coming to the conclusion that they greatly value each other's friendship and yet they can't remain friends. Allegory over character, but it's only a quibble. So, yeah...not exactly what most people would consider holiday reading, but then again, like most trips I take, this wasn't really a vacation as such. More trip photos coming soon.
Shut up and write
I know it's hard to write, darling. But it's harder not to.
When I was in college I read a lot of books about writing. I read Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees, and Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write, and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. (Bird by Bird is far and away my favorite writing book. The chapter entitled 'Shitty First Drafts' changed my life—she says you can write 'So what's it to you, Mister Poopypants?', and no one ever has to know, and you just keep writing garbage until you get to the good stuff. The other thing I love about Anne Lamott is how completely honest she is about her writerly neuroses. We're all neurotic, and the sooner you make peace with it, the more effective you'll be in your work.) I read Natalie Goldberg too, even though I found her stuff a little too new-agey. Heck, I even read Ayn Rand's The Art of Fiction (which is a pretty hilarious title coming from Ayn Rand, right?)
And I talked. Oh, how I talked. I talked about wanting to write until my boyfriend at the time finally lost patience with me and said, 'Stop talking. Go to the library, put your butt in the chair, and do it.'
Yes. Yes, it really is that simple.
So I went to the library, wrote a page, and was proud of it even though it wasn't a proper story and I knew I was never going to show it to anyone. I started taking notes for what would become my practice novel, started writing it, and funny thing--I didn't really want to talk about my writing anymore.
Of course, I still love reading other people's writing advice. The Guardian did a wonderful two-part series last year, Ten Rules for Writing Fiction (link to part two here), and there are plenty of tidbits from literary heavyweights-- some of it rather clever or flip, and some bits are more philosophical than practical, but almost all of it resonates (for me anyway). It's heartening to read that well-established writers like Helen Simpson still need a kick in the pants sometimes:
The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-it on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it."
I actually had a draft of this post sitting around for a few weeks, and what prompted me to finish it is Sugar's latest advice column ("We Are All Savages Inside") at The Rumpus. The letter is from an MFA grad frustrated by news of other people's book deals, so much so that she can't even feel happy for one of her best friends, and she asks for advice on dealing with her jealousy. Sugar provides a reality check so lyrically articulate (There isn't a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart) that you almost forget the letter-writer is getting a talking-to. In this column as well as "Write Like a Mother****er," Sugar points out that the letter conveys a certain arrogance, a sense of entitlement. The writer's ego is a huge part of the problem.
Like I said in my practice novel post, I first sat down to write partly because I felt like I needed to prove myself, but I had to let go of my ego before I could write good fiction. So if I can give only one piece of advice, it's this: when you glue your butt to that chair, forget about genres and agents and book deals and inspiring other people's envy. Tell a good story--a 'devastatingly gorgeous' story--and don't worry about the rest of it. All that really matters is the story.
Great Book #65: The Magician
"You think me a charlatan because I aim at things that are unknown to you. You won't try to understand. You won't give me any credit for striving with all my soul to a very great end."
But the terror of it was that at the neck it branched hideously, and there were two distinct heads, monstrously large, but duly provided with all their features. The features were a caricature of humanity so shameful that one could hardly bear to look. And as the light fell on it, the eyes of each head opened slowly. They had no pigment in them, but were pink, like the eyes of white rabbits; and they stared for a moment with an odd, unseeing glance. Then they were shut again, and what was curiously terrifying was that the movements were not quite simultaneous; the eyelids of one head fell slowly just before those of the other.
I devoured this novel. Loved, loved, loved it. Now the question is, will I ever get around to reading Of Human Bondage? (This is the problem with loving a novel too much: I'm reluctant to read any of the author's other books for fear I'll be disappointed.The Time Traveler's Wife and not wanting to read Her Fearful Symmetry is a case in point.)
The Practice Novel
The time I spent writing (and revising, and re-revising) my first novel—my 'practice novel,' not Mary Modern—was a frustrating but very necessary period in my development. I'm a much better writer for it, and I couldn't have written Mary Modern without it. I've long since let go of that manuscript, but I haven't chucked all of the print-outs or any of the two dozen or so floppy disks I used for each new draft, and whenever I dig this stuff up again it makes me smile. Of course, I can say that now.
Part of my problem was trying to write a novel at twenty-one and twenty-two. I certainly don't mean to say that someone so young can't write a good novel (several writers have!), but I hadn't had enough life experience yet to come up with something greater than the sum of my parts. The manuscript does have its moments; there are a few passages I'm still a tiny bit proud of having written, and I still consider it an achievement.
I want to tell you a little bit about the timeline between 'finishing' the novel and giving up on it. Even when it looks to everyone else like a clear and easy path (people do tend to assume that when they hear you published your first book at 26), it almost never is.
1. Worked on the manuscript my last year at NYU in 2002. Passed on several weekend trips while studying abroad in Florence to hole up and write. (Ehh...maybe I shouldn't have done that.) Got a job as an editorial assistant at a nonfiction imprint at HarperCollins that summer, and kept writing.
2. Fall 2002, sent 600 pages to a very nice agent, who told me it had promise.
3. More revisions into 2003, and a few more rejections.
4. Signed with a junior agent at a terrific boutique agency in the spring of 2003. Winnowed 600-page behemoth into an almost-as-bloated 475.
5. Racked up loads of rejection letters that year, from two rounds of submissions. She has yet to master the concept of a plot.
[Snarky, maybe, but also a much-needed kick in the pants. Thinking back on that letter once I'd decided to shelve the practice novel, I thought, Next time I'm going to come up with a real plot, and it will be tight and exciting and build momentum on every page. Most useful rejection letter I've ever received.]
6. Personal problems with agent #1 (which of course I won't get into here). Realized in the spring of 2004 that we would probably have to part ways, and soon after we did.
[I learned a very important lesson there: always, always be professional. The messy details of your private lives have no place in the publishing process. You may meet up for a drink after work, but your agent is not your friend—at least not until you actually have a book deal and can relax a bit!]
7. Signed with my current agent (whom I now consider a dear friend even though she is 100% professional at all times) in June 2004. Pared the manuscript down to 350 pages.
8. More rejection letters through the end of 2004. Agent unfazed, said I had two choices: she could sell it to a small indie publisher for a $500 advance, and that would likely be the only money I'd ever see out of it; or I could throw myself into a new project. Naturally she wanted me to choose option #2, because if I settled for a $500 advance (if that) and a print run of a few hundred copies (if that) then I'd most likely never see the level of success I was hoping for.
When I set it down in points it doesn't sound too tortuous a route, but I can tell you that I spent plenty of time crying, loathing myself and loathing my work and wondering what I could possibly do with my life if I couldn't write a novel anyone would want to read. Thank goodness for my family—my parents said I should focus on when, not if, and that really helped me keep my chin up. I tried to let go of my ego, to get out of my own way so I could just tell the story already; and it was amazing how much easier the whole thing became when it was no longer about proving myself. That's the thing I didn't understand when I was twenty-two.
Anyway, I moved to Galway in September 2004, wrote Mary Modern, and handed it off to my agent. After a few rounds of revisions, she sent it to a bunch of editors in February 2006. It was a blessing that I'd gotten the Moon Ireland travel-writing gig, because life was busy and exciting enough on its own, and I didn't have too much time to think things like 'what if this novel doesn't sell either?' (I did think it, of course, but I couldn't obsess over it when I had a 500-page guidebook to write.)
Guess which editor was the first to call my agent and say 'I love this and I'm going to bid on it'? The same editor who said I didn't know what a plot was! You can just imagine what a sweet moment that was for me.
I talk about my 'juvenilia' whenever I'm in the company of aspiring novelists. A practice novel is not a waste of time. You're still learning your craft. Heck, it's not unheard of to have three or four or five (as I said, you're in very good company). The tricky thing is knowing when to throw in the towel—because isn't perseverance the key to success in publishing? Yes, but I discovered there is also such a thing as revising a dead horse. So when do you know this novel isn't going anywhere?
1. Enough agents have said no that when somebody asks you how many rejection letters you've racked up so far, you find you've lost count.
2. You start to get a nagging feeling that this isn't your very best, and it never will be.
Okay, you might lose track after only twenty or thirty, and I'm not saying you should give up at that point. Like I said, your agent has to fall head over heels for your work, and that's a sort of chemistry it can take months and dozens of rejection letters to find. But if you've approached the agents (and/or their junior associates) who represent the authors you love (i.e., you're writing in a similar vein), and you're still only getting complimentary rejection letters, then it's time to rethink. You may very well find that after multiple rounds of revisions and query letters, this manuscript doesn't get you excited anymore. You're tired of it. You read over the lines you thought were clever, and they're not; you know you can do better now. What's giving you that warm, shimmery feeling in your gut now is the prospect of a fresh start.
Having said all this, I do believe there are some writers with terrific first novels who will probably wind up publishing them after their 'break-out' novel. An amazing, publishable novel will eventually find the right home, even if it doesn't happen quite the way you think it will. That may be the case with yours, but you still have to put it aside to give your new story the headspace it needs to grow.
Anyway, I hope this has been at least somewhat reassuring—do leave a comment with your own experiences, or any questions you might have!
War-time Soup
As a young married woman writing to a friend expressed it, "We live mostly on entrails."I spent yesterday in 1917. Felt like it, anyway! I was reading Dorothy Constance Peel's How We Lived Then, 1914-1918: A Sketch of Social and Domestic Life in England During the War. Here's a gem from the appendix (originally distributed by the Ministry of Food in 1917 and 1918):
War-time Soup
All outer leaves and peelings and tops and tails of vegetables, all fruit peelings, stones and cores, all saucepan and dish rinsings, bread crusts, remains of suet, batter, and milky puddings (but not jam or sweet puddings), cheese and bacon rinds, skim milk, sour milk, remains of sauces (not sweet sauces) or gravy, vegetable water, margarine (if liked), pepper and salt, water.
Wash thoroughly all vegetable peelings and leaves (do not use potato peelings); use the outer leaves of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, curly kale, lettuce, leeks, and onions; the tops and peelings of turnips, carrots, parsnips, swedes, kohlrabi. Put all into a cooking box saucepan with plenty of water, bring to the boil, boil 20 minutes; add some or all of the other ingredients; season to taste; boil 10 minutes without removing cover, and place in the cooking box 2 to 3 hours. Take out and rub through a sieve and, if necessary, reheat on gas ring.
Every economical housewife should have War-time Soup constantly going; it is both delicious and nourishing and, above all, cheap.
Today we'd call this 'compost stew'! Cheap? For sure. Delicious? I'm doubtful. (It's the 'dish rinsings' mostly. And the sour milk!) Any brave soul want to try this?(I took down another recipe for vegetable pie with a potato crust, which would have been a sensible thing to cook during meat shortages. That one I'm going to try next month when I'm home again.)[Edit: to put the above quote into context, offal wasn't rationed, so it was much easier to obtain scrap meats.]
Great Book #48: A Farewell to Arms
I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind. I went out swiftly, all of myself, and I just knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you just died.I tried reading Hemingway in college, just the one short story, and it was so misogynistic that I swore I'd never bother with him again. His brief appearances in Marion Meade's Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin softened me up a bit, so I put this novel on my 100 great books list even though I still didn't want to read it. Then someone at the Common Good Books event asked if I'd ever read A Farewell to Arms (since, y'know, it's got the whole love-in-war thing going on). I told her I was allergic to Hemingway, and to my satisfaction everybody got a chuckle out of it.So imagine how taken aback I was to find that, apart from one annoying instance of the N-word, I actually liked this novel. People always praise his spare prose, and I get it now, I see the beauty in it.
I sat up straight and as I did so something inside my head moved like the weights on a doll's eyes and it hit me inside in back of my eyeballs. My legs felt warm and wet and my shoes were wet and warm inside. I knew that I was hit and leaned over and put my hand on my knee. My knee wasn't there. My hand went in and my knee was down on my shin. I wiped my hand on my shirt and another floating light came very slowly down and I looked at my leg and was very afraid. Oh, God, I said, get me out of here.
Frederick Henry—an American ambulance driver in Italy during the First World War—is an unremarkable character, but I think that must be the point; there's nothing remotely romantic or heroic about him, nor anything 'epic' about his situation. Even his relationship with Catherine underscores the absurdity, the mess, the out-and-out wrongness of war. What would otherwise have been a passing attraction turns into a great love; he runs from the battlefield to live with her in peace and quiet, and in the end finds life would have been kinder to let him die in uniform.The ending is inevitable, of course. It made me cry.Gosh, this is turning into quite a surprising experiment, isn't it? Who would have thought I'd be bashing Peter Pan and writing admiringly of Hemingway?!(Oh, and I went back and forth between my paperback copy and the audiobook read by John Slattery, who is excellent. Isn't he on Mad Men? I think that's the guy.)
A Tiger in the Kitchen (and zucchini souffle!)
Remember when I was at Yaddo last April? (Sheesh, I can't believe it's going on a year ago already.) Well, when I walked into the common room my first evening there, we were doing the usual introductions and one of my new friends said, ' Wait a minute—I've read your book!' Cheryl turned out to be the social glue the whole time I was there, always hatching plans for fun things to do in the evenings, acquiring bruises all over in the name of PIG (official rules posted here, also thanks to Cheryl), and taking wonderful pictures to remember each other by.I blog family recipes from time to time, and you all know how fond I am of my grandparents, so of course Cheryl's new memoir, A Tiger in the Kitchen, is right up my alley. I haven't had a chance to read it yet (it'll be waiting for me when I come home next month), but here's the book description:
After growing up in the most food-obsessed city in the world, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan left home and family at eighteen for America—proof of the rebelliousness of daughters born in the Year of the Tiger. But as a thirtysomething fashion writer in New York, she felt the Singaporean dishes that defined her childhood beginning to call her back. Was it too late to learn the secrets of her grandmothers' and aunties' kitchens, as well as the tumultuous family history that had kept them hidden before? In her quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore by cooking with her family, Tan learned not only cherished recipes but long-buried stories of past generations.A Tiger in the Kitchen, which includes ten authentic recipes for Singaporean classics such as pineapple tarts and Teochew braised duck, is the charming, beautifully written story of a Chinese-Singaporean ex-pat who learns to infuse her New York lifestyle with the rich lessons of the Singaporean kitchen, ultimately reconnecting with her family and herself.
Now, Cheryl has some pretty sophisticated tastebuds (as evidenced by her popular blog), but she's no 'food snob.' Recently a reader commented that her grandmother's recipe for pineapple tart was 'run of the mill', which of course annoyed anybody who ever had a grandmother. My grandmom Kass' cooking is unabashedly 'run of the mill'—simple, no-fuss recipes for good old-fashioned comfort food. So what if the zucchini soufflé recipe calls for Bisquick? I'll take my grandmother's cooking over haute cuisine any day. (Besideswhich, those pineapple tarts look pretty extraordinary to me! Bewitching bite-sized marvels, indeed.)
Ever hear that saying, 'every time an old person dies a library burns'? So far as I've observed, my grandparents' generation were and are a humble bunch, and they don't think too much about posterity or how valuable their life experiences are. Family recipes are a huge part of this trove of knowledge. Grandmom Kass learned how to cook from her aunt, because her own mother wasn't exactly Betty Crocker (we heard stories of how she used to dump sugar on the salad, and her jello always came served with a nice thick skin on top). Pumpkin soup, onion pie, creamy horseradish carrots, broccoli baked with cheese and breadcrumbs, rice pudding, depression cake...for me, my grandmother's culinary repertoire typifies mid-century blue-collar Philadelphia—nothing fancy, just good, wholesome food. (Though by 'wholesome,' I don't necessarily mean healthy. Philly is best known for cheesesteaks, pizzas, and spaghetti-meatball dinners, after all.) None of those recipes are original, but to me they are hers. She could have made up her own, of course, but I don't think it's ever occurred to her. Every cook makes her own modifications as she works, and given that she probably added a dash of this and a pinch of that without ever making a note of it, I doubt my versions of her signature dishes will ever taste as good as hers; but at least we have the recipes, and every time we make one we'll think of her.
So to celebrate the publication of A Tiger in the Kitchen, I'd like to share my grandmother's recipe for zucchini soufflé.* This one is, hands down, my favorite of everything she has ever made. It's light and delicately flavorful and I always try to snag a nice golden-crusty corner piece.
Combine in mixing bowl:
--3 cups grated zucchini--1/2 cup vegetable oil--1 cup Bisquick mix--4 eggs--1/2 cup grated parmesan--1 small onion, grated
Mix well, spoon into greased two-quart casserole dish. Bake at 325º for 50-60 minutes. Serves 6-8.
*From The Best of the Zucchini Recipes Cookbook, compiled by Helen and Emil Dandar and published locally in 1988; this recipe was submitted by Antonette Biasotto of Newark, Delaware.
Happy Pub Day, Cheryl!
(Note: A veganized recipe is forthcoming.)
Hexenhammer
Today's spot of witchery offers no witches, but merely the rumor of them.I first heard of the Malleus Malleficarum, "The Witches' Hammer," during my semester abroad in Florence. My friends were taking a medieval and Renaissance lit course, and I remember being in the cafeteria and laughing at the idea of runaway penises. There is plenty of cause for snickering when taken out of context, and I refer to it with no small degree of sarcasm in Petty Magic.But the Malleus Maleficarum belongs at the top of a list of books that should never have been written, because its publication in 1487 led to the persecution and murder of thousands of accused "witches" all over Europe. Written by "holy men"? Now there's a big fat W-T-F!Anyway, the book popped up again in Muriel McCarthy's history of Marsh's Library in Dublin, and this brief passage made me shiver.
Malleus maleficarum is a terrifying and cruel book. When it was first published it bore on the title-page the dreadful warning: 'Haeresis est maxima opera maleficarum non credere' (To disbelieve in witches is the greatest of heresies). The Dominican inquisitors amongst other quaint beliefs suggested that witchcraft was more natural to women than men because of the inherent wretchedness of their hearts.
'Quaint' isn't the first word that comes to mind, but you get the gist. If you'd like to learn more about the book and the resulting witch-hunts, here's a good online resource.
Fast asleep in mermaid pajamas
(NERD ALERT:) I used french seams for the first time, which was very exciting. That's when you sew the seams on the right side (i.e., wrong sides facing), then turn it inside out and encase the first seam in the second seam. No fraying! What a revelation!
I wore these for the first time last night and, probably not coincidentally, had some lovely lovely dreams, none of which I can recall, although I'm pretty sure I composed the best novel I'll ever write, which was lost, of course, as soon as I woke up.(Nope, I'm not going to edit that.)And a couple more mermaidy goodies: Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon (pre-order!), and her interview (just posted today) with Alice Hoffman, which includes advice to aspiring mermaids. HAH! Love it.
Great Book #5: Peter Pan
"It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly."Of all the books on my great 100 list, this is probably the biggest why-didn't-I-read-this-when-I-was-a-kid? I'll tell you why: along with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (which I finally read four or five years ago), I watched the Disney movie several times and then somehow convinced myself that I had actually read the book. (I know. I am so ashamed.)Anyway, Seanan recently told me he was reading the novel (which I listened to on Librivox) and mentioned this particular passage, which he rightly thought I would appreciate:
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
How delightfully eerie! (I wanted to call it magical realism, but can there be such a thing in a fantasy novel? The first couple chapters do take place in ordinary London...) After this passage I figured I'd enjoy the rest of the story just as much.Well...no. Actually, I didn't enjoy the rest of Peter Pan at all.Call me excessively P.C. for cringing every time I heard the words "redskins," "savages," or "Piccaninny tribe," or unimaginative for finding it utterly ridiculous that grown men (no matter how dastardly) should fight little boys to the death as if they were equally matched. It is, of course, Peter Pan himself who annoys me most, partly because I see his echo everywhere in popular culture. We tell our young men that it's okay to be selfish and irresponsible, that they can hop on a carousel of hedonism and never come down again. Wendy, Tinkerbell, and Tiger Lily--and oh yes, the mermaids too!--all squabbling over the same cocky, self-indulgent little boy: sure sounds like reality TV to me. Peter goes away for years and expects Wendy to wait for him, and eventually he trades her in (and her daughter, and her granddaughter...) for a younger girl. Heck, during their original flight to Neverland he even forgets who Wendy is! Peter Pan is the original man-boy, and I see enough of him in real life, thank you very much.
"I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things," he told herpassionately. "I don't want to be a man. O Wendy's mother, if I was towake up and feel there was a beard!" "Peter," said Wendy the comforter, "I should love you in a beard;" andMrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he repulsed her. "Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man."
I don't want this post to turn into a full-on rant (I don't know, is it too late?), but I just need to mention two more things that bothered me. Once Peter and the lost boys have defeated Hook and his crew, he starts wearing Hook's clothes, brandishing an imaginary hook, and generally behaving like a pirate captain. Hmm...now which Orwell novel does this remind you of? I know, I know, it feels very wrong to speak of Animal Farm and Peter Pan in the same blog entry, but it is what it is.But the thing that really annoyed the hell out of me is this line from the last chapter:
Boonsboro
Crawford's Restaurant, Guns & Ammo. Bwahahaha.I've been meaning to write about my weekend in Boonsboro, Maryland for ages. On November 6th I was invited to Turn the Page bookstore for a group signing thanks to my cousin Suzanne, who is the innkeeper at Nora Roberts's gorgeous Inn Boonsboro. My mom and I spent Friday night in the penthouse suite, watching "Bell, Book & Candle" on the king-size four-poster bed.
The bathtub, oh my goodness. And the toilet is heated, goes up and down by itself, and even rinses your bits for you. Not that I pressed that button. Oh no.People stood in line for hours (no, I'm not exaggerating) to get their Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb novels signed, and sometimes they picked up my book while they were waiting. I lost track of how many copies I signed, and that almost never happens. Hooray!
More importantly, I got to meet a group of wonderfully witty, fun, and all-around nice writers. Here I am with Jeanine Cummins, Lisa Scottoline, and Lisa's daughter and co-author Francesca Serritella. I also got to meet Mariah Stewart and Carolyn Turgeon, author of Godmother and the forthcoming Mermaid; I'm particularly excited about those because Carolyn writes my kind of stuff. Jeanine too, actually--she has strong Irish connections, so of course we had a lot to talk about. Here's one of my favorite passages from her novel, The Outside Boy:
Her voice was thin, watery. She opened and closed her toothless mouth. Her eyes was shining in the faint light. Granny could do that, she could change, like. Granny of the Transformations. Right now in the grief-stricken wagon she was a mournful fish. Mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, in silence. I imagined that one more gape of the mouth and she would sprout fins and gills, and she would rend off her black funeral dress and reveal a breastplate of hard, beautiful scales beneath, like the blue and green glass scattered on the ground outside. And then she would swim away in a river of her own tears.
I really, really love that image.My dad and grandparents came down too, and Kate drove out from Baltimore, so after the signing we had a big family dinner at a pizzeria down the street. None of us had seen Suzanne in a long, long time, so it was pretty special. (I wanted to post a group picture, but none of them came out very well. Too much flash.)
Anyway, thanks to Janeen at Turn the Page for putting together such a wonderful event, and Nora for inviting me, and Suzanne for making it happen in the first place!