The Great Productivity Experiment, part 2
(The Great Productivity Experiment, part 1: Of Writers and Robots.)Last week I did not write a single word. And I was productive!I'm working on three projects right now, two of which are in the beginning stages, which means I did a lot of mind mapping and reading for research. Let us make the distinction between process-wise productive and product-wise productive. On Wednesday night I jotted down a few notes on the back of a bookmark--I was beside-myself excited--and those scribbles set everything in motion inside a certain fictional universe. But I could show you that little piece of paper and it wouldn't look like much, would it?Things I have learned, or re-learned, this past week:
1. You know those studies that indicate listening to Mozart aids concentration? TRUE!
2. Being a "night person" or a "morning person" is ultimately a matter of choice (by way of discipline--my new favorite word, haha). I have always taken it for granted that I'm the former, but I got up at 7 (that's early for me) a couple of days last week and I liked it. I like feeling a sense of accomplishment earlier in the day. Imagine that!
3. Forgetting my power cord at home is not what I meant by "Mac Freedom." That said, I'm really loving it (the program, I mean). I occasionally get "the twitch"--Wikipedia! HootSuite! Gmaaaaail!--and then I remember I'm cut off, and get back to it.
4. Going for a run first thing in the morning makes me feel awesome, which probably helps my productivity. As they say, exercise is healthy for the brain too.
5. "A watched pot never boils." This week I wasted time fretting over project #3, a short story for an anthology submission. (Part of the issue is, of course, that I don't really write short stories; people think I am joking when I say writing a novel feels easier than writing a short story. But I was very kindly invited to submit to this anthology, so I'm going to give it my best shot.) Anyway, I never come up with a workable idea by consciously thinking about it--it just has to occur to me. There's no way around that. So I resolved to focus on the other projects, and as I was walking home from the library Thursday night the solution presented itself.
As for the other two projects, one is a nearly-finished YA novel I began a year ago this month, and the other is another children's novel. I need to push myself to finish the draft of the YA novel so I can focus on the new children's novel, which I'm most excited about. The plan is to get a detailed outline ready to go, a la Rachel Aaron, and then we'll see just how (product-wise) productive I can be.In case anyone is wondering: after these two novels are in the can, yes, the project after that will be a novel for grown-ups!
Chickpea Salad
I love the idea of an "unrecipe," where all ingredients are "to taste." This one is a really easy knock-off of the "balela" you can find at Trader Joe's in a tiny plastic container. I like to make a whole tub of this stuff.
--chickpeas--red onion (chopped up in the food processor)--cilantro (also finely chopped)--vine tomatoes--lime juice--olive oil--salt and pepper
Mix and devour!
Of Writers and Robots
It seems like all of Twitter (or at least my writerly corner of it) is excited about Rachel Aaron's "How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day." No, that is not a typo.Of course, my first reaction when reading the article was "I'm a writer, not a robot!" I've never liked wordcounts. They may seem like the most concrete measure of productivity, but obsessing over your daily output feels somewhat counterproductive.
@PettyMagic @novaren I think each book is different. Some flood. Some trickle.-- McCormick Templeman (@McTempleman) June 3, 2012
But I don't want to linger on that. Whether we write 500 or 5,000 words, the point is that we've actually focused on our work for the better part of the day. For me (as for most of us, I suspect), the internet is far and away the greatest obstacle to productivity. I know that I get WAY more done when I deny myself WiFi access, and I need to get serious about staying offline while I write. I've seen other writers tweet about Mac Freedom, and I used to scoff at the concept--like you can't just summon the willpower to disconnect?The thing is, I can't. I shut down the web browser and resolve to focus, but then I think about just one teensy thing I can look up really quick, and then I'm done for.Shaming myself into good work habits just got a whole lot more appealing. I'm going to use Mac Freedom as part of a productivity experiment.No Twitter.No gchat.No Firefox.No Gmail notifier.Rather, these things will be limited to short periods in between writing sessions--at the beginning, middle, and end of the day. If I think of something I need to look up, an email I need to send, or whatever, I've got my notebook at my elbow. Fortunately, I haven't forgotten how to use a pen.There's more to this than the distractive power of the internet, though. Rachel Aaron is not a hack; she is a disciplined writer with real-life responsibilities. She makes every second count. I am a not-very-disciplined writer with no kids, no day job and no mortgage. If I first thought of Rachel Aaron as a robot, it was only because it let me off the hook. It's time to stop making excuses.
@novaren I recently wrote a book at a rate of between 7K and 10K per day, and I actually hurt my arms. Fun, but they still hurt!-- McCormick Templeman (@McTempleman) June 3, 2012
So my own productivity experiment means pulling together the gap between what I want to, need to, or "should" do, and what I actually do. That's why I went for a run this morning, and why I spent what felt like too much time cleaning, cooking, and packaging up something I promised myself I'd send to someone who did something awesome for me. It's why I'm going to begin meditating on a daily basis. Steven Pressfield talks a lot about "the resistance" in The War of Art, and man, is he right. You don't want to do something, but you do it anyway, and afterward you feel amazing. (I also love what Victoria Moran said in her lecture at the NYC Veggie Food Fest back in March: whatever you're most likely to skip, whether it's exercise, meditation, or something else, do that thing first. Literally as soon as you wake up.)I want to lean into that resistance. I want to get up and run when the smaller part of me would rather stay in bed. I want to make conscious decisions about how I'm spending my time, so that I can ultimately live a more creative life. Yes, I'm already living a creative life, and it may seem counterintuitive to use discipline as a creative tool, but there is such beautiful, subtle logic in it.Apart from using Mac Freedom to stay offline, I'm going to make a list of what I need to get done each day (I don't routinely do this), and when I'm writing, I'll make a note of my wordcounts by the hour, because the business manager in Sarah convinced me to take the spreadsheet idea seriously. Today, as Rachel suggests, I'm going to plot out the rest of my YA novel in way finer detail than I ever have before. (That's how she's able to write 10,000 words, by the way--I doubt anybody could be that insanely productive without first, as they say, "laying the groundwork.") When I am surfing the internet I will remind myself that I don't have time for virtual rabbit holes. (Or, to be more realistic, I won't indulge in them so often.)And whatever I said before about wordcounts, I would like to kick my own butt and reach for 10k at some point. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do it every single day--I feel dazed enough after 2k!--but I think shooting for it once in awhile would be pretty awesome. (And it would be an ideal strategy for a residency!) But I feel good about these changes for now.I'll write about my progress next Monday.
@novaren It was crazy. Felt like automatic writing. You've got a Flaubert thing going on. 500 words, but probably the right ones.-- McCormick Templeman (@McTempleman) June 3, 2012
Read more on Rachel Aaron-inspired writing productivity experiments here:
Nova's The Writing Productivity Experiment of Doom (or Great Success, Depending)
Squam 2012, part 2
(Squam, part 1. More Squam recaps here.)
When you come looking for sugar,your bag will be examinedto see how much it can hold;it will be filled accordingly.
--Rumi
Evenings at the Playhouse. Incandescent Elizabeth. Ahhhhhhhhh.
I made new friends, and grew to love my "old" ones even deeper. It is the loveliest feeling to know there's noplace else you'd rather be, and no one else you'd rather be with.
So in love with @pettymagic. One of the most beautiful people I know! http://t.co/3Nswl36b— Anne Weil (@flaxandtwine) June 10, 2012
Mumsy came along this year, and we had a great time. We took an embroidery class together, and she also took Helene's food photography class:
Savory scents wafted out of the Deephaven kitchen while we worked on our personal monograms in Jessica's embroidery class:
Jess's "E," Crystal's "J," Carol's "B," my "O," and Suzanne's "S." The "A" in the background is Jessica's sample. What a great gift idea! And Jessica is a fantastic teacher.
This shot is so Amy.
Bonnie had her sampler from Rebecca's class last year beautifully finished.
Renee's project inspired some serious embroidery envy! (There's a flamingo on her head!)As you can see, I took two embroidery classes, and they were both awesome. Jessica and Rebecca have very different styles, and I really admire them both.
I was a total enabler at the art fair ("should I?" / "BUY IT, BUY IT!") That gorgeous dress Anne's wearing is from Hodgepodge Farm. My goal for next year is to draft that pattern out of Cal's book and get it sewn! Also, the lovely sweater I have on is Bonnie's Pomegranate. I can't wait to knit it!(I will also be blogging soon about the dress I'm wearing in that photo. Yes, I made it!)
Squam 2012, part 1
Anne, Amy Lou, Jill and Jeanne, Saturday afternoon, Greenwood dock.
Evening light reflected by the surface of the lake.
Remember this?
A cicada shell (?) stuck to the porch screen.
Cragsmere.More soon.
Good Enough, Smart Enough...
One day last summer I was on my way to the library when I ran into my neighbors chatting with a visitor in their driveway. Herb and Hazel introduced me to their friend, and said excitedly, "Camille has published novels!""Well, isn't that something," the man replied. "My daughter writes paranormal romance. She just got a two-book deal. Six figures. What are the names of your books, and how many copies have you sold?"Not only does this line of inquiry make my skin crawl--as if my sales figures are the whole point of what I do!--but this man was quite obviously trying to make himself feel like "somebody" through his daughter's accomplishments. I extricated myself from the conversation as quickly as I could, and walked away feeling as if I'd somehow been violated. This man was literally in my face, comparing me to his daughter, eager to prove that she was the more successful writer. If I'd been subjected to this type of talk at the age of 12 or 13, I would have run home and cried.
Everything will make you feel small if you let it. Don't let it. *Lesson #788 in not comparing yourself to other authors.-- Nova Ren Suma (@novaren) May 23, 2012
When I was a young teenager I came across a piece of advice that changed my life: don't compare your insides to other people's outsides. I can't remember where I read this--it may have been Go For It!, by Judy Zerafa, that classic pep-talk-in-a-book--but it was so true and so obvious that I might have literally smacked my forehead. Middle school had felt like an endless cycle of classmates' mean-spirited jabs and wanting to make myself unrecognizable. You probably know how it was--as if getting contact lenses, braces, and jeans from the Gap would stop the catty girls from drawing dogs on the chalkboard and labeling the doodles with my name, or throwing paint chips at me in art class while our teacher's back was turned. These kids were just as insecure as I was, and making fun of a more sensitive classmate was their way of coping with it.I got to high school, armed with that inside-outside insight, and stopped caring so much what people thought of me. I still occasionally got made fun of, but I knew those taunts had everything to do with the insecure person hurling them, and little if anything to do with me. I enjoyed academics and art classes and after-school sports. I got excited for college. I didn't feel inadequate anymore.And I don't feel inadequate now. No matter how many times people ask me pointedly "how well" my books are doing, no one can make me feel inadequate ever again.
Great Book #98: A Room of One's Own
Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
Virginia Woolf and I did not much like each other on our first meeting. It was junior year of high school, and when my English teacher gave us a choice of novels I picked To the Lighthouse. Her characters did much too much mooning about, stewing in their own selfish concerns. How that book exasperated me!This time around I am older and therefore more patient, and so I revel in the product of Woolf's rich and fertile mind even when she cannot seem to finish a paragraph. This is not just a book to inspire women writers; it is a book for writers and readers and thinkers of both sexes.I'd always assumed A Room of One's Own was a sort of manifesta, and if it is, it was written in the very highest spirit of feminism. The only men Virginia Woolf ridicules are those pompous middle-aged professors of her day, who try a little too strenuously to assert their intellectual superiority (see also epigraph). Lesser male writers, she says, are preoccupied with themselves, while lesser female writers cannot write without concern for the expectations and opinions of others. Genius is not something we can only admire in rich white men, though Woolf recognizes and reveres it in the great writers of the past who happened to come of privileged backgrounds. Women writers have just as much potential for greatness, so long as they possess what Coleridge called an "incandescent mind": a mind free of all bitterness and distraction. This, of course, is the tricky part--the reason this book needed writing, and why A Room of One's Own is just as relevant today as it was in 1928.
The reason perhaps why we know so little of Shakespeare--compared with Donne or Ben Jonson or Milton--is that his grudges and spites and antipathies are hidden from us. We are not held up by some 'revelation' which reminds us of the writer. All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded...it was Shakespeare's mind.
As for the necessity of an independent income and a lock on the door to one's own work room, you know I'm a fan of Bukowski's air and light and time and space--the gist being that an artist creates regardless of circumstances. But Woolf makes a good point, quoting Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in The Art of Writing: "What are the great poetical names of the last hundred years or so? Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne...of all these, all but Keats, Browning, Rossetti were University men; and of these three, Keats, who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly well to do." A poor poet, concludes Quiller-Couch, "hasn't a dog's chance."Of crucial importance, too, are opportunities for travel and independent experience. Woman or man, any writer who cannot leave the house will suffer from a stunted imagination. As Woolf writes of Charlotte Brontë, "One sees that she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire...She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters. She is at war with her lot. How could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?"Which brings us back to the "incandescent mind." An incandescent mind is also an androgynous mind, Woolf writes--what Mary Gordon (in her foreword) calls "a pure vessel...for the transmission of reality." Male writers should strive to use what feminine impulses they find inside themselves, and vice versa. The sexes need each other, are inspired and invigorated by each other; neither is superior.
One cannot thinkwell, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. The lamp in thespine does not light on beef and prunes. --V. Woolf-- Camille DeAngelis (@PettyMagic) May 23, 2012
A Room of One's Own is a delight, even as it asks us to stomach unpleasant truths on every page:
And one gathers from this enormous modern literature of confession and self-analysis that to write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty...dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world's notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them...if anything comes through in spite of all this, it is a miracle, and probably no book is born entire and uncrippled as it was conceived.
We will go on writing, of course, in the face of indifference, skepticism, illness, economic hardship, and whatever other difficulties life may hurl at us; and if we manage to create something of value, something resulting from but not marked by aforesaid trials, some reader someday may even call it genius.(Check out my 100 Great Books list here.)
Istanbul, Reprised
Vintage treasures from the Grand Bazaar (which was otherwise disappointing--way too many cheap souvenirs).
Topkapi.
Kate: Where's Camille?Elliot: Fart and she'll smell you.
They say the Hagia Sophia will take your breath away, and they're right.
The Blue Mosque.
As awe-inspiring as the Hagia Sofia is, I loved the Chora Church even more. I geeked out (being an art history major and all) over all the magnificent frescoes and mosaics.
Sweet cart! Kate couldn't be happier.Eating out in Istanbul was a bit hit or miss. We went to one restaurant in Sultanahmet (a touristy area near the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque) that served us meat dishes (which we had obviously not ordered), and when we asked for fries the waiter made an excuse: "The cook, he is not here." Elliot started eating his lunch and said, "Judging by the taste of this chicken, the cook was last here three or four days ago." Hah.We did have a nice last meal at a lovely rooftop restaurant, and as you can see, the street food was never a disappointment!
Printed!
"Wonderful Kizkalesi"
"You were thinking rabbit, which was optimistic."We wanted more time at the beach before heading back to Istanbul, so we took Lonely Planet's recommendation on "wonderful Kizkalesi," on the Mediterranean coast.HAH.Oceanside architecture so ugly I couldn't even laugh at it. Tacky amusements. Crowds upon crowds of weirdly unfriendly Turkish tourists. (You know how nice we found the Turks everywhere else!) We might as well have been a million miles away from that perfect morning in Butterfly Valley.Anyway, we made the most of it, seeing everything remotely worthwhile in the area--like a really cool floor mosaic of the Three Graces in nearby Narlikuyu, and some nifty clifftop Roman reliefs:
"Even if I fell I probably wouldn't die," part two. (Can you see Elliot?) We scrambled down that rock-face to get to the Roman reliefs.We had the reliefs to ourselves, but there were plenty of people to contend with at the Caves of Heaven and Hell. On our descent into "hell" we found empty water bottles strewn along the path even though there were trash bins at regular intervals. (Leads one to wonder if there's a special circle reserved for jerks who don't respect the environment.) Elliot remarked, "If there is a heaven, who cleans it up?"
At the mouth of the cave is the ruin of a Byzantine church:
The ghost of a fresco in the apse, destroyed through the elements plus human idiocy.
We got up early one morning and swam out (200 meters) to Maiden's Castle, and wandered over the ramparts in our bare feet. There was plenty of graffiti on the walls, and the smell of urine in dark corners, but it was a glorious morning and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.Istanbul, reprised: the next and final installment!
Notes on a Revision
A few weeks ago I finished the first draft of my new novel. This was BIG. For more than two years I'd stumbled through a string of false starts, and though I was trying to "trust the process," some days that's easier said than done.Finally, finally, everything began to fall into place, and writing good prose felt effortless again. I also went back over the novel and story fragments I'd written in the meantime, and realized that it's quality stuff after all--it just needs more time to marinate, the same way this idea needed two and a half years to make itself write-able.As you know, I'm a big fan of Anne Lamott's chapter on "shitty first drafts." Just get it down, nobody but you is going to read it, you can fix it later. Along the homestretch the message on this postcard advertisement (for the Church Street Boxing Gym) became my mantra:
Truth be told, I haven't worked this hard in a long time--not since I pretty much made myself ill finishing the first draft of Petty Magic. I'm sniffling my way through this revision too, but this time the only deadline is the one I've set for myself, and I feel downright exuberant. People often say that writing a novel is a little like giving birth, but I wonder if the comparison is apt for a different reason--when the birth is over, you forget how much it hurt, right? I find myself reading over my draft unable to remember any of the rough days, those times when the complexity of what I was attempting sent me into the library stacks looking for somebody else's novel to escape inside. If you don't count the incubation period, this manuscript came together ridiculously quickly--300 pages in four months!--and reading it over feels a bit like walking through a dream. But of course, you have to count the incubation period. I couldn't have written it so quickly back in 2009.
work work work work work work (daydream about future book covers) work work work work work work (daydream about future book deals) work work-- Nova Ren Suma (@novaren) May 8, 2012
I love revising. I relish all this filling in the gaps, rejigging scenes, picking up the dropped threads, building timelines and calendars (so my characters aren't aging backwards or talking of things that haven't been introduced yet), and fact checking with TimeandDate.com, the Online Etymology Dictionary, and Dr. Google. Last week I spent a very enjoyable half hour in front of a microfilm machine reading the New York Times headlines from Sunday, November 28, 1915, and what I learned replaced a whole lot of XXXXXXXXXs in the manuscript.
More @nytimes ads from 1915: Smart apparel for stout figures--The Eager Internal Bath Appliance--Avoid that breakdown: Take Wincarnis!-- Camille DeAngelis (@PettyMagic) May 17, 2012
It's still a long way from perfect, but I'm getting there, in my gleeful nerdy way. And it feels really, really awesome.
Sequoia, part 2
(Sequoia, part 1.)
I think there are many more camping trips in our future.
Unmagnetic Prosetry
While I was planning the writing workshop at my local library I had the idea of doing something like magnetic poetry, but using the opening 300 words from some of my favorite short stories and novels. I didn't tell my participants which story the words had come from until they'd reconfigured them into something totally different. I just love the idea of using the exact same words to make an entirely new story. Ah, the magic of language!Here's the one I did:
I was hampered slightly by the words I didn't have (all right, so I cheated a little), but I was still pretty tickled with how it turned out. Can you guess whose words I rearranged?
Jedediah Berry! (Now when is that man coming out with a new novel?!)It's a little labor intensive (I used a tiny rotary cutter to cut up the words), but I still think this is a great way to loosen yourself up--and once you have the words in a Ziploc bag you can take them out and make something new whenever you like.
Sequoia
Last weekend I went camping with Kate, Elliot, Spencer and Walt in Sequoia National Park.
I hadn't been camping in years (living in a tent at Harmony Homestead doesn't really count), and it was so lovely to wake up to the sounds of birdsong and rushing water. (Our campsite was right on the river.) I also used a sleeping pad for the first time, which allows you a downright comfortable night's sleep. Revelation!
The sequoias, some of which are older than Jesus, make you feel insignificant in the very best way (if that makes sense). Walking around them, and through and over the fallen ones, was something of a spiritual experience. They're resistant to decay, so even when a tree falls (because its roots can no longer support it), it sticks around for hundreds of years.
We also walked through the "Fallen Monarch," which fell over 300 years ago, and was used as a stable by the U.S. cavalry--and even as a saloon!
This crunchy moss fascinated me. I kept wanting to touch it on every tree we passed.
Grizzly Falls. (Do you see me?)
Kings Canyon, Cedar Grove lookout.(Sequoia, part 2.)
Great Book #9: Fahrenheit 451
Sierra and I knew we were going to be friends before we met, and I guess I've always the same way about the work of Ray Bradbury.I know, I know. HOW have I not read Bradbury before now? Everyone knows he is a visionary, but he is also the author of some of the most staggeringly gorgeous prose I have ever had the chance to savor:
One time, as a child, in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon...
There are no more such moments of wonderful newness and mystery in the world of Fahrenheit 451, in which firemen burn all books because literature makes people feel confused and inadequate. Feelings are messy and opinions only lead to nasty disagreements. Isn't it so much easier to refrain from thinking at all? Instead, people while away their time with interactive reality TV on a screen that wraps around one's entire living room. The government perpetrates atomic wars while people sit on their couches reading their lines in soap operas about nothing in particular. (Did I mention this book was published in 1953 and first appeared in short story form, as "The Fireman," in 1951? Talk about visionary!)Bradbury mentions in one of his introductions (written in 1993) that he did have the 1933 Bebelplatz book burning in mind as he developed the idea for this story, but Fahrenheit 451 isn't ultimately a cautionary tale about censorship. It blows my mind that Bradbury could have foreseen the stupefying effects of excessive TV watching YEARS before televisions became a universal fixture in the American home.
How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you?
I know this is going to sound crazy, but the most disturbing passages in the novel aren't the scenes in which a woman chooses to die in a blaze along with her books, or the novel's protagonist, Guy Montag, torches his boss; they're the scenes between Montag and his conformist housewife, Mildred. Bradbury's satire is no less potent for its lack of subtlety:
No matter when he came in, the walls were always talking to Mildred."Something must be done!""Yes, something must be done!""Well, let's not stand and talk!""Let's do it!""I'm so mad I could spit!"What was it all about? Mildred couldn't say. Who was mad at whom? Mildred didn't quite know. What were they going to do? Well, said Mildred, wait around and see.
Yup. Ridiculous. And this is simply horrifying:
He felt her there, he saw her without opening his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened pouting lips, the body as thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon. He could remember her no other way.
Montag's transformation into a free-thinking individual happens through late-night walks with his teenage neighbor, Clarisse, whotriggers the thought process that will eventually unravel his sad shamof a life. "You laugh when I haven't been funny and you answer right off," she tells him. "You never stop to think what I've asked you."
He felt she was walking in a circle about him, turning him end for end, shaking him quietly, and emptying his pockets, without once moving herself.
Montag stashes books (he's got a few already hidden in the air conditioning vent when the novel begins), reads them, attempts to prod Mildred into the same intellectual awakening, and contacts an old man named Faber with the tools and contacts to begin laying the groundwork for a rebellion. Meanwhile, the fire captain, Beatty, sends the eight-legged mechanical hound with its terrifying needle of death sniffing around Montag's house, and the plot hurtles toward its inevitable conclusion.Bradbury, as I've said, was frighteningly prescient, and not just about reality TV; at one point Montag nearly finds himself the victim of joyriding children, who run over pedestrians for sport. It's not exactly The Hunger Games, but there's no denying that growing up is way more dangerous than it used to be. And have I mentioned that this novel was written in the early 1950s?There were a couple of head-scratching moments--daffodils in November, what? And how can these houses of the future be fireproof when Montag's house goes down in a matter of minutes?--but whatever, it's a masterpiece and I'm still kicking myself for not reading it years ago.I watched the 1966 film adaptation the day after I read the book, and this comment from the IMDb forums sums up my thoughts pretty succinctly: The first film, although trying to be faithful in spirit, really was a mess of an adaptation in my opinion, more of a sixties pop culture film. (Apparently there's a big-budget Hollywood remake in the works.)Bradbury wrote in one of his introductions that he was actually satisfied with the adaptation, and looking on the upside I guess they could have thoroughly ruined it. The trouble with filming an inner awakening is that...um...you can't. Take this great line, for instance:
He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other.
There are so many more wonderful passages that are completely lost to the screen, and the actor who plays Montag doesn't help his case when he can't even pause to consider Clarisse's simple question: are you happy?Also, I missed Faber and his nifty "green bullet" that enabled telepathic communication between the two conspiring bibliophiles; in the film he appears in a public park for only a few seconds when Montag pats him down for illicit books (our hero finds something suspiciously book-shaped in the inner pocket of the man's trench coat, and lets it slide). Instead, an older version of Clarisse becomes Montag's partner in subversity, no doubt because Julie Christie is easier on the eyes than a retired English professor. Technology and budget constraints must have necessitated the omission of the mechanical hound, the result being a disappointing lack of tension in the climactic scenes.I will admit, though, that the final scene of the film is pretty perfect: rebels of all ages ambling through the woods in the falling snow, reciting the books they have learned by heart.
So if you haven't yet read Fahrenheit 451, do it! Read it NOW! It's hands-down my favorite on the list so far.
FAQ: Outlining and "Prewriting"
What is your "prewriting" process like? Do you outline?"Outline" may feel like a dirty word, but I think you'll find it's a very necessary step in the process of writing a novel. My friend Nova answered this question on Formspring awhile back, and it turns out she and I have the same M.O. First we write--that initial burst of feverish getting-it-down--and then, once the story is crying out for some order, we go back and build the structure.Initially, though, it's a very open-ended, right-brained process. My "prewriting" phase involves a lot of scribbled exploration of the possibilities ("yay, a premise! now what if she does this? then what will happen?") and initial research--on human cloning, witchcraft in folklore, Spiritualism, or what have you. The research component is crucial, because that early reading often triggers Very Important Ideas (as opposed to nice little details I might slip in here or there, if I can--though I'll get plenty of those as well). I'll write more about research in a future post, and for a peek at my Mary Modern "prewriting," see here and here.This "tank-filling" phase generally lasts for at least a few months before I actually begin writing the first draft, and by that point the story has taken a more definite shape. I like to think that holding off writing until I have some semblance of a plot in mind means I'm not throwing out dozens of pages in the editing process.So I write and write, and eventually I start feeling the pull to order. My novels tend to jump back and forth in time (oh, all right, they ALL do! I'm incapable of writing a chronological narrative!), which means I'm putting a plot together like it's a jigsaw puzzle. Dozens of threads (anything from major character arcs to something as seemingly minor as a chewed-up old sofa) need to be followed and developed and ultimately tied up. The outline, however you choose to format it, will help you to juggle all that, so that the balls are still in your hands at the end of the act. Speaking of jigsaw plots, awhile back Unclutterer posted J.K. Rowling's handwritten outline (chapter by chapter, character by character) of one of the Harry Potter novels. You really can't spend too much time getting all your ideas in order!
That said, there's another kind of outline you write for your editor/publisher's benefit. When I submitted the first 90 pages of Petty Magic to Shaye Areheart, she asked that I submit a "chapter flow"--a prose-y sort of outline.
I got an offer based on the sense and tidiness of this "chapter flow." I knew how Eve's story was going to end, although I hadn't quite plotted out all the twists and turns that had to happen to get her there--but that was okay. My publishers just wanted to make sure they weren't giving me money to write a novel I had no clue how to finish!
Writing is Work
When I'm home I write at the public library, which thankfully is only a fifteen-minute walk. There are a few people I see there pretty much every day, and I wonder what their stories are. There's one guy with a long scraggly beard, black ball cap, and a mini-shopping cart full of tattered papers that has a disconcerting whiff of all his worldly possessions. He regularly curses at his laptop. Another middle-aged man spends all day, every day at the computer terminal in the café; and another, who looks to be about my age though he's gone almost fully gray, sits nearby at the DVD station watching crime dramas or episodes of "The Office." Yet another man, also about my age, sometimes reads and sometimes wanders around not looking at anything in particular, as if he's forgotten all about the books. Are they between jobs? On disability? (It's a pretty safe bet the laptop-shouter is.)Maybe I'm nosy, but I prefer to think of myself as observant. Isn't it part of my job?Of course, the ironic thing is that I, too, am a regular, and it's very possible they speculate as to what I'm doing there day in and day out.But you know what I'm doing. I'm writing.Okay, so I'm also checking Twitter and Facebook, flipping through the latest issue of Writer's Digest, and browsing the audiobooks. But I'm mostly, mostly writing.I've been writing full time since 2006. It's something I fell into, because I didn't have a day job to quit when I got my first book deal. All this time I've been feeling that I should try to stick as close to a 9 to 5 schedule as possible--I know a few writers, like my friend Christian, who do—not because it suits my rhythm (it definitely does not), but because it's what people expect, simply because it's how they work. And I'm slowly coming to the realization that I have to stop worrying what people think of me.When I lived in Galway, I had a roommate who was a "mature student," which is what Irish students call themselves when they've come back from a break in their studies. I'd say he was a couple years younger than I was (I was 27 at the time). He'd come home from a morning lecture right around the time I was fixing myself some breakfast, and he'd invariably make some comment about my being home in the middle of the day. In the very beginning, of course, I'd told him I was a professional writer and offered to lend him my books, but he made it clear he wasn't even the slightest bit curious. It was garden-variety ignorance on his part, and not a big deal at all in the cosmic scheme of things, but it did grate on me to hear the television blaring in the sitting room as I was heading out for the library. "Mature," my foot.
Me, working. Don't believe me? Read chapter 25. I know it sounds ridiculous to think that someone who is self employed isn't working just because they don't work on somebody else's schedule. After all, what's the point of being self employed if you can't make your own hours? Someone who's never been self employed isn't necessarily going to understand that, however. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, also known as the Yarn Harlot, touches on this in an excellent essay on people's tendency to confuse "work-at-home writer" with "stay-at-home parent."
...I absolutely concede that it is pretty amazing to be able to go to work in my underpants, but I feel like after almost a decade of trying to balance my culture's perception that I'm unemployed with the reality of having a full-time job, I've decided it's a diaper of a different colour.
Actually, the really sad thing is that the clueless mother who asserts the author doesn't need summer childcare, is herself self employed.Although I don't have children, I found myself getting really excited over this piece, because it touches on an (albeit minor) frustration I've been nursing for years. It annoyed the hell out of me when I was feverishly trying to finish writing my guidebook and a visiting relative kept making remarks about my being anti-social. It bugs me when someone asks for a favor during the day, because after all, I don't have anyone to answer to. And even though he doesn't mean anything by it, it niggles at me when my grandfather jokes about my being "retired."
The ability to use what flexibility the job granted me was amazing - but the difficulty of having that work respected, and protecting the time to do it was almost impossible.
Maybe the trouble with being a writer is that everyone else thinks they can do it too. They could, of course, but how many do? Writing is real work, but people don't see that when working looks to all the rest of the world like staring out the window, reading a book, or scribbling on a napkin.So the next time you see me doing any of those things, will you do me a favor? Don't assume I'm not.[Photo by Kelly B.]
11 Questions
And another goody for a sunny happy Friday: my friend Mieke Zamora-Mackay has just posted a Q&A with yours truly on various aspects of the writing life--daily routine, finding inspiration, to MFA or not to MFA, and so forth and suchlike. Read it here.I'm blogging about writing again on Monday morning. Stay tuned...
Musings from a Beginning Quilter
Today I have a guest post on beginning quilting on my friend Anne's blog, Flax & Twine! Check it out!
(See also Cocktails & Calico and Welcome to Babyville, part 2.)
Cóilín likes the back side of his quilt better. He converses with the owls.
(He's two now, so he's grown out of that, but it still makes me happy to think of it!)
Be Remarkable
As a student, you often learn your most enduring lessons outside the classroom. When I was doing my M.A. in Writing at NUI Galway I remember a particular meeting with my fiction teacher, Mike McCormack, and something he said that completely redefined how I would view my work--and myself as a writer--from then on.At this point I was fresh off my two-year stint at HarperCollins, nearly twenty-four, with a completed manuscript (that is, my practice novel), an agent, and a big ol' stack of rejection letters. My agent had recently explained to me via email that we could either start sending the manuscript out to small publishers—the implication being that if I did get a contract with a small house, I would probably never have a publisher like Random House. Alternatively, I could shelve my first effort and work on a new novel—and since I was already doing that, the choice had apparently made itself.So I showed Mike some early pages (ahem, very early pages) of Mary Modern, and he said he liked what I was doing, mixing science fiction and nostalgia with something kind of neo-gothic, and that very few writers he could think of were interested in this sort of genre bending. (This was back in 2004; of course we can think of a few more now!) We talked about novelists like Pat Cadigan and Connie Willis. "You have to create a place for your book on the shelf," he said. "Write something that no one else could ever think of writing."I know it's cheesy to say "write the story only you can tell," but that really is the gist of it. Don't write for "the market"; don't write a version of somebody else's commercial success. Write the novel that would be your favorite, if someone else had written it. A delightful little paradox, eh?[This post was inspired by Jane Friedman's "5 Things More Important Than Talent," a Writer's Digest blog post from June 2011. Yup. This has been sitting half-written in my drafts folder for that long.]Petty Magic shelf photo by Cheryl Tan.