Always Learning

There is a new television program called THE CRAFTSMAN, and it features Eric Hollenbeck, a master woodworker who has been honing his craft for over 40 years.  

He sometimes says things that are common sense, but rarely said aloud.  Such as, it took a long time to get good at what he does, and that his product is never perfect..."the tree was perfect."  The man also says he's still improving in his art.

I'm in my 50s now, so 20 years younger than Hollenbeck, but I can't remember a time when I wasn't working at being better at writing.  When I was younger, I'd sometimes be frustrated when I would read someone else's work that I knew was better than my own.

Obviously, I still find writing better than my own, and often, but I don't get frustrated anymore.  I don't get disheartened by rejections, either.  This is not to say I've grown numb to the experience; I have not. It's like Hollenbeck says, my writing will never be perfect.

Those who know me, also know I love data.  I wasn't a math kid, but there is something about data analysis that really speaks to me, and while points of data can be fascinating...nothing beats a trend.  An observable, quantifiable, valid trend.  

While I know my writing isn't perfect, and I'm surrounded by people who write better than I, or get more awards than I, or fewer rejections than I do...the trend is a good one.  I can read my work from 20 years ago, and see that it has improved since then.  Looking at short stories from 10 years ago, I scratch my head, and think, "I can fix this," and get to work.

The trend, since I was very little, has been one of improvement in my writing.  

The scary bit?  The trend in my cognitive function is going the wrong way.  I have to make lists!  Not just in my writing, but for just getting normal stuff done!  When did that happen?  With my writing, I have to go back and read so much more often.  I used to be able to hold an entire novel-in-progress in my head.  Now, I go into the next room and, upon getting there, I have to pause and think about why I went in.

I know it's the normal process of my brain becoming less elastic.  I don't learn nearly as quickly as I once did.  However, with writing, what my brain no longer retains, I remember through muscle memory I have acquired by having written so much.  For an obsessive writer like me, with that joy of lifelong obsession, the amount that I have written dwarfs what other people have seen.  I've written a lot of stuff.

Short fiction, essays, novels (in various genres), journalism, legislative bills, advertising copy, how-to, textbooks, screenplays, travel writing, curricula, poetry, a bit of memoir, translation, song lyrics, and of course blog entries.

With some of those types of writing I'm stronger, and with others, I am weaker.  I have been working on my screenwriting, and the generosity of others, teaching me, like screenwriter Judd Richter did last week, is something for which I'm extremely grateful.  

As long as I feel the trend is a positive one, I won't write in a panic.  I'm sure that day is coming, but I try not to panic about the impending panic.  As long as I can keep improving my writing, I'll only love doing it more. 

Once I realize that I have plateaued, I'll only speed up the pace. 

Once I realize that I'm in decline, I'll write only for me.

What is your mind doing?

Recently, in the novel I'm currently writing, I needed a song that a 12-year-old character could sing a cappella.  The words weren't especially important, but using lyrics from a published song is fraught with many hoops through which to jump.

So, as others have done, I wrote half a song.  There was a tune in my head, and it has meter and rhyme, but no one will hear the melody.  They will just read the lyrics.  I added additional info, such as the song sounds like Appalachian folk, or old-time folk, so that might help.

It occurs to me that someone reading it will actually have to grab a different gear in that part.  As we read, we have to create the vision, the sound, the scent based on the clues the author provides.  It is yet another step to imagine the music that might go with these lyrics.

I was listening to a story on the radio, and a woman was having her brain activity studied.  The scan showed that while her brain was active while she was signing, it was even more active when she silently imagined she was singing.  

Imagining took more work than the doing!

We see this as well when brains are scanned while people watch a video recording vs. reading the same scene without pictures.  The reading involves more brain activity, probably because the reader has to imagine rather than just see and hear.

Fewer young people read today than a few decades ago, ergo they do less imagining.  These younger generations are wonders at multi-tasking, but deficient in singular focus, compared to members of Gen X, but it seems clear that they likely imagine less. 

I see this as a real shame.  Don't get me wrong, I'm amazed by the next few generations, and I certainly don't fall into the camp of saying they are not motivated or lazy or helpless.  They are none of these things, but they seem to be less imaginative.

Partly because the internet has left little to wonder about, they've seen more by age 8 than I saw by age 14, but also because they haven't done that sort of mental lifting.  We teach persuasive writing, over and over, and neglect fiction writing.  We assign books that have so much in common with the last book we assigned, often with a heavy-handed story, and almost always filled with unrelenting sadness and trauma.  When was the last time a school assigned a novel that was a side-splitting comedy?  

So, they multi-task well, but absorbing instead of imagining.  When we stumble across an artist or voracious reader among them, it's as if we've run into Livingstone in Ujiji.  Again, I'm sure someone will respond with, "Nonsense, kids today read twice the books we did, paint many more paintings, are expert potters, and most have full-sized looms in their bedrooms where they wove their families' blankets."

Shut up.

I already said, I have great admiration for the younger generations, and pointing out a difference in how they think and have thunk is not a condemnation.  I also know that a call for them to "read more" doesn't really make sense, although I'd like to see it.  It would be like a member of Gen Z trying to teach a GenXer to type a story, with music playing and the television on, while texting with a friend.  

We'd say, "Yeah, I could learn to do that.  Why would I want to?"  Just as they would if we said, "Turn off all other distractions, get on your bed, and in silence read for two hours."

Neither generation is better, but an adaptation has occurred.  While there are exceptions, younger people adapted to the new world around us, and also adapted away from imagining things.

Everyone has the answers, but there are no answers

There is no shortage of experts who will tell an author what the secret to financial success is in publishing.  Also, there is no limit to the number of experts who will contradict the last expert with whom you spoke.  Some charge money, some don't.  Some have risen to respected positions in publishing, representation, or the media, and some haven't.

Eager authors jump from expert to expert, trying something new, trying to unlock the magic formula.  For those who take comfort in organization and predictability, this can be frustrating.  They sometimes can't understand why the last effort didn't work.  

They think, "If I throw a match on a puddle of gasoline, there will be fire.  So, I did what they said, and my book didn't explode.  It makes no sense."

However, marketing art is not like a lab experiment or writing software.  It's not a series of "IF...THEN" statements, like flipping binary switches, that must result in the desired outcome.

It is art.  Human taste is involved.  Human instincts come into play.  There is luck in the mix. None of these things can be quantified, and so authors end up with a recipe without measurements.

To bake a successful book, add 1 cup of water to some flour and salt, some sort of sweetener (the customer will tell you which one is the best after it's baked).  Put into the oven.  What temp?  The industry will crank that up and down, so good luck, you have no control on oven temp.  Leave it in there for somewhere between 15 minutes and 6 hours.

This is especially hard on those authors who insist that there must be a correct combination, and those who have found a way to succeed all their lives by simply working harder.  They believe success is nothing more than will power and talent.  With art, it's simply not the case.  

We cannot will an agent or publisher to love a story.  We cannot will a customer to buy a book.  It's not all up to the author.  Some authors, when they truly learn this, abandon publishing.  If they can't control everything, then why put that much work into something?  They can't imagine working their asses off, only to have success determined by the tastes and whims of other people.

But that has ALWAYS been the creative person's lot in life.  The zen of it is learning to write for writing sake, offering work that you love to others knowing that they might reject it.  Being rejected is not losing.  When I go fishing, with the first cast of my line, and I reel it in without a fish, I haven't "lost" at fishing.  I cast again.

Imagine sitting on a bank and a fly fisherman comes along.  He wades in, with a fly he tied himself, that he thinks is great, and he casts.  Hooking nothing, he casts again.  As the afternoon goes on, each cast is a bit angrier, and he's looking on his phone, watching YouTube videos of expert fly fishermen casting.  Now, imagine how much worse it would be with people on the bank calling out conflicting advice: "Cast over there! It worked for me!"  "You didn't invest enough in the pole and waders! You have no chance of the fish noticing you!" "You should be spearfishing!" "There are so many fish here!" "Fishing is dead!"

You look up, at the beautiful sky, and the wonderful day around you, birds, sweet scent of grass, the sound of the river, and the noise of a cussing, stomping fisherman making his way out of the water, saying, "The whole system is corrupt!  And rigged!  I'm doing everything right!  The fish in this river are especially stupid!" 

Just stop.  Stop.  Move to a different bend in the river.  Calm down.  Maybe put that fly away, and tie another.  Don't throw it away, simply put it aside.  A frustrated fly fisherman is missing the best part of the experience.  Smile at the advice, but don't chase from one advisor to another, in a panic.

Keep in mind, most overnight successes took 15 to 20 years to be successful.  Also keep in mind, some fisherman go home empty-handed, even when they did everything right.  The unhappy ones are the control-freaks who attempted to compel the fish to behave a certain way.  The happy ones are the ones who enjoyed the fishing.  

Finally, books aren't something we cram down people's throats.  Books are what authors leave behind.  F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby was considered a failure until AFTER he died in 1940.  It was made popular by thousands of soldiers, serving in the war, who were sent piles of books. The GIs discovered it, and it became a huge success.  The novel brought entertainment to so many in such a tough situation.  It has been a huge success ever since, and there are many examples like it.  

If you're an author, you're a part of a much bigger thing than some transactional arrangement where you build a widget, and try to sell it. If you don't get that, you're missing it.

I see your Point of View

I mean, what's left to write about this?  I suppose in many ways, it's like teaching the historical event of Washington crossing the Delaware.  It's covered in 5th grade, 8th grade, and 11th grade and yet, still, some people aren't familiar with it.  Maybe there is something left to dig into or reinforce.

When a book is written in 1st person point-of-view (POV), the narrator is a character in the novel, and is using first-person pronouns like "I" or "me" or "my" or "we" or "us"... you get the idea.  This is a fun way to write, because the author can do so much like have an unreliable narrator.  The storyteller is involved, and is thus biased, and may even be trying to deceive the reader. The narrator can even be dead, and telling their story.  The challenge is the author must always be asking, "Would my narrator know this?"  The narrator certainly would not know the thoughts and feelings of others, so the words "seemed to" and "seemingly" come in often.  As in:

"She seemed to be angry with me, but I couldn't be sure."

The narrator can't see someone slipping poison into tea in the next room.  The narrator can't know anything that happened while the narrator was sleeping, unless someone explains it later.  Even with these limits, it can be a fun POV because the reader inhabits the character, although this can be off-putting as well.  First-person character needs to be a bit more sympathetic than others, and by sympathetic, I don't mean the reader has to feel sorry for them, only that the reader would be interested in learning what happens to them.

In 2nd person, the pronouns are "you" and "your" and "yours" and this is incredibly hard to do.  There is no story that the reader is accessing, peeping into, it's in the reader's face.  It is author-to-reader jujitsu, and it is incredibly hard to do well.  Most often, you find this POV in self-help books, e.g. "You need to get in touch with your inner child" and it is rugged to use it in fiction.  A young author from Australia used it particularly well, her name is Bruna Gomes, in her novel How to Disappear, but it is challenging, and honestly, I warn you against it.

In 3rd person limited, some of the constraints from 1st person still apply. The narrator is anonymous.   The pronouns switch to 3rd person, like "he, she" but the reader is only inside the mind of one person, and that's why it's limited.  We the reader can only see inside the mind of a single character throughout the entire book.  None of this:

"Caroline thought that Benjamin was handsome, and Benjamin thought Caroline was a genius."

Nope.  You can't write that in 3rd person limited.

Neither can you do that with 3rd person multiple.  In 3rd person multiple, you have all the same rules as 3rd person limited, but you switch which mind the reader can see into, usually at chapter breaks, otherwise the reader will become confused.  

A chapter where we can see only Caroline's thoughts and actions, and then a chapter where we can see only Benjamin's thoughts and actions.  This can be a lot of fun to write and to read, because as the reader we know the thoughts of the characters, but they do not know each other's thoughts, and we can see the Three's Company-esque misunderstandings coming a mile away, or we can be tense because we are aware of the trap the other character is walking into.  With three characters, each getting a turn each chapter, a nice braided story can occur, and the three characters needn't be living in the same century, or even on the same planet.  The trick is tying it all together, the braiding, but it can be great fun to write, and three 90-page stories combine for a nice 270-page novel.

That brings me to 3rd person omniscient.  My initial advice- don't do it.  Leave that POV to God.  It's a POV where the reader can hear the thoughts and see the actions of every character in the same scene.  It's takes much of the narrative tension out of the story, like a police detective's court testimony, it's virtually impossible to do well, and no one likes a know-it-all anyway.

Remember that, except in 3rd-person omniscient (again, don't use it), if the POV is through a character who becomes unconscious, asleep, or dead-dead (not Lovely Bones dead), the character and thus the reader cannot know what is happening.  Once you learn this, you'll spot it happening as a glaring error.

The movie Groundhog Day is TERRIFIC.  I love it, but it makes this gaff once.  Bill Murray's character, though whose POV we have been experiencing everything, is dead in the morgue, and his colleagues from the TV station go and identify his remains.  He is dead and insensate. We have been in his POV the entire time, and suddenly we're in someone else's.  Maybe the coroner's, maybe the woman's?  Who knows?  It's jarring.  If you watch the movie with me, when we get to that very short scene, you'll hear me say, "POV issue" every time.  I know it annoys people, but I can't help it.

Once you learn these things, it's not as if spotting these errors is like being a middle-school hall monitor, saying, "You broke the rules!"  It's more like watching a puppet show, and the marionette's strings suddenly shift from invisible wires into 1-inch black rope.  

I don't want to sit and watch a great movie, or read a wonderful book, or even go to a decent puppet show, and suddenly get slapped in the face with POV issues that yank me out of the story.

Pick one of the POVs above (not 3rd-person omni, and I caution you against 2nd-person) and carefully stick to it.  Breaking the rules is always a choice, but you won't look clever.  You'll only look like you didn't know the rules.  

The Writing Zone

It hasn't happened to me in quite some time, but I've had these experiences while writing.  The last one happened when I was working on my novel, THE TWIN.  

I'm not a plotter, and I'm not a total pantser either.  My books are not completely plotted out, detail by detail, but I'm not just winging it and writing by the seat of my pants.

So these experiences I mentioned...there are times, I sit down to write, maybe with a lunch, a sandwich. I begin to work, following the very loose notes I've made.  I'm working..I'm working...and then suddenly I look past my computer monitor, and the room is dark.  Having sat down at noon, munching and writing, and then all at once, it's evening and many hours have passed.  

I don't mean this in a figurative sense, but instead in a "lost time" sort of thing.  Like an alien abduction, you know, except no aliens and probes and whatnot.

The entire house is dark, with no lights turned on.  My sandwich is gone, and there are 8000 new words in the novel.  Weirder still, I start to go back to read what was written, without any memory of what I wrote, and the quality is higher than my usual first pass AND there are plot points that I hadn't planned.

Then I realize how badly I need to go to the washroom, how parched I am, and how stiff I am.  

As I mentioned, this doesn't happen that often, and hasn't happened in years.  And I miss it.

Anyone have any theories as to what that is? I've already excluded the possibility of aliens. When someone mentions being in the zone, that's what I think of, I think of those times when that sort of thing has happened to me.  I chase it and want to experience it again, even though I have only the memories of right before and right after, with no memories of the actual writing.

I would love to know what you think is happening when that occurs.  Please comment and let me know.

What's the point?

Everyone can write whatever they want.
One might write for the pure enjoyment of writing, without any need for others to read it.  A writer may write with the sole intent of earning money by selling their work.  Writing can be therapeutic.  
The books might be designed to do nothing but entertain the reader, with nothing substantial to think about afterwards.  Novels may also have themes- something for the reader to examine during AND after the reading, such as loneliness, self-awareness, desire, redemption, culture, community, wealth, appearance, hypocrisy, forgiveness, or countless others.  These might even be combined.
Often, I believe, that a novelist will write a novel without being conscious of the theme, but the writer runs the risk of being all over the place, with a disjointed story. 
Because of this risk, I think it's best for authors to stake out a theme before they write.  They do not have to be a slave to it, nor do they have to plot out the entire story in advance.  Pantsers and plotters alike can choose a theme and then let it guide them. Even if authors have a story gel in their minds before they select themes, they might try to identify the theme of the story they've captured, and let it guide them as they wrestle the story from brains to pages.  
Authors know they've done this when they are asked, "What is your novel about?" and they are able to answer with a theme instead of characters and plot points.  

Q: What's your book about?
A: Growth, self-awareness, and redemption.

If an author cannot immediately do this, because they hadn't considered it, it might even be fun to spend time thinking about the book and discovering what the theme is.

Not another persuasive essay- how about empathy opportunities instead?

Many schools have become stuck in their writing instruction.  Students are graduating having written countless persuasive essays.  When it is suggested that perhaps students have had enough practice at that type of writing, the response is sometimes that the students are not yet proficient at it.

I'd suggest that if, after writing 6 to 8 persuasive essays in four years, students haven't reached proficiency yet, imagine how much work all the other types of writing need.  The literary analyses, research and scientific writing, narrative and expository writing, poetry, and many other types are largely going unaddressed.  Often, even when we assign something we call a research paper, there is a persuasive essay built into it.

Also, it's a solid backup plan, but the 5-paragraph essay should be in the rearview mirror by the time a student leaves middle school.  It's a great format to learn in fifth grade, but writers should grow beyond it. If someone ordered me to write an essay during my lunch break, I'd go to the 5-paragraph essay, but 18-year-olds in an honors class should be rising well above that bar.  It is to writing what a net is to a trapeze artist.  No one goes to a circus to watch the Flying Febrecci Family napping in the net.

I'll make a pitch for teaching the writing of fiction now, and not only in an elective class.  We live in a society where even good people collect and distribute information and misinformation as quickly as they can.  They try to persuade, just as they did with the predominant writing assignments in high school.  However, it is when we create characters, and therefore must get into the heads of the people we are creating, that we can develop empathy for people.  It forces the writer to imagine others thinking and feeling, hoping and wondering, imagining and realizing.

The writing of persuasive essays teaches us how to package information in a straightforward way that we hope will convince another person that we are right.  The writing of fiction can do that as well- we can even camouflage our message in a Trojan horse of storytelling- but fiction writing forces the writer to do more emotional work.  

Even if all we want to do is deliver our argument to others, it's almost always more effective built into fiction.  People often quickly put down an essay they disagree with, but if the point is built into an interesting story with sympathetic characters, the reader might finish and get the full dose of our ideas.

If we must keep compelling our students to attempt to convince others of one thing or another, what if we taught them to attempt it in a piece of fiction, instead of getting them to write one more persuasive essay?  That way, they get to put forward a point of view, while simultaneously stretching those empathy muscles as they craft characters.

Worth a try?

Writing Badly

I was once married to a brilliant singer, and while we were on our way from our apartment in Pacific Grove to Carmel-by-the-Sea, we were listening to a Beach Boys cassette tape.  As we drove along, we were singing, and of course she was hitting every note.  I was missing one here and there, but she was kind, and found something nice to say like, "Nice breath control."

But then, on the topic of missing notes, she said something I hadn't considered before. She pointed out that it took considerable talent to intentionally miss every single note, because you'd have to know what the right note was, and then assiduously avoid it, while singing another note, preferably a real clunker.  She was right.  Try it sometime.
The same can be true of writing.  One of my grad school mentors was a terrific Maine author and playwright named Mike Kimball, and he once wrote a humorous story about squirrels, intentionally missing every note when it came to writing craft.  
The room was filled at the reading, mostly MFA students and faculty, and we hadn't recovered from the last belly laugh before the next came.  He crushed it.  Most of the clunkers were because the prose was so over the top, and so repetitive in its repeating of what had already been said...plus throw in rodent love...
Anyway, there is an event called the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest which is looking to award a small prize for the worst opening line.  Known to many as the "Dark and Stormy Night" contest, it's run by San Jose State University, and writers attempt to miss all the notes while crafting a horrible opener, and then submit it.
The contest is named for the novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the well known first line, "It was a dark and stormy night," from his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. Snoopy, when he was crafting his novel, often used it. 
The whole of that stinker of an opener goes, "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
P-U, but the contest attracts over ten thousand entrants annually, and has been broken into subcats like mystery, romance, western, YA, etc.  
There comes a point when one more stroke of the brush diminishes the painting.  Bulwer-Lytton took a roller to his painting in the opening line.  
It's important to be detail-oriented when writing, but in my opinion it's hugely important to be economical as well, and to trust the reader for Heaven's sake.  Let the reader do some of the work, which sounds like a fortune cookie at a writing seminar, but it's true.  
For fun, here are some of the winners and runners-up from a recent Bulwer-Lytton contest:

2020 Grand Prize - Lisa Kluber, San Francisco, CA

Her Dear John missive flapped unambiguously in the windy breeze, hanging like a pizza menu on the doorknob of my mind.

2020 Crime & Detective category winner - Yale Abrams, Santa Rosa, CA

When she walked into my office on that bleak December day, she was like a breath of fresh air in a coal mine; she made my canary sing.

2020 Romance category winner - Julie Winspear, Washington D.C.

In Gertrude’s experience lovemaking was always bittersweet, or at least it had been until one fateful night when Chaz, the seductive man behind the concession stand blessed her with the salty-sweet bliss reminiscent of both true romance and quality kettle corn.

2020 Historical Fiction category winner- Edward Covolo, Menlo Park, CA

When Sir John of York fought in the crusades, he killed many Saracens with great dispatch, and was likened unto a whirling dervish of steel and Christian might—minus the dizziness from constantly spinning in a circle, and the fact that he was on a horse that couldn't do that.

Here's my advice.  Just write, in as natural a voice as you can.  Don't try to sound like someone you once heard, but you were reading, so it was the voice in your head, or one of them, with words being put in its mouth by another writer.  

Relax, and write.

Encouragement and discouragement

The image is the cover of a book I sold to my Dad in June 1975, shortly before I turned 7 years old.  I wrote and illustrated it, bound it (you can see the 5 staples), and did all the marketing myself.  

Some people would say that it's the work of someone born to be a writer, trying it on at a young age, but I believe far more of us are born to be storytellers than end up doing it.  "The Storey of the Tree and the Muose" is more a product of the encouragement from supportive parents than it is of a child-writer.  

I cannot remember back to a time when our parents were not reading to us.  Our drawing, writing, and all other creativity was encouraged.  Dad later even provided a stage for creativity through writing computer code, and I was writing original software before the local school district had any computers in classrooms or even offices.  

The fact that I even still have a copy of "Muose" is a sign of support.  As I said, I "sold" it in 1975, and unbeknownst to me, Mom kept it safe before giving it back to me 40 years later.  40 years.  

Later, when I published my first novel under my own name (I previously published 3 novels under a pen name), a book titled "Aliens, Drywall, and a Unicycle," Mom made sure she attended the launch and reading, via Zoom, on November 10.  She passed away, from cancer, on November 14.  

The support...that love...is what gives a creative person the ability to weather the rejections and criticism to come, and to continue creating.  Often we speak of a thick skin, which sounds like the creative person will not feel anything, almost as if numb.

I'm not numb to rejection or criticism.  It's just that on the huge balance scale, weights on both sides...on one side is all the love and support my parents provided, and on the other is the rejection.  It's no contest.  My parents, and others who offered support through the years like teachers, professors, loved ones and friends, and readers, are still winning.

And I'm very grateful.

What Should I Write? What is Selling?

As I'm sure you've heard a million times, don't try to write what is selling.  By the time you're done, that fad might have moved on without you.  I mean, how many people began writing novels with sparkling vampires because the bookshops were filled with them, not knowing the industry had left vampires behind in favor of zombies or tough young women with archery skills?

Besides, if you switch to a genre you don't read a lot of, it will likely show.  As we all know, the pathway to writing a book is paved with the books we have read.  If you have enough pertinent life experience, you can certainly make up for a not reading in a genre. A retired police detective with decades of experience probably need not read hundreds of police procedurals, since those novels will almost surely be more frustrating than helpful.  Still, there are craft lessons to be learned, so maybe reading a handful of the most successful would be a good thing.  

Kevin St. Jarre

Back to the main point- a writer shouldn't try to chase what seems to be hot.  Especially when whatever looks to be in style in a bookstore was actually the talk of the publishing industry at least a year before, when a publisher bought it, and the writing likely began a year or two before that.  By the time readers see marketing, the concept has been fleshed out, the book has been written and revised, an agent has been found or notified, more editing happened, the agent sold the novel to a publishing house, an announcement goes out to the industry insiders (more on this later), more editing happened, marketing plans and materials are created, publishing happened, distribution began, then the marketing appeared on the street, and the reader became conscious of the "new" book.

There are sources that can tell us what publishers are buying today, but as writers we're still behind by however long it takes to write the book.  

Publisher's Weekly is not a source for what books are selling behind the scenes, but instead is great for articles about authors and books that are currently being marketed, perhaps as early as pre-release marketing.  Its circulation is about 16,000 subscribers, but PW says that so many people pass along their articles, that their readership is more like 70,000.  That's not 70,000 people getting the entire weekly issue, but certain articles get passed-along (it's actually called a "pass-along" rate) and so the reach on a certain piece hits that many more readers, PW claims.  The readership, according to the magazine, are "booksellers, publishers, public and academic librarians, wholesalers, distributors, educators, agents and writers."  

There's a lesser known (to readers and even writers) publication.  It's called Publisher's Marketplace.  It's online, not in print like PW, and it's daily instead of weekly.  They are known as the "biggest and best dedicated marketplace for publishing professionals built on the foundation of Publishers Lunch, read by 40,000 industry insiders and considered 'publishing's essential daily read.'"  Instead of 16,000 weekly subscribers like PW, it has 40,000 daily recipients.  Publisher's Marketplace doesn't track the pass-along rate, partly because they ask subscribers not to pass along their issues.  They're supported by subscriptions, not advertising.  

While not everyone would be willing to pay the subscription fee, I have for 17 years or so, and subscribers can read daily announcements of what books sold that very day, to which publishers, and if an agent was involved, who it was.  They can see a projected pub date, and often the size of the advance the author is receiving.  And every sort of book is covered- every genre of fiction, or if the novel is from a debut author.  What else has the author written?  Perhaps it's nonfiction, those deals are in there, too, and foreign rights, TV and film rights, audiobook rights, you name it.  

PM was not designed for readers or bookstores, but instead for publishing industry insiders (and Hollywood and international publishers) and they read every deal.  

On January 14, 2022 alone, Publisher's Marketplace announced 73 brand-spanking new book deals.  Now, each announcement doesn't have that People magazine feel, with photos and cover art, etc.  Instead, they are 3-sentence announcements, giving the info-sans-hype. 

We can do searches by genre or type of deal.  For example, on January 14, we can see that of those 73 deals, two were for brand new thriller novels, and two others were romance.  None of the deals on that day were mystery (although we see some the day before), and four deals were for literary fiction.  On the nonfiction side, we can see that none were biography, but four memoir deals were announced that day.  

There were eight novels, already printed in the United States, that found publishers who bought the foreign rights, and we can see the last announcement of film rights being sold for a novel was back on December 27, 2021.  As for audiobook rights, on January 14, Tantor picked up a fantasy title and Blackstone picked up a mystery.  

There are great publications for marketing your writing.  It would be terrific to have your next novel featured in Publisher's Weekly, or to get a review in The New York Times.  However, even though you shouldn't try to write based on what's selling because it's an ever-moving target, if you want to now what the industry is buying today, if you want to know what industry insiders read in order to stay on top of the publishing world...it's Publisher's Marketplace.

*NOTE: I don't work for PM, have no deal to push PM, and PM has no idea I'm writing this, because I'm nobody, really.

My new-ish writing space

 

My writing space.  I used to look directly over the monitor and into the yard, but I often had the sun in my face, etc.  It's got a door, but that's rarely closed.  Noise doesn't really bother me.  Of course, if I'm required to interact...to get up and let the dogs in or out, or to go repair the latest malfunction in the home, or to answer the door...that does take me out of my writing.

But if anything, it's quieter than I'm used to for writing.  In the days before COVID, I loved to write in a combo sandwich-coffeeshop.  There is one in Plymouth, NH called Chase Street Market that was great for writing.  There's one in South Portland, ME called CIA that was pretty good, although it usually was a bit too warm in there for me.  Others would love that, I'm sure.  Arabica on Free Street in Portland, ME was great, even with very limited food options, but the table I liked to sit at, in the back on a raised portion, has been removed and the last time I went, I liked it less. I wrote in Petite Jacquelines once, in Portland, and the wine was certainly a nice addition, and it happens to also be one of my favorite restaurants. I've written in coffeeshops in Paris, Prague, Lisbon, Beirut...all this to say, it doesn't need to be silent.  Meals (awesome if both breakfast and lunch), open early, temperature is comfortable, furniture is sturdy and comfy, but there is another issue...

I like kids.  I really do.  However, some coffeeshops pre-COVID were doubling for daycare centers.  By all means, I think parents should be able to take their children into coffeeshops, but where they lose me is when they don't keep track of their child, and expect all the other patrons to participate in the free child care.  Let's not do that.

I typically wear headphones or earbuds in a coffeeshop.  I can still hear what is said, but it's down a notch.  I can listen to music, even with lyrics, while I write, as long as I know the lyrics very well.  Otherwise, I'll be trying to listen to the words being sung, and that does impact my ability to write.

Usually, all you'd see at a place like Chase Street Market, is me, sitting alone at a high top table in the corner near the street-side window, typing, taking an occasional sip of Orangina, sometimes eating a sandwich, earphones on.  I sometimes can write with another person, but most people sitting next to someone else for a few hours, will eventually talk to them.  Once that happens, I'm no longer writing.

I grew up in a small, northern Maine town.  Much of my childhood was spent outside in the forest or streams.  Even now, I live in a small coastal town, but I find good writing energy sequestered in a city apartment with good wi-fi, nearby markets and pubs, and sweet, blessed anonymous seclusion.  That is a recipe for writing from 5:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., with a half hour to eat a little fruit, bread, and a couple soft-boiled eggs.  In such an environment, I can write-and-revise as I go, about 18,000 words per week. Afternoons are for walks, lunch, and getting lost in the city.  Evenings are for dinner, a read-through of the day's work, and maybe stream a movie.  In that environment, I could write and revise a novel every 60 days- 30 for the first draft, 30 for revision.  

In real life, lately, I had a vacation around the holidays.  Ten days off from the day job, about 6 hours of writing got done.  Everything that needs doing, outside of work, ends up piling up and waiting for weekends and vacations.  However...hopefully...rearranging my home writing space will lead me to prioritize what I love to do over what I think has to be done.

Good luck with your writing!

Describing Characters, Revealing Characters

Sometimes writing workshops/seminars/whatevers sound like you've found yourself trapped in some hoity-toity cult of writers trying to sound deep, speaking author-speak in the most exclusionary way.

Advice like, "Don't simply tell us about the character, allow it to be a revelatory, transcendent-but-earthy experiencing of the character's inner..."  ack, I'm gagging and can type no more.

As always, I'm just sharing my thing.  It could be wrong and awful, who knows, but it's how I do it.  My first rule when introducing the reader to a character is to avoid being corny if I can help it.  Worse than corny is cheesy.  I'm not sure why the connection to food in those expressions, but I try to avoid them both.  Not in real life, though, because cheese is magic. 

While many say that describing a character's attire is a great way to give insight into the nature of the person, their societal status, their likes/wants/personality...I generally try to avoid it.  There are some exceptions, in my opinion, but describing an entire outfit as if the readers might want to order it for themselves is tedious.  It takes me out of the story, and I suddenly feel like I'm trapped in the author's living room, the author's voice drowning out the story.

I have to side with Mr. King on this one, and say that the less said about the character's clothing, the better.  Some clothing items I don't mind?  A hat with a sports team logo, shoes with stiletto heels, a crown, wellies.., these are examples of minor additions that do a lot of work.  But "he was wearing a tux, Tom Ford, with structured shoulders and a swooping shawl lapel" takes a lot of space and does so little, except insert the author's voice into the story with all the finesse of a bandsaw cutting through sheet metal.

I mean, leaving clothes out of it, in Twilight, the author never even describes the Bella kid, except to say she's bad at volleyball.  Bella is our vehicle in the story, and if you describe her clothes, height, weight, hair color, nose shape, eyes, teeth, etc...every item you add you make it more difficult to slip into the character's skin.

Those of you who curled a lip at genre fiction, no matter how much more money she's made than you, we can find the same sorts of examples in literary fiction as well.  I've never been a fan of The Great Gatsby. Yeah, I said it, and yeah the book outsells my books, so what.  But here's the thing...Daisy is such a 2-dimensional character that the most we really know about her is what she's wearing, and that she is an affront to feminism everywhere.  

Which maybe was intentional, because all the women in that novel are basically furniture that the men, portrayed as much smarter and more decisive, fight over.  Daisy is a clothes rack with a two-color floor-length gown, with a collar like flower petals, and she wears white gloves. F-Scott-F even describes her earrings as large and flower-shaped, but there is no real understanding of who she IS.

You know the whole "show don't tell" thing? When it comes to revealing a character to the reader, I think listening is better than seeing.  What a character SAYS is far more important than what they look like, clothing, body, etc.  It's just as true as it is in real life.

Give the characters stuff to say that reveal who they are.  Then we get to hear the character's voice, instead of the author's voice, and we'll get to know them.

I'm Complaining about Me

 So many people post complaints about other people's creative work, saying, "It's a pet-peeve when...."

In this entry, I'm going to complain about some issues that dog me when I write.  If I make grammatical errors while doing so, I am only supporting my points.

First complaint:

None of us are hungry.

None of us is hungry.

The second one is correct.  The object of the prepositional phrase, "us," is plural, so it makes it feel like we need a plural for of the verb.  We do not.  None is no one.  If we rewrote the line and took out the "of us":

No one are hungry.

No one is hungry.

I get caught by this sort of thing from time to time.

Second complaint:

I sometimes forget the comma before a conjunction that introduces an independent clause.

That man is dangerous, and a butler can be expensive.

That man is dangerous and a butler can be expensive.

The first one is correct.  Otherwise, when we get to the word "can," we've read that the man is both dangerous AND a butler, and then the word "can" throws us off, and as readers we now have to back up and figure out what's going on.

Third complaint:

My third complaint is about the word "just."  I put it everywhere.  I use it more than hot sauce.  

He was just outside, just beyond the door, but the mail arrived just in time, just in case you were wondering.

This is such a challenge for me.  I often do a search for the word, just to take it out.  

Fourth complaint:

This doesn't come up often, but when it does, I can't seem to stop myself from choosing the wrong one:

As to whether or not...

Whether or not...

The second one is enough.  We don't need the "As to," no matter how many times we've seen it.  

Last complaint is about the word "would" and its unnecessary use.  

Every Christmas, he would open his gifts...

Every Christmas, he opened his gifts...

The second is better.  Find the wood, er, "would" in your writing, and see if you can't pluck it out.

Of course, there are many more examples in my own writing I can complain about but I think I'll just leave it there.

Speaking of Speaking

You know dialogue can be the favorite part of writing.  The pacing is swift, a lot of information and characterization can be delivered quickly, and dialogue presents all sorts of opportunity to surprise the reader.  It's also a chance to take on perhaps the hardest part of writing, and that is attempting to be funny, but we'll tackle that in another post.

Writing dialogue is also full of traps, and just as I'm doing with this entry, there are countless people who are more than willing to tell you the rules.  

So, my first rule is look at all the rules as if they are only guidelines.  Dialogue is like music.  What is wonderful in one person's ear is pure clunker in the next.

Second, dialogue is the most human thing you'll write- meaning culture, ethnicity, education, socio-economics, generation, region, and individual personality all come into writing it.  Furthermore, it's all filtered through the POV of not only the narrator, but the author.  I'm a 50-something man, and so what a 12-year-old sounds like to me is different than what a 12-year-old sounds like to his 10-year-old sister.

The leads to a believability curve.  Someone may tell you, "This 12-year-old doesn't sound like he's only 12."  First, keep in mind that the reader is looking through a different life-lens than you are.  Second, the reader might not have had a 12-year-old in their life in 35 years.  The 12-year-old they are using as a model is now 47-years-old.

People resist changing these mental models.  If you write a story about a 12-year-old who speaks like a physicist, or an 85-year-old grandmother who speaks like a longshoreman, that character can become a really interesting feature, but some readers will reject it. 

For me, I write dialogue in three steps.  Step 1- get it down on paper.  Just write it, knowing you'll improve it later.  Step 2- streamline it.  Go through and economize.  For example, you'll almost never need the word "yes" or "no."  In 2000, I spent a month in China, and my Mandarin was never great, but my driver told me that they really didn't use a word for "yes" or "no." If someone asked, "Are you tired?" you could expect someone to simply answer, "I am" or "I am not."  

A mentor of mine pointed out early on that when a character asks, "Are you hungry?" better than answering with "yes" the second character could reply, "I could eat."  As is said so often, dialogue is not transcription of speech.

Step 3- make it more realistic with misunderstandings.  Almost no conversation goes smoothly, and the miscommunication is almost as revelatory as the communication.  Also, let some of it go.  Don't fix everything.  When humans talk, they let a lot of the stuff they didn't understand go without comment, until it becomes obvious that they missed a crucial bit.  All this is tough, but give it a try and practice.

This isn't a step, but it is another bit of advice...try to be fair.  Make an effort to not give all the best lines to the character most like you.  It's a nice way to resolve some conflict from your middle school years, maybe, but it shows, and if the reader detects the one-sided nature, they might take the side of the verbal punching bag.  Keep it balanced, if you can.

I'm one of those who writes dialogue with attributions "said" and "asked," almost exclusively.  No adverbs, no groans-shouts-sighs, etc. Occasionally, I will use "reply" or "answered" but rarely.  As many have pointed out, it's difficult to convey whispering with punctuation or context, so "whispered" makes sense, but keep in mind that whispering can be really creepy, especially when it's deadpan whispering by a child.  

Years ago, I wrote about accents, so I'll avoid it this time, except to again beg you to go easy.  There is a brilliant author, I love the work, but one novel was basically unreadable because the Scottish accent within is so overwrought, so heavy-handed, that it carries all the gravitas of Pepé Le Pew and Foghorn Leghorn.  Signal the accent, with a word here and there...do not try to recreate it.

To sum up, in my opinion, whenever you get stuck, have a couple characters say something.  It'll boost pace, it'll refresh the reader, and it will almost certainly put fresh choices before you as the author.

Coarse language

I'm not shy with my use of profanity.  There are times when I can prevent myself from using it, such as when I'm in a classroom, a job interview, or any number of examples.  However, I have nothing against it.

So, my use of profanity is not an accident, and neither is the absence of coarse language in speech or writing.  It's a choice.

I wrote three military thrillers under another name for Berkeley Books, and although there is horrific violence in those novels, there is virtually no profanity in them.  It was a choice I made, which doesn't really reflect my experience with how people speak in the military, but it was a creative decision.

I wrote an historical novel, titled THE TWIN, which is supposed to be the translation of a 1st century document.  Obviously, street profanity from a modern American city would not have been a fit.  However, a supernatural thriller, like my coming novel ABSENCE OF GRACE, has quite a bit of it.  If it was natural, in my mind, for a particular character to swear a blue streak in a particular situation, he did.  

In my novel ALIENS, DRYWALL, AND A UNICYCLE, early on in the book, there is shouted profanity that has nothing to do with characterization, but instead is actually part of the setting.  It signals something to the reader about the nature of the main character's new apartment when, as he's unpacking, he hears someone roar obscenities down in the parking lot beneath his open window.  

The book I'm writing now, titled PARIS, CALIF., features the point-of-view of a mild-mannered retired dentist living in a small coastal town.  If I had him dropping F-bombs constantly, it would be initially jarring, and maybe entertaining, but it would also be a completely different character than the sober judge-of-changing-surroundings I need the person to be.

It's been said that profanity is like salt, or hot sauce, its use changes the dish (making it less or more palatable depending on tastes of the consumer), and its overuse can ruin it.  

But no matter what, it's simply another choice.  No story requires it, but it's equally true that it can be used in any story.

Breathing New Life

Twelve years ago, I began writing here, North of Everything, but it's been more than six years since I dusted this place off.

I'm back!

This space will be reserved for all things creative.  I'll share my thoughts about, and experiences with, writing, painting, editing, building, publishing, and so on.  Hopefully, I'll hear back from many of you.

For now, I invite you to scroll back through my previous posts.  I had fun walking back through them.  Some I deleted, some I almost deleted, and some I left.

Most of the discussion of writing here will be of craft and process.  There are better writers than I, believe me I know, but I'll share my take on things, in exchange for your responses, and hopefully overall it'll be a growth experience.

We'll leave politics, religion, and money out of the posts, but not out of the creative writing.  That means we can explore how we might write about these topics, but we won't argue the topics themselves here.  There are plenty of other online places to do that.

Generally, we'll be positive.  If someone's discouraged or having a bad day creatively, we'll be here for each other, but any post like, "All publishing is hopeless. It's all corrupt," or some such will be deleted.  

Okay, I think that's it.  Look for regular posts here, and I'll look for responses.  Hopefully, it'll be fun!

So this whole YA thing...

Young Adult fiction just kept coming up.  I don't mean the new book sales.  I don't mean one agent after another who said they were actively looking for YA.  I mean readers.  Smart adults, that I admire, reading YA.

Now, I admit, I was skeptical.  Why would educated, erudite adults, all clearly smarter than I, be reading YA?  I know people are quick to point out that YA means that the protagonist is young, usually a teen, and that YA does not that the language in the book is written at a lower reading level.

So, I began researching and reading.  Turns out, most YA fiction IS written at a lower reading level than most adult fiction.  So, people who get insulted by those who say some readers have turned to YA because it is easier to read probably should get over it.

It is also true that most YA, actually I could find no exception, features a main character between the ages of 14 and 18.

However, it is also true that I was surprised by some of the YA fiction.  I was surprised to find some of the language- the diction, the syntax- was actually challenging reading and clever writing.  I was also surprised to find very intricate plotting, and complex themes.

I realized that not all YA was easy to read, and certainly some YA was difficult to write.  In light of this, and because I love to learn-by-doing, I decided to try and write a YA novel.  The entire book is written in 1st person, from the point-of-view of a 16 year old girl.  I did, in fact, learn a lot.

I also had a lot of fun.  I finished the first draft of my first YA novel today.  The working title is "Celestine," which is also the protagonist's first name.  Celestine Tolland has found herself in a new place and time, after great loss, and has to find her way.  These are familiar tropes, I know, but to live inside the head of teenage girl since November has been both eye-opening and exhausting.

I always learn from the characters I invent.  The Night Stalkers series I wrote featured a female protagonist, so that wasn't the particularly new part.  It was the combination of gender and age. Teenage girls live in an especially fun and simultaneously vicious world, filled with opportunities for stories.

Now, I'll set to revising the "Celestine," and hopefully I'll be querying agents about the project in the coming months.

In the end, I have learned that I enjoy writing Young Adult fiction.  I am not sure what my next novel will be, but it just might be another YA project.

Teaching

I'm a teacher and a professor and I want to share something.

I'm not blowing the "Hurray for teachers!" horn.  While I started kindergarten able to read and loving school because my first teacher, my mother, was an excellent one, I had a terrible teacher in 2nd grade that had no business teaching children.  I won't name her, but when I look back at that year, I literally can only remember fear and humiliation, and even the colors are somber blue and grey.  Screaming and dumping of desks and kneeling in corners and worse.  She set me down a path of not taking school seriously, hating much of it, being quietly defiant, and setting me back years in my learning.

HOWEVER...along came a string of talented teachers.  Many, in fact, and more than I can name in this post.  If you were one of my teachers, and I don't thank you by name, please know I am still deeply grateful for the time and effort you put in for all of us.

After the damage done in 2nd grade, and a string of some great and some not so great teachers afterwards, it was in 7th grade that my rescue truly began.

A teacher who simultaneously was stern and loving, demanding and supportive, took an interest in my writing.  Outside of my parents, no one really had.  Her name is Julie Foss.  She was a veteran, and had taught my parents before me.  In a stroke of luck, I had Mrs. Foss for two years in a row.  Truly, I look back and know that she was the pivot point in my educational life.  It was because of her that I became a student again.

The scaffolding was not there for math, and so I continued to feel inadequate in the subject and would remain behind some of my peers throughout junior and high school.    Some math teachers assumed I was lazy, others probably thought me stupid.  I remember one instance so clearly...I discovered I finally understood my homework one night.  It clicked!  I worked for two hours on it, but it was fun!  Like solving a long-secret puzzle.  I went to class the next day, and the other students were talking about how easy the homework had been, how it had only taken them 20 minutes.  And then I learned that I had every problem wrong.

But another teacher came along.  Perhaps a bit eccentric, but energetic, and very smart.  For the first time, I enjoyed math, and felt I could actually learn it. I also began to care about doing well with the math because I wanted to please the teacher.  Mr. Frank Colgan was actually, primarily, a chemistry teacher, but I learned more math from him than I learned from anyone else in my life.  Perhaps all the years combined.

I had strong preparation in my English classes throughout high school.  In fact, we read more each year than most high school students read in four today.  We studied *gasp* grammar in a systematic way, even diagramming sentences.  This helped immensely when I went to Monterey to learn a new language in a year-long immersion program.  Well, actually, I was bored for a few weeks while foreign nationals had to teach the other Americans in the class the difference between between nominative and accusative cases (I just had to learn the labels, they had to learn the concepts).  Still, it was the last high school English teacher I had that marked another turning point.  All male teachers wore a coat and tie back then.  He would come in, like a reverse Mr. Rogers, in a suit and tie, and remove his high-top leather white sneakers, and slip into his shoes.  He once announced the next day would be the first day studying poetry and he brought in Led Zep lyrics to Gallows Pole.  I mean, everyone does that sort of thing today, but back then it was unheard of.  He was very young, and quiet by nature, but smart and, again, encouraging.  If Mrs. Foss made me want to be a student again,  it was Mark Kelly who made me want to teach.

I had some growing up to do before starting university, and after my time in the army, I was ready for full-time college work.  I found that even six-years removed, the prep I had received at little Madawaska High School was more than adequate.  When I took Biology at university, we didn't come close to covering what we had covered in half a year of Mr. Paul German's high school bio class.

There were three professors, among many great ones, whom I'd like to mention here.  The first was Dr. Bill Willan, who shocked me at the end of my first semester when he invited me to join an honors class in English for my next semester.  There was Prof. Brad Ritz, with whom after I had exhausted every course in economics that the university had to offer, we designed independent study courses so I could continue to learn.  I truly regret that I simply ran out of years at college before I could soak up more from Brad.  I have 3 semester hours in Brazilian monetary policy.  I mean, who has that?  I loved it.

And finally, my undergrad mentor, with whom I also took several courses.  He was such a different sort of person.  A man of huge frame, with a pony-tail.  From Brooklyn, but with a PhD from West Virginia.  I took a course in Evaluation & Guidance from him that I still refer to almost weekly in my own teaching.  If Mrs. Foss made me a student again, and Mark Kelly inspired me to teach, it was Jim Killarney who made me into an intelleweirdo-good-natured-skeptic desperate to learn more psychology, sociology, and philosophy.  Foss made me want to work, Kelly made me want to tell, Killarney made me want to ask.  When Jim lost his battle with cancer, one he did in his own inimitable way, I was truly saddened.  We'd lost another great one.

I had four mentors in grad school, brilliant writers all..  I will briefly mention them all, because they each gave me something I continue to use in the moments I am doing the work I love most- writing.  Suzanne Strempek Shea's kindness, expertise, generosity, and journalistic eye helped me center my voice.  Richard Hoffman did something that no one had honestly and constructively done for me.  He told me that my writing was not up to par.  That he expected more and he showed me how to build a pathway to get there.  I'm still working on it.  James Patrick Kelly was encouraging not only of my writing (and he is a master of plot) but also of my workshopping skills, something I love and get paid to teach at the university level today.   Finally, Mike Kimball, the cool one, not that other guy.  Novelist and playwright.  His humor and insight into the craft of writing has forever changed my work.  When I am editing/revising any of my own fiction today, it's his voice I hear in my head.

I'm a teacher and a professor and I am thankful.  Not only because these great teachers, and others like them, were able to undo the damage of one horrible person and the self-inflicted damage that came after, but because while underpaid and overworked and probably without knowing it, they saved and inspired one kid who is now doing his best to teach others with an example of how to do it badly and many examples of how to do it incredibly well.

Thank you.

Allan Hale Jr.

This morning I learned from an old friend that one of our dear and mutual friends has passed away, Feb 3, after a battle with cancer.

Last July, when I was living in NH for the summer, Allan Hale emailed me:
""Hi Kevin,
So you're in Groton? I'd like to meet you sometime for a beer! I live in Laconia now. I haven't been on email lately, I was out the last several work days . . . Just got back to work today. Let me know when a good time for you is.
Allan"

We didn't get that beer. Now, we won't.

Allan was one of the good ones. Brilliant, kind, an extremely dry wit, and a worker. Intellectually curious and seemed to know something about everything. When Allan knew more about something than you did, you could never tell. He wouldn't tell you. He'd just smile and nod and let you share what you knew.

We two were the young-ins for several years of hunting parties. We'd go to camp with his dad Allan Sr. and his peers, funny guys like Bill Harris and others, and Al and I would listen to the stories and laugh at the "team" who slept in instead of hunting. And then we'd laugh again when those back in the camp would play the sound of sizzling bacon over the walkie-talkies while we were out freezing in the woods far up north by 3rd Connecticut Lake in NH.

We worked at a software company together, we started in the software training dept on the same day. The company was a spinoff from Cabletron called Aprisma, and we'd leave at lunch to go target practice at a range in South Berwick, ME. We'd smoke cigars and laugh. We rewrote coursework together. We once worked as a team to convince the state of West Virginia to buy the software by teaching them about it for 3 long days. When Aprisma began to build a new building for itself, we were put in temp work spaces. Al and I SHARED a cubicle. He talked often back then about learning to fly a helicopter and getting his license. He never did. We laughed a lot. It was in that cubicle, Al and I sitting shoulder to shoulder designing new course material, that we both learned of the 9/11 attacks in progress.

We went golfing on Waukewan, the course his veterinarian grandfather owned and built (well, he built the front 9, the back 9 he brought a firm in) and Al was so patient with my terrible play. His maternal grandfather, if I remember right, had been the police chief in Meredith, NH. So rooted in NH he was, but funny too. We once stumbled upon a tiny cemetery in the woods, one of those you really only find in NH, and by coincidence everyone in it was a Hale. No matter how I tried to make him excited about the chance find, he just shrugged it off.

While we worked full-time together, including at least 25% of each month on the road flying across the country and around the world, he earned his MBA at night. He was a worker.

Smart, driven, kind, funny, generous. How better to be remembered?
I'll miss him. I wish we had gotten that beer.

Saving Moira

My current work in progress has the working title Saving Moira and the first draft will run short.  I believe a novel should really hit the 70k word mark at the very least, and this novel's first draft will end well short of that.  This only means I have the room to go back through and weave an additional subplot through it, but I don't know yet what that will be.

In Saving Moira, Christopher Beranger made his dying wife a promise to bury her on the land they owned and loved.  What he couldn’t tell Moira, as she lay in her deathbed, was that the bank had already begun foreclosure proceedings.

Christopher and Moira lived with their dog, well-liked by neighbors, but they kept mostly to themselves.  When they received the dire prognosis, Christopher stopped taking work and they spent their time walking the wooded acreage together until Moira simply was no longer strong enough.

After she died, Christopher kept his promise and buried her in her favorite spot, down by a bend in the brook.  He then dug false graves, filling the forest with them, in an attempt to confound any attempt by others to find her.

The bank auctioned off the property, and Christopher was resigned to leaving the house with only their dog and a few odds and ends, until an order to move Moira provoked a confrontation.  Among those who wanted her moved were the land development company which won the auction, and Moira’s brother Mike, who wanted his sister buried elsewhere.

Sympathetic to Christopher were the local police chief, Lem Holt, and an attractive print journalist named Karen Kendall.  Karen took up Christopher’s cause, and wrote about the couple and Christopher’s promise.  Soon protesters were at the property showing solidarity with Christopher and Moira and angry with the banking system and the so-called 1%.  Mike, Moira’s brother, was also there, with a handful of supporters of his own.

Now, the sheriff’s department intends to execute the eviction order, and time is running out for Christopher….

…and that’s what I’ve written so far in the novel Saving Moira.

I'd like to write some more today, but I have to finish preparing for the college course I begin teaching tomorrow. 

Aliens, Drywall, and a Unicycle

In researching The Twin, I read countless books.  Well, maybe not countless, and not cover to cover, but I read huge chunks of almost thirty different books and many different web sources.  I mean, I was immersed in Josephus (the 1st century scholar), the Gnostic gospels and Pistis Sophia, and three different translations of the Bible (of which, Young's Literal Translation was especially useful).

After The Twin, for my next project, I wanted to do something completely different.  As one might imagine, my use of language, tone, and even huge pieces of plotting were constrained by historical events and my imagined expectations of the readers.  When the next novel came along, I decided I wanted to go a bit nuts.

Even the working title- Aliens, Drywall, and a Unicycle- started as a bit of a joke.  In fact, it was even worse originally, as Aliens, Drywall, God, and a Unicycle, but I decided to shorten it a bit.  I also know that someday when the ms is published, the title will likely be changed.  Novels differ from poetry that way.  With a poem, the title is part of the poem.  With novels, the title is part of the marketing.

Aliens, Drywall, and a Unicycle is the story of Tom Tibbets, who takes a job at a weekly newspaper in Portage, New Hampshire and an apartment in the old Cooper Building where the residents form a kaleidoscope of the odd, interesting, and insane.  Tom, against his better judgment, is soon assigned to write a series of features on his colorful neighbors.  

There’s elderly Marie downstairs, who is sure we are all the descendants of ancient aliens, and there is Ben, the pothead philosopher who works at McDonald’s.  There are the Lennox brothers who hang drywall for a living and play with explosives for fun.  There is Winnie, the albino vegan pacifist, and Rich and Becky Kapel, who despite renting a top-floor apartment, are nomadic born-again Christians who drop by in their Winnebago from time to time.  There is Leaf, the self-harming nymphomaniac who attempts suicide every couple of weeks, and Miguel who is a middle-aged, long-haired, chain-smoking schizophrenic, who is always seen riding his unicycle.  Finally, there is the mysterious and wise Mr. Hitch whom no one seems to know, but who appears at different times wearing such varied things as wetsuits, cowboy costumes, and roller-blades.

At first, Tom feels like the only sane person in the building.  However, he soon identifies more and more with his neighbors who are more three-dimensional than they initially appeared and who actually might have life figured out. The very people he at first considered unstable and strange become a lens through which he gets a new look at himself and everything else.

His contempt for his job, his boss, the outside world, and his life as he knew it grows.  Just as it seems Tom will simply be assimilated into the cast of tenants, the tragic accidental death of one of his neighbors not only derails his life, but leaves the tenant community forever changed and off-balance.  Tom comes to wonder if his karmaic weight, added to the Cooper building, has thrown off the bizarre status-quo energetic balance of the place.  In the end, however, the story is a tragi-rom-comedy featuring Tom’s growth from delusion to examination to awareness of what is truly important in life.

To say the book is strange is an understatement.  I think some of the fun of writing is the capturing of different facets of the author in the projects.  Wave Momentum, The Twin, and Aliens all come from different corners of my head.  

Tomorrow, I'll discuss a couple projects I began writing, which have not died but are sitting idle for now while they incubate.  Someday, I'll reopen them.