This is more like it

Here comes Hanna. The forecast of gusty wind and rain bodes for an interesting Saturday morning run. But then I get to say I ran in a hurricane. I know it won't be a hurricane anymore but everyone knows I tell lies anyway. Wait until I describe the possums and crow's wings and oil drums tumbling past me.

But this is why I labor in the garage with iron-hard locust lumber. Because it's thick and dense and will not rot, and if I put in the hours and sweat to make that wood part of my boat, the boat will, maybe, better withstand weather like this.

And this is more like it. 35 gusting to 40! Apart from the high likelihood of catastrophic structural failure on my poor old boat (not the one under construction), that is the sort of weather I should be sailing in. Or very much the sort I should not be sailing in, if you listen to my mother.

 ANZ531>533-052230-
CHESAPEAKE BAY FROM POOLES ISLAND TO SANDY POINT-
CHESAPEAKE BAY FROM SANDY POINT TO NORTH BEACH-
CHESAPEAKE BAY FROM NORTH BEACH TO DRUM POINT-
 626 AM EDT FRI SEP 5 2008

 TROPICAL STORM WATCH IN EFFECT

 TONIGHT
E WINDS 20 TO 25 KT. GUSTS UP TO 35 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT.
WAVES 2 TO 3 FT. SHOWERS.

 SAT
E WINDS 30 TO 35 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 45 KT. WAVES 2 TO 4 FT.
SHOWERS.

This is why thoughtfulness and care in building -- writing too, for that matter -- is so critical: the world is dangerous. Bad things happen. Has anyone ever been lulled into a real sense of complacency? No! It's always a false sense of complacency.

Let's build our boats strong for they may be in danger someday. Our stories may be read in a world very different from the one we live in. Imagine the books published on December 6, 1941. Or September 10, 2001.

Write strong!

Stop thinking

When I'm writing, am I thinking about writing? No -- at least, not when it's going well. Ideally I'm in the story, experiencing it just before it appears on the page.

It's not until revisions that I'm thinking about the story. In fact, the magical and not-to-be-understood moment of story creation requires, for me, a sort of relaxed effort, the hanging pause in a cathedral just after the organ's last thunderous chord, a very very quiet space where I can hear the high thin singing of the story.

It is very quiet but it is there, way up there, way up there, up the narrow dank spiral staircases and out above the clerestory to where dust motes drift like milkweed and swallows wheel. Up there is where the story lives.

And then I climb back down to revise, bringing -- I hope -- that quiet singing down to earth where I can look at it and try to refine it, shape it, see it in the harsh light of judgement. Not-thinking and thinking.

Now, then, a question. With "more" people buying books online, is it less important where a book is shelved in the store? Believe me, I am heartily in favor of actual stores with actual people and actual chairs and even actual books, but it would be unwise to ignore the growth of online bookstores like Amazon.

Junk mail is junk mail. Ads are ads. Listen to me on this: I work in marketing for my day job, and I know of what I speak: most marketing budgets are wasted on things that look flashy -- ads are a great example -- and are great to point to as "marketing" but which fail to actually get people to buy the product.

So why do people buy the book? see the movie? attend the college?

Word of mouth. We hear about stuff from other people, people we trust, people we don't know, it almost doesn't matter as long as it's not the manufacturer itself. If I'm a high school senior, which is more convincing: a slick ad from a college, or somebody not affiliated with the college marketing office who just talks about what it's like being a student there?

We are a skeptical society. Rightly so, given the tripe masquerading as objective news and information [rant narrowly averted here]. What this means is that we don't trust salesmen as much as we trust "users." This means other people who have read the book.

A word of mouth "campaign" is hard to track and nearly impossible to assign a budget to, so the corporate world tends to get twitchy when it's mentioned. But if you can get people talking about a book, reviewing it, discussing it on blogs ... that is huge.

Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the economics of book promotion, and certainly there are other important factors, such as bookstore reps, catalog sales, etc. All I'm saying is that the thing we -- ironically -- talk very little about is how important it is to talk about books. Better yet, to get other people talking about our books.

The Internet has revolutionized this, with blog tours, guest interviews, reviews, comments, links to other sites, on and on and on -- and all of it completely independent of the traditional publishing house marketing campaign. Let that continue, as it should: it is not without purpose. But let's also warm the smoldering energy of a conversation about good books. Because that's how you reach skeptical readers and buyers.


p.s. I am trying and failing not to be turned off by the word "marketing." Maybe it's because so much of my day job involves it, but more likely I'm not comfortable with the business and promotional aspect of book-making. Better get over that, huh?

Wind Freshens

Well, after five days away from the blog and home, I'm back. The best part is that I accidentally didn't think much about my manuscript at all during those five days! I don't think that's happened since I started writing it!

I did many great things on my vacation, not the least of which involved sailing a screaming reach twelve miles down the Chester River as dusk fell and the wind rose. I had no idea my little boat could go that fast, and I'm now reconsidering plans to give it away to make room for the new boat. Can't I keep them both in the garage? Where would the plywood go? Where would my tools go? Where would I go? Etc.

I'm serious, this was like doing a wheelie on a bike. Downhill.

At any rate, this accidental holiday from the book means that I've started to forget all the little dips and bumps and can think more broadly about the overall shape of the story. It's not there yet, but it's close. So I've found, to my delight, that the freshening wind provided an unforgettable couple hours of sailing and the distance I've so badly needed to look at the book critically.

And now, even as I wonder if I can take a few more days away from it, I remember the sound of the boat running up onto the sand in the twilight rain, how warm the water was, the shaky-leg feeling when we walked up the hill to the yacht club bar. Part of me is still there.

Revisionzzzzz

Two nights ago I fell asleep while doing revisions: sitting on the couch, scrolling, checking consistency, chapter titles, scrolling, scrolling ... drool ... hummingbird ... leather ... sandy feet ... and suddenly I woke up.

Then I read about Stephanie Perkins' don't-take-prisoners-unless-you-can-use-them-to-brew-you-more-coffee revision plan on her blog: Come home from work, nap and then revisions until 3-4AM! (Thanks to Laini Taylor for the link.) Holy cow. That is dedication. That is belief. That is the sheer madness that I'm beginning to think must be necessary to succeed.

Story uber alles. Necessity knows no law, etc.

What do you want for dinner?
Revise.
What time is it?
Revise.
Do you want to change that shirt?
Revise.
Here, at least clean your face.
Revise.
Do you even know where you are?
Revise.

E.B. White told us to omit needless words. Stephanie Perkins reminds us to omit needless activities. What counts as "needless" will vary! TV? Sure. Sleep? Depends. Food? Probably not.

I'm no longer writing just so I can "be an author." And I'm no longer writing because it's fun (though it is, desperately fun sometimes). I'm writing because I believe in the story and the characters. They own me; I owe them. How I let them remain incomplete?

Thumb. Thumb. Thumb.

I've just finished reading Alan Garner's Stone Book Quartet, four novellas bound into a single book. This was an edition printed in the 80s and then left, forgotten, in various boxes and shelves. Come on, it had a boring cover and the paper was the wrong weight so it was hard to open. Plus I was too busy reading Robert Aspirin and not talking to girls.

Anyway, I'd seen some references to the haunting quality of Garner's work and tried The Owl Service and then this. The Owl Service is about two kids in Wales -- my memory is spotty here, this was several months ago -- who stumble into a very old story and find themselves playing roles that others had played, generations before. A very old story. And I have to say the book was downright creepy.

The Stone Book Quartet is not easy to read, filled as it is with regional English dialects, references to offstage action and events, and to some extent, a lack of the comforting explanatory narrative I think we've gotten used to in books like the Harry Potter series. Alan Garner doesn't explain, he describes. He observes.

What makes these four interlinked novellas so haunting and compelling is that each of them is concerned with the past and old stories, all relevant and affecting the narrators. And each story has characters and references -- a stone wall, a steeple, a way of shouting -- that echo the other stories, so while reading you feel like you're in the middle of a pond with ripples spreading out and in, all around you. It's dizzying.

It reminds me of when I was little and used to be able to put myself into a semi-trance state by staring at my thumb and saying, "Thumb. Thumb. Thumb." Over and over until my thumb seemed strange to me, and my own existence seemed strange, and the fact that I was sitting on a chair in my grandparents' house, in a country in Earth in the twentieth century, it all felt like a hugely random accident, as if there was so much more in the world than my tiny perceptions. Thumb. Thumb. Thumb. Thumb.

It's the same feeling I get when I force myself to remember that, for example, people have been living in this part of the world for hundreds of years. Thousands of years. Right here. Playing and fighting and thinking and wondering, just like I am. And it's not some chapter from a history book or a museum exhibit: I could go outside right now and see the same kind of sky they saw, the same kind of tree.

(One Small Blue Bead has this same dizzying quality.)

AT ANY RATE. The link between my auto-fugue state and Alan Garner is this awareness of the heaviness of the world, all of the things in it besides me, the narrator of my own story. Somehow Garner pulled it off in a "children's book." Check it out.

The Owl Service, by Alan Garner
Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner
One Small Blue Bead, by Byrd Baylor

Here Be Monsters

On the outside of my house, to be specific. This afternoon I watched a praying mantis devour a cicada. This was interesting because the mantis was the size of my finger and the cicada was the size of my thumb.

I bravely crouched down and took pictures, but it turns out they are too horrifying to post, so instead I'll try to describe the situation. Remember, nature can be cruel. And warning: this is horrible.

The mantis grasped the cicada in its front legs. One of the sharp legs had gone through the cicada's wing and pierced its back through; the other had clamped across its face. I bent closer and said, "Oh-". The back of the cicada was gone and it was opened up like a bowl as the mantis chewed, scissoring its heart-shaped head back and forth.

The cicada's gossamer wing was fluttering and humming, and its legs twitched and wiggled as if it was trying to escape the great hook-legged horror that was wetly eating out the back of its head with neither haste nor mercy.

I leaned closer. There was a tiny cracking like matchsticks snapping as the mantis leaned and bit, leaned and bit. Chewed. Leaned and bit. Chewed. The cicada's legs crawled, brushing its hollowed head. Tiny cracklings.

BANG! My wife, inside, rapped on the window above me and for a moment the world was ending because I was the cicada and I was the mantis.

Be glad I have not posted the pictures!

How can I sum all this up in some witty yet meaningful writing advice? I don't know. I've been revising all weekend -- it's getting there! I don't hate it! Much! -- and I have nothing left except the capacity to be horrified and drawn in by a trauma, a drama, a small world I'd never expected and which entranced me. There: isn't that what a good story does?

Ugh. I can still hear the chewing.

p.s. The worst part was that six inches away was the brown husk of the shell the cicada had just emerged from. Not the best timing.

Tinker, tailor

It's not pentameter, but is it iambic?

Tinker, tailor
Soldier, sailor
Rich man, poor man
Beggarman, thief.

I-am, I-am, I-am. Iambic? Someone with an English degree please verify!

As I plow through revisions I waver between large-scale (storyline, revelations to readers and character, plot arc) and micro-scale (imagery, dialogue). The rhythm of writing falls in the latter category.

I try to write musical sentences -- I've actually found myself whispering the words out loud as I write them (I do NOT move my lips while reading). But I have to be careful not to fall into a sing-songy bounciness.

Tinker, tailor, solider, sailor. Both the rhythm and the rhyme make this sentence rest comfortably in my mind. It's the same beat as "ice cream, ice cream, ice cream FREEZE!" -- a clapping rhyme that, somewhat embarrassingly, is lodged in there as well.

Not all sentences have to bounce or rhyme. Depending on the scene, the mood, the point of view through which we're experiencing that moment, a sentence can be languid and ornate (Austen?); short and clipped like a tough-guy mustache (Hemingway); circuitous and repetitive (my early drafts), etc.

The dog barked.
The dog was barking.
The dogs bayed.
The noise of dogs barking filled the night.
Barking were the dogs.
The dog coughed a wet bark without getting up.
The bark of the dog was harsh and tight, a sandpaper sound of rage.

Okay, I cheated a little on the last one. Hear the rhythm? It's almost like riding a horse. Clackety-clackety-clackety.

It's one more thing to pay attention to. Every tiny piece of the narrative must be deliberate: it must communicate a message beyond whatever the words say. There's a second layer of meaning, that comes from word choice and the shape of the sentence. Readers pick it up, even if we're not aware of laying it down.