Read This: Seth Godin

My first book was published thirty years ago. Finished manuscript in hand, I eagerly sent it off to a famous author, a respected entrepreneur whom I had met a few months earlier. “Would you be willing to write the forward to my new book?” I asked. My editor and co-author were counting on my connection to this man to transform our book into the bestseller we hoped it might become.

Two days later, the response showed up in my mailbox. “I would have been happy to contribute to your new book, Seth, but since you spelled ‘foreword’ wrong, I’m afraid I have to pass.”

As a first time author, everything was at stake and this very personal, very careless failure resonated with me for years to come. I had blown it, really and truly.

A few years ago I began to think of this differently. What Andy had inadvertently taught me is that “forward” is far more powerful and important than “foreword” ever could be. 

In the years that followed that book, I got more than a thousand rejections to the book proposals I sent to publishers. I launched projects that didn’t work the way I hoped they would, I wrote blog posts that didn’t resonate and spread, told stories on stage that didn’t hot their mark. All in an effort to go forward. 

– Seth Godin, from Introduction to Fail Fail Again Fail Better by Pema Chodron

 

Book Review: A Moveable Blah

This is going to come across as sacrilege, I know, but I cannot stand the writings of Ernest Hemingway.

I can hear your collective gasp and I give not a hoot, not a single one.

Yes, I read A Moveable Feast because, as a writer, I’m supposed to. I’m also supposed to eat kale and yet I ardently refuse on the grounds that not all good things are good for all people.

And Papa Hem is my kale.

My first experience with H. was my junior year of high school. For one tortuous week I forced myself through The Old Man and the Sea. For over a hundred pages I read the (boring) story about a man fishing – and he didn’t even get to keep the damn fish! I remember becoming punch-drunk delirious half-way through, in awe that the book was considered great literature. The entire book could be summed up in one word – perseverance – the old man’s for not letting that fish go and mine for reading every adjective-less sentence.

My next experience was in my twenties when a man I was interested in decided that reading me Ern’s hunting essays would be super-sexy seductive. He lost that one, big time. First of all, don’t glamorize big game hunting with me and second, I fell asleep in my coffee cup before my suitor get three pages in.

And now, I attempted to tackle the ‘great’ A Moveable Feast. Here’s my takeaway:

• H. liked to go to races and write in cafes
• He took lots of long, uneventful walks in Paris
• He really didn’t like Ezra Pound
• F. Scott and Zelda were drunks

As for all the details, the stark, devoid of any embellishment details, I just don’t remember any because my eyes were glazed over most of the time.

So there, I don’t like Ernest Hemingway and I don’t care about what happened to him in Paris. Three strikes and you’re out, Hem.

 

Tools You Can Use: Rules for Writing from Really Great Writers

I started reading an article about Jonathan Franzen and how we love to hate him (you know what I mean) and then I was diverted by this older piece in The Guardian which compiles writing rules from incredible writers, among others Margaret Atwood, Elmore Leonard, Richard Ford, Neil Gaiman and (God love him) Franzen.

It’s all very practical and they are rules we’ve read time and again from lesser known writers and teachers. However, coming from Philip Pullman or Margaret Atwood, each little piece of practical advice bears slightly more weight.

I plan on printing out both (it’s a two-parter) and adding all of the rules to my compendium of amassed writing advice which is starting to take over my desk.

As for Franzen, I’m ignoring the copy of Purity sitting on my dining room table, taunting me. That I found the opening pages compelling only makes it worse. He’s like that super-smart pretentious guy in high school who knew his smarts and was condescending about it. And the fact his work could actually support his hubris, you had to grudgingly respect him.

Franzen (think Jerry Seinfeld saying ,”Newman“).

This Writing Life: Show, Don’t Tell

Clearly, we writers know this one by heart, don’t we? Don’t give a lengthy paragraph of exposition when you can write it all out as an action sequence. This is beat into our brains from day one, kind of like Chekhov’s shotgun.

What I’m wondering is if Mr. David Lagercrantz didn’t get the memo or perhaps they don’t teach Show, Don’t Tell in Sweden. I just finished The Girl in the Spider’s Web – his continuation of the sensational Millenium trilogy by Stieg Larsson.

Larsson created one of the most original female characters to ever grace the printed page in Lisbeth Salander. Fiesty, violent, a mathematical genius and psychologically wounded, she fascinated us and we cheered her on through three books. Somehow Lagercrantz managed to make Lisbeth (gasp) boring.

He also managed to write out multi-page long conversations telling of past events, breaking not only the golden rule of Show, Don’t Tell, but that of the entire Thriller genre.

Yes, I read the whole thing. Maybe because I was really hopeful that it was all leading somewhere, that I’d get my feisty Lisbeth back and she’d teach some much-needed lessons to a few wicked misogynists. But alas, even the one major action sequence at the end of the book, in which our heroine saves an autistic boy from guns for hire, is recounted after the fact by a witness.

If you ever wonder what a writing teacher means by Show, Don’t Tell, pick up a copy of The Girl in the Spider’s Web.

Read This: Out on a Wire [an excerpt]

Whether it’s screenwriting, radio, stand-up comedy, or novels- it’s all about telling  a story. In this excerpt from the new graphic memoir, Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio by Jessica Abel, an interviewer guides an interviewee into turning her life into an interesting narrative arc. It’s really quite fascinating and worth checking out.

Quote of Note: Samuel Johnson

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

– Samuel Johnson

 

Tools You Can Use: Fantasy Football Team Name Generator

Sounds crazy, right? Why would you ever need this? Because the name generator at Fantasy Football Toolbox is hilarious. You just hit the random name generator button and a list featuring an adjective/noun combo appears. Such fun!

Need a name for the hipster restaurants and coffee shops that populate the main street of your fictional town? You might like:

The Supreme Llama Cafe

    Glamorous Fog Salon and Mustache Supplies

The Influential Cloud Book and Sharpened Colored Pencil Shop

Or maybe you need names for the Quidditch teams in your Harry Potter fan fiction:

    Evolutionary Lightning

    Pathological Mustangs

    Buffalo Gangsters

Band Names? Writing Prompts? Your new Start-Up?

    Inquisitive Chinchillas

    Spatial Mice

    Illegal Gargoyles

    Statistical Koalas

    Unable Elephants

I’m just saying, sometimes coming up with wholly original, brain-sticking names can be difficult and a little help never hurt. You hear me, all you Mental Mandrils out there?

Here’s a whole list just to see what I’m talking about:

Civil Donkeys

Dramatic Knights

Unchanged Gorillas

General Stallions

Crabby Moles

Central Cyclones

Boston Crickets

Successive Vicunas

Amateur Woodchucks

Well-Known Bigfeet

Brief Catfish

Mutant Rebels

Given Criminals

Crooked Werewolves

Unbeatable Condors

Jolly Kittens

Strange Pioneers

Judicial Wranglers

Improved Lizards

Radical Constellations

Rear Waterspouts

Primitive Mountain Goats

Brave Assassins

Severe Quasars

Miserable Maniacs

This Writing Life: That Blasted Shotgun

I’ve been reading copious amounts of books, essays, and articles on the art and craft of writing, particularly fiction. And seriously, if one more writer draws on Chekhov’s shotgun example, I’m going to pitch that author out the first window I see.

If you don’t know what I’m taking about, Anton Chekhov (who some believe to be a God among the short story canon) apparently said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that if in your opening chapter (paragraph) a shotgun happens to be hanging on the wall, that shotgun better go off at some point during your tale. Otherwise, it’s a superfluous detail that must be struck immediately from your writing. The same goes for absolutely every other detail that bears no weight on your plot.

I get it, I really do.

What frustrates me is, we’re writers, right? So isn’t there any possible way to convey this information without mentioning Chekhov’s shotgun?

Or is this a concept like Schrodinger’s Cat, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Madonna’s Like A Virgin? The concept is entirely and wholly Chekhov’s so we must credit him always?

Come on, writers! Let’s get creative and think of a different way to say ‘don’t use superfluous details!’

Or maybe I just did.

Read This: Mary Doria Russell’s Blog

Mary Doria Russell, known for her novels The Sparrow, Thread of Grace, Dreamers of the Day, and Doc, among others, has a writing blog that’s a delight to read. She doesn’t post very often, but when she does, Russell gives honest insights into her writing life which are both sobering and inspiring. I subscribe to have her posts emailed me and I’m always excited when they show up. Check her out!

Tools You Can Use: Word Clouds for Editing

We all love to use the same words, we’re drawn to them as if we came pre-loaded with them at birth; others we pick up over time whether they be regional idiosyncrasies (Y’all, yous, ain’t) or horrible slang terms that have insidiously infiltrated our culture (like, selfie, hella).  We allow these words to creep into our writing, so subtle are they that we almost don’t see them there at all.

Which is why it’s a good idea to run anything you write through a website like Word It Out or Wordle.

This is the word cloud I get after running a recent short story, Marjorine, through Word It Out’s word cloud creator:

It’s simple: copy and paste your text and hit a button. The biggest words are used most often, smallest the least. Word It Out let’s you change the text and background colors and download your word cloud for later use.

For editing, it’s useful to know what words are used in overabundance. Aside from the names of my two main characters being used most often, I can look closer and see that I also used ‘driveway,’ ‘before,’ and ‘morning’ quite a bit. Perhaps I can go back into this piece and try to use more creative vocabulary, and therefore challenge myself to write something a little more interesting and colorful.

I think it’s worth putting bigger writings through here; Marjorine is only 1200 words. But here’s what happens to a 4200-word short story:

It’s a story about Sharon and her Father, so I can look past those super-sized words and wonder why I used ‘back,’ ‘one,’ and ‘know’ so much. Now I can go into Word and do a search for each of these words, read them in context and edit accordingly.

Give it try!