Thursday, August 28, 2008
Palm Desert: Our last morning
Our last hours here. On about the third day I'm on vacation/away, I start settling in and want to stay/move in. But we have things to get back to in Orange Co. Travis starts school next week. I think I made a breakthrough as regards my novel. I wrote a rough draft for an essay. I'm going to talk with Connie, here, about holding a writers' retreat. It's all good.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
A Palm Desert reprieve
It began with a mojito, homemade by Brian.
Morning on the Lazy River, outside our room.
The desert resort version of NYC, outside our room, also. Great people watching.
Heat, sun, water. Mountains that rise from the stark landscape. Panting birds. Here's where I want to hold a writing retreat in the coming months. Writing during the day, water and big fun at night. A group of 12. A sublime time.
Better pics here than these.
Morning on the Lazy River, outside our room.
The desert resort version of NYC, outside our room, also. Great people watching.
Heat, sun, water. Mountains that rise from the stark landscape. Panting birds. Here's where I want to hold a writing retreat in the coming months. Writing during the day, water and big fun at night. A group of 12. A sublime time.
Better pics here than these.
Monday, August 25, 2008
My essay in today's Los Angeles Times
In case you don't get the print edition, but would like to read it, here it is. If you have any thoughts, comments or questions, bring 'em on.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Short stories vs. novels ... again
If you're in a rush, come back later. There's a lot here. Maybe this long post will make up for my often terse posts, or sporadic ones.
It's long, like a novel, but it's mostly about short stories, which I've been thinking of a lot lately--especially since writing a noir short story for an anthology, which I loved loved loved writing.
I dwell on this so much of late, whether what I'm obsessed with these days -- namely, the past -- should go into my novel or stand alone as a short story. I just read Polly Frost's thoughts on this subject and think: short story! Then I think, short stories can be too short when you tend to write long; my first published short story ("Quickening") was 9,000 words.
Short stories were my first love. I spent my entire time in college writing short stories and poetry. Didn't even consider writing a novel until I was years out of college.
Short stories give you more immediate gratification, too. A novel can take years but a short story might take, at most, a couple of months. Getting it published can be a trial, though, unless you're willing to pub it anywhere.
I just received the new book, Off the Page, edited by Carole Burns. It's a compendium of short pieces with quotes by 40-some writers on aspects of writing. I like what Gish Jen says about novels vs. short stories:
I love novels, yet--and don't hit me for saying this--sometimes I think too many are being published. So many cross my threshold in consideration for the show and I can't help but think some shouldn't have been published at all, and others should be way shorter--short story length, actually. There's such pressure to write novels, not short stories.
Depends on my mood as to what I want to read. Lately I tend to read novels, though I love the noir anthologies published by Akashic Books. Los Angeles Noir is a current favorite. (This year Susan Straight won an Edgar award for her story.) Susan, Gary Phillips and Naomi Hirahara talk about writing noir on my show, which you can hear on podcast. (Enter one of their names in the Search box and you'll find it.)
I asked Frost what she thought about short stories vs. novels. She said:
What about publishing, I said. Is it easier publishing novels?
The conversation isn't over, but this is enough about what I think. What do you think?
It's long, like a novel, but it's mostly about short stories, which I've been thinking of a lot lately--especially since writing a noir short story for an anthology, which I loved loved loved writing.
I dwell on this so much of late, whether what I'm obsessed with these days -- namely, the past -- should go into my novel or stand alone as a short story. I just read Polly Frost's thoughts on this subject and think: short story! Then I think, short stories can be too short when you tend to write long; my first published short story ("Quickening") was 9,000 words.
Short stories were my first love. I spent my entire time in college writing short stories and poetry. Didn't even consider writing a novel until I was years out of college.
Short stories give you more immediate gratification, too. A novel can take years but a short story might take, at most, a couple of months. Getting it published can be a trial, though, unless you're willing to pub it anywhere.
I just received the new book, Off the Page, edited by Carole Burns. It's a compendium of short pieces with quotes by 40-some writers on aspects of writing. I like what Gish Jen says about novels vs. short stories:
It's the difference between having an affair and being married. The story is fun because you can go anywhere, you can write about anything. I think in my stories you can see that there's a slightly giddy air to them. I think you can see I'm on holiday. But there's a way in which you can put everything that you know as a human, including the texture of your life, into a novel.
I love novels, yet--and don't hit me for saying this--sometimes I think too many are being published. So many cross my threshold in consideration for the show and I can't help but think some shouldn't have been published at all, and others should be way shorter--short story length, actually. There's such pressure to write novels, not short stories.
Depends on my mood as to what I want to read. Lately I tend to read novels, though I love the noir anthologies published by Akashic Books. Los Angeles Noir is a current favorite. (This year Susan Straight won an Edgar award for her story.) Susan, Gary Phillips and Naomi Hirahara talk about writing noir on my show, which you can hear on podcast. (Enter one of their names in the Search box and you'll find it.)
I asked Frost what she thought about short stories vs. novels. She said:
God bless everyone in the mainstream book world who publishes short fiction! The New Yorker, the book publishers who are committed to anthologies, the editors who stand up for short story collections. I'm grateful for your radio show and for Tania Hershman's
The Short Review -- you celebrate short fiction!
But I don't think the road to mainstream publication is easy for anyone writing short fiction of any kind, literary or genre, these days. I wish I could say that there is one easier path to get published, but I don't think there it exists.
This is a puzzle to me, to be frank. For one thing, I've been writing and publishing since the mid-1980's, so I've seen phases come and go. There have been times when mainstream publishing gushed out a lot of short fiction of many different kinds, and when critics and readers enjoyed a real wealth of material and talent to explore.
Remember the Gordon Lish years? The years when both women's and men's magazines like Redbook and GQ regularly published short fiction?
Now doesn't seem to be one of those eras. Still, I'm confident the good times will return soon.
For another thing, there's a growing audience for short fiction, especially among younger readers. People are working longer and longer hours, time is getting chopped-up in strange ways, and life seems to be getting faster and faster.
It really should be a great time for short fiction. But maybe we creators of it need to be more entrepreneurial. Maybe we need to take more advantage of the online world, of Amazon's Kindle, of self-publishing, of audio, of doing live readings. I myself did live readings in lounges and bars during the last five years and it was a fantastic experience -- I was happily surprised to get full houses and lively audiences eager to hear short fiction.
So whenever I think the grass may be greener for either literary short fiction writers or other genre writers, I stop myself. The truth is, we short fiction writers need to stop whining and start looking after our own business until mainstream publishing catches up with us and realizes that short fiction rules.
What about publishing, I said. Is it easier publishing novels?
It's absolutely easier on every level if you write a novel, from getting an agent to getting a book published.
A funny experience I had: When I first published a humor story in The New Yorker I got a call from a literary agent. The first thing she said was "So, do you have a novel?"
She lost interest in me the moment I said, "Actually, I haven't thought about writing a novel at all. I love writing short fiction."
I think this attitude on the part of the mainstream book business is, in fact, why there are so many crappy novels out there. I always say that many of today's novels feel like a short story that's gone on way too long!
It's easier, too, to get your book reviewed by the mainstream press (in so far as the mainstream press still even reviews books) if it's a novel.
However, I will say that my story collection, Deep Inside, has been reviewed close to 50 times, by mainstream and online publications and blogs. I found that many editors and critics welcomed a book of short fiction. Like everyone else, they have limited time, and it's appealing for them to read a collection of stories. I can't complain about the coverage I got for my collection -- it was much better than many novelists get.
The conversation isn't over, but this is enough about what I think. What do you think?
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Howard Junker and ZYZZYVA
If you're in the Southern California area, and read The Los Angeles Times, you probably saw this piece on Monday. If not, click here. (And here's ZYZZYVA's blog.)
Stories like this give me hope, and we writers always need signs pointing up.
Stories like this give me hope, and we writers always need signs pointing up.
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Q&A with literary agent Gary Heidt
The following is an interview I did earlier this year with NYC literary agent Gary Heidt for The ASJA Monthly.
FinePrint Literary Management agent, Gary Heidt, was a John Jay Scholar at Columbia University and General Manager at WKCR-FM. Upon graduating, he returned to the nightclubs as a gigging musician; the Village Voice called his first album a "masterpiece." He is a published poet and columnist. His librettos for composer Evan Hause's Defenestration Trilogy earned praise from Newsday, Opera News and the New York Press, and his musical comedies (he has written several in collaboration with Gary Miles, including The Feng Shui Assassin and American Eyeball) were described by The Onion as "strangely funny." Originally from Texas, he has lived in New York City for a decade and a half.
Gary is looking for history, science, true crime, pop culture, psychology, business, military and some literary fiction.
BDB: Talk about how you became an agent.
GH: I wrote a few novels, and in the nineties I was briefly represented by two different agents, neither of whom had any luck with my rather precious, self-indulgent work. Ten years later, it occurred to me that those people had what seemed to be a pretty neat job— they were fairly independent and got to read a lot. So I went to work at a literary agency.
BDB: What sort of material do you especially like to handle?
GH: Like everyone, I love something that is truly and deeply funny. I am convinced that humor is the hardest thing to do well. We are awash in bad humor and pathetic comedy, and the bad stuff is really terrible. A finely tuned sense of humor is a wonderful thing, and it enhances any genre of writing. I am also very interested in well-researched history, although it's hard to sell if it isn't by someone who doesn't have any history credentials.
BDB: Is what you like to handle and what sells best one and the same?
GH: What I like to handle is precisely what I think I can sell best. What I like to read for personal fulfillment is often a book I would never represent, because I couldn't sell it. I read poetry, which I don't represent, and some academic nonfiction, university press type stuff, art criticism, histories of banks, things that I would probably not represent as an agent. But I also like to read commercial fiction, thrillers, and mainstream literary stuff.
BDB: Talk about the nonfiction you represent—science, history, psychology....
GH: I recently signed up two physics professors. I love to read about science. History is, to me, about understanding one's self and how the world got to be the way it is. Psychology is murky—I don't do self-help books or prescriptive nonfiction, how to survive depression, things like that. In order to write books in any of these subject areas, these days, one really needs a Ph.D. or a strong resume as a journalist.
BDB: Do you see any particular trends in publishing right now, in terms of what’s being sought after?
GH: Overall, the picture right now is one of downsizing, shrinking lists, former editors standing around fires in hobo encampments wearing fingerless gloves and fighting over tattered copies of McSweeny's. Every publisher wants an author that doesn't need a publisher—in other words, they are eager to sign authors who can sell a half-million copies on their own, through their Web site or their television show. A larger and larger proportion of books are being bought from packagers rather than authors—it's another aspect of editors at corporate houses shifting more of the work of editing onto an external supplier.
BDB: Of course writers shouldn’t pay attention to trends, right?
GH: That depends. If by writers you mean bitter, lonely, unpublished writers, yes, I would agree.
BDB: It’s a conflict for a writer, perhaps especially for literary writers: You want to write from your passion, yet if you’re not aware of what’s selling, you’re considered naïve.
GH: I would say that if you find yourself thinking or saying, "Nothing good is being published now," as I hear so many people say, you should realize that something on the order of 150,000 titles were published last year, and that it's likely that a few good ones may have escaped your notice. I think it is profoundly important for writers to be as aware as possible of their peers. So for literary writers, I would say it's especially important to seek out and champion writers whose work you like. Review books for a local newspaper, on your blog, whatever. I am constantly reading new literary fiction, and there is a lot of very good stuff being written. I would say that literary fiction isn't really about trends, but at the same time, there's no excuse for not being aware of who is doing good work in this day and age. If all the writers who queried me about their literary fiction in the last year bought twelve new literary books a year, we would see an immediate renaissance of literary publishing in this country. If you're stumped because all the critics liked Franzen's novel and you can't stand it, don't stop there. Look for the books the critics ignored, buy them, read them, tell everyone about the good ones.
BDB: Speaking of fiction, what sort of fiction are you attracted to?
GH: My favorite fiction writers today—who are published: In literary fiction, I love Charles Yu, Tito Perdue, Stephen Policoff, Carol Emschwiller, Shelley Jackson, Stephen Wright, Daniel Patrick Scott, Frederick Barthelme, Charles Baxter, Ryan Gattis and Sam Lipsyte. There are a some that I like a lot but which don't speak to me quite as emphatically as that first list, but they are very good and worth reading—folks like Bruce Wagner, Viken Berberian, Walter Kirn, Danuta de Rhodes, Amelie Nothomb, Gregoire Bouillier, Joe McGinnis. In YA, I particularly like Marcus Zusak, Chris Lynch, Sonia Sones and of course Jason Myers. In crime fiction, everyone should read every single book that Charles Ardai's Hard Case Crime publishes. Not that I have, but I would guess I've read over a dozen of them and have yet to be disappointed. In thrillers, I love the team of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Lee Childs.
BDB: You’re interested in graphic novels, yes? Please elaborate...
GH: They are a lot of fun to read. I was into Marvel Comics as a kid, and then in the nineties was introduced to Alan Moore's work by a friend of mine. I think that the potential of the genre is nearly limitless. On the business side, the graphic novel shelf is the fastest growing segment of the bookstore. I think publishers are a little confused on how to deal with this, but I am trying to give them some helpful guidance.
BDB: Do you see books going away in favor of electronic publishing?
GH: It could happen. The reading of books has mostly gone away already, and all that's left now are the actual objects. I read somewhere that a pretty large percentage of books are bought as totems. You can put the book on your coffee table or carry it to Starbucks, and it sends a message about who you are. Now how will this work with a Sony Reader? No one will know that you are carrying a copy of The Stranger in that Kindle. The portable electronic readers will go down in price, and once they hit, say, fifty, sixty bucks, I think e-books might do for publishing what the mp3 did for the record business. The good thing about electronic publishing is that it lowers the production cost for a new book, so theoretically more authors could get published.
BDB: If you had to sum yourself up in one line, what would you say?
GH: Don't take it serious, it's too mysterious.--Lew Brown
BDB: How does the fact that you’re a published poet and columnist, and a musician, figure into the mix?
GH: I think I have a better understanding of what goes on in the creative process than some of my fellow agents who haven't pursued these kinds of activities.
BDB: What else should potential clients know about you?
GH: That I want you all to go out and buy a lot of books, especially those by my clients!
Monday, August 04, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Mary Roach, author of Bonk
Here's an interview I did with Mary a few months back, after she was on the show.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Reading John Irving and talking with John Ware
Anyone reading anything good? I'm listening to John Irving's A Widow for One Year and hate to see it end. I love it. I love good novels--great novels--with main characters who are writers. This one has five writers--four novelists and one sassy journalist--who are great characters. Irving is a bit obsessed with breasts, but then again, who isn't?
What book made you feel that way, that you just hated to see it end?
(FYI, one of my favorite literary agents in the entire universe--John Ware--was on the show again the other day. My podcast guru Rob Roy posted it so give it a listen. It's podcast here. If you search his name, you can listen to older shows featuring the great agent.)
What book made you feel that way, that you just hated to see it end?
(FYI, one of my favorite literary agents in the entire universe--John Ware--was on the show again the other day. My podcast guru Rob Roy posted it so give it a listen. It's podcast here. If you search his name, you can listen to older shows featuring the great agent.)
Monday, July 21, 2008
San Diego....
To those of you who've written to me about him...Travis is fine. He says he's not troubled anymore, but when I asked him why he thought he was so freaked out by the little girl, he said, Weren't you freaked out by that? The elevator opens and there's a little Indian girl muttering!
Friday, July 18, 2008
San Diego, little lost girls and Moleskines
This afternoon Travis and I drove down here to San Diego to attend my student Peter's wedding. What a gorgeous ceremony and delicious, fun reception. And Peter looked so handsome in his tux and hot pink vest and Melissa looked beautiful in a sublime beaded strapless gown. They both looked so happy.
We sat and gabbed with Dianne and Ron, and Andy, and afterward drove back to the hotel. At 10 p.m. Travis and I stood in the parking garage on the 3rd floor of the Doubletree, waiting for the elevator. The door opened and out wandered a toddler, a little Hispanic girl in a tee-shirt and undies. Travis and I looked at each other, wearing blank, then befuddled, looks.
Where's your mommy? I said to the girl. Travis' dark eyes went wide. He said nothing.
C'mon, honey, I said, trying to grab her hand to get her back in the elevator to go down to the lobby. She rambled in toddler Spanish and of course my Spanish is bad.
We got her back into the elevator and hit the button for the lobby. Travis did not say a word while I was thinking, how does someone lose a little girl? And what if it wasn't us finding her but someone else?
We got her over to the registration desk and I said to the reservationist who had checked us in, We just found this little girl.
A moment before he was laughing with the couple he was helping with directions, but now he looked completely puzzled.
And then from the direction of the elevator I saw a couple of Hispanic women looking slightly curious as they looked around and I said to the reservationist, Maybe one of them is the mom, and then one of the women saw the little girl and yes, it was the mom, or auntie, or someone, anyway, who was connected to the cutie.
She picked up the girl and they went into the elevator. So did we. I said, We found her coming out of the elevator on the third floor, and she said, Oh, thank you, and I'm thinking she wasn't as freaked out as we were, as Travis was, as I would be if I just lost my kid.
They got off on the 8th floor. On the ride up to the 14th floor, we said little. Travis was unsettled. What's wrong? I said. I don't know, he said. Then: That was weird!
Our room key didn't work, and Travis said, I don't like San Diego.
Oh, come on, I said, it's a good thing it was us who were there. Someone else might have snatched her for his or her own.
Don't say that! Travis said.
I'm just saying, I said.
We tried the key a few more times, then hiked back down the hall to the house phone and called the lobby. Someone will come up with a new key, a voice told me. Travis sounded funny, incredulous, when he said, Shouldn't we have a little bit of good karma for that?
Why are you so freaked out? I said.
He said he imagined the mother was killed in her hotel room and that was why the girl was wandering around alone and in the elevator.
Honey, I said, but I'm thinking: My kid has watched one too many Hitchcock films and has brainstormed with me about plot for noir stories a bit too much, maybe?
A bellman came with a new key, we strode down the hall to our room and the key worked.
Travis knows how to plot. He has a great imagination and spins out plots to me, or inciting incidents for stories. I've kidded him: You're great at plot for someone who doesn't want to write.
But now he was saying he wanted a Moleskine notebook so he could write these things down.
You have two Moleskines, I said. We'd just bought him two pocket sized notebooks a couple of weeks ago.
Those are for music, he said. I need one to write down stories, to write a book. I'm going to write a book, he said, laughing strangely, surprising himself at hearing those words.
Writing would help you purge this stuff, for sure, I told him, as he went into the bathroom. I was still feeling a bit creeped out, too. I started thinking: What if those women weren't the kid's relatives, but someone else, or what if they were doing her harm, and she escaped, and now we sent her back to her tormentors?
Such is a writer's mind, always going, always imagining....
We sat and gabbed with Dianne and Ron, and Andy, and afterward drove back to the hotel. At 10 p.m. Travis and I stood in the parking garage on the 3rd floor of the Doubletree, waiting for the elevator. The door opened and out wandered a toddler, a little Hispanic girl in a tee-shirt and undies. Travis and I looked at each other, wearing blank, then befuddled, looks.
Where's your mommy? I said to the girl. Travis' dark eyes went wide. He said nothing.
C'mon, honey, I said, trying to grab her hand to get her back in the elevator to go down to the lobby. She rambled in toddler Spanish and of course my Spanish is bad.
We got her back into the elevator and hit the button for the lobby. Travis did not say a word while I was thinking, how does someone lose a little girl? And what if it wasn't us finding her but someone else?
We got her over to the registration desk and I said to the reservationist who had checked us in, We just found this little girl.
A moment before he was laughing with the couple he was helping with directions, but now he looked completely puzzled.
And then from the direction of the elevator I saw a couple of Hispanic women looking slightly curious as they looked around and I said to the reservationist, Maybe one of them is the mom, and then one of the women saw the little girl and yes, it was the mom, or auntie, or someone, anyway, who was connected to the cutie.
She picked up the girl and they went into the elevator. So did we. I said, We found her coming out of the elevator on the third floor, and she said, Oh, thank you, and I'm thinking she wasn't as freaked out as we were, as Travis was, as I would be if I just lost my kid.
They got off on the 8th floor. On the ride up to the 14th floor, we said little. Travis was unsettled. What's wrong? I said. I don't know, he said. Then: That was weird!
Our room key didn't work, and Travis said, I don't like San Diego.
Oh, come on, I said, it's a good thing it was us who were there. Someone else might have snatched her for his or her own.
Don't say that! Travis said.
I'm just saying, I said.
We tried the key a few more times, then hiked back down the hall to the house phone and called the lobby. Someone will come up with a new key, a voice told me. Travis sounded funny, incredulous, when he said, Shouldn't we have a little bit of good karma for that?
Why are you so freaked out? I said.
He said he imagined the mother was killed in her hotel room and that was why the girl was wandering around alone and in the elevator.
Honey, I said, but I'm thinking: My kid has watched one too many Hitchcock films and has brainstormed with me about plot for noir stories a bit too much, maybe?
A bellman came with a new key, we strode down the hall to our room and the key worked.
Travis knows how to plot. He has a great imagination and spins out plots to me, or inciting incidents for stories. I've kidded him: You're great at plot for someone who doesn't want to write.
But now he was saying he wanted a Moleskine notebook so he could write these things down.
You have two Moleskines, I said. We'd just bought him two pocket sized notebooks a couple of weeks ago.
Those are for music, he said. I need one to write down stories, to write a book. I'm going to write a book, he said, laughing strangely, surprising himself at hearing those words.
Writing would help you purge this stuff, for sure, I told him, as he went into the bathroom. I was still feeling a bit creeped out, too. I started thinking: What if those women weren't the kid's relatives, but someone else, or what if they were doing her harm, and she escaped, and now we sent her back to her tormentors?
Such is a writer's mind, always going, always imagining....
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Sunday's event
This coming Sunday I'll be at Barnes & Noble, Fashion Island, Newport Beach, 1 p.m., talking about essays, maybe, or knitting, or both--depending on the crowd. Come by! My essay, "Knitting: My Urban Escape," is in the new(ish) anthology, Knitting Through It: Inspiring Stories for Troubled Times (Voyageur).
Friday, July 04, 2008
Orange Coast Magazine's Best of OC
It's a tad embarrassing (embarrassing because I'm more used to being behind the scenes. After all, no one can see you on radio), but some of you may be interested in this piece. (Scan to the bottom for the copy.) It's a nice mention by Orange Coast, which has become a readable magazine again, now that Marty Smith is back at the helm.
Photo credit: Bradley Meinz
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Charles Baxter Q&A
Here is an interview I did with Charles Baxter for The ASJA Monthly, which I edit.
BDB: You began as a poet. Do you think this was because you grew up in a literary family (with Brenda Ueland as a friend of the family--how lucky!)? Or did you just have a thing for language early on?
CB: I saw Brenda often, and she bullied me, as a strong aunt might, and in a pleasing way. She told me that I should do what I wanted to do in life. It was radical advice. My family wasn’t especially literary, though my parents had known some novelists, such
as Sinclair Lewis and Robert Penn Warren, in their day. I began as a poet—as most poets do—because I had an intense inner life exacerbated by solitude, and because I fell in love with poetry at the age of seventeen, when I first read the work of James Wright.
BDB: When did you turn to fiction, and why?
CB: I dabbled in it until I was in my thirties, when I began to dedicate my life to it. I noticed that my poems were all narratives, and I found that I was particularly interested in characters, and in sequences: what people do when they’re under pressure, how they get themselves into interesting trouble. That’s the interest of a fiction writer.
BDB: I read a funny story in a Ploughshares profile about you that you had
an agent who asked you why she hated your first novel. Care to elaborate?
CB: It was unpleasant. I’d sent this agent (not my current agent, of course) a novel manuscript, and she said over the phone that she hated it; then she asked me why she hated it. I told her that I didn’t know. She insisted that I answer her. She was very cruel, of course; she had a mean streak.
BDB: And then you gave up writing fiction, deciding you would teach and write criticism?
CB: Yes. Well, I didn’t give up writing it. I resolved to give it up, but I couldn’t, quite.
BDB: But then you didn't quit--you merged three novels into one....
CB: No. What I did was to write a story, “Harmony of the World,” about a failed artist, which is what I thought I was. In the story, he’s a musician, not a writer. With the irony of which life is so fond, the story was published and anthologized and lifted my spirits a bit, so that I thought maybe I could live in the world as a writer after all. You never know who or what will give you permission to be the person you want to be. Brenda Ueland had, but few others had, in my case.
BDB: Since then, you've published four novels, the lastest being The Soul
Thief. What inspired this book?
CB: It began in an odd way, with something that happened to me years ago, when there was, briefly, an imposter Charles Baxter. Also, I have a friend who, when she was a freshman at Duke University, found that her roommate was stealing her clothes and beginning to imitate her, unconsciously. And lately I’ve been thinking about MySpace and Facebook, and how virtual identities can be concocted in our time. It’s a very strange feature of our age, this trading-off of identities.
BDB: One of your books, Feast of Love, was turned into a movie. How satisfying was this experience?
CB: I was pleased that they wanted to make a movie of the book, which I knew would be very difficult to adapt. Many talented people worked on that movie.
BDB: How do you generally begin: theme, character, image?
CB: I never know. It changes from project to project. Sometimes I begin with a dramatic image, of someone-doing-something. I don’t have any rules about where I should begin. Out with the rules!
BDB: As well as novels, you've published nonfiction, which I always recommend to my students because of your non-generic slant. Talk about your collection, Burning Down the House, and how this came about, as well as the controversy at least one of these essays inspired.
CB: I’ve been associated for years with the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and I’ve given many lectures there. I revised them for that book. It was never my intention to give how-to lectures. If you give how-to advice, you’re involved in the how-to-write-literature racket. Instead, I tried to isolate certain features of cultural life (how we gossip, for example) and compare those features to how we tell, write, and read stories. Two essays in that book (Burning Down the House) got me into some controveries: the essay “Against Epiphanies”—which some readers mis-read as an attack on insight—and the “Dysfunctional Narratives essay, which was interpreted as an attack on our mealy-mouthed Chief Executives, who had disavowed responsibilty for bad outcomes. That’s just what it was.
BDB: How do you merge all of the various forms you write and publish in--short stories, novels, nonfiction? How do you decide what you're going to spend the next however long on a particular project?
CB: It’s whatever I also want to do next. I follow my impulses.
BDB: You're also an instructor! You must be highly organized, to be so prolific and to teach as well.
CB: No. I feel that I’m completely disorganized. It’s a wonder that I get anything done at all.
BDB: By the way, how do you teach writing? I've read that you"eschew how-to
tutorials on fiction writing."
CB: I try to read the work as closely as I can, and then describe it to the writer. After that, if the form and content seem to be at cross-purposes, I’ll try to say why.
BDB: In The Soul Thief, there is some of the best description about Los Angeles, as if you've never been here. Yet, you say you've traveled here often. Talk about writing landscape.
CB: You sometimes have to write about a place as if you’re a stranger to it. The description of LA in that book is a stranger’s description of it, in which details that residents take for granted are made strange again—odd, and worthy of attention. I never get used to LA, much as I sometimes like it.
BDB: Do you ever concern yourself with the marketplace? Seems the marketplace hangs over so many writers' heads.
CB: No, not any more. If you think too much about the marketplace, you turn into a hack. Of course you think about readers, but you can’t be too concerned with sales.
BDB: What are your reading right now?
CB: I just finished Richard Price’s Lush Life and Scott Spencer’s Willing. I’m also re-reading War and Peace, in sections, and I have Imre Kertesz’s Detective Story nearby.
BDB: Any words of wisdom for our [ASJA] members?
CB: No. I probably need words of wisdom more than they do.
BDB: You began as a poet. Do you think this was because you grew up in a literary family (with Brenda Ueland as a friend of the family--how lucky!)? Or did you just have a thing for language early on?
CB: I saw Brenda often, and she bullied me, as a strong aunt might, and in a pleasing way. She told me that I should do what I wanted to do in life. It was radical advice. My family wasn’t especially literary, though my parents had known some novelists, such
as Sinclair Lewis and Robert Penn Warren, in their day. I began as a poet—as most poets do—because I had an intense inner life exacerbated by solitude, and because I fell in love with poetry at the age of seventeen, when I first read the work of James Wright.
BDB: When did you turn to fiction, and why?
CB: I dabbled in it until I was in my thirties, when I began to dedicate my life to it. I noticed that my poems were all narratives, and I found that I was particularly interested in characters, and in sequences: what people do when they’re under pressure, how they get themselves into interesting trouble. That’s the interest of a fiction writer.
BDB: I read a funny story in a Ploughshares profile about you that you had
an agent who asked you why she hated your first novel. Care to elaborate?
CB: It was unpleasant. I’d sent this agent (not my current agent, of course) a novel manuscript, and she said over the phone that she hated it; then she asked me why she hated it. I told her that I didn’t know. She insisted that I answer her. She was very cruel, of course; she had a mean streak.
BDB: And then you gave up writing fiction, deciding you would teach and write criticism?
CB: Yes. Well, I didn’t give up writing it. I resolved to give it up, but I couldn’t, quite.
BDB: But then you didn't quit--you merged three novels into one....
CB: No. What I did was to write a story, “Harmony of the World,” about a failed artist, which is what I thought I was. In the story, he’s a musician, not a writer. With the irony of which life is so fond, the story was published and anthologized and lifted my spirits a bit, so that I thought maybe I could live in the world as a writer after all. You never know who or what will give you permission to be the person you want to be. Brenda Ueland had, but few others had, in my case.
BDB: Since then, you've published four novels, the lastest being The Soul
Thief. What inspired this book?
CB: It began in an odd way, with something that happened to me years ago, when there was, briefly, an imposter Charles Baxter. Also, I have a friend who, when she was a freshman at Duke University, found that her roommate was stealing her clothes and beginning to imitate her, unconsciously. And lately I’ve been thinking about MySpace and Facebook, and how virtual identities can be concocted in our time. It’s a very strange feature of our age, this trading-off of identities.
BDB: One of your books, Feast of Love, was turned into a movie. How satisfying was this experience?
CB: I was pleased that they wanted to make a movie of the book, which I knew would be very difficult to adapt. Many talented people worked on that movie.
BDB: How do you generally begin: theme, character, image?
CB: I never know. It changes from project to project. Sometimes I begin with a dramatic image, of someone-doing-something. I don’t have any rules about where I should begin. Out with the rules!
BDB: As well as novels, you've published nonfiction, which I always recommend to my students because of your non-generic slant. Talk about your collection, Burning Down the House, and how this came about, as well as the controversy at least one of these essays inspired.
CB: I’ve been associated for years with the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and I’ve given many lectures there. I revised them for that book. It was never my intention to give how-to lectures. If you give how-to advice, you’re involved in the how-to-write-literature racket. Instead, I tried to isolate certain features of cultural life (how we gossip, for example) and compare those features to how we tell, write, and read stories. Two essays in that book (Burning Down the House) got me into some controveries: the essay “Against Epiphanies”—which some readers mis-read as an attack on insight—and the “Dysfunctional Narratives essay, which was interpreted as an attack on our mealy-mouthed Chief Executives, who had disavowed responsibilty for bad outcomes. That’s just what it was.
BDB: How do you merge all of the various forms you write and publish in--short stories, novels, nonfiction? How do you decide what you're going to spend the next however long on a particular project?
CB: It’s whatever I also want to do next. I follow my impulses.
BDB: You're also an instructor! You must be highly organized, to be so prolific and to teach as well.
CB: No. I feel that I’m completely disorganized. It’s a wonder that I get anything done at all.
BDB: By the way, how do you teach writing? I've read that you"eschew how-to
tutorials on fiction writing."
CB: I try to read the work as closely as I can, and then describe it to the writer. After that, if the form and content seem to be at cross-purposes, I’ll try to say why.
BDB: In The Soul Thief, there is some of the best description about Los Angeles, as if you've never been here. Yet, you say you've traveled here often. Talk about writing landscape.
CB: You sometimes have to write about a place as if you’re a stranger to it. The description of LA in that book is a stranger’s description of it, in which details that residents take for granted are made strange again—odd, and worthy of attention. I never get used to LA, much as I sometimes like it.
BDB: Do you ever concern yourself with the marketplace? Seems the marketplace hangs over so many writers' heads.
CB: No, not any more. If you think too much about the marketplace, you turn into a hack. Of course you think about readers, but you can’t be too concerned with sales.
BDB: What are your reading right now?
CB: I just finished Richard Price’s Lush Life and Scott Spencer’s Willing. I’m also re-reading War and Peace, in sections, and I have Imre Kertesz’s Detective Story nearby.
BDB: Any words of wisdom for our [ASJA] members?
CB: No. I probably need words of wisdom more than they do.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
The economy and publishing
BJK asked me to address the following here: "How does the economy affect publishing? Buying manuscripts etc?"
There are others who could address this question better than me, but first I would ask BJK: Why do you want to know? Why is this important? How will it affect your writing? If I tell you I've heard that the economy is making it even more difficult to get published, what will you do? Will that make you write harder or take a vacation?
All kidding aside, I'm thinking that you should check out MJ Rose (you can Google her). She talks about business a lot. Or you should forget about it.
Not what you were hoping for, huh?
There are others who could address this question better than me, but first I would ask BJK: Why do you want to know? Why is this important? How will it affect your writing? If I tell you I've heard that the economy is making it even more difficult to get published, what will you do? Will that make you write harder or take a vacation?
All kidding aside, I'm thinking that you should check out MJ Rose (you can Google her). She talks about business a lot. Or you should forget about it.
Not what you were hoping for, huh?
Monday, June 23, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
David Benioff interview
David Benioff recently spoke with my co-host Marrie Stone on my show, "Writers on Writing." But there was a broadcasting glitch, and not only was no one able to tune in, it also will not be podcast. So here is some of that interview, thanks to Marrie.
David Benioff is an author and screenwriter. He adapted his first novel, The 25th Hour, into the feature film directed by Spike Lee. He also adapted The Kite Runner for screen and wrote the script for Wolverine. In addition he is also working with D.B. Weiss on an HBO adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is due out in 2009. Stories from his critically acclaimed collection When the Nines Roll Over appeared in Best New American Voices and The Best Nonrequired American Reading. He is a graduate of our very own UC-Irvine MFA program. And it is his latest novel, City of Thieves, published by Viking that we’ll be talking about this morning.
(The following is a synopsis taken from the publisher’s comments about City of Thieves.)
A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won't talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds.
Lev Beniov considers himself "built for deprivation." He's small, smart, and insecure, a Jewish virgin too young for the army, who spends his nights working as a volunteer firefighter with friends from his building. When a dead German paratrooper lands in his street, Lev is caught looting the body and dragged to jail, fearing for his life. He shares his cell with the charismatic and grandiose Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested on desertion charges. Instead of the standard bullet in the back of the head, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt to find the impossible. A search that takes them through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and the devastated surrounding countryside creates an unlikely bond between this earnest, lust-filled teenager and an endearing lothario with the gifts of a conman. Set within the monumental events of history, City of Thieves is an intimate coming-of-age tale with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.
MS: It feels like it would be terribly easy to fall into an entirely macabre tone in this book, given the subject matter, given the stand-out scenes which I won’t give away. But if one can imagine the Siege of Leningrad in any detail at all, you can imagine what went on. And yet that’s not the feel of this novel. It’s not oppressive and hard to take. It’s got its moments, but it also has moments of real humor and sex and love and the whole spectrum of emotions. Was it difficult to lift your characters out of this molasses of despair and keep them going in the face of all that adversity?
DB: I was fortunate enough to be able to visit St. Petersburg with a friend and translator while working on this book. One thing that really struck me, and this is true in other countries as well, but particularly in Russia, was how fiercely connected the Russians are to their literature. People walking around quoting Pushkin all the time. I don’t know who the American equivalent of Pushkin might be, but I know we don’t quote literature in this way.
From the diaries I studied, it became apparent that the Russians really did stay connected to their culture during the siege. They still wrote, they still read, they still attended theater and concerts. If the first violinist was on the front lines, they turned to the second violinist. If he was gone, they found another. They were very attached to culture and to humor. They didn’t give up who they essentially were in the face of what was going on around them, and I wanted to retain that spirit in writing the book.
MS: You said that Ann Patchett once told you to chose the single best book on the given subject and study it obsessively. As opposed to reading a dozen books on the subject. What’s the wisdom in this advice?
DB: Ann was one of my mentors at UCI. She wrote this fabulous book called The Magician’s Assistant and she seemed to know magic in and out. I asked her about research and she advised getting the one definitive book and studying it fiercely. The thinking being that if you studying too many texts or books on a subject, you become someone who sets out to write a sort of high school report that may be factually accurate, but is lacking imagination. With that said, I was too overwhelmed to enter into a project so big—the Siege of Leningrad—something that happened long ago and far away, without really getting my facts straight. So I read quite a bit. But the real texts that I relied upon were Harrison Salisbury’s, “The 900 Days” and “Kaputt,” by Curzio Malaparte, an Italian journalist who was an early Fascist (he marched on Rome with Mussolini) before becoming disillusioned with the movement. He had remarkable access to the German and Finnish officers commanding the invasion of Russia, his writing is beautiful, and I ransacked his reportage for many key details. And the diaries.
MS: I like the device of putting your characters on a deadline. There was a ticking clock in this novel, and also in “The 25th Hour.” Something needs to be solved or done by a particular time or there’s some consequence. It strikes me as a good suspense builder, and a good way to keep momentum. Is this a screenwriting ploy or something you build into most of your material?
DB: After my first book was rejected, and I worked up the courage to sit down and read all the rejections, the gist of the feedback was that nothing was really holding it together. The novel took place over 30 years and there was no cohesive story. At first, I thought they were all wrong. I thought they were just idiots who didn’t understand what I was trying to do. But after I sat with it, I realized they were right. So I forced myself to have some structure to the narrative in the form of something having to be accomplished. The 25th Hour has a deadline. It’s the 24 hours before this man goes off to prison. And this novel obviously has a deadline motivating the movement of the novel. I think it’s a good way to keep yourself on track.
MS: One thing that struck me, and maybe this is just because I knew you were a screenwriter going into the book, but this is a very visual novel. There are some novels that you feel—you’re in the character’s brain and there are amazing insights and ways of looking at the world—and this had that too. But there are other novels that you really see. This had the feeling of a movie playing in my brain. The language was almost tactile somehow. Talk if you would about how your screenwriting informs your fiction writing, and what the two mediums can give to each other.
DB: The good part about screenwriting is that it made me a very disciplined writer. Working within the constraints and pressures of time . . . you have to tell a story, a fully fleshed out story, in 120 pages. If you see the number 200 or more on your page count, you’re done and over. So there’s a real discipline to telling a story in a compressed time. The bad part of screenwriting is that it makes you a lazy novelist. While I can just write “interior restaurant” on a script and I know the production director and lighting guy and location scout will take care of it all, you can’t do that in a novel. You have to slog through descriptions of where you are and make it come alive on your own. And that takes discipline. The first section of this novel took me months because I was out of practice on describing things well.
MS: You had this to say about writer’s block: “Writer’s block, I think, is often the result of a frustrated anticipation for inspiration. But if you’re writing for a living, you can’t sit around waiting for the muses. You get your butt in the chair, you turn on the computer, and you write, and if the writing’s no good you keep doing it anyway, because that’s all you’re good for.” I rearranged a few words for radio. But I do like you combating the notion of inspiration or the muses or whatever it is we think we need to write.
DB: I have this friend who I went to college with. Brilliant writer. I always thought he was the best writer among us. And now he barely has written a word. Every few days he writes me these gorgeous emails. And on the one hand, I’m so happy to receive them. They’re beautiful and poetic, and on the other hand it makes me so angry that his talent is going to waste. He always says he’s waiting for inspiration, or he’s stymied because he can’t write until he feels he really has some insight or some phrase or something important to say. We’ve been having this debate for years and years, and I’m so frustrated with him because it’s just wonderful talent going completely to waste. You can’t wait for inspiration. It’s rare. It happens, but it happens so infrequently that if you rely on it, you’re doomed.
MS: You came out of the UCI MFA program. No need to let that influence your answer here. But seriously, I’m curious about your feelings on MFA programs in general and what you may have gained from it in particular.
DB: I do see value in the MFA programs. For one thing, I was able to study with some incredible writers. Ann Patchett, Geoffrey Wolff to name a few. What the MFA program did was give me time to focus on nothing but writing. And while I know there are people out there who can handle a job and keep writing (Khaled Hosseini is one rare example, who kept writing while practicing medicine), that’s not easy for most of us. And while I was in the program, I was teaching undergraduates which paid for my time there. And being around that kind of intellectual stimulation was very exciting. So it gave me time and focus and access to amazing writers.
MS: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
DB: My advice to screenwriters is to read more screenplays. Good screenplays. “Carnal Knowledge” and “Chinatown,” to name a couple. We’re told as novelists to read, read, read. But I don’t think scriptwriters are given the same advice, and it’s a shame.
My advice to novelists is just to get into the discipline of sitting down to write. There’s no other way around it.
David Benioff is an author and screenwriter. He adapted his first novel, The 25th Hour, into the feature film directed by Spike Lee. He also adapted The Kite Runner for screen and wrote the script for Wolverine. In addition he is also working with D.B. Weiss on an HBO adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is due out in 2009. Stories from his critically acclaimed collection When the Nines Roll Over appeared in Best New American Voices and The Best Nonrequired American Reading. He is a graduate of our very own UC-Irvine MFA program. And it is his latest novel, City of Thieves, published by Viking that we’ll be talking about this morning.
(The following is a synopsis taken from the publisher’s comments about City of Thieves.)
A writer visits his retired grandparents in Florida to document their experience during the infamous siege of Leningrad. His grandmother won't talk about it, but his grandfather reluctantly consents. The result is the captivating odyssey of two young men trying to survive against desperate odds.
Lev Beniov considers himself "built for deprivation." He's small, smart, and insecure, a Jewish virgin too young for the army, who spends his nights working as a volunteer firefighter with friends from his building. When a dead German paratrooper lands in his street, Lev is caught looting the body and dragged to jail, fearing for his life. He shares his cell with the charismatic and grandiose Kolya, a handsome young soldier arrested on desertion charges. Instead of the standard bullet in the back of the head, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful colonel to use in his daughter's wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt to find the impossible. A search that takes them through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and the devastated surrounding countryside creates an unlikely bond between this earnest, lust-filled teenager and an endearing lothario with the gifts of a conman. Set within the monumental events of history, City of Thieves is an intimate coming-of-age tale with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.
MS: It feels like it would be terribly easy to fall into an entirely macabre tone in this book, given the subject matter, given the stand-out scenes which I won’t give away. But if one can imagine the Siege of Leningrad in any detail at all, you can imagine what went on. And yet that’s not the feel of this novel. It’s not oppressive and hard to take. It’s got its moments, but it also has moments of real humor and sex and love and the whole spectrum of emotions. Was it difficult to lift your characters out of this molasses of despair and keep them going in the face of all that adversity?
DB: I was fortunate enough to be able to visit St. Petersburg with a friend and translator while working on this book. One thing that really struck me, and this is true in other countries as well, but particularly in Russia, was how fiercely connected the Russians are to their literature. People walking around quoting Pushkin all the time. I don’t know who the American equivalent of Pushkin might be, but I know we don’t quote literature in this way.
From the diaries I studied, it became apparent that the Russians really did stay connected to their culture during the siege. They still wrote, they still read, they still attended theater and concerts. If the first violinist was on the front lines, they turned to the second violinist. If he was gone, they found another. They were very attached to culture and to humor. They didn’t give up who they essentially were in the face of what was going on around them, and I wanted to retain that spirit in writing the book.
MS: You said that Ann Patchett once told you to chose the single best book on the given subject and study it obsessively. As opposed to reading a dozen books on the subject. What’s the wisdom in this advice?
DB: Ann was one of my mentors at UCI. She wrote this fabulous book called The Magician’s Assistant and she seemed to know magic in and out. I asked her about research and she advised getting the one definitive book and studying it fiercely. The thinking being that if you studying too many texts or books on a subject, you become someone who sets out to write a sort of high school report that may be factually accurate, but is lacking imagination. With that said, I was too overwhelmed to enter into a project so big—the Siege of Leningrad—something that happened long ago and far away, without really getting my facts straight. So I read quite a bit. But the real texts that I relied upon were Harrison Salisbury’s, “The 900 Days” and “Kaputt,” by Curzio Malaparte, an Italian journalist who was an early Fascist (he marched on Rome with Mussolini) before becoming disillusioned with the movement. He had remarkable access to the German and Finnish officers commanding the invasion of Russia, his writing is beautiful, and I ransacked his reportage for many key details. And the diaries.
MS: I like the device of putting your characters on a deadline. There was a ticking clock in this novel, and also in “The 25th Hour.” Something needs to be solved or done by a particular time or there’s some consequence. It strikes me as a good suspense builder, and a good way to keep momentum. Is this a screenwriting ploy or something you build into most of your material?
DB: After my first book was rejected, and I worked up the courage to sit down and read all the rejections, the gist of the feedback was that nothing was really holding it together. The novel took place over 30 years and there was no cohesive story. At first, I thought they were all wrong. I thought they were just idiots who didn’t understand what I was trying to do. But after I sat with it, I realized they were right. So I forced myself to have some structure to the narrative in the form of something having to be accomplished. The 25th Hour has a deadline. It’s the 24 hours before this man goes off to prison. And this novel obviously has a deadline motivating the movement of the novel. I think it’s a good way to keep yourself on track.
MS: One thing that struck me, and maybe this is just because I knew you were a screenwriter going into the book, but this is a very visual novel. There are some novels that you feel—you’re in the character’s brain and there are amazing insights and ways of looking at the world—and this had that too. But there are other novels that you really see. This had the feeling of a movie playing in my brain. The language was almost tactile somehow. Talk if you would about how your screenwriting informs your fiction writing, and what the two mediums can give to each other.
DB: The good part about screenwriting is that it made me a very disciplined writer. Working within the constraints and pressures of time . . . you have to tell a story, a fully fleshed out story, in 120 pages. If you see the number 200 or more on your page count, you’re done and over. So there’s a real discipline to telling a story in a compressed time. The bad part of screenwriting is that it makes you a lazy novelist. While I can just write “interior restaurant” on a script and I know the production director and lighting guy and location scout will take care of it all, you can’t do that in a novel. You have to slog through descriptions of where you are and make it come alive on your own. And that takes discipline. The first section of this novel took me months because I was out of practice on describing things well.
MS: You had this to say about writer’s block: “Writer’s block, I think, is often the result of a frustrated anticipation for inspiration. But if you’re writing for a living, you can’t sit around waiting for the muses. You get your butt in the chair, you turn on the computer, and you write, and if the writing’s no good you keep doing it anyway, because that’s all you’re good for.” I rearranged a few words for radio. But I do like you combating the notion of inspiration or the muses or whatever it is we think we need to write.
DB: I have this friend who I went to college with. Brilliant writer. I always thought he was the best writer among us. And now he barely has written a word. Every few days he writes me these gorgeous emails. And on the one hand, I’m so happy to receive them. They’re beautiful and poetic, and on the other hand it makes me so angry that his talent is going to waste. He always says he’s waiting for inspiration, or he’s stymied because he can’t write until he feels he really has some insight or some phrase or something important to say. We’ve been having this debate for years and years, and I’m so frustrated with him because it’s just wonderful talent going completely to waste. You can’t wait for inspiration. It’s rare. It happens, but it happens so infrequently that if you rely on it, you’re doomed.
MS: You came out of the UCI MFA program. No need to let that influence your answer here. But seriously, I’m curious about your feelings on MFA programs in general and what you may have gained from it in particular.
DB: I do see value in the MFA programs. For one thing, I was able to study with some incredible writers. Ann Patchett, Geoffrey Wolff to name a few. What the MFA program did was give me time to focus on nothing but writing. And while I know there are people out there who can handle a job and keep writing (Khaled Hosseini is one rare example, who kept writing while practicing medicine), that’s not easy for most of us. And while I was in the program, I was teaching undergraduates which paid for my time there. And being around that kind of intellectual stimulation was very exciting. So it gave me time and focus and access to amazing writers.
MS: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
DB: My advice to screenwriters is to read more screenplays. Good screenplays. “Carnal Knowledge” and “Chinatown,” to name a couple. We’re told as novelists to read, read, read. But I don’t think scriptwriters are given the same advice, and it’s a shame.
My advice to novelists is just to get into the discipline of sitting down to write. There’s no other way around it.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Six words on love and heartbreak
Do you know about the book,, Not Quite What I was Planning: Six Word Memoirs from Writers Famous and Obscure? (My co-host Marrie Stone, interviewed the editor on the show a few weeks back.)
Well, they're looking for submissions for a new collection due out on Valentine's Day. Here's the link if you'd like to submit your six-word memoir.
Well, they're looking for submissions for a new collection due out on Valentine's Day. Here's the link if you'd like to submit your six-word memoir.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Lauren Weisberger doesn't wear Prada
Here's a photo from our evening at the Newport Beach Public Library. Lauren Weisberger, seated beside me, came to talk about her new book, Chasing Harry Winston, and of course we talked about her first book, The Devil Wears Prada.
I met Lauren in the conference room with her media escort and her husband Mike. She wasn't wearing Prada, not that I thought she would be, but somehow I thought if you wrote a book about something that happened to you while you worked at the biggest fashion magazine, that you would be into fashion.
So I spent more time than I should have concerned with what to wear. Should I wear my best white pantsuit that I bought at Nordstrom last year? I almost emailed Lauren to ask what she was going to wear, so we would sort of match, but didn't. I decided to dress the way I always dress for literary events, which is how I usually dress in general, only not as casual (no tee-shirts, no pull over cotton jerseys, no black workout pants, no faded jeans). I did bring along my knock-off Prada bag. It was meant to be a joke, but I don't think Lauren found it funny. (Later I decided she was burnt out on Prada jokes and people thinking she was into Prada.) I bought it a few years ago at a flea market in Pennsylvania because I loved the lime green color and size. The Prada logo put me off, though.
I don't want to buy a knock-off, I told my cousin John.
So Sharpie in the logo, he said.
That's tacky, I said, buying the bag but leaving the Prada logo alone. When I carry it, I turn the logo side toward my leg so the logo doesn't show.
I was happily surprised Lauren was dressed casually in white jeans and sandals. She likes to buy jeans, perhaps more than she should (says she). Her diamond wedding band caught the light as big diamonds will. I loved the ring.
In the conference room she said she thought we should only talk a little and use the time for questions. She said she hated the media. I commiserated. So many radio and TV people are only interested in sound bites, I said. I told her I thought we'd talk for 30 minutes or so and then take questions. She thought that was too long. I said it would be okay. She said she liked questions. I said it would be fine. I worried, though, that she seemed nervous.
But it was fine. It was actually great fun. Lauren seemed to genuinely have a great time, too.
Before an audience of 230, Lauren and I talked about her books, but we also talked a great deal about writing. One tidbit I took away (that a lot of us took away) is that Lauren is distracted just like the rest of us, with email. Even a speck of dust can seem fascinating. And yet the girl is extremely productive. I found that inspiring, that she's distracted often and is so productive anyway.
In the photo, you'll see Lauren and me seated, and behind us are Lauren's new husband Mike, NBPL Executive Director Tracy Keys, and Event Coordinator Janis Dinwiddie, with Dinwiddie Events. Kudos to Tracy and Janis--the library has been bringing in solid authors and helping to quench the Orange County thirst for literary events. Yay, Tracy and Janis!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Noir on tomorrow's show
If you're on my e-list for the radio show, you've received this. If not....
Tomorrow, Weds. June 11, for the entire hour, we'll have three authors--Naomi Hirahara, Gary Phillips, and Susan Straight--talking about noir. I'm excited!
Naomi is the author of the Mas Arai mystery novels and the noir short story: "Number 19." Gary is the author of the Ivan Monk and Martha Chainey series, and a lot of short stories including the noir story "Roger Crumbler Considered His Shave." Susan is a novelist ("Highwire Moon" was a National Book Award nominee), and the noir short story: "The Golden Gopher," which won an Edgar. All three of the stories highlighted above are in the collection: "los angeles noir," published by Akashic Books.
Tune in at 9 a.m. Pacific at 88.9 FM KUCI or listen on iTunes. Eventually the show will be podcast and you can find it (and many other podcasts) here.
Tomorrow, Weds. June 11, for the entire hour, we'll have three authors--Naomi Hirahara, Gary Phillips, and Susan Straight--talking about noir. I'm excited!
Naomi is the author of the Mas Arai mystery novels and the noir short story: "Number 19." Gary is the author of the Ivan Monk and Martha Chainey series, and a lot of short stories including the noir story "Roger Crumbler Considered His Shave." Susan is a novelist ("Highwire Moon" was a National Book Award nominee), and the noir short story: "The Golden Gopher," which won an Edgar. All three of the stories highlighted above are in the collection: "los angeles noir," published by Akashic Books.
Tune in at 9 a.m. Pacific at 88.9 FM KUCI or listen on iTunes. Eventually the show will be podcast and you can find it (and many other podcasts) here.
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