Category: blog

That individual thing

Kelley,

First of all, yes, you correctly interpreted my last point about literature being about emotional truth. I agree that it’s difficult to “express precise emotional truth in bad prose” –” it’s like watching a terrible movie in which the actors are very good. What’s the point, I ask myself? I also completely agree that great prose doesn’t necessarily hit the mark, although it also depends upon the reader. It used to bother me when I read a book that someone I respect recommended highly and it didn’t work for me at all. I used to think there was something wrong with me, that I just wasn’t getting it. I know now that it probably just didn’t read for me.

You’re also right on the money about “genre” fiction. I read a ton, all the time, and I would say a majority of my favorite reading material would be classified as genre fiction. And it’s not all great stuff –” sometimes I just wanna watch stuff blow up, to use another movie metaphor. But the best of those books transcend whatever genre they’ve been shoved into.

I think “genre” is really a marketing term. A publisher has to try to sell the books they are publishing, and my experience as a consumer has convinced me that the standard advertising strategy for any product is to simplify and summarize –” come up with a brief, catchy way to let the consumer know what it is. Often it seems that advertisers and their clients make an early decision on a specific section of the public (a demographic) to which to make their pitch. Then the summary can be canted toward that audience. Books cause problems when they cannot be easily summarized or fit into a standard category. I imagine it gives advertising companies seizures. So they do the best they can, pick a category reasonably close to the book’s content (or possibly just arbitrarily assign one based on the author’s past work) and put out a marketing campaign accordingly, which may or may not work.

What do you think, as both a reader and a published and therefore marketed writer?

Another unrelated question: I love reading Ask Nicola and have written a few questions myself (just sent one in a little bit ago). The two of you have distinctive, individual voices. I wouldn’t write a post here in quite the same way as I would a post over there. My question is, do the two of you ever discuss the sorts of posts you each get at your respective Web sites? Or do you make a point of maintaining your own separate spaces on the Web? Just curious.

Keep passing the open windows,

Adam Diamond

The comment about disliking books recommended by people you respect makes me think about growing up Southern, and learning early that contradicting others’ taste wasn’t Nice (there are certain qualities of Southern culture that cry out for capitalization). I’ve unlearned this fairly well, thanks in great part to living with Nicola (smile).

But it’s not fair to blame the South. Let’s blame the whole US. I think it’s possible to talk about US culture in a few fundamental ways, even though race and region and class and gender and physical ability particularize our socialization to such a great extent (not to mention whatever individual family wackiness we grow up with). Why do you suppose so many people in this culture equate disagreement with personal disrespect? Partly, I suppose, it’s a communication-style issue. Some folks don’t know any other way to express an opinion except as a die-to-defend-it expression of self (even Nice Southern Folks, and those of you who live there know what an experience it is to cross teaspoons with a bona fide steel magnolia who believes her taste has just been dissed….). It’s hard to have a conversation about perception with someone who wants to talk about it in terms of core identity.

But there you go: individualism and customized personal identity are fundamentals of US culture. And I like the premise even if I don’t always like the way it plays out. I wish I had grown up with more sense of interdependent community, but I also know that being raised in a culture of individualism made it possible for me to escape my class and much of my negative socialization. (Shakes head). These are the tools we’re given.

Part of the reason I’m riffing on this is that I think it’s related to marketing and the concept of ‘genre.’ Because even individuals need connection, but we sure have to work hard to find it sometimes. Most of us are more comfortable with similarity than difference, and we use affiliation groups, categories, whatever, to help us find our connections. Amazon.com knows this –” I think the “people who bought this book also bought…” is a stroke of marketing genius. Because that’s what marketing is all about–”that balance between individuality and groupmind. That’s why there is nothing so precious or effective as word of mouth to sell a book. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold didn’t end up selling north of a million copies because it got reviewed in the New York Times –” it was all those book clubs, and people telling their friends. Viral marketing.

In my experience, your perception of book marketing is accurate, although I think it’s often a less active process than the one you’ve described. It seems to me that most books go out into the world with “default marketing” –” someone writes a press release and sends it with copies of the book to a pre-established list of reviewers and booksellers, and then goes out for lunch. I don’t much like this system, but I understand why it exists. In 2002, an estimated 115,000 books (including Solitaire and Stay) were published in America. An Everest of books. As a reader, I rely on reviews and word of mouth to find my way through the forest, and when I’m browsing in a bookstore I rely on cover art and the “signals” of genre (categorization, blurbs, cover copy, etc.) to help me navigate. Newspapers and magazines often assign reviewers to certain categories of books so that readers can get a certain consistency of reviews over time. And booksellers need to know where to shelve a book so that all us readers will find it. It’s a vicious spiral of categorization. I don’t think it’s a question of least common denominator as much as the path of least resistance taken by the people who have those 115,000 books to market.

I was fortunate that Solitaire was treated, well, more individually (grin). Anyone interested in more detail about this can read this interview with Broad Universe.

And now to the difference between VP and Ask Nicola. I showed your question to Nicola and said, “What do you think he means by that?” She said, “I guess he means we’re different.” Hah. She is so great.

She certainly answers questions more quickly (and thanks for your patience, Adam). She gets many more than I do, so she has a certain pipeline pressure. Yes, we do talk about them. We talk about everything. It’s one of the fundamentals of our relationship.

And we are also interested in maintaining our separate space (that ‘individual’ thing….) I think this is a more conscious concern for me, because Nicola doesn’t generally have to contend with the “oh, you’re a writer too” attitude. This all goes back to those notions of individualism. There’s a set of largely unarticulated but profound assumptions in this culture about partners in the same line of work: that their relationship suffers from competition (or the rigorous defense against it), that the person who “goes first” has a certain right of assertion to being the “real one” while the person who “goes second” is probably riding on their partner’s coattails. The “follower” is more influenced by the “leader” than vice versa. Way more people describe me as a writer in terms of Nicola’s work than have ever described Nicola in terms of mine, as if the influence only went one way. This is particularly troublesome to me, since it implies that I’m not as independently creative.

That’s not why our website voices are different: they’re different because we’re different. But it is partly why I have a website (although I think every writer ought to have one). It’s a way of particularizing me to people. I work hard to make my web voice reflect my private voice. Okay, I swear a lot more in private conversation –” but in person I like to riff, to ask and answer, and meander to and from a central point as much as I do here in the virtual pub. Straight-line conversations don’t interest me as much. I wonder what it’s like to view life as a linear process? I never have. To me, it’s a set of fractals, or an ecosystem, or maybe a perpetual set of chemical reactions…. any metaphor that involves change and reaction, choice and adaptation.

And I like to watch stuff blow up too. Multifaceted, me. Cheers.

No sequel

Kelley,

I just finished reading your book the other day, and I thought it was great. It delved into the recess of the human mind that many authors do not write on. Very rarely have I ever seen a book written such as this. The internal perspective of the protagonist was so vividly described that it almost made you feel as if you were her.

As I read the last line of the book it left me with one burning question: Will there be a sequel?

As I said before, I thought the book was great. I can’t wait to see what you write next.

Anonymous

I’m glad you liked the book, and sorry to disappoint you about a sequel. I don’t expect there will be one. The stories that are jostling for my attention now are about other people. I think I’d like to write a short series someday, something with a specific, planned arc (as Nicola is doing with her series about Aud Torvingen), but I’d be surprised right now if it turned out to be about Jackal or any of the other characters in Solitaire.

I’m glad you cared enough about Jackal and Snow and the others to want to know more about what happens to them. That’s such a compliment to a writer, and it seems churlish to say nope, no sequel. But I told the part of their story that I wanted to tell. It’s like driving at night past the lighted windows of houses or apartments, getting a peek at the life inside. It’s an intersection of sorts.

Tribal

I found a link to this by chance, and it reminded me of Solitaire.

The article doesn’t cover all that much ground, but the description of “urban tribes” as “loose networks of close friends, or tribes, [that] sustain each other emotionally and professionally for the years in between college and marriage” resonates with the connections Jackal has on Ko.

Although the people to whom the label is attributed tend to respond with “Fuck you, I’m not in a tribe.”

“Web” sounds so much better.

Ide Cyan

I’ve read elsewhere about this book, and find the notion interesting and familiar. When I was in high school and college, and imagined an adult life in the wider world, I saw myself in what might now be called an urban tribe. I thought of them as “my people” –” friends, lovers, older or younger, people who would help me move a hundred boxes on a Sunday, watch bad movies, make interesting food, understand how plumbing worked. People who would find me equally valuable. In some ways, Jackal’s web does this, but it’s heavily influenced by the corporate culture of Ko, where the emphasis is on the “greater goal” of business. The web is a community, but it’s an artificial construct based on age, and it’s in service to the good of Ko. There are people in America who think this latter quality is a good idea for us, too, so maybe it isn’t science fiction after all.

If you’re interested, there’s a “virtual tour” planned for this book, the brainchild of Kevin Smokler. I love this idea (here’s an article about it), and will be interested to see how it plays out. But I don’t love that he says “no genre fiction” in the guidelines (edited in 2008 to add: that link is no longer in service, so you’ll have to take my word for it). I infer he means “no crap fiction” and that he assumes “genre” and “crap” are synonymous terms. It’s too bad, and too easy. See my previous post for more ranting on this subject (grin).

Edited in 2008 to add: Kevin read this post and contacted me, and we had a good email chat about good fiction. A couple of years later, he invited me and Nicola to write this essay for his anthology Bookmark Now. Thanks again, Kevin!

What’s literature?

Been a while, but I’m back for a glass of something and some good conversation…

What’s literature? Tough one. For many, I think they can’t get past the boundary that a book has to have been taught in English class — high school or college — in order to be considered literature. Presumably, something has to be read to be considered literature, or maybe it had to have been read at one time. I’m thinking of a quote from the movie “Bullets Over Broadway”, where the pretentious playwright mentor of the hero proudly intones that all of his plays are specifically written to go unproduced. I’m also reminded of my freshman year of college, where my Intro to Literary Method teacher spent a class period talking about the concept of “dramatic literature”, or plays written to be read rather than performed. Then later the same day, my American Musical Theater prof talked about how the concept of “dramatic literature” is a crock — plays have to be performed to be fully realized.

So what does this have to do with literature? I think my point is that writing, in order to be relevant to anyone other than the writer, has to be read. But to be literary, it has to relate to the world. Now, a lot of writing takes place in the world without actually relating to it. Hell, some of Stephen King’s writing is like that. And I’m not talking about just dropping common references — a lot of writing does that as a short cut to engage readers. There’s a feeling to literature that I’m having trouble articulating (obviously). I think a lot of writing is intended to (and succeeds in) activating emotional reactions from its audience, but in a very superficial way, like movies made from video games instead of scripts, or quickie books written based on TV characters. In order to be literary, I think writing (or art in general) has to access emotions in a genuine way. I almost wrote a “lasting” way, but it doesn’t have to last to make an impression.

I guess I think Stephen King’s best work is literary, but no writer is always literary. I think a lot of people think that authors are either always literary or always not. But was Charles Dickens really writing at the top of his game all the time? Was John Steinbeck? Was Jane Austen? The answer should be obvious.

Well, that’s my two cents on literature. Here’s another related question, though, which is implied in some of my comments above: does a work have to be written to be literature? Can a film or a play qualify as literature?

Later, y’all.

Adam Diamond

I’m with your American Musical Theatre professor on this one. Strictures of form are essential. Goethe said, “In the limitations the master shows his mastery.” I do think that “literature” is a specific term that refers to prose or poetry, so I don’t think plays or films are literature, but the best ones embody the same qualities as the best books –” a good story, well told, about characters who are true even if they aren’t real.

Art is not theory, it’s connection. It’s not about thinking, it’s about doing. It’s an interaction between people, across a spectrum of immediacy that ranges from live on stage to words or images whose creators are no more than mulch and memory. When it comes to fiction, I’m not interested in realigning the post-modern literary paradigm through radical re-interpretation of established form. Blech. I want a good story, well told, with some sort of resonance and meaning that I can connect with. I want it to be particular, the way our tastes and experiences and notions of ourselves are particular. That’s part of my definition of good writing. But do we really need three hundred pages of ten-dollar words and tortured metaphors to get there? I don’t think so.

I recently judged a writing competition with two other writers. One referred to himself as a noir mystery writer, the other as a literary writer. We had an interesting disagreement about what should constitute a winning entry, and eventually found ourselves on opposite sides of the border. The entry that these writers preferred was controlled and structured and obeyed all the rules of reasonable prose, and it was boring. Nothing happened. All telling, no showing. An adjective or two for every noun, an adverb for every verb. A theme constructed in crystalline sentences and unconvincing dialogue. I would rather pound my head against a brick wall than read a whole book of that stuff. But they liked it because it was “good writing.”

We disagreed not so much about what good prose is, but what it does. I agree with you, Adam, at heart it’s about emotional truth (which is how I’m paraphrasing your comments, let me know if that’s not right). I’m not sure it’s possible to successfully express precise emotional truth in bad prose, but I am sure that it’s possible to write beautiful prose without heart, without a human center.

So much of what is pointed out as “literary” prose seems to me to be almost a purely intellectual exercise in vocabulary and structure and style. All these things are necessary, but they are tools, not substance. A novel shouldn’t be “about” voice or theme. Yeesh. It should be language in service of story. It should create people the reader can connect with in some way, and things should happen to these people that matter to them, and to us.

And of course there are many literary novels that do exactly this. I think my biggest grump comes with the idea that genre, by definition, cannot be literary in this way. Genre can be crap sure, and it can also be literature –” but try getting the literary establishment to think so. It was interesting at the judging meeting. Everyone was comparing writing experience, seeing who could pee highest up the wall. The New York Times Notable Book thing is a clear contender in this regard, and the LW’s eyebrows went up a notch when I mentioned it. Then he looked at the book. “Oh,” he said. “Science fiction.”

Emotional truth

Been a while, but I’m back for a glass of something and some good conversation…

What’s literature? Tough one. For many, I think they can’t get past the boundary that a book has to have been taught in English class — high school or college — in order to be considered literature. Presumably, something has to be read to be considered literature, or maybe it had to have been read at one time. I’m thinking of a quote from the movie “Bullets Over Broadway”, where the pretentious playwright mentor of the hero proudly intones that all of his plays are specifically written to go unproduced. I’m also reminded of my freshman year of college, where my Intro to Literary Method teacher spent a class period talking about the concept of “dramatic literature”, or plays written to be read rather than performed. Then later the same day, my American Musical Theater prof talked about how the concept of “dramatic literature” is a crock — plays have to be performed to be fully realized.

So what does this have to do with literature? I think my point is that writing, in order to be relevant to anyone other than the writer, has to be read. But to be literary, it has to relate to the world. Now, a lot of writing takes place in the world without actually relating to it. Hell, some of Stephen King’s writing is like that. And I’m not talking about just dropping common references — a lot of writing does that as a short cut to engage readers. There’s a feeling to literature that I’m having trouble articulating (obviously). I think a lot of writing is intended to (and succeeds in) activating emotional reactions from its audience, but in a very superficial way, like movies made from video games instead of scripts, or quickie books written based on TV characters. In order to be literary, I think writing (or art in general) has to access emotions in a genuine way. I almost wrote a “lasting” way, but it doesn’t have to last to make an impression.

I guess I think Stephen King’s best work is literary, but no writer is always literary. I think a lot of people think that authors are either always literary or always not. But was Charles Dickens really writing at the top of his game all the time? Was John Steinbeck? Was Jane Austen? The answer should be obvious.

Well, that’s my two cents on literature. Here’s another related question, though, which is implied in some of my comments above: does a work have to be written to be literature? Can a film or a play qualify as literature?

Later, y’all.

Adam Diamond

I’m with your American Musical Theatre professor on this one. Strictures of form are essential. Goethe said, “In the limitations the master shows his mastery.” I do think that “literature” is a specific term that refers to prose or poetry, so I don’t think plays or films are literature, but the best ones embody the same qualities as the best books –” a good story, well told, about characters who are true even if they aren’t real.

Art is not theory, it’s connection. It’s not about thinking, it’s about doing. It’s an interaction between people, across a spectrum of immediacy that ranges from live on stage to words or images whose creators are no more than mulch and memory. When it comes to fiction, I’m not interested in realigning the post-modern literary paradigm through radical re-interpretation of established form. Bleh. I want a good story, well told, with some sort of resonance and meaning that I can connect with. I want it to be particular, the way our tastes and experiences and notions of ourselves are particular. That’s part of my definition of good writing. But do we really need three hundred pages of ten-dollar words and tortured metaphors to get there? I don’t think so.

I recently judged a writing competition with two other writers. One referred to himself as a noir mystery writer, the other as a literary writer. We had an interesting disagreement about what should constitute a winning entry, and eventually found ourselves on opposite sides of the border. The entry that these writers preferred was controlled and structured and obeyed all the rules of reasonable prose, and it was boring. Nothing happened. All telling, no showing. An adjective or two for every noun, an adverb for every verb. A theme constructed in crystalline sentences and unconvincing dialogue. I would rather pound my head against a brick wall than read a whole book of that stuff. But they liked it because it was “good writing.”

We disagreed not so much about what good prose is, but what it does. I agree with you, Adam, at heart it’s about emotional truth (which is how I’m paraphrasing your comments, let me know if that’s not right). I’m not sure it’s possible to successfully express precise emotional truth in bad prose, but I am sure that it’s possible to write beautiful prose without heart, without a human center.

So much of what is pointed out as “literary” prose seems to me to be almost a purely intellectual exercise in vocabulary and structure and style. All these things are necessary, but they are tools, not substance. A novel shouldn’t be “about” voice or theme. Yeesh. It should be language in service of story. It should create people the reader can connect with in some way, and things should happen to these people that matter to them, and to us.

And of course there are many literary novels that do exactly this. I think my biggest grump comes with the idea that genre, by definition, cannot be literary in this way. Genre can be crap sure, and it can also be literature –” but try getting the literary establishment to think so. It was interesting at the judging meeting. Everyone was comparing writing experience, seeing who could pee highest up the wall. The New York Times Notable Book thing is a clear contender in this regard, and the LW’s eyebrows went up a notch when I mentioned it. Then he looked at the book. “Oh,” he said. “Science fiction.”

Buncha stuff about writing

So here’s what happens a year after the publication of a book….

There are no more print media reviews (although I give thanks on a daily basis for the internet, and bloggers, bless you all).

Most of the awards have been given out.

The trade paperback publication is still months away.

The author is up to her ears in two or three new projects, all of which are exhibiting a strange “running in place” energy. Lots of work and creativity going in, very little to show for it. I’m sure that some law of writing physics is attempting to reveal itself to me. We could call it the rising blister theory, but that would be inelegant. Let’s call it critical mass of narrative. Then let’s buy it a beer and try to persuade it to relax a little….

All this by way of explaining the lack of updates in the last 2½ months. It’s been very easy and enjoyable to disappear into the new book and the details of the everyday. I think it’s partly an effect of summer. But now that fall is rolling in, I’m preparing to be more engaged with the wider world. I love autumn — it smells and looks and feels right, a little wild, a little sad, with unexpected moments that feel like some internal space has just opened wide.

In that spirit, I have some things to share.

I’ve been noodling with a “links” page on this site, but I find that deciding what to include on such a page is a bit like choosing a tattoo. So instead, every so often I will stop in to the virtual pub and post things that been meaningful or interesting to me. Here are a few:

Open Letters. This site is no longer active, but is available in a complete archive state. There’s some great storytelling here. People are amazing. I miss the hell out of Open Letters.

@U2. The best U2 website on the planet, in my opinion.

Arizona River Runners. I took this trip nearly 20 years ago (edited in 2008 to add: and had hoped to go this year) and my heart has been full of canyon since. Along the trip, the guide stopped the boat by a wall that went up and up. “Touch it,” he said, and when we did he told us the rock was nearly 2 billion years old. The Grand Canyon is the closest thing I know to a cathedral.

An amazing poem by Wendell Berry. An acting teacher gave me this when I was at college a thousand years ago. Along with getting genuinely excited over a monologue I did one day, it’s the nicest thing she did for me. She also taught an improvisation class one summer that gave me one of the cruel moments of my life, and would be another Open Letter, if…. This poem is reprinted by permission of the publisher.

A website chock full of computer wallpaper. Amazing photos and graphic images of all descriptions. My mom, the Master of Web, turned me on to this site.

DATA. If you have email and a phone, you can help persuade the US government to keep its promise to help African nations work against poverty and AIDS. Make a difference in the world.

MoveOn. You can have more than just a vote, you can have a voice. This is the best organized, most effective grassroots organization I have ever seen. (Edited in 2008 to add: And I unjoined a couple of years ago because they lost focus on the electoral process and started trying to stick a hand in every issue under the sun, and it all started feeling a little too much like lockstep politics to me…)

From time to time, I will also pass along articles about publishing. It’s a wacky business; the more I learn, the more I shake my head. I think there are some changes coming, although I’m not sure what they are. It seems to me to be more and more difficult for a writer to a) break in to the business, and b) maintain a career. Having accomplished (a), I find myself concerned about (b). Reading articles like the ones below helps me understand how fortunate my experience with Solitaire has been in many ways (especially given the poor reviews in the trade — Publishers Weekly and Kirkus hated the book), and also how much more fortunate I will need to be with future books.

“It takes more than talent to become a best-selling novelist. Timing, marketing, and luck are also key…” (from the Boston Globe)

“Of the 60,000-some books that land in his office yearly, Steve Wasserman, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, has room to cover only about 1,500…” (from Poets & Writers Magazine)

“Look up a book on Amazon.com, and the first media review you see isn’t from a well-known book review outlet…” from Slate.

And other news: Stephen King is getting a National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. Big smile from this side of the room. I’m delighted for him, and also delighted that the National Book Award had the guts to acknowledge that storytelling and characters who talk like real people, as opposed to speaking in ongoing tangles of metaphor and endless irony, have a huge place in the general reading experience. (Edited in 2008 to add: Here’s more about that.)

I am pretty tired of what passes for literary fiction in some circles these days. I prefer good writing to bad, but beautiful prose is not an end in itself. At least, I don’t think it should be. Nicola says that if you can see how much work the writer has done, then the writer hasn’t done enough work.

I’ve been following the commentary on the New York Times website regarding the award for Stephen King. It started out with (predictably) a lot of people being very fussed. Then there was a round of supportive posts from people who decided to come out of the closet as those who like a good read, and the literary canon be damned. For a while, the discussion flows along the lines of Oh no! versus You go, Stephen! Then it moves into consideration of what makes a work literary, which to me is a much more interesting and slippery question. I’d be interested to hear what people think — what’s “literature,” anyway? Any takers?

Cheers to you all.

Mementos

Hi Kelley,

I am planning a 15th class reunion and we are wondering what are some of the mementos we can give our fellow classmates?

karla and bessie

Hmm. It seems to me that mementos fall into two basic camps: the commercially easy but relatively impersonal, and the lots-of-work-for-you but more personal. I suppose it depends on how much you like your class and whether you really want to (or have the time to) do a bunch of work just to give them a gift.

I’ve been to reunions where the main mementos were T-shirts and/or baseball caps. Neither of these excited me particularly, but they certainly aren’t bad in any way. Deciding what design to put on them can be fun, and they are easy to get produced. There are also things like mugs, calendars, etc. that can be produced with photos or text. On the work-your-ass-off side of the scale are the customized items –” music, photo albums or montages, reunion books. The CDs I made took me at least 150 hours of planning, programming, duplication, and graphic design time, and I would assume that other customized items would require a similar commitment.

I can imagine lots of things that might be fun to do, but it’s not clear to me how feasible they are. Given time, you could project-manage a huge collaborative memento –” everyone (who wants to) contributing a message to the class, or a piece of art, or a photo they took, that embodies their experience at school.

My take is that mementos, whether mass-produced or personally crafted, should be A) something that people can actually interact with (read, drink from, laugh and wonder over, or use in their everday world), and B) something that will reconnect them with their school experience. Giving them an object with the school’s name tastefully silkscreened on it does not, in my opinion, accomplish this: they already know the name of the school, after all. But something with a picture, or a text memory, or a special class motto, might do the trick. Mileage varies, as always.

You will have to pay for this stuff up front and collect the cost as part of what you charge each person to attend the reunion, unless you are fortunate enough to have a school budget already available for such things. So be warned: stuff is expensive (grin). If you want to make sure everyone in your class gets a memento, and not just those at the reunion, then the people who come to the reunion pretty much end up covering the cost of the mementos (and shipping) for those who don’t. Charge accordingly.

You haven’t said if this is a high school or college reunion, or anything about your class. I’d be interested in hearing more: where did you go to school, and what was it like? Are you happy about being in charge of this event? (I can imagine it being equal parts fun and nightmare, myself.) What are you hoping for?

Good luck with it. I hope you have a blast.

Sharing spaceships

Wow. That was really wrong. She WAS a pig that day. I just lost a tooth yesterday afternoon. It had to be pulled out. It’s not a good tooth to lose because it’s a first molar (provides the vertical stop). My dentist is a cool guy though. He’s a bit on the eccentric side, but he’s great at what he does. He gives me all the Novocain I need and never tells me, “…it’s pressure, not pain”. I probably would have fainted if a teacher did that to me.

I should have said that the spaceship set is an interior one. My friend’s parents were kind enough to let us have their basement (3/4 of it). We’ve got an engine room, a transporter, a command center, turbo elevators and a forward viewer…complete with a starfield. It looks like the inside of a spaceship. On film, it looks amazing. So, we are definitely proud of our set. For EXT. SPACE scenes, we use a model. Alx made it out of a digital alarm clock and other household items. All painted up, you’d never know. We made a lot of our own props.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a few setbacks. I can’t play Agent Tallent because the girl who was supposed to play Nate, pulled several “no shows”. Since Tallent doesn’t appear until later, I have to play Nate. So, I have to exercise. I despise exercising. And the thing is, I’m in pretty good shape…just not “Nate shape”. Then I have to Tallent search (ha! couldn’t help it). There’s quite a bit of stupid shit popping up. I won’t get into it. I will say that we are not freaking out about stuff like we used to, so that’s good. And, for something that is low (super-low) budget, Wayfarer 1 is looking great. We are very excited and extremely pleased.

I will definitely let you know when the website is up and running (shooting for Nov). Even better, I could send you a cd. Could I do that??? Perhaps through some c/o address or other? In fact, if anyone here would like a FREE cd, just email me with the information and I’ll send it out. Uh… I’d be a little sketched about giving my address to a stranger, so I’ll understand if no one wants a disc. But, there are always p.o. boxes and c/o’s and fake names, etc., etc. So really, feel free. Keep in mind though, that it will be several months before any of this happens.

Arrivederla!

Lindsey

That’s nice of you! I will definitely take a CD when they’re available (I will send you contact information privately). I hope some other people will take you up on it; it’s good to Share Art.

I think it’s fantastic you built a spaceship in the basement. I regard it the way I regard being an astronaut or a spy or a sixth dan black belt in aikido –” something cool for which I have neither the talent nor the predisposition. A real wow, people are amazing moment. You go.

I am not a plant

There’s a discussion on Nicola’s website (scroll down to the last question) about the role of music in her work. I’m curious about how you use music in your writing? Thanks.

Anonymous

I’ve been enjoying that conversation. Music has always been essential to me, but it took that question and Nicola’s response to make me think in more detail about how I feel about music and how I use it in my work.

I’m a verbally-centered person. Language is my primary tool to ground myself, to express myself, to connect with others. That’s part of the writing deal, of course, but it can be limiting. Some things are not so easily expressed in words. Sometimes a person just has to dance, or cry, or throw their arms out and try to hug the world. Music is my conduit to this part of myself.

There are things I’ve learned about myself only through particular pieces of music that have taken hold of me throughout my life. Music is one of the few things in the world that I respond to by wanting to move, to feel, to think, all at the same time, instead of giving preference to thinking as I often do. And it has meaning for me beyond just the words and the beat. Some music has become a part of my self-identity in a way that’s hard to articulate –” not just I like this or I get this but I am this: this particular intersection of rhythm and voice and word and sound is about me, for me, of me.

My work so far tends either to use music overtly in this way, or to pretty much ignore it as an emotional force and just treat it as another feature of the environment. Strings is an example of the former, as is my most recent (unpublished) story in which a woman imagines herself a rock star. Those stories are, in one particular way, the most revealing and personal pieces of fiction I have written. In Solitaire, music is background.

It’s hard for me to imagine using music in my work the way Nicola does in hers. We have a fair amount of overlap in our musical tastes, but we experience even the music in very different ways. What a surprise (ironic smile): Nicola and I are different. Different people, different writers. Segue to one of my hot buttons: I get grumpy sometimes at assumptions that my work must automatically always be informed by hers, as if she were the sun and all the rest of us are plants or something. Someone commented online a while ago that since Nicola and I are partners, I had clearly modeled Solitaire on the themes of Slow River. I find this more annoying than I can possibly express.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not slamming your question –” in fact, I appreciate the careful setting of context (“this discussion on Nicola’s website made me wonder…”) without the actual request to “please compare and contrast yourself to Nicola.” And of course I do compare and contrast myself to her, as she does to me. Maybe I should give her approach to music-in-fiction a whirl just to see how it goes. It’s good to stretch. But I’m not sure that I could assign specific pieces of music to a moment in the story without wanting to go all the way with it and turn it into the sort of experience for the character that it is for me. And that’s not always right for the work.

As I write this, I am listening to what I think of as the early Aerosmith “trilogy”: Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic, and Rocks. Steven Tyler is wailing about being back in the saddle again. The bass line kicks ass. I am dancing in my chair. Time to go do some work.

Dreaming big

Congratulations on an awesome book! I hope you succeed beyond your wildest dreams and have a life of writing, beer, and Nicola.

Cara

I must admit that succeeding beyond my wildest dreams is a stretch goal, because I dream big. I’m thinking, well, okay, what’s my wildest dream of success, and I can’t even post it here, it’s just too over the top.

I find that I am not embarrassed to have these dreams, which are a very powerful force in my personality and my life. But I am sometimes embarrassed to share them with other people. The endless question: what to reveal, what to keep private. It’s hard to have precious things misunderstood or dismissed. Yet I also believe that dreams are harder to achieve if they are too closely guarded, never made external in any way. It seems to me they need to be expressed somehow, even if it’s just out loud to myself in a field miles from nowhere in the middle of the night. It’s mighty powerful to say, “I want this.” It sets up echoes that come back at the damndest times.

So thank you for your kind wishes. I hope so too. I want it.