Holden Caulfield Leads the Way

On Monday, Anne Rice suggested we "go where the pain is," in our writing.

Are you like me? Did you lift your head from your nail-painting/paper-clip-sorting/whatever-it-is-you-do-in-a YouTube-watching-moment and ask:

 "What pain?" I know, for some of you the pain is big and immediate and sits right there on top, and you may or may not be ready to write about it yet.

But others of us may have submerged a few things, so we can get through the day. But what if now, for the sake of writing in a voice that's yours alone, you want to dig them up? Where do you look?

 

I have some thoughts. 

I recently read Catcher In the Rye, because I wanted to watch Salinger, the film Bonnie talked about a few weeks back. It just seemed right to read his book before I watched the film.

It's a good book, and very subtle, and strangely transparent in it's subtleties. Salinger was a master at telling it slant. The plot takes form between the lines. The main character, Holden Caulfield, repeats certain phrases like nervous ticks, and each time he says them, each instance, is like a little signpost. The signs may not be in a language you understand, not at first.

But soon enough you get that they mean something, and you start to pay attention, and they start to tell you what you need to know about Holden Caulfield. 

Phrases like, "I can't stand it," "I hate it," "Boy, do I hate it." 

Phrases like, "If you want to know the truth," "It really does," "I really do." 

Here's how this connects to finding your pain:

Next time you sit down to write, play with those phrases. Start with "I can't stand it when..." and finish the sentence as many times and as many ways as you like.

Play with the others. What is it you hate, boy do you hate? Your reader does want to know the truth. What comes before "I really do," or "It really does," for you? 

Make up a good character, and let your answers shape him.

Then, read the following paragraph: 

"I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

Now ask your character what he sees, what she would really like to be, crazy or not. 

Oh, and one last thing, for no other reason than I want you to notice: Read the last paragraph of Catcher In the Rye, and ask yourself:

What's it means to miss someone?

The 10,000 hour club and other musings.

I've never read Catcher in the Rye, never read anything by J.D. Salinger, never seen a documentary on him, though I might try to find the documentary Bonnie talked about in her post on Monday, where she certainly gave us a lot to chew on.

She made a very good observation when she said the media called him a hermit and recluse, yet the life he lived was only selectively hermit-like. I'm sure Bonnie's correct in that his part-time withdrawal from public life may have been partly "because he understood his capacity to be a dangerous man ..." But I'm taking a guess when I say I think he was probably also a media snob. He wanted his fame and fortune, but on his terms.

Like so many other famous people we could name.

Well, in all fairness, who of us doesn't? Who of us writers who dream of best-sellers, book tours and movie deals---and struggle with envy for those few who do achieve those things---don't want fame on our own terms? But is that realistic? Is it fair? We aggressively woo fans, hoping they'll buy our books and support our writing habit ... so long as they keep their adoration at arm's length? There's something very one-sided about that to me. Yes, I understand the need for privacy and safety and boundaries, but in my opinion, those who step from private life to public life have an obligation to the ones who help them achieve their dreams.

I know, easy for me to say since I'll never achieve the kind of fame we're taking about. I just don't happen to be a fan of elitism, or snobbery on any level.

That said, I'd like to address the other part of Bonnie's post, the 10,000 hours part. If the premise is true, that would be 416 days of round-the-clock, non-stop writing to master the skill. Taking my average weekly writing time and multiplying that to the 10,000 hours necessary to master a skill, I figure it took me 13-15 years of writing to reach that milestone. Like Bonnie, the thought of considering myself a master is laughable. But trust me when I say I've come a long, long way in 28 years, which is how long I've been diligently at this writing life.

And I have to believe if, after all those years of striving, I'd managed to gain even a tiny fraction of  the fame of a J.D. Salinger, I think I'd show more appreciation. At least I hope I would.

My musings aside, I have two questions for you:

1. Do you fear the fame you may be courting?
2. How long has it taken you to reach the 10,000 hour club --- or where are you on your journey?

What J.D. Salinger Got Right

I recently watched a documentary called "Salinger", and when it was over that sadness that always lingered after reading his stories was present in the room.

Media called Salinger hermit and recluse. Clearly he was neither of those as he was constantly seen about the small town near where he lived, took frequent trips to New York and Florida. He wasn't hermiting, he was simply trying to live out the last thread of sane left to him after surviving WWII, and then surviving the crashing success of Catcher in the Rye--the same novel that would be fingered as the reason and justification of three high profile shootings including the murder of John Lennon and the shooting of then President of the US, Ronald Reagan.

It's possible that Salinger decided to withdraw from life in public because he understood his capacity to be a dangerous man if allowed to stew too long in the soup of public pressure. Men and women hunted him down believing he had answers to their chaotic, hopeless lives. He didn't. And he knew it.

It's possible that Salinger's own writing left him with no alternative but to turn his back on the media lest he become entrapped in the same poser culture he railed against in his theology thinly disguised as fiction stories (he was a follower of Vedanta, Hindu philosophy and his stories always preached the tension between    body    and     spirit).

No doubt, Salinger walked a tightrope of being and maintaining his status as public figure and being fully dedicated to writing itself. Pure writing without any distractions.

It's murky and complicated (just like life), but there's one thing that stood out for me, one point where I believe Salinger was right: you can't talk about writing and be a writer. You must write. Only that.

There's a discipline to this, especially in the world of the internet where it is (literally) possible to glean so much information about how to write fiction that you could--in time--present college level courses on the subject and yet not be able to execute any of it.

A writer could, in theory, spend every weekend at one writer's conference after another soaking in so much knowledge he or she might feel a brain burst coming on. But so what if you can't actually do it?

I'm not against writing conferences. If you have a plan and have carefully selected workshops that will actually benefit your writing, and leave the conference with measurable ROI (return on investment), then great. Rare. But great.

But.

Nothing trumps the doing.

Write.

Read.

Write.

Read.

Don't stop.

Remember that well hashed saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill? My husband recently pointed out that I've passed that milestone. I am, according to the hour formula, a master writer. (Can you see me giggling right now?)

What's the singular biggest lesson those 10,000+ hours of writing have taught me?

I can't talk myself into becoming a good writer.

I can only write, and write, and write some more until I find my true self and then write that.

Carpe Annum Tribute

 

An important component of Carpe Annum – claiming the year – is claiming the past. Taking stock and acknowledging how we got to this point in our lives as writers.  Identifying the layers of the bedrock we’ve built upon, including great books, great writers, mentors and encouragers great and small, who steered and cheered us on.  This segues naturally into a Mother’s Day appreciation since next Sunday is THE day.  (Get those cards in the mail today, if you haven’t already.)

My sweet mother just turned ’91 or 90, whichever.’  I chuckled to myself when she said this. It was so similar to the opening of Water For Elephants.  What’s a year when you’re approaching a century?  I credit her for introducing me to a lifetime of reading.  

I remember the excitement when a package came in the mail for me at the age of five or six containing three books by a new children’s author named Dr. Seuss.  I assume The Cat in the Hat arrived first, or whatever, as mom says. Every few months another package arrived with more books until we had a small collection.  I think I had first seen them in the dentist’s office.  I had soft teeth, and having bitten my old dentist (not soft enough, apparently), he had referred me to a new-fangled pediatric dentist who very wisely prescribed a pre-appointment sedative and filled his waiting room with children’s books.  Later, reading them to my own children, I realized my mother must have gone nuts repeating those nonsensical rhymes over and over, but she never quit, even after I could recite them by heart.  My particular favorites were Put Me in the Zoo, Go Dog Go, and One Fish Two Fish.  Interestingly, Dr. Seuss credits his own mother with inspiring him to write books.  You can read about his journey (27 rejections for the Cat in the Hat) at http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm.

When I was older, mom took me to the library and signed for me to get my own library card.  It was the first official card in my plastic wallet.  The children’s books were located in a snuggly, low-ceilinged basement that muffled all sounds of outside civilization.  I could have brought my sleeping bag and settled in. I overheard mom telling the librarian that my teacher said I was ahead of my grade in reading, and the librarian showed me the stacks for more advanced reading.  It was something mom never would have told me, not wanting my head to ‘get big.’ Parents had to keep their kids' feet on the ground in the 1960s.

Later, mom and I read Victoria Holt’s books until we could predict the endings, and moved on to Agatha Christie and L.M. Montgomery.  The day came in my adolescence when I picked up a paperback novelization of one of my favorite shows, The Avengers.  Not the Marvel Comics superheroes – I’m talking John Steed and Emma Peel, the British agents.  I argued hotly for it and she clucked her tongue and shook her head before allowing me to buy it with the caveat that if there was inappropriate material, I would stop reading. Now we were swimming out past the buoy into unknown literary waters.  She trusted me and I felt mature enough to handle whatever it contained. I had no intention of getting rid of it.  I read the book in my room, anxious that ‘the passage’ might appear.  And, of course, it did – not even a scene, but an offhand comment that shocked me. By today’s standards, it was mild, but I felt chagrined and tossed the paperback with my favorite actors on the cover in a place where she would never find it.  To her credit, she never asked about it until a year or so later.  I simply acknowledged that she was right and she never said another word.  Good form, mom.

Then, in high school English class, we read West Side Story.  I was a bit shocked and disturbed by one scene in the book which I felt was inappropriate for high school, and I skipped over it.  Mom, of course, managed to pick up the book and flip to THAT scene, which triggered a tirade and a threat to call the principal’s office. I talked her down from the edge, assuring her that it was the only book that had anything offensive in it that we had read and she cooled off. I mean, if you overlooked Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace, which she didn’t need to know about.  

Mom and I continued to swap book titles until our tastes parted ways.  She even read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. But she loved a good mystery best of all.  She read so many from her local library that she had to make a small mark inside the cover when she was done so she wouldn’t check it out again.  I was shocked that she would be so bold as to mark in a library book.  Well, maybe not.

I think the thing I appreciate the most is that she didn’t discourage me when I said I wanted to write.  Mom was never overly demonstrative – so not her generation.  But she proudly took my first book into the library where the librarian added it to a display case for local authors.  I dedicated that book to her and my family, but the dedication page was inadvertently omitted (stuff happens) and the page made it into the next book.

Whose shoulders do you stand on in your writing journey?  Who has helped you build a foundation to Carpe Annum?  We’d love to hear!

To Read or Not To Read: A Roundtable Discussion

My husband and I are avid readers, and so are our daughters. Our son was too. I'm delighted to have both my daughters as members of the book club I started 2 1/2 years ago. We enjoy the same types of novels, so when my

youngest, Deanne, recommended Room, I borrowed her copy and dove in.

The best I can say about it, is that it's disturbing. I wanted to give up on it a dozen times, but hung in because Deanne assured me it would be worth it to keep going. After three long nights of reading, I reached the "Aha!" moment, when I was indeed glad I'd stuck it out. I called Deanne the next day to tell her exactly what I just said here, adding, "It's a lot of pages to wade through to get to that all-important revelation." "But,

Mom," she said, "didn't you read the back cover copy?" This from a reader who will never, ever read the back cover copy; who wants to know absolutely nothing about a book she intends to read. "No," I said, though I usually do. "I went solely on your recommendation." She laughed and said, "I bet it's on the back cover copy." "No way," I said. "They'd never give that away. It's a stunner! It just comes too far into the book. She and her editor took a huge risk of losing lots of readers by at least not hinting that there was a stunner on the way." "Go get the book," she said. "I bet it's there." So I did ... and it was. I was blown away. "Well, didn't you feel like I did, wading through the first quarter of the book?" I asked. "No," she said, "I knew it from the start." "No way. You did not figure that out in the first few pages." She confessed that she knew because her daughter Katelyn had to read it this summer in advance of her sophomore English class -- which I also find disturbing -- and Deanne read Katie's report.

So, here's my question: Say you're like my daughter, and you go into a novel knowing absolutely nothing about it. How willing are you to stick with a novel that is disturbing, dark,

grim, oppressive -- you fill in the adjective. Does it make a difference if someone you trust recommends it?

Perhaps you're like me. I have my trusted restaurant friends. If they recommend a restaurant, it moves to the top of my must-try list. From listening to the wrong people, I've also scratched some restaurants off my list. Movies are the same way. And, of course, so are books.

I recently read a book on the recommendation of a highly regarded friend. I read and read and read. I didn't like any of the characters. The plotline was comatose. The author certainly has a gift for description, so she describes the same thing three different ways, repeatedly. And then something happened in the story that was like stubbing my toe in the dark. I like surprises, the kind that give you an "A-ha!" moment, but this was a sucker punch, as if her editor said, "Something has to happen here!" And it did, and I put the book down. I'm reading another book recommended by the

same person. We all deserve a second chance. It's fascinating! Title? The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

It greatly depends on whether the story gives me bad dreams or not. I've put down a few for that reason. (The Historian, for one - and I'd bought it in hardback - grrrr) If an acquaintance gives me the heads up about a slow beginning or "just get past the blah-blah-blah" then I'm more likely to stick with it. But I feel cheated if it never improves. I'm willing to go along for the ride if I'm promised a satisfying resolution of some kind, but that doesn't always materialized. I don't need a Pollyanna ending, but there has to be some redemption or character growth.

My latest brush with the dark side of fiction was when I picked up a YA novel by Robert Cormier, entitled In the Middle of the Night. The low page count and the fact that it was a YA made me think it would be a quick read.

So quick that I never finished it. It had an interesting premise (a young boy is the son of a man who unintentionally caused the death of some 20 people and is contacted by someone who wants revenge). Halfway through the novel I read a Cormier bio which spoke of his pessimism and the fact that his protags don't "win" -- and I tossed the book.

I must must admit I can't handle dark YAs. I tried to read Catcher in the Rye and couldn't stand the protag there. Sorry.

There are places I know I don't go when it comes to story--not simply because they are dark, but because they are dark in a specific way or on a specific topic. For example, I don't read novels about children dying. Fiction is personal. When I recommend a novel to a friend I do so with trepidation; love me, love the books I love, right? Some of my favorite books were handed to me by a friend: The Bean Trees, Cold Sassy Tree, In the Skin of a Lion, Life of Pi to name a few. Other books I have grown to love were recommended to me by the women on this blog: The Book Thief being among the top recommendations.

When it comes to 'dark' subject matter, I find the lines are not easily drawn. A story can be dark in a human sort of way and I will find the novel un-put-downable (I recommended Canadian writer Ann-Marie MacDonald's novel Fall on Your Knees to the Novel Matters women because of it's rich and brilliant writing even though the subject matter was so dark the reader is often tempted to look away while a scene plays out). My personal rule is thus- if it is dark in a "humans can be so dark" sort of way, I'll give it a look. If it's a dark "there's a man with a knife in the closet" sort of way, I pass.

I'm certainly with Latayne on that one. I can't handle dark YAs either. And I've never read Catcher in the Rye. I don't feel like I've missed much. What about you? Where do you find yourself in this discussion? We'd love to hear.