Looking for the Extraodinary

Until I read Elizabeth Berg's novels, I didn't even know I wanted to be a writer.

It was my turn to choose a book for book club. I hadn't been a member of the group for very long. The weight of choosing a book to suit varied tastes made my pits sticky. I wandered around Barnes & Noble for hours reading back copy and first paragraphs, beginning to believe the perfect book didn't exist.

And frankly, I was looking for more than the next book. I was looking for a new direction. We'd read about plague years and dream-seeping violence and horrendous violations. Don't get me wrong, I'm not squeamish when it comes to hard-hitting fiction, but a steady diet of the stuff had left me battered.

And so, the search labored on. My checklist included these requirements: rich language that wasn't syrupy or distracting, a story that valued the small things that tower large in our lives, a story about familiar things portrayed in surprising ways. That's all. Simple. A story that is neither contrived nor soul-crushing.


Why was this so hard?

And then [cue the rapturous music], I picked up Joy School by Elizabeth Berg. My prize! The story is ordinary and extraordinary. Human. Winsome. Transparent. The girl's mother wears Tabu perfume, for heaven's sake.

I read the book quickly and set it down, only to pick it back up again. I read random scenes. Underlined favorite passages. Carried the characters around in my head for days, maybe weeks. Is anyone gagging yet?

I'd read many wonderful books up to this point--classical, popular, and literary. This is the book that made me want to be a writer. But why?

I wanted to spend my days playing with words and writing stories that become friends to the reader. That's my goal, anyway.

BTW, I traveled a thousand miles to attend a writers conference where Ms. Berg was the keynote speaker. I sat in the front row at all her appearances. The poor lady was on the tail end of a long book tour. She looked ragged. Did that keep me from schmoozing my way into a conversation with her? No! Are you kidding? I have the picture to prove it.

Update: It's been awhile since Ms. Berg has hit the high bar she set for herself with the Katie stories (Durable Goods, Joy School, and True to Form, plus What We Keep), but I still credit her for showing me the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Who has done this for you?

Novels as Good Company

I loved Katy's post on Monday. There's a proud place on my bookshelf for meditative books. She mentioned that most of the meditative books she enjoys are nonfiction, often memoirs with a few exceptions, most notably Gilead. But there are novels that invite you into friendship. That's what I'm going to talk about today.

Some years back I joined a book club of fellow teachers from the elementary school where I taught. We read a wide range of novels, always novels. We were a group of story-lovers. We spent the days using the bests picture books and middle readers to egg our students on as writers. At night, we hungered to indulge in adult fiction.

When it fell to me to select the next novel to read, I spent hours perusing Barnes and Nobles, reading back cover copy and first paragraphs. The whole process carried the weight of arranging a blind day for a beloved friend. Little did I know I would fall in love with the book I selected.

If I wasn't reading learning theory or middle readers at that time, I borrowed from my husband's library. Lots of bombs and good-hearted cowboys in there. But in this book I found, no bombs explode. No ranch is threatened by cattle thieves or--gasp!--sheepherders. No enemies of civilization to thwart. The story wasn't a mystery but included a hint of a mystery. Definitely not a romance but the longing of a romance wove through the story. The narrator is young, but it's not a coming-of-age story.

This story and so many of the stories I love are easier to describe by what they're not, but I'll try, through a few examples to talk about these books that defy genre classification. We've talked here about upmarket fiction, a marriage of the literary and the marketable (read that: has an engaging plot). The books I'm thinking of today, however, are a shade different. I mean no disrespect by the name I'm going to give them--good company books. How could I? I abandoned my hard-won career as a teacher and the possibility of a pension after reading this one book when I leapt into the luminous darkness of novel writing.

Some books are (not just or simply) plain good company, certainly not a roller coaster ride of threat and near disaster. Joy School by Elizabeth Berg was good company for me, a harried new teacher with too much life on my plate. It's the story of twelve-year-old Katie whose mother has died, her older sister has left home, and her father has moved Katie away from her best friend to a new army post. Katie sees it all and speaks with gentle honesty about her angst. Yes, she's in love with a married man who pumps gas, but this is a crush, not Lolita, and she's trying to fit in at her new school. That's the plot, but it's ancillary to the real story of Katie learning to deal with her losses.

So what is it about this good-company novel that keeps a reader engaged? Partly, I loved the timing of the story. Katie was twelve about the same time I was twelve. Her mother wore Tabu perfume, and she laid out in the sun with baby-oil laced with iodine. So, perhaps, nostalgia numbs the pain of a inconsequential plot. But what really won me was Katie's voice. Katie muses about getting to know a new friend:

When it's new and important, you have to rest in between times. And anyway, even when I like a person there is a weariness that comes. I can be with someone and everything is fine and then all of a sudden it can wash over me like a sickness, that I need the quiet of my own self. I need to unload my head and look at what I've got in there so far. See it. Think what it means. I always need to come back to being alone for a while.

I'm reading A Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler just now. It's the story of a mid-30s man who has lost his wife when a tree falls on their house. He has no problem accepting her occassional appearances after the funeral, but he believes others find them disturbing.

As with Tyler's other books, the story is more like standing before a painting in a gallery with piano music playing softly in the distance. The sun is shining. No one is two-stepping just out of your peripheral vision to have their moment before the painting. You can stand there forever, drinking in the portrait of grief and longing.

The charm of Tyler's books is how she captures the moments of a pedestrian life poised on the threshold of pain with such humanity and humor. If you're a Tyler reader, you can relax and know that she will give her characters all the room they need to grow and find happiness, so relax and enjoy the journey. This would be the second characteristic I submit for good-company books--they read like a memoir with a satisfying resolution, sort of a year-in-the-lfe-of story. Here, the main character, Aaron, explains the paroxysm of grief:

It's like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It's still there, but the sharpest edges are...muffled, sort of. Then, every now and then, I lift the corner of the blanket just to check and...whoa! Like a knife! I'm not sure that will ever change.

A good-company book also tends to fire a longing in the reader. Ivan Doig's The Whistling Season did that for me with its strong characters, a spectacular landscape, and uncluttered prose that quickened my pulse. In The Whistling Season, an aging Montana school superintendent must decide what to do about the single room school houses that dot the rural areas. They're terribly inefficient, which makes them too costly. The story is his memories of the 1909 schoolyear, the year his mother died and Rose and her brother Morris came to town. He learned so much. Some of it in the school, thanks to Morris. The story plucked me out of my time and settled me squarely into 1909. In the end, the book is an ode to the single room school house and education that really matters.

Childhood is the one story that stands by itself in the soul.

We can't very well talk about good-company books without mentioning Jan Karon. Twenty-five million people have stepped into Mitford through her books. All that without being reviewed by The New York Times or recieving a nod from Oprah. Impressive. Jan Karon treats her character benevolently and draws them with endearing strokes. Father Tim is far from the Elmer Gantry type of clergyman we've come to expect in literature. The greatest tension in Shepherds Abiding arises from a deadline--Christmas!--for completing Father Tim's wife's present, which he does just in the nick of time. Some people complain about the sugary storylines of Karon's stories, but many find her stories affirming with prose like this: "I believe that's when God first started speaking to my heart--the very day I started speaking to His!"

It's a bit audacious of me to name a genre, but it's Wednesday and I'm feeling a bit careless. Can you add your suggestions for a good-company book? Do you have another name for this type of book? Do you find a steady diet of good-company novels unsatisfying? How do you quench your desires?

Shining a Light on Monsters

OOPS! I skipped a chapter in our discussion of Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird last time. Here it is! Jump in whether you've read the chapter or not. Also, is there a writing book you would like to discuss together here? We're almost to the end of Lamott's book.

Lamott's chapter, "Finding Your Voice," opens rather predictably but wisely about how new writers tend to emulate their favorite authors:

It is natural to take on someone else's style, that it's a prop that you use for a while until you have to give it back. And it just might take you to the thing that is not on loan, the thing that is real and true: your own voice.--Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Early in my writing career, I read everything by Elizabeth Berg. I LOVED her voice, the truth of it, how I felt connected to her characters, with her. I loved her writing so much I attended a writers conference where she was a speaker, hoping to meet her. The poor woman was at the tail end of a book tour. She looked like she'd slept in motel rooms lit by strobe lights for weeks. The good thing for me? She was weak and easy to stalk. I wrangled a picture with her, a few words that I don't remember, but it didn't help me sound just like her.

As much as I wanted to write in her voice, I wasn't Elizabeth Berg. I hadn't lived her life, wrestled her monsters, eaten her breakfast, argued with her husband over moldy towels. My voice is my own, a product of all that is dull and magnificent about me. It's what I fantacize about, tremble over, do in dark rooms with the shades drawn. Oh my! My voice is also what swells my heart to love, rejoice, and worship. There's no getting around it, I can only write from my own core.

This, according to Lamott, means getting in touch with our monsters.

Really?

Oh yeah.

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are. The secrecy, the obfuscation, the fact that these monsters can only be hinted at, gives us the sense that they must be very bad indeed. But when pople let their monsters out for a little onstage interview, it turns out that we've all done or thought the same things, that this is our lot, our condition. We don't end up with a brand on our forehead. Instead, we compare notes.

I worried about myself even as a child. We had exposed aggragate stairs to the second floor that sort of floated. No risers. Somehow, I had gotten into my head that if I stepped on the third step from the top, a monster would reach between the steps, grab my leg, and pull me into the 5th Dimension where unspeakable torments awaited children. My maturing brain knew this couldn't be true, but the self-doubting part of my brain kept up this practice for an embarrassingly long time.

No one ever knew.

Until, in an unguarded moment, as an adult, I told someone I hardly knew. As it turned out, she had rituals that kept her safe from monsters in the bathroom--touch the hot water knob, the cold, and tap the faucet three times. No monsters in the bathroom! And so, as Lamott suggests, my new friend and I compared notes. And that's what our readers want to do, compare notes. They don't want to brand us, banish us, or beach us (in case you're a whale). They share our need to know we're not as weird or damaged as we thought. We're not alone.

Recently, the gifted and gorgeous Katy Popa suggested a book to me: The 90 Day Novel by Alan Watt. The author took me by the hand to lead me through the process of structuring and plotting my work in progress through daily writing exercises. Some of the writing prompts took me aback. He made me write about my biggest disappointments, tell things that no one knows about me, and what the source of my greatest shame happens to be. I've filled five notebooks with entries for myself and my characters.

Somewhere in the process, I thought to myself, "Wow, my character's voice is changing. She's real." I'm not sure how my subconcious accomplished this (Bonnie!), but shining a light on my monster has deepened my voice, made it more unique and infused it with truth. It's more me.

Lamott summarizes that telling the truth in our own voices is our nature. "Truth seems to want expression." I'm not sure it's our nature to tell the truth, but I do agree that truth wants expression.

Fortunately, not all truth is a cold, cold lake we have to plunge headlong into. Perhaps your truth is that there is so much more to life than what can be seen. Life is mysterious, wondrous, and its Creator is good. Lamott includes a quote toward the end of the chapter that took my breath away. Stephen Mitchell wrote about Job, saying this:

The physical body is acknowledged as dust, the personal drama is delusion. It is as if the world we perceive through our senses, that whole gorgeous and terrible pageant, were the breath-thin surface of a bubble, and everything else, inside and outside, is pure radiance. Both suffering and joy come then like a brief reflection, and death like a pin.

Let me dare to summarize this seemingly disjointed discussion on voice: While we are in the toddler stage of our writing, we will emulate--or try to emulate--our favorite authors. It's possible this sort of play will lead us to our true voice. But it usually doesn't. What does strengthen and develop our grown-up voice is courage--to face our monsters and to "expose the unexposed." All this work will give us a truer voice, and truth will connect us with our readers like nothing else.

There was Interview With a Vampire. How about Interview with [fill in your name here]'s Monster? If you dare, interview your monster and see how the experience influences your voice. Be sure to report back! Are you buying this? Is it necessary to face your monsters to develop a strong, unique voice? Have you laid a book down because the voice wasn't true? And what about this kinship with truth? Have you experienced that with an author? Here's one sentence from this chapter that could start a great conversation: "Write as if your parents are dead." Let's not waste it!

Musings of a Minimalist

I am not a packrat. Okay, let me try that again. I am not a packrat, except when it comes to books. I never have been, never will be. As I look back over the years, there are things I wish I'd kept for their sentimental value, but for the most part I'm not sorry that I regularly cull my possessions.

If you walked into my home, you'd see immediately that I'm a minimalist. The rooms in my house aren't cluttered. My walls aren't cluttered. The furniture in every room is evenly centered, aligned, arranged to everything else in that room, and kept as neat as possible at all times. Pictures are centered on the wall and straightened on a regular basis. I call that good housekeeping; my kids call it anal (although both our daughters are just like me now. Ha! I love it!).

A funny aside to this revealing info about me: My daughter Mindy's mother-in-law is the exact opposite of me. The 100-year-old Victorian home she and her husband have lived in for more than 40 years is chock-full of collectibles and ... stuff, from the basement to the upstairs bedrooms. There's a path that leads from the kitchen and goes through the dining room, into the living room, to the front door. Every other inch of floor space is filled up, and there's hardly an inch of wall space left to hang another picture or Gone With the Wind collectible plate. They were in town visiting Mindy & Corey when Jayden, now 5, was about 2. We all took a drive to Sutter Creek, a quaint little town in the foothills known for its antique shops. We entered the first little shop, which was wall-to-wall merchandise with little room for walking. Jayden took one look around and said, "Grandma? Is this your house?" I couldn't stop laughing.

I'm also a minimalist when it comes to talking. I know people who use 1,000 words to my one, and it boggles my mind that someone could talk that much. Boggles. My. Mind. I'm not the best conversationalist, but I am a good listener, I will say that. I'm not anti-social by any means. I just tend to be quiet.

So it's not surprising that I'm also a minimalist when it comes to my writing. I tend to write novels with just a handful of characters, and only a few plot lines. I'm always impressed with complex novels and wish I could pull off that kind of writing, but my story worlds tend to be small and anything but epic. Maybe that's because I so love to become emotionally intimate with my characters. I want to get inside their heads. Literally. I tend to write in first person, and especially love first person, present tense. In order to pull that off, there's a lot of internal dialogue on my pages. I find that reflective of me, internal dialogue going on inside my head all the time. I'm sure that's true of most writers.

The novel I'm reading now, And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer, is one of those epics I could never see myself writing. It's historical fiction and spans six decades, with a large enough cast of characters that a family tree or two would have been helpful in keeping everyone straight after the 2nd or 3rd generation. It's typically NOT the type of novel I read, because I much prefer contemporary to historical. But it was on my TBR list for the longest time (not sure how it got there). It took me months to locate it. Finally, my library was able to borrow it from another library so with that much effort I felt obligated to read the almost 1,200 page behemoth. I have about 100 pages to go, and I have loved every word. I plan to write a review about it before long.

What matters most to me in the novels I read, no matter the genre, is being able to truly connect with one or more of the characters. It's so much more important to me than the plot. That doesn't mean I must be able to empathize with a character's situation. I may never experience anything like what they're going through -- for instance, Katniss in The Hunger Games Trilogy. But I want to be able to draw near just the same. Like Debbie, I'm a fan of Stein on Writing (read her She Reads post on Everyday People). I remember reading the quote Debbie cites as I made my way through his book the first time: "I have seen talented writers hurt their chances of publication because they persist in writing about 'perfectly ordinary people' ... characters who are seemingly no different from the run of people we meet who do not seem in any way distinctive." I took exception with it. Because most novels I read and enjoy are stories about perfectly ordinary people ... who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, doing extraordinary things. I think of characters like Turtle in Joy Jordan Lake's Blue Hole Back Home, Ginny Young in Elizabeth Berg's What We Keep, Dara Brogan in Katy Popa's exceptional To Dance in the Desert. Ordinary people, caught in extraordinary circumstances. How else could I relate to them if that weren't so?

Reading preferences are so subjective that is seems rash to make such a sweeping statement as Stein's. I actually thought it arrogant, though that one statement doesn't alter my opinion of Stein on Writing. It's one of those books I read, re-read and refer back to as I write. But as my daughter Deanne would say, I chew the meat and spit out the bones, and there's a lot of good meat within its pages.

So what about you? If you're a writer, are you minimalist or epic when it comes to your story world? As a reader, which do you prefer? What matters most to you about the novels you read?

Writing from the Attic: Therapy or Lunacy?

Katy's excellent post on Monday about things in the attic -- like her humming yellow jackets and naughty 'possum -- reminded me of an incident that happened last November when my husband was on one of his frequent missions trips. It's funny now, but it sure wasn't then. I wrote about it in my 11/15/10 NM post, A Week in the Life of . . . This is what I said in part:

Where is a man when you need one? Mine could be anywhere in the world, but I can pretty much guarantee if something's going to go wrong, it will go wrong when he's out of the country ... (This particular time he was in Cuba.) A week ago Sunday night I was in my bedroom watching TV and addressing Christmas cards when a racket shattered the relative quiet -- and it came from right above my head. Startled, I jumped up and tried to assess the what and the where as I speed dialed my daughter, because, as we all know, misery loves company. I had no idea what was going on, I just knew it was LOUD. It sounded like a whole family of something had moved into our attic space. With my daughter on the phone, I went outside, hoping against hope that whatever it was was on the roof, and not somewhere INSIDE my house. Alas, it was not to be. I declined my daughter's invitation to spend the night/week on her sofa, and listened in fear and trembling as this thing moved around upstairs above my head till after 3:00 a.m. At one point it sounded like it was dragging something across the floor up there. I kid you not.

I called Clark Exterminators first thing Monday morning. A young man -- who was my new favorite hero -- came within the hour, but alas yet again, he could open the access to the attic space, but he couldn't actually go in and do anything about what might be up there. It seems they have rules, and that, in my opinion, was the stupidest. What he could do was set a mega-mouse trap just inside the attic space, which he could reach while standing on the very top of my 6-foot ladder, without actually being in the space. Well fine. But let me tell you, A: this was no mouse, mega or otherwise! And B: out of 3,100 square feet of living space, the 16 x 20 inch opening in the ceiling that goes into the attic space happens to be right above the chair I sit in at my computer. So now not only was I afraid of whatever had moved in, I was terrified I'd hear a SNAP! while sitting here trying to write.

So this ... whatever it is ... had me on edge all week. I'd hear its nocturnal wanderings after the sun went down, and was jerked awake at 2:00 in the morning Wednesday, while it carried on above my head till after 4:00. Elizabeth Berg, bless her heart, kept me company.

Well, wouldn't you know there hasn't been a peep from the attic, lo, these many months? But in a few weeks Rick goes back to Cuba. I'm willing to bet something will go amiss.

There are things in my "other" attic that are nearly as difficult and troublesome to identify, and when it comes right down to it, who wants to?!? Like Katy said, the attic can be a wild place. But it truly is chock full of material for a writer willing to go there. It's probably true that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, but I pull on the rope that lets down those hidden stairs, climb up, and root around in that dark and creepy place every time I get ready to start a new novel. I've been somewhat surprised at the themes that have emerged in my writing over the past number of years, all issuing from what I've stored up there in the attic. For example, each of my novels -- published and unpublished -- have dealt with extreme loss of one type or another. And most explore that most complex of all relationships: mothers and daughters. I have a very close relationship with my daughters, and I had a close relationship with my mom, but it was definitely difficult at times. I'm sorry to say the problem was mostly with me -- because of things I had a hard time letting go of. I've said more than once that Mom is the first person I want to see when I get to Heaven; I have some apologies to make. A lot of apologies, in fact. I don't mean to make this my confessional; I'm just keepin' it real.

I'm getting ready to start a new novel, rubbing my hands together and eager to begin. I love discovering new characters and delving into their stories. I'm looking right now at the faces I've compiled on my Character sheet for this new work, and I can tell just by looking at them that my themes will hold true. At least this time around, the loss will be less intense, and to that I say, "Whew!" But I reiterate the profound conclusion Katy came to in her post on Monday: "If we want to write stories that mean something to people with attics of their own, we have to climb to that shadowy place in our heads full of strange noises and wild animals. If you're a storyteller, you must go there."

What about you? How willing are you to climb through that trap door, and if you do, what themes emerge for you?

The Sweet Spot

We're keeping a sharp eye out for that person who becomes our 300th follower. If that's you, you'll win our delightful recipe book: Novel Tips on Rice: What to cook when you'd rather be writing. And vice versa. We appreciate all of you who follow Novel Matters and especially those of you who comment on our posts. This would be a dull place without you!



Seth Godin is a guru. He, of course, is the author of a dozen international bestselling non-fiction books, from Tribes to The Dip. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. There are blogs -- dozens of them -- devoted to "memorable quotes by Seth Godin." Who knew? My confession is that until a few weeks ago if given a quiz where I had to link the name of the author with the title of one of his books, unless I'd come up with a very good guess I'd have failed the quiz. I obviously haven't read Seth Godin, though I probably should.

This all came up because a writer I know recently mentioned that one of the key elements of one of Seth's books (I don't even know which) is this: if you don't identify and write to your niche, it may mean that you satisfy no one. That in itself is an intriguing concept, but on that very same day our own Karen Shravemade wrote the following comment to my post, What is True and Right:

"What I'm most interested in ... is the "sweet spot" between literary and
commercial. You know -- books that are beautifully written, but have such a big
premise and/or gripping plot that they hit a note with a broad audience.

I wonder, though, if in trying to find some middle ground between
literary and commercial, I'll end up hitting neither. That I'll write a book
nobody knows what to do with."

The coincidence was too large to ignore. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about boxes, because it seems to me both Seth and Karen are alluding to firm boundaries that we should keep in the forefront as we write. To maintain those boundaries, does that mean we must always create the same type of protagonist? Always write in first person or third, and in the same tense? Must our plot points be comparable? Is there no room for experimentation?

You hear a lot about branding at writers' conferences these days, which is sort of a new term for an old concept. It just means that you should be very identifiable as an author. For example, if I say John Grisham, you think legal suspense. If I say Elizabeth Berg, you think women's fiction that includes subtle humor and an in-depth look at relationships that are vital to women. Jamie Langston Turner has a unique style of writing that includes lots and lots of narrative. Though her novels are short on that all-important "white space," she is one of my favorite authors. We could talk all day about writers who have done an exceptional job of branding themselves. But I'd like to focus on Karen's comment.

As I read the first part, I found myself asking, "Is Karen saying that literary fiction is the "beautifully written" novel, while the commercial one has the plot and appeal that literary fiction doesn't have? Is it that well defined, or is it possible to blend the lines between the two? Can literary fiction have a dynamic plot, or commercial fiction be thought of as beautiful? Does anyone do that, and do it well? With all my heart, I hope the answer is yes.

As I read the second part of Karen's comment, I asked myself, are those of us who are trying to blend the two wasting our time? Are we writing books that, indeed, no one knows what to do with? Funny, but I just pulled a Jodi Picoult novel off my shelf -- Handle with Care -- and this is what a reviewer from Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Picoult is a rare writer who delivers book after book, a winning combination of the literary and the commercial." I could have searched a month for a suitable quote and not found one, but there this was, right at my fingertips, when I wasn't even looking. So the answer is yes, the two can be blended -- and perhaps that in itself defines Jodi Picoult's brand. But as the reviewer said, it's the rare writer who can pull it off.

Now please understand, I'm not comparing myself, or anyone else, to Jodi Picoult. She truly is an exceptional writer. What I am saying is that it's not only possible to find that "middle ground" that Karen talked about, but there's a huge audience for it. Ms. Picoult, Elizabeth Berg, Anne Tyler, Charles Martin and others have bridged the gap, and done so very convincingly. So those of us pursuing literary ficton can take hope in that. But we must hone our skills until we're the best we can be; and we must find our own unique place within the industry. I don't believe in luck; I do believe that God guides us with a steady hand. If we follow what we consider to be the call He's placed on our lives, then we'll fulfill the purposes He has for us. The results are His. Always His. And that's the bottom line for those who call themselves Christians.



What is your opinion of literary fiction, either as a writer or a reader? Who else would you add to the list of authors who have successfully bridged the gulf between literary and commercial fiction, whether in CBA or ABA?

Wading and Plunking

There's almost nothing I'd rather do than fish. No kidding. I love it. For me there's nothing like being out on a lake in a little fishing boat with my husband. I never go without him, because, you see, we have this agreement. He doesn't iron his own shirts, and I don't bait my own hook. It's a wonderful agreement. Except that I've done a lot more ironing than he's done baiting in the past couple of years. But he told me just the other day he's going to Montana in June for business, and that he's taking me with him so that after the business we can spend a couple of days fishing. There's almost nothing I'd rather do than fish in Montana. I can hardly wait.

So Bonnie's post on Monday about "hook" vs. "invite" made me chuckle, especially when I went to the TBR shelf of my bookcase and found that Hooked by Les Edgerton was the very next writer's book I planned to read. It was right there beside Truby's book, The Anatomy of Story, which I stuffed back on the shelf after wading my way through the first two chapters a few months ago, underlining everything in sight, while simultaneously scratching my head. Like Katy, I do plan to read it. Really. I do. And soon.

But back to Hooked. It's a nice little easy-to-read, easy-to-follow book on beginnings, and nothing but. Edgerton writes, "...a story is a movement from stability to instability to a new stability." I like that. It makes sense to me, like simple math. And then he says, "What is different about today's story structure is that the first part of the equation--stability--has been shortened considerably and, in many cases, completely omitted ... Many times that period of stability is only implied." Well, he's the expert, but personally, I'd rather wade into a story than be plunked into it, as though I'd been pushed off the dock way out there in the deep end of the lake. There are genres where implied stability is perfectly suited, but the type of fiction I write and mostly love to read has more of a wade-in feel than a plunked-in feel.

~

Here are some of my favorite examples of wading in:

~

"Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that's what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning." The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.

~

"Outside the airplane window the clouds are thick and rippled, unbroken as acres of land. They are suffused with peach-colored, early morning sun, gilded at the edges. Across the aisle, a man is taking a picture of them. Even the pilot couldn't keep still---'Folks,' he just said, 'we've got quite a sunrise out there. Might want to have a look.' I like it when pilots make such comments. It lets me know they're awake." What We Keep, Elizabeth Berg.

~

"Lying on her daughter's bed, Dottie Puckett heard sounds as if they were magnified a hundred times that day. She heard the usual things you'd expect to hear--an airplane, distant traffic, the air conditioning turning on and off. And she heard other things, too--a high-pitched motorized whine from somewhere nearby, the chatter of a squirrel outside the window, a tree branch brushing against the gutter, the coursing sound of water through a pipe, her own breathing. Sounds told you a lot. Today they told her that people and things were going about their normal business in spite of what had happened here at this house only three weeks ago. Though everybody thought she was mild-mannered and good-natured, Dottie knew that what she felt right now was closer to anger than anything else. Not that she was angry at the planes and cars and water pipes, for goodness' sake, but why is it, she thought, that I have to go on breathing in and out when Bonita is lying in a box a mile down the road?" By the Light of a Thousand Stars, Jamie Langston Turner.

~

"Likely it was only two dreams crisscrossing paths, one snagging on the other in passing, but somehow the face that walked by me this morning, not four feet away, got tangled up with one from my past. The way-back and way-faraway, all quiet and almost forgotten, got yanked up and placed alongside today, where two minutes before I'd have told you I was: in Boston. At the Public Garden. Not a stone's throw from Beacon Hill, where I live and work, and pay as much for my own private parking space as folks back home do for a decent slab ranch and enough acres for the dogs to tree themselves something other than city-soft squirrel ... And I swear time backstitched on itself, and at that very moment, I was barefoot--not with black pumps stowed under a park bench, but the right kind of barefoot. The kind of barefoot that went with the truck bed of a pickup. I was back with the wind standing my ponytail straight up over my head, the Blue Hole just around the next curve. And I was tracing my cheek where a kiss had just landed." Blue Hole Back Home, Joy Jordan Lake.

~

Contrast these with James Scott Bell's thrilling suspense novel, Try Dying: "On a wet Tuesday morning in December, Ernesto Bonilla, twenty-eight, shot his twenty-three-year-old wife, Alejandra, in the backyard of their West Forty-fifth Street home in South Los Angeles. As Alejandra lay bleeding to death, Ernesto proceeded to drive their Ford Explorer to the westbound Century Freeway connector ... Bonilla stepped around the back of the SUV ... placed the barrel of his .38 caliber pistol into his mouth, and fired." Plunked. Most definitely. With the former stability not even implied. And exactly how a fast-paced suspense novel should begin.

~

But back to fishing. I love to drop my line in the water and begin to entice; to wait as the bait lands, then sinks to just the right depth; to tug ever-so-slightly two or three times while the worm works its magic; to let it sink a bit more, then tug again. And then ... to feel the hit, to sink the hook, and reel in. I love it. Here is the writing equivalent to my fishing method from the opening to my WIP. "Grief, it is said, is a sea that ebbs and flows. Comes in waves that roll over the shore, then recede in a dizzying, lose-your-footing-in-the-sand sensation, leaving you unsettled but standing. Well. Whoever said that never felt the tsunami effect, the drowning, sucking, tidal wave of grief. I know, because I haven't come up for air in five days short of a year. A suffocating, black hole of a year, each day collapsing in on itself like sand too long unwatered. Eighty six hundred, forty hours; five hundred eighteen thousand, four hundred minutes; thirty one million, one hundred four thousand seconds of a smothering nightmare I can't wake up from. A long slow terror, like free-falling in the dark with no cord to pull. I don't plan to be here for the anniversary five days from now."

~

I understand completely where Bonnie's coming from when she says, "But 'hook?' If I recall, it ends badly for the fish. I prefer 'invite.' Semantics, right?" Right. She'll be happy to know that, often, for the fish I catch it's not an unhappy ending, because I typically catch and release. Especially in Montana. And that's what I like to do with my readers. Catch and release--but hopefully not to swim completely away. I want them to stay in the pond with me, so the next time I cast in, I might draw them back.

~

And speaking of lines, I laughed and laughed over Dina Sleiman's comment on Katy's post Wednesday. "I got my nose pierced last year, and it's so freeing because no one expects me to be normal anymore." I love it. It would make a great opening line for a novel. And, Dina, for that line I'd like to send you one of my novels. Just email me with your address and tell me which one you'd prefer.
~

Everyone else, leave a comment telling me what you think the "anniversary" of my novel deals with and your name will go into a drawing for a copy of Lying on Sunday or Every Good & Perfect Gift, winner's choice. Be specific with your guess. And creative.

Writing Books We Have Loved - A Roundtable Discussion

Excuse me. Hello? I'm sorry for elbowing my way in here. I have a copy of Bird by Bird for Heidi, but I still need your address. Please click on "contacts" to send your snail mail address, and I'll mail the book right out. We start our discussion next Monday. You may now proceed.



Last week Patti gave Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" away to five lucky readers, and I'm delighted for each of them. I too read the book several years before I published my first novel, and yes, it comforted and encouraged me, yes, I clutched it to my heart, and no, I won't loan it to you. Bless Anne. Bless Patti.

After I read her

post, I went to my bookshelf to find other books I won't loan to you, writing books that stirred me up to be not only a writer, but a certain, stubbornly individual kind of writer.

As I scanned the books, I caught sight of the smallest one, nestled in like a first beloved toy crowded to the back of the shelf.

The book was "Zen and the Art of Writing," by Ray Bradbury. It's not the small paperback you can buy at the store - and I suggest you do. It's the Chapra Chapbook Series edition published in 1973 that my professor made me buy in my freshman year of college. It consists of the title essay plus one more, The Joy of Writing. The price on the back reads, $2.50. I notice now, you can buy one on eBay for $25.00. I'm not selling.

Here's a sample, to remind you that good writing is not about money or reputation. It's about juici

ng out what you and you alone can give the reader:

"Notoriety and a fat bank balance must come after everything else is finished and done. That means that they cannot even be considered while you are at the typewriter. The man who considers them, lies one of two ways, to please a tiny audience that can only beat an idea insensible and then to death, or a large audience that wouldn't know an idea if it came up and bit them."

Yet another writing book to add to my list. Thanks, Katy!

I own an embarrassing number of writing books, but I only return to a few. One is by one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Berg--Escaping Into the Open: The Art of Writing True. I enjoy Ms. Berg's writing, because her narrators are so stinking honest. Laughingly so. Gut-wrenchingly so. And that's the kind of writer I want to be, honest. That honest is born of passion and courage.

She says it like this:

Passion is everywhere: in love, in religion and politics, in cooking and gardening, in learning, in art, in d

evotion to one's family, in solitude and the search for self. But if I had to come up with one word to describe what writing passionately is all about, the work would be "risk." Because that's what emotionally intense communication requires: You must be willing (and courageous enough) to show others the most private parts of yourself, holding back nothing. But first you must be willing to show those parts to yourself, to acknowledge in a conscious way their presence in you.

Confession time: Most writing books make me nervous. They spend a lot of time on helping new writers find ideas and that's not my problem: Ideas stalk me and mug me in the middle of other things I should be doing.

For me, a writing book has to be practical. Nuts and bolts. And the book that helped me the most in that regard is an actual workbook with tear-out pages where I learned, by filling in those pages, how to pace the action of those ideas.

The book is Evan Marshall's The Marshall Plan Workbook: Writing Your Novel from Start to Finish. I'm sorry to say it is out of print but even the copies you can get second-hand (be sure and get a new one-- you need those pages!) makes it worth the money. Here's my favorite quote from Marshall:

". . .In general, the key is to keep characters' emotions at the forefront; write about issues, whether large or small, that people care about; tell your story in an interesting manner; pay attention to your story's pacing; and wind up your novel on a satisfying note. You will be writing the kind of novel you most like to read, but you will also be writing to please your readers."

And the workbook showed me how to do that.

I have 5 writing books that, like Katy, I wouldn't loan out. They're the ones I go to time and again and never fail to find what I need. But since our assignment is to choose one and only one, I went with the book that has a boatload of multi-colored tabs stuck to page after page. That book is Write Away by Elizabeth George. The jacket boasts that "bestselling author Elizabeth George offers would-be writers exactly what they need to know about how to construct a novel." And the book certainly delivers. As a bonus, each chapter begins with an entry by Ms. George from Journal of a Novel. The entry that begins the chapter titled "The Value of Bum Glue" reads:

~

"This is the moment when faith is called for. Faith in the creative spirit within me, which is part of what I've been given by God; faith in the process; faith in my intelligence and my imagination. If I've managed to imagine these characters and this situation into being, doesn't it follow that I should also be able to imagine my way through to the end of the book? It seems so. Thus . . . I suit up and show up. I sit down at the computer and I do the work, moving it forward a sentence at a time, which is ultimately the only way there is to write a book."

I'm torn between two lovers (feeling like a fool. . . loving both of you is breaking all the rules) - at least when it comes to waxing eloquent about writing books. I've read several (skimmed most), but only two have rocked my writing world. When I started writing I lacked no hutzpah. But I didn't know how to wield it. Enter Arthur Plotnik's risque Spunk & Bite: A writer's guide to punchier, more engaging language and style. This is the modern response to Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Art gives practical, gutsy advice and examples of how to write out in style - the kind that gets noticed, even published. Here's a sample from his introduction: "With so many gifted authors already sniffing their way to publication, with so man diversions grabbing mass attention, no writer can afford a writing-as-usual attitude. Language or style that is less engaging, less stimulating than the competition is, frankly, dead on arrival. Whether you strive as a journalist, novelist, poet, copywriter, corporate communicator, student -- or even as a yearning presence on Match.com -- something distinctive, some umami-like deliciousness has to emanate from your words or off they go to oblivion."

After that pep talk, Art's book emboldens the writer to unthink, bend some rules, and embrace her inner hutzpah. (A side note: since I read his book several years ago, he and I have struck up a writing friendship of sorts. He even quotes me twice in his upcoming book. Yep. Little ol' me!)

My second book o' choice is the meaty goodness of John Truby's The Anatomy of Story. I applied myself to this book as I have to university courses. It was painful, but worth every jabbing chest pain. It's not a book to encourage yourself with, it's a textbook and includes the looming impression that there will be an exam at the end. And, of course, there is. It's called your novel.

John states the mission of the book in three succinct points (but don't let that fool you).

• "Show that a great story is organic -- not a machine but a living body that develops.

• Treat storytelling as an exacting craft with precise techniques that will help you be successful, regardless of the medium or genre you choose.
  
  
• Work through a writing process that is also organic, meaning that we will develop characters and plot that grow naturally our of your original story idea."

Both these books have moved me as a writer. They made me plop at the authors' feet and say, "Guru me , baby!"

Well, Katy stole my thunder. My all-time favorite how-to book is Ray Bradbury's "Zen" so I chose a little blue book by Les Edgerton titled Hooked. In particular, his chapter on story-worthy problems vs. surface problems gets to the heart of what hooks a reader:

A story-worthy problem always relates more to the psychology of the protagonist and has to be big enough, dramatic enough, to change the protagonist's world and force him on a journey of change. Surface problems, on the other hand, are more like bad situations that reflect the actual story-worthy problem.

What transforms a story is the inner psychological problem of the protagonist being laid bare on the page.

The best sources for significant story problems reside within yourself in the form of your personal demons.

Seriously good stuff. The book is easy to read with loads of examples and ends with insights, titled, "Agents and Editors Speak Out on Beginnings." Now, get thee to the bookstore.

At Home in Story World

I've been on an Elizabeth Berg binge of late, reading one Berg novel after the other, right down the line, according to year of publication. Almost every time I check one out at the library, no matter which library I use, the clerk helping me makes a comment about Elizabeth's books, how much they enjoy her writing, how popular she is, etc. And I always agree. I love her writing. I can step into most any of her story worlds and feel right at home. Is this a result of Elizabeth "writing what she knows," as Marybeth discussed on Monday? For example, does Ms. Berg know what it's like to have a mother walk out on her (What We Keep)? ... have a husband who dies after depleting their life savings (Home Safe)? ... run a boarding house after a costly divorce (Open House)?

~

If we had an opportunity to sit down for a cup of tea with Elizabeth -- isn't she lovely? and wouldn't it be nice to be so familiar with her? -- and ask her about the stories she's written, she probably would say she doesn't know the specifics of each scenario, but what she does know is the relationships contained within the stories she writes. She knows what it is to be a wife, a mother, a friend. And after all, it's the relationships that I love about her writing. And it's relationships I love to write about. Like mothers and daughters, and daughters and mothers. There's no end to the story possibilities there!

~

How much, exactly, do you have to know about a topic to create a story world your readers would want to inhabit all the way to the last page? Is it enough, as in Marybeth's case, to just know about the mailbox, and use it as the central "What if ..." of a story? I say, "Absolutely!" That's where all my stories (published and unpublished) begin. "What if ..."

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... a young boy makes a decision that leads to his sister's death, then struggles to deal with his guilt (Hub of a Daisy)?

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... a woman's world is forever altered when she loses a lifelong friend to catastrophic illness (Every Good & Perfect Gift)?

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... a woman's world is rocked and rocked again with news of her husband's death, then of his infidelity (Lying on Sunday)?

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... a woman experiences a crisis of faith when the unthinkable happens (Unraveled)?

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I don't know what it is to cause someone's death, but I do know how it feels to lose a sibling. And I do know how it feels to carry guilt for decisions I've made.

~

I don't know what it is to experience infertility, but I do know what it is to lose a close friend to Early Onset Alzheimer's. I've lost two in fact to EOA.

~

I don't know what it's like to be a widow, but I do know what it is to have a comfortable life interrupted by devastating news.

~

I've never had a crisis of faith, but I've experienced things that have made me ask the hard questions of God.

~

So maybe it's a blend of what we know, taking us into what we don't know, because of who we know. Convoluted? Perhaps. But a lot goes into the writing of a novel. We can't know everything about everything. That's where research comes in (and the Internet has put a world of facts at our fingertips -- so much easier than in the old days), but we're not writing term papers, so we have to be expert weavers, seamlessly inserting our research as threads that blend with the whole. And beyond that, we have to give our imagination permission to run free.

~

When you open a novel, what are your expectations when you read the first page? Do you read as an interested observer, or as a participant in the story? Whose voice do you hear word by word? Do you read a novel to learn something, or to experience something? Or both? What are some story worlds you've found easy to inhabit, and why?

Words that Rankle

Our spring Audience-with-an-Agent Contest is underway. If you'd like a chance to have your manuscript read by agent Janet Grant of Books & Such Literary Agency go to our Promotions page and follow the guidelines.

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Every 10 days or so I spend about 3 hours ironing the clothes my husband and I wear. A lot of work, yes. Outdated, I know. But we wear cotton. Period.

~

This photo is of me from 1st grade. It's one of my favorite pictures of myself as a child ... with one exception. The thick turtleneck sweater beneath the corduroy jumper is part wool (we won't even talk about the hair). I wore my brand new outfit that day, for that photo, and refused to ever wear it again. I love my mother, but wool? Why would she DO that?

~

I can watch an old farmer walk into a coffee shop wearing a wool Pendleton, without even a T-shirt underneath, and for me it's like passing the scene of an accident -- I don't want to look, don't want to imagine how awful that shirt must feel against his skin, but I can't help myself! And a wool dress on a woman? I can never see that without taking time to ruminate on self-flagellation. It stops my thought processes. Literally. I watch old military movies with my husband and do you think I'm drawn in by the drama? No. I'm thinking, "The uniforms are wool. How did they stand that?" I'd have gone AWOL.

~

What on earth does this have to do with writing, you ask? Okay, you saw my title so you probably didn't ask. But here's the thing. I've been known to stop reading a book because of the "W" word. I can feel it coming in a sentence, know the word is about to jump out and assault my sensibilities, and I can barely stand it. Extreme? Obsessive? Oh, yeah. "Hello, I'm Sharon and I'm a wool-hater."

~

Maybe I'm this way because I have very sensitive skin, but the fact is that the words wool, cashmere, mohair, have a physical affect on my psyche. They create in me the most uncomfortable feelings, they disturb, they rankle.

~

So here's my point. Words have the ability to move us. We're writers, we know that, and in fiction we need to stir all kinds of emotions. We need to inspire, appal, amaze, even rankle. But we sometimes forget the importance of one perfect word or phrase to achieve that. To be good writers we have to mine the dimensional words, the ones that emerge from the page and engage the senses. It's easy to settle for words that are comfortable and within reach, like well-worn slippers. But well-worn doesn't cut it if we want our fiction to be noticed. Here's an example from Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg. The passage is in the form of a letter from a woman to her husband:

I don't regret the fact that I was the one to stop working to raise Ruthie. When we brought her home from the hospital I hovered over you every time you even held her. I knew you were her father and half responsible for her in every way, but I have to tell you, Martin, as far as I was concerned, she was really all mine. I made her baby food, I picked out her toys and her clothes, I took her to school every first day, I pulled her shades down for her naps, I took her to the doctor, I braided her hair and buckled her shoes and mounted her artwork on the refrigerator. And I wanted to. I wanted to. Once she got into the teen years, you and she seemed to get closer and that was fine with me, too. I had had my hands to her when she was still wet, was how I saw it. Now I could step back -- keep watching, but step back. And then back further.

The line in red is a beautiful, breathtaking example of words that burst from the page. Ms. Berg could simply have written, "I know I'd left my mark on her." That would have made the point. But to have her character, Nan, write, "I had had my hands to her when she was still wet," depicts the type of effect Nan wanted to achieve, and conjures a far deeper stirring of the emotions in the heart of the reader than a stagnant phrase ever could.

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In Blue Hole Back Home, by Joy Jordan Lake, we find this fabulous passage where two girls, different in every way, are getting acquainted:

She looked startled, like our little exchange had been suddenly tossed, then retrieved -- and no reason for either. But she took -- after a second -- the rope-end of talk I held out.

The rope-end of talk... What an image those words create. I don't think there's anything that inspires good writing as effectively as good writing. When the bar is raised, it benefits writer, reader, publisher, everyone. We've been talking about books that are keepers the past few days on NM, and many of the books cited are ABA books. I want to see that expand to include more and more CBA books. If we choose our words expertly, avoid the cliche, and dare to strive for phrases that do more than get the point across, we've taken one giant step in the right direction.

~

So now that you know more about my quirks, what words rankle you? And Happy 34th Birthday to my darling daughter, Deanne!

Pretend You're a Man--It's Good for You!

I bounced, galloped, pedaled, paddled, and scampered my way through grade school. Sitting for long periods of time still makes me itch.

I itch a lot.

I set the timer for 30 minutes during my writing day. The trill releases me to move about for five minutes to keep my blood from turning to sludge. This is the only way I can be a writer.

Two years ago, a double-whammy injury made me sedentary for most of a year. As you’ve probably already guessed, the limitations nearly drove me insane. And since I am of a “certain” age, my body isn’t bouncing back.

I’m walking daily—through wind and sleet and dark of night—and contorting myself through stretches and Pilates.

And still the muscles growl and bite.

My physical therapist tells me to stick with it.

Aargh!

My brain needs a regular workout, too. I keep a book of crossword puzzles handy, read delicious novels, and journal daily with a feverish hand. A writer needs more, something to spark the creative genius within. Some call them writing exercises. Not me. I do plenty of exercises, thank you very much. I call these activities games.

Writing games prod us to look at something with fresh eyes, to be male though female, to remember the summer of ’88 or ’62 or 2079. Perhaps a writing game will give you that rare opportunity to have a sit-down with your cat. To meet your great-great grandmother at her favorite Disney World ride. To describe two very different feet.

Let’s play!

Here are five, quick “games” from Elizabeth Berg’s book, The Art of Writing True. Choose one or all. Whatever you do, have fun! To make this more interesting. If you're a woman, play the game as a man. If you're a man, yep, you've got your pink thinking cap on today.

Use these three words in a sentence: dream, heart, gold.

He’s so weird! He likes to eat ___________ and __________ together!

Write the first line for a love story.

Write the last line for a tragedy.

An odd smell, a mix of __________ and __________

Since I'm asking so much of you today, for all who play I'll put your name in a hat and pull out a winner. The prize is one of my novels. Your choice! Ready, set...go!