Morning-After Reading Regrets

A while back we had a fabulous guest author here, crime fiction writer Hallie Ephron. Like we NovelMatters ladies, she blogs with some fellow authors at their site, Jungle Red Writers. 

Recently they asked their readers which movies they had watched that they wished they hadn’t. Their readers were enthusiastic in their stories about everything from being ambushed by gross-out films, to those which were an unremarkable waste of time except for one image or one line that lingered as persistently as garlic on a stranger’s breath in the morning.

Books are that way, too. Sometimes we stop reading something—or keep reading something and are filled with regret later. (I was such an ignorant prude that I threw away my copy of The Good Earth when I was 13 years old because it actually suggested that Chinese people had sex with one another. Never did finish that one. But I do remember something about them eating mud during a famine.)

So – X-rated books aside, which books are so remarkable in your memory that you wish you’d never read them? Do tell. Give titles. Describe details—unless they involve sex and mud and anything else that might gross me out. 

Reading in the Land of Ought-to-Be

We’ve opened a huge topic here at Novel Matters this week, starting with Marybeth’s innocent question: Which books are on your “Keepers” list? These are the books you devoured and talked about incessantly to the annoyance of your family. Most titles offered by our readers came from the American Booksellers Association (ABA) or mainstream market, not the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) or inspirational market.

This led to Latayne’s question: Why aren’t CBA books found on “Keepers” lists more often? She bravely listed her reasons. Marybeth's and Latayne’s insights are thought-provoking. Consider going back to read both of these finely crafted blog posts.

Allow me to stir the pot a bit more by asking: Why do Christians who buy inspirational fiction prefer more formulaic storylines in an America of long ago?

I think there is a strong spiritual element to this question. Warning: I’m not a theologian. (Haven’t I said that here before?) I’m just trying to understand our market. Try this out and feel free to set me straight:

As Christians, we all live in a place of great tension. The Kingdom has come in the person of Jesus Christ. Eternity has started for us. We’re members of His family. We’re Heaven-bound and God-connected. We worship a living God, eternal and holy. We’re loved, saved, grace-doused. Hallelujah!

And yet . . .

We aren’t in Heaven yet.

Friends get cancer. Our children rebel. Husbands leave. Prayers aren’t answered the way we hope and certainly not as soon as we would like. Smut is everywhere. We’re seeing our values dissolve before our eyes. We can’t trust the schools, and some have been deeply wounded by the church (little c).

We are between what is and what will be. We live, for now, in the Land of Ought-to-Be. We have high expectations of living out our faith, but this proves challenging in its application. We desire praises and not profanities to flow from our lips; we’re desperate to be healed every time we pray, to love one another sacrificially, and to be Christ-like in the way we live, work, and play. But because we’re in the Land of Ought-to-Be, we fall far short of these expectations.

Some Christians have a lower tolerance for the dissonance of the Land of Ought-to-Be than others. Those on one end of the continuum crave a literary vacation spot where the world is on their side. They also need their faith and life-style affirmed.

On the other end of the continuum, readers are more comfortable with open-ended questions, and a view of the world that is as menacing—or more menacing—as true life.

Now that I have this working model of why some Christian readers like certain kinds of fiction, what am I to do?

Simple.

I write the stories God dangles before me like a jewel in the sun, pursue excellence in form and content of my prose, and pray my audience finds me. And BTW, I enjoy a literary vacation, but the story must be well-written.

Did I even come close to understanding this phenomena? What’s your take?

Life in the Third Person

It would be accurate to say that I spent most of my childhood in the third person.

Growing up in a household where there was mental illness, violence and uncertainty led, not surprisingly, to fear and distrust. I began to fear my surroundings (and with good cause) but often did not directly interact with them because much of the mistrust, I think, was of my own view of reality.

To escape, I hid under the weeping willow tree and read books. From the time we moved to Albuquerque when I was 10, I lived only blocks from a small branch library. I began by reading the “colored” fairy tale books –The Rose Book of Fairy Tales, The Red Book of Fairy Tales, etc., all the Wizard of Oz books, all the Nancy Drew books, many of the classics – and then devoured every single book, for a child or adult, about American Indians and Egyptology.

To my recollection, every book I read (except Black Beauty and that narrator was a horse, of course) was written in the third person, so I began to think in the third person. Though I kept a sketchy diary (a couple of lines a day, mainly speculating on family situations or that unknown territory of teenage boys), my real writing output was poems and stories.

In many cases, I would view situations around me with some degree of literary dispassion, as the recorder of a scene. It provided safe distance.

Perhaps that’s why I have been so reluctant to focus on personal experience in my own non-fiction writing. Writing my first published novel, Latter-day Cipher, was challenging but at least it was in the familiar native tongue of third person.

But it’s real problem for me in my present WIP, which is a first-person narrative.

Now, since it’s fiction, every reader will pick it up knowing it’s me supposing the first-person view of someone else. And that person is a real historical figure whose unknown history I am, well, supposing. I have to fight the sense that I am being presumptuous or even fraudulent.

And then there are the mechanics of recording someone else’s words. Anne Rice, in Interview with the Vampire, used the device of interview. Others have used the device of a long-lost last manuscript written by the first-person narrator.

Man, this is hard.

Does anyone else struggle with any such issues regarding writing in the first person?

Tell me more

I loved Latayne's post on Monday, love talking about writers and the craft of writing. Similes and metaphors, if fresh and unique, can enhance fiction like nothing else. Sol Stein, in Stein on Writing--a book every writer should read and reread--calls them "the wonders of writing...when carried off, especially when a simile is original and a metaphor sings, there is no greater glory in the practice of words." Wow. Quite a boast. And I tend to agree. I know good writing shouldn't draw attention to itself, but I can't help stopping at every great simile I come across, taking a moment to savor it, to praise the author for digging deep.

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Whether we're writers, readers or both, we want the words on the page to sparkle, to sing, to draw us in like a temptress and have their way with us. According to Stein, detail is another way to achieve that. But it's not just "detail that distinguishes good writing, it is detail that individualizes." It's detail that tells us more without employing tired adjectives to get the job done. Stein calls this particularity. Here are some examples from the skilled women I share this blog with. I've italicized key phrases that smack oh-so-nicely of particularity.

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"...Kirsten Young lay on her back, a serene Ophelia in her dusky pond of blood" (Latter-Day Cipher, by Latayne C. Scott). Pool of blood would have gotten the point across in a tired way most readers would have skimmed right over. But dusky pond of blood, well, that sings. You don't skim over a phrase like that. You read it again, and maybe again.

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"Five women as gnarled as driftwood shuffled into the chapel...they smelled of mentholated lozenges and joint ointment" (The Queen of Sleepy Eye, by Patti Hill). What a visual we're given by Patti's particularity to detail. She accomplished more in that first lovely phrase than ten tired adjectives could have.

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Here's a description of one of Katy Popa's memorable characters from To Dance in the Desert: "'...there she was with her long gray hair fanned out on the pillow like the Lady of Shalott. And her hands folded on her chest--with a lily! And her face all sunk down like a badly made bed...' Dara cupped a hand over her mouth to contain the revulsion. She saw too clearly the flesh-draped skull sunk into the pillow, the jaw hung open...Dara peeked over her shoulder and there at the door was the bombshell (the very woman we've been reading about), in--for heaven's sake!--white stiletto heels." Masterful particularity!

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"I grin back and tug on a piece of tape, careful not to tear the brilliant red paper...I laugh and pull off the wrapper. A white box, the kind you use to wrap the sweater you bought Grandma for Christmas. I throw him a toothy grin that I hope covers my disappointment. I don't want a grandma sweater" (Talking to the Dead, by Bonnie Grove). The use of grandma as an adjective to define the sweater tells us so much more about Kate's disappointing expectation than the word sweater alone ever could. Of course, it wasn't a grandma sweater in the box--not even close! But you'll have to read the book to find out what he gave her.

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And this from a courtroom scene in Debbie Fuller Thomas's Christy-nominated Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon. "Dad sat beside me doodling a perfect likeness of Andie on the manila folder stuffed with evidence that argued our right to disrupt her life." That one phrase tells us more dynamically what a whole page of text couldn't, and in a way that packs an emotional punch. But notice the contrast of doodling (a light and whimsical activity) on such a document. That too is a great example of particularity.

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Share some of your favorite passages of particularity for a chance to win this month's giveaway novels: Blue Hole Back Home, by Joy Jordan Lake, and Safe at Home, by Richard Doster. And, if you haven't yet read the novels available from the authors here at Novel Matters, I hope this whets your appetite. Watch throughout the summer for opportunities to win our books.

Similes are like Metaphors...

I've been thinking a lot lately about metaphors and similes. (That's what authors do when they're supposed to be paying close attention to what others are saying to them, and what earns us the reputation of not listening. We do listen, but sometimes not to the voices outside our heads.)

You may remember from your high school English classes that both similes and metaphors compare two concepts. A simile usually employs a word such as "like" or "as" (as in, "Her crochet hook dipped like a frantic, starving duck into the tangled lake of thread in her lap"); whereas a metaphor makes the comparison with the "like" or "as" not stated, but implied.

Apparently these literary devices are something God really likes, the way His mind works. His Holy Spirit inspired the writers of the Bible to use them often. Almost all the parables Jesus told were similes: The kingdom of God is like yeast, for instance.

But similes are more difficult for me. God is love. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Maybe the challenge of these literary devices is why they delight us so. Recently I read (actually listened to the audio of) a book called I Was Amelia Earhart by Jane Mendelsohn. Since most people know of Amelia Earhart and her mysterious and unsolved last flight, many expectations come along with her book. Is it an autobiography? If so, from what point of her life? Why the "was"?

So imagine the drama, the anticipation, when the first sentence of the book is, "The sky is flesh."

That compelling, jarring metaphor sets the tone for the rest of this well-written and provocative book.

How about you? What is the most memorable metaphor or simile you have read recently?

We Want Your Opinions

This is bonus giveaway month at NovelMatters! First there’s the extraordinary opportunity to have your own novel in the hands of a top literary agent – that’s the point of our fantabulous big contest. Though it will run for several months, your best chance is to submit early so that you will get a thorough, non-deadline-bleary-eyed look from the six of us who will pre-qualify the finalists. Click here for the rules.

In addition, to celebrate with you wonderful readers the release of my first novel, Latter-day Cipher, I would like to offer five of you (who don’t already have it) a copy of my book. Plus I’ll send those winners some “Fiction Samplers” from Moody Publishers for your friends, as well. The samplers contain the first chapter of my book and also the first chapter of Debbie Fuller Thomas’s Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon.

Here’s what I ask you to do:

1) Send me an email at consult at parkeastinc.com. (You know the drill about where the @ sign goes.) Put “NovelMatters Cipher Contest” in the subject line.
2) Copy five friends who are not NovelMatters readers on that email.
3) In the email, tell me what you think of my book trailer. The first five people who do this will receive an autographed copy of the book.

Now, one reason that I want you to look at the book trailer – and have your friends look at it – is that I’ve taken some substantial risks with it. It’s not your usual Christian-book trailer. I told a friend that the book – and the trailer --are probably PG-13. It’s well-produced but admittedly jarring.

Katy Popa wrote a very insightful post on Monday about ethics in writing. Specifically she referred to the dilemma faced by Christian writers in depicting the way that their characters come to faith.

But there are other ethical decisions to be made as well. One of them is the decision about how much – and how graphically – to depict violence. Of course, Christian publishers have parameters they enforce. Yet many of us want to acknowledge some of the gritty issues that our readers face, from the perspective of a Christian worldview – when contemplating those disturbing issues.

What is your “compass” in determining how far to go in reading or writing Christian fiction depicting disturbing issues?

Wish You Were Here

We're sitting here in Sharon's office, Bonnie, Debbie, Katy, and Sharon, in anticipation of a great weekend in the California redwoods where we'll meet up with Patti and Latayne. This will be the first time all six of us have met out of cyberspace, and the first time Bonnie and Latayne have been to the Mount Hermon Writers conference. If the six of us have as much fun as the four of us already are, we're in for a fun-filled five days!


Some of the things we are looking forward to: meeting new friends, connecting with old ones, face time with our agents, the gorgeous scenery, the workshops, good advice, catching up on other writers' journeys, seeing writers get new contracts, discovering new things about the industry, hearing what editors are looking for, sharpening our marketing skills, going to the book signing on Monday night, getting ice cream at the soda fountain, enjoying lattes in the Fireside Room, staying up late, late and laughing together, seeing our heroes, and James Scott Bell doing the "Hairy Man Song," and most of all, being in the same room with like-minded people who love to let their artistic light shine.

We hope to get acquainted with some of our readers from Novel Matters who are attending this weekend. Please come up and introduce yourselves.

Every Novel Matters reader who gives us a card will be entered into the April giveaway drawing, which is Latayne's brand new release, Latter Day Cipher. Please write on the back that you follow Novel Matters.

Be sure to stop by the blog on April 15th for a Speak-With-the-Author chat with Latayne celebrating the release of her new novel.