When I first started this blog, I wrote a lot about the sordid guts of getting rejections. I didn't do it to be morose, exactly. I wanted to accurately reflect both what one encounters and what one thinks while trying to publish stories. There is something reassuring to knowing that you aren't the only one getting tons of no answers, wondering if you were close, wondering why the stories that did get picked are better than yours, wondering if you will ever get anywhere with it and if it all makes any sense.
About a decade a go, another writer who was going through the same issues started a blog called Literary Rejections on Display. It had quite a following for a while. I'm not sure if its popularity ebbed because nowadays, people seem to prefer to watch people on YouTube talk into a camera rather than read a blog, or because she actually finally did break through and get a few books published. When I started my own tour of rejections, though, it was a great help to me to go back through her litany of rejections.
It was especially helpful that she posted a lot of the actual rejections she got. Commenters chipped in, too, which meant you got to start to form a sense of whether the rejection letter you got really was encouraging or if that's just what they send to all the writers.
The options when it's a no
Most journals just send a pretty unambiguous no, something like "Thanks for sending to ___, but unfortunately, this story isn't for us right now. Best of luck placing it elsewhere."
Sometimes, though, you'll get a note that says something like, "Although we are not publishing this story, we admired your writing, and would like to see more of it." There are two options here: either it's sincere, or it's letting you down easy. Why let you down easy? I guess to get you to keep submitting. This is especially possible if it's a journal that charges enough from its reading fees to make money off of them.
But for most journals that are either free to submit to or only charge a few dollars, why would they lie? I assume this is a second kind of form rejection letter. The journal probably has three choices. Door number one is to accept. Door number two is to reject. Door number three is for the good-but-not-good-enough, who get a consolation prize of the more encouraging rejection letter.
I assume that when a journal that isn't charging a lot for submissions tells you they want to see more of your work, they mean it. Nobody wants to read through crap. If they see something that's almost there, they'd rather get more of that in the future. I assume they only want to encourage writing of the kind they'd like to see again. But it's so hard to be sure.
A lot of writers suggest that you just look at whether it's a yes or a no and forget the rest. There is nothing to be gained by considering how long it took to get a decision or what they said after the no. But with some journals in particular, the kinds where to get in would really be a big breakthrough, I can't help it.
Which brings me to the past two weeks
I've had either one, two, or three of these kinds of rejections in the past two weeks, depending on how you count them.
#1: Although this piece isn't going to be a go for ____, we like your
writing and would welcome the chance to see more from you.
#2: While we enjoyed 'Story X,' we didn't quite feel the ending
wrapped up in a satisfying way. We appreciate your interest in NR, and
hope you keep us in mind for future submissions--we'd love to see more.
#3: Unfortunately this particular
piece was not a right fit for ____, but we were very impressed by
your writing. We hope that you will feel encouraged by this short note
and send us something else.
I could take any of those to be the kind of response you'd get if the editors thought they'd just seen a story worth at least a moment's thought. #1 might just be what they send everyone, since it's not terribly effusive, but again, why would they encourage more stories they will just reject? #2 suggests that they at least read to the end, which is actually a very good sign. #3 is the real one I wonder about. #3 was a journal that would have been a very big deal to get in. But they also tend to be a bit aggressive with offering extras, like writing seminars. So maybe my hope is important to them. It's very hard to know. I just know that I sent out a lot of work to some very hard-to-crack journals out there, and I'm likely to keep getting more rejections in the next few weeks, which means I'm likely to keep trying to read tea leaves to know if there's more to the no than just a no.
I can't imagine I'm the only one like this, which is why I'm sharing it. If you are reading this and thinking that you can't stop wondering what your "no" means, that means you're like everyone else.
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Monday, October 9, 2017
Gallimaufry of observations
Nothing big enough for a full post here, but a few half-thoughts.
1. Amazon apparently enforces its terms of service for comments on books
I had never really thought Amazon had tough rules for its comments. Based on past history like the three-wolf shirt comments thread, I kind of thought the comments could be a place to throw some absurdist commentary. I left a comment on my own book that gave it five stars, but also said the book was terrible. I was kind of proud of it. After over two months, Amazon I guess noticed that it was me, and removed it. They also did not allow a post from my mother, although I'm not sure how they knew it was her. It's not really a big deal to me. It's apparent that barring something unforeseen, this isn't going to become a huge seller, and a few comments one way or the other aren't going to change that. But it does seem like an unlikely to be really followed policy. The FAQ tells us that Amazon doesn't "allow individuals who share a household with the author or close friends to write Customer Reviews for that author’s book." I'd guess that the vast majority of people who actually write reviews on Amazon of smaller press books have some kind of relationship with the author.
2. I had a reading the other day, and I had a wonderful time
The publishing company, Washington Writers' Publishing House, is just fantastic. It's made up entirely of past winners, and many of them came out, got a book, heard me read, asked questions, listened to me talk about writing the book, and generally made it a great day. A few friends actually gave up football just to come hear me read a story they've already been hounded into buying. Made me feel like a real author. I could do that every day.
It was also kind of encouraging to be at a book store that looks like it's going to stay open for a while. I'm thinking I'm going to start buying my books from here, if I can. They support the local writing scene and they provide some sort of alternative to Amazon, so if it's a few dollars more, it's worth it.
3. It's fall, so that means the rejections are coming in
I shot for the moon with nearly all my submissions this fall. I feel like after the book, I'm writing better work, but I also feel like I need to move forward in terms of the level of respect of the journals I'm appearing in. That means the job of getting published--which is hard enough in any journal--got a lot tougher. I've already had seven rejection of the work I turned in last month. Two seemed encouraging, which I guess ought to make me feel good.
I have to say, a lot of the fancy journals are really on point with handling submissions. They are making decisions quickly, much quicker than my journal is usually able to do. I think that's because many of them are either tied to schools or can otherwise command large numbers ofslaves intern readers interested in getting in on the ground floor of publishing.
4. I paid $45 to have an agent proof read my query letter for my novel.
I'm not sure yet if the final product is great, but I can't complain about the level of effort from the agent. For $45, I got three rounds of edits, which were not in any way half-assed. I'll start sending out more query letters next week after the last round of edits is done, and I'll report back on whether the next 25 letters got any better response than the first 25.
1. Amazon apparently enforces its terms of service for comments on books
I had never really thought Amazon had tough rules for its comments. Based on past history like the three-wolf shirt comments thread, I kind of thought the comments could be a place to throw some absurdist commentary. I left a comment on my own book that gave it five stars, but also said the book was terrible. I was kind of proud of it. After over two months, Amazon I guess noticed that it was me, and removed it. They also did not allow a post from my mother, although I'm not sure how they knew it was her. It's not really a big deal to me. It's apparent that barring something unforeseen, this isn't going to become a huge seller, and a few comments one way or the other aren't going to change that. But it does seem like an unlikely to be really followed policy. The FAQ tells us that Amazon doesn't "allow individuals who share a household with the author or close friends to write Customer Reviews for that author’s book." I'd guess that the vast majority of people who actually write reviews on Amazon of smaller press books have some kind of relationship with the author.
2. I had a reading the other day, and I had a wonderful time
The publishing company, Washington Writers' Publishing House, is just fantastic. It's made up entirely of past winners, and many of them came out, got a book, heard me read, asked questions, listened to me talk about writing the book, and generally made it a great day. A few friends actually gave up football just to come hear me read a story they've already been hounded into buying. Made me feel like a real author. I could do that every day.
 | ||
| I rock a pencil and pen in my shirt pocket nearly all the time. It's kind of my thing. |
It was also kind of encouraging to be at a book store that looks like it's going to stay open for a while. I'm thinking I'm going to start buying my books from here, if I can. They support the local writing scene and they provide some sort of alternative to Amazon, so if it's a few dollars more, it's worth it.
3. It's fall, so that means the rejections are coming in
I shot for the moon with nearly all my submissions this fall. I feel like after the book, I'm writing better work, but I also feel like I need to move forward in terms of the level of respect of the journals I'm appearing in. That means the job of getting published--which is hard enough in any journal--got a lot tougher. I've already had seven rejection of the work I turned in last month. Two seemed encouraging, which I guess ought to make me feel good.
I have to say, a lot of the fancy journals are really on point with handling submissions. They are making decisions quickly, much quicker than my journal is usually able to do. I think that's because many of them are either tied to schools or can otherwise command large numbers of
4. I paid $45 to have an agent proof read my query letter for my novel.
I'm not sure yet if the final product is great, but I can't complain about the level of effort from the agent. For $45, I got three rounds of edits, which were not in any way half-assed. I'll start sending out more query letters next week after the last round of edits is done, and I'll report back on whether the next 25 letters got any better response than the first 25.
Friday, October 6, 2017
Washington Independent Review of Books reviews my collection of short stories
Let my friend Chris know that I actually did manage to do one thing right as a self-promoter of my book: I got a review from Washington Independent Review of Books.
I didn't know for sure that they were going to review it. (In fact, it's been up for three days and I just now saw it.) I sent them two books, because the folks at my publisher, Washington Writers' Publishing House, suggested it. A woman on the WWPH staff knew someone at WIRB, but when I sent them the books to review, I forgot to include my email address, because I am a moron. So I never heard from them. I also saw on Amazon that there was a used copy of my book for sale at the Goodwill right by the WIRB, so I wondered if they just dumped it. But it looks like they did a real service to a local writer and used one copy to get it reviewed.
They don't normally review a whole lot of books from small presses like mine. I believe this was a solid they did me because I'm local. That's darn nice of them.
It's especially gratifying to see this now, because I'm in the middle of doing my own literary good citizenship right now. I'm doing a review of a book someone asked me to do. Turns out, it's a much harder assignment than I thought it would be. The American Review of Books actually wants a short academic paper. I haven't written anything like that in years. I'm not sure I'm up for it, but it's my job to do this, and I know if I were the author, I'd want me to put some effort into it. So I'm struggling through it. Nice to see karma paying me back for it ahead of time.
I didn't know for sure that they were going to review it. (In fact, it's been up for three days and I just now saw it.) I sent them two books, because the folks at my publisher, Washington Writers' Publishing House, suggested it. A woman on the WWPH staff knew someone at WIRB, but when I sent them the books to review, I forgot to include my email address, because I am a moron. So I never heard from them. I also saw on Amazon that there was a used copy of my book for sale at the Goodwill right by the WIRB, so I wondered if they just dumped it. But it looks like they did a real service to a local writer and used one copy to get it reviewed.
They don't normally review a whole lot of books from small presses like mine. I believe this was a solid they did me because I'm local. That's darn nice of them.
It's especially gratifying to see this now, because I'm in the middle of doing my own literary good citizenship right now. I'm doing a review of a book someone asked me to do. Turns out, it's a much harder assignment than I thought it would be. The American Review of Books actually wants a short academic paper. I haven't written anything like that in years. I'm not sure I'm up for it, but it's my job to do this, and I know if I were the author, I'd want me to put some effort into it. So I'm struggling through it. Nice to see karma paying me back for it ahead of time.
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Why you might want to stand for the national anthem even if you think you don't
Here are some things this post is NOT saying:
-You must stand for the national anthem. It astounds me that a president who was elected by the American impulse not to be told how to act summarily ignored that impulse.
-If you do not stand for the national anthem, you are less American, less patriotic, or love your country less than those who do stand.
-The national anthem or the flag are inherently sacred, apart from the meaning we choose to give them.
-Forced acts of patriotism are meaningful.
-The underlying argument that sparked the protest is not a very valid point to make, or not critical to the health of the country. On both an emotional level--the kind that comes about from watching videos of young black people get killed in what certainly looks like an unjust manner--and a cognitive level, when one looks at statistics about young men of color in America, it appears the American dream is not offered equally to young people of color.
I've been surprised how divisive the issue of standing for the national anthem before football games has been. Trump baited us, of course, but having taken the bait, I'm surprised how viciously we're willing to fight each other over it. As these arguments go round after round, they sometimes stray into offshoots of the main argument. It's one of those offshoots I want to address. Eventually, if you argue this long enough, you'll get into territory where you're addressing propositions like "Is it just a song?" and "Is it just a piece of cloth?" That is, is there anything intrinsically meaningful about standing for the national anthem?
What would the meaning be?
Although a lot of people are conflating standing for the national anthem with respect for members of the armed services, past and present, I'm only aware of one explicit meaning given to the ritual at sports events. When we are asked to rise (and I'd say we are asked, not ordered: the PA announcer always says "please rise"), it's "to honor America." That's a pretty amorphous objective, one that each person who stands is going to interpret in their own way. When I stand--and I always have--I can't think that I've ever felt much of anything in the way of patriotic sentiment. I don't tend to find a whole lot of meaning in ceremonies. But I can see that it matters to some people around me. The ceremony they care about loses meaning for them, though, if everybody does not participate. It requires my outward observance. So I give it, in order for them to enjoy a ceremony that matters to them.
This may seem like I'm saying it doesn't mean anything at all to me, but in a sense, its meaning to me has a lot to do with life in a democracy. I'd be fine without a national anthem prior to sporting events, but it seems to matter to a majority of the community, so I participate to a limited extent. By standing, I'm saying that what other people want sometimes is more important than what I want personally. It may not really be a great song. It might be some rather pedestrian, 19th-Century bombast about a battle with a racist third verse we thankfully never sing. We might have a history as a nation that was just as long without it as our national anthem as we've had with it. Everything about the custom might be arbitrarily chosen and a complete accident of history. But it's an accident we've been living with for a while, and it's an accident that my neighbors seem to care about, so I'll participate.
Not everything is meaningful
I don't feel this way about every ritual. For years after 9/11, baseball stadiums were in the habit of pulling out a second patriotic act. In the 7th inning, where "Take me Out to the Ballgame" used to go, they started doing "God Bless America." And they were actually acting like we were supposed to stand for that, too. I remember getting in an argument with the person next to me at a Washington Nationals game one year when I didn't stand for it. I claimed it was because to stand for a song other than the national anthem was disrespectful to the national anthem, like saluting a state flag would be disrespectful to the national ensign. In reality, though, I was just annoyed by what felt like too much community patriotic display in one night. The 7th inning already had a great American tradition attached to it, I thought, and I didn't want to see it replaced because in our post-9/11 world, we were all falling over each other to show how much we loved America.
As a teenager, my high school suddenly re-implemented the Pledge of Allegiance soon after Desert Storm began, after years of not observing it. I found this troubling, like we were being told to get on board with the war. Not that I necessarily objected to the war, but I did object to being told not to object to it. So I stood for the Pledge, but I didn't recite it. I don't think anyone noticed, or if they did, nobody cared. But I just couldn't see myself going along with a group ceremony then. I didn't think the claims of the community to my participation were stronger than my personal conscience.
But maybe we need a few ceremonies we all agree on
I'm a snarky pain in the ass a lot of the time. When group organizers are trying to get some community activity going, I am usually the one crapping all over their efforts. In the Marine Corps, I sang the wrong words to cadences while we ran. Or I wouldn't sing them at all, and claim I had a religious objection to some of the baudier lyrics. I've uttered thousands of really great jokes under my breath. As a child, when my poor parents were trying to establish traditions for us, I worked against anything I found too solemn. I ignore 95% of all work functions outside of work.
Partly, this is just a reflection of my own personal predilection toward autonomy. And this predilection is probably healthy for the community, provided it isn't too prevalent or too pronounced. Too much community spirit can lead to totalitarian communities. It's a good thing to have a couple of wise asses in the group to keep the group from taking itself too seriously.
But there is also a danger in a community being too atomized, too focused on the individual. What would a school be without those PTA parents I find so hard to talk to? What would the Marine Corps be without those obnoxious Sergeants acting like we really belonged together? A few years ago, I coached my son's baseball team. It was a disaster for a while, because I wanted to be the wise-ass at the back undermining my own leadership. It took me a few weeks to realize that I had to be the chipper, annoying presence who made the whole thing stick together, or there would be no thing for people to make fun of.
Just because I make fun of something doesn't mean I don't love it. I keep my country at a safe emotional distance, but I also love it. I don't want it to dissolve. I want it to be there, so I can go on snarking about its traditions for decades to come.
Standing for he national anthem doesn't have any meaning unless we ascribe meaning to it. The flag is a piece of cloth. But this is the ritual we have. We don't have another one that's more central, more recognized. If we have nothing at all, no ceremony, however flawed, that is a space where we all recognize that we do, in some sense, belong together, then we will not belong together in any sense for long. If the community can make no claims on us at all, then there is no community.
Standing for a bad, 200-year-old song so convoluted the singers often screw up the words is not a great ritual. But it's the closest thing to an all-encompassing, American ritual that we have. At some point, the ones who mistrust community have to give the community some right to trespass our personal space, or the community will not be there. America is a more fragile thing than we imagine.
Words that should have been said by someone other than me
I admire those who kneel. It would have been much, much easier on Colin Kaepernick to just go along with the ritual, not rock the boat, and do what was expected. Those who kneel show a bravery I didn't have in high school to make their objections visible. And the underlying social reality of black Americans is real enough that I understand not feeling like you want to show outward signs of respect for a country that doesn't respect you.
But I don't think anyone who is kneeling wants the community to fall apart entirely. I suspect that many of those who kneel might love America more than many who stand, and it's the fierceness of their love that makes them kneel. But they may not realize the peril the nation is in. When Russian trolls seek to take America down, their easiest target is just to make us fight with each other. And we are starting to make it easy for them.
Former Green Beret-turned-NFL-long-snapper Nate Boyer approached this the right way last year when Kaepernick began his protest. He didn't berate Kaepernick. He said Kaepernick's protest was understandable, and made him sad more than angry. He longed for a time when Kaepernick would WANT to stand for the national anthem again.
These are the words the President should have said, rather than demanding the patriotic observances of free citizens. The paradox of democracy is that it doesn't work if we make you do it, and it doesn't work if we don't all do it without being forced. In that sense, standing for the national anthem does take on some meaning, because its significance arises, like the nation itself, from voluntary participation.
So I'm not saying you must, you should, you ought. I'm saying you might want to.
-You must stand for the national anthem. It astounds me that a president who was elected by the American impulse not to be told how to act summarily ignored that impulse.
-If you do not stand for the national anthem, you are less American, less patriotic, or love your country less than those who do stand.
-The national anthem or the flag are inherently sacred, apart from the meaning we choose to give them.
-Forced acts of patriotism are meaningful.
-The underlying argument that sparked the protest is not a very valid point to make, or not critical to the health of the country. On both an emotional level--the kind that comes about from watching videos of young black people get killed in what certainly looks like an unjust manner--and a cognitive level, when one looks at statistics about young men of color in America, it appears the American dream is not offered equally to young people of color.
I've been surprised how divisive the issue of standing for the national anthem before football games has been. Trump baited us, of course, but having taken the bait, I'm surprised how viciously we're willing to fight each other over it. As these arguments go round after round, they sometimes stray into offshoots of the main argument. It's one of those offshoots I want to address. Eventually, if you argue this long enough, you'll get into territory where you're addressing propositions like "Is it just a song?" and "Is it just a piece of cloth?" That is, is there anything intrinsically meaningful about standing for the national anthem?
What would the meaning be?
Although a lot of people are conflating standing for the national anthem with respect for members of the armed services, past and present, I'm only aware of one explicit meaning given to the ritual at sports events. When we are asked to rise (and I'd say we are asked, not ordered: the PA announcer always says "please rise"), it's "to honor America." That's a pretty amorphous objective, one that each person who stands is going to interpret in their own way. When I stand--and I always have--I can't think that I've ever felt much of anything in the way of patriotic sentiment. I don't tend to find a whole lot of meaning in ceremonies. But I can see that it matters to some people around me. The ceremony they care about loses meaning for them, though, if everybody does not participate. It requires my outward observance. So I give it, in order for them to enjoy a ceremony that matters to them.
This may seem like I'm saying it doesn't mean anything at all to me, but in a sense, its meaning to me has a lot to do with life in a democracy. I'd be fine without a national anthem prior to sporting events, but it seems to matter to a majority of the community, so I participate to a limited extent. By standing, I'm saying that what other people want sometimes is more important than what I want personally. It may not really be a great song. It might be some rather pedestrian, 19th-Century bombast about a battle with a racist third verse we thankfully never sing. We might have a history as a nation that was just as long without it as our national anthem as we've had with it. Everything about the custom might be arbitrarily chosen and a complete accident of history. But it's an accident we've been living with for a while, and it's an accident that my neighbors seem to care about, so I'll participate.
Not everything is meaningful
I don't feel this way about every ritual. For years after 9/11, baseball stadiums were in the habit of pulling out a second patriotic act. In the 7th inning, where "Take me Out to the Ballgame" used to go, they started doing "God Bless America." And they were actually acting like we were supposed to stand for that, too. I remember getting in an argument with the person next to me at a Washington Nationals game one year when I didn't stand for it. I claimed it was because to stand for a song other than the national anthem was disrespectful to the national anthem, like saluting a state flag would be disrespectful to the national ensign. In reality, though, I was just annoyed by what felt like too much community patriotic display in one night. The 7th inning already had a great American tradition attached to it, I thought, and I didn't want to see it replaced because in our post-9/11 world, we were all falling over each other to show how much we loved America.
As a teenager, my high school suddenly re-implemented the Pledge of Allegiance soon after Desert Storm began, after years of not observing it. I found this troubling, like we were being told to get on board with the war. Not that I necessarily objected to the war, but I did object to being told not to object to it. So I stood for the Pledge, but I didn't recite it. I don't think anyone noticed, or if they did, nobody cared. But I just couldn't see myself going along with a group ceremony then. I didn't think the claims of the community to my participation were stronger than my personal conscience.
But maybe we need a few ceremonies we all agree on
I'm a snarky pain in the ass a lot of the time. When group organizers are trying to get some community activity going, I am usually the one crapping all over their efforts. In the Marine Corps, I sang the wrong words to cadences while we ran. Or I wouldn't sing them at all, and claim I had a religious objection to some of the baudier lyrics. I've uttered thousands of really great jokes under my breath. As a child, when my poor parents were trying to establish traditions for us, I worked against anything I found too solemn. I ignore 95% of all work functions outside of work.
Partly, this is just a reflection of my own personal predilection toward autonomy. And this predilection is probably healthy for the community, provided it isn't too prevalent or too pronounced. Too much community spirit can lead to totalitarian communities. It's a good thing to have a couple of wise asses in the group to keep the group from taking itself too seriously.
But there is also a danger in a community being too atomized, too focused on the individual. What would a school be without those PTA parents I find so hard to talk to? What would the Marine Corps be without those obnoxious Sergeants acting like we really belonged together? A few years ago, I coached my son's baseball team. It was a disaster for a while, because I wanted to be the wise-ass at the back undermining my own leadership. It took me a few weeks to realize that I had to be the chipper, annoying presence who made the whole thing stick together, or there would be no thing for people to make fun of.
Just because I make fun of something doesn't mean I don't love it. I keep my country at a safe emotional distance, but I also love it. I don't want it to dissolve. I want it to be there, so I can go on snarking about its traditions for decades to come.
Standing for he national anthem doesn't have any meaning unless we ascribe meaning to it. The flag is a piece of cloth. But this is the ritual we have. We don't have another one that's more central, more recognized. If we have nothing at all, no ceremony, however flawed, that is a space where we all recognize that we do, in some sense, belong together, then we will not belong together in any sense for long. If the community can make no claims on us at all, then there is no community.
Standing for a bad, 200-year-old song so convoluted the singers often screw up the words is not a great ritual. But it's the closest thing to an all-encompassing, American ritual that we have. At some point, the ones who mistrust community have to give the community some right to trespass our personal space, or the community will not be there. America is a more fragile thing than we imagine.
Words that should have been said by someone other than me
I admire those who kneel. It would have been much, much easier on Colin Kaepernick to just go along with the ritual, not rock the boat, and do what was expected. Those who kneel show a bravery I didn't have in high school to make their objections visible. And the underlying social reality of black Americans is real enough that I understand not feeling like you want to show outward signs of respect for a country that doesn't respect you.
But I don't think anyone who is kneeling wants the community to fall apart entirely. I suspect that many of those who kneel might love America more than many who stand, and it's the fierceness of their love that makes them kneel. But they may not realize the peril the nation is in. When Russian trolls seek to take America down, their easiest target is just to make us fight with each other. And we are starting to make it easy for them.
Former Green Beret-turned-NFL-long-snapper Nate Boyer approached this the right way last year when Kaepernick began his protest. He didn't berate Kaepernick. He said Kaepernick's protest was understandable, and made him sad more than angry. He longed for a time when Kaepernick would WANT to stand for the national anthem again.
These are the words the President should have said, rather than demanding the patriotic observances of free citizens. The paradox of democracy is that it doesn't work if we make you do it, and it doesn't work if we don't all do it without being forced. In that sense, standing for the national anthem does take on some meaning, because its significance arises, like the nation itself, from voluntary participation.
So I'm not saying you must, you should, you ought. I'm saying you might want to.
Sunday, October 1, 2017
Editing Roald Dahl
This is going to seem presumptuous as hell, but there's a point to it. Who am I, Writer McNobody, to suggest changes to the great Roald Dahl? Well, that's not exactly what I'm saying. Dahl IS great. I'm not arguing that. And I wouldn't want to change a word that he wrote.
Unless he were trying to get published today.
What I'm saying has more to do with something I suggested a few months ago, something having to do with not having read a lot of modern fiction until very recently. A lot of people who start writing have read a lot of fiction, but a good portion of what we've read is older. We've read a lot of the type of stuff we were assigned in school. I know when I first started writing, I'd read more 19th-Century literature than all other literature put together.
The 19th Century is great. Melville is great. I wouldn't change a word of Moby Dick. But you couldn't write Moby Dick today and get it published. You couldn't write Shakespeare today and get it published. Right or wrong, each generation has certain expectations it has to write to. As much as journals love it when someone turns those expectations on their heads, there are still some things you just can't do. In the 19th Century, journals often paid by the word, which lead to florid sentences. That was part of the expectation of editors and readers. But if you tried to write a story now with a bunch of seven-line sentences, you'd be rejected before the first page was up, unless you were writing something that explicitly channeled the age, such as John Knowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Same goes for the early-to-mid 20th Century. There are things writers from that age did that tend to have a low reputation among editors nowadays. You can argue with me that this is stupid, that the currently approved lit-fic conventions are terrible and banal and lead to literature that all sounds the same. You can argue that, but if you stick to your guns and write like O. Henry or Roald Dahl or Dash Hammett or Ring Lardner because that's what you read in your teens or whenever your introduction to great literature came, you're probably facing an uphill slog getting your short stories published. So fight me if you want. I'm just the messenger here of what editors are looking for.
Two things to avoid
I just read Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter" this week, because my son was assigned it for his English class. Two things stand out about it that, as much as I enjoy them in Dahl, I would advise writers to avoid now if they want to get published in a good literary journal.
1. The "dark and stormy night" beginning. Okay, Dahl's opening here isn't hackish like "it was a dark and stormy night," but it is a cold start onto scene setting: "The room was warm, the curtains were closed, the two table lamps were lit." Now, right after that, we get action, so this might not really be a problem, but I see a lot of stories come in as an editor that go on with scene-setting for a page or more. There was a time when this was a standard way to begin a story. ("A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight...") But nowadays, there is an expectation that right from the jump, you're going to start to establish not only mood and scene, but also character and, if possible, a unique voice. Generally speaking, it's advisable to give an opening line that introduces the people we'll be getting to know. If possible, make it sound like no other opening line ever, so we know that there is also something special about the people we're about to meet. That's expecting a lot, and maybe it does lead to cookie-cutter fiction by making every opening line predictably unpredictable. But that's sort of what's expected. Don't believe me? Here are the opening lines from the first ten short stories in this year's Pushcart Prize anthology:
As you can see, you don't have to necessarily have fireworks going off. Most of these are actually rather modest starts. But one thing they all have in common is that the people in them are in sentence number one. We eventually will get setting, but that's not where we start. We start with people, normally. I'm sure you can find exceptions. I'm not telling you not to break the rules. I'm telling you what the rules are.
2. The plot twist as the story's raisson d'etre. Plot twists are great. I'm sure a lot of the stories we all grew up loving were built around plot twists. "The Gift of the Magi" comes to mind. (I just re-read that not long ago. It honestly stands up pretty well to the test of time.) But you can't make the plot twist the thing on which your whole story stands. In Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter," we get three moments where the plot turns: the man tells his wife some secret, probably that he is leaving her and their unborn child for another woman; she murders him with a frozen lamb leg; and then she feeds the murder weapons to the police who worked with her husband.
Again, I'm not saying Dahl's story is some cheap one-trick thing. It's a strong character study of a woman who puts too much of her own self-worth into how her husband feels about her, a story of a woman treated badly but who finds, suddenly, that she has the emotional reserves necessary to bring about her own resolution. If the story doesn't resonate with us today quite as much as it might have with readers in 1953, that's because we're now used to stories of abused women fighting back. It's like expecting us to be impressed with the special effects from Ben Hur.
But that's not the problem for a modern writer who would try to build a whole story around a plot twist. You can certainly have plot twists, but if we feel that's the whole reason you offered us a story, if that's what was gnawing at you until it spilled out of you into words on the page, then an editor is going to feel you've cheated him, that you didn't really have that much to say. The plot, in modern fiction, is a result of two things: what the author throws at the character, and how the character reacts. If the editor feels that the end result of your story was something you had in mind from the beginning without pausing to get input from your characters, then you're going to get a polite letter thanking your for your story, which isn't quite right for the journal right now.
And so, I offer this simple edit:
In order to make it not feel like Dahl is trying to spring surprise on us as the main draw of his story, and also to make the story open on Mary, rather than the setting, I would simply suggest that he change his opening sentence, if Dahl were alive and unknown today and trying to get his story published. I'd offer these two sentences: "The day Mary Maloney killed her husband with a leg of lamb, she was sitting with equanimity on the couch in front of the curtains, which were closed. The room was warm, and the two table lamps were lit." Now, it no longer seems like Dahl is trying to shock the reader with a plot twist more characteristic of mystery genre fiction than literary fiction. He's fine from there. Mary is still a fully realized character, and interesting for the way she reacts to her whole world being blown up with a few words uttered off camera.
So there you have it. Open on people and don't make a surprise ending the whole draw of the story. Mock me if you wish for suggesting a legend should change to suit my dull tastes. Just keep some of what I said about those dull tastes in mind if you're trying to get published in a journal of serious fiction.
Unless he were trying to get published today.
What I'm saying has more to do with something I suggested a few months ago, something having to do with not having read a lot of modern fiction until very recently. A lot of people who start writing have read a lot of fiction, but a good portion of what we've read is older. We've read a lot of the type of stuff we were assigned in school. I know when I first started writing, I'd read more 19th-Century literature than all other literature put together.
The 19th Century is great. Melville is great. I wouldn't change a word of Moby Dick. But you couldn't write Moby Dick today and get it published. You couldn't write Shakespeare today and get it published. Right or wrong, each generation has certain expectations it has to write to. As much as journals love it when someone turns those expectations on their heads, there are still some things you just can't do. In the 19th Century, journals often paid by the word, which lead to florid sentences. That was part of the expectation of editors and readers. But if you tried to write a story now with a bunch of seven-line sentences, you'd be rejected before the first page was up, unless you were writing something that explicitly channeled the age, such as John Knowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Same goes for the early-to-mid 20th Century. There are things writers from that age did that tend to have a low reputation among editors nowadays. You can argue with me that this is stupid, that the currently approved lit-fic conventions are terrible and banal and lead to literature that all sounds the same. You can argue that, but if you stick to your guns and write like O. Henry or Roald Dahl or Dash Hammett or Ring Lardner because that's what you read in your teens or whenever your introduction to great literature came, you're probably facing an uphill slog getting your short stories published. So fight me if you want. I'm just the messenger here of what editors are looking for.
Two things to avoid
I just read Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter" this week, because my son was assigned it for his English class. Two things stand out about it that, as much as I enjoy them in Dahl, I would advise writers to avoid now if they want to get published in a good literary journal.
1. The "dark and stormy night" beginning. Okay, Dahl's opening here isn't hackish like "it was a dark and stormy night," but it is a cold start onto scene setting: "The room was warm, the curtains were closed, the two table lamps were lit." Now, right after that, we get action, so this might not really be a problem, but I see a lot of stories come in as an editor that go on with scene-setting for a page or more. There was a time when this was a standard way to begin a story. ("A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight...") But nowadays, there is an expectation that right from the jump, you're going to start to establish not only mood and scene, but also character and, if possible, a unique voice. Generally speaking, it's advisable to give an opening line that introduces the people we'll be getting to know. If possible, make it sound like no other opening line ever, so we know that there is also something special about the people we're about to meet. That's expecting a lot, and maybe it does lead to cookie-cutter fiction by making every opening line predictably unpredictable. But that's sort of what's expected. Don't believe me? Here are the opening lines from the first ten short stories in this year's Pushcart Prize anthology:
1) I was once a star on YouTube.
2) Full disclosure up front: I am a gay black man, a proud New Orleanian, thirty years old, five out of the closet, a decade on the down-low before that; bi-dialectical as every educated brother in this city must be, a code-switcher as needed; a poet in my spare time, in my unspare time a poetry teacher devoted to dead French guys and live black ones.
3) My former daughter-in-law is sitting in the next room eating cookies off a plate.
4) Barnes Hollow was actually Jason something, but no one dreamed of calling him that.
5) Afterward, Eva turns her face to the wall and falls asleep immediately, smacking her lips like a newborn.
6) It's the middle of the night and the woman can't sleep.
7) Her parents always said they'd dig their own graves if anything ever happened to their children, so when her sister Claire disappeared on a camping trip in the White Mountains, Elsie kept at eye on things.
8) He lived in a world of grease, and no matter how often he bathed, which was once a day, rigorously--and no shower but a drawn bath--he smelled of carnitas, machaca, and the chopped white onion and soapy cilantro he folded each morning into his pico de gallo.
9) Joan had to look beautiful.
10) When Father Tom comes to a party, people look embarrassed, even the ones who invited him.
As you can see, you don't have to necessarily have fireworks going off. Most of these are actually rather modest starts. But one thing they all have in common is that the people in them are in sentence number one. We eventually will get setting, but that's not where we start. We start with people, normally. I'm sure you can find exceptions. I'm not telling you not to break the rules. I'm telling you what the rules are.
2. The plot twist as the story's raisson d'etre. Plot twists are great. I'm sure a lot of the stories we all grew up loving were built around plot twists. "The Gift of the Magi" comes to mind. (I just re-read that not long ago. It honestly stands up pretty well to the test of time.) But you can't make the plot twist the thing on which your whole story stands. In Dahl's "Lamb to the Slaughter," we get three moments where the plot turns: the man tells his wife some secret, probably that he is leaving her and their unborn child for another woman; she murders him with a frozen lamb leg; and then she feeds the murder weapons to the police who worked with her husband.
Again, I'm not saying Dahl's story is some cheap one-trick thing. It's a strong character study of a woman who puts too much of her own self-worth into how her husband feels about her, a story of a woman treated badly but who finds, suddenly, that she has the emotional reserves necessary to bring about her own resolution. If the story doesn't resonate with us today quite as much as it might have with readers in 1953, that's because we're now used to stories of abused women fighting back. It's like expecting us to be impressed with the special effects from Ben Hur.
But that's not the problem for a modern writer who would try to build a whole story around a plot twist. You can certainly have plot twists, but if we feel that's the whole reason you offered us a story, if that's what was gnawing at you until it spilled out of you into words on the page, then an editor is going to feel you've cheated him, that you didn't really have that much to say. The plot, in modern fiction, is a result of two things: what the author throws at the character, and how the character reacts. If the editor feels that the end result of your story was something you had in mind from the beginning without pausing to get input from your characters, then you're going to get a polite letter thanking your for your story, which isn't quite right for the journal right now.
And so, I offer this simple edit:
In order to make it not feel like Dahl is trying to spring surprise on us as the main draw of his story, and also to make the story open on Mary, rather than the setting, I would simply suggest that he change his opening sentence, if Dahl were alive and unknown today and trying to get his story published. I'd offer these two sentences: "The day Mary Maloney killed her husband with a leg of lamb, she was sitting with equanimity on the couch in front of the curtains, which were closed. The room was warm, and the two table lamps were lit." Now, it no longer seems like Dahl is trying to shock the reader with a plot twist more characteristic of mystery genre fiction than literary fiction. He's fine from there. Mary is still a fully realized character, and interesting for the way she reacts to her whole world being blown up with a few words uttered off camera.
So there you have it. Open on people and don't make a surprise ending the whole draw of the story. Mock me if you wish for suggesting a legend should change to suit my dull tastes. Just keep some of what I said about those dull tastes in mind if you're trying to get published in a journal of serious fiction.
Friday, September 29, 2017
As some rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born, Jake blogs about the process of writing fiction
While discussing one of the stories from my book with a friend the other day, my friend said he'd never be able to write a character as awful as the main character from ""Dawn Doesn't Disappoint." It's about a divorced man, starting to fall into the decrepitude of middle age, who takes up with an overweight, simple, but sweet and occasionally bright much younger woman who works for him. He does it because it's easy. He's realized that the relationship isn't good for him and definitely not good for the girl, Dawn, but he can't end it on his own. Instead, like a teenager afraid to tell a girl what he really feels, he decides to try to be a jerk to get her to end it.
I've discovered that the two questions a fiction writer gets asked the most are: 1) How did you come up with this? 2) (Related to the first,) Did this really happen/happen to you?
The reason I'm starting to have a little success, though, is because most of it didn't really happen
In grad school, or really in any writing workshop, you'll get this scenario all the time: guy turns in a story to the group, and the feedback comes back that the story seems to have a random ending, one that doesn't fit the logic of the story. The writer of the story will shake his head, look sorry for everyone offering their misguided advice, and reveal that "that's how it really happened!" The poor saps who didn't care for the story don't realize that the writer has given us TRUTH, because he's relayed it the way something really happened to him.
What the writer has really done is substitute anecdote or memoir where we expected fiction. This is normal; many writers start out by transcribing events in life that stood out to them. It's typical of a writerly temperament. Some aspect of life stands out to you, and you want to memorialize it. But it's not mature fiction writing yet. Fiction isn't real life. It's not real at all, in fact. That's what "fiction" means. Among other things, in fiction, unlike in life, things have to happen for some reason. You, the writer, are creating some order. Hopefully, it's not a heavy-handed order. It's something arising organically from the seeds of your characters and the situations you place them in. But it's still an order.
Stages from writing memoir to writing fiction
It may seem a little cheeky of me to be dispensing fiction writing advice; I've just had one tiny book of short stories published, and a handful of publications from respectable but not top-shelf journals. But I look at it this way: you cannot learn to play basketball from Lebron James. He's too good, and whatever he tries to tell you will only work for him. But you can learn from the guy in your neighborhood who made the high school team. So this advice is for people struggling to figure it out at all, from someone who's just starting to figure it out.
I don't think there's anything especially unique about the way I do things. It's pretty similar to what all-world writer George Saunders said in this video. But precisely because there's nothing flashy about it, it might be a useful road map if you're looking to take your first steps into writing fiction, or if you've tried and gotten nowhere with it.
Phase One: Transcription of events
This is the phase I described above. Something happens to you, or you encounter a person who leaves an impression, and something about that tells you that there's something worth rehashing in what you experienced, some deeper level of reality waiting there if you scratch a little further. So you write the story, keeping pretty much to how it happened. When you're in this phase, you can still develop as a writer just by paying attention to details, picking out details that matter and are interesting, and figuring out how to describe scene and action both clearly yet without killing the reader with details. One advantage to this kind of writing is it solves one of the biggest problems in creating a narrative: deciding where the beginning, middle, and end is.
But it's hard to make pure recitation of events work as fiction. I get a lot of this kind of writing at the journal where I read. I'm not saying I could pick out with 100% accuracy which stories are really fiction and which are close enough to real life to be memoir, but I can sure tell sometimes. One reader often rejects stories with the note "sounds like thinly fictionalized memoir." There really is something about it that stands out.
Phase Two: Change some shit
Perhaps the one piece of advice that helped me the most was a simple one. If you're writing a story and one of the characters is based on you or someone you know, try changing one important fact about that person. If the person is tall, make him short. If he's athletic, make him awkward. If he's attractive, give him warts. You can try for something bigger if you like, such as changing the gender or race or sexual orientation, but it will do at first to just make one profound change. You'll find that if you change one important feature, the whole character will start to change. Taking away something like intelligence or athletic ability can be like writing about Superman with his powers suddenly taken away. In fact, it can really start to drive narrative. You're answering a question about what someone would be like if you changed something about them, and that in itself can become its own story. You may find that by changing one thing, you end up changing more.
What works for character will also work for plot. If you're retelling a story that happened to you, change one thing about how it went down. The girl didn't go to prom with you. Or she did. By shifting yourself just the slightest bit from the "real" story, you suddenly free yourself to make the story whatever you want it. There's no reason to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Phase Three: Start with what's made-up, and add some reality to it
This next phase is sort of the flip side of phase two. Instead of starting with a real person or story and adding fiction, you start with fiction and add some reality. This is where a lot of what I write now is. I start with a daydream or an image or a rough notion in my head. As I start trying to draft some of it, I will pull things from my life into it in order to give the story some bones. But I kind of throw them in wherever. I put words that my real-life hyper-masculine friend would have said in the mouth of the fictional gal pal of my female lead. I pull a story from dating Mrs. Heretic 17 years ago and transplant it into the foreign land of some story about a funeral home director from Akron.
One of the great things I find about writing like this is that one of those "phase one" stories I tried a long time ago suddenly finds a place where it makes sense as part of another story. I find that the instinct to think that a story existed there was right, it was just that that vignette really belonged within a larger fictional cosmos.
Phase Four: Make it all up
I haven't done this yet. I haven't written a period piece in which nothing is familiar to me and the characters are entirely made up and don't in any way resemble anyone I know. Some people would have you believe that until you ascend to this plane, you aren't writing at the highest level. I'm not sure I agree. Melville continued to mine the same autobiographical material for stories throughout his life. I can't think of a Vonnegut story that doesn't end up at some point back in some place he lived in--upstate New York or Indiana. Vonnegut actually recycled characters over and over. There's nothing wrong with this. Even if you're writing something completely out of your imagination, that imagination is still colored by your experiences. You can't escape yourself, and many of the best writers in history have done great work by not really trying to hide this fact.
Putting it together
Commenter Badibanga may critique me here for being formulaic and narrow about how I approach story writing, but I promise the way I write feels fairly natural to me. After I've done whatever level of fusion of real life and dream sequence I needed to in order to put a story together, I look at it. I imagine what I do at this point is similar to what an artist does. The story probably doesn't look like I thought it would when I started writing, but that's okay. I look at it for what it is now as a rough draft, and see what stands out to me about it. Are there parts that made sense with the original plan that don't make sense now? Are there things that need to go in now to make the most of what's good about the story as it actually happened? What images have emerged as a result of throwing things into the story that I can now capitalize on? The rough draft becomes a launching pad from which to set out again--hopefully, with less imaginative heavy lifting to do from here on, but still with surprises to come as I continue to rework the clay.
A word about outlines
One point from that George Saunders video I somewhat disagree with is this, which I regard as perhaps a bit of overstatement: "...a bad story is where you know what the story is, and you're sure of it, and you go there with your intentionality fixed in place." Saunders compares this to going out on a date with someone who has notecards in his hands about when to compliment his date and when to tell which anecdote. He says it makes the story seem insincere, like it's talking down to its reader. A real story, a "non-bullshit" story, is one where the author goes into writing it without preconceived notions of where it should go.
This is a common notion in modern fiction theory. Because of it, it's typical to hear advice that you shouldn't use outlines going into a story. I don't think this is necessarily true. Saunders says he sometimes goes into a story with just the smallest idea of something around which he is basing his work. But I don't think that means that if you have a fairly detailed idea where you're going, that means your story is not authentic. Indeed, with some stories, such as Game of Thrones, it's hard for me to imagine writing them without plotting out a lot of it in outline/sketch/map format first. You don't need to feel like a story that comes to you in more pieces from the get-go is not artistically valid. You DO need to remain open to whether all your choices in the planning stage continue to make sense as you write. You DO need to fully incarnate people in your story, even if those people were just someone you originally drummed up to fulfill a role in your plot.
Anyhow, that's my advice, from one advanced beginner to beginners. Whenever I think of process, I think of what Arnold Palmer allegedly said about a good golf swing. A good swing is whatever makes the ball go where it's supposed to. Try this if you want. If it gets you near the hole, great. If it doesn't, try something else. Just don't stress too much over whether your stories are working out. Stories can teach us rich things about life, but they're also meant for fun, much like golf. Which is to say, there are a lot of things going on in the world that might be more important.
I've discovered that the two questions a fiction writer gets asked the most are: 1) How did you come up with this? 2) (Related to the first,) Did this really happen/happen to you?
The reason I'm starting to have a little success, though, is because most of it didn't really happen
In grad school, or really in any writing workshop, you'll get this scenario all the time: guy turns in a story to the group, and the feedback comes back that the story seems to have a random ending, one that doesn't fit the logic of the story. The writer of the story will shake his head, look sorry for everyone offering their misguided advice, and reveal that "that's how it really happened!" The poor saps who didn't care for the story don't realize that the writer has given us TRUTH, because he's relayed it the way something really happened to him.
What the writer has really done is substitute anecdote or memoir where we expected fiction. This is normal; many writers start out by transcribing events in life that stood out to them. It's typical of a writerly temperament. Some aspect of life stands out to you, and you want to memorialize it. But it's not mature fiction writing yet. Fiction isn't real life. It's not real at all, in fact. That's what "fiction" means. Among other things, in fiction, unlike in life, things have to happen for some reason. You, the writer, are creating some order. Hopefully, it's not a heavy-handed order. It's something arising organically from the seeds of your characters and the situations you place them in. But it's still an order.
Stages from writing memoir to writing fiction
It may seem a little cheeky of me to be dispensing fiction writing advice; I've just had one tiny book of short stories published, and a handful of publications from respectable but not top-shelf journals. But I look at it this way: you cannot learn to play basketball from Lebron James. He's too good, and whatever he tries to tell you will only work for him. But you can learn from the guy in your neighborhood who made the high school team. So this advice is for people struggling to figure it out at all, from someone who's just starting to figure it out.
I don't think there's anything especially unique about the way I do things. It's pretty similar to what all-world writer George Saunders said in this video. But precisely because there's nothing flashy about it, it might be a useful road map if you're looking to take your first steps into writing fiction, or if you've tried and gotten nowhere with it.
Phase One: Transcription of events
This is the phase I described above. Something happens to you, or you encounter a person who leaves an impression, and something about that tells you that there's something worth rehashing in what you experienced, some deeper level of reality waiting there if you scratch a little further. So you write the story, keeping pretty much to how it happened. When you're in this phase, you can still develop as a writer just by paying attention to details, picking out details that matter and are interesting, and figuring out how to describe scene and action both clearly yet without killing the reader with details. One advantage to this kind of writing is it solves one of the biggest problems in creating a narrative: deciding where the beginning, middle, and end is.
But it's hard to make pure recitation of events work as fiction. I get a lot of this kind of writing at the journal where I read. I'm not saying I could pick out with 100% accuracy which stories are really fiction and which are close enough to real life to be memoir, but I can sure tell sometimes. One reader often rejects stories with the note "sounds like thinly fictionalized memoir." There really is something about it that stands out.
Phase Two: Change some shit
Perhaps the one piece of advice that helped me the most was a simple one. If you're writing a story and one of the characters is based on you or someone you know, try changing one important fact about that person. If the person is tall, make him short. If he's athletic, make him awkward. If he's attractive, give him warts. You can try for something bigger if you like, such as changing the gender or race or sexual orientation, but it will do at first to just make one profound change. You'll find that if you change one important feature, the whole character will start to change. Taking away something like intelligence or athletic ability can be like writing about Superman with his powers suddenly taken away. In fact, it can really start to drive narrative. You're answering a question about what someone would be like if you changed something about them, and that in itself can become its own story. You may find that by changing one thing, you end up changing more.
What works for character will also work for plot. If you're retelling a story that happened to you, change one thing about how it went down. The girl didn't go to prom with you. Or she did. By shifting yourself just the slightest bit from the "real" story, you suddenly free yourself to make the story whatever you want it. There's no reason to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Phase Three: Start with what's made-up, and add some reality to it
This next phase is sort of the flip side of phase two. Instead of starting with a real person or story and adding fiction, you start with fiction and add some reality. This is where a lot of what I write now is. I start with a daydream or an image or a rough notion in my head. As I start trying to draft some of it, I will pull things from my life into it in order to give the story some bones. But I kind of throw them in wherever. I put words that my real-life hyper-masculine friend would have said in the mouth of the fictional gal pal of my female lead. I pull a story from dating Mrs. Heretic 17 years ago and transplant it into the foreign land of some story about a funeral home director from Akron.
One of the great things I find about writing like this is that one of those "phase one" stories I tried a long time ago suddenly finds a place where it makes sense as part of another story. I find that the instinct to think that a story existed there was right, it was just that that vignette really belonged within a larger fictional cosmos.
Phase Four: Make it all up
I haven't done this yet. I haven't written a period piece in which nothing is familiar to me and the characters are entirely made up and don't in any way resemble anyone I know. Some people would have you believe that until you ascend to this plane, you aren't writing at the highest level. I'm not sure I agree. Melville continued to mine the same autobiographical material for stories throughout his life. I can't think of a Vonnegut story that doesn't end up at some point back in some place he lived in--upstate New York or Indiana. Vonnegut actually recycled characters over and over. There's nothing wrong with this. Even if you're writing something completely out of your imagination, that imagination is still colored by your experiences. You can't escape yourself, and many of the best writers in history have done great work by not really trying to hide this fact.
Putting it together
Commenter Badibanga may critique me here for being formulaic and narrow about how I approach story writing, but I promise the way I write feels fairly natural to me. After I've done whatever level of fusion of real life and dream sequence I needed to in order to put a story together, I look at it. I imagine what I do at this point is similar to what an artist does. The story probably doesn't look like I thought it would when I started writing, but that's okay. I look at it for what it is now as a rough draft, and see what stands out to me about it. Are there parts that made sense with the original plan that don't make sense now? Are there things that need to go in now to make the most of what's good about the story as it actually happened? What images have emerged as a result of throwing things into the story that I can now capitalize on? The rough draft becomes a launching pad from which to set out again--hopefully, with less imaginative heavy lifting to do from here on, but still with surprises to come as I continue to rework the clay.
A word about outlines
One point from that George Saunders video I somewhat disagree with is this, which I regard as perhaps a bit of overstatement: "...a bad story is where you know what the story is, and you're sure of it, and you go there with your intentionality fixed in place." Saunders compares this to going out on a date with someone who has notecards in his hands about when to compliment his date and when to tell which anecdote. He says it makes the story seem insincere, like it's talking down to its reader. A real story, a "non-bullshit" story, is one where the author goes into writing it without preconceived notions of where it should go.
This is a common notion in modern fiction theory. Because of it, it's typical to hear advice that you shouldn't use outlines going into a story. I don't think this is necessarily true. Saunders says he sometimes goes into a story with just the smallest idea of something around which he is basing his work. But I don't think that means that if you have a fairly detailed idea where you're going, that means your story is not authentic. Indeed, with some stories, such as Game of Thrones, it's hard for me to imagine writing them without plotting out a lot of it in outline/sketch/map format first. You don't need to feel like a story that comes to you in more pieces from the get-go is not artistically valid. You DO need to remain open to whether all your choices in the planning stage continue to make sense as you write. You DO need to fully incarnate people in your story, even if those people were just someone you originally drummed up to fulfill a role in your plot.
Anyhow, that's my advice, from one advanced beginner to beginners. Whenever I think of process, I think of what Arnold Palmer allegedly said about a good golf swing. A good swing is whatever makes the ball go where it's supposed to. Try this if you want. If it gets you near the hole, great. If it doesn't, try something else. Just don't stress too much over whether your stories are working out. Stories can teach us rich things about life, but they're also meant for fun, much like golf. Which is to say, there are a lot of things going on in the world that might be more important.
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Yeah, you keep cracking wise...
The New York Times followed the U.S. media's long tradition the other day of treating North Korea dismissively. In this case, it was yucking it up over the use of the word "dotard," claiming people everywhere were scrambling to find out what the word meant. The implications of this laughter are that North Korea uses antiquated words, and is therefore easy to deride and take lightly. They can't even use normal words, who can take them seriously?
Of course, neither Kim Jong Un nor his ghostwriter said "dotard." The word shows up twice in the English version:
and
The Korean, for those able to play along, was the following:
and
I don't really object to the translations. The statement clearly wanted to achieve hyperbole, and there's no way to soften that and give a true translation. The word 늙다리, translated as "dotard" doesn't really have a better translation. Other ones might have been equally good, though: old coot, buzzard, dinosaur, etc. It's an old person whose age has weakened his/her faculties. (Did that many people really have to look up the meaning of "dotard" in English? That was surprising to me.)
It's not that unusual a word in Korean, though. It can be used about anything old. An old animal that's past its prime can be a 늙다리. I think most adult Koreans would know what the word means, unlike (much to my surprise) most Americans with the word "dotard." It isn't, in other words, a particularly strange thing to say in Korean. On the scale of KCNA pronouncements, it's actually kind of normal.
I wouldn't begrudge folks having a laugh over such a pedantic point, except that it seems like the U.S. media has only one note with North Korea, which is to make fun of everything it does or says. It's all just a big joke, all the time. Well, it's not a joke to North Korea. It's an existential matter for them. Nobody there is laughing.
Of course, neither Kim Jong Un nor his ghostwriter said "dotard." The word shows up twice in the English version:
Action is the best option in treating the dotard who, hard of hearing, is uttering only what he wants to say.
and
I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire.
The Korean, for those able to play along, was the following:
말귀를 알아듣지 못하고 제할소리만 하는 늙다리에게는 행동으로 보여주는것이 최선이다.
and
미국의 늙다리미치광이를 반드시,반드시 불로 다스릴것이다.
I don't really object to the translations. The statement clearly wanted to achieve hyperbole, and there's no way to soften that and give a true translation. The word 늙다리, translated as "dotard" doesn't really have a better translation. Other ones might have been equally good, though: old coot, buzzard, dinosaur, etc. It's an old person whose age has weakened his/her faculties. (Did that many people really have to look up the meaning of "dotard" in English? That was surprising to me.)
It's not that unusual a word in Korean, though. It can be used about anything old. An old animal that's past its prime can be a 늙다리. I think most adult Koreans would know what the word means, unlike (much to my surprise) most Americans with the word "dotard." It isn't, in other words, a particularly strange thing to say in Korean. On the scale of KCNA pronouncements, it's actually kind of normal.
I wouldn't begrudge folks having a laugh over such a pedantic point, except that it seems like the U.S. media has only one note with North Korea, which is to make fun of everything it does or says. It's all just a big joke, all the time. Well, it's not a joke to North Korea. It's an existential matter for them. Nobody there is laughing.
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