Probably an Author's Worst Nightmare

Sometimes I'm in the middle of a lovely daydream, that one where I've published a book, and though it's not insanely popular (I wouldn't want it to be) it's solid, a fine piece of work that is rediscovered and appreciated generation after generation long after I'm gone. Then I think of lunchboxes, and the whole thing comes crashing down.

See, the reason I wouldn't want to become insanely popular is because of lunchboxes. And film adaptations, and Happy Meal toys, and mud flaps. It always makes me shudder to see what mass consumption has done to other authors' characters, sort of the same, I guess, as sending your blushing, bright-eyed young daughter into the world and having her come back as a chain-smoking hooker. My reaction is to make a cringing "eeEEee" sound and clutch my manuscript closer to my breast. Posthumous publication is underrated.

Case in point:

Up until a couple of months ago I had never read Little Women. It fell through the cracks somehow. While I was visiting in Oxford I began to pass my nights cozied up in a little library with a friendly, musty old copy of Little Women I had discovered in the "American Literature" section. (A section that had, like, twelve books in it. Biased much?)

When I returned back home I merrily skipped - skipped, I tell you - to my local library so I could keep reading where I left off. There was only one copy on the shelf. I picked it up to take a look...and immediately shoved it back again. "This can't be right," I thought. "Where's the REAL version?" But no, this was it. Someone watching from afar might have thought I was fishing out a dead bird from between the books the way I picked up that copy again.

It was the real version. But this is what the cover looked like:

(click to enlarge)

WHAT.

I don't understand anything about this cover. What is its intent? Is it supposed to attract a younger audience? "Hey look! They have acne! I have acne too! I will now sit down and read 500 pages about 19th century American women's etiquette!"

Did they hope to "freshen it up?" If so, why then do I want to run it down the garbage disposal? I nearly didn't check it out BECAUSE of the cover. And listen, marketing people - I want to read this book. I don't have to lay down money to read it. Yet I was so embarrassed to be seen even carrying it to the front counter that I nearly bailed.

Marketing fail.

The worst part about this cover...no. What can I possibly pick? Is it the fact that none of those quotes are in the book, nor even remotely what any of those characters would ever say? Is it the...liquid...spotty...substance...that seems to be juicing out all over the page? Is it the defamation of the female form? IS IT THAT THING ON JO'S NOSE?!?

Ugh. Luckily for me, once I opened the pages I didn't have to look at it any more.

And this, THIS is why I fear publication. Poor Louisa May must be tearing out her hair from up in the clouds. Oh, no, wait....here she is on the back cover:



Right. Well, she looks pretty okay with it. "MAH GOILS!" she's saying, all sweaty and proud.

Aaaaand....that's all I can say about that.

The Author's Corniche - 4

Counting pages is a dangerous thing.

I learned this the hard way, when I was much younger and the idea of writing was still new. I had broken through the terrible 20 page barrier, and it suddenly occurred to me that I might actually be able to write a whole book. A whole book! I had always been an avid book lover. In elementary school, we used to get those order forms for newly released paperbacks, and each quarter I was allowed to pick a couple, mostly based on title, which is how I was introduced to such wonderful things as "How to Eat Fried Worms" and "There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom" and many others which I don't remember. I gobbled them up.

But then I realized that I, a mere mortal, might actually be able to produce an entire book of my own, and suddenly the perilous doors of opportunity where thrown wide open! This was in high school, now, past Judy Blume and on to Victor Hugo and Ken Kesey, but as far as making words of my own, I was still but a youth. In my excitement, I spent less time doing the writing and more time checking to see how many pages I had, fiddling with the margins to match the size of a standard paperback and seeing how many pages that produced, calculating extra pages for chapter titles and indexes and the like. The page count was king. Many pages meant that I was a real writer.

Thankfully, that book attempt failed. Getting bogged down in the formatting should have been my first sign that I was not actually interested in the story I was telling, because if the author's attention wanders during the writing, where will the poor reader's attention end up? I suspect it is the folly of many beginning writers. I was young and easily distracted, and so I cast off my failed book with only a little disappointment. Thank goodness, for it was terrible. Even a thousand monkeys in a thousand years would not write such a mess. When I try to reread it nowadays, it is like bringing a smelly cow into the room. My comments go along the lines of, "Oh, well, that's not so bad," to, "Uh...hmm, yeah, that's pretty awful," to, "AAA! AAA! MAKE IT GO AWAY!!"

But older writers, people who are just seeing those open doors of opportunity, perhaps are tempted to press on despite all such warning signs - like counting pages before even the first draft is finished - and rush the final product off to the slush pile a publishing house, where its sole purpose is to torment the eyes of an underpaid intern. I see this quite a bit when I read comments from aspiring authors on writing sites, people who are searching for just the right font to write in. Warning signs!

I hope to say I know a little better now, and that if I am thinking of anything beyond the first draft, I'm into red flag territory. After watching the demise of one book, (a book for which I had already planned the cover design, ha-ha), I was so humbled that I immediately turned to the other extreme, writing with the mindset that nothing I wrote would ever be seen by anyone, ever, until long after my death, when it would be discovered in a dusty desk drawer ala Emily Dickinson, and then probably be returned to the drawer to complete its decomposition. I chose, as a font, the unassuming Arial, which has all the literary promise of a tax form, and refused to think of anything as formal as titles, plots, or - dare I say - endings.

My phobia of becoming a Johnny-Too-Quickly still lingers, but I've crept a bit out of my shell since those early days. Several years ago I switched to Times New Roman, which looks dangerously similar to "real book" type... (Yes, I realize I just mocked people who search for the right font. Go away.) And last year I broke another long-standing rule and began to read anecdotes from publishing houses, more for entertainment than research, because I still hold that the word "publishing" should not enter one's vocabulary until the last change is made on the very last draft. Gone, too, is the mentality that no one will ever read what I write, and this has brought both good and bad. Bad, in that I don't write quite as freely or honestly, and good, in that I make things tighter, disciplined with the constant looming question, "What will others think?" Yes, the critical invisible audience, forever a paranoid writer's companion!

But counting pages? No. I do not count pages. And I pay no attention to the fact that this is the hundredth post on Fifteen Feet. Nope. I hardly notice at all.

I am so in love with this site

Once again, I'm not really sure how I stumbled onto the site Editorial Anonymous, but I can't stop reading the thing. It's written by a children's book editor, and she completely won me over with such posts as "Creative Thinking is a Disease and Must Be Stamped Out," and "My Manuscript Has Had Puppies. Want Them?" Here's a recent post:
---
5 Things Not to Write Any More Rhymed Picture Books About:

1. Insurance
2. Calculus
3. IRS audits
4. Shakespeare
5. STDs

It's been a bad week in the slush.
--

What fun the life of an editor!

The Author's Corniche - 3

My corniche has a roadblock. A corniche, if you did not know - heck, I didn't - is a road that hugs a precipice, a route of great beauty and danger and constant vigilance. I find it cheery, minus the imminent-death part, because it reminds me of the coastal roads of my hometown. More importantly, it seems like an appropriate analogy for anyone who dares enter the realm of writing.

The realm of writing... When I say it like that, I suddenly picture the JAWS shark rising up out of my page while I'm trying to write. Okay, so perhaps writing is nothing like driving alongside a sheer drop-off, but the psychological impact of failing to write well can certainly feel like falling off a cliff.

Which makes a roadblock a bit of a relief. I have not been speeding along those dangerous curves lately, but rather leaning against a rockslide picking my teeth with a toothpick and saying, "A-yup...gonna have to wait for this to clear." I am being a lazy, lazy writer, solving my literary problems by ignoring the fact that they exist, or at least giving up trying to address them through the tips of my fingers.

I suppose I should be panicking, kicking myself towards the computer (and ignoring the siren lure of "Minesweeper" once I get there,) but honestly, the wax and wane of writing seems like a natural thing. Writer's block is a bit like waiting for the tide to come back in, not furthered by me jumping up and down on the beach flailing my arms and shouting at it. Relax, says I. No deadlines to meet.

Which randomly reminds me - they say that authors who publish one book are oftentimes signed on to deliver follow-up books within a certain time period, which is why second and third books want for quality. There are many interesting discussions in writing circles about how publishing, as a business, is suffocating the life out of good writers. Once you cram a deadline down an author's throat, the thoughts that should be allowed to simmer in the pot get suddenly dumped out al dente, underdeveloped, or scorched to the point of hackneyed cliche. ("Hackneyed cliche" is a hackneyed cliche, I have just realized.) The publishing world also does a disservice by publishing so many peanuts, making it harder to find the few almonds and cashews, but I suppose they figure if they flood the market with books they'll have a better chance at snagging a reader, and the peanut author is then vindicated in their life-long dream to become a writer, so everyone wins. I would rally for publishers to be much more selective, but I have a vague suspicion that my own stuff may be a bit peanutty, and so I'll keep my mouth shut. (At least I'm a passionate peanut! Even peanuts can have standards!)

Am I digressing?

Anyway, I did something absolutely fantastic this morning, something which I almost never do - I freewrote. It was an attempt to get my writing pilot light going again. Though I agree on principle with all the little tricks of the trade - the freewriting, the "artist's date," the morning thought journals - I almost never indulge in them, because I, logical person that I am, say, "Every moment writing something irrelevant is a moment I could use to work on current projects!" (And I jump up while I say it, and there is a crowd of cheering people in my head.)

But freewriting is such a lovely forbidden thing for a stodgy red-pen-loving grammar freak such as myself, especially since I was wearing my piratey eye patch on one eye. My other weaker eye inexplicably likes to rearrange letters on the page, great for anagrams but not so much for reading, and so I wrote with my eyes closed and it was wonderful. Oh, I get to indulge myself here on Fifteen Feet every now and then, but to write without the chance that anyone will read it gave me free license to do all those things that are so wrong, so deliciously wrong.

I used nouns as verbs. I twisted verbs into adverbs and then into convoluted unpronounceable adjectives. I strung pearls of adjectives into long necklaces, where the poor little noun was hidden at the end like a clasp. And the run-ons, oh delight! My paragraph sentences would have made Faulkner blush.

Ah, the naughty little pleasures of the freewriter. I suppose the real trick is to slap yourself out of it after you've had your fill, get your grammar back in order, imprison punctuation, and return to the real work at hand. Pesky....pesky plotlines.

I do love the writer's art.

Wandering the Web Occasionally Pays Off

I just stumbled upon this excellent little blog, Brooklyn Arden. It's written by one of the editors who worked on the American version of the Harry Potter series. I'm only just beginning to explore it, but she has provided some interesting thoughts on the series (with lots of spoilers and no warnings, so be careful), as well as a plethora of info for aspiring writers and editors. It's well worth a look if you're into that sort of thing.

(That sort of thing being "writing," which, if you are not into, implies you are of the Neanderthal ilk, but who am I to judge?)

The Author's Corniche - 2

In a recent writing class, I was asked the question, "Why do you write?" We were given ten minutes to write out the answer.

I didn't need that long. I knew my answer immediately, and wrote it down. "Because I have to."

There must be authors out there who sit down and say, "All right, me. I think I'd like to make a living at writing. Let me copy a plot form from a popular genre and make a lot of money." These are the people who churn out books by the cord, and are very successful, and have boats and ponies, and don't stay awake at night fretting over backstories. You can find their works right next to the TicTacs, or left over on the shelves of group housing.

Oh, I'm being harsh on some probably very talented people, but it's only because I'm a frustrated wannabe writer. I would be perfectly happy to quit trying, but my "projects," let's call them, come after me like a scene from "The Birds." Caw - write us! Caw. Caw. We won't leave you alone until you do! I feel like the parent of a bunch of bratty kids. Since I can't kill them, I'll have to graduate them and kick them out the door and hope they never come back. I have to finish writing. Can't help it.

When people ask me, "Are you still writing?" my eyes take on a gleam of terror, much like a man in front of the bulls of Pamplona who has just been asked, "Are you still jogging?" Do you understand me, people? No choice... no choice!! I marvel that the question implies one can stop writing, like you can sit back one day and say, "Yup. That's enough."

Maybe if I actually finish a project I'll reach such a state of zen, but I don't see that happening any time soon. It's surely one of the comedies of existence that the harder I focus solving my narrative dead spots, not only do those spots grow more tenacious, but suddenly I begin to question elements of the plot that I thought were working fine. My story, if it was a car, would be a paid mechanic's dream, with bits breaking off even as it sat motionless in the garage. And so I spin myself in circles trying to straighten everything out, garbling what sense the story used to have, creating new characters, killing old ones, changing the setting by a few hundred years, and finally collapse with a cry of, "Magic! A big magical butterfly drops down from the sky and fixes everything, fer hfnxig!!!" (That last sound is me choking on spit.) Ah, deus ex machina, how I long to dance the dance of love with thee!

Then I stop thinking about the story altogether. I do the little Dutch boy thing and shove my finger into the leak in the dam. (Stops that thought, by crikey!) But by and by, that irresistible writing urge blows open another leak in a totally different part of the story, and suddenly I'm thinking from a new perspective, solving problems from another end, and making a few new ones as I go.

Is it this difficult for every novice writer? In the pinball game of authorship, I feel like I'm getting whacked around more than normal on my way down the table.

The Author's Corniche - 1

This morning I am enjoying a cup of mountain man coffee - which is coffee grounds boiled in a pot, the result of life without a coffee maker - and killing my darlings. When I first heard this treasure of writing advice years ago, I thought I could never do it, but I'm discovering that the more little darlings I crush for the benefit of the overall story, the easier it is to do, and now I wonder if I may fall into a weed-pulling frenzy that will uproot my entire flower bed.

I'll get back to that in a second, but first let me note that this particular darling isn't dying well. Rather than killing it outright, I am suffocating the life out of it by reworking it into a similar scene, which is a shame since the original one stands so well on its own. The original was inspired; the revision a labor of necessity. It's like trying to reshape a candle after the wick is already lit. What can a writer do? The original doesn't work overall... it doesn't work and must be killed. Ah well. I guess I'll just file it away in my "Drafts" and read it to myself for jollies years down the road.

Like I said, often times I fear that my massive revisions are ripping out the guts of my story, this creature I'm crafting. It's so easy to keep the "pretty" stuff and axe anything challenging, or weird, or personal, especially when I envision it being read by another person. But if I keep that up, I'm going to end up with a skin, a decorative wall hanging, that will look oh so very nice of the surface but never be able to move on its own. No, rather give me a skinned and living story with no decoration, a Catcher in the Rye, an Archy and Mehitabel. It might not catch instant appeal, but it will survive.