Sparse Space, Mighty Muse – Part II

By Lisa Lopez Snyder

Are you making stereotypes of your characters? Are they predictable? If so, you need to give them a good hard shake and see what falls out of their pockets. If you’re lucky, you’ll find something deliciously odd, dangerous, or scandalous. The goal here, folks is surprise. And surprise for we writers is good, very good.

That’s at least one of the thoughts I came away with from my workshop with Danzy Senna at Skidmore College this summer (see previous post for Part I). In several of the sessions, we reviewed more than a few manuscripts that had some scintillating prose surrounding the character, but there was the predictable narrative that never got away from itself, e.g:

A compulsive young man spends his day watching and calculating every minute[okay, fascinating], but nothing every challenged his compulsive habit, and nothing changed about him or around him; a little boy places a bowler hat on his head to make himself invisible because life at home gets pretty scary [intriguing, let’s keep reading], but he keeps doing this, no one does anything, and that’s all that happens.

We’ve all done this! We get so into our characters and we love them, good or bad, but we don’t let anything happen to them to challenge them or transform them. Nothing pops out and hits them in the face. And to top it off, we may veer wildly off tone. Danzy explained this dynamic as the need to get a narrative strategy to help get inside your character, to get beyond the “clean and easy” (my term), and to get…well, “dirty” (her term). The idea, she said, is to get yourself out of your head.

She suggested reading some folk stories as a way to discover narrative strategies to strengthen your writing. “Notice the tone,” she said, “and study at the dialogue.” Using dialogue, she added, “helps you see more characters more clearly.” Folktales not only do this, but they use a framework that astounds not just us, but our characters, too. Here are a few that came out of that class:

• Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol’s "The Nose" http://h42day.100megsfree5.com/texts/russia/gogol/nose.html
• Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales
• The Hebrew story about “the talking fish” that ran in The New York Times in 2003. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE0DE1F3EF936A25750C0A9659C8B63&scp=1&sq=Miracle?%20Dream?%20Prank?%20Fish%20Talks,%20Town%20Buzzes&st=cse

On another note, I should add that during my stay the faculty and my peers continued to expand our recommended reading list. Ah, that we should live as long to read all the good books our friends suggest! Here’s just a snapshot of several on my “to-read” list:

Novels
Bad Behavior - Mary Gaitskill
Letters to a Young Novelist – Mario Vargas Llosa

Short Stories
“Women in Their Beds” – Gina Berriault
“Hole in the Wall” - Etgar Keret

Non-fiction
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – Mary Roach


Enjoy!

Sparse Space, Mighty Muse, Part I

By Lisa Lopez Snyder

Thanks to a generous scholarship I had an opportunity this past July to spend two weeks at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Describing the experience is akin to trying to express what seeing Yosemite Falls is like for the first time. Okay, so maybe that’s not the best way to illustrate my point, but the enthusiasm it generated might measure similarly.

Perhaps the most potent aspect of the Writers Institute is that it is truly a writer’s colony. In the midst of life’s madness, this gathering is a place where you can forget having to make a meal or clean a dish (you eat at the university dining hall), and just dive into the writer’s life all around you--every day. I was one of more than 60 writers who stayed in the dorms on campus and participated in fiction, nonfiction or poetry workshops.

During the first week my workshop (18 to a class) was led by Danzy Senna (http://blueflowerarts.com/danzy-senna), author of the phenomenal Caucasia and the autobiography, Where Did You Sleep Last Night? The second week I studied under Howard Norman, whose novel, What is Left, the Daughter (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/books/review/Wallace-t.html) will have you eager to explore the epistolary form. We had workshop three times during the week and on the alternative days all the groups came together for an afternoon discussion with other workshop faculty and visiting writers, who included Ann Beattie, Russell Banks, Joyce Carol Oates, Mary Gaitskill, Rick Moody, nonfiction writers Jim Miller and Geoffrey O’Brien, and poets Henri Cole, Jayne Anne Philips, Mary Kinzie and Peg Boyers. In addition to small group discussions with these authors about the craft of writing, we heard them read from their latest works later that night, and then on Sunday evening, we participants held our own public reading.

As a fiction writer, I came away with ideas on how to further explore character, dialogue and story. Ann Beattie talked about how “short stories can be like plays.” She urged us to “use dialogue to create situations” as well as to expose the raw, the “unredeemable” character. Emerging writers can be timid about exposing the “imperfect” character, Joyce Carol Oates said in another session. She reminded us, however, that “all great art is based on conflict.” Simply put, she added, “If you don’t want to upset your mother or father, you won’t be a writer. You can be a nice person, but you won’t be a writer.”

Henri Cole’s reading of his poem “Black Camille” struck me with the utter significance of word choice and how I might apply the lessons of poetry to my work. “What are you now but a blood-red palanquin of plucked feathers and silk airing in the sun?” he read one night. In the hush of the auditorium, I understood then, that the words we choose are not just for their rhythm or sound, but for their absolute urgency. And, we know that takes time. But it’s worth it, isn’t it?

Stay tuned for more in Sparse Space, Mighty Muse – Part 2 next week…

Woman in Red Dress

By Laura P. Valtorta

During a recent disaster evacuation drill at Stanford University, all went awry. Workers and students were supposed to stand outside the buildings, twenty feet away, between 10 and 10:30 a.m., marked by siren signals. The sirens failed to go off as scheduled. Still, the Stanford police managed to rally most people outside, and situate them in neat clusters with their groups -- physics department, law school, visitors center, the Cantor museum, etcetera.

Dante and I waited outside the Cantor museum studying the beautiful sculptures by Auguste Rodin, including the Gates of Hell. We waited 30 minutes for the drill to finish.

At 10:20, a woman in a red dress strode out of the Cantor museum. The guards looked at each other. "What happened?"

"She was inside." The guards shrugged their shoulders. This was the first disaster evacuation drill, and all over campus it had been a disaster. Foreign, non-English-speaking tourists refused to leave the non-denominational chapel. The sirens either failed to sound entirely or they were too soft to hear. Students remained inside the dorms.

Then there was that woman in the red dress, who might have been an employee of the Cantor museum. If there had been an actual earthquake or fire, she could have been killed. But there was no disaster. Instead, she illustrated a point. She pushed the boundaries and disobeyed the rules, either out of stubbornness or ignorance. She showed the system did not function well. During this drill, she was an auslander.

Why does disobedience exist? As an outsider myself, I can testify there is no choice involved. Outsiders are born challenging the rules, questioning authority, stretching the boundaries. Auslander writers, such as the great Stieg Larsson, create new realities, illustrate our unexpressed dreams, and blast aside stereotypes. The result is Lisbeth Salander -- the woman every intelligent woman wants to become.

My goal as an auslander writer is to create a vision of the future that no writer has expressed. My future world is inspired with hope -- it is a utopia as opposed to the dystopia described by such writers as Margaret Atwood. Being an outsider causes me pain and disaffection on a daily basis. Oftentimes I fail to understand the world around me because it seems to be so driven by fear. There must be a reason for my pain. Outside thinking pushes the human species forward. It helps us evolve.

What Ever Happened........?

By Beth Cotten

Remember the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? As I recall, it bordered on a horror movie. The title stirred my muse to write this blog. My question is different and doesn’t provoke the same sense of dread as the movie title....but close. The question is, "What the $#@& Happened to James Patterson?"

On the way to visit my daughter in Indiana, I stopped at the airport gift shop to pick up a novel to read on the trip. I selected a James Patterson and quickly read the blurb on the book about the story line. Science Fiction is not my cup of tea, and this was a different genre from most of his nearly 60 books published since I read Virgin in 1980. So, I rationalized it must be good because it was a James Patterson novel.

I can count on one hand....maybe three fingers....how many books I started and did not read to the end. One was written in Spanish, and it was taking me way too long because my Spanish was "way too long ago." This Patterson book, The Dangerous Days of Daniel X, had a total of 220 pages. I read 80 pages to the end of chapter 31. Almost every other page is the beginning of a new chapter. I did not read further. This is by far the worst book I have ever read!

The premise of the book is that Daniel X is born with an extraordinary power unknown to our world. He is capable of creating inanimate objects and human and alien beings. As a toddler, from his hiding place, he sees his parents cruelly slaughtered, but the killer is not aware of a witness to the murders. Later, he discovers a list of names of super-powered, evil, alien beings and determines his father’s mission had been to assassinate these evil beings to save the world; thus the explanation why his father and mother were murdered. At the age of fifteen, Daniel takes up the search to complete his father’s mission. I will not be the spoiler and tell more.

I did some research:

- Reviews about the Daniel X series were split between those who thought the books were substandard to Patterson’s previous novels and others who praised them.

- The average review was three stars out of five.

- The books were written for young readers between the tweens and teens. (Well, I am a bit older.) Patterson explained the books were written to encourage the younger generation to read something other than comic books.

-The favorable reviews were from the youngsters or from parents and grandparents who were thrilled their child or grandchild was reading rather than spending all the time in front of a computer or television.

-Since 2005, Patterson published an average of 5.4 books a year --- seven alone in 2008. Can any author write four to seven quality novels a year?

Please, Mr. Patterson, don’t leave us “Oldies-but-Goodies” hanging. We were here first!

Is Less More?

By Alex Raley

When I began writing fiction, I tried to include every thought, detail, and event that could possibly be related to the story and much that was not related. Dialogue was filled with things said that had absolutely no relevance to the story. Obviously, repetition crept in on kitten’s feet with tiger paws.

That same tendency to tell all carried over to my poetry; however, poetry taught me that less really can be more. For example, one of my early poems had over forty lines. After many revisions I finally have something that speaks to me. It is only twenty-two much shorter lines. Did I lose anything that I wanted to say? No. I have something that punches out exactly what my soul feels about an event that has hung in my memory for over sixty years.

I am not talking about brevity, which is another matter altogether. T. S. Eliot took twelve pages (more or less, depending on how it is printed out) to give us the classic “The Waste Land.” He even uses repetition – repetition that drives home his thought. An example is found in the section of the poem where he ponders the bareness of no water. “If there were water / And no rock / If there were rock / And also water /And water / . . . Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop / But there is no water.” Every line in Eliot’s poem moves his thoughts forward.

If you want both brevity and sharpness of thought, I invite you to read Galway Kinnell’s “Promissory Note.” In thirteen brief lines he captures the essence of one who knows he will precede his loved one in death and who exacts a wonderful promise from that loved one. There is no way to retell the poet’s thoughts. You can only experience them by reading Kinnell’s poem.

Though I am suggesting that the unnecessary be eliminated from writing, in the real world there are many examples of tomes being successful. My daughter introduced me to “The Girl” trilogy by Stieg Larsson. When I looked at reading five to six hundred pages per book, I thought, this is insane. What I experienced were exciting page turners. Sure there is repetition that comes primarily from constantly changing from head to head depending on whose version of the event you are hearing, and Larsson does love to tell the reader everything. But you find yourself enjoying all of it. I pondered why? I think it boils down to a compelling story, unlike anything we have read before, with good sequencing, and strong, ongoing suspense and expectation.

So, unless you envision yourself as another Larsson, work on eliminating the unnecessary. I might even suggest that you read some contemporary poets to see how they distill their thoughts into succinct lines. Poetry can inform fiction about unnecessary words. Try it.

Language of Historical Fiction

By Bonnie Stanard

When Shakespeare, in his play Julius Caesar, had Cassius say “The clock has stricken three,” he committed a faux pas which is so common among historical fiction writers a word has been invented to describe it—anachronism. The clock is the anachronism, for no clocks existed in Caesar’s day.

Recently I read the antebellum novel Jacob’s Ladder by Donald McCaig in which a character orders a sandwich in a tavern. Though the word sandwich dates back to 1762 in England, it doesn’t appear in antebellum diaries and cookbooks I’ve researched. From that misstep by the author, I read the story with an eye of mistrust (which was compounded with his reference to a “rubber tarp,” for rubber wasn’t in common usage at the time).

The writer’s challenge is to avoid not only anachronisms but also a modern English tenor of speech, in other words try to be true to the history and language of the time. An example of a novel that takes place in history but reads like a modern story is Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl. Though you’re supposed to believe you’re in 16th Century England, the modern sound of the language transports you to the 21st Century.

In writing of slaves and their owners in the South in 1857, I have compiled my own lexicon of white and slave idioms which I’ve taken from diaries and slave narratives. I’ve found this useful in writing not only dialogue but the narrative as well.

Charles Frazier in Cold Mountain uses language effectively to put the reader in the antebellum South and to bring the characters alive in their time. If you open this book to any page and read, you will guess from the language that it is a 19th Century story set in the South, even if you know nothing about the book. If only I can capture that sense in my manuscript.

There are 19th century words which hardly anybody has heard of today, some because an entity no longer exists—e.g. calabash (vessel made of gourd shell) or banyun (slip-like dress) or osnaburg (coarse material). Others disappear because usage has changed—e.g. counterpane has become quilt; chilblain became sore; and snood, hairnet.

If I’m in doubt about a word, I look it up in the Merriman-Webster dictionary (CD copy) to check on the date it was introduced into the English language. I have found that some words dated earlier by Merriman-Webster don’t appear in 19th Century diaries, words such as diaper, moonshine, and toddler. The Merriman-Webster dates would be even better if the dictionary provided the original definition, for many contemporary words date back centuries, but mean something entirely different now.

I’ve tried to avoid even questionable words, some of which I really miss. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to talk about meals without using the word left-overs (introduced in 1891). Pregnancy is mentioned by antebellum doctors, but lay persons described the condition in veiled tones such as confinement, lying-in, or a delicate condition. Teenager dates from 1921 and I wish it had come into our language much earlier. And if one of my characters broke his wrist watch, the reader could justifiably mistrust me as a writer of historical fiction.

O.U.R. B.L.O.G. R.O.C.K.S.

By Tiem Wilson

Our blog rocks, let me be clear.
Unlike any other, it’s a place to share
Relevant information for those who care.

Books, bound & electronic, blogs, ball-point pens.
Lines, letters, lyrics, and literature
Opinions, and observations
Genre gossip on Google galore

Read thru the entries and be amused
Of how our members display their muse.
Come back often for new insight and
Knowledge to help facilitate the need to write.
Show the web how our blog rocks!!!

Blue People, Billions and Basic Writing

By Kimberly Johnson

I didn’t pay the $7.50 at the ticket window last Saturday. That’s right; I’m the only one who didn’t see Avatar. You know, the flick with the blue people flying on dinosaur-looking creatures. The flick that made billions of dollars.

To borrow a phrase from Drew Barrymore’s date night film: I’m just not that into it—science fiction, that is. My history with science fiction is checkered, spotty at best. I did munch popcorn to the Star Wars trilogy. I smiled through E.T. I curled up on the couch to Close Encounters on DVD.

Again, not a fan of space, the final frontier.

I didn’t pay the $7.50 at the ticket window last Saturday. That’s right. I blew it. After watching James Cameron’s insightful interview with PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley, I realized that blue people and quality writing equals big bucks. The Smiley-Cameron exchange revealed the director’s vision on creativity, the use of computerized imagery and the writing process. I also realized Cameron is a prolific screenwriter with box office notables such as The Terminator, Rambo: First Blood Part II and True Lies under his belt.

I did pay the matinee price to see those films.

That interview got me thinking… Cameron must be a darn good writer.
I drove to the public library and checked out three screenwriting books. (There is an iceberg and leading man in my future.) Hal Ackerman’s, Write Screenplays That Sell, is a keeper. Ackerman states that you don’t need to take a screenwriting course to write professionally. Did I tell you he is a former screenwriter and film instructor? Well, his former UCLA film students give him high praise for his simple, yet effective techniques to write and to format scripts.

So, I rolled the dice and decided to skim the book.

Then, I decided to read it.

Finally, I decided to incorporate some of his ideas into my writing. (I liked Ackerman’s take on character descriptions--- Keep the language fresh and vivid. Never leave your reader wanting less.) Overall, Ackerman wants the reader to develop strong writing skills. He does a good job on providing the nuts and bolts. For example, Ackerman believes that “dialogue must function as a part of a character’s efforts to accomplish his or her immediate objective”. He offers helpful hints such as:
• It’s never a character’s objective to give information to the audience.
• Characters ought not to be complicit with the writer’s intentions for them.
• A character’s objective is not to tell the story or to supply biographical information, back story, mood or psychological diagnosis.

I didn’t pay the $7.50 at the ticket window last Saturday. That’s right. I didn’t blow it. I used my library card to check out a reference guide to improve my writing—and to find some blue people.

Independents and Independence

By Mike Long

I'm not sure where I'm going with this—it feels more like venting than advising potential writers. It seems to me that we, the public, are subjected to a regular barrage of pleas to support indies, the independent booksellers of America. I understand and agree with their arguments, and there's that David vs. Goliath thing too.

In fact I do support them; for example, for about ten years I drove past the “big guys” to shop at Litchfield Books, when we had a place at Garden City Beach. This year I called them to ask about putting my new novel there on consignment. The “lady” who answered interrupted me to ask if I was self-published, then said, “We do not stock self-published novels.” End of that conversation.

I had the same brief talk with a large indie in Charlotte (not Park Street Books-they've stocked me and are allowing me a signing this month). I sent an email query to 20 Texas indies, and only received two responses—one was folding, the other wanted a 45% discount. True West Magazine accepted $1540.00 from me for an ad, then declined to review my novel as they “have to stick with established authors and publishers in these troubled economic times.”

I have had great luck with some of the few indies left in SC, like Indigo (John's Island), Swift (Orangeburg), Fiction Addiction (Greenville), Java Nook (Ridgeway), and Blue Bicycle (Charleston). The manager at Ravenous Reader (James Island) was absolutely rude, even though I had stacked up $184.00 worth of books to buy on her counter. I left them there, drove over to Indigo Books and bought them from nice people, the owners Nat and Linda.

I guess that's my point. We, the independent writers, are sometimes treated to a different standard than the indies wish for themselves. I, as an indie writer, plan to keep spending money with fair-minded folks, and to keep identifying those with double standards. My True West subscription will expire.

The Writer's Gut

By Mayowa Atte

Not that kind of gut.

I am talking about that other writer’s gut. The writer’s instinct.

Among all the skills and talents a writer must possess to write well, few are as important, far-reaching and ethereal as instinct. What is it, this writer’s instinct? How do we cultivate it? How do we put it to good use?

Let us try a recipe. Take all the experiences that make a writer unique as a human being. Add a large helping of the story the writer wants to tell, plus an equal portion of all the writer knows of the writing craft. Blend vigorously.

What you have at the end is a writer’s instinct. It is what helps a writer choose between two or more equally applicable words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, motivations, actions and consequences. All the ingredients blend into a fluid, personal and inspired inner compass that points the writer towards the true north of the story.

We cultivate the writer’s instinct by building up all the individual ingredients. By living full and vital lives that enrich our experience. By picking the right stories to tell. By reading and writing ceaselessly to better our craft.

How do we put our writing instincts to good use? By listening to them. There are countless moments when a writer’s gut feeling will directly contradict writing convention, the opinions of our editors, beta readers and fellow work shoppers. Our writing instincts should win a good portion of the time.

Why not all the time? Tis a fine line between trusting one’s instincts and being a writing egomaniac. Writers have to know when to accept criticism and feedback, when to ignore their instincts and gain new insights.

Your writing gut is right there. Cherish it, build it into the wonder of muscular magnificence that it is, and listen when it whispers.

Enslaved to Confusion

By Deborah Wright Yoho

As a writer, I feel buffeted by the pressures of globalization. Ever since I read Thomas Friedman’s iconic books on the subject, daily I feel like I am leaning into the wind, weathering the storms of merciless change. Deadlines. Competitions. Places to go and things to do if I ever hope to be published. Yet writing for me requires a slow pace and a measure of peace and quiet. I’d like to think of my writing as a refuge, at least a pause that refreshes. But more and more the mechanics of modern life reduce my writing time to a few moments, like taking a vitamin pill with the hope I’ll have more energy later.

My new intellectual hobby is keeping up with the effects of globalization. I am enslaved to perpetual confusion, dealing with the unrelenting learning curve required to operate my demon computer. I call it the Machine, and I refuse to talk to it.To do so would confirm the presence of another life form struggling to communicate with me in an alien language. While I know it is useless to ignore its demands, I maintain the delusion that the human mind by default should function as master over all machines. Entities with an assertive consciousness require respect I refuse to offer.

The joy of maintaining a connection to friends and family has become a chore. Nobody is ever home, cell phones are unreliable, email addresses constantly change, and who has the time for snail mail? Facebook just won’t cut it. I must plan for a three-day delay trying to reach anybody at all. Not that I am any different. People get mad at me if I don’t return their message in less than 24 hours. Half the time I want the world to just go away and the rest of the time I’m chasing after it.

My private life as a reader has been invaded. Should I buy a Kindle? Must I? Probably. The cost to feed a two-books-a-week habit is bounding away from me. I can’t indulge my preference for ink on paper much longer unless I want to spend more time with the Machine managing a waiting list at the library.

I suspect those who cherish the deliberative writing process, considering, drafting, editing, and then doing it all over again before releasing their thoughts to others, could someday become an extinct species.

Why Workshop

By Monet Jones

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” What a bunch of nonsense! Most of us have heard this line from childhood and perhaps responded to insults with it. It’s a lie. Words hurt, criticisms hurt, and even “constructive criticisms” often cause anguish.

This is a fact that we must recognize if we intend to relate to readers or improve our writing style. Spoken words can insult; written words can destroy. As aspiring authors, we must be aware of the possible impact of our words, and particularly the concepts described.

We also quickly learn that the power of words is a double-edged sword. Words give us power to hurt others, while at the same time endowing critics with the ability to cut us to the quick.

For that reason, a certain amount of masochism is involved, particularly with the Columbia II Workshop, whenever one submits to a peer review. Writers who set up scenes with words must realize that we can’t be objective enough to anticipate all possible viewpoints, never mind spelling and grammar. Painting word pictures is always an inexact art, and therefore, accords suggested improvements.

This is the “raison d’être” for writers' workshops. It is my belief that no writer ever achieves a standard of professionalism that would make peer review redundant. You might have a rapier wit and think you have produced a “monumental tome of literary excellence,” only to have it drop into an abyss of indolent nescience, if none but a select few appreciate it. (The preceding statement is a façade of BS intended to impress the casual reader.)

My Path to Inspiration

By Michelle Gwynn Jones

Whenever I tell someone that I am a writer their first question is always “What do you write?” I can see the look of confusion on their face, or horror in their eyes, as I tell them about my novel and the sequels. “Where did you get that idea?” is almost always their next question.

Some people find their inspiration in a country song, either the lyrics or the title. Others find their stories embedded in historical events and create a fictional character who was there. There are those who design the coolest spaceships known to mankind and unfold their stories in its travels.

I looked over the outlines I developed for the sequels to my novel, Daniel’s Law, and tried to remember exactly what I was doing at the time I thought of the story. I have never been able to point to anything so definite. What was the catalyst to its development? Nothing comes to mind. There were no great moments of epiphany while watching the news, attending a conference or getting a manicure which I can point to.

I do, however, remember the questions I asked myself that led to the storylines: Can citizenship be forced upon someone? How far is too far undercover? If murderers can’t inherit, can their children? Once I asked myself the original question I felt compelled to seek out an answer, sometimes with a quick Google, other times with weeks of devoted researching. It was not until I had an answers to my question that I realized this could be a story. There is always some subtlety in the law, some nuance in its interpretation, which lends it to a mystery.

While I have no idea what inspired my original inquiry I know that by the time I decided it could be a story it was well thought out.

Thinking Ahead in Another Language

By Ilmars Birznieks

Repeatedly educators and parents in our country question the
relevancy of foreign languages in schools. Their argument is that
practically in every foreign country we can get by with English.
Consequently, they propagate the idea that the learning of a foreign
language is a waste of time.

The idea that foreign languages are irrelevant and their learning
a waste of time ignores the facts. English is not spoken in every
country. It only appears that way to American tourists. People in
other countries naturally prefer to talk or negotiate in their own
language, a matter of national pride. However, in many instances U.S.
media, businessmen, and government officials working in other
countries are at a disadvantage because they cannot speak the language
of the country in which they work and live. They have to employ
translators, who do not always serve the best interest of their
employers, for faulty translations occur frequently.

Our educators and parents should seriously reconsider their
attitude towards requiring students to learn foreign languages at an
early age. Because of the global economy, which will become even more
global in the future, we will have more foreign involvement not less.
In preparing our students for that kind of future, we must not
handicap them. We must recognize that many of them, like it or not,
will have to work for a foreign company here or overseas. For them
the ability to speak a foreign language will be a distinct advantage.

Mr. Peanut: A Book Review

By Ginny Padgett

I must say Adam Ross’s Mr. Peanut goes against all the advice from experts we aspiring writers hear for crafting a first-time novel, and I am hopping mad. I want to know who Ross had to sleep with to get this trash to market and reviewed by the New York Times.

Here’s the list of some of the transgressions I noticed:

• Two stories told side-by-side and then too conveniently dovetailed by an unbelievable turn of events. (The implausible storyline includes Dr. Sam Shepherd, whose wife was murdered, a real case from 1954. He was convicted for the crime, went to jail for ten years and was then released, all the while maintaining his innocence. In Mr. Peanut, when released from prison, Shepherd becomes a police detective and is assigned to investigate the suicide, or possible murder, of the wife of David Pepin, one of Ross’s main characters. The Shepherd and Pepin murder stories are juxtaposed for our enlightenment or entertainment.)
• Rambling descriptions of Hawaiian terrain, climbing a mountain, convoluted feelings, etc., go on for pages and halt the forward progress of both stories.
• A flashback at the end of the novel that sheds no insight into characters or events is so lengthy it becomes a mini-chapter…just hanging there.
• The Mobius strip, a mathematical object of optical illusion, is mentioned ad nauseam as an element in works of art; is the basis of one of David Pepin’s video games he is developing for a flourishing market; and is the name of the private detective hired by Mr. Pepin. I enjoy symbolism, but this use struck me as overkill. In addition, Mr. Peanut, the Planter’s Nuts icon, and the actual nut also carry significant weight as symbols throughout both stories. I felt like I was being hit over the head with the hammer of Mr. Ross’s less than subtle images.

On top of all these annoyances, this is the most misogynistic piece of ‘literature’ I have ever read. If one is to suspend belief to buy into this story, the reality is all men fantasize, dream, plot, and sometimes carry out the murder of their wives.

The New York Times reviewer wrote this about Mr. Peanut, “…story that reads like a postmodern mash-up of Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and one of James M. Cain’s noirish mysteries.

How can this “…dark, dazzling and deeply flawed novel that announces the debut of an enormously talented writer” get published? Maybe I could understand it better if this were the fourth or fifth book from an established author.

Mr. Peanut seems to prove my theory that all you need to become a successfully published, well regarded, best-selling author is a good publicist. I regret I wasted my time reading this collection of words. I hope Adam Ross will renew his prescription for ADD medication before he attempts another book.

Boot Camp

By Suzanne Gwinner

In April, I attended a weekend boot camp. A writers' boot camp. A children’s writers’ boot camp to be exact. When I got the invitation in the mail, it sounded perfect for someone like me – a writer struggling with revisions on my first children’s book. It meant giving up an entire weekend, the weekend of our annual neighborhood soiree, but that would be a small price to pay in exchange for a dose of inspiration. On the designated Friday evening, I tossed my suitcase in the car and headed up I-77 to Charlotte. I know from experience that workshops don’t always meet expectations, but I had high hopes for this one.

Early Saturday morning I entered the conference room and established my territory. With coffee, bagel, notebook, and workshop materials spread before me, I perused the agenda. In two days we would cover:

• Generating story ideas
• Developing unique believable characters
• Creating internal and external conflict
• Developing plot
• Making a plot point outline
• Writing dialogue
• Exploring point of view
• Writing description and setting
• Opening sentences and paragraphs
• Revising
• Formatting manuscripts
• Writing query letters
• Writing a synopsis
• Marketing

Time was built in for group discussions, class exercises, and questions were invited.

“Whew!” I thought to myself, “This is going to be intense.”

It was. Our knowledgeable speakers, Laura Backus and Linda Arms White (Children’s Book Insider, WeMakeWriters.com) packed each hour with valuable material. The well-planned writing exercises were professionally evaluated. Laura and Linda, while warm and sincere, exhibited some drill sergeant-like qualities. The no-nonsense tone of the workshop meant we stuck to the schedule, we accomplished all of the goals, and we had time for questions. We analyzed the handful of books we had been assigned to read prior to coming to camp. Their organization and preparation allowed for a workshop packed with quality learning.

At 5:00 P.M. on Sunday afternoon, I drove back to Columbia with that fabulous fried brain feeling. This workshop had met all of my expectations and more. Ideas for revisions were already dancing in my head. As I drove, a simple thought occurred to me. Good writing is good writing, no matter the audience. The agenda from boot camp could have been the agenda for any number of adult writing workshops I have attended. We all strive for a moving story, characters that connect, clever dialogue, a setting that grabs. In some ways, a children’s author has a more difficult job as he/she must convey all this using fewer words and, often, a less sophisticated vocabulary.

Anxious to get a reaction from my writing companions at workshop, I read the new rendition of my book. My cohorts insist they don’t know anything about children’s literature, but they do. They know plot, character, setting, dialogue. Many of them have children and grandchildren whose reading habits they have helped to develop. In my opinion they’re experts. I cherish their comments.

“Children’s Authors’ Bootcamp” was the spark I needed to finish my revisions. Have you been to a workshop lately? An outsider’s view, a fresh idea, a different perspective might just be the answer if your muse has gone on vacation.

The Curse of Concrete/Sequential

By Alex Raley

My twelve-year-old grandson just finished a workshop in creative writing as a part of the University of South Carolina's Carolina Master Scholar program. After the first day, I asked him whether the workshop was what he expected. His response was negative. A bit surprised, I asked him what he expected. He said, "Boooring!" I said, "It isn't boring?" "No, it is so fun. We wrote about twenty short poems and prose pieces." I ignored the "so fun" nonsense and pondered writing "so much" in a group setting. His group kept that pace for five days. Of course, they met from 8:30 to 3:30 with a lunch break.

Groups are inspiring to me. I get excited on hearing the work of members of our writing group. Even reading books on writing is helpful and goads me to get to writing more. Attending workshops on writing provides me with lots of fodder for thought, but rarely do I produce something in the workshop that excites me. I suppose my mind just doesn't work that way.

For most of my life I have thought through scenarios in my mind before beginning to write. That may have come from the many essays I had to write throughout my school career--essays that had to have well-defined theses and a sequenced development of those theses that would bring you to logical conclusions. Do you suppose we are wired before birth to be concrete/sequential or random access? If so, lucky is the writer of fiction who is wired as random access. Fiction is about life and life is not concrete/sequential.

Recognizing my bent to think concrete/sequentially and paying homage to that bent for its contributions to me throughout my school years, especially graduate school, I set about remaking myself. One of the things I did was to use every opportunity to jot down bits and pieces of scenes and experiences without tying them to other thoughts that might try to drive them to a logical end. I also approached reading differently. I chose books that did not feed my bent to the logical. Even mysteries, which must be built with a good measure of logic, lead you down many unexpected paths before finally confronting you with what you logically should have expected.

Writing poetry also has helped me. Poetry is built on unexpected interesting images drawn into the vortex your writing. The idea of poetry enhancing fiction is for a later blog.

Can you still expect to see me in writing workshops? Count on it. I love the camaraderie of and conversation with other writers. Now that's where random access resides.

Giving Women What They Want

By Laura P. Valtorta

Stieg Larsson, (1954 – 2004) the Swedish author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (in Sweden originally titled Men who Hate Women), The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, wrote books that are wildly successful because they give women what they want: a strong female character who defies every despicable stereotype. The character, Lisbeth Salander, lives the way she wants in a society that tries its best to suppress her. More than 27 million copies of Larsson’s novels have been sold in 40 countries.

There is no doubt in my mind that Larsson’s longtime companion, Eva Gabrielsson, helped invent the characters in these novels, especially Lisbeth Salander. Full credit must be given, however, to Larsson for being strong enough to write such a fantastic female character, who steals the show from Blomquist, the character who may be Larsson’s alter ego.

But to say that Blomquist is Larsson’s alter ego is unfair. Every character is part of the author’s psyche. Lisbeth is Larsson.

Lisbeth Salander exists in a world of misogynists, a world that is constantly trying to beat her down. She thrives, nevertheless, because she displays so little emotion. For a five-foot-tall woman she is exceedingly strong, physically, and knows how to use weapons and fight. She always protects herself and successfully fights off the larger men who try to kill her. She has sex when she wants, with whom she wants, and then she walks away unscathed. (Except for Blomquist, who is the love of her life, but whom she ignores when he goes off with another woman.) She excels at math and science and makes her living as a computer hacker. She depends on no one.

There are no children in Lisbeth Salander’s world. No husband. She makes her own money – lots of it – and spends it as she wants – on a luxury apartment and lots of travel. Nothing ties her down. When the time comes, she drives off on her motorbike, leaving the expensive apartment, and its IKEA furnishings behind.

This is the dream world, the ideal world that Stieg Larsson has given us. It is a wonderful gift.

Setting: It's All in the Song Title

By Kimberly Johnson

I’m on the interstate (I-20 E) and I’m thinking about the topic for this blog. My radio’s on 97.5 FM and my AC is on 5. All of sudden, my foot starts tapping (the other foot that is not on the gas pedal) along to Tulsa Time by Don Williams. It got me thinking:

“What does Tulsa look like in the summertime?”

“Is it hot as Texas Pete hot sauce on a fried chicken leg?”

I mentioned that episode to get you to ponder the setting of your next fiction piece or nonfiction masterwork. Setting is the time and place in which a story takes place. The purposes are 1) to create problems for the characters, 2) to provide a background for the events and characters, and; 3) to help understand the characters and their conflicts. For me, setting is truly important; I spend considerable time conjuring the perfect city, state and zip code for my good and bad guys to duke it out in. Sometimes I feel like a production manager on a MGM musical from the 1940s.

As always, the Nashville sound is a great template to bring into play when you begin to write the backdrop for the next Great American Novel. So, the next time you are driving on the interstate, switch over to the country station. Think about how you can produce an action-packed plot or weave a tale of romance. For inspiration, try these songs, the drama is built into the titles:

All The Gold in California, The Gatlin Brothers, “…all the gold in California is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills, in somebody else’s name, so if you’re dreaming about California, it don’t matter at all where you played before, California’s a brand new game…”

Cowboy Casanova, Carrie Underwood, “…He’s a good time cowboy Casanova, leaning up against the record machine, looks like a cool drink of water, but he’s candy-coated misery. He’s the devil in disguise, a snake with blue eyes, and he only comes out at night ...”

Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, “…See the alligators all a-waitin' nearby, sooner or later they know I'm gonna try. When she waves from the bank don't you know I know, it's goodbye fishin' line see you while I go. With a Louisiana woman waitin' on the other side, the Mississippi River don't look so wide…”

Alright, Darius Rucker, “…Don't need no five star reservations; I've got spaghetti and a cheap bottle of wine. Don't need no concert in the city, I've got a stereo and the best of Patsy Cline. Ain't got no caviar, no Dom Perignon, but as far as I can see, I've got everything I want…”

The Latest Addition

Meet a New Writer

MONET M. JONES

I am currently a member of the SC Writers’ Workshop, and participate in several online writers’ groups. I retired from teaching high school technology courses, twenty-five years at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, and am now involved in writing full time. I live with my wife Kathy near the small town of Elgin, SC.

Kathy works in Columbia as an accounting assistant. Each morning before she leaves for work, we usually hike with our dog, Max, on a two-mile trail near our home.

Max is a toy poodle and my constant companion, if our granddaughter is not around. Our cat, Annabelle, more commonly known as “Mow Mow,” makes an appearance on the walking trail or in the home whenever the notion strikes her. Both pets have been the inspiration for several short stories.

My favorite activities, other than writing, include reading, walking, watching and feeding the birds that cluster to our back yard, singing in the church choir, and helping my son Nicolas with the planting and harvesting of our vegetable garden.

My first novel, Rehoboth, is in the final stages of self-publication, and I hope to have it published by CreateSpace in July of 2010. I welcome emails mjones1@sc.rr.com.

Monet's first blog entry follows.