Books That Make a Difference

Oldest Son came to me with the requirements for his final English paper in honors English, sophomore year of high school. Choose one of the 75 books, give or take, listed, and work up about 10 pages of various projects and essays. Some of the titles included:

• Catcher in the Rye
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Slaughterhouse Five
• The Color Purple
• As I Lay Dying
• Wise Blood
• Fences
• Invisible Man
• Winesburg, Ohio
  

When I looked at the list, as the mother of a Mexican-American son, I was pleased to see writers of color represented, and Hispanic writers represented (Oscar Hijueles and Isabel Allende, for example). Favorite writers made the list. Cormac McCarthy made the list. As did Mark Twain. As did Kate Chopin.

I know my kid. So I went through the titles and said, basically, running down the list, "You would like this.... You'd get his humor.... This one would bore you to tears.... This one . . . nope....Not sure the themes in this one would be meaningful to you....This one is AWESOME."

And so he has narrowed his choices to Vonnegut (I'm lobbying for this) and Salinger, I think.

But what this little exercise did for me? When I went through the list, I physically was aware of my facial muscles. I smiled at this novel's title or that one. I thought, sadly, of the tragedies in The Good Earth. I frowned at the injustice in The Color Purple. And in each case, it was not about what HAPPENED, but what each book made me FEEL. And I realized, at least for me, as a reader, I carry the feelings a book brings up. It's a connection that is more than intellectual. The books that stay with me, long after "The End" (and I can tell you, it's been 20 YEARS since I read some of these and I still INSTANTLY recall my feelings), are the ones that somehow awaken something inside me.

And all I can hope is my books do a little of the same.

Thoughts? If you had to come up with a list for a 16-year-old, what books would you want the teen in your life to read? Why? When did you read that book? What did it mean to you?

Share. Discuss. I can't wait to hear what books changed you.

Secondhand Emotions

Years ago, Goldie Hawn and Burt Reynolds made a movie called Best Friends. There was a very funny scene in it in which he walks into their kitchen and finds her sobbing. When he asks her why, she essentially tells him she loves her parents so much that she "practices" their deaths by thinking about it until she cries, so that when the real thing happens--or so she thinks--it won't be as devastating. It's practice grief. Of course, he tells her that sort of thing just doesn't work. Because it doesn't. We can't practice grief any more than we can practice how we're going to feel the moment we hear our baby's first cry, or the moment we learn we have some incurable disease. Any seminal moment is so unique and primal that we can't practice it.

I think about emotions and their range a lot as a fiction writer. Some emotions are brilliant hued, and some are pale. In the last few months, I have witnessed some bad behavior on the part of a handful of people I am acquainted with peripherally. And the funny thing is in every case, I consider the source. If someone who behaves like gutter trash does something that's basically unkind or dishonest or trashy . . . it can hardly be a searing pain, because it's almost like you expect it. On an emotional scale . . . it's rather pale. If someone you LOVE and adore and trust betrays you . . . THAT is the brilliant-hued, searing, agonizing emotion. It's gonna feel like you're being stabbed in the heart. If you've ever experienced that kind of betrayal, or had it happen to a friend, you know what I mean. There is NO comparison. Like grief, there's no way to practice it.

In writing, I feel like it's my job to somehow make the emotions I want conveyed on paper be as brilliant-hued and true and searing as possible. It's not an easy task. Like Goldie Hawn in the movie, it's like trying to invoke a strong emotion in a fictional or fake scenario. I want the reader to FEEL what my characters feel, but it's secondhand. Only by pulling them into the story as fully and richly as possible can I hope to achieve what I want.

In my wip, one of the main characters is going to suffer greatly and die. I am HOPING by the time the reader gets to page 350, they're going to cry and grieve. How strongly will depend on the writing--and of course on the reader, too.

To me, this is one of the central challenges of writing. To make it so real it's the visceral emotions, and not the secondhand, detached kind.

Thoughts?

Deconstruction

Sometimes, having a beta reader or a critique group can feel a bit like a police interview with Bobby Goren . "Why did you choose this career?" "What do you gain by having it set here?" "Why . . . why . . . why?"

I got a big thumbs-up from my secret beta this week on my first three chapters, but he did ask me a why I couldn't answer. I basically had to say, "Hmm . . . I'll have to think about that."

The way I used to write, I pretty much let the story unfold. And that was that. Now I realize that for every element, every scene, every character flaw, the story says something in the choices a writer makes. I tend to spend more time thinking before I write. And on edits, I spend a lot more time agonizing about the choices. And asking why, why, why, why?

I think there's a clear difference now. No "accidental" novels here. I wake with the Why on my brain. And write with the Why in the forefront. I edit with the Why at my side.

Thoughts? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about Why?

Pull It In

In trying to describe my work-in-progress, I realized last night that it's rather huge--interesecting storylines, multiple POVs, lot of characters (some human, some not), time travel, 400+ years of history. It's out of control.

And so I took a deep breath, and I said (to the woman who asked), "It's about a couple falling in love as the entire world quite literally falls apart."

And then I exhaled.

Sometimes, I think it's good to pull it in. I am actually, for real, taping up that sentence to my desk today. And I am going to leave it there, through every scene and every century, through plot twists, and tragedies, and scenes of ordinary days and end-of-days. Because in the end, that is what the book is about.

The bigger your story, sometimes the easier it is to lose sight of it. And sometimes the easier it is to lose the emotion of it, the character of it, the depth of it. You can get so distracted with world building and these great hooks, and with the bells and whistles you toss in, that you forget the emotional core.

So that's what my book is about. I feel so much better. I've pulled it in. That's the heart of it. Will there be plague and destruction and wandering people with no recall of who they are? Yeah, a little of that. Will Chernobyl's dead zone be there? And London in 1665? And New York in 2018? Yeah. But in the end, it's about two people finding a desperate love as civilization is ending.

Do you find you sometimes need to pull it in?

Authentic

I like writing fiction because I get to make things up for a living. But lately, I have been spending tremendous time making sure the details of my made-up worlds are authentic and REAL.

I think Demon Baby taught me this lesson. When I meet people who think they have a mischievious child, my first internal thought is Piker. I know there is no WAY their little devil can have anything on Demon Baby. And if I were to WRITE about a naughty little guy and NOT be the parent of a Demon Baby . . . I might have details like, "He puts worms in his pockets to keep them as pets." But I would never take it to the extreme. I wouldn't know how to make a Demon Baby story authentic. I wouldn't write that his mother sat on the living room sofa (the formal living room) and saw an earthworm wriggling across the hardwood floor. Or she found one in her wine glass, or she found one in the refrigerator on top of a lovely little brie she had been saving. No . . . I don't know that I would have been THAT authentic. (And yet . . . each of those things is indeed true.)

But more and more, with scene setting and characters, I find that I think I have my arcs down. I think I have my big picture. But I am constantly searching for that detail, that authentic scent or sight or mood or tiny button on a shirt or lost expression or . . . And I realize so much of what creates the very best stories are the details. They take us deeper into story.

Of course the key is doing so in such a way that the details don't bog us down. But that's the art of storytelling.

Oh and I have been thinking about "storytelling" You see, we spend a lot of time saying "show don't tell." But storytelling implies an action. You might call it story weaving. Or story spinning. Or pick a verb of your choice. But the art of storytelling to me implies movement, luring people into your world word by word. The details do that when done right. The connection is made.

So what bit of authenticity are you bringing to your storytelling today?

Emotions at the Opera

Today, I am off to take Baby Girl to her first opera, Rossini's Barber of Seville. I'll probably cry. Knowing my sensitive child, my guess is she will too.

Yes, I am the woman who cries at Kodak commercials. Hallmark commercials. Heck, given the right frame of mind, I might cry at Billy May's commercials. (And yes, Demon Baby STILL comes running to tell me when Billy May, his IDOL, is on TV.)

I regularly cry at certain songs. Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" because it reminds me of my parents.

But back to the opera. It's about emotions, even though I don't speak the language. There seems to be a universal language of emotions in music and voice that opera taps into. I've heard songs--ballads--in languages I do not speak, and FELT moved to tears. I am a huge fan of this guitarist. And this one. Neither sings. The instrument does the talking.

And don't even get me started on Beethoven's Ninth symphony. I have yet to get through it without tears.

Which brings me to writing. I am re-reading one of the more brilliant novels of the last year or two. It tells a bleak tale set in Stalinist Russia. But the way it works, for me, is the opening chapters. People are starving in Russia of 1933. And a woman is determined to survive with her two sons. What they must do to survive . . . well, that's the mood and scene and astonishment. But the writer taps into an emotional well of parents desperate for food and what they would do to save their children. This is a town where every rat has been eaten, where there are no living animals--all eaten. Shoes--eaten. Bark on all trees? Eaten. And so you are brought into this world. You may not be able to relate to the desperateness, but the emotions? That you can't help but relate to.

The better writers and books, I think, are able to do that. Paint a world so vividly, but draw you in, through emotional empathy, to a place where you ache along with the characters.

Thoughts? Do you believe in a universal, unspoken emotional well. Or are beliefs like that only for women who cry at the opera?

Digging Deep

I will never forget the first time I read a "meh." It had never occurred to me that writers would see what editors are buying and then go and write a book based on that. I always assumed it was the other way around. Writers wrote what was meaningful to them, and if that occurred at a good intersection of timing, luck, talent, and market conditions, a sale was made.

But the more writers I met, the more I realized that some would see a trend a chase it. And there was no passion for the story. Just . . . "I think this will sell." So it was that I read a manuscript. On the face of it, it had a decent chick lit premise. There weren't any typos. You know you are in trouble if the best thing someone can say is your manuscript is typo-free. I read a few chapters . . . and it dawned on me that when you stripped away the trendy setting and the designer clothes and the cocktails, that you didn't care about the characters at all. They read, to me, like a laundry list of traits--much of them external. When I questioned the writer, she was all about "I know this is what they're buying in NY." And no, she didn't get a sale. I actually, because one editor she tried was one of my own, was privy to the editor's feedback, who offhandedly said, "She can't write." But it wasn't that. She couldn't write with heart.

I'm often asked if I have advice for aspiring writers. I don't. What the hell do I know? I have my journey . . . all the writers out there have theirs. But I suppose I ascribe to one thing . . . not write what you know. No, I don't really believe that one. Write what you feel. But someone else said that far better.

Put your ear down next to your soul and listen hard.

~Anne Sexton

Thoughts?

Relevance

So last night, Baby Girl came into my room and wanted to watch American Idol. This despite the fact that I was 1) on the phone, and 2) hacking up a lung. So how she heard a thing, I have no idea. Anyway, it was something they call "60s Night" in which singers had to pick a song from the 60s to sing. And the judges--particularly the snarky Simon--kept criticizing these singers because they were not "relevant." At least that's what I got out of it in between talking to my best friend, then sister, then my mother . . . and hacking up said lung. It wasn't that the songs were old. It was that the singers couldn't make the audience relate to them.

Relevance.

I have a book which has an opening story arc in Darfur. Nearly every book I write mentions the main character praying. Mentions Buddhism. In ROCK MY WORLD, one of the rock groups even collects food for the homeless at its concerts. Mark Terry writes about a Homeland Security troubleshooter. Can't get much more relevant than that. Edie Ramer has written a book about women coming to grips with breast cancer. Relevant.

But there's more to relevance than politics or religion or health issues. There's EMOTIONAL relevance. At a book's heart, I think most readers want to relate to the main character. If the main character is so removed from the lives of nearly everyone else, then the book will lack relevance. In other words, I have critiqued books in which the heroine loses everything that has ever mattered to her in her entire life. And doesn't react. And the author will say, "Well, Susie Q is a very tough person. She just wouldn't react to it." And that may and well be true. But if you haven't drawn Susie Q well enough for us to even begin to fathom that, then she will cease to be relevant.

In Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven, when Lily has sex after losing her breast, the scar feels hideous to her, and her lover kisses it--every inch of it. I tried to invoke EVERY person, not just women, who has ever, in this appearance-oriented culture, made love with an enormous sense of insecurity--to invoke the relevance of a scar, or being "imperfect" and its relation to our sexuality.

There isn't a person alive who isn't touched by love, laughter, small moments and large moments of emotional beauty . . . and by loss, illness, pain, and eventually . . . death. We're all going out in a pine box, folks. Or, judging by my recent post on fears, a LOT of us are getting cremated. But the bottom line is this quote from the Dalai Lama:

Under the bright sun, many of us are gathered together with different languages, different styles of dress, even different faiths. However, all of us are the same in being humans, and we all uniquely have the thought of I, and we´re all the same in wanting happiness and in wanting to avoid suffering.
~Tenzin Gyatso

FIND that element in your stories and no matter what you write about, your words will be relevant.

Thoughts?