Sometimes Writing. Always Reading.
In no particular order…
Look what arrived in the mail last week – and finally, I have time to read it! Hooray! Thank you Cindy Pon!
Just busy. I haven’t been able to get much writing done over the last month, thanks to a hectic fall schedule (why do I always forget how busy September can be?).
I have managed to read Cheryl Klein‘s The Magic Words this month though. I’ll try to get a post up about it soon – it’s given me many revision ideas, so I may have more to say about the WIP as well.
Here in New Mexico, the end of summer is chile season. I grow chiles (see the photo 🙂 ) but, like many New Mexicans, in August or September I go to a chile roaster and buy a sack of roasted green to get me through the winter. You can smell the arrival of chile-roasting season: the odor of charred chile wafts over the entire Rio Grande valley.
This smell is just one of many things I love about autumn in New Mexico. The clear blue skies, the warm days and cool nights, the way the colors seem so much brighter…usually mid-August feels like coming home.
This year has been different. I’ve been dreading the end of summer, partly due to day-job drama and partly for reasons I haven’t been able to articulate, even to myself. I’ve been frightened and anxious when I’ve contemplated the arrival of the autumn.
But this morning I woke to the smell of roasted chile. And it gave me faith: faith in myself, that I can deal with the challenges ahead; faith in the turning of the seasons; faith in the beauty of the world.
I finished the draft of my work in progress today…the word “finish” used advisedly (there are various bits that need fixing, now that I’ve gotten to the end and know how things work out). Still, even knowing that there’s significant work to be done before I can hand it to my first-line readers, typing “End” feels so, so good.
This particular project has taken a LONG time in the drafting stage. This is in part because I have been working on it during breaks between other things (two major revisions of another work of fiction, the start-to-finish writing and subsequent revision of a non-fiction book) – it has never once in its lifetime been my only project. It’s also taken a while because, well, sometimes life goes that way.
But I think the biggest reason it has taken me so long to get to the page where I type “END” is my so-called process. I am what Brandon Sanderson has (very generously) called a “Discovery writer.” Some people use the term “pantser” but “by the seat of one’s pants” doesn’t really describe what writing is like for me – it makes it sound kind of like riding bareback on a half-broke horse that’s running off into the sunset.
There are days when writing is like that for me, I suppose, but usually it’s more like spelunking. I start with an idea of where I want to go, and there is definitely a world that confines me. Sometimes I take wrong turns; sometimes I get stuck in narrow passages; sometimes I run out of light and can’t see where I’m going.
Sometimes I stumble into a cavern and look up, and see something like this:
(Looking up and suddenly finding cave art is how many of the famous works of Paleolithic art were identified, BTW. I’m not going to get into my cave-art-discovery-stories geekery right now…maybe another post sometime. This particular image is from Chauvet Cave, which has a particularly cool discovery story. )
To get back to this particular draft, I spent a lot of time at the beginning trying to follow other people’s writing advice, thinking that maybe outlines or story cycles or something would speed me up. But it didn’t. I’m not sorry I tried all those techniques – it’s always interesting to try something new – but in the end, I wound up writing as I always do, groping through the dark with a small lantern, trusting that if I keep on going, I will find the story.
I recently finished Points of Departure: Liavek Stories by Patricia Wrede and Pamela Dean. Liavek, the world in which these stories are set , was created by a group of authors (I think seven; the group included Wrede and Dean, anyway) in the 1980s; this collaborative venture produced 5 collections (all currently out of print). I’d heard of the original anthologies, but I never managed to get a hold of any of them. So when I saw some of the original Liavek stories had been re-issued I was eager to read them.
I enjoyed the anthology as a whole (rare for me; I’m not much of a short-story reader), but I think its strength really is the complex, colorful world of Liavek. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around how a group of authors could create a world together, and write so consistently (at least in the Wrede and Dean stories I read) of it. For me, world-building is really an act of discovery. I know a couple of things about the world and I learn more as I write.
But to create a world as a group, one would have to know more about the world before writing, I would think. Or, if one had a writing group and were sharing stories with them regularly, could it be an organic process in the same way as discovering a world solo?
I have a piece in the 3rd annual SCBWI-NM Enchantment show this month. This is not the first time I’ve participated in the Enchantment show, but it is the first time I was able to make it to the opening reception/reading (it took place last Saturday, on July 9).
The Enchantment show is a fun concept: participating illustrators come up with a piece inspired by a theme (this year’s was “Warm and Fuzzy). Participating authors are assigned one of these illustrations at random, and have to come up with a single-page written piece to accompany the illustration. I am really not a short-form writer, so I began doing this because I thought it would be good practice.
I was right, it turns out: it is good practice, and it’s taken my writing down paths I never would have anticipated. (Poetry???) In addition, the pressure of the “show” aspect (these pieces are hung in the Los Griegos library for all to see) means that I work harder on these pieces than I ever would for a writing exercise meant only for me, which is also good.
And this year, I read my piece at the reception – a brand-new experience and one again, good practice. I like reading aloud (I read my writing aloud while I’m writing it, anyway), I’m a practiced public speaker (even if not about my fiction writing), and this was a small and friendly crowd. I therefore didn’t expect to be nervous. Foolish of me! Reading in front of the illustrator (this year I got a terrific illustration from the fabulous Lois Bradley, an accomplished author-illustrator) made my knees shake as they had in my very early days of giving talks.
Despite my nerves, though, I had fun. Lois spoke a bit about her illustration, I said a few words about mine (titled “The Prickle Runs Amok”), and then read – and then it was over, and I could relax and enjoy the other readings.
Thank you for the wonderful inspiration, Lois – it was an honor to write to your illustration!
The Enchantment show hangs from July 1 – 31 at the Los Griegos branch of the Albuquerque Public Library. If you are in the Albuquerque area, I highly recommend stopping by before it closes!
I have been listening to Performance Today this morning, featuring Andre Watts and Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto. When asked about his relationship with his teacher Leon Fleisher, Watts said that the most important thing Fleisher taught him was to listen – to listen to everything.
It reminded me when I took a class in drawing, many years ago. The class’ first rule was to really look, to see.
Writing, like music and drawing, sharpens my senses. Look, listen, touch: such small things, all a part of everyday life, and yet magic when given full attention.
I mentioned reading David Hutchinson’s book Europe in Autumn in a previous post. I’ve been re-reading it, more slowly this time, to try to figure out my response to this book. I knew, from the first time I read it, that there were aspects of the plot and writing that didn’t work for me. But despite those things, the book sucked me in. It’s always interesting to me when there are obvious flaws and yet I enjoy a book anyway, and since I’ve been writing myself it’s become especially interesting.
The news about Brexit this morning clarified some of my thoughts on Europe in Autumn. This book is set in an alternate near-future Europe, one which has fragmented into numerous nations and polities. Hutchinson does a marvelous job of world-building; his vision of future Europe seems almost prescient, and even more so this morning.
It is the world of Europe in Autumn that drew me in. Like a good dystopian (and I wouldn’t call this book a dystopian, to be clear), its fictional world provides an opportunity for reflection on important themes in the world today. In this book it is questions on the nature of borders and nation-building which come to the fore. The Brexit vote suggests these questions – and by extension, Europe in Autumn – will remain relevant for some time.
The wonderful flurry of reading I experienced in May has trickled off. For the last week or so, I’ve been in a reading lull.
It’s not that I’ve been too busy with other things. Nor am I waiting on the next books on the list to come in at the library, or anything like that. And though I have been writing again (finally! hooray!), it’s not that I can’t read because I don’t want to lose the fictional world I’m writing in. (Though I am beginning to get to this place…)
No, it’s merely that I’m in a reading funk, the literary equivalent of a bad mood. I haven’t been able to get in to any of the books I’ve tried these past days, and so I’ve wound up casting them aside. In some cases, it’s been the book’s fault. But most of my reading problems recently have, I think, been just me.
What to do when this happens? In the past I’ve occasionally been able to snap myself out of it by re-reading a favorite. Re-reading hasn’t worked this time, though – I wind up casting even my favorites aside.
So I’ve been reading cookbooks. Here are a few that I’ve enjoyed while in this lull:
Of course it’s too hot to cook these days…maybe that’s why this is working for me right now. I can simply read and fantasize!
Two weeks ago I plunged into my summer reading pile, and it’s been…satisfying. Incredibly, unusually, remarkably satisfying. While I’ve attempted a few books that I abandoned mid-read, or that I finished but had significant problems with, most of what I’ve picked up have been winners.
Here are a few that I’ve read and particularly enjoyed:
Either a lot of good books are coming out these days, or I did an especially good job on my 2016 summer reading list. Or maybe it’s just luck of the draw?
Back to reading!
For me, the power of fiction (and a lot of non-fiction too) is that it tells a universal truth through the particular – through an individual, or collection of individuals.
Marketing, on the other hand, seems most often to be about generalizations – guessing what most people (be they a category of people, or people in general) will like. I’ve had a problem, personally, with generalizations about people for – well, for as long as I remember. They make me feel like the last kid chosen for the team; they make me feel like I don’t belong.
I’ve known this about myself for a long time. Usually I try not to worry about generalizations and instead just get on with my life. But the business of publishing has to think about marketing. And I, in my search to publish, got hoodwinked into thinking about “marketability” as part of my writing, about “what readers like.” I was told thinking about the industry would make me a better writer, and I bought it.
I was wrong. This kind of thinking killed my ability to write for a while there. It also killed my ability to read. And worst of all, it made me feel like an alien in my own life. Every time I read, a voice in my head would be asking, over and over, “Is this publishable? Why?” Every time I wrote, I felt alone in a sea of faceless generalizations. And more and more that feeling spilled into my everyday life.
So I stopped. I stopped reading industry news; I stopped worrying about being published. And it took a while, but I’m recovering. I can read, and write, again. I may never publish. That’s ok with me.
Not every piece of advice out there works for everyone.
Some of these are recommendations, some are things I’ve been wanting to read for a while, some are rereads. The list grows.
The list is in no particular order.
Most of these are sci-fi/fantasy…where my taste is trending these days. Most are NOT young adult, a deliberate decision (and something I’ll write a post about when I can get my thoughts in some kind of coherent order.)
Oh and, on the cookbook front, the 2016 James Beard Awards were just announced. I put some of the awardees/nominees on my list too:
It’s been a long hard winter here. Spring is usually not my favorite season – in New Mexico it means wind, and lots of it – but this year it has arrived like the promise of a better world. Which it is: I am moving into a season in which I should be less busy, and more open.
In celebration of the new season, I’m making my list for summer reading – another promise of better times to come! I can’t wait to dive into the pile of books that awaits me, and discover a new world.
I’ll be posting reactions to what I’m reading in the coming weeks/months. In the meantime, I welcome all suggestions of books to add to the list!
Earth hard as concrete
beneath my feet and the wind
is unrelenting
I’ve long loved poetry, but – despite the usual embarrassing teenage attempts – I’ve never much written it. I guess that unfortunate teenage poetry stayed with me; I didn’t want to revisit what I’d written then, and it didn’t really occur to me that (of course) what I would write now would be different.
This changed in 2015. I can’t remember where the idea came from, but in mid-March I embarked on a plan to write a poem a day for thirty days. It was funny timing: my poem-a-day month included the first part of April, National Poetry Month, which I didn’t know when I began; and I discovered, too, that there were others doing poem-a-day.
I learned a few things in doing poem-a-day. First, the only way (for me) to do this was to give up any attachment to the poems being any good. A lot of the poems I wrote in this period were as bad as those I wrote as a teenager.
But I also discovered that – like drawing – writing poetry made me really look at the world around me; it drew me to actively observe rather than passively receive.
And I found, too, that words and rhythm came more easily with practice. I started by writing haiku, because it is short and I knew how. The more I wrote, the more my language naturally came out in 5/7/5. When I decided to try other formats, towards the end of my month, the consciousness of rhythm transferred easily to those as well.
I didn’t stick with poem-a-day after my 30 days were up, but I did keep writing poetry. Mostly it’s still not very good. But the practice of writing it has given me so many gifts, I cannot give it up.
Holidays are when I catch up on my pleasure reading. I have a big stack of things to read over the next two weeks (and can’t wait to do so). But here are a few of the books I read and enjoyed earlier this year, in no particular order.
Warning: this list is almost certainly incomplete. I should probably start doing periodic lists of stuff I’ve recently enjoyed, if only to keep track of what I’ve been reading for myself….
“Well, I believe there’s no failure, there’s just feedback. . And if you’re a growth mindset person then you take the feedback, and you learn from it and you get better. It doesn’t mean you tell everybody about what you’re learning and tell everybody that you failed at your game. I don’t think you have to do that, but privately and internally in this locker room we have a group that looks at ourselves in the mirror and if it’s not working, they’re honest, I’m honest – we change it and correct and we’re not naĂŻve.”
Portland Timbers coach Caleb Porter, after winning the MLS Cup (http://www.timbers.com/post/2015/12/06/quotes-notes-columbus-crew-sc-1-portland-timbers-2-2015-mls-cup)