The recent death

of a good friend led me to ponder the nature of obituaries. In Ann Hood’s novel The Obituary Writer, the main character has the ability to bring the deceased to life through her writing. People travel long distances with the stories of their loved ones because they know the writer will deliver an obituary that reveals the true nature of the person who has passed. Her obituaries bring readers to tears.

These days obituaries are a listing of birth and death dates; of accomplishments, awards and organizations; of family who have passed before and those that remain. None of these facts alone give the reader insight into the character of the deceased. Few papers, in print or online, offer an “old-style” obituary. One that I know of is the Delta Independent of Delta, Colorado. They give a fuller picture of the deceased by publishing often lengthy obits that mention small, insightful, facts.

“…he dreamed of owning his own ranch.”

“She was drawn to the nursing field due to her illness.”

“She moved to San Diego where she built airplanes.”

These seemingly innocuous details lend humanity to the stark facts of life and death. They each could be the basis of a story, perhaps even a novel. Many writers do biographies of their characters. I have heard this suggested at writers conferences and read it as advice in writer’s magazines. But if your bio is only a string of facts, your character will never have a full life. I’m thinking of writing not bios of my characters, but obituaries that reflect the most important details of their lives—the enduring dreams and life changing moments. It seems to me that it is the little things that individualize and surprise us.

As for my friend— he was an avid historian who rode horses until his knees gave out.

And we will all miss him.

It’s a question that arises often, at least for me.

I bet you could name an author who gives a lot of detail in their story telling — Clive Cussler comes to mind — a well as one who doesn’t. I brought a story to my writing group and received the suggestion that I be more detailed in the character’s movements. The scene is one where the main character is picking up broken glass from the kitchen floor and cuts her foot. The group member who made the aforementioned suggestion wanted to see the character take a step before mentioning she had cut her foot.

It’s tough to walk the ditch between too much detail and not enough. As with most things in art, it’s subjective. I remember a scene in Wylie Cash’s first book, A Land More kind Than Home, where the young boy at the center of the novel makes a peanut butter sandwich. The boy is grieving, traumatized, and caught in a confusing position. Cash goes into great detail on the boy making the sandwich: spreading the peanut butter, the jelly, etc. I thought it was a wonderful way to show the boy’s angst. The intense detail on the action gave poignancy to the small act. My good friend, a prolific reader, thought it was too much.

And so it goes.

A writer’s style is made up of small decisions. I think one of them is this question of detail. I tend toward the sparse, believing the reader will be able to fill in the gaps. Writing the sentence “She got into the car and drove off,” is not very evocative, but “she opened the car door, sat down in the driver’s seat, closed the car door and inserted the key, turning it to the right to start the engine then depressed the accelerator while shifting into reverse” and on and on would be way too much. However, if I were to write, “She got into the car, closing the door on her skirt” would that be enough for the reader to know she was in a hurry? Would I have to add, “in her haste”?

If my character is picking glass off the floor and cuts her foot, do I need to say where exactly she stepped on the shard? I don’t know. Maybe. I am rewriting the story and will look carefully at my absence of detail.

In the meantime, what do you think? What writers do you love to read that do one or the other. I’ll sit here and pick my nose while you think.

I recently joined the writers/readers sharing site Wattpad

on the recommendation in Joan Curtis’ article 7 Tips to Help Writers Gain Attention in the World of Fiction posted on the writer’s blog Live Write Thrive. I had never even heard of Wattpad before. Turns out it is Google’s version of Amazon’s Write On, a readers/writers sharing site for Kindle. Since every one says I need to raise my web profile, I figured I would give Wattpad a whirl. The first thing I noticed was that the site seems to cater to younger readers and writers of YA or NA lit. Then I found out that Margaret Atwood is a member. She posted a wonderful, adult, short story from her new collection and ran a contest related to it. Hummmmm.

This started me wondering how sharing sites fit in with literary magazine sites. Anyone can put everything, good or bad, up on a sharing site. Lit mags have editors to reject pieces that don’t fit their standards and criteria. This gives a story published on a site such as Atticus Review more cache, even though there is no payment involved. One of the purposes of sharing sites is to expose new writers to publishers and agents that, supposedly, cruise the sites looking for new talent. This, of course, is one of the perks associated with lit mags. The advice given at conferences and on agent blogs is to get your work in these lit mags to build your credentials – otherwise known as platforms. Sharing sites do not count when building platforms.

So is it worth ‘publishing’ your story or novel, or pieces of your story or novel, on a sharing site? I question whether putting a piece up on Wattpad would disqualify it from being published later in a lit mag or contest. The Wattpad site says that it can be; I wonder what a lit mag such as Atticus would say.

I suppose that Wattpad would tell me that none of this is the point of their site. Their business model is to bring readers and writers together – period. They have had remarkable success so far with 30 million readers world-wide. And you don’t have to have an e-reader!

I’m interested enough to be considering which piece to put up on Wattpad.

What do you think about Wattpad and sharing sites like it? Are you on one?

Let me know.

 

I have written a prologue for novel two

but have yet to actually attach it to the body of the work. My hesitation at actually beginning the book with a prologue is a matter of, “they all say not to.” I have heard numerous speakers on the subject—though it is never tackled as a subject in and of itself. It is usually tucked into a larger speech on fiction writing, if said speaker is an author, or on selling fiction, if speaker is an editor or agent. It makes its appearance under things to avoid. No publisher, I am told, will ever publish a book with a prologue because they, and so their readers, hate them.

I Googled prologues and found at least a dozen expounding on using and, most often, not using a prologue. I also found quite a few sites listing “Famous Prologues” and even a book for sale listing them. I suspect that book was written by a frustrated prologue writer, but I have no proof. One blogger suggested the most famous prologue is the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, a bit of a stretch since there is no prologue in that wonderful book. Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books by Francis Bacon et al. is a free book that I have yet to consult as is the Harvard Classics Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books by Charles William Eliot. Both give me pause as they were written in previous centuries – like the seventeenth!

Does this mean the prologue is dead? I think not. In fact, the last two books I read, the book I am reading now, and one of the books on my to read list have prologues. They are all, however, by established writers so maybe that’s the catch. If I sell the first novel, may I have a prologue in the second? Unsure.

I like my prologue and am leaning toward using it, even though it might be frowned upon. After all, Tis far nobler!

Call me stupid,

but up until last year I had never heard of the em-dash. Now I see it everywhere. For those who are as unenlightened as I was, the em-dash is used to mark an interruption in a sentence. A great many people use dashes in this way but that, apparently, is wrong. So why the proliferation of the em-dash? It could be because of its quaint use of a dash in its name, kind-of ironic since it is used instead of a dash in a sentence. Or perhaps it is just the em-dash’s time in the sun. Do punctuation marks go in and out of fashion, just like paisley print? Perhaps.

Case one—Faulkner. A randomly picked sentence from The Unvanquished, “We left Ab Snopes and his men in the woods beyond the bivouac, and Granny and Ringo and I drove up to Colonel Newberry’s tent at exactly the right time, and Granny passed the sentry and went into the tent, walking thin and straight, with the shawl over her shoulders and Mrs. Compton’s hat on her head and the parasol in one hand and hers and Ringo’s General Smith order in the other, and Ringo and I sat in the wagon and looked at the cook fires about the grove and smelled the coffee and the meat.”

Try reading that aloud in one breath. I dare you. Point is: Faulkner used commas in a way that would be unthinkable today. If you showed this sentence to my writing group, we would all suggest dividing it into separate sentences. Of course nobody is Faulkner, so that may be an unfair example.

When I was in college, the favored punctuation was the semi-colon. You saw it everywhere. Now, sadly, it is confined mostly to non-fiction. It has had its day. Enter the em-dash.

But maybe I am being to judgmental. Let’s look at the longest sentence ever written. I won’t quote it here. It’s too long. You can find it at http://www.theblogmocracy.com/2010/04/15/the-longest-sentence-ever-written/ . Semi-colons and em-dashes join forces with, of all things, the asterisk!

But then the sentence was written in the 18th century when they didn’t understand fashion.
Boy, would my writing group have a field day with that one!

Occasionally,

I get caught talking to myself. I imagine people think I’m on the edge of sanity, if not slipping down the side. In fact, I am holding a staff meeting. Don’t snicker. Think about the for traditional staff meetings:

1) To go over the accomplishments over a stated period of time—or lack thereof
2) To evaluate those successes and/or failures
3) To set new goals reflecting what has been learned based on successes and/or failures
4) To set new time tables for production
5) To build co-operation and communication between staff members

For a writer this means:

1) Dwelling on rejections while trying to concentrate your attention on acceptances
(“I made 50 bucks this quarter on a story. Besides, The Paris Review doesn’t know a good poem from a croissant.”)
2) 50 bucks is better than nothing
3) Maybe that piece wasn’t right for the Paris Review
4) I will rewrite that poem before sending it out again. I will start on at least one new story every day. I will get back to unfinished novel # 32. I will finish it all by spring, or fall, or next week, or next month.
5) I will listen to my husband and critique groups suggestions with an open mind. I will not pout.

Ok, that last one is expanding the definition of “staff.” This is necessary for a writer to do at some point in order to get outside opinions and keep from talking ONLY to oneself. That would be just crazy.

“Who me?”
“Yes you!”
“Couldn’t be”
(To be accompanied by clapping of hands and a rhythmic top-thigh slapping.)
And so it is my turn to be called out –To Blog.
Oh the pain, the horror, for someone who never kept a diary, who always found it tiresome to talk about myself, even in locked pages. I supposed that is one reason I love fiction. It’s not about me—yet it is. Good fiction tugs at me, reminds me of my own experiences, elicits feelings. Sometimes a book will stay with me long after I am finished reading it. I think about the characters in the shower, muse on its plot while on walks, ponder its rhythms. This happens when a book comes close to me and applies to all fiction including the light fluff beach book, the predictable detective novel, the stereotypical thriller. The good ones have something in them, in their storytelling, in their protagonist or villain that echoes our own voice as in a cave.
The game is called “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar.” Remember it? Does it bring back a memory? Make you smile? Remind you of your kindergarten teacher or your first best friend?
That’s good fiction.

Thus endith my first Blog

ME