Attitudes

Today I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen for about a year.

She said to me, “Are you still writing?”

I’ve had this question put to me many times in my life.  I don’t think the question is asked of anyone but people in the arts.  Sometimes it even comes from people who are in the arts.  An actor once asked me this.

But the best one was an old editor of mine who I bumped into in an elevator.  The elevator was in a building where the publishing company was located.

“Are you still writing, Sandra?”

“No, Roger” I said.  “I’m a brain surgeon now.”

He didn’t blink because I don’t think he was listening to my answer.

Why do people ask this question?  I think if you’re a writer, painter, etc. people don’t take what you do seriously.  They don’t think it’s work.  They view it as if it was a hobby.  They can’t equate arranging words on a paper or putting paint on a canvas as work.  Especially writing, because everybody writes. And an awful lot of people think they can write more than a letter if only they had the time.

A man I know who had been sick said, “I wouldn’t have gotten through my illness if I hadn’t had mysteries to read.  Now that I’m better I’m going to write one to give back what I’ve gotten.”

I wanted to pop him one, but I didn’t.  Even I have restraint at times.  Afterall, he’d been sick.

Today when I was asked the question I said, “I’m taking a little break now.”  And I didn’t ask her if she was still practicing law.  

Quote

"The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat's mat is a story."

John LeCarre

Reading

I may never read a book again.  Is it me or is it the books?  I know I’m having a terrible time focusing because of conditions I can’t control.  But that’s getting better.  I have less to do.  So why hasn’t my desire to read returned?

I can read newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc.  But not books.  I read fiction almost exclusively.  Occasionally a non-fiction book will peak my interest.  But nothing interests me now.

At the moment I have two new novels from the library.  I put them on a request list months ago.  I was anxious to read them because both are written by authors I like.  I’ve started both and stopped both.

Before that I read about 385 pages of a 400 page novel and stopped.  I had no idea what I’d read and, of course, didn’t give a damn about the ending.  This has never happened to me before.  I give a book about 25 pages and if it doesn’t grab me I don’t read it.  Sometimes I can tell in 10.  But 385?

I don’t actually think it’s the books.  It’s me. Reading is one of the great pleasures of my life and not being able to do that leaves me feeling empty.

This is great: I can’t write and I can’t read.  Daytime TV?  Not yet.

An Excuse I Don't Want

I’m home but I have certain responsiblilities that make it not only impossible to think about writing, but untenable to write.  It makes me sad.

I think I want the choice to be mine.  Not something that is imposed on me.  It will be six weeks before I can focus on myself and make some sort of stab at what I want to do.

There’s a flash fiction project going on and I can’t even do that although I’d like to.

From time to time I’ll try to write things here that pertain to writing even though it’s not my personal struggle.  This and that as they occur to me and I have a moment or two.  Maybe no one will read it but it’ll be good for me if I can do it.  I guess I don’t want to be out of this altogether.

 

Musing

I hope my regular readers don’t abandon me while I’m in this state.  I hope one day you’ll drop in and read that I’ve begun something.

Meanwhile, perhaps this tells you what can happen to a writer at my stage in a career.  The fact is I don’t have a career at this time.  I have lots of work behind me, but now … nothing.  And no publisher is waiting for me to turn in anything.

As this stage has gone on and on I realized I’ve been derailed by many things.  Not all of them my doing.  We all know that the state of publishing is a mess.  So this doesn’t make me want to knock myself out trying to get back on track.

I’m a writer and my natural state is to be writing.  Still, knowing that probably nothing will happen to anything I write is depressing.  This isn’t my imagination.  I have a track record and you’re only as good as your last book.  In other words, how much money you made for the publisher.

This is understandable.  Publishing is a business.  My career has not been a splashy one.  Pretty steady though.  Once I started publishing only one book of mine was rejected…never published.  So it’s hard to think of writing knowing it might end up in a drawer.  I’m not used to it.

Yes, I put 200 pages in a drawer a year ago, but that was by choice.  I’m talking about a finished manuscript.  Anyone who tells you they write for the sake of writing is either a liar or a fool.

If and when I start again, the knowledge that what I’m writing may never be published will always be with me.  During most of my career I wondered, never sure I’d sell a book, but this is different. 

I’m nearer to the end instead of the beginning. Or even the middle.  It’s harder here.

The New Year That Wasn't

I did say that I’d know by now and I do.  Things have turned out to thwart any new beginning at this time.

I’m not sure exactly how long I’ll be unable to consider writing.  It looks like six to eight weeks.  I’ll be away from home for about five days and with lack of concentration or focus no writing will occur except for email and this blog.  And I’m not sure how that works in a hotel.  The wireless thing, I mean.

I’d be foolish to think I could begin something during this period.  And when I get home I’ll be very busy doing other things.  So two months more or less before I consider writing again.

Yes, I’m relieved in a way, but I don’t admit to that.  I tell myself I would’ve come up with something good and I’d be back on track again.

It could’ve happened, I guess.  But this isn’t the end of the line.  It’s a postponement. At least that’s what I tell myself.

A New Year

A writer friend wrote me, after reading this blog, to wish me the “September Fever.”   

I knew exactly what she was talking about because after all this time I still think of September as the beginning of the year.  A time to start new things.  An excellent time to start writing a new book.

For many years that’s exactly what I’ve done.  But this year, for various reasons, starting a new anything is not in the cards.  It’s out of my control, a state I’ve never been comfortable with.

The worst part of this is that I’m not sure I want to start a new novel.  How many months have I been saying that I’m finished writing?  It’s only in the last weeks that I’ve been suspicious of that stance.

Herbert Gold says, writers never stop writing, are “always on the lookout for the next book.”

“Writers can’t serve 30 years and then earn release to play golf, wear a baseball cap, enterain themselves by negotiating shopping carts down the aisles of the local supermarket.”

I’ve always believed this, but I know I won’t be sitting here hitting the keys on September 2nd.  That’s a given for a reason out of my control.  And after that things will depend on what happens on September 2nd.

For anyone who has been a constant reader of this blog, you know that even if everything turns out all right, I won’t start on September 3rd because it’s a Wednesday.  Whoever heard of starting anything in the middle of the week?

If I’m lucky I might want to begin writing on Monday September 8th.  And if I want to I can only hope that circumstances allow me to do so. 

Quote

“My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college."

Kurt Vonnegut

My life goes on but my writing doesn’t.  I think it was Freud who said that to have a happy life you need both love and work.  I have one but not the other.  I’ve had both and I was happier.

So sit right down and go back to work, you say.  It’s not so simple.  I keep thinking that I’ll do that in the fall despite my insistence of retirement.

It’s true that I was tired of the routine, but I’ve had a rest and now I feel I want to write.  Perhaps that’s because at this moment I can’t. I may be fooling myself.  Once I can I might not want to.  That remains to be seen.

The point is that at this moment I feel I want to write, feel I would if I could.

One Step Forward

I can read again.  I’ve almost finished a novel.  And I think my not writing might have something to do with a situation I can do nothing about.  The situation will change, but I don’t know when.

It’s not magic and I know it doesn’t mean that when the situation changes I’ll plunk myself down here and bat out the first chapter of something. 

But I do notice that I have a sense of longing.

Arrrrrghhhh!

No second line has come to me.  I have no desire to find one. 

I thought about going back to writing YAs.  My agent has suggested it and so have friends.  I’ve published 5.  But the thing is that would require writing.

I did have a heady moment when I thought it would be okay to write one with another person.  And then the idea deflated like a sick balloon.

Since then (about a week ago)  I’ve felt hostile toward the act of writing.

Worse than that is that I can’t read.  I start something and then I put it down.  I’ve had periods like this before but somehow this one is making me mad.  Everything is making me mad.

 

 

A Tiny Conundrum

I’ve had a first line for about a week.  I think it’s a great first line.  So? What am I doing writing first lines anyway?  I’m the retired writer.

But what to do when a beauty of a line comes buzzing into your brain?  Dodge it?  Black it out?  Give it to someone else?  God no.

I went to Word and typed it on the blank page making it no longer blank.  And that’s where it is now.  One line.  No company.

Is it lonely?  Maybe.  But I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.  I think of that line a lot.  I’ll be making the bed and the line pops into my mind.  It makes me smile.  I wash a dish and I say it silently.

It’s no big deal to have an opening line, you say.  You’re right.  So why am I blathering about it?  You tell me.

Quote

"Write as often as possible, not with the idea at once of getting into print, but as if you were learning an instrument."

J.B. Priestley

Flash Fiction

” With gas prices rising they had to change their plans.”  This was the sentence given for this particular piece of flash fiction.  One had to use it somewhere in the 750 word piece.  Mine is below. Links to the other writer’s pieces can be found here. 

———————————————————————

     With gas prices rising their plans had to change.  They had little money to begin with and getting away by car seemed impossible now.

     Betty Rae wanted to push Kenny’s head through the windshield because he was ready to give up on the whole thing. 

     “What are we supposed to do, B.R., go by donkey cart?”

     “You’re not funny.  This is serious.”

     “But how’re we gonna get away after?  We need money for food and stuff.  Can’t go paying no six twenty-five a gallon.  The way this fuckin crate eats up gas we’ll be outta money before we pass the county line.”

     “We gotta think a something else.” She knew she was the one who had to think of a plan because Kenny never thought of anything.  What was she doing with this moron, anyway? She should never’ve broken up with Bing.  Her mother always snarled when she talked about him.

     “Betty Rae, can’t you do better than a boy named Bing Cherry?”

     It wasn’t his fault that was his name.  Wasn’t like he named himself.     Wait a minute. Bing had a Vespa.  And she knew where he kept a spare key.

     “You ever driven a Vespa, Kenny?”

     “A what?”

     “Vespa.  It’s like a motorcycle only smaller.”

     “You mean like a mobed.”

     “Moped.”

     “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

     She wasn’t going to argue with him because there wasn’t time for that now. 

     “So you never drove a Vespa, right?”

     “Right.”

     “Thing is, you get a lotta miles to the gallon with them.”

     “So what? 

     “I know where we can get one.”  She told him about it.

     “And you can drive it?” he said.

     “Easy.”

     “Cool. Let’s get her then.”

     Kenny started the old Ford and drove over to Bing’s. He was in Iraq and Betty Rae knew his parents both worked.  Kenny parked around the corner and they walked to Bing’s house, up the driveway and peeked through the garage window. 

     There it was with a grey cover over it.

     “What if it don’t have gas in it?”

     “Shut up.”  She went over to the flower bed near the side of the house, dug around in the dirt and came up with the key.  She held it up to Kenny like a trophy.

     When they went to open the garage doors they discovered they were locked.

     “Now what?”

     She looked at him with contempt, took off her shirt, walked to the side of the garage, wrapped the shirt around her hand and punched a hole in the window.

     “Jesus, B.R.”

     “Nobody’ll hear us.”  She put her shirt back on, pulled out the pieces of glass stuck in the frame, climbed through, came around and raised the door for Kenny.

     They didn’t say anything and went over to the Vespa. 

     Betty Rae pulled the cover off the machine. It was a wild purple, like she remembered.  She kicked the stand, threw a leg over the seat, put in the key, and tried to get it started.

     “Bet it has no gas in it,” Kenny said.

     “Anyone ever tell you you’re a goddamn pessimist?”

     “Not so I remember.”

     “Well, you are and it’s a big drag.”

     “Sorry.”

     One more try and the engine gurgled to life.

     “Get on.” She could see he didn’t want to so she gave him her I’ll kill you if you don’t look.

     He slowly took his seat behind her and she drove out of the garage, down the driveway and onto the street.

     “Hey, my car’s the other way.”

     “Fuck the car.  We don’t need it. Listen. We’ll go to my house and get the gun.  And you’ll do like we planned.  Then we’ll get outta town on this.”

     Her fucking parents were on disability so they’d both be home.  Shithead would be watching Oprah in the living room and Pigface would be glugging wine and smoking cigarettes in the kitchen.   

     Kenny would kill her father first while she was in the kitchen with her mother.  The stupid bitch would hear the shot but before she could do anything Betty Rae would stab her and then Kenny’d come in and shoot her.  After, Betty Rae would pull the jar out from behind the pipes under the sink and take the money.

     But what if Kenny got cold feet?  He wouldn’t because he knew she’d kill him if he didn’t do like she said.

     “Waaatch ooou…,” Kenny screamed.

     They hit the car in front, bounced off and smashed into the telephone pole.

     Neither one was wearing a helmet.

 

Will Wonders Never Cease?

Those of you who read this blog know I balked at writing a short story last year. Then I did it and it was published in the anthology HELL OF A WOMAN.  From there it was picked to be included in  A Prisoner of Memory: And 24 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories.  This came as a great surprise to me.

However, in cleaning out a trunk I found a rolled up scroll which turned out to be a certificate of merit in recognition of winning Honorable Mention in the Regional Scholastic Writing Awards for New Jersey. Yes, for a short story.  I have no memory of this or the story I wrote when I was fourteen.

I guess I wrote short stories back then.

Coming up at the end of the week is my first try at Flash Fiction.  It’s okay, I didn’t know what FF was either when I heard about it.  It isn’t much, but I actually wrote something.

Another New Chapter

I’ve been walking around with a low-grade depression for weeks. Now something has lifted it for me.  I think I miss writing. Everything I’ve said before this is true.  I didn’t miss it and I was feeling fine about it, enjoying myself. 

I still hate the idea of a routine. But I realized that three days a week I get up to an alarm anyway because I go to an excercise class.  This means that three nights a week I go to bed at the same time I did when writing.  That is part of the routine I was sick of.  The other part is writing itself.  Or was.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to plunge into some big project or even a small one.  The fact is, I don’t know what it means.

There are adjustments I have to make.  I have to accept that I’m not in the thick of things anymore.  It’s not twenty some years ago when I was in on starting Sisters In Crime.  I don’t have loads of writer friends.  Many of them have stopped writing (or stopped getting published) and I don’t live in NYC.  There’s a whole new crop of wonderful writers out there and it’s their turn now…as it should be. Going on book tours is a thing of the past for me.  I’m not grieving for that.  I could still go to conventions but I don’t want to.  Again, that’s really for the new kids on the block.

This is a fresh chapter for me.  I’m not sure what will be in  it, but I guess I’ll find out.  I have no illusions about this.  And I hope no delusions. 

As always, I don’t know how I got from there to here.

Sleepless in Southold

Last night I had a helluva time falling asleep.  I think it was because I ate a chocolate cookie…very chocolate…too late.  But it was also because I was reading a short story by Alice Munro.

I started to think about stories again.  When I put out the light to try to force myself to sleep, I could only think of ss ideas.

I don’t know what it means.  I’m not saying I’m going to write any, but something is happening.  I’ve noticed my ears are perking up when other people are having conversations.

Writing a ss is not a huge commitment the way a novel is.  On the other hand I’ve always felt writing one was wasting time.  I have to do something about this idea.  This way of thinking.

That’s all.

Word Count

Jess has asked this question:

“In all your years of writing books, did you ever come up short in word count?”

Word count never came up until I signed with Ballantine about five years ago.  No one said anything about it.  I wrote until it was finished. Some books were longer than others.  I guess I went by feel.  Or to put it another way, the characters told me when it was time to get out of there.

Then when I got the Ballantine contract it said I had to turn in a book with 95,000 words.  I’d never seen anything like that in a contract before.  I’d spent my career paring down my writing.  My aim was to not have a wasted word. The joke was on me.

Years ago 65,000 words was the length of the average novel. Thomas Wolfe was an exception. I had no idea what word count I had in any novel I’d published.  But I felt that 95,000 words might be too many for a P.I. novel.  I got them to agree to 85,000, which I still thought might be too long, but I had to sign the contract with that word count. And my book came in around that length.

Still, I think dictating the amount of words a writer must punch out is destructive.  Sometimes a very long novel is self-indulgent.  I can think of quite a few.  On the other hand, very short novels might leave a reader feeling cheated. 

If you’re worried about getting a book up to a certain word count you’re bound to load it with filler. We’ve all read books like this and it’s a big bore.  Even if it lands on the bestseller list.  Boring.

A writer must do what he/she feels comfortable with.  Thinking about word counts might take the life out of the novel especially if you’re new at writing.  But times have changed and publishing houses have new rules. 

I think it’s sad that these rules and regulations have come into play.  Asking for a specific word count is as bad as asking a writer to write a book like Dan Brown or Mary Higgins Clark.  Or Virginia Wolfe.  But no one would ask you to write like her.

If getting published is more important to you than writing what you want to write then, by all means, do your word count.

I believe you have to write like you and you have to write until you come to the end.

Quote

"Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself."

Truman Capote

FRIDAYS: The Book You Have to Read.

From Patti Abbott

This is the first of what I perhaps overly optimistically hope will become Friday recommendations of books we might have forgotten over the years. Not just from me, but from everyone. I have asked several people to join with me today and recommend favorite books of theirs. Their blog sites are listed below. I also asked each of them to tag someone to recommend a book for next Friday.

I’m worried that we are letting some great books of the recent past slide out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we can all name perhaps, but that group of books that comes next. If you read a book that someone recommends, please call our attention to that too. It would be nice to think a recommendation had an impact on someone somewhere.

Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

If you’re looking for a fast read, this isn’t for you. Bowen's people are keenly aware and the reader must stay right there with her, because hidden among lengthy descriptions of sea air and drawing-room politics are terse asides.

This is a story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties. Portia, an orphan, comes to live in London with her half-brother, Thomas, and his wife, Anna.

It’s Portia’s innocence that causes so much trouble. She isn’t trained to deal with London society or with boys or with the isolation she endures. Anna and Thomas live dull, sterile lives.

Unfortunately for Portia, she falls in with Anna's friend Eddie, who seems to be made entirely of bad motives. Though the plot follows Portia's relationship with Eddie, the novel's real tension lies between Portia and Anna.

There is a stunning romantic betrayal and it sets in motion one of the most moving and desperate flights of the heart in modern literature.

For me this is the best of Bowen’s novels.

For the others go to Patti's Blog