Borrowing From the Dead by Francine Mathews

Borrowing From the Dead

By Francine Mathews

A long time ago, before I was a journalist or an intelligence analyst or the mother of two boys, I was a graduate student in History atStanfordUniversity.  As part of the ordeal that was my third year, I was expected to do nothing but Read for Orals.  This is a hoop through which every grad student must jump—seven or eight months of sitting in the deep chairs of a campus library, staring blindly at texts, preparing to answer any question a panel of experts might pose.  I gave up somewhere in month two and read Dorothy Sayers instead.

I discovered, however, that I love history not for the statistics or the dates or the succession of events it records—but for the characters that it brings to life.  Lives of glamour or suffering; lives of crazy triumph.  Lives of utter evil, unredeemed by a plot twist at the close.  Lives, maybe, like yours and mine…except for that fact that they’re over and done with.  History.

I began to look at the Dead through a different lens.  They’re all characters, waiting to be used, their remarkable lives better than fiction.  History is written by the victors, of course; which is another way of saying that history is a fabrication, an interpretation, a riff on what might have happened…or the basis for a novel.  Where would Hilary Mantel be without Thomas Cromwell?  Or Philippa Gregory without that Other Boleyn Girl?

I’ve written twenty-two books over the past two decades, half of them about Jane Austen.  I’ve taken liberties with Virginia Woolf and Allen Dulles and Queen Victoria, and none of them has complained.  My latest—JACK 1939, which follows a college kid named Jack Kennedy through Europe as it teeters on the brink of war—feels like the most audacious borrowing I’ve done yet.  But these books work because they begin with a plausible what-if: a moment of doubt in the official record, a gap in what is known.  Virginia Woolf goes for a walk on March 28, 1941, with a dubious note propped on her mantelpiece; but her body isn’t pulled from the Stour until twenty days later.  What if she boarded a train that March afternoon, instead of killing herself?  What happened during the subsequent three weeks—and why did she end up in the river?

Now that’s an interesting story.  I called it The White Garden.

For these parallel universes to feel plausible, however —for the true suspension of disbelief—I think it’s essential to hew as much as possible to fact.  When I start to mold history, I first want to know the facts.  If I’m seized by a what-if, seduced by its novelistic possibilities, I immerse myself in research until I’ve educated myself on the subject.  Take JACK 1939, for example.

The facts: Jack Kennedy skipped the spring semester of his Harvard junior year to research his senior thesis.  He traveled alone for six months through Europe as Hitler was mobilizing to invadePoland.  He interviewed anybody official, Nazi or otherwise, who could understand English or his execrable French.  He was inLondon,Paris, Val d’Isère, Danzig,Prague,Munich,Berlin,Warsaw,Latvia,Moscow.  We know roughly when he was there from the letters archived in the Kennedy Library.

The fiction: Jack, the son of theUS ambassador toEngland, is tapped by Franklin Roosevelt to act as a spy while he travels through Europe—because the Nazis are trying to buy the 1940 election for Wendell Wilkie andRoosevelt has absolutely no intelligence service.

It’s the architecture of the plot that marries fact with fiction.  I set myself parameters when I’m working with a real life: If I place Jack inMoscow, it must be roughly when he was actually there; but his documented trip toJerusalemfit nowhere in my plot, and was therefore elided.  Yes, I give him guns and secret codes and a bombshell sidekick, but I strive to be true to my sense of who Jack was as a young man—which is somewhat different from the President he became.  In researching young Jack, I’m struck by his chronic and severe illness; by the weeks he spent in hospitals as a kid; by the loneliness of confronting mortality at a young age; by the incessant reading his isolation and boredom encouraged.  If you’re going to borrow a character from the Dead, you have to make him your own. My Jack is analytic, yearning, desperate for connection but fearful of loss; a boy who uses his charm and his smile to keep the world at arm’s length.

In the end, it’s the characters we follow—they act as our guides in how to live.  It’s the characters who keep me writing.

That, and a History habit I just can’t kick.

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Francine Mathews also writes as Stephanie Barron.

Over My Shoulder by Kevin Desinger

by Kevin Desinger, Author of The Descent of Man

I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.  —Twain

When my agent Gail agreed to represent my manuscript, she said there was a rule of thumb that such books shouldn’t be longer than three hundred pages. At the time mine was that plus one, and—this being my first published novel—I assumed we were almost there. Alas, we were not almost there. In the next nine months she and I each reread the entire manuscript three times and removed seventeen pages of clutter.

Fortunately for me, the first round of cuts dealt primarily with what I think of as scaffolding: material needed (by this writer, at least) to construct a first draft. I can’t know until later drafts whether this or that scene or character will matter, so it or he or she remains and gets developed and polished along with the rest. And now, after years of working alone, I had someone basically reaching past me to point at a paragraph and say, “Why is that there?” If I hadn’t seen it as scaffolding, some of those early phone sessions may have grown a little warm.

One afternoon, after a half hour of rewording and tightening, Gail said, “You’re going to kill me for this,” and suggested cutting a full page of dialogue on which I had used everything from massage oil to a spike maul to make it just right. I loved that exchange, but to her it was nothing more than an aside. She had been unerring on her other edits so, stifling a mix of defensiveness and heartbreak, I selected the whole thing and dragged it into a separate file, which I titled “Cut,” and tapped the save button on my keyboard. Without working up a transition, and keeping in mind that I could always put things back the way they were, I reread the chapter. I didn’t miss the conversation in the slightest. It was almost disappointing.

Later, I realized that all the time we were on the phone I had been waiting for her to target those lines, was just beginning to think that I would get away with keeping them when she said, “And one last thing…” I’m sure that part of my attachment came from having worked so hard on them. And part of why I had worked so hard was because they had always seemed somewhat extraneous.

This became a model for the rest of my work with her, and later with Greg, co-publisher at Unbridled Books: before wasting energy over the sense behind an edit, I dragged the material in question into my Cut file, saw that the sentences leading into and away from the removal were contiguous, and reread the section. If I didn’t notice a difference, I simply moved on.

My Cut file grew.

Publishing a novel has been likened to sending a child into the world. It’s time for you to let go now, time for it to begin life away from you, the creator, you who put so much time and effort—so much of yourself—into helping it become what it is. Eventually, you hope to hear that it is doing well.

For me any real sense of this didn’t sink in until after Gail decided it was time to send it around. Greg made an offer, we accepted, and he became my second editor. Because Gail and I had worked so meticulously—questioning the existence of each word, it seemed—once again I thought we were almost there, that with a few tweaks it would be ready. Wrong again. Now working under the deadline of a release date, in the following three months we reread the manuscript another three times and cut another seventeen pages.

We were two phone conversations into the process when I realized that we were no longer working on my novel (and here I felt a brief panic); we were working on our novel. I stopped in the middle of whatever I was saying and let the information penetrate. I wonder now if Greg can sense this as it happens, when the first-time novelist suddenly realizes that the once privately owned piece of writing has become community property.

Toward the end of the process, as we were ironing out the tiny details, I apologized for missing some pretty obvious errors. (How many times can I look at “I was just working on it just now,” and not see the repetition?) Greg said, “Well, you must be snow blind!” Indeed, I was staring into a blizzard of meaningless words.  With the deadline looming, I completed the final adjustments and gave a parent’s sigh.

Now that the book has been published the Cut file is no longer active. Along with other files created around that time, it is tucked into a folder whose title I don’t recall. For the sake of this essay I considered looking, but it’s more true to my effort here to shrug it off. I imagine if I were to try reading through all those sentences and paragraphs, I would wonder why any of it ever mattered to me. I won’t, though, not even out of curiosity. I have no interest in opening the door to that dusty room.

Read our review of The Descent of Man; http://wp.me/p2DwkQ-7L2

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Kevin Desinger graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop before moving to Portland, where he wrote for the Willamette Week, the Oregonian and a number of regional publications. An earlier short story appeared in The Missouri Review. This is his first novel.

Blogger Power

Blogger Power

By Sandra Brannan

Imagine someone trying to murder an 80-year-old woman in hospice during her last mile in life’s journey.  You’ve just envisioned the first chapter of Widow’s Might, the third book in my Liv Bergen mystery thriller series.  What would possibly motivate a person to take such a risk when the only gain would appear to be a handful of days difference in the timing of the woman’s ultimate demise?  She’s already in a drug-induced semi-conscious state to combat the pain, too far gone to realize her husband was murdered three days earlier.

I asked myself that question, a seemingly implausible ‘What If’, to create a plot with the goal of suspending a reader’s disbelief.  I use this technique with creating all my stories.  The premise for In The Belly Of Jonah, my debut novel in 2010, was whether or not I could convince readers that a jet stream of water could be used as a murder weapon.  Or more accurately, as a sculptor’s chisel for a very disturbed artist.

Lot’s Return To Sodom, the second book in the Liv Bergen series, was inspired by the all-too-real Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, an event hosting a half million bikers who descend annually on a tiny town in South Dakota, twenty minutes from my hometown in the Black Hills.  As a teenager, my softball coach – an FBI agent – told me stories of his work at the rally, stories that weren’t common knowledge or told to the press.  Each year after the wave of leather-clad tourists ebbed, the bodies of a woman or two who’d gone missing were found in the woods.  Of course, like so many others where I live, I assumed the murderers had to be one of the many motorcycle gang members attending the rally.  In fact, they weren’t responsible.   So I used the concept of pre-judging outlaw bikers to create a ‘What If’ sceneraio.  What if a local resident used the infamous motorcycle rally as a cover for a murder or two?  And why not frame a biker gang member in the process?

My ‘What If’ scenarios double as the base for a query letter or ‘pitch’ to agents.  The readers decide if I successfully executed the storyline around the unlikely premise.

As crazy as the idea sounds for Widow’s Might – a killer attempting to accelerate the inevitable end of an 80-year-old – the early reviews are offering me a whole lot of love for my efforts.   Starting with ‘crazy’ and ending with ‘love’ is the formula for my success as a writer.

First, I was crazy enough to think I could actually write, considering I’m an engineer, operating from the left side of my brain.  But I loved writing so much, I wrote ten novels before ever getting published.  Second, I was crazy enough to think I could actually be one in a thousand writers who ever get published and loved achieving within my first month the 7% of published authors who ever sell more than 2,000 books.  Finally, the craziest part of this journey is that I attribute my success in no small part to two very important segments of the book world who are often overshadowed by their Goliath-like counterparts:  independent booksellers and bloggers.

Because of the ABA’s Indie Next List Notable award for In The Belly Of Jonah in September 2010, I had instant credibility as a debut author and my books found their way in stores nationwide.

But being in stores isn’t enough to sell books.  Someone has to drive readers to buy the book while shopping at those stores and bloggers were kind enough to do that for me.

I had the distinct honor and privilege to attend the First Annual Bloggers Convention following BEA in New York City in May 2010 and it boggles my mind how I ever ended up there, of all places.  I remember not having a clue what it was all these people did, although I found each and every one of them the most charming, intelligent, and well-read people I’d ever met in my life.  Hopefully, bloggers will forgive me for this, but one notable blogger asked me early in our conversation if I even knew what blogging was or how to blog to which I replied, “No ma’am. I haven’t a clue how to blog, but I know how to clog.  My mother is Irish and she taught all nine of us kids.”

Thank goodness bloggers have a sense of humor and appreciate honesty!

Two years later, I am releasing my third book, Widow’s Might, on August 7^th, 2012, working on my fourth, because of bloggers.  I definitely know what blogging is now and greatly appreciate the power bloggers have to spread the word about authors like me.

Call me crazy, I love bloggers!

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Sandra Brannan debuted as an author in 2010 with In the Belly of Jonah, the first installment of her acclaimed Liv Bergen mystery series. The novel was chosen as an Indie Next List Notable by independent bookstores and librarians across the country and went into a second printing just one month after its release.

Sandra’s success in the literary world led to her being named one of the top 25 most fabulous women by Black Hills Magazine.

Much like her character Liv Bergen, Sandra has spent her career in the mining industry. Working her way up from day laborer in the company her grandfather founded to a top executive in the family business wasn’t easy, as Sandra often received threats from those opposed to mining. These life experiences gave her a first-person perspective into the high-stakes scenarios of which she writes.

Sandra was raised the seventh of nine children in loving home not far from Rapid City, South Dakota. After living in Colorado (the setting for In the Belly of Jonah), Wyoming, Washington D.C. and Washington state, Sandra returned to her hometown where she lives with her husband. Their budding family consists of four boys and three grandchildren.

The second book in her mystery-thriller series, Lot’s Return to Sodom, releases June 1 and revolves around the legendary Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. Sandra’s forthcoming titles include Widow’s Might and Noah’s Rainy Day.

http://sandraSandra.com/author/

Follow Sandra on Twitter: @SandraBrannan

Writers on Writing: If You Can’t Run…

If you can’t run….

            By Patricia Dunn

“If you don’t love to write, do something else. There are so many things far less painful.” Short story writer and teacher Grace Paley said this at a lecture I attended during my first year in graduate school.

For years I quoted her on the first day of every writing class I taught, and then a student said to me, “I don’t love to write. I just don’t have any other choice.”

Now I tell my students, “If you have a choice not to write, run now, leave this class… We will refund your money… GO… Save yourself.” Of course there will be moments where you will be thrilled with something you’ve written, a sentence, a paragraph, a whole chapter, but these are the suck-you-in moments.  It’s like playing the lotto. That one winning ticket, no matter how small the payoff, gives us the illusion that we will win again and again.

Just like it only takes that one story written effortlessly, yes, we got it right on the first try, no revision needed, to keep us needing to write. After hours of torment spent at our computers with nothing to show for it but aggravated carpal tunnel syndrome and intensified neck and back pain, we need to keep writing. We’re hooked. We don’t have a choice.

Addiction?  Compulsive personality disorder? Out- of-our-freakin’-mind-syndrome? I don’t know the reason why many of us can’t walk away from writing.  I will leave the analyzing to the psychologists, psychiatrists, podiatrists, or anyone else who cares to figure out why some of us can’t walk away from writing, even when it hurts.

Instead, I accept my lot in this life, and offer these words of advice: If you can’t run, and you must write, then don’t suffer it alone; find yourself a writing support group.  Do this now. Fortunately, unlike playing the lottery, if you’re open minded, patient, and willing to keep trying, the odds of finding the winning fit are in your favor.  Still, finding a group of like-minded, like-spirited, and just plain likeable writers that’s the right fit takes time.  For me, it took two years out of graduate school, working with different groups of people, to find the support group I’ve been with for eight years now.  As with revising your work, it can take lots of trial and error, patience and frustration to get it right, but when you finally get it to work, it works.

Of course, you can try other options first. I did. There are books upon books–hardcover, paperback, eBook–that offer suggestions on how to, or what to, write and how to keep writing. I’ve probably read most of them. And many have taught and inspired me, but what has kept me writing through divorce, my son’s battle with cancer, and my self esteem being so low to the ground that it was only visible after I tripped over it, was my writing support group.

Five writers who will critique my work and help me cement the cracks in my plot structure and develop the right balance between my characters’ inner and outer worlds. Writers who offer me the feedback that helps keep my writing alive. Women who also understand that who we are as writers is not defined by any one particular.  We are all the words we have ever written and ever will write– red cells, white cells, platelets, plasma cells and all the other thousands of components that allow us to breathe and bleed and survive the writer’s life.

Every Friday night, and in summer months every other Friday night, I meet with five other woman, all writers, mothers, and partners, and a slew of other things that helps them to get me, and for me to get them. It’s not about what genre we write in or about what subjects and themes we explore. It’s chemistry. A shared connection that inspires enough trust among us that no matter how insane, zany, depressed, zippy, or pissed off we act, we know we will not be judged. Okay, sometimes we do judge each other, but we understand that it comes from a place of respect and the knowing that we’ve all been there and will be there again. We’ve all had that rejection that we couldn’t just “get over.” That one rejection that we crawled up in bed with swearing we would never write again. That’s when my writing support group comes calling, emailing, pounding at the door, and says, “I get it. Now get out of bed and get your ass writing.” Actually, that’s the kind of thing I would say. Gloria says, “I hear you.” Jimin says, “You should write about how you feel.” Kate–“It does suck. It does.”  Alex–“Oh honey, I’m so sorry.” And Deb, “Your work is great. They’re idiots.”

We trust each other. We believe in each other. We have each others’ backs.

Usually, we meet in our living rooms, or at some local eatery where the wait staff doesn’t mind us sitting for hours on end. We moan and cheer about writing, of course, but mostly about life. All that life gives us, takes from us, and at times smashes in our face.

When my son was receiving chemotherapy and living at the hospital more than at home, the support these woman gave me, sitting at my side on brown vinyl couches in the patients’ family room, helped me to write about what I couldn’t talk about. And when a publisher made an offer on my book contingent on edits, these woman were there for me, chapter by chapter, and from one chemo treatment to the next.

We don’t let each other give up. We trust. We believe. And we write.

Go now. Find a group of two, three, four, or five other writers where together you can write through your lives, about your lives, and, when necessary, around your lives.

Let’s face it, running isn’t an option.

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Patricia Dunn’s debut novel, Rebels By Accident (Aug. 16, 2012, Alikai Press) tells the story of a troubled teen sent to Cairo who finds revolution is everywhere, including in ourselves. Dunn was the managing editor of Muslimwakeup.com, America’s most popular Muslim online magazine from 2003-2008. She has an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College where she also teaches.

Her writing has appeared in Global City Review, where she edited the post-9-11 International Issue. Salon.com, Women’s eNews, The Christian Science Monitor,
The Village Voice, The Nation, L.A. Weekly and other publications have featured her writing.

Her work is anthologized in Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies, from Kent State University Press (2006); Progressive Muslim Identities: Personal Stories From the U.S. and Canada, Muslim Progressive Values; and most recently in the bestselling anthology, Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, Soft Skull Press. She is featured on WISE Muslim Women.

Dunn was raised in the Bronx, became a political activist while living in Los Angeles, has traveled throughout the Middle East, and lived in Jordan and Egypt before settling back down in New York where she lives with her teenage son and her toddler dog.
Website: PatriciaDunnAuthor.com
@shewrites Rebels By Accident
JKSCommunications

Writers on Writing: Unseen Beginnings

UNSEEN BEGINNINGS

By Katherine Webb

Two very different events caused the initial spark of the story that was to become The Unseen to ignite – one which took place almost a hundred years ago, the other just a few years ago.

Firstly, in 1917, was the case of the Cottingley fairies. This was a set of photographs taken by two schoolgirls in the north of England, which seemed to prove the existence of fairies. The pictures show the girls watching and playing with a variety of sprites from tiny, delicate female figures in slip dresses to ugly gnomes in tights and jerkins. As a child I was desperate to believe that the pictures, and therefore the fairies, were real. What fascinated me just as much as I grew up, however, was that so many educated and respected adults at the time the pictures were taken were equally prepared to believe in them.

The more recent event that inspired the book was the excavation of a mass grave of British and Australian soldiers killed at the battle of Fromelles, in Northern France, during the First World War. Archaeologists working with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission made amazing and terribly poignant discoveries as they worked to identify the dead – personal items like tokens from sweethearts, and other things you would never expect to survive so long in the ground. Having travelled to the WWI battlefields in Belgium in the past, I had always been fascinated and deeply moved to learn of the frequent discoveries of unidentified soldier’s remains made near the battlefields. Here, at Fromelles, was evidence that even when uniforms had perished, and ID tags had been removed, still enough could survive the long interment to allow the men to be identified.

And if a bus ticket could survive, then couldn’t a letter? A series of letters? And what if the quest to make such an identification led to the uncovering of more than just a name? What if it led to the discovery of a mystery? The solving of a hidden, long-forgotten crime? This at once became the mission of my contemporary character, Leah; a freelance journalist desperate for a story to take her mind off the disastrous aftermath of a love affair. And the long-dead soldier she eventually identifies…well, he is at the centre of events a hundred years earlier, when life in a peaceful village rectory is turned upside down by a series of escalating events.

This was where my interest in the Cottingley fairies came into play. Perhaps the most famous believer in the pictures was the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A follower of Theosophy, an east-meets-west spiritualist religion that was growing in popularity, Conan Doyle wrote a series of letters and articles at the time in which, behind all of his careful consideration and evaluation, you can just about smell how desperate he is to believe in the fairies, how excited the idea that here could be definitive proof makes him. Later on in life, the little girls themselves, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, admitted that they had faked the photographs with the help of paper cut-outs. All the publicity at the time had made them too afraid to come clean, but to her dying day Frances insisted that there had been fairies at Cottingley, and that they had only faked the pictures to prove as much to the world. This idea really struck me – the idea of using a fake to prove that something is real…

So the character of Robin Durrant was born; a charming and ambitious young man, determined to make a name for himself in the field of Theosophy. This character, and that of Cat, the rebellious, politically astute new housemaid, came to represent all the new ideas and movements that were beginning to shake the solid foundations of the Edwardian world in England. And who better to reflect how hard these new ideas might be for some people to assimilate than a naïve country vicar and his even more naïve young wife? So these four people are brought together in a small village where nothing much ever happens, during the long, hot summer of 1911, and the clock is ticking to find out who will reach their breaking point first.

The Unseen became a story at once about the thrill and healing power of uncovering something long buried, of sharing a secret; and about how dangerous the desire to believe in something can be. It’s a story about just how much the world had changed in the one hundred years between 1911 and 2011; and also about how human beings, in essence, never change. I hope that people will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

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Katherine Webb was born in 1977 and grew up in rural Hampshire, England. She studied History at Durham University, has spent time living in London and Venice, and now lives in Berkshire, England. Having worked as a waitress, au pair, personal assistant, potter, bookbinder, library assistant, and formal housekeeper at a manor house, she now writes full time.

Writers on Writing: The Writing Process – Get to Know Your Own

The Writing Process – Get To Know Your Own

By Bruce Holbert

 

I am more than a little hesitant when someone bitten by the bug asks for advice about writing.  Having myself read several books and articles on the craft/art/process that, though well-meaning, strike me, as often as not either semi-vapid generalizations anyone with a tertiary knowledge of the craft would have either already gathered or intuited from his or her own reading or simply wrong-headed for anyone other than the person composing the piece or those whose gears turned in a very similar direction.

But I held the Teaching Writing Fellowship at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop and have taught high school for 25 odd years before or since and have maintained a group of friends who look to me for critical input (as I do them).  So I’m either paid or duty-bound to offer such advice.  How to do so without slipping into hypocrisy or sophistry is the trick.

The first piece of advice I can offer has to do with process: get to know your own.  Elizabeth McCracken (In the Giant’s House, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination) can write a book in six weeks.  Once she arrives at that point, she shuts the shades, turns off the phone and says goodbye to her husband and kids and disappears into her book.  But her process requires a few years of simmering to get to that stint. Another writer and friend, Max Phillips (Snakebite Sonnet, The Artist’s Wife), makes painstaking outlines and spends weeks on research and then begins to write, but does not do so linearly.  He will hop through the outline to where he feels the most compelled to work and spend his time there.  As for myself, I don’t want much idea of what happens next.  I need the mystery and the faith that goes with writing in such uncertainty.  I want a source of tension and some notion of the people in the scene, but I also want the flexibility to change a character’s gender or sexual preference if it seems to steer the work into a place that will challenge my expectations of the story.

Though these methods appear diverse, they share much.  First, each contains an element of discovery.  Elizabeth simmers not to plan her books but to know their context, their characters, their places, both geographically and historically.  She wants to argue and laugh with them and when she writes, she writes from that acquaintance, though events remain up in the air.  Max needs to have the events laid out in front of him.  His mode of discovery is his character’s subtle response to them.  Chris Offutt, another friend and a fine writer (Kentucky Straight, The Same River Twice, and screenplays for True Blood, ‘Treme) relies on place, the smell and color and sounds and people, especially their intersection with place and their histories in that place.  His sense of discovery comes from the imposition of the reader viewing such a private knowledge of people and place.

Another commonality is a love of sentences: the sounds of them.  Each carves, shuffles, shakes, shapes sentences into a sound that anchors their work.  Max’s language is tight as a drum; Elizabeth’s turns quirky when you least expect it: Chris’s colloquy as sharp and original as Twain.  Sound suits process, as well; they can’t be separated; it is speaking the language of one’s perspective.

Finally, one should write often, every day, if possible.  Inspiration is a cold and bitter mistress and must be coaxed and seduced into showing herself.  Elizabeth, who takes years to get to her novelistic bursts, is constantly writing stories, articles, reviews and commentaries to keep her language sharp.  Max keeps a journal.  Chris is always in the middle of a screenplay, stories, a novel and various articles.  As for myself, I am a fan of Hemingway’s advice, which strikes me as the best if only because it is the most unassuming: write one good sentence.  Even if teaching and coaching my kids and the daily lifting of one’s burden and carrying it throughout the day exhausts me, I try to write one good sentence.  And then another.

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Bruce Holbert is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and the University of Eastern Washington. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Other Voices, The Antioch Review, Crab Creek Review, The West Wind Review, and Cairn. His recently published western novel, Lonesome Animals, has been praised as “a brilliant debut” by The Seattle Times and Publishers Weekly called Holbert “a master storyteller of formidable skill.” To learn more about Bruce Holbert, visit: http://www.bruceholbertbooks.com.

Shield Those Innocent Teens

Shield Those Innocent Teens

By Margie Gelbwasser

There was a movie that came out March 30th called Bully. You have probably heard about it. It follows five families and their experiences with bullying. From what I’ve read, the film sounds real and raw. Apparently, that’s a problem. Apparently, it’s too real. So disturbing, that this documentary received an R rating. Yes, it’s only appropriate for those 17 year old and older. Therefore, many of the teens who experience bullying today will not even be able to see it.

The language, say some parents, is too graphic. The content, they continue, is too troubling. Yes, let’s shield our teens from the harshness. It’s just a movie, right? Not like it’s real. Oh, wait. What’s that? It IS real. It’s a reality many teens face today. But it’s too upsetting to let them see what they already know? Really?

Yes, I know the rating doesn’t mean that teens can’t see it. They only need an adult to be present. But what about those kids who don’t speak up about the bullying or wait until it’s too late to do so? What about those who suffer in silence? This movie would make them feel less alone, let themselves be heard.

To me, seeing this movie with a guardian is beside the point. I feel the rating and parents’ “concern” speaks to a greater issue regarding abuse and bullying. We want our children to be safe—so much so that we protect them from the very things they already know and are trying to come to terms with.

My new novel, Pieces of Us, came out March 8 and some reviewers have said that this book is not appropriate for teens. Not, “best suited for mature teens,” not “best for the older teen,” just “not for teens” OF ANY AGE. A few even went so far as to say they would not let anyone under 25 read this book. Yes, it has mature content: abuse, cyberbullying, rape, graphic language, and dating violence. But the words can be heard in hallways in high schools across the country. Cyberbullying has driven kids to suicide. Rape is a reality teens live with as well. And dating violence? Let’s not even pretend that there aren’t too many young women out there who stay with the guy because they think that’s what love is.

Lest you think I’m not a parent, I am. My son is little now, but when he comes to me with the tough questions or is a teenager and wants to read books like Pieces of Us or see a movie like Bully, I’ll use these opportunities as teachable moments. I’ll watch the movie with him, read the book as well. We’ll talk about what the characters’ behavior means. If he’s seen anything like that. What he can and should do in those situations.

The bottom line is this. Not all teens are the same. Some CAN handle the painful issues. Some can’t. Often, the teen knows which category she or he falls into. The problem with saying a book should not be read by ANY teen or that a movie should not be seen by ANYONE under 17 is that we’re hiding material many kids CAN handle and desperately need. Let’s not take it upon ourselves to decide what’s best for all teens. Odds are many have lived and seen the very things some are trying to keep hidden.

To learn more about Bully check out it’s website: http://thebullyproject.com/#/abouttheproject.

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Margie Gelbwasser got her first shot at becoming an award-winning writer when she was 7 years old. But her 10-page story about a kidnapped girl was beat by a 3-page talking strawberry tale from a fellow 2nd grade student. Margie kept her dream alive by editing her high school and college literary magazines – she earned a bachelor’s degree in English at The College of New Jersey and got her masters from William Paterson University – and freelance writing for Self, Ladies’ Home Journal and Girl’s Life.
She debuted as a published novelist in 2010 with her young adult book about a Russian-Jewish girl with an alcoholic mom. And she won an award after all; INCONVENIENT was a 2011 Sydney Taylor Notable Book for Teens. Her second novel for teens, PIECES OF US (Flux Books, March 8, 2012) is told in four points of view and hones in on the growing issue of cyber bullying, abuse, family relationships and how one teen’s actions affect the other three.
Born in the former Soviet Union in what is now known as Belarus, Margie came to America when she was 3 years old. She lived in Brooklyn as a child and throughout New Jersey in her adult life, settling in Fair Lawn with her husband and their superhero-firetruck-construction-dinosaur-loving 5-year-old son. When not writing and spending time with the family, Margie leads creative writing classes and programs for teens. Website: http://www.margiewrites.com/

Writers on Writing – It Takes More Than a Village

It Takes More Than a Village

by Mary Albanese

 

After spending the past 20 years writing, studying the process academically, or teaching writing, I have developed some thoughts on the subject that might be useful to other writers. Here goes.

I write the first draft for myself, taking special care to ignore my inner editor, the doubter. My goal is to write like a lion, brave and fearless, but also with stealth as I stalk ideas in the rich, dense forest of my mind, teasing those crafty little thoughts out into the open before I pounce. For re-writing, I keep the audience in mind and aim to re-write like an eagle, ruthless and all-seeing. This is a different kind of hunter chasing the good story, but the re-writing is where the work comes off the ground and starts to soar. At the same time, it is a messy process, with entrails strewn around, so I must be prepared to get dirty.

What happens when a character starts to run away with the story? I let him. When I get to the editing, that’s where I decide if this was an indulgence or a viable new direction for the work. Sometimes I plot the whole book in advance, but not always. Early on, I might find the ending crashing over me like a wave. If so, I write that ending and then have to go back and fill in the middle. Having an end-point already done can help with that massive middle. I let each project dictate the process of how that particular book evolves, and feel there is no “right” way to do it. However it gets done is a small miracle.

When do I show others what I’ve written? I have to be careful with this. When a project is in its early stages, it is like a foetus — very fragile. Any little bump or jar can cause it to terminate, so I have to protect it in those early days. A well-meaning friend can kill a project. An admirer won’t help at all. When I do share the concept or the actual pages, I need to determine if the other person’s feedback deals with clarity (and is something to consider) or if it would re-direct my vision (and may be something to ignore). Once the project is shared, it gets harder to keep my self-doubter at bay.

Most people view writing as an additive process, but I see it as a winnowing process. I once heard that Michelangelo was asked how he could carve a horse out of a block of stone, and he replied that all he had to do was remove everything that wasn’t the horse. I feel that writing is very much like carving horses out of stone. My hardest job is to remove the things (all possible story threads and words) that are not the story I have in mind. Since there is an infinite amount of words and storylines possible, this is a tall order. In fact, I think that the “blank page” syndrome is not so much about the fear of facing an empty page, but about facing an infinitely full mind, and forcing yourself to reject everything that isn’t the story. Once you know your vision for the story, this is the first and most important step towards being able to get to the end of that path.

The beauty of writing is that if isn’t quite ready yet, I can stick it right back in the pouch, like a mother kangaroo, and allow it to keep developing.

If I’ve done the job correctly, the writing looks effortless. If it is breezy to read, most readers assume it was easy to write. Only another writer knows better. Only another writer could possibly understand that a book that reads with the speed of a gazelle was probably written by a relentless plodder. Once again, I think it is often the turtle and not the hare that ultimately wins this particular race.

Writing is the most difficult cognitive task that humans do. This is why advanced degrees are based on the successful production of a significant piece of writing (the thesis or dissertation). The higher the degree, the more sophisticated is the piece of writing required. A book is even harder to write, because it must not only be clear and concise, it has to be as captivating as a three-ring circus, with tigers leaping through burning hoops and elephants in tutus and all manner of amazements and unexpected delights that come in at just the right moment.

It might take a village to raise a child, but the way I see it, it takes a whole zoo of animal skills and metaphors to write a book.

 

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Mary Albanese’s autobiography MIDNIGNT SUN, ARCTIC MOON http://www.midnightsunarcticmoon.com/ chronicles how she went to Alaska and found herself drawn into the adventurous but dangerous world of an exploration geologist. Available now from Epicenter Press. For more information, see: http://www.MidnightSunArcticMoon.com

 

5.9.12: Series Writing: Writing with the Third Book in Mind

Series Writing: Writing with the Third Book in Mind

My oldest brother, Matt decided to impart some of his driving wisdom one day when we were in the car together.  I was a teenager at the time and had little understanding of the dynamics of traffic flow.  He said; pay more attention to the vehicle two cars in front of you than the car directly in front of you. If the car directly in front of you is going to do something unpredictable or erratic, it is more than likely as a result of the actions of the vehicle in front of it. Your ability to respond and take evasive action, if necessary, will be faster – likely just as fast as the car directly in front of you, and enable you to avoid an accident.

This story is an excellent segue into the approach I use when writing my series. When I was writing Exiled, my first novel, I knew it was the first in a series.  Actually, I had the series name, The Never Chronicles, decided before I had the book name decided.  Anyway, as I wrote, in the back of my mind always sat the question, how is this going to tie into the third book? (What was the second car up the road going to do?)

I’ll be the first to agree that is a strange way to write anything –especially since I mentor others to focus on one project at a time.  I’ll also be the first to admit that my writing technique isn’t exactly normal.  I find it hard –nigh impossible, to write a linear story. That is, when I’m writing, I will end one chapter in one place and time and begin another somewhere else.  It could be back-story, it could be front-story (is there a technical term for a flash-forward?) or anywhere between.

When reading Exiled, you will notice that I decided to employ my ‘Lost’-like writing style (if you’re a fan of Lost, you’ll get it) into the book layout.  There are two timelines. The first follows the main character, James on his journey. It is linear, spatial and temporal. (same place, same time) The second is non-linear and jumps through time and place.  This second timeline adds depth and understanding to the characters.

The complete story of The Never Chronicles is epic. A vast, multigenerational tale, that couldn’t possibly be told in one book. In fact, when I completed Exiled, I had actually competed Exiled and the second book in the series.  I realized it would have been far too long a novel for my target reader had I kept it in its original form so I cut it in half.

Back to the point.  When writing my series, the non-linear chapters can literally be moved virtually anywhere within the story and still provide the necessary information and maintain the flow.  Each time I write one of these chapters, which I seem to find more enjoyment in writing than the linear chapters, I always have the future of the timeline in mind.  How will what I’m writing today impact what will happen when the linear timeline reaches a certain point?

I intentionally leave clues and hints throughout these chapters so readers may find enjoyment in picking up on them as things click together –so don’t get mad when something isn’t explained, it most likely will have a tie-in later on in the story.  When I say I’m writing with the third book in mind, I understand what I am working on today will impact directly or indirectly the story down the road (or up the road depending on the when) and need to make sure I’m not painting myself into a corner.

Rather than a series where each book is a new and different adventure, The Never Chronicles recount the main character’s single journey through several books.  This gives me the luxury (much to the frustration of my readers, I imagine) to leave open ends knowing they will be closed as the timelines come together.

There is a craft to weaving all the non-linear chapters with the main story.  It can be a daunting task.  The technique I use, while extremely simplistic, is quite effective.  The good old corkboard is an excellent method. Red ink indicates the nonlinear timeline chapters, green ink, the linear.  At a glance, I can move the see what I’ve got going on and, if necessary, move the chapters around to help the flow of the story, add drama or bring absolution to a sub-plot.

Without looking two cars ahead, I would find this process extremely difficult and can imagine the re-writing would be an almost continuous task.

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J. R. Wagner was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania during a blizzard. The snow made travel by car impossible, so his father called an ambulance when his mother went into labor. The ambulance became stuck at the bottom of their home’s driveway, prompting the dispatch of a
fire truck, which towed the ambulance to the hospital where he was born. Maybe it was this experience that destined J.R. to love adventure. A competitive cyclist, triathlete, mountain biker and adventure racer, he once received a medal for saving a woman’s life during the kayaking section of an adventure race. And the adventure is hard to miss in his debut novel Exiled (Live Oak Book Group, June 5, 2012), the first book in J.R.’s young adult fantasy series The Never Chronicles. He’s got a day job to keep him “grounded”; J.R. helps run his late father’s Downingtown, Pennsylvania floor-covering business.
J.R. first started writing at 10 years old with his sequel to “Return of The Jedi” – the self-proclaimed “Star Wars geek” had lofty aspirations of working with George Lucas on filming the project. In 1990 he began filming his version of “The Lord of The Rings” in his parent’s basement, but the plug was pulled after he nearly burned down the house. Since then the storyteller has also written a full-length science fiction screenplay, a thriller novel and a second screenplay.
After graduating in Kinesiology from Arizona State University, J.R. returned to Downingtown, where his creative fires were re-stoked by his two beautiful daughters. J.R. also endearingly considers his wife Lisa his muse. It was during their trip to Maine he began writing Exiled.

Website: TheNeverChronicles.com
Author blog: whatisthenever.blogspot.com
@JRWagner2 WhatisTheNever

3.28.12: Documenting Fatherhood

Documenting Fatherhood: A Connection Worth Writing

 by Scott Hanley

I didn’t start out with the intent to write a book. My original idea was to create a simple chronicle of my experiences as a single dad; a collection of reflections on my challenges, understandings and feelings. I thought it would be something perhaps my boys might find amusing, or at best something they could find of value when they embarked on their own journeys of raising their children.

The material for this book developed from dozens of traffic-congested trips in my truck while I was on my way to various work sites. I was able to describe my process in real time by talking into a tape recorder that I screwed to the floor of my truck as I weaved, started, and stopped my way through the infamous Boston streets and highway interchanges.

Three years later I had thirteen 90-minute audio cassette tapes filled on both sides. I tossed them into and old Nike shoebox and put them in the closet. After moving to Portland, Oregon a few years later, I stumbled upon the box of tapes while digging out from the move. As a birthday gift a close friend offered to transcribe them (I don’t think she knew what she was getting into). When I first began to read them they were quite a mess- Even I couldn’t understand them! Some ten years later, with the help of a few writing classes, and dozens of rewrites, my journey through fatherhood became this book.

The Dad Connection is a personal reflection of the learning-as-I-went process of raising two strong-willed, bright, and independent boys. Although it was an extraordinary experience in every way, the journey had a myriad of challenges – from the typical supermarket meltdowns to broken arms, teacher conflicts, and emotional traumas. Each of these individual and cumulative experiences served to create a lifelong bridge of bonding between the three of us.

I learned what it is to be a Dad and even more I learned what it is to be a very young person in an adult’s world. This was as enlightening as it was uncertain. I spent considerable time focusing on how to do it better and build a stronger connection to each of my boys all the while trying to keep in mind that I still had to do my primary job of keeping them safe and sound. It was not work. Instead it was fulfilling and exciting. This book simply captures some of my feelings and thoughts as I was traveling along this journey.

As I edited and rewrote (seemingly endlessly) I continued to change words and sentences while struggling not to lose my voice. This was a considerable challenge for me as I am not a natural writer. I had to dig down into the feelings at my core to re-connect with some of the initial emotions that I had I felt when the experience was occurring several years before, considering that my boys are now in their late 20s. This was a lot more challenging than I had expected. However, I felt this was the only way I could retain my original voice and still be able to tie it into my present-day understandings, which had the advantage of several years’ perspective. Once I felt I was able to achieve this I believed it could become the book I wanted it to be. Once I had the meat of the book in words, I shifted my focus to organizing the writing so it would be relatively simple to read that the audience could understand in a relatable frame of reference.

Presenting the final draft for review and feedback was scary because since this is a non-fiction, memoir style of work, I was left feeling completely exposed. It is not that I needed to be validated or regarded for my ideas (although that would be great)… I just wanted this writing to be understood and experienced by the reader as a positive contribution to their life as a parent. Perhaps that is slightly dramatized, but it is absolutely real for me.

What began as more than 450 single-spaced, double-sided pages of mostly gibberish is now a more succinct 150 pages of material attempting to reflect both my experiences and understandings as I grew from a young, single guy to an older and experienced dad. It is my hope that the reading will be easy and maybe even a little fun; combined with some relatable understanding that all parents can have an unbelievable and extraordinary journey raising their kids.

Scott Hanley was born and raised in Indiana. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in zoology while captaining the Hoosiers nationally ranked rugby team and earning National All-Star honors his senior year. He has managed his own successful four-star restaurant in Cincinnati, a construction company in Boston specializing in urban remodeling, and a construction business in Portland, OR specializing in ultra high-end remodeling – all while raising his two sons as a single father. He was named the Northwest Regional Contractor of the Year in 1999. His expertise and personality earned him guest appearances on the local ABC affiliate morning talk show “AM Northwest,” which eventually grew into a permanent role as one of the show’s weekly celebrities. From 2000 to 2003 he was co-host of Fox 12’s Saturday morning talk show. He currently lives with his family in Portland, OR.