Category Archives: Writing Life

Searching for the right agent, the right word, the right phrase and frame of mind.

Invented Reading

Don’t know about you but my eyes have been playing tricks on me lately. No, not the menu tricks where I need the arms of an orangutan to order my meal; nor the kind where, stymied to make out a number in the phone book, I’d sell my firstborn for a magnifying glass.

Invented Reading is the phenomenon occurring when the eyes of a middle-aged and quite literate woman begin to read headlines, phrases and sometimes full sentences just slightly off kilter. It makes for an often humorous parallel reality.

Just today I was passing time with the latest Vanity Fair while the pharmacist readied my middle-aged birthday prescription. (The label on the pill bottle instructs me to, “take thirty-two with nineteen gallons of water and holy moly! Stand back! Or better yet, sit down.”) OK, I invented the stuff on the medicine label but I was waiting at the pharmacy reading Maureen Dowd’s terrific piece on Tina Fey in VF.

Dowd shared what a clean whistle Fey is — no bad boys, no drugs and akin to Liz Lemon, her 30 Rock twin, a virgin until she was 25. And then I read, “Her voice is true cupcakes.” Huh? What? My eyes returned to the winsome sentence. Ah. Dowd had actually written of Fey, “Her true vice is cupcakes.” Invented Reading had just reared her head and woombly eyes yet again.

“Her voice is true cupcakes” has a certain charm to it, don’t you think? I got to thinking — what kind of woman has a voice true as a cupcake? Is she homey? Sweet but not cloying? A small satisfying bite of fun? Bernadette Peters, perhaps? Lauren Bacall? Never.

So here’s a brief writing exercise. Join in the fun if you wish. Describe a woman whose voice is “true cupcakes.” Or share a phrase or two of Invented Reading your own eyes have stumbled across. I’ve started keeping a list of these gems. I figure they just might make a wonderful story. Which I shall have plenty of time to work in a week or two — after I’ve washed down the above-mentioned pills with the requisite nineteen gallons of water.

Paper Chase

As if it’s not dire enough here in Detroit, looks like we’re about to lose daily home delivery of our two city newspapers the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press. Those of us who dart out jammie-clad in the early morning for our daily dose of news and mayhem will only have to make that trip thrice weekly now — Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Abbreviated versions of the papers will still be available on newsstands but for who knows how long. Readers are expected and encouraged to go online for the web version.

Except I don’t want to read an entire newspaper on my computer first thing in the morning. It’s one thing to dribble an errant a spoonful of milk on the front page of the Freep. No way I’ll risk short-circuiting my keyboard. And besides, I’m online enough. I don’t particularly want more face time with my computer screen. You and I are at least digitally comfortable. Those who aren’t will likely be sidelined altogether. And I won’t even get into the deeper staff cuts this move presages.

Newspaper. How many years before the word itself is relegated to that dustbin of archaic phrases, destined to keep company with “dialing the phone,” “rolling down the window” and “pension”?

“Grandma!” my grandchild will one day exclaim. “Were you really alive when the news was printed on paper? Wasn’t that a waste of natural resources? Didn’t it bug you not to be able to link right away to what you really wanted to read?”

How will I explain the langorous pleasure of moseying from page to page? Or the rustling give and take my husband and I used to share as we traded sections with each other? I will befuddle my Gen-Net grandchild with tales of dashing out to the driveway to “get the paper” and how I used to cut out and mail articles that I thought would interest her mom, away at college.

This grandchild will never understand that the phrase “newspaper chains” not only referred to print media conglomerates but was the unsung metaphor for the way we readers once maintained links to our community.

Incommodious

Timothy Egan wins my hero for the week prize for his essay in yesterday’s New York Times, Typing Without a Clue.

In case you haven’t heard, Joe the Plumber (whose nom de plumb is Samuel J. Wurzelbacher) is having a book published! Just like that! Easy as spinning a wing nut. Egan called Joe the Plumber on the bath mat for thinking he can join the profession of “Mark Twain, George Orwell and Joan Didion.” Egan got in what I thought was an aimless and distracting dig at Sarah Palin’s propensity to use a slew of words to signify little, but his broader thesis was sound, his fury legit
— what the hell is a plumber doing getting a book contract when so many of us work hard at our craft, sweating bullets to get assignments, an agent, a commitment from a publisher. Along comes Joe. Ten minutes on CNN and the guy’s got a a book deal.

“Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true,” wrote Egan. “Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush’s dog getting a book deal.”

So Joe the Plumber is writing a book. Big woof. Publishers play this game ostensibly to reap the bucks that will offset publishing “quieter works”–the poetry; the novels whose readership is inversely proportional to their depth and beauty; the academic treatise that might or might not crossover into mainstream. Back in the Seventies I worked at Alfred A. Knopf. The star biographies (Lauren Bacall, Arthur Rubinstein) provided a cushion for the wonderful poets editor Alice Quinn signed. Betty and Art had something to say. But JtP? Wrenching.

Who goes up to a neurologist and says, “I’ve always wanted to slice open a cerebellum. I’m going to do it one day when I have the time.” ? Put a writer at a cocktail party and suddenly everybody’s writing a novel. Or a memoir. Or a children’s book. One day. When they find the time. I understand it completely. Everyone has a story. An idea. A profound experience. We are compelled to share the truths and hard fought wisdom of our lives. And everyone is entitled, invited even, to sit down at the blank page or screen and give it his or her best shot.

What plunges writers into the depths are these flash in the pan “authors” and their publishers riding fifteen minutes of fame for a quick cheap buck. When we read about the Joe the Plumbers we wonder: is our intention to publish our hard-wrought work anything more than a pipe dream?

Whose Title is it Anyway?

Of all the slings and arrows we writers must bear, the worst is pitching a story  to an agent or an editor, being rejected and then seeing the very story on the newsstand or on a bookshelf at Border’s.  Many times it’s just coincidence.  Sometimes, though, the similarities are too close for comfort.

Years ago I pitched a story to Better Homes and Gardens on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The holiday touches several of BH&G’s bases — entertaining, food, diversity.  I submitted my proposal and publishing credits, offering to include photos and holiday recipes as well. They never responded. But they must have liked the idea because a wonderful story on Sukkot appeared a year later. Written by someone else.  Such are the slings and arrows of the writing life. My puny revenge? I didn’t renew my subscription and have never bought a copy since. This is the writer’s Catch-22.  To stay viable and solvent we need to pitch stories. And more often than we’d like to think about, some of these pitches land in someone else’s horseshoe pit. 

Four years ago, a good friend and writer buddy began working on a memoir about adjusting to the empty nest. Around that time, an acquisitions editor of a women’s press invited her to submit any book ideas she had on the back burner.  Cindy submitted a full proposal package  —  sample chapters, a marketing plan, and outline, title and the subtitle of the memoir for which she had already completed three chapters. She also submitted an idea for the cover illustration. You know where this is going, don’t you? The editor received the package and told her she’d get back to her.  Which she didn’t. The company was reorganized, the acquisitions editor had moved on.  So did Cindy.  She continued working on the book, researched her market in advance and submitted it to a handful of agents. One requested the complete proposal and 50 sample pages; another wanted the whole manuscript when it was finished. Everyone loved the title. And no one ever got back to her.

Last month Cindy saw an empty nest memoir reviewed in a women’s magazine. Very similar in scope to hers, with her title and subtitle.  And a cover illustration  close to identical to the visual she’d suggested in her proposal.  Coincidence? Perhaps. There are certainly enough of us empty nest writer moms trying to figure out a new flight path. What makes Cindy’s situation so disturbing is that this book has her identical title and subtitle. Not to mention the striking similarity in cover art.  

What’s a writer to do? Act on our ideas with lightning speed? Keep titles and developing ideas under lock and key? Writers and editors are one another’s bread and butter. What if the day comes when writers, sick of being “coincidenced out of assignments” quit pitching their stories to editors?   The internet is forcing change all over the publishing industry. Marketing firms are now zeroing in those blogs with enough authority and content to merit investment. Why? Because larger, deep-pocketed websites are turning to the blogs of independent journalists to keep their own sites fresh and content driven.  The  bigger fish are —- get ready! —- seeking bloggers and indie web sites whose content dovetails with theirs . Fancy that! Big guys looking for us! Because they need us! 

I have a strong streak of Luddite in me that I am loath to relinquish.  I don’t want a Kindle. I like my paper and pen. But the idea that the internet might be tipping the scales even the teensiest bit in favor of writers who have terrific things to say is heartening.  Given the coincidences that happen to us all, the Web might just help writers keep authority over their own content.

All’s Well That Ends….Perfect?

We had a funeral to attend a fortnight ago. In New York. Airplane — $875 per ticket. Driving — $170 round trip. I brought five books and got to three. The political thriller thrilled. The memoir inspired. And the contemporary women’s novel entertained until the last chapter. Major tick-off.

Some of us like our fictional just-like-real-life-but-better endings tied up gift box neat. Others like them raw and painful. Yours truly goes for endings that are good enough. It’s good enough to close the book thinking Ahhhh. She got most of what she wanted, leaving the rest open for possibility. It’s good enough to close the book and think, Awwww, the bad guy got his but our hero got nicked or injured, or emotionallly damaged, in the process. A good enough ending leaves the reader with something to chew over. The ending of the above-mentioned novel was all meringue. Way too sweet and nothing to chew over.

Truth be told I did like the book. It passed the miles. I enjoyed following the characters down their vastly unanticipated paths. I loved this one’s octogenarian feistiness and that one’s self-induced muddle of a life. Most of the ending satisfied. The land hungry developer didn’t get the ten-acre beach front Nantucket estate; the gay architect who loved historic renovations did. The heartbroken divorcee whose husband had an affair, found the love of her life. The jeweler who got the boss’ wife preggers found himself off the hook when the period arrived in the nick of time leaving him free for the broken-hearted divorcee. It could happen. It’s fiction. Just like real life but better.

But here’s where the fiction fell apart on me. The woman whose husband left her to play for the other team begins to write a memoir. And before the year is out she lands three short stories in the NYTimes. (Which takes serialized novels. In the Magazine section.) She sends out a book proposal for her memoir and in less time than it took for Jonathan Safran Foer to write Everything is Illuminated she lands an agent. And not just any agent. A top flight agent. And if that’s not enough her father, who kept big time secrets from her, comes clean. And then dies, leaving her a nice little nest egg. Filled with more than enough eggs to buy a sweet cottage with a water view of Nantucket Sound. Or was it the Atlantic? My Nantucket geography is thin.

Am I writing with ink pressed from sour grapes? I’ll cop to a drop or two. For me, fiction’s “like real life but better” definition doesn’t mean every dream comes true. But many do, often in ways unexpected. “Like real life but better” means fictional struggles are deeper, quirkier, sharper edged, higher in their heights of achievement than are our day-to-day tussles with reality. Does doing real life “better” mean every last conflict neatly resolved? Or does it mean a rich, jaw dropping how-did-the-author-Do-that! kind of ending? The kind of ending that’s not meringue but caramel. Sweet. Chewy. And because it’s like real life but better, you don’t lose a filling.

PS When my novel finally finds its agent, its publisher and its place on your night stand and your you-gotta-read-this-novel-NOW! book list, I promise, it will leave you chewing long into the night. With all fillings intact.

The Writer Up the Block

Yesterday a green VW convertible pulled out of a driveway in front of me. I peered ahead. Gray hair, narrow face. Yep. Elmore. As in Leonard. The novelist. He lives on an adjacent block. We are separated by three houses. Occasionally we cross paths on early morning walks in the neighborhood. One year I noticed his signature five lines above mine on a petition at our local pharmacy. Then yesterday’s sighting. I followed him for a mile or so. (Banish the idea I was stalking him. We were simply on the same road, heading in the same direction.) He peeled off into the shopping center at the corner. A latte at Starbucks? Fruit at the new Kroger? A loaf of rye at Breadsmith?

I think about Elmore every now and then, imagine him writing away. Does his study overlook the front yard with its circular drive and the pillars around which twine magenta hibiscus? Or do his office windows overlook a grand sweep of backyard lawn and a pool?
“Dutch” Leonard has more than forty published novels on me. Right now I’m simply buoyed by some serious agent interest. His novels have been made into movies. My novel has too, if only in my mind.

Sometimes I drive by his house and wonder if Leonard sweats his dialogue, honing and rewriting until the repartee is sharp as a shiv? Or do those inimitable exchanges leave the nib of his pen fully formed? Are his characters leading him in circles or into fertile and entertaining territory? Does he ever look up from his legal pad and wonder if he’ll ever write a sentence as good as his last?

Three houses, close to fifty novels, a handful of movies, dialogue that flies from the page in machine gun bursts. So much separates us. And yet on those occasions when my mind wanders to the novelist up the street I take heart. We’re both striving to get the words down, determined to tell the stories ricocheting around in our noggins. We’re both rooting around in our alternative universes, alert for the precise word or image to fire up our eventual readers. I send a nod of encouragement his way. He might be ahead of me but we’re nevertheless on the same road, heading in the same direction.

(P.S. On a totally unrelated subject. Some time this week readthespirit.com will post an essay of mine, written some years ago, linking polishing silver for the High Holidays and the polishing our souls. Some of you have likely read it before, some of you haven’t. Either way, the message endures. Hope you enjoy.)

You Say Blog; I Say……?

Some writer buddies and I were discussing the word “blog.” A derivative of “web log,” it’s such an inelegant word. Short. Heavy. Blog rhymes with other short, heavy, inelegant words: bog, flog, hog, clog. (OK, I’ll give you dog and Prague but then you’ll have to give me slog and grog.) Blog is a frog of a word that cannot be kissed into princehood.

Writers live for the elegance of words, for the images and emotions they conjure. We are in love with the way words dance; the way they sound in isolation and in concert with one another.

Blog works for those short bullets of thought and opinion, the true web logs. But what of those posts that reach for a more sublime connection with readers? The longer, more lyrical ones? The ones that sear consciousness? Blog just doesn’t cut it.

So I’m putting the call out there to all my readers and writer buddies and their readers and writer buddies. Come up with an alternative to blog. Coin, or purloin, a word that reflects this other kind of blogging — the composition of elegant prose that has the power to move hearts. And mountains.

A free copy of my novel (when it’s published!) to the winner.