Author Archives: Theryn

A sense of enjoyment

When I write I make a conscious effort to generate a sense of enjoyment–to convey to my readers that I found the events I’m describing more than ordinarily interesting, or unusual, or amusing, or emotional, or bizarre. Otherwise why bother to describe them? I also try to convey the idea that I was feeling great when I did my writing–which I almost never was; writing well is hard work. But readers have a right to believe that you were having a good time taking them on your chosen voyage.

—William Zinsser

So Rainy!

[N]o one needs to watch the news every night, unless one is married to the anchor. Otherwise, you are mostly going to learn more than you need to know about where the local fires are, and how rainy it has been: so rainy! That is half an hour, a few days a week, I tell my students. You could commit to writing one page a night, which, over a year, is most of a book.

—Anne Lamott

11: T is for Trespass

T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton

Another 55 cent book from the Book Sale. Hardcover, with a jacket, and another that was not a library book.

Previously on The Remainder Table…

[S is for Silence] flips between Kinsey’s 1987 world and flashbacks to 1953 (various characters). Since Kinsey is not a party to the 1953 flashbacks, the reader always knows more than she does. I’m not thrilled with this device. In a detective story, I think it’s best if we stick to the detective’s PoV—this is the only way the reader can play along (and isn’t that what a detective story is about?).

I’d forgotten about this. In T, while most of the story is told from Kinsey’s PoV, some of the chapters are told from the villain’s PoV. As with the flashbacks in S, I wasn’t excited about this device—I don’t think Grafton provided any insights into the character that we couldn’t have gotten another way. And it mitigated the suspense. Sure, there was still the “what is she going to do?” suspense, but there was no “who’s the villain?” More importantly, it put the reader ahead of Kinsey from the very beginning, which made Kinsey look kind of slow when she finally did catch on (which seems kind of unfair to the character).

I’m guessing that Grafton couldn’t think of a way to create doubt as to who the villain was with this particular storyline, so that’s why she went this route. But I think it would have been possible, if some of the minor characters had been played up more.

In T, what would normally be the side plot turns into the main plot. Kinsey’s neighbor, 89-year-old Gus, falls and dislocates his shoulder. He needs help while he recovers, but his only relative is a great-great-niece in NY. Kinsey manages to locate the niece, and she makes a brief visit to Santa Teresa. But because Gus is a Grumpy Old Man, she has trouble finding a home care nurse for him. When she finally finds someone, she only has Kinsey do a cursory background check, because she is eager to get back to her life in NY. Duh-duh-duh!

I enjoyed T more than S. But I know if I think about it too much, the whole thing will fall apart. (So I’m not going to ;-))

Here’s the thing. I know Kinsey Millhone isn’t great literature, but also know if I come across another in the series, I will probably read it. It’s reading junk food! nomnomnom It’s not even so much about the series itself, but about the fact that reading it also reminds me of reading the first books in the series, back when my favorite TV show was Remington Steele and my career aspiration was to be either a police detective, a private investigator, or a cat burglar.

Random tidbit: Grafton’s pet word is “ease”: people are forever easing onto stools, cars easing out of driveways, etc. etc.

Haha. It’s true! She still likes ease, but its noticeability was eclipsed by her new pet word (phrase?): “thumb lock.” I assume she means a deadbolt. I’ve never heard them referred to as thumb locks before.

10: The End of East

The End of East by Jen Sookfong Lee

Another hardcover picked up at the book sale (I’m starting to feel repetitive…). This one was actually a library book—gently-used, as they say. The dust jacket was in good condition.

I was pretty excited to read this book because it’s not only set in Vancouver, it’s set on the east side.

If you’re not familiar, the east side of the City of Vancouver is generally referred to as “East Van.” The west side, otoh, is just referred to as the west side. This is because there’s already West Vancouver—a different city, to the north(west) of Vancouver. There is also the West End, which is the neighborhood near Stanley Park. (If you think that’s confusing, to the east of West Vancouver are not one, but two, North Vancouvers.)

Bonus Fun Fact: most people think of the east and west sides being divided by Main Street. But this is incorrect! The east/west divide is actually Ontario Street. This leaves a two-block strip of east-side addresses for Realtors to tout as “west of Main!” This has cachet because the west is the more affluent side of the city.

And my blathering is less of a digression than you might think when you consider the title…

Anyhow, I could very much visualize the areas she described, but I did start to wonder how much of that was my own pre-existing knowledge. Was there too much of a reliance on street names as a shorthand? I’m not sure. If you’re not from Vancouver and you read it, let me know what you think.

The End of East is Jen Sookfong Lee’s first novel. It’s about three generations of the Chan family, but more broadly about the difficulties Chinese immigrants to Canada faced due to racist immigration laws.

Seid Quan immigrates to Vancouver in the early 1900s, at a time when Chinese immigrants were subject to the head tax. He settles in the Downtown Eastside, in Chinatown, and ends up taking over ownership of a barbershop. His village finances his immigration and his purchase of the shop and he works for many years to repay them. He is only able to return home a few times (for both financial and immigration law reasons). After many years alone in Canada, he is able to bring his son and his wife over. Eventually, his son marries and has five daughters, the first generation to be born in Canada. The story is narrated by the youngest, Samantha (Sammy).

Sammy’s parents and grandparents are nuanced characters, and her telling of their stories is unsentimental yet moving. I really liked the non-linear structure of the story. Instead of moving steadily forward in time we jump forward and back, learning different pieces of the story, until they all fit together in the end like a puzzle. Loved that. (And I think Lee’s ability to do this well in a first novel bodes well for her future books.)

The weak part of the book for me was Sammy. She’s just sort of… there. First you think, well, maybe she’s just there to tell her family’s story, a Scheherazade, if you will. Ok, I could get behind that. Except, not exactly. Because there is this sketchy backstory that doesn’t really go anywhere. And also this weird side-plot that doesn’t really go anywhere. And even these things would have been ok if they had been developed to that level but  associated with another character, e.g. one of her sisters. The problem for me was that she’s a first-person narrator.

But this is a quibble. I liked this book very much, and I look forward to reading Lee’s second novel when it comes out.

Once you set the pace, the rest will follow

To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed—and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.

—Haruki Murakami
in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2008, p. 5)

So I have this thing where I’ll see/hear Someone Who is More Well-Known than Me (which is to say, pretty much everyone) doing or saying something that I’ve been doing or saying for eons, and I’ll be “Wait, what? I said/did that First!” Sometimes I think I’m secretly an innovator—except I never realize what I’m doing/saying is bleeding edge until someone else scoops me. (This is why I will never be rich ;-)) Or maybe this is a common thing. Let me know.

Anyhow. Please note the date on my article, “Starting Will Always Be Hard: What Running Taught Me About Writing.”

Probably the most important thing that running has taught me is that no matter how long you’ve done something and how much you love it, starting will always be hard. Start anyway. If you don’t, you’ll never get to experience that moment when everything clicks and you’re sailing: your feet are flying across the pavement or your fingers are smoking over the keyboard. And afterward, when you’re done? Well, that feeling is sheer euphoria.

Genius Inhabits You

[Genius] comes in flashes and then leaves, because you don’t possess genius—not even if you happen to be declared one. Instead genius inhabits you, enables you, fills you. I think the creative world would be better off by far—perhaps less selfish and competitive—if we embrace a concept of genius that envisions it as free-floating and collective, rather than bound up in the individual. Genius is something that strikes us, something we occasionally tap into unaware. We should be more concerned with this timeless, incomprehensible force that inhabits writers than with the accolades we use the genius word to bestow.

—Steven Wingate