This resonated with me:
I think they key is this: I know that it takes a long time to write a good novel. It will take me at least two years, but probably three. I can’t beat myself up for missing these days. All I can do is promise myself that I will do better. …… Whatever happens, I don’t want to associate my writing with guilt. I have enough stuff to feel guilty about. …
Everyone has their issues. Guilt is mine. Should I ever write that memoir I’ve mentioned, it will be a major theme.
Here, Tayari Jones writes about her publicity tour for her second book. What I found interesting was what a difference the marketing slant can have on a book’s success.
Anyhow, she writes:
My publisher, Warner Books, sponsored the dinner where they would be featuring one of their new writers: the author of a magnificent work of art called Redneck Nation.
What I found so… deflating, I guess would be the closest word, about this, is that I think when we (writers) imagine a publisher finally saying “Yes, we want to publish you!” we also imagine that this “yes” means they “get” you. They think your writing is cool, they’re on the same wavelength, etc. etc.
Which… really that’s silly, of course. They’re not picking your book because they think it’s the most brilliant piece of prose ever written, they’re picking it because they think it will sell. Which means their catalog will contain works of varying degrees of quality and competing philosophies. I’m a pragmatist. But still, it must be bizarre for a publicist to be promoting one book with the message “X” and then turn around the next day and promote a book with the message “not-X”. I guess this is why I’m not in marketing.
*
Anyhow, I liked Tayari’s writing there so, as you do, I clicked on the link to her own website, saw “blog” at the top there, and started reading.
I haven’t been doing much gushing or eking lately. *sigh* Well, I did write an AB article, but that’s not what I mean. I can’t say that I haven’t had time to write creatively this past month; I just haven’t been able to
focus. At least part of the problem is that writing query/cover letters is sucking my brain dry. Bleh.
Open letter to ‘The Da Vinci Code’ publisher
This one’s a guy ranting about why he won’t buy The Da Vinci Code in hardcover. (For the record, I’m the other person who has not yet read The Da Vinci Code.) And why won’t he? Well…
Why? Well, it’d go against one of the two rules by which my mother taught me to live life: Always Wait for the Paperback.
FOCLMAO. I had the hardcover vs. paperback discussion with some other reader/writer-types a few years back. I said I only bought paperbacks. Trade paperbacks, usually, but paperbacks, nonetheless. I think people thought I was wacky or something. Like, hardcovers are soooo much better! They smell great, etc. Yeah, yeah. Whatever. They’re also f’ing expensive and big/heavy (i.e. hard to carry around). I have changed my stance on the hardcover thing a little in the last couple years, though, since I discovered the remainder table. I mean, if I the hardcover is selling for $2.99, who’m I to say no? (I actually got one for 99 cents! That’s like FREE in American!)
I suspect there’s something politically incorrect about buying books off the remainder table. Like the author gets no royalties or something. (Anyone know?) But here’s the thing: if I’m buying full-priced paperbacks, I generally stick to writers I’ve read before. Who wants to shell out 20 bucks for a book that sucks? Also, the regular bookshelves in a large bookstore can be somewhat overwhelming–there are so many books! Which ONE to choose? So it’s easier just to go to my favorite authors and look for something I haven’t read yet.
With the remainder table, I can get 4 books for 20 bucks. If a book sucks, well, it’s no great loss. I’m free to take risks. The selection is smaller and more eclectic. It’s generally not literary phenomenon-type stuff, The Book Everyone is Reading. Which is good, because I’m really not into jumping off cliffs just because everyone else is. But often there will be books by “name” writers that I haven’t read. Hey, here’s a chance to check them out. And I always look at first novels. Sound interesting? I’ll pick it up.
It’s the randomness of it that I like. It’s the same principle as used bookstores, which I’ve always loved. You never know what you’re going to find, what you’re going to discover. And the selection is never the same twice. So you can’t waffle. You have to leap.
And the thing is, all it takes is one book to hook me. Next time? I’ll be looking for you on the regular shelves. As long as you’re in paperback 😉
Book lover, collector turns silo into unusual library
The article’s about a guy who turned an old silo into a three-storey library with a spiral staircase in the middle. Too cool. But I loved this quote:
“I can’t imagine living without books. If I go out to dinner at someone else’s home, and they don’t have books visible, I wonder if I want them as friends,” said Barbara Farnsworth, an antiquarian bookseller in West Cornwall, Conn.
It’s so true! I always find it disturbing to be in a house that lacks books. Like, do I have anything in common with these people? I remember a time I was house-sitting, and I kept wandering around the house thinking “something’s not right” but not clueing in to what it was, and then I realized. No books! I gasped. I did another circuit of the house to check and make sure, but no, it was true. Not a single one! I was quite literally shocked.
I also find it disturbing when a house lacks living things other than people (i.e. plants and/or pets) and personal mementos (not tchotchkes, but photographs and other items of personal significance). Without those things, it seems like a hotel room, not a home.
When I was in my last year of high school I babysat for this “rich” family. (I put in rich in quotations because it turned out they were in fact living beyond their means. ) Anyhow, I’d never seen anything like the house they lived in. I mean, not the house itself, it was typical for the neighborhood. But the interior. It had clearly been “done” by a decorator. Everything matched, from the furniture to the paint colors to the accessories (they were clearly accessories, not personal items). For instance, there was a white baby grand piano in the living room. I’m sure no one in that house played piano. There was never anything out of place, no magazines on the coffee table or toys on the floor or anything like that. It was stunning. And completely sterile. The only room I felt comfortable in was the unfurnished playroom (the room builders call the “bonus” room) that held all the kids’ toys. After the perfection of the rest of the house, it was delightfully messy.
When [girls] pick up Forever, her hallmark folksy, first-person voice eases their transition into the book’s more adult world, conveying subliminally the idea that sex is not something “other” – and therefore to be feared – but something “more”; the logical next step on the ladder to adulthood.
I always liked Judy Blume, despite the fact that I never understood Margaret and her friends in Are You There God? (I thought they were insane.) Anyhoo. Never owned a copy of Forever (or any other Blume books that I can recall, though I read them all), so I can’t reminisce about where I hid mine. That’s not a slight. For as much as I read, I really owned very few books as a pre-adult. Most were library books or borrowed. Forever was borrowed. It got passed around my junior high until everyone who wanted to had read it. Who it actually belonged to, I don’t remember, if I ever knew.
Blume now finds herself in the rather curious position of being, as she herself puts it, “one of the most banned writers in America” …
What I find fascinating about Judy Blume is how her books are always on those “most-banned” lists. In fact, most of the authors on those banned lists are YA authors. I find that amusing because I started reading novels-written-for-adults when I was about 10. Nothing a teen novel could throw at me was particularly revelatory. I don’t even particularly remember much about the plot of Forever (I think there was a ski trip?). What I remember is that dog-eared paperback being passed around the school.
Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant
Because snarking at creationists is always fun. 😉
Love, Family, and Fairness, or How to Raise a Gay Friendly Child
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this said better, if at all. I think this is really important, and it’s something I’ve thought about a lot, especially with all the recent media attention on banning books that depict same-sex families because they’re “age inappropriate.” One, I don’t think that it’s ever too early to show kids that not all families are of the one mom, one dad variety. And two, I think it’s pretty presumptuous to assume that your child is heterosexual.
I also think she’s terribly cool. She’s on my “must read all books by her/him” list. I try to take these things slowly though, because it’s always a little disappointing when you’ve read a writer’s entire oeuvre and there’s nothing left to discover.
Sallie started a discussion at TC about Anne Rice and her aversion to having her work edited. Apparently she thinks she’s so beyond that. As in, she’s not in need of an editor because her work is sheer perfection. Ya, right. Now, it’s true, I’ve never read Ms. Rice. However, there isn’t a writer out there who couldn’t use the assistance of an editor from time to time. So you can probably figure out what I think her swelled head needs. *kick*
I much prefer what Madeleine L’Engle had to say on the subject of editing. From Two-Part Invention:
[M]y first novel [A Small Rain] was optioned by Vanguard … I was fortunate at Vanguard to have a fine young editor, Bernard Perry, who later founded the University of Indiana Press. Bernard somehow managed to make me understand what I needed to do with the shapeless mass of material I had given Vanguard, to refine it and tidy it until it became a novel.
Then a little later:
[M]y second novel [Ilsa] was accepted, with enthusiasm. But, alas, Bernard Perry was gone. There was nobody at Vanguard at that time to tell me that what I had submitted was an excellent first draft but that my manuscript needed work, a lot of work.
I have been blessed with editors who have pushed and prodded me, made me go back to the typewriter and rewrite and revise. This second novel needed that kind of editorial nudging and didn’t get it.
This is so weird. I just finished reading this book of short stories by Carol Shields. One of the stories is about a window tax (tax is based on how many windows people have, so naturally people board up their windows). So I figured it as some kind of 1984-ish type thing: this is where we’re going. Except not. Today in Tax (first day of school, btw), I learn that there actually was a window tax, way back when. Who knew?
Finally got around to posting what I’ve written this month. It’s been erratic, what with it getting close to exams and all. But I’m still going!
I’ve been reading Stephen King’s “On Writing.” When he was in high school, he had a job as a reporter for the local newspaper, and he relates a few things the editor (John Gould) taught him. One thing stuck out, particularly as I try to keep this story going to its conclusion.
“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”
And I realized it’s true. That’s what I’m doing. I’m telling myself the story. As I actually get it out of my head and into words, I’m figuring out what the story is. You think you know, but as you write, you realize you really don’t. Not until you write it down. Stuff comes up that you did not expect at all. Characters appear. Situations connect.
So. I’m on the right track, even if it looks like crap atm. Once I get it finished, then I can take out what it is not.
The Remainder Table 