Feels good to be laptopin’.
Okay so the storm is gone, the lights are back on in Connecticut and I can flush without hauling water. Life is pretty much back to normal which means things aren’t normal at all. I’m being screwed at work, so what else is new.
I shouted at a gaggle of electric linemen in some big-ass green trucks from Quebec yesterday.
“Thank you,” I shouted. “Canada rocks,” I said. They waved and cheered; made me feel good.
“Oh Can-a-da…” I love their anthem, it’s so cool but I like ours better, bombs bursting, flags still flying. Believe me…dawns early light…it comes damn early when you have no eee…leck…ticity, especially after going to bed with half-dead D-cells and a book with a #10 cordia font or whatever the hell it was; Christ it was small in the dark.
Anyway, I finished the book, The Help. Stockett’s story as a first time fiction writer getting rejected 60 times is beyond inspirational, that chick is crazy focused.
I’m shopping for an agent for my first novel and already a quarter-way through my next book. Does that mean I consider number one totally complete….naw…they never are, even when they are.
Oh, The Help, read it, with the lights on at a reasonable hour. Now that I’m thinking about this I realize I should have read some King or Koontz in the dark. Scary shit that. I’ll wait until the next hurricane. Gotta’ find me some new D-cells first.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
The calm before the...
I hear that low barometric pressure is good for the writing mind. It helps produce waves of inspiration and blows clear that which blocks the creative mind with extraneous stink-pile. It also floods us with ideas and topples doubt. I am hoping that I don’t lose the power of my abilities, lest my ideas rest in the dark too long.
Sincerely,
Irene
PS Cold showers and not being able to flush suck.
Sincerely,
Irene
PS Cold showers and not being able to flush suck.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Just beyond my grasp
I am off to stack plates on shelves when all I want to do is tap keys. It’s better than digging ditches, I guess, and better than cleaning grease-vats or changing shitty sheets and much better than the unemployment line. With dismay I recall a forty year ago brass ring handed to me which I tossed to the future thinking it would land in my hand again someday. I’m still waiting. Actually, not waiting, reaching. I can see it…it is just beyond my fingertips…almost…
Monday, August 22, 2011
The next book
Sent my first-reader a copy of the short story I am using as the back bone of my next novel. She said it blew her away, that she loved it.
Now I have to feed it. That’s a lot of kibble, 10,000 X 10. I’ll have it done by January.
Now I have to feed it. That’s a lot of kibble, 10,000 X 10. I’ll have it done by January.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Same-old, same-old
I took a vacation this week, from my job, from writing, from doing all the same-old, same-old, day after day. I ate different foods and drank different drinks. What I have found is that, though different is good and needed when same-old, same-old becomes the norm, new is only best for purses and shoes without holes.
It feels good to be back in my familiar, it feels good to place my fingers on keys other than those which start my car and open my door. Computer keys are my voice, from my brain to yours.
Hello.
It feels good to be back in my familiar, it feels good to place my fingers on keys other than those which start my car and open my door. Computer keys are my voice, from my brain to yours.
Hello.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
First the tide rushes in and then the sea is very still.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, can play Ebb Tide on the piano better than I play it.
It was a song written in the fifty’s. The best instrumental was done by Santo and Johnny, two guitar brothers during the same era, absolutely awesome. Sinatra sang it, Ella too and so did the Righteous Brothers. But my rendition on the piano beats them all. Why?
The summer I was fifteen my family moved to a new home, in a new town, far away from the few friends I had, which were also new; we had moved from our old town 900 miles away from my old friends. With no one to hang out with, both my parents worked, not that I wanted to spend my summer as my mother’s best friend, I hung out with our piano.
For eight hours a day I played the huge black instrument in our dining room, by ear. An image of me banging on the keyboard with the side of my head, just popped into my mind, no, my ears are fine. For hours on end I sounded out musical phrases until I could play the songs I heard on the radio. When I was little I had taken a few piano lessons, and my mother played beautifully, so I could read the basics of notes. I envied that she could read the ‘sheets’ so well, but not enough for me to study and actually practice songs I disliked, and thought were boring. Though she could read notes, which looked like chicken tick tac toe to me, her actual playing lacked something. I think it was emotion. She played it, like she read it. She expressed it, like the song writer wrote it. Not me. I played it, like I heard it, and performed it, like I felt it.
In one of her music books I found Ebb Tide broken down to its basic, and began to play. I added in keyboard runs, sounding like waves, and a masterpiece was born. All day long, day after day, I practiced. Even now, when I sit down at a piano, the first thing I play is Ebb Tide. It still sounds pretty good too.
It takes a special kind of talent to sound out music and to play it well. It takes dedication to the art form, deep emotional feelings of expression, and a long hot summer of doing nothing but banging on keys.
That’s how I write, by ear.
I know the basics of English grammar and sentence structure. I know what nouns, verbs and adjectives are; beyond that I’m crippled. I remember that you are not supposed to end a sentence with the word from. I just did. That beginning a sentence with ‘that’ is wrong is a rule I occasionally break. And, beginning a sentence with ‘and’ again a no-no, I find a terrific way to get across an additional point. I can’t spell worth a shit, my computer points out quite often just how serious my spelling disability is. And, my use of comma’s, or lack of them, sucketh.
But, (another rule broken by starting a sentence with ‘but’), having said all that, I’ve written some pretty amazing stuff. Well over sixty of my essays have been published by very patient editors who have been able to ‘listen’ to what I have written, and not how awkwardly I have written it. Many of my pieces have gone out over the wire service. Pretty good for a kid who, during the same year as a college freshman, flunked English 101 but got A plus in English Composition and Creative Writing.
Now that I’m querying agents, because my second book is complete, I’m finding the same kind of structural bias I found when my high school music teacher dismissed my rendition of Ebb Tide, the kids went crazy when I played it, because “… I set a bad example”, she said. I wasn’t ‘studied’ enough. The ones, who just sat and listened, enjoyed. That to me was what playing the piano was about.
But, one spectacular song does not a repertoire make.
Side note: I spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to spell repertoire on the computer. No luck. Fifteen seconds in my Webster’s Desk Dictionary from high school, found it; doesn’t say much for computer programs or my electronic methods.
In the process of playing the piano I learned to read music but my heart is into a different kind of keyboard now. My hunt and peck for words has become a speed-dial race for written expression that I am extremely proud of. (Never end a sentence with ‘of’ either). I think they are called prepositions.
With half a hundred of books on writing, writing courses, writing groups and being published many, many, many times, I have expanded well beyond Ebb Tide. I have made the leap from ‘published’ essays to ‘never been published’ fiction, and am hoping that somewhere I will find a patient agent who will see past my technical failings, into actual expression. The problem is that in an industry in flux, as much as traditional publishing is today, can they afford to take on such a neophyte as I? Many say absolutely not.
Copy has to be as pristine and as a clean as a virgins past.
So, what to do? Learn.
My Strunk and White, ’79 edition is my music book now. It is Beethoven’s ninth, on paper, to me; I struggle, I’ll get it eventually. I just hope the audience gets to hear it, before I get so old my fingers curl, and my mind goes out with the tide. Gee, I wish I hadn’t sold the old piano. I’m in the mood for some Ebb Tide.
It was a song written in the fifty’s. The best instrumental was done by Santo and Johnny, two guitar brothers during the same era, absolutely awesome. Sinatra sang it, Ella too and so did the Righteous Brothers. But my rendition on the piano beats them all. Why?
The summer I was fifteen my family moved to a new home, in a new town, far away from the few friends I had, which were also new; we had moved from our old town 900 miles away from my old friends. With no one to hang out with, both my parents worked, not that I wanted to spend my summer as my mother’s best friend, I hung out with our piano.
For eight hours a day I played the huge black instrument in our dining room, by ear. An image of me banging on the keyboard with the side of my head, just popped into my mind, no, my ears are fine. For hours on end I sounded out musical phrases until I could play the songs I heard on the radio. When I was little I had taken a few piano lessons, and my mother played beautifully, so I could read the basics of notes. I envied that she could read the ‘sheets’ so well, but not enough for me to study and actually practice songs I disliked, and thought were boring. Though she could read notes, which looked like chicken tick tac toe to me, her actual playing lacked something. I think it was emotion. She played it, like she read it. She expressed it, like the song writer wrote it. Not me. I played it, like I heard it, and performed it, like I felt it.
In one of her music books I found Ebb Tide broken down to its basic, and began to play. I added in keyboard runs, sounding like waves, and a masterpiece was born. All day long, day after day, I practiced. Even now, when I sit down at a piano, the first thing I play is Ebb Tide. It still sounds pretty good too.
It takes a special kind of talent to sound out music and to play it well. It takes dedication to the art form, deep emotional feelings of expression, and a long hot summer of doing nothing but banging on keys.
That’s how I write, by ear.
I know the basics of English grammar and sentence structure. I know what nouns, verbs and adjectives are; beyond that I’m crippled. I remember that you are not supposed to end a sentence with the word from. I just did. That beginning a sentence with ‘that’ is wrong is a rule I occasionally break. And, beginning a sentence with ‘and’ again a no-no, I find a terrific way to get across an additional point. I can’t spell worth a shit, my computer points out quite often just how serious my spelling disability is. And, my use of comma’s, or lack of them, sucketh.
But, (another rule broken by starting a sentence with ‘but’), having said all that, I’ve written some pretty amazing stuff. Well over sixty of my essays have been published by very patient editors who have been able to ‘listen’ to what I have written, and not how awkwardly I have written it. Many of my pieces have gone out over the wire service. Pretty good for a kid who, during the same year as a college freshman, flunked English 101 but got A plus in English Composition and Creative Writing.
Now that I’m querying agents, because my second book is complete, I’m finding the same kind of structural bias I found when my high school music teacher dismissed my rendition of Ebb Tide, the kids went crazy when I played it, because “… I set a bad example”, she said. I wasn’t ‘studied’ enough. The ones, who just sat and listened, enjoyed. That to me was what playing the piano was about.
But, one spectacular song does not a repertoire make.
Side note: I spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to spell repertoire on the computer. No luck. Fifteen seconds in my Webster’s Desk Dictionary from high school, found it; doesn’t say much for computer programs or my electronic methods.
In the process of playing the piano I learned to read music but my heart is into a different kind of keyboard now. My hunt and peck for words has become a speed-dial race for written expression that I am extremely proud of. (Never end a sentence with ‘of’ either). I think they are called prepositions.
With half a hundred of books on writing, writing courses, writing groups and being published many, many, many times, I have expanded well beyond Ebb Tide. I have made the leap from ‘published’ essays to ‘never been published’ fiction, and am hoping that somewhere I will find a patient agent who will see past my technical failings, into actual expression. The problem is that in an industry in flux, as much as traditional publishing is today, can they afford to take on such a neophyte as I? Many say absolutely not.
Copy has to be as pristine and as a clean as a virgins past.
So, what to do? Learn.
My Strunk and White, ’79 edition is my music book now. It is Beethoven’s ninth, on paper, to me; I struggle, I’ll get it eventually. I just hope the audience gets to hear it, before I get so old my fingers curl, and my mind goes out with the tide. Gee, I wish I hadn’t sold the old piano. I’m in the mood for some Ebb Tide.
Friday, July 29, 2011
So this is how I did it.
So how does a book get started?
That’s a stupid question so I shall rephrase…how did my book, Reference to the Unspoken come about?
After I finished To Walk Among Strangers and began the querying process, I learned two things.
1. Wow, I could finish a book and be proud of the work I completed.
2. I can’t spell for crap.
3. (I’m adding a 3rd), I will not commit to another book because it takes too much time.
So, I discovered short stories. I love writing them. With over thirty written, and with a central theme I consider quite clever, I finished and began the query process again. Trying to get short stories published is about as easy as sending a newborn back where it came from. So what, I write them because they are fun.
At my laptop one day I started another short story and wrote the words, “I am beige.” Three innocuous words that on the surface say very little but when you think about them they describe a lot. From those words Reference to the Unspoken emerged and at 70,000 words and complete, has a cast of characters as full of fun and family secrets as my own. To say I love my characters is to say, well, I love my characters; I know it’s a very cliché kind of writery phrase, but did I say I like my characters?.
When I began the querying process, yet again, I thought my lead paragraph was brilliant and posted it here along with the entire query. Then I read an agent’s post which said never post your query on your blog because it will bite you in the behind. Not sure why the agent said that but I took it down and posted only the first paragraph, the brilliant one.
Then I read an agent’s blog, (I read too many agent blogs), which said to never lead a query off with a concept of thought or analogy. I’m supposed to grab the agent by their ‘I-wana’-read-your-book-balls’. In one paragraph I am supposed to describe, and entice the agent to love my be-zillion words; a query is a writer-to-agent-foreplay maneuver. So I took down my brilliant paragraph, which I am reposting now. Sorry experts but it best explains the backbone of the book.
Reference to the Unspoken is about elephants. Not about the ones which roam the African veld or performers the likes of Sara Gruen’s Rosie, but about the huge beast in the middle of the room about which no one speaks. It is also about the elephant which quietly dozes in the corner. That one has been around so long people often forget it is there.
I mean really, what is wrong with that? The writing is okay. Sure it says nothing specific but it lets the reader know that my book is about the baggage we all have and are mute about.
From the first three words of chapter 1, ‘I am beige’, the reader learns about Lillian, a never married, childless, college professor, who considers her life at almost-forty a cruel joke. At her nieces wedding she meets Royce, a recovering alcoholic and single-father who reeks of Jack Daniels. They don’t get along right away, ah…predictable, but when they begin to discover their feelings things get interesting. Enter the elephants.
There is a tragic reason Lillian is still single. Her elephant in the room is the one dozing in the corner and Royce’s is the huge beast in the middle of the room everyone dances around. As I added family members, ex-wives, and children, and break your heart incidents, my so called romance novel began to take on a much more serious tone. (It does have amusing parts too.) I’ve been told it is NOT a romance novel but contemporary fiction, which is okay with me because I didn’t want to write pure romance anyway. I’m not criticizing the genre it’s just that my characters say fuck too much.
Dig deep my writing teachers always said, go beyond where other writers may not seek to explore, so I dug, with shovel and pick-ax into incest and marital rape, as exculpatory regarding secondary characters, and realized mid-point in the story that every single family has secrets. If you don’t think yours does then you are the one they are keeping the secrets from.
And then the OMG WOW moment, the surprise of all surprises I cannot even hint at or the WOW is lost. (No spoilers here.) My God I cannot believe I came up with what I came up with. I love it. I love where it goes. I am proud, can you tell.
So, the book I said I would never write, because it takes too long to write a book, I wrote. It’s done, finished, edited ad infinitum. I went to Staples and had three copies printed, (258 pages each), and 3-hole punched. (I wanted them bound but their binding machine was broken so I bought three binders); they sort of look like books but really like huge homework assignments. 80 bucks later I handed over the copies to members of my writing group who graciously offered to read them.
Okay so I have to get over the idea that these people are blowing smoke of my dress. One of our group teaches writing at the college level, is published, honest and tough. She said she couldn’t put it down and she used the word phenomenal. I will not go into what others have said because repeating accolades is boring to the reader because, I know what you are thinking, ‘hey they are your friends, hey, they know you, they don’t want to embarrass you, or themselves, by telling you the last nine months of effort is a stink-pile’. But one of the people, I had a 4th copy, mine, who read it IS beyond honest and doesn’t give a shit how much time I spent or whether I am embarrassed…she loved it too.
Fourteen queries so far, two partials and yes a few rejections but what I find interesting is that they rejected my query, not the book. (It’s only been 3 weeks.) I find it amusing that even though I am a published essayist, well over 50 tear-sheets to prove it, my query sucketh. I'm on my hundreth version.
I have come to the conclusion that writing a book and getting it published is like losing weight. Once you make up your mind to do it, it is easy. Maintaining the weight loss is like getting your book published; remain focused, don’t get discouraged and stay on track. Yup it’s exactly like losing weight. Did I mention that two years ago I lost 92 lbs. ? I went from a size 22 to an 8 and yes I have maintained the loss of every frigging ounce. But that’s another story.
That’s a stupid question so I shall rephrase…how did my book, Reference to the Unspoken come about?
After I finished To Walk Among Strangers and began the querying process, I learned two things.
1. Wow, I could finish a book and be proud of the work I completed.
2. I can’t spell for crap.
3. (I’m adding a 3rd), I will not commit to another book because it takes too much time.
So, I discovered short stories. I love writing them. With over thirty written, and with a central theme I consider quite clever, I finished and began the query process again. Trying to get short stories published is about as easy as sending a newborn back where it came from. So what, I write them because they are fun.
At my laptop one day I started another short story and wrote the words, “I am beige.” Three innocuous words that on the surface say very little but when you think about them they describe a lot. From those words Reference to the Unspoken emerged and at 70,000 words and complete, has a cast of characters as full of fun and family secrets as my own. To say I love my characters is to say, well, I love my characters; I know it’s a very cliché kind of writery phrase, but did I say I like my characters?.
When I began the querying process, yet again, I thought my lead paragraph was brilliant and posted it here along with the entire query. Then I read an agent’s post which said never post your query on your blog because it will bite you in the behind. Not sure why the agent said that but I took it down and posted only the first paragraph, the brilliant one.
Then I read an agent’s blog, (I read too many agent blogs), which said to never lead a query off with a concept of thought or analogy. I’m supposed to grab the agent by their ‘I-wana’-read-your-book-balls’. In one paragraph I am supposed to describe, and entice the agent to love my be-zillion words; a query is a writer-to-agent-foreplay maneuver. So I took down my brilliant paragraph, which I am reposting now. Sorry experts but it best explains the backbone of the book.
Reference to the Unspoken is about elephants. Not about the ones which roam the African veld or performers the likes of Sara Gruen’s Rosie, but about the huge beast in the middle of the room about which no one speaks. It is also about the elephant which quietly dozes in the corner. That one has been around so long people often forget it is there.
I mean really, what is wrong with that? The writing is okay. Sure it says nothing specific but it lets the reader know that my book is about the baggage we all have and are mute about.
From the first three words of chapter 1, ‘I am beige’, the reader learns about Lillian, a never married, childless, college professor, who considers her life at almost-forty a cruel joke. At her nieces wedding she meets Royce, a recovering alcoholic and single-father who reeks of Jack Daniels. They don’t get along right away, ah…predictable, but when they begin to discover their feelings things get interesting. Enter the elephants.
There is a tragic reason Lillian is still single. Her elephant in the room is the one dozing in the corner and Royce’s is the huge beast in the middle of the room everyone dances around. As I added family members, ex-wives, and children, and break your heart incidents, my so called romance novel began to take on a much more serious tone. (It does have amusing parts too.) I’ve been told it is NOT a romance novel but contemporary fiction, which is okay with me because I didn’t want to write pure romance anyway. I’m not criticizing the genre it’s just that my characters say fuck too much.
Dig deep my writing teachers always said, go beyond where other writers may not seek to explore, so I dug, with shovel and pick-ax into incest and marital rape, as exculpatory regarding secondary characters, and realized mid-point in the story that every single family has secrets. If you don’t think yours does then you are the one they are keeping the secrets from.
And then the OMG WOW moment, the surprise of all surprises I cannot even hint at or the WOW is lost. (No spoilers here.) My God I cannot believe I came up with what I came up with. I love it. I love where it goes. I am proud, can you tell.
So, the book I said I would never write, because it takes too long to write a book, I wrote. It’s done, finished, edited ad infinitum. I went to Staples and had three copies printed, (258 pages each), and 3-hole punched. (I wanted them bound but their binding machine was broken so I bought three binders); they sort of look like books but really like huge homework assignments. 80 bucks later I handed over the copies to members of my writing group who graciously offered to read them.
Okay so I have to get over the idea that these people are blowing smoke of my dress. One of our group teaches writing at the college level, is published, honest and tough. She said she couldn’t put it down and she used the word phenomenal. I will not go into what others have said because repeating accolades is boring to the reader because, I know what you are thinking, ‘hey they are your friends, hey, they know you, they don’t want to embarrass you, or themselves, by telling you the last nine months of effort is a stink-pile’. But one of the people, I had a 4th copy, mine, who read it IS beyond honest and doesn’t give a shit how much time I spent or whether I am embarrassed…she loved it too.
Fourteen queries so far, two partials and yes a few rejections but what I find interesting is that they rejected my query, not the book. (It’s only been 3 weeks.) I find it amusing that even though I am a published essayist, well over 50 tear-sheets to prove it, my query sucketh. I'm on my hundreth version.
I have come to the conclusion that writing a book and getting it published is like losing weight. Once you make up your mind to do it, it is easy. Maintaining the weight loss is like getting your book published; remain focused, don’t get discouraged and stay on track. Yup it’s exactly like losing weight. Did I mention that two years ago I lost 92 lbs. ? I went from a size 22 to an 8 and yes I have maintained the loss of every frigging ounce. But that’s another story.
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