just the facts, ma'am

Are you going back in time through writing a historical novel? Then you’ll be doing research on the fashions, mores, diet, and customs of the times your characters live in. Don’t rely solely on movies, TV shows, or <heaven forbid> wikipedia for your information! Sometimes the movies got the information shamefully wrong. You wouldn’t want to have any anachronisms, would you?

Here are the kinds of books that would help. They make for fun reading even if you aren’t writing a historical novel—or is that just the English major in me?

Below: covers from City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London

and Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England



in medias res

in medias res. Defined in Creative Writer's Handbook as "'In the middle of things.' The strategy of beginning a literary or dramatic work in the midst of the action rather than at the beginning of the chronlogical sequence. See point of attack."

Okay, so point of attack is: "Moment in a literary or dramatic work at which the plot, but not necessarily the story, begins."

Sometimes when we read back over a rough draft, we can see that a revision where we begin in medias res would be better than a chronological organization of events.

A movie that begins in medias res:

Raging Bull.

A video game that begins in medias res and goes backward:

A novel? Mary Shelley's Frankenstein:

Ode to Pork, continued

Kevin Young, author of Ode to Pork, has a great website!

http://kevinyoungpoetry.com/home.html

Where has he been all my life? I have read some of his poems here and there, but had no idea of the huge body of work he has written. He's prolific!

Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels, came out this year.

Previous books include:

The Art of Losing, 2010

Dear Darkness, 2008

For the Confederate Dead, 2007

Black Maria, 2005

Jelly Roll, 2003

To Repel Ghosts, 2005

And other books. He's won numerous prestigious awards. The titles of his books are so great, I can only imagine the wonders to await us in his poems. Kevin, if you are reading this, I love you! Call me!

BOOK REVIEWS IN HAIKU?!

Okay, here's a challenge. How to write book reviews in Haiku? Three lines, with 5/7/5 syllables in length.

http://37days.typepad.com/haikubookreviews/2005/05/teaching_with_y.html

Teaching with Your Mouth Shut - Donald L. Finkel

Teaching or learning?   
Don't just Tell your students things,
help them discover.

By Patti Digh

Subversive Children's Books

The Today show did a segment on subversive children's books. Some that made the list:
Where the Wild Things Are
Harriet the Spy (one of my favorites)
The Story of Ferdinand
Yertle the Turtle (Dr. Seuss)
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type (no, this is not my memoir) :-)

What children's book would you add to the subversive list?

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40099066/ns/today-books/

BLOOD, BONES, AND BUTTER

I adore the title of this memoir. It reminds me of a time in my life when I cooked for a living. Why do these brilliant people keep stealing the thoughts right out of my head?

By the way, cooking is dirty, backbreaking, hot, dangerous, repetitive, and allows no time for sleep. Just shoot me if you hear me talking about opening a restaurant.

who'd a thunk it? OMG is now in Oxford English Dictionary

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/03/dictionary-texting-omg-lol.html

Amanda Hocking interview

You must read this interview about 26 year-old wunderkind Amanda! Let's self-publish!




 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tonya-plank/meet-mega-bestselling-ind_b_804685.html

The Paris Wife

I’m reading The Paris Wife by Paula McClain. It’s a historical novel based on the life of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson, who were married from 1921-1927.

Also, I just read an interesting article about cursing. Where do you stand on this issue as regards your own writing?

Jon Pareles, New York Times, “From Cee Lo Green to Pink, Speaking the Unspeakable”

March 15, 2011,

"Deploying the f-bomb also defuses it; give or take a few copycats in the months to come, it’s going to sound about as potent as a popgun."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/arts/music/from-cee-lo-green-to-pink-speaking-the-unspeakable.html

 

More on naming fictional characters...

Check out this blog post (link below) for more interesting information and considerations about naming our characters.

One snippet of advice is to avoid using a character name that ends with "s." The reason? It gets awkward to make the name possessive!

For example, Doris. Is it Doris' coat or Doris's coat? Either one seems funky. Who wants to struggle with this through an entire novel?


http://www.gointothestory.com/2010/09/importance-of-character-names.html

interview your character!

From Lauren Grodstein, “The Interview” in Now Write! Editor Sherry Ellis, Penguin, 2006.

Journal exercise:

This assignment involves creating a character and getting to know that character as well as you can. Your job is to interview your character as though you were a journalist for, say, Esquire or The New Yorker, and your character were the subject of a big juicy profile piece. Here are some of the questions you might want to ask your character;

--What is your earliest childhood memory?

--What’s your idea of a dream vacation?

--If you could have any other job, what would it be?

--Whom do you consider a hero?

--Which do you prefer: rock, opera, or jazz—and why?

--Or do you only listen to talk radio? Or do you listen to nothing at all?

Ask your interviewee anything you want!

It’s not that you will use all of this information in your fictional piece, but interviewing your character gives that character depth enough “to convince your reader of the genuineness of your fictional world. A thin character is not strong enough to hold up the narrative dream your stories should create.”

Quote of the day! from Stephen King

"Book-buyers aren't attracted, by and large, by the literary merits of a novel; book buyers want a good story to take with them on the airplane, something that will first fascinate them, then pull them in and keep them turning the pages. This happens, I think, when readers recognize the people in a book, their behaviors, their surroundings, and their talk. When the reader hears strong echoes of his or her own life and beliefs, he or she is apt to become more invested in the story. I'd argue that it's impossible to make this sort of connection in a pre-meditated way, gauging the market like a racetrack tout with a hot tip."
From On Writing.

quote of the day from Why I Write by Joan Didion

When I talk about pictures in my mind I am talking, quite specifically, about images that shimmer around the edges. There used to be an illustration in every elementary psychology book showing a cat drawn by a patient in varying stages of schizophrenia. This cat had a shimmer around it. You could see the molecular structure breaking down at the very edges of the cat: the cat became the background and the background the cat, everything interacting, exchanging ions. People on hallucinogens describe the same perception of objects. I’m not a schizophrenic, nor do I take hallucinogens, but certain images do shimmer for me. Look hard enough, and you can’t miss the shimmer. It’s there. You can’t think too much about these pictures that shimmer. You just lie low and let them develop. You stay quiet. You don’t talk to many people and you keep your nervous system from shorting out and you try to locate the cat in the shimmer, the grammar in the picture.

Quote of the day

"In the end, writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe."
James Salter

Quote of the day

Tim O'Brien, speaking about the "sense of place" in writing stories:

"It's not the amount of time you spend in a place that matters; it's the intensity of that time."

as quoted by Rebecca McClanahan in

Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively. Writer's Digest Books: 1999.

Have you read O'Brien's story "The Things They Carried"?

Do you have one minute and fifteen seconds?

If you do, take a look at this video by Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. Scroll down the left side of the page just a bit and you'll see the video under "check out related media."

I like that Ms. Simonson confesses why she didn't write something dark or gritty! We like dark and gritty, but sometimes we need a little something different.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812981227/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1J2EDAFS1KS8YYQQDQDJ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

I just finished this novel, and loved it for an escape from everyday life in Jacksonville, NC.

I found it hilarious in parts. The Major is something else. And so is Mrs. Ali.

book from a blog

I mentioned in class that I’m a blog reader. I just came across this blog today:

www.37days.com

The author, Patti Digh, has also written a book from her blog—Life is a Verb. The 37 days concept came about because her stepfather was diagnosed with lung cancer and died 37 days later. This led Digh to wonder, “What would I do if I only had 37 days to live?” Digh lives in Asheville, NC.

Quote for the day

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

Voltaire
author and philosopher, 1694-1778

description of winter silence

“Our valley hibernated, and I missed the sounds that marked the passing of each day almost as precisely as a clock: Faustin’s rooster having his morning cough; the demented clatter—like nuts and bolts trying to escape from a biscuit tin—of the small Citroen van that every farmer drives home at lunchtime; the hopeful fusillade of a hunter on afternoon patrol in the vines on the opposite hillside; the distant whine of a chainsaw in the forest; the twilight serenade of farm dogs. Now there was silence. For hours on end the valley would be completely still and empty, and we became curious. What was everybody doing?”

From A Year in Provence

By Peter Mayle

literary tattoos

From Dominique Browning's Slow Love Life blog. She has a book by the same name with the subtitle
How I lost my job, put on my pajamas and found happiness.

http://www.slowlovelife.com/2011/01/body-of-bookstores.html

Quote for the day

Whatever you can do, or believe that you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. -Goethe

Thanks to the Optimal Optimist blog for providing this quote from Goethe.

http://optimaloptimist.blogspot.com/