Years ago I attended a weekend workshop for writers led by Marge Piercy and her husband, Ira Wood. One of the enduring memories I have from that workshop was a question I asked Marge during the Q & A section of the workshop. She had mentioned earlier that she had written several novels (seems like it was 5 or 6) before she got her first book published. Considering she said it took her a couple of years to write one novel, this was quite a feat of resilience, in my opinion. Not to mention that I was in a similar situation myself. So when given the opportunity, I asked her how she kept going during that time of getting several books rejected multiple times. Her answer surprised me. She said that she got angry!
At first my southern soul—trained since infanthood to be nice—was a bit shocked by this statement. Anger, said all my training, was not nice. But then it occurred to me that this was really about the healthiest and self-preserving thing she could do. Rather than being a victim to the process (and believe me I’ve met plenty of writer victims over the years), Marge Piercy took charge of the situation. She absolutely refused to give up. She spoke about becoming more political as a result. To the point that at the workshop she was incredibly frank about the reality of the writing profession and its injustices to all the wide-eyed, naive novices. She was so frank, in fact, that I wondered how many would-be writers were leaving their dreams at the door as they left.
But there is wisdom in frankness, too. Over the years I’ve allowed myself to get angry over the inherent craziness in the process of getting my books out into the world. There is enough apathy, indifference, overwhelm and sometimes downright greed that goes on in the publishing world that not just writers are angry these days but agents and editors, as well. Great writers are passed over for the latest craze. Imprints are closed just as they’re about to sign your book to a contract. Endearing executive editors are replaced. Agents have stockpiles of fantastic material that they can’t sell because it’s too artful and not commercial enough. Not to mention everybody trying to keep up with the profound shifts occurring in the publishing industry with the advent of ebooks and indie publishing.
So if aspire to be a writer, or are already a professional, perhaps you need more than the most elaborate laptop on the market and all the typical writer’s tools. Maybe you should invest in a punching bag, too, or some other appropriate way to vent your anger. Whether seeking readers in traditional or indie ways, rev up your resilience and fight for what you believe in!
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Our house is basically a construction zone right now. We are a little more than halfway through a summer of renovations. We’ve had these changes planned for months; we geared up for the disruption it would inevitably cause; we vowed to rise above the chaos and stay focused on the finished product.
Now that we’re in the thick of it, we have resorted to living a life of clichés. “Take it one day at a time,” we tell each other. “Keep your eye on the prize,” we gently remind ourselves. “Stay steady,” we say seriously, when it feels like the wheels are coming off the rickety go-cart of our sanity. (This one we coined ourselves; our rendition, I guess, of stay the course.)
At the same time that our house is being taken over by noise and very helpful, wonderful tradesmen, I have been seeking out quieter locations to work on the revisions to my new novel. As nail guns secure wooden boards where worn out carpet used to be, I hammer away at every scene, every paragraph, and every word trying to create something new, fresh, and vital.
Revising is about re-visioning.
A few months ago we re-visioned our house, wanting to take it to the next level of possibility that would fit our aesthetics and our lifestyle.
Today, as I re-vision every scene and character in my latest manuscript, I move sections of text around, enhance or expand a scene, as well as take a hard look at anything that slows down the pacing and effectiveness of the novel. I do this because for me, the goal is always to write a really good story – a story that will keep readers interested and engaged and have them remembering the characters long after they have finished reading the book.
To this end, revising (also known as rewriting) can be subtle, removing a word here or there, adding a different metaphor, expanding dialogue or description. At other times, revising can contain moments of complete demolition. Much of revising, or re-visioning, is about getting rid of anything (characters, scenes, extra words) that doesn’t serve the story, just like a home renovation is getting rid of anything that doesn’t serve the ultimate layout or vision a person has for their home. But it’s also about building: creating richer, more compelling characters, taking more risks and perhaps expanding the scenes that work.
Revising is about being able to hold the tension of the chaos that occurs before a creation is complete. In the end, whether you’re revising your book, your home, your work, your relationship or some other aspect of your life, for me it’s about creating a work of art.
So as the summer progresses, may we all take each day one day at a time, keep our eye on the prize and, by all means, stay steady. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear how your summer is going. And if you have any suggestions on how I might get through the rest of August without resorting to more clichés, I’d be especially grateful.
Lately I’ve been focusing on making my life a work of art, which is obviously a big concept to wrap one’s mind and life around. But I like a good challenge. Then serendipitously, I found this quote from Virginia Woolf’s unfinished memoir ‘A Sketch of the Past’, begun in 1939.
Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me. It is the rapture I get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what; making a scene come right; making a character come together. From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool [of daily life] is hidden a pattern; that we–I mean all human beings–are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mess that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven . . . we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.
Virginia Woolf's memoir
Does any of it resonate with you? Do you think that it’s possible that we could all be parts of a work of art? I’d love to hear from you.
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Twenty years ago I had a different name and a different mission: I founded a not-for-profit women’s center in Charleston, South Carolina and was its first executive director. It was truly a labor of love and, honestly, one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I didn’t do it alone, of course. We had a tremendous set of volunteers, both women and men, who helped it get established. I learned an enormous amount from the experience. And in a way, it paved the way for me to become a writer because I learned how to create something tangible from a dream.
Twenty years later I’m happy to report that The Center for Women in Charleston is still going strong and I have gone on to create other things, stories that you can hold in your hands that hopefully entertain and inspire.
Here’s an article that ran in the Charleston Post and Courier after the center opened:
What were you doing twenty years ago?
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According to Writer’s Almanac, this week marks the fifty year anniversary of Harper Lee’s only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
The story is narrated by six-year-old Scout Finch in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. It was an immediate best-seller, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an instant American classic. Many people believe it to be one of the greatest works of southern fiction ever written. It continues to sell incredibly well, with 30 million copies still in print.
The book’s title appears in a scene in chapter 10, where Scout remembers something her dad, Atticus, has said and asks her neighbor Miss Maudie about it.
”I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
”I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
For years after seeing the movie as a girl, I wished that Atticus Finch was my father, since my personal father wasn’t quite up for the task. And like millions of other kids in the States, I was required to read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school. But I didn’t understand this book’s power until I re-read it a few years ago.
Harper Lee
What about you? Have you read this book? What did you think of it? Why do you think Harper Lee didn’t write another novel? I’d love to hear from you.
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I am currently reading the Atlantic Monthly 2010 Fiction Issue and came across this essay by Richard Bausch entitled:
How to Write in 700 Easy Lessons: The Case Against Writing Manuals.
If you are a professional writer, or aspire to be one, you might find it interesting. In the beginning, I read my share of books on the ‘how to’ of writing, but I ultimately found that I learned how to write by doing the actual work of writing every day and by reading a lot of literary fiction (the genre I write in). Of course every writer is different.
What do you think? Can ’how to’ manuals actually teach a person to write? Do you think reading books/novels/poems helps people become better writers? As usual, I’d love to hear from you.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
Finally, a word about this kind of instruction: it is always less effective than actually reading the books of the writers who precede you, and who are contemporary with you. There are too many “how-to” books on the market, and too many would-be writers are reading these books in the mistaken idea that this will teach them to write. I never read such a book in my life, and I never will. What I know about writing I know from having read the work of the great writers. If you really want to learn how to write, do that. Read Shakespeare, and all the others whose work has withstood time and circumstance and changing fashions and the assaults of the ignorant and the bigoted; read those writers and don’t spend a lot of time analyzing them. Digest them, swallow them all, one after another, and try to sound like them for a time. Learn to be as faithful to the art and craft as they all were, and follow their example. That is, wide reading and hard work. One doesn’t write out of some intellectual plan or strategy; one writes from a kind of beautiful necessity born of the reading of thousands of good stories poems plays… One is deeply involved in literature, and thinks more of writing than of being a writer. It is not a stance.
The full article can be read here.
My website: www.susangabriel.com
This week I offer two quotes on art that I love. One by Pablo Picasso. The other by Thomas Merton.
Does one resonate with you more than the other? Do you have another favorite quote about art that you’d like to share?
ART WASHES AWAY FROM THE SOUL THE DUST OF EVERYDAY LIFE -- Pablo Picasso
ART ENABLES US TO FIND OURSELVES AND LOSE OURSELVES AT THE SAME TIME -- Thomas Merton
ART ENABLES US TO FIND OURSELVES
AND LOSE OURSELVES AT THE SAME TIME -- Thomas Merton
(Artwork by Picasso)
In a recent article by Laura Miller, senior writer at Salon.com, Ms. Miller writes about the changes going on in the publishing and self-publishing worlds and how this will effect readers.
The article is called: The democratization of slush: How do you find something good to read in the brave new self-published world.
Here’s a taste:
When their former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, died four years ago, thousands of Chileans poured into the streets to celebrate — but that’s small potatoes compared to the crowds lining up to dance on the grave of traditional book publishing. The industry, we’re forever being told, is antiquated and hidebound; it doesn’t know how to spot great books or how to deliver them to readers. Fortunately, a tsunami of sparkling new technology is just about to hit those old fogies, washing them from the face of the earth so that the people who know what they’re doing can finally take over. If you have any contact with the publishing world, you probably hear some version of the story above every day. What’s most striking, however, about the many, many conversations I’ve had about e-books, innovations in self-publishing and the emergence of publicity venues like social networking is how difficult it is to stayed focused on what all of this means for readers. No matter how hard you try, within five minutes the talk turns inexorably back to how agents, editors and publishers will suffer in the coming cataclysmic change — and, above all, how gloriously liberating it will be for authors.
When their former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, died four years ago, thousands of Chileans poured into the streets to celebrate — but that’s small potatoes compared to the crowds lining up to dance on the grave of traditional book publishing. The industry, we’re forever being told, is antiquated and hidebound; it doesn’t know how to spot great books or how to deliver them to readers. Fortunately, a tsunami of sparkling new technology is just about to hit those old fogies, washing them from the face of the earth so that the people who know what they’re doing can finally take over.
If you have any contact with the publishing world, you probably hear some version of the story above every day. What’s most striking, however, about the many, many conversations I’ve had about e-books, innovations in self-publishing and the emergence of publicity venues like social networking is how difficult it is to stayed focused on what all of this means for readers. No matter how hard you try, within five minutes the talk turns inexorably back to how agents, editors and publishers will suffer in the coming cataclysmic change — and, above all, how gloriously liberating it will be for authors.
Click here to read the entire article by Laura Miller.
What do you think? Has the self-publishing world opened up a Pandora’s box for readers?
Are you concerned about how we, as readers, will find the books worth reading, if the traditional publishing industry and literary agents aren’t the gatekeepers telling us what is good?
I’d love to hear from you.
My interview on Book Talk, Creativity and Family Matters was quite enjoyable. I wondered what I would talk about for an hour, but it seems I had plenty to say about creativity, my writing process, Seeking Sara Summers, as well as offering my take on the current world of publishing, getting an agent, and the dilemma of how to set aside time to write.
Anjuelle Floyd, also a writer, asked some great questions and had a lot to contribute, as well.
If you’d like to sample a bit of the interview, you can listen here. As always, I’d love to hear what you think.
To anyone interested:
Saturday, June 12, 2010, I am being interviewed on Book Talk, Creativity and Family Matters.
Call in time is 12 Noon PT, 1pm MT, 2pm CT, and 3pm ET.
The call-in number is: (347) 215-7740, if you want to listen or call-in. You can also listen to interviews after the fact, simply click on the link below.
Here’s the link to the show page.
The format is fairly laid back. I will talk about my book, Seeking Sara Summers, and discuss my process for writing, and how I came into writing.
The interviewer is Anjuelle Floyd.