Reading Like A Writer

Yes, it's the title of a Francine Prose book I read a while back (and made a note to read the books in her list at the back and never quite followed through), but the question is...

...Is it just me, or do others also find that "reading like a writer" is a lot easier when the writing is lousy? By "reading like a writer," I mean paying attention to what the author is doing in the broadest possible terms - language, characterization, pacing, setting theme, and so on - instead of being a passive reader. (I think calling readers "passive" is an unfair characterization most of the time, but I use the word to equate it to watching TV or a movie rather than being actively analytical.)

See, when the writing is good - very good - I find myself (despite my best efforts) reading too much like a reader: getting sucked into and carried away by the story, not paying as much attention as I should to all the things the author is doing right. This is somewhat of a guilty admission, but Stephen King does this to me almost every time. His dialogue is amazing (usually), his characterization masterly (most of the time), his story premises simple (often unoriginal, even) but effective, and his ability to ratchet up the tension and raise the stakes (and keep them raised) unparalleled.

I also failed to very effectively read like a writer when I read Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (one of the best two novels I've read this year, along with Empire Falls). I noticed, fleetingly, how quickly he ratcheted up the tension, how true his dialogue was, his descriptions of battle, his ability to tell us just enough about the large cast of characters so that we didn't get any more confused than he intended. But I kept getting too sucked into the story to worry about it all that much.

I've gotten better at this over time, with more experience writing and more self-consciousness (I mean this in a good way) about what makes my own writing stronger or weaker. But I still find it hard to enjoy a story and read like a writer simultaneously, especially when I'm actually inclined to enjoy the story. (Give me some shitty piece of trash to read and I can see all the problems. It's even easier for me to see the good things an author does in a book I don't really like or am not all that into.) Now, you might say that is what rereading is for, and to that I answer: re-what? I'm lucky I have time to read it once!

One last thought: if you've ever tried mindfulness meditation, you know you are supposed to observe yourself meditating, notice when you have thoughts, acknowledge them, and bring yourself back to mindfulness (concentrating on the breath or whatever). In a way, you're supposed to step outside yourself and watch yourself just be. (Which, to me, has always begged the question of whether you're supposed to watch yourself watching yourself just be, and so on. The zen masters would not be pleased that the Lt. is such a fucking wiseass.) But reading like a writer is kind of like mindfulness meditation in that you need to observe not only what the author is doing, but also yourself as a reader. It also requires you to step outside yourself, outside your interaction with the story...and that's a toughie when the story is good!

And that's about as close to a deep thought as I'm going to get today.

Radio Silence

It's now been just about three months since my experience at the Writer's Digest Conference in New York. After the conference, I had some back-and-forth with agents but then abruptly all that activity stopped. I still have two partials and two fulls pending, but I've not heard a peep from anyone since the end of February. I guess at this point I can nudge, at least on the partials, but I'm not feeling especially inclined to do so, figuring the only responses would be more silence or rejections. I like being able to hold out some hope.

I'm in an interesting place with respect to writing right now. I've got this first novel out there, but I'm starting to think more and more that it's nearly played out in its current form, that more cold querying is a waste of time. The novel is good, and publishable: it's not that I'm slowly getting the sense that it's just not up to snuff, or have lost confidence in it as a work of literature. But I am getting the sense that I gave it a good run and people are not going to bite right now. More work on it might help, but simply working on it for the sake of working on it and then wondering if everyone will feel differently is probably not the way to go.

I have a second novel that I have just come back to after putting it aside after I finished the first draft a few months ago. I am revising it but finding, for a couple of reasons that mostly have to do with the story and the genre, that not much needs to change, that it will be ready for prime time in the not-too-distant future. Once I'm ready, it will be interesting to contrast my experiences with this novel and the first one.

And I have a third project on which I am slowly - too slowly, but what can I do? - beginning to set down ideas. I feel like the lessons learned, especially from the first one, will pay dividends here.

And yet with all these projects - a place I've worked for nearly four years to get to, as opposed to having just one project and just one focus - there's been so little activity lately that I feel like things are stagnating and it would be so easy to just...well, do nothing and give up. Let me immediately say I have no intention of doing that, despite how difficult it has been for me to get things of my own done lately (including blogging). But it's so odd that here I finally am with multiple projects and instead of making me more gung-ho, it's just been tricky to figure out how to allocate my already too sparse time.

I know there is nothing to do about it but continue plugging away. I tell myself that I'm doing this for me and if I don't want to write anymore that is my choice. Put it aside and life simplifies, at least a bit. But I rebel at the thought. Sometimes, when you do something for yourself, the rest of life intervenes. That's no excuse to give up. Like I said, there's no other choice but to keep moving it all forward - one hour or 30 minutes or whatever I can scavenge - at a time.

On Room by Emma Donoghue

I try not to reveal too much in my book reviews, but interestingly it is impossible to review this book without giving away some of the essential elements of the plot. So, be warned, spoilers follow.

This book got an awful lot of hype last year. My wife read it and seemed strangely unaffected (not negative on it, just unaffected) but - in my quest to understand what makes good, or at least bestselling, contemporary fiction - I thought I would give it a shot. The book does two things very well: 1) it sets up a compelling situation - a woman and her young son held captive in an 11 by 11 space - the son never having even seen the outside world; and 2) it provides a unique narrator in the five year old son. These two elements together, and both are done quite well, make the story irresistible.

And yet I find myself, like my wife, unaffected...which I attribute to several elements of the way the story is executed.

First and foremost is the pacing, and this is why I say I cannot review the book without spoilers. I expected the very end of the book to be their big break for freedom. Instead, it comes less than halfway into the book. "Man, this just can't work," Lt. Reader thought to himself, "Not only is the plan wholly implausible, but it's way too early in the book, and [in the style of Stephen King] boy is the shit going to hit the fan when this fails."

Unfortunately, the plan succeeds. And I say "unfortunately" because not only is the plan implausible to unbelievability, but it makes the rest of the book about what happens after they escape. Sure, there are interesting parts of becoming reacclimated (or, for the narrator, acclimated) to the world. But it's not that interesting, and it also suffers from some implausibilities.

"english basement" for rent...real cheap...utilities included...LOL

Such as: nobody thinks socializing the narrator with kids his own age is of any importance, but his grandma somehow thinks he should effortlessly make fast friends with some random kids at a playground. Such as: when his uncle comes to bring him to the natural history museum, no one foresees "just stopping by the mall on the way to pick up a gift" will be problematic. Such as: the mother's suicide attempt in the wake of a disastrous talk show interview, which ruins - for little purpose - her otherwise admirable character.

The man who abducted them - Old Nick to our narrator (the allusion to Satan being a bit too obvious here for my taste) - is but an afterthought. Something compelled this sicko to build a special facility in his backyard and abduct a woman for his personal perversion. Yet when Old Nick and Ma interact, it's more like "The Lockhorns" than Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling (or even the two characters from Misery). Who'd have thunk our antagonist would so quickly go from living out his sick fantasy to squabbling with his abductee about the cost of groceries and the condition of the floor tiles? Who'd have thunk his raping her would occur missionary style, with the lights off, after she bleakly asks him whether he's coming to bed? Who'd have thunk he'd allow her to have his kid? I feel like the author took no care to build this character, and the story suffered as the result.

It's hard not to think that this story was inspired at least in part by this sick case...but Room fails to be as disturbing as reality. Our narrator is compelling but ultimately we know he's going to be fine: he's going through the same acclimation to the world that all of us do - just a little later and more suddenly. And we lose interest in Ma who, after all her endurance and her strength and her developing a a vivid world for her son, gives up as soon as some stupid TV lady questions her motives.

One last world: I did not understand why in a book that is otherwise fairly plainly written the language around breast-feeding was so veiled. I picked up on what they were talking about right away, but "some from the left" seems unnecessarily obscure. My wife thought maybe because there is some kind of shame associated with it. But really? These two lived in a small room and had to take a crap in front of each other. If they can talk about poo, they can talk about milk.

Nice To Meet You

Hi. My name's Lt. Cccyxx, and once upon a time, I was a blogger. Then life intervened. The irony is that things being so busy means there's a lot I could write about if I had the time. It's also true that playing in my mind is the fact that half my readership is about to give birth and will probably not be reading blogs as regularly for a while. But that's a silly reason not to blog since I write this blog for me. Indeed, this blog would look quite different were it set up to market something (me? my book? methamphetamine?). I was going to write a post about that, in fact, but...um, yeah.

So, you may be wondering, what in the f is going on with you, Lt.? First and foremost, work has become - there's no other word - overwhelming. Out of balance. Unsustainable. I'm guessing this is just an especially busy time. Some of the folks on our staff seem to really thrive on this - they wouldn't have it any other way. But for me, and for at least one or two others, it's not a good thing. Seriously, if I gave up my weekends and evenings and just worked seven 10 or 11 hour days, I still wouldn't get everything done. The unclimbable mountain of work is enough to make me want to throw my arms up in despair. But I think what really needs to happen is simply a reequilibration of expectations...and, I'll admit it, I'm mostly talking about my own. But work and other things have been impinging, fairly significantly, on my evenings and weekends. And since that is obviously my prime time for writing and blogging...well, as the characters in Matterhorn (a fine book I am about 2/3 of the way through) might say: "There it is."

It has also become abundantly clear to me what the downside of being salaried and exempt is. If you lose a Sunday to work and meetings, you are simply not compensated for it (with either time or money) and there's no way to get it back. Now, I suppose the proper attitude towards this is to say that this extra time is already built into my compensation. I just have trouble wrapping my mind around that, especially in an environment where we make a good deal of our own work.

I'm not complaining about my job, and busy times come up everywhere, but I wasn't a happy camper for good chunks of the past couple of weeks (less about the hours, honestly, though I was working long days, and more about the intensity and the impossible deadlines batted around with no one actually believing they could be met, but me taking them seriously and getting upset), and that's been unusual for me in this position. I just know that sometimes I need a break, and the break can't be a day and a half - sometimes it just needs to be a longer break. And when I can't get it, I get cranky.

So, all this is to say, blogging will now resume, but I can't promise three times a week in the near future (and who are the ad wizards who came up with that three times a week thing anyway? I don't know what I was thinking).

I'll just do what I can.