Note to Book Editors: Call arse-kicking machine repairman!

From the always insightful David Hewson's "Why does a popular press hate popular books?":

The best selling book in Britain last year was Linwood Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye. I checked The Times archives to see if they reviewed it. Yes, they did, favourably. But only after it got to number one. When I was a general reporter and that kind of thing happened with news stories there was always an inquest, and usually someone was invited into the room that contained what one executive liked to call ‘the arse-kicking machine’. With good reason too.

I’ve picked on my own paper here because it’s the one I still take at home. This is a little unfair. Snobbery on the literary pages is rife, and not just a British affair. The American prints often behave much the same way. Many of those are steadily killing book review space too on ‘economic grounds’.

Read the rest here.

Read Sam Shepard's "Indianapolis (Highway 74)"

Looking for a culturally edifying way to delay starting your work day? Now in the New Yorker, short fiction from one of my favorite playwrights.

From "Indianapolis (Highway 74)" by Sam Shepard:

Evidently there’s some kind of hot-rod convention going on in town, although I seem to remember those always taking place at the height of summer, when people can run around in convertible coupés with the tops down. Anyway, there are no rooms available, except possibly one, and that one is “Smoking,” which I have nothing against. The desk clerk tells me she’ll know in about ten minutes if there’s going to be a cancellation. I’m welcome to wait, so I do, not wanting to face another ninety-some miles down to Kentucky through threatening weather.

Click here to read the rest.

Potential Pitfalls: Flashbacks

Some techniques are riskier than others. After judging for a number of first chapter writing contests, I've come to the conclusion that one of the toughest to pull off is the flashback.

In skillful, experienced hands, flashbacks may work - and work well. But more often than not, especially in the hands of newer writers, flashbacks serve as stumbling blocks, distancing the reader from the now of the story before the reader's fully bonded with the characters and their present journey.

The writer's goal should be to immerse the audience in the story's real-time flow of events. Anything that detracts from that connection should be cut.

So how, without flashbacks, does the writer effectively dispense critical backstory? Ideally, crumb by crumb, dispensing teasing little hints - the kind that keep the reader madly turning pages as she seeks to piece together the totality. Dispensed a bit as a time, this trail of breadcrumbs enhances rather than detracts from the plot, heightens tension, and raises story questions instead of stomping them flat.

So the next time you're tempted to use a flashback, especially near your manuscript's beginning, ask yourself, could the story possibly be better off without it?

Sisterhood over self help (3 Questions for Melissa Senate, author of The Secret of Joy)

New Yorker Rebecca Strand is shocked when her dying father confesses a devastating secret: Joy, a daughter he turned his back on, the result of an affair when Rebecca was a toddler. Now he wants Joy to read the unsent letters he wrote every year on her birthday. Determined to fulfill her father’s last wish, Rebecca drives to a small town in Maine and knocks on her half-sister’s door. As is always the case with sisters, secrets, and broken hearts, everything that happens after that in Melissa Senate's latest novel, The Secret of Joy, is complicated, to say the least. The book is in stores this week, and Melissa spared a moment for 3 Qs in the midst of launch-o-palooza.

This is fertile ground for a story to grow, Melissa. I'm curious about the roots. Where did the idea come from?
Several years ago, I received an email out of the blue that said: I think you might be my half-sister. I was. Am. It took me a long time to decide to take that little (huge) nugget and write a novel to help me figure out the answer to some burning questions, such as: if you haven’t seen or heard from your biological father, or any member of his family, since you were little (or, in Joy’s case, never at all), is his child from another relationship really your sibling? Or just a stranger? Does the word father or sister or brother mean anything without back up? I had a ton of questions and set out to uncover how I felt through a fictional character, but it’s interesting to me that I flipped everything on its head in the writing of the story. Nothing but the basic questions that are proposed in the novel are autobiographical. Just the questions! And I surprised myself quite a few times during the writing of this story with how I felt about certain things. Amazing how writing fiction can teach you so much about yourself.

When a book is about folks -- as opposed to lost symbols, car chases, etc -- the nuances and consistency of character mean everything. How do you anchor yourself, visually and conceptually, while you craft the people in your books?
I picture my characters’ faces with their personalities etched into their features. I rarely base my characters physically on celebs (except for my first book—Jane from See Jane Date looked just like Ann Marie from “That Girl” (a young Marlo Thomas). She did not look like Charisma Carpenter, who perfectly played her in the TV movie, but now when I think of Jane, I think of Charisma only. Which makes me think of hot David Boreanaz, which is a good thing. I have long been drawn to guys with dark eyes and dark hair, starting with my very first serious crush in 7th grade. But Theo, Rebecca’s love interest, has sandy-blond hair and pale brown eyes because that’s just the way he came out of the keyboard -- he sort of created himself. I never base the guys on anyone. They’re always inspired by the guy I wish I were dating. (Yes, I’m single!) Right now, as a single mother, I’d love a guy who, like hot, wise Theo, works with his hands and made things, like porch swings and tree houses for my son. A guy who’s smart and honest and romantic and always seems to say the right thing at the right time.

Okay, putting that out to the Universe. Meanwhile, you seem to have your feet firmly on the ground career-wise. Talk to us a bit about the nuts and bolts of process. (Whatever you're doing is working spectacularly well!)
An idea flits into my heart, mind and soul (if I may be so dramatic!) and I just know. The idea, just a wispy thing, grips me and I think about it until the two major characters—my protagonist and the person or thing who “forces” her change—become clear. Then I write out a one page treatment, a bare bones synopsis, then think about that, then revise the storyline into a “pitch” I can share with my agent. If she green-lights it, I’ll then let myself dream it into a full blown synopsis, which is what I usually sell a novel on. The synopsis, in its major plot points, rarely changes, but how the characters get from page one to page 325 is another story.

I’m crazy about my editor, Jennifer Heddle at Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books. I love working with her. She’s just so razor-sharp smart and aware and interested in the world and pop culture (which I’ve learned via being her friend on Facebook!). Her suggestions, starting with our first conversation before she even bought my book, were so intelligent and thoughtful. And she’s New York honest in a very kind way with her editorial letters and edits. I absolutely trust what she says. As I’ve gotten to know her, I’m even more touched that she bought my book. She’s a tough customer, I think. And that’s a good thing.

The Secret of Joy is a Simon & Schuster Book Club Pick. Click here for the Reading Group Guide.)

Oh, Deer! Lessons from a Misguided Buck

We've all heard of tilting at windmills, but this week, in Viroqua, Wisconsin, a buck went that old saw one better, mistaking a 640-pound concrete elk statue (to give him credit, it was a misty dawn, and mating season, when buck hormones run amok) for a rival and head-butted the immovable object to hard that Very Bad Stuff ensued. Sure, his "enemy" was toppled and its antlers broken, but the poor, misguided buck cracked his own noggin, stumbled a short distance, and succumbed to his miscalculation.

Almost immediately, I saw the corollary with writers frustrated by rejection, inattention, or poor sales. Perceiving an enemy in the guise of an agent, editor, or publishing house, these writers allow their feelings of impatience, rage, and helplessness to lead them to attack, often in the form of ill-thought e-mails, public Internet postings, and rants at writers' conference. As in the buck's case, the results (to the writers' hoped-for careers, at any rate) can be equally calamatous. Publishing is a very small world, and things do get around. Even more importantly, fury, frustration, and feelings of impotence tend to drive the muse to warmer climes... which leaves a writer no product to peddle.

Just remember, "enemies" are often inanimate or immovable objects, attempts at revenge tend to backfire, and a dead buck gets no doe/dough. I'm not saying that the writer should put up with any old abuse that comes down the pike, only that it might be wise to give the situation the old smell test before you lower your antlers and make a headlong charge.

Saturday morning cartoon: Simon's Cat "Let Me In!"

Clearly, Simon Tofield, creator of Simon's Cat, knows what it feels like to be an author seeking literary representation...

Simon's Cat hit bookstores in September. Check it out.

Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the origins of genius (and where one goes after everywhere)

Whatever you're doing, writing, being, buying, selling, ramma-jamming today, I hope you'll spare twenty minutes for these wise and comforting words from Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and the forthcoming Committed: a Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage.

Sound vs. Noise

I have a number of CDs/MP3 tracks I often play but rarely hear. I'm plugged into an old favorite now, An English Ladymass by Anonymous 4, a gorgeous medieval groove.

Beautiful as it is, I don't play it so much to listen as to overlay the harsh cacophony of what I like to call The Noise. More than the literal racket of ringing phones and barking dogs and your neighbor's darned leaf blower, this noise consists in equal parts of old rejections, fear of new ones, and discouraging pronouncements from the Voices of Doom (many of which write articles, post blogs, and tweet copiously, shrilling the news of markets collapsing, agents despairing, and, to put the cherry on top, your most recent effort stinking up the planet.)

Now, I'm not advocating a head-in-the-sand approach to writing (or life in general), but there's a difference between the necessary evil of staying aware and allowing The Noise to take up residence in your skull. Art can't happen in the presence of fear, so you have to find some way to silence both the internal and external factors that prevent you from creating.

In my case, I make the conscious decision to choose sound over noise, to quit reading the naysayers, and to get on with the business of telling the stories I want to tell, to dream, and to inhabit. And I take it as an article of faith that if I love that story and its characters enough, so will others.

So what steps do you take to quiet The Noise?

Upwardly mobile (Levitate innovates more than the world's most awesome staircase)

One of the blogs on our Feed Me bar pointed me toward this amazing multi-tasking bookcase/stairway (to heaven!) in a London home designed by Levitate Architecture. When I visited their site to see what other cool and groovy stuff they were doing, I was taken by their opening statement, which is something a lot of us could tweak to apply to what we do in book world:

We are a practice of Architects and Conservation Architects committed to designing sustainable and contextual contemporary architecture. Architecture that is in harmony with modern life and its setting. We practice what we call "innovative common sense," taking our client's brief and delving into it to find something extra, something unique. We aim to create spaces that function effectively but that are also a joy to be in...We take time to understand the wider context, physical, social, economic, of all our projects, but we also take pleasure in attention to detail. We provide a professional, friendly service and enjoy what we do.

I love that that last sentence is something of which they are particularly proud. It's not a given. It's part of the mission. Madlib all that, substituting books and readers for spaces and clients, and it's a set of directives every working author could take to heart. This is a moment and market environment that calls for "innovative common sense," if ever there was such.

By the way, the Feed Me bar item was on the New Yorker's "Book Bench" blog, a terrific mix of random industry-related stuff. Check it out.

(And no, I have not yet approached the Gare Bear with my secret plan to tear up the hallway carpet and recreate my own suburban crackerbox version of the bookway to heaven. But I will have it. Oh, yes. I will have it...)

Do You Want to Enough?

"You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning."
Phyllis A. Whitney

To Ms. Whitney's wisdom, I'd add, do you want to enough to put in the time and sweat equity and expend the effort to silence the voices of doom (many of which are located only inside your head)?

If the answer to any of these is no, then move along. There's nothing to see here. But if you're brave enough, smart enough, diligent enough, talented enough and mule-stubborn, you just may have a shot.

Stoking the Fire: Keeping the Creative Habit Alive

After taking an extra-long weekend for R&R and travel, I find myself playing catch up this week... and tempted to blow off my own writing to tend to the mountain of O.O. (other obligations) in my way. But the trouble is, O.O.s, like the detritus taking over my office, have a way of expanding to overwhelm all available space. Should I allow them to take precedence over my writing, I'll see more and more and still more things that need doing. And before I know it, the habit of writing will be lost.

It's a fragile thing, this habit, and no matter how many years you've stoked its flames, the writer must remember it takes only a little inattention to see them snuffed out by the demands of living. When I've worked for others, my supervisors never would have tolerated my putting their business last on my priority list. It's important that I'm at least as work-oriented a boss to myself.

So instead, I plan to give over the best hours of my week to what's most important to me: my own writing. Instead of shunting it aside, I'll ditch TV, DVD movies, and (this one really hurts) reading for pleasure in the evenings until I get caught up.

In doing so, I will feed the fire of my work, one twig at a time.

What are your work priorities this week? How to you plan to keep your focus on them?

Sunday Groove (breathe, nap, play with your dog)

Fortunately, Rue McClanahan has a great heart!

I've gotten a lot of email this week about Rue McClanahan's heart surgery on Wednesday. Rue was going in to have knee surgery, preparing to return to the stage with an adaptation of her memoir My First Five Husbands...and the Ones Who Got Away. (I had a blast working with her on the book and was delighted to help with the script adaptation.) According to Rue, during the pre-op stuff, it was discovered that she "needed some maintenance on the old ticker."

I really haven't heard any more than has been reported in the media, but word has it she's doing great. What I can tell you for sure is that Rue has one of the biggest, kindest, most genuine hearts in the biz, with or without bipass. I'm sending her a care package today and will pass along all the messages of love and support.

Update Saturday noonish: Just heard from a friend that Rue's doing fabulously well and bossing everyone around the ICU. That's m'girl!

A little Rue for writers: "Now I know why Hemingway killed himself" scene from "The Golden Girls."