Time & Distance & Revision

Did you miss me? I've been away from the blog, away from the Internet (gasp!) for about nine days. Thanks to Joni for keeping up BtO in such grand style.

I spent the week visiting my family across the country. It was a quiet trip. No gliders or mountain vistas or long hikes to view wildlife, but one of those introspective journeys where you spend hours and hours chatting with the folks who knew you first and face up to the You you might have been if you'd stuck around the homestead.

In addition to getting my family fix, the trip brought me a writing gift as well. With my nose forcibly pried from the grindstone, I was able to get enough time away and distance from the project at which I'd been laboring to give me valuable perspective. Somehow, I'd forgotten the lesson that it's blinding to stare at any one point so closely and for so long. Coming back to it now, I see it as if for the first time, as cleanly and with as much detachment as if I were editing someone else's work.

It's a valuable gift, this perspective. I'm going to try my best to remember it the next time I spend week after week churning through the same pages.

Hope you all have had a grand week too!

By the way, the artwork is Perspective Box 1660-1680 by Pieter Janssens Elinga. Find out more here.

Applied physics: the natural laws of story

Gary and I were having an admittedly nerdy coffee conversation this morning, and as he was expounding on the finer points of Newton’s laws, it occurred to me that these indisputable physical laws can be applied quite handily in the universe of fiction. There are certain truths about character and plot development that do not change, and breaking those natural laws removes the element of reality good fiction needs.

Newton's First Law of Motion: An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
In every sentence of every scene of every story, characters have to have a reason for doing what they’re doing. An arc of change has to be set in motion by some credible catalyst, and a course of self-destruction or self-actualization can only be stopped or slowed by a believable obstacle. Even if the entire story takes place in a bathtub, some force – from outside or in – has to come along and upset the balance.

Newton's Third Law of Motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Once the story is in motion, there’s play and counterplay, crossing and countercrossing. Sometimes it’s a quick step, sometimes it’s a tango, other times everybody’s kung foo fighting, but always there has to be action and reaction in equal measure.

Newton's Law of Gravity: Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of the masses of the particles and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

“That essentially means opposites attract?” I asked Gary this morning.

“No,” he said, “that means everything attracts.”

Which is of course the story of the glory of love. And hate. And Sunday dinner at the in-laws and war and peace and crime and punishment. The way characters are drawn to each other or flung into one another, crashing at intersections or being sucked in by a charismatic criminal or quietly coming together for a cup of tea. But on a larger scale, I think there has to be a sort of gravitational pull from the story itself that keeps the characters and events in orbit. What is this universe about? That’s the mass that guides the arc of change and keeps plot points from flying off into outer space.

PS ~ The way cool portrait of Sir Isaac above was done by artist Spencer Tomberg. "I attempt to capture a fragment of the complexity of the natural world in my paintings," says Tomberg. "By mixing geometry with images that are common to our minds I strive to honor the mathematical majesty that is hidden in our lives...It is a weaving of the human condition, culture and mathematics that brings my paintings to life and shows how we are a beautiful part of the natural world."

How do you not love that?

Fact, fiction, and fudgery

Bob Hoover, book editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had an interesting piece in yesterday's paper. "Separating fact from fiction is the author's job" discusses some recent cases where facts were fudged -- sometimes through honest mistakes and sometimes not -- and asks some important questions about who is ultimately responsible for making sure that non-fiction means yeah, we really really mean it this time.

Quoth Hoover:

We've become blase about the issue. Perhaps it was the excessive coverage granted James Frey and his trumped-up autobiography, "A Million Little Pieces," that prepared us for the too-familiar story of Margaret Seltzer, a woman in her 30s who pretended to be the survivor of gang life in South Central Los Angeles and wrote a book about it.

Every word of "Love and Consequences," including the "the's" and the "and's," (thank you, Mary McCarthy) was a lie. Yet, for three years, her editor at Riverhead Books, Sarah McGrath, apparently never challenged Seltzer's work. It took the author's sister to blow the whistle on her fraud, and the book was pulled from sale.

Publishers are not in the business of verifying every fact. They concentrate mainly on checking for plagiarism and libel.

It's not part of their tradition to challenge the contents of their authors' work, but to judge whether the book will succeed in a very competitive market.

"The most important thing for an editor, in my opinion, is keep the job separate from the policing functions of publishing," said Daniel Menaker, who edited fiction and poetry at the New Yorker magazine and Random House for more than 35 years.

I totally agree with Menaker. Thank goodness we live in a world where people never lie, especially when there's a big bucket of money involved, so editors are able to do that.

Oh. Wait.

When I sign on as a ghostwriter for a memoir, an important part of my job is to thoroughly research the client's story to make sure s/he isn't going to be embarrassed by honest errors or hazy recollections. My clients want to be as accurate as possible about everything from the phase of the moon on the night a baby was born to the spelling of the Bulgarian village from which Great-Grampa Czievteksky emigrated. They want to honestly tell their life stories.

Usually.

Working on a project for a major publishing house a few years ago, I uncovered an uncomfortable truth: the client's story was inconsistent with the research. I went to the editor with this discovery and was subsequently fired with stern reminders that divulging any information to which I'd become privy through the interview process would result in me and my children's children's children being pounded to glass by the client's legal team.

You better believe that I will take that information to my grave (as I will take ALL my clients' private communiques to my grave), so don't bother asking who it was. The project never made it to the bookstore. I later learned that I was the fourth writer who'd been brought in, and two more writers were hired and fired before the thing totally imploded. (I was lucky to be protected by a good collaboration agreement; they got screwed. Repeat after me, class: KILL FEE, KILL FEE, KILL FEE.) In my humble opinion, that editor (and her boss, who was all but sucking the client's toes at our initial project meeting) acted in monumentally bad faith, so I had a hard time feeling bad for them when they got burned. Frankly, swallowing the advance they'd paid out was a cake walk compared to what Sarah McGrath is going through.

So what may we extract from this hideous little tale of fact, fiction, and skulduggery? I think it's that editors and publishers can't pretend to live in a vacuum. Babies are not found under cabbage leaves, and if you are in the business of obstetrics, you'd better know that. Yes, fact checking is the author's job, but author checking is the publisher's job.

Other than that one bad experience, I've worked with wonderful editors who are skilled in the craft of editing and savvy to the biz of publishing, in addition to being delightful, decent, honest folks. New York is full of terrific book people, and every year there are dozens of carefully wrought, candidly told memoirs published. That's the way it can and should be, but it takes a Village, you know?

Hoover concludes:

The truth is that in order for a nonfiction book to be accurate, the author must be willing to recheck every fact. The publisher isn't.

So, in the future, I think it's fair to blame the writer -- for errors of fact.

As for the Margaret Seltzers of the business, the responsibility is on the company that publishes the lies.

True that.

PS ~
Mr. Hoover and I exchanged a few emails after I posted this. He killed a little chunk of my soul by telling me, "What's happening now with me and other book editors is that when we see a memoir arrive -- I received 3 last week alone -- we immediately toss it on the bottom of the pile. There's just too much doubt right now."

But then he cracked me up by adding, "I'm sure that when Dick Cheney's memoir is published, all will be well again in the business, right?"

Easter for heathens: "Bunny"

Last year, I waxed sentimental on Easter Sunday. But it's been a crazy kinda Lent this year, and nothing says Happy Easter like Tom Waits and a bunny sticking his head in the oven.



Or for the very, very cynical amongst us...the Easter bunny hates you.

Building your book (a publisher's perspective)

An interesting post on "The Right Way to Build a Book" from Theodore Savas of small historical press Savas Beatie:

The fundamentals for selling any book are essentially the same. Here is the secret: talk about your book as often as you can, with as many people as you can, for as long as you can, wherever you can, even if you don't sell a single copy when you do. Oh, and there is a follow up: REPEAT--REPEAT--REPEAT.

...Do you have copies with you all the time? Have you sent a letter to everyone you know telling them about your book? Are you talking about your book as often as you can, with as many people as you can, for as long as you can, wherever you can, even if you don't sell a single copy when you do? Are you asking people who they know in the media that can help you?

The honest answer to that question will explain a lot the next time you open a royalty statement or read in the news about some author who has a bestseller that is no more interesting than the book you spent years working on. What does he know that you do not? What is he willing to do that you are not?

The post details a recent baja hay-making trek Savas shared with author Gary Moore to promote Playing With the Enemy. Check it out.

I've discovered who I am as a writer: a reader.

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write," Stephen King says in On Writing, and that was a boot to the head I needed at the time. As the mom of two young kids, a maniacally devoted church lady, PTO volunteer, and newly published author, I realized I'd been reading less and less, and the books I crammed into my sleepy head in the last grabby moments of my waking day were mostly research or writing/publishing how to books. Then Joan Drury, the wise woman who edited my second novel (she was "Joanie the Greater" and I "Joni the Lesser" a la Biblical distinctions) pointed out to me one day that a person who's never written a break-out bestseller is ill-equipped to tell others how it's done, and a writer is much better advised to read books that restore the love of language and refresh the joy of story, which is what drew us into the world of books to begin with. She gave me an "assigned if the spirit moves you" reading list that took me back to my reading roots, and sure enough, it totally re-energized me as a writer.

So here are a few books on my "assigned if the spirit moves you" (so as not to feel home-worky) list of books that might remind you why you write. The list ranges from classic Camus (The Stranger) to classic camp (Valley of the Dolls -- oh, yeah, that's right, I said it!) and includes favorites from way back when and right up to now. Read. Reconnect. Enjoy. And please hop in and share your list of Books That Made Me Want to Write.

Pax vobiscum, Sir Arthur

The first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, I was with my big brother Allen. He took me and my sister Diana to the Rivoli Theater in LaCrosse, Wisconsin for an afternoon matinee. The sun was getting low and it was bitter cold when we got home to find that we'd locked ourselves out of the house, and we huddled in the station wagon for hours, discussing the film's weighty themes and artistic nuances until Mom got home to let us in.

This from the BBC obituary yesterday:

Science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died at the age of 90 in Sri Lanka. Once called "the first dweller in the electronic cottage", his vision of the future, and its technology - popularised in films like 2001: A Space Odyssey - captured the popular imagination. Arthur C Clarke's vivid - and detailed - descriptions of space shuttles, super-computers and rapid communications systems were enjoyed by millions of readers around the world. His writings gave science fiction - a genre often accused of veering towards the fantastical - a refreshingly human and practical face.

Seeing dead people

My novel in progress begins with the discovery of a dead body buried beneath the oleander in the protagonist's backyard, and the cascading wall of research that ensued led me to the web page of Houston's own Dr. Ed Uthman, pathologist, web worm, deep thinker, enthusiastic ranter, and apparently really, really cool guy. Hard research resources that I will definitely be visiting and revisiting include A Screenwriter's Guide to the Autopsy ("Remember the brain? We left it suspended in a big jar of formalin for a few weeks. After the brain is "fixed," it has the consistency and firmness of a ripe avocado. Before fixation, the consistency is not unlike that of three-day- old refrigerated, uncovered Jello."), an introduction to Forensic Pathology, and a delicious section on Exotic Infections ("For medical students, any treatment of infectious diseases at the survey level will of necessity leave out a huge amount of medical knowledge, so please consider this an apology in advance for when your Medicine attending drills you about "Lobo's disease," and you have no idea what it is. Well, at least now you know how to spell it.")

"If you enjoy watching someone deterioriate with age, I have a series of personal photos," says the good Doctor. Shown here is a man and his brain, circa 1977. The moment I saw that, Dr. Ed Uthman ratcheted directly to the top of my fantasy dinner party guest list. Now that's what I call dead sexy.

Introducing BoxingtheOctopus.com

I wanted to take a moment to introduce BtO's readers to the new web resource, www.boxingtheoctopus.com, that Joni has put together for us. The website contains some of the best of the blog, links to helpful writers' resources, and a bookstore that includes helpful books on writing, recommended reads, and (naturally!) our own books.

Thanks so much, Joni, for all the work you've put into the site and into BtO's sleek, new look! Readers, please let us know what you think or any suggestions you might have.

More on Collaging

Not so long ago, I posted about a number of methods used to brainstorm a new novel. For my most recently-released novel, The Salt Maiden, I mentioned the use of collaging, which is a technique I picked up from several authors, including Susan Wiggs, Barbara Samuel, Jenny Crusie, all of whom, I'm 100% sure, are more artistic than I am.

But I won't knock anything that works, so when I recently rediscovered my original collage, I snapped a photo before tossing it, mostly because I thought it would be interesting to see how closely this idea-catcher resembled the final novel. I've done this with other prewriting plans (usually webbing, which I described in the linked post, or occasionally in poorly-rendered sketches) and have been surprised to find that these may have formed a springboard to the ideas that formed the synopsis and, after much hair-pulling, a novel, but they've borne little if any resemblance to the final product.

Not so with the collage. I was surprised to find it a close match, not so much in the detail department (most if not all of the characters names were changed. I never know who they really are or what they should be called until after I've lived in their skins awhile.) But what I call my "guiding vision" for the book remained remarkably true, giving my imagination visuals on which to hang its many hats.

So does this mean I'll continue using collaging to plan every book? Nope. In fact, I've found it surprising unhelpful for planning the next manuscript I wrote. (Triple Exposure, coming in Aug. 2008, had a guiding vision informed by my real travels and experience.) But as I've mentioned before, it's one more trick for the act, and you can never tell which one you'll need to pull out of your pocket on any given day.

Adaptation is the lesson. Train your noggin to slurp up every technique you can, and don't be afraid to try it, reject it, bastardize it...

Whatever works to get you through the book.

The real deal isn't defined by numbers

According to the legend at the bottom of every deal report from Publisher's Marketplace, a "nice deal" is $1 - $49,000, a "very nice deal" is $50,000 - $99,000, a "good deal" is $100,000 - $250,000, a "significant deal" $251,000 - $499,000, a "major deal" is $500,000 and up. The legend is basically a waste of space, of course, because only a tiny fraction of authors make it past "good", and even those lucky ducks who do recognize the difference between the $100K and $250K per annum lifestyle. If PM actually wants to make this information useful, to give authors (and agents and editors) some actual frame of reference, they need to break those first two levels down to bite size and label anything over $150K "Neenur Neenur Neenur".

A far more accurate system for quantifying your latest advance: "The Real World Book Deal Descriptions" from John Scalzi's Whatever blog, which still cracks me up years later.

$0 to $3,000: A Shitty Deal. Because that's what it is, my friends. Possibly the only thing worse than a shitty deal is no deal at all. Possibly.

$3,000 to $5,000: A Contemptible Deal. The deal you get when your publisher has well and truly got your number, and it is low.

$5,000 to $10,000: A "Meh" Deal. It's not great, you know. But you can pay some bills. Get a few of these, and a tolerant spouse with a regular income, and you can tell your day job to piss off. This year, anyway.

$10,000 to $20,000: A Not Bad Deal. Note that "not bad" here should be said with a slight appreciative rise of the eyebrows and a small approving nod -- this is the level at which the money begins to look not embarrassing both to writers and non-writers. A couple of these, and you'll definitely be punting the day job (I did, anyway).

$20,000 to $100,000: A "Shut Up!" Deal. This needs to be said in the same enviously admiring vocal tone as a teenage girl might use to her girlfriend who is showing off the delicious new pumps she got at Robinsons-May for 30% off, or the vocal tone (same idea, lower register) Jim Kelly used when one of our number admitted to having at least a couple of deals in this range. With this kind of money, you don't even need a supportive spouse to avoid the Enforced Top Ramen Diet (although, you know. Having one doesn't hurt). But it's not so much that the other writers actively begin to hate you.

$100,000 and above: "I'm Getting the Next Round." Because if you're at this level, you can buy and sell all the other writers at the table. Get 'em a friggin' beer, for God's sake (ironically, this is the only level not thought up at the bar, but in the cold hard light of the next morning, by Shara Zoll).

Seriously. There's a lot of truth there. But we need to go one step beyond that and recognize that there are a lot of intangibles that have to be considered when striking a book deal, whether it's your first or forty-first.

I placed my first novel with a small literary press. (A book presciently titled Crazy for Trying .) I had no agent, so I fielded The Call on my own.

"What sort of advance were you hoping to receive?" asked the editor.

"Advance?" I gasped liked I'd been goosed. "Oh, I never expected you to offer me an advance."

He cleared his throat and quietly said, "Um...Joni? You're not supposed to tell me that."

"Ah. Right. I meant..." (Backpedal, girl, backpedal!) "I meant eight million. Yeah, eight million is what I usually get."

The fact is getting published by this prestigious little press was -- well, it was beyond stepping stone. It was elevator. It was oil rig. It was flying buttress. It was the vital difference between being a writer and being an author. In the course of that phone call, I went from being Joni Rodgers to being Joni (Crazy for Trying) Rodgers.

The editor offered me $4K, I gratefully accepted it, and took my kids to DisneyWorld. I've gotten bigger advances for subsequent books, but that was the biggest deal I ever signed.

The bottom line isn't always the bottom line in book deals. Getting that first book properly published is a huge, crucial step. Any advance is gravy on top of that critical career biscuit, and as you go forward, there are other concerns worth compromising for. Working with a particular editor. Building a relationship with a publishing home. Signing with a smaller press with a more motivated and personalized PR plan.

On the flip side, I was watching Suze Orman's spiel on PBS the other day, and she said two things that really resonated with me: "You are not on sale." And "Stop doing things that make you feel like a liar." It's really tough for me to be assertive about my own value, especially in the realm of ghostwriting, but homegirl here ain't no bargain basement. I'm good at what I do, and I work insanely hard at it. If I sign a deal that strips me of my self-respect, I am forcing every word and faking every smile. That doesn't serve anyone well.

It's been ten plus years since I struck that first book deal -- a nice deal, a sweet deal -- and I've learned a bit from every contract since. A good deal is not just in the dollars. It's in how I feel about my work, where it goes, and how it gets there.

Did Someone Say *Free Books*?

Publishers Weekly's "Beyond Her Book" blogger Barbara Vey is celebrating her first-year anniversary of filling us in on all things women's fiction. I love Barbara's friendly, positive take on the industry, so I'm one of more than 75 authors, publishers, and publicists donating goodies (in my case, an autographed copy of The Salt Maiden) to one lucky person who posts a comment on her anniversary post today, Friday, March 14th.

I hope you'll pop over and wish her a happy anniversary -- and let the powers that be at Publishers Weekly know we're glad to have a place to dish on romance and other chick-friendly fiction.

And on another note, thanks to Joni for all the hours she's put into freshening the look of Boxing the Octopus! We're trying to make the format leaner, cleaner, and easier to navigate. Any thoughts out there?

Workable shmerkable, it's all in the delivery

A telekinetic girl goes ape-crazy after getting her first period? What a crappy idea. No wonder the author threw it in the trash. An evil genius assembles a monster from human body bits? Yark! Hideous idea. And the author's husband was a literary lion. Certainly, he was right to throw the manuscript in the fire. And what's the market for a book with a fat, obnoxious protagonist? Worst idea ever. Who could blame the author for despairing? But Stephen King's wife rescued Carrie. Brave Mary Shelley resurrected Frankenstein. And sadly, John Kennedy Toole's heartbroken mom watched A Confederacy of Dunces win a Pulitzer after her son despaired and took his own life. I won't even bother mentioning the scores of agents and editors who told JK Rowling that her ten pound tome about a boy wizard was utterly unworkable.

So what grand moral may we extrapolate from these tales of tragedy and triumph? Perhaps it's that two things separate good ideas from bad: skilled execution and bald faith. Conversely, what damns a good idea to lameness? Hacking execution and lack of balls.

Think about that brilliant idea you just had as the iconic light bulb. Lacking energy, it dims and dies. And that's the easy way out, isn't it? Picking an idea apart, focusing on all the reasons why it won't work -- well, now you're off the hook aren't you? Why invest the effort? It never would have worked. And who cares? It was just an idea. We live in a cynical day and age. Nothing springs so quickly to mind as the negative. The why not. In an effort to bulletproof a manuscript or a proposal or a fragile beginning, we anticipate every snarky, snitty, undermining comment that could possibly be made. But if we cross over to the snark side, who's left to champion that idea?

I've decided that every idea is brilliant. There is no such thing as a stupid idea. Or an unworkable idea. Does that mean every idea warrants unflinching dedication and buckets of energy and time? Of course not. When I finish one project and I'm fishing the pondering pool for another, I like to say I'm dating several ideas but not in a committed relationship with any of them. You gotta kiss a lot of frogs, right?

Once I commit to an idea, I love it with my whole heart. I look for the why instead of the why not. That little light bulb needs all the electricity I can generate. A lot of ideas -- the vast majority -- return to the universe, but something always remains. A whip of dialogue, a character's name, the description of a tree. And when I look at all those not right now (or maybe just not right) ideas I dated, I don't see a pile of crap, I see fertilizer.

The image above comes from the wildly off the wall Toothpaste For Dinner.