Angels and Liars PS

Betwixt holidays, I blogged about Herman Rosenblat's concentration camp memoir Angel at the Fence, the publication of which imploded when he admitted that he'd fabricated most of the story. I've gotten a lot of interesting email about the controversy, including a heads up about Marjorie Ingall's excellent column yesterday in Forward. Check it out.

Go get mooned this weekend! (Every once in a while, we have to look up.)

Breaking away from a critique ms last night, I went to let my dog out, and the moment I opened the back door, I knew something was different. I crossed the patio, out of the shadow of the roof and into a power wash of the brightest moonlight I've experienced south of Montana. And the moon isn't even full until Saturday; right now it's waxing gibbous.

"Gare Bear!" I called. "Get out here and look at this." And I swear the moon was so bright, it changed the sound of my voice.

Gary's my go-to guy for all things astronomical. He calls in the middle of the night whenever there's a conjunction or an occultation or the space station is flying over, and he regularly checks SpaceWeather.com to make sure we don't miss any major happenings that can be seen with naked eye, spotting scope, or web cam. According to my old man, we're about to experience a perigee moon, the brightest full moon of 2009.

Here's how SpaceWeather explains it:

Johannes Kepler explained the phenomenon 400 years ago. The Moon's orbit around Earth is not a circle; it is an ellipse, with one side 50,000 km closer to Earth than the other. Astronomers call the point of closest approach "perigee," and that is where the Moon will be this weekend...

January is a snowy month in the northern hemisphere, and the combination of snow + perigee moonlight is simply amazing. When the Moon soars overhead at midnight, the white terrain springs to life with a reflected glow that banishes night, yet is not the same as day. You can read a newspaper, ride a bike, write a letter, and at the same time count the stars overhead. It is an otherworldly experience that really must be sampled first hand.

The most spectacular effect will be when the moon is close to the horizon, and the actual phenomenon blends with optical illusion. If you're in position, you'll be blown away by...well, it's just a huge honkin' moon!

Okay, how do I tie this into the writing life...let's see. Well, there's the blending of truth and illusion to create something striking and memorable. Or there's something oovy groovy about the trepidation of the spheres. Or maybe it's simply that it momentarily drags our nose away from the grindstone and up to the heavens.

I'm reminded of a favorite zen koan: "Barn's burned down. Now I can see the moon."

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Start Dragon

Ever wonder what you'd do if you were suddenly incapacitated and unable to complete a deadline? After all, only a tiny minority of writers have disability insurance, and sugar daddies are in woefully short supply these days.

After injuring my dominant left arm and shoulder and finding myself unable to type, I quickly thought of a program I heard other writers discussing. Dragon NaturallySpeaking contains everything you need to get started with dictation. Included with the standard program you'll receive one microphone headset and a clear set of instructions to turn your computer into a voice recognition machine.

Yes, you will have to spend some time learning the software and training it to recognize your distinct voice. But within two hours of receiving the package, I was responding to e-mails and beginning work on my manuscript.

At first, Dragon was making many mistakes, and I was constantly forgetting the correct commands. However, in another day I was using the program almost effortlessly -- and that was under the influence of painkillers.

I've thought about trying out Dragon in the past, but I seriously doubted I could write creatively via dictation. However, when forced to make the transition, I found it far easier than expected. Yes, I still have to watch Dragon for mistakes and I'm new enough to the program that I'm forced to give it my full attention. I've also found it's a bit prudish about off-color language, but I'm equally determined to allow my characters to say what they want to say.

At the moment, I'm dictating this blog post. The only corrections I've made so far, outside of a couple of miscues, are the sort of normal tweaks I make any time I'm writing.

For certain, I'm writing much faster than I possibly could typing with one hand, and with far less frustration. I can definitely see why the software is popular among those with temporary or permanent disabilities. While I'm not sure I would've wanted to go through the bother and expense of learning and buying Dragon without a compelling reason, I'm definitely glad I have it now and would highly recommend it to anyone experiencing hand or eye problems.

My husband, a slow typist, is interested in training the software to his voice as well. I'll keep you posted on how that works out for him, though I'm betting without an injury to force him into it, he'll find it more frustrating than helpful.

Diagrammar (a moment of unabashed love for Strunk & White)

Critiquing a ms for a talented young fantasy writer, I'm getting an interesting taste of a genre in which I'm not at all well read. The story is strong enough to pull me in. I adjusted quickly to the unfamiliar names. I'm not feeling overly video-gamish about the balls-out action movie battle scenes. What is hanging me up is the desire to smack this young man's middle school English teachers. Here's a guy who's got the essential unteachable element of talent; it hurts my soul to see him tripped up by technical issues, which -- because he is a good writer -- stand out like dung piles in a diamond mine. If he was a lousy writer, I'd never notice the minutia.

Good grammar skills don't make for rigid prose. Just the opposite. When you know the rules well enough to follow them consistently, wrap your head around the structure of a sentence as a series of stepping stones -- without stumbling blocks or switchbacks -- then you instinctively know how to bend and break the rules without betraying the spirit of grammar, which is to facilitate the reader's experience.

One of the most important things a writer needs to have firmly ingrained in the brain is sentence diagramming. It's not about anal retention or rigid conformity, it's about a welcoming world of words in which the reader doesn't have to climb over anything to get to the characters and sail into the journey.

If your diagramming skills are due for a refresher, click here to revisit the basics. Or there's this...

Here at the Intersection of Discretion and Valor

Thanks to Joni and to everyone who's expressed concern over my broken wing. I hope to receive my copy of Dragon tomorrow and will start working to train it. Meanwhile, I'm laboriously typing with one hand to see how frustrated I get. :)

As I mentioned in the comments, I was really embarrassed to have injured myself doing something so crazy as trying out my teen son's skateboard. At least one family member has given me the "why don't you just admit you're old and uncoordinated" lecture, but not a one of my writer friends.

Why? I think it's because as novelists, we live at the intersection of Discretion and Valor, where we continually dare to defy the tremendous odds favoring failure for a single chance to fly.

And even when we crash, we have only to look around for someone to offer a hand up... someone else who understands the reasons we brave the breaks and bruises time and time again.

May you all, however, experience far gentler landings. Or at least remember to keep your dominant hand tucked.

Life smarts (update on Colleen's broken wing)

When asked what on earth would tempt an intelligent woman to hop on her son's skateboard on New Year's Eve, Colleen's been quipping, "I realized I hadn't done anything incredibly stupid in 2008. This was my last chance." The resulting broken elbow and wrecked shoulder are no joke. It's every writer's nightmare: a typing handicap.

Colleen called me less than 24 hours after this spectacular ass-over-tea-kettle flying-Walenda-meets-driveway event, and she'd already ordered Dragon Naturally Speaking, a voice recognition software that's gotten great reviews. (Colleen promises to update us on how that works out for her.) She's a "life goes on" kind of person who knows that writing is not about typing and falling is all about getting up again. She's got a book under contract, deadlines looming, bloggery to be blogged and stories to be told. Braced by a healthy dose of Darvocet, she showed up at a North Houston chapter of the RWA on Saturday to give a scheduled talk on critique group dynamics. I am struggling to swallow the word...plucky. Gotta love her.

After a weekend of stout drugs and the love of a good fireman, Colleen's off to the orthopedic surgeon today to find out exactly how long she'll be trying to write around her broken wing. I'll update as soon as I hear from her. I'll also be reminding her often over the next few months, as difficult as they might be, that living life, attempting to fly, daring to try -- that is the antithesis of stupid. Adventure is the only sensible use of a human life. Sometimes pain is the price of our ticket to ride, and as the story unfolds, it's worth it. (And yes, this is all easy for me to say since I can still sleep on either side and type with both hands.)

Since the rest of us don't get to be on drugs today, I'll leave you with this Mister Mister moment from the days of our youth, when we sailed the suburbs on neon skateboards, unbroken and indestructible, our bangs feathered like a Flock of Seagulls on the breeze.

"Take these broken wings and learn to fly again,
learn to live so free.
When we hear the voices sing
the book of love will open up and let us in..."

Declaring your genius

This in Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac yesterday:

It was on this day in 1882 that the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde docked in New York. Customs asked him if he had anything to declare. Oscar Wilde replied, "Nothing but my genius."

Every time I hear that story, I'm reminded that this is all any of us have in this profession. The total contents of my office is worth two or three thousand tops, including all the technology, my Louis Vuitton knock-off tote, and the dog's new chew toys. Rights and royalties provide a dependable trickle of butter and egg money. Sometimes right before I hand off a manuscript, I have bad dreams about my house exploding in flames. Sometimes I have to get up out of bed and compulsively back up everything online, just to make sure. The only real asset I have is my ability to set words in rows, and this work has value, but it took me a long time to take ownership of that.

Why is it so hard to say "I'm a good writer" and so easy to say "I suck"? I was always big on the self-deprecating humor and self-slamming blah blah blah until an editor bluntly said to me, "If you don't believe in this work, stop wasting my time with it. If you do believe in it, stop disingenuously running it down."

Suggested New Years resolution for every writer within hearing: declare a moratorium on negative self-talk. You are the first and most powerful advocate of your own work. Declare your genius and stand by it.

Saturday morning video: "The Darlene Sunshine Show"

Just for fun. This mostly deleted scene from the movie "Stranger Than Fiction" does a pretty acurate send up of the typical author interview.

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button": Did you love it or hate it?

Earlier this week, Colleen and I went to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", the extraordinary movie based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I loved it. Colleen not s'much. (I was sitting there choked in tears at the end of the three hour film, so I only vaguely remember her saying something about "watching paint dry.") I want to see it again, so I'm trying to get the Gare Bear to go with me this weekend, but I won't be surprised if he reacts the same way Colleen did.

The movie is long. And odd. It requires patience and a complete suspension of disbelief that modern audiences simply aren't trained for, so you've got to be in the right mood for it. The same is true of the short story, though the story and script have very little in common -- at least superficially.

The story is very Fitzgerald (though it's not an example of his best writing, IMHO), and the setting -- Baltimore during the industrial revolution, Spanish American War, roaring twenties -- is far removed from the movie, which is set in New Orleans between WWI and Hurricane Katrina. That shift in time and geography has a major impact on the characters, of course. The story is sort of absurdist or maybe Kafkaesque. It's very short and wry and walks us briskly through the pragmatic challenges of Benjamin's backwards life while the movie takes time to be sentimental, philosophical, and rich with beautifully wrought images. The women in the story are a lot less noble than the movie women, typical of Fitz, and made me newly sad for him and Zelda, two people who loved and tortured each other famously.

When Fitzgerald included the story in his collection Tales of the Jazz Age, he had this to say about it:

This story was inspired by a remark of Mark Twain's to the effect that it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst part at the end. By trying the experiment upon only one man in a perfectly normal world I have scarcely given his idea a fair trial. Several weeks after completing it, I discovered an almost identical plot in Samuel Butler's "Note-books."

The story was published in "Collier's" last summer and provoked this startling letter from an anonymous admirer in Cincinnati:

"Sir--

I have read the story Benjamin Button in Colliers and I wish to say that as a short story writer you would make a good lunatic I have seen many peices of cheese in my life but of all the peices of cheese I have ever seen you are the biggest peice. I hate to waste a peice of stationary on you but I will."

The two Benjamin Buttons -- screen and story -- seem to have in common a serious case of love-it-or-hate-it. As someone who often feels out of sync with the rest of the world, I loved them both.

We're interested in your thoughts. Anyone else see the movie this week?

Read "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and the rest of Tales of the Jazz Age in full on Project Gutenberg.

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a joyfully productive and wildly creative 2009!

Ring Out Wild Bells
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Listening with My Pen

Many years ago, I learned (what a shocker!) that my words don't fall out onto the paper in crystalline patterns of immutable perfection, that my manuscripts -- if they're ever going to make it into book form -- have to be rewritten as much as written. More shocking still, I came to the conclusion that alone, I lack sufficient perspective to see where the problems lie.

What took me far longer was to learn to listen, really listen, when others make suggestions. Instead, as they were speaking (or I was reading their judging sheets or personal rejections) my mind was too busy churning out a bunch of garbage. This person's clearly an idiot! Or obviously, she doesn't *get* me. Or what a bunch of horse crap! All excuses as to why I needn't listen to them.

Yet still, I wasn't selling, no matter how hard I worked on my own.

And then one day, while cleaning out my office, I came across some months-old contest scoresheets and discovered that, lo and behold, this judge's comments about my work made sense. That, in fact, they were dead right. Not all of them, but many, and I could really learn from the points this person had made.

I started wondering what else I hadn't truly "heard" while my ego was making so much noise throwing tantrums. From that point on, when I attended writers' group critiques, I started taking careful notes when people talked about the work I'd read. I made a rule against arguing with them or defending any choices. Instead, I listened, pen in hand, and let them finish. Then I thanked them and promised I'd carefully consider their suggestions.

By the time I finally started selling, this habit of "listening with my pen" and taking time to think about suggestions was incredibly helpful when dealing with editors' requests. Lots of times, editors will make what seem like unworkable (um, sometimes ridiculous) suggestions to fix some problem in the manuscript. But if you dismiss the suggestions out of hand, you'll miss the chance to see there really *is* a problem and come up with your own, far better solution.

Besides that, amateurs and a few doomed divas are the ones who argue. Pros listen to other pros, and to those who've earned respect. And they give a chance to others, too, because professionals are interested in what's best for the story, not in coddling their own egos.

And that's how they *stay* pros.

Angels and liars (and another dark moment for memoirs)

Dang. Oprah is going to be seriously pissed when she sees this. Last year, she featured a compelling story that left audiences breathless: a boy in a concentration camp (cue cello) survives with the help of a girl who slips apples to him through the barbed wire fence and then years later, having resettled in America, (cue violin) astonishingly, he meets this very girl on a blind date and marries her! Herman Rosenblat first shared this heart-wrenching tale in a newspaper contest about ten years ago. It was subsequently featured on Oprah (in '96 and '07) and other media. A portion of the story was retold in Laurie Friedman's picture book Angel Girl (Carolhroda Books, 2008), and Berkley Books was gearing up to publish Rosenblat’s memoir, Angel at the Fence, in February with the film rights already optioned.

Today Lynn Andriani reports in Publishers Weekly:

Upon learning that the widely publicized Holocaust love story of Herman and Roma Rosenblat, which inspired the picture book Angel Girl, is not entirely true, Lerner Publishing Group announced yesterday that it would pull the book from shelves...The house has canceled all pending reprints and is issuing refunds on all returned books. The company is no longer offering the book for sale and is recalling the book from the market.

...After investigation by the New Republic, Rosenblat and his agent, Andrea Hurst, released statements on December 27, saying parts of his story were fabricated. Hurst’s statement said that although Rosenblat’s stories from the concentration camps were true, he invented the love story. Rosenblat also revealed that he made up the chance reunion with the girl.

This sucks on so many levels, most notably for Friedman, who took Rosenblat's story on faith (as did O) and is now going to be crucified for his sins. It's also heartbreaking for artist Ofra Amit, whose luminous paintings illustrate Angel Girl. Friedman told PW that her goal in writing the book was "to communicate that even in the darkest of times, no one should give up hope.” She might want to post that on her office wall for the next few months. She should also email it to Oprah. Since she's been chicken Freyed on this issue once before, I suspect it's going to be a cold day in Ixtapa before she features another memoir on her show, and that (said the memoirist) really kills me. The word "memoir" is becoming synonymous with "bull", and that is an injustice to all those who dig deep, do the work, and tell their true stories.

As a memoir guru, frequent flyer, and all-around motherly type, I spend a lot of my life listening to the stories of clients, seatmates, and strangers. I don't take these stories with a grain of salt; I take them with a grain of sugar. If I can't listen to someone with a willing and compassionate heart, I may as well just sit there and eat my peanuts. When you truly listen to someone's story, you're not hearing a recitation of facts; you're hearing a longing for redemption, a search for meaning, a plea for vindication or forgiveness. Some moments receive plastic surgery, others a decent burial. Shrines are built in the heart and mind. We each have our own truth.

Perhaps Rosenblat's wife is an angel in his eyes, and at what moment could an angel be more desperately prayed for? Perhaps what kept him going was the idea of a future of love and plenty. Maybe what sustained him was the faith that there would be witnesses to this terrible moment, that help was just on the other side of the wire. Or maybe he just went slightly (and understandably) nuts. In fabricating this story, either he's revealing an image created by his mind as a means of self-preservation or he's consciously spinning straw into gold, cranking out a line of BS which brought him rewards and recognition he felt he'd earned.

If Rosenblat had told this story to his grandchildren and let it go at that, there would have been no harm in it. (Oh, grow up. Sixty percent of all family lore is fairy tale. Your grandmother did not trip on the cellar stair and invent the potato pancake.) This is an elderly man who was a prisoner at Buchenwald; that much we know is factually correct. God alone knows what he actually endured and how he lived through it. If history is written by the winners, he gets to write this episode because his every heartbeat is a victory over incredible odds and unthinkable wrong. That's undisputed truth. But it's not the kind of truth that gets you on Oprah. In the memoir market, you've got to have more than truth; you gotta have a hook. The hook here was the serendipitous love story.

I wish Rosenblat had kept the angel alive for his grandchildren instead of trying to cash in on her. I also wish the story of an earth-bound woman who mended the heart of a deeply damaged man could be enough for hungry producers. And I wish there had been angels outside a lot of history's fences. In the cold light of fact, every love has lies in it, every life suffers wrongs that can never be written right. The purpose of memoir is not only to suss out emotional truth and meaning in the actual events, but also to recognize the angel and the liar in each of us. There is a way to tell what really happened and still give voice to what might have been, to what we prayed for or dreamed of. The powerful opportunity to do that here was lost in a fog of greed. This story of love and survivorship is now a saga of squandered resources, the involvement of lawyers, boxes on a loading dock at the destruction warehouse, a writer's worst nightmare.

Every time this happens, it makes me very sad for all involved and scared for the future of memoirs, which (when truly written and properly vetted) hold such healing power for both authors and readers.

Colleen's Take on 2008

I enjoyed Joni's recap of the year so much that I thought I'd share, from my point of view, the highs and lows of my 2008 writing life. One more year and we'll officially have a tradition.

The Good
Compared to 2007, where I was slapped down by a debilitating viral infection that rained down all kinds of nasty repercussions, '08 was a year that brought both physical healing and much-improved focus. It brought, too, a bit of badly-needed equanimity as I settled into a relationship (one that began in 2007) with a terrific new agent, saw the publication of my fourteenth novel, Triple Exposure, and agreed to write two more romantic suspense novels for Dorchester Publishing.

I count among my year's blessings my first final in the Daphne Du Maurier Awards (for Head On, a 2007 release), a number of lovely reviews and reader letters, and a small flurry of foreign sales and publications. In addition, I've kept busy speaking to writers' groups and penning writing-related articles. A teacher by trade and personality, I derive a great deal of satisfaction from these and other mentoring activities.

I'm continually grateful as well for the many close friendships I've developed as a result of writing. Whether I need a pal to yahoo with me over some good news or someone to talk me off the ledge when I'm having a crisis of confidence (as does every writer I know), I have a number of good friends I can count on, as they can count on me.

And last but not least, I wanted to mentioned how thrilled I am to live in a country, culture, place, and time where creativity is celebrated. From television and movies to novels, nonfiction, plays, poetry, music, dance, the visual arts and beyond, our world is alive with artistic vision. Not always the Capital-A Art and not limited to dusty classics, but the living, breathing, growing, changing little-a arts that add so much color and texture to our lives.

The Bad

During the first half of 2008, I was still feeling a lot of fallout from the Virus from Hell. I didn't get out nearly as much as I would have liked, and I completely fell out of the exercise habit. Though I managed to get quite a bit of work accomplished, I feel sluggish and slackerish, like a flabby, middle-aged woman treading water as the Michael Phelpses of this world go streaking past. I'm hoping that a brisk daily walk will signal to my subconscious that it's time to really get much more productive and quit goofing off, and I'll regain the energetic confidence and tolerance for "informed risk-taking" needed to keep boxing octopi!


The Ugly
Compared to so many others, my family and I emerged unscathed from Hurricane Ike, but it certainly blew me off course for awhile. Already hard on the heels of a tight deadline, the power outage and general upheaval forced me to ask for my very first deadline extension. Though the book was turned in only two weeks late, I've felt way behind (see the old postcard from Bob Weeks' collection) ever since.

Like many others in this economy, I look toward 2009 with a bit of trepidation but thankfully, a good deal of hope that I'll be able to see beyond the stress and to the opportunity.

So how about you, brave BtO readers? What in your opinion was the best and worst of this past year?