The Writerly Pause: Home of The Grit & Crit

Book Review: Operation Homecoming

2009-08-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

A soldier writes home to his mother:

"Dear Ma,
They call them HERO missions. They are the worst kind.
It's the body bag in the back, that makes the trip rough."

Think of this as a book that belongs to all of us. It was born out of our collective psyche, as Americans who are witness to an event that is shaping our generation and those after.

Read the rest at The Kitchen Dispatch

Book Review: Three Cups Of Tea

2008-11-12T19:51:00.001-08:00

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house
That your eyes might be shining for me
When I came.

-TE Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

For those of us who fell into T.E. Lawrence's account of the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turks, Three Cups of Tea should fill a void we've been missing. Like Lawrence, Greg Mortenson is a rare storyteller, former soldier and an adventurer. He's also the son of missionaries, father, husband, humanitarian and a fearless taskmaster.

"The little red light had been flashing for five minutes before Bhangoo paid it any attention. "The fuel gauges on these old aircraft are notoriously unreliable," Brigadier General Bhangoo, one of Pakistan's most experienced high-altitude helicopter pilots, said, tapping it. I wasn't sure if that was meant to make me feel better."

After a failed attempt to scale K-2, he wanders into the small forgotten town of Korphe, high in the mountains of North East Pakistan. Recovering from his trip, he asks the village chief if he can see the school. Mortenson is taken to an open plot of land where the children are without a teacher. They're seated on the ground, and the wind is blowing their pages. Mortenson pledges to build them a school. This rash decision will lead him to his lifelong cause: breaking the cycle of poverty by providing a balanced education.

But it isn't easy. Along the way, we ride with Mortenson as he works shifts at night as a nurse, trying to save enough money to build his first school. Back in the Bay Area, he lives in squalor, and fruitlessly writes letters to find a benefactor who will underwrite the project. Amazingly, he does. And there starts the tale of buying supplies in a foreign land, underestimating, transporting them on the Khyber Highway in a truck too big for the narrow, winding road. We read about finding a wife, and along the way he gets kidnapped, has two Fatwahs declared against him, and is approached Kirghiz horsemen who have ridden over the Irshad Pass to the equally remote Charpurson Valley in Pakistan to build a school for them. The reader is taken through the "stans," --Baltistan, Waziristan. We learn of the the Wazir, Pashtuns who had not only defeated Alexander, but later, the British as well.

This is a great read not because it's an adventure or a tale of the the human spirit. Three Cups of Tea is essential because it's an approachable primer for those who want to understand how the the Taliban and Al Qaeda used a lack of publicly funded education to their advantage. It's estimated they built twenty thousand schools of their own, known as madrassas. As Mortenson points out, not every madrassa is a hot bed of extremism, but it does give easy access to foment their own interpretation of the Koran.

"They admired war because it was the occupation they could adapt to. Their simple belief in a messianic, puritan Islam which had been drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only prop they could hold on to ad gave their lives meaning."

Three Cups of Tea gives the reader a greater understanding of the problems of the region, its tribes and the landscape. More importantly, Mortenson makes a good argument for building schools to break the cycle of poverty and giving reason to go toward a brighter future, offering an alternative to the extremist movement. He, along with other Muslims, views the education of girls as essential to rebuilding peaceful communities. As of 2008, Mortenson's non-profit Central Asia Institute built 78 schools, educating 28,000 students, which includes 18,000 girls. Three Cups of Tea is an incredible story of humanity and offers a deeper understanding to the region in conflict now.

Three Cups of Tea is available in paperback through the site, a portion of which goes to building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And Then There Were Three

2008-10-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

As with a lot of groups, activity on The Writerly Pause has ceased.
Three members remain --Sovann Somreth, Kanani Fong & John Louis Peters. We keep in touch, continue to edit, rewrite and submit our manuscripts.
It's been fun.
We hope to see you when the three of us get our books accepted and published.

John Robison: A Fun Filled Feast

2008-09-27T05:57:00.000-07:00

John Robison has groupies now. No, not sleep in your bed groupies (his wife fills this role), but book reading ones. I call them this because John used to work as a sound engineer/explosives expert/ flaming guitar builder for KISS, as well as for other bands. Back then, he couldn't have given a flip about all the groupies who were really into guys with mullets and over processed long hair. Nah. But I figure he has them now because he's written a book called "Look Me In The Eye," which serves as a "greatest hit" to millions with Asperger's.

Anyhoo.... after his reading at Book Soup, myself, John, Sovann, David, and the driver sent for John went out for dinner. You know that when in a given night, you're treated to stories about him and Korean War Veterans working behind the scenes at KISS concerts shooting off Howitzers, mirror neurons, research at Harvard, and later --when everyone at the table (well almost everyone) confesses to various recreational drug drug pasts you've stumbled onto something cool. You also know that nothing can push the night off into the realm of "too weird to be believed," when the night is capped off by a long conversation with a book clerk, who happened to work as Oliver North's secretary back in the Reagan Administration.

That's right. Combine the stories of John, Howitzers, Korean War Vets, Explosives, Drugs, Mirror Neurons, Harvard and Fawn Hall, you've pretty much got an evening where even Hunter S. Thompson was called from the spirits and was lurking about.

And that's what happened. All of it. There can be no

replay of everything that was said, but I will only depart with this:

It was great. It was real. He's a charming speaker, you wish he would go on and on. And yes, yes, yes... you must read his book if you haven't yet. If you haven't, then start with my review.

General You-Know-Whats

Yes, he was the first guinea pig for an experimental treatment called TMS. It has "awakened a part of my brain," meaning that he can now read people's faces, and see music that he hadn't heard in 30 years.
He has no opinion about those who believe their children "got" Asperger's through vaccinations.
Despite the success of his book, John has and will continue to keep his car repair shop open. He knows that making a living as a writer can be fairly treacherous, and the car repair gives him both a different social outlet and also a regular stream of income.
He shops for cars with people like Peter Frampton.
His brother Augusten Burroughs lives nearby.
He's an advocate for the development of TMS (which you can read about on his blog).
He ate Spaghetti Bolognese (quick someone call TMZ with this tidbit).
He does pretty well with jet lag.
He made some changes in his paperback book, expunging the swear words because he became aware that a lot of 12 year olds and teens were reading his book.
None of my pictures turned out. I am getting a new digital camera that stays still when you click the damned thing. But it's okay. I have a feeling ....call it ESPN* that I'll be seeing more of John in the future.

And by the way, I'm auctioning off one of John's dirty t-shirts on eBay. Buy it. I'm a writer and I need money, and yes, if I have to support myself by filching dirty undergarments and eyeglasses from writers to support myself, I will.

*Extra-special notion

No, we weren't on drugs, but I think fittingly, the waiter shook the camera to make it look like we were!

Seven-Year-Old Authors

2008-08-04T23:08:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, I had the honor of speaking to a class of students about life as an author. You may be wondering how that was possible since I’m still looking for an agent for my first book?

Fortunately, I had an in. My seven-year-old son is enrolled in a summer school course called Create a Book where children spend six weeks writing and illustrating their own books. The first day of class, my son came home with a message that the teacher would like me to speak to the class because he had told her I was a writer.

I was really nervous, as I had no idea what to say. Fortunately, the children were interested in writing and had lots of great questions on their mind. Here's a sampling:

"Why did you decide to write?"
"When did you decide to write?"
"What is your book about?"
"Why did you write about that?"
"How many pages is it?" (When I said three hundred, I heard quite a few oohs and ahhs.)
"At what grade level can a child read your book?" (That little girl seemed put out when I mentioned it was geared towards adults.)
"What are you working on now?"
"What’s a catapult?"
"Do you have any pets?"

To think only two years ago these children were learning their ABCs. Now, they’re writing books and asking the same questions I hear adults ask at book signings.

At the end of class, the students passed around their completed books. Each story was required to have a main character, a problem to be solved, and how it was solved. So basic, that with all of our adult complicated ideas about writing, this basic premise is sometimes forgotten.

Some children wrote mysteries, others science fiction, and others about how to make friends with someone if they don’t like you. It's interesting what's on a seven-year-old's mind.

The last page of their books included an author's bio page. My son's final line brought a smile to my face. "When I grow up, I'm going to write books."

Kent Haruf: Tight Prose On The High Plains

2008-07-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com Widgets

click to order

This is the stuff you dream of writing. It's the stuff that makes you forget about cooking or going to bed. Kent Haruf 's prose is spare and unsentimental, yet lithe as winter wheat blowing in the wind. He depicts everyday people who live in areas that are usually overlooked. The pregnant, homeless girl; the two ranching brothers who've never married; the woman who's lived with the tyranny of her violent father and later, the feebleness of a younger brother, and the social worker who has seen too many tragedies unfolding before her. All of his books take place on the high plains of Colorado, a rugged unforgiving landscape only for the most hearty who can endure isolation, wind and sand.

A finalist for the National Book Award for fiction, Plainsong artfully weaves together the lives of six people in the small farming town of Holt, Colorado. What's astonishing in how smoothly Haruf does it with a minimum of fuss and exactness --one can only compare the structure to great architecture.

In each of his books, the characters come alive because of the emotional truths. Here's a bit from his first novel, The Tie That Binds, where the narrative voice just rolls along, spelling out the truth in a way that's matter-of-fact, but also descriptive. The overall effect is poignancy without sentimentality:

"But she was crying then. There wasn't any sound to it. It was past the point where the puny sound of a human voice can make any difference. She walked out of the house away from her father towards the hayfield to tell Lyman, with the unregarded tears falling onto the breast of her blouse. After that, I know of only two other times in her life that Edith Goodnough allowed herself to cry. Neither was at the death of her father."

The skill with which he writes, the choosing of the right words, when to put in short, sharp passages of description is so well wrought, that one is never distracted from the pull of the story. His latest book, which came out in January 2008 is West of Last Chance, a pictorial of the lands and people of the high plains he writes about. Those who like Willa Cather's My Antonia, will no doubt find the same strength in character and storytelling as well.

National Book Award Winner Sherman Alexie

2008-07-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

In June, I reviewed Sherman Alexie's book. You can read it here. What I liked about it was the voice, that ranged from scared to smart alecky, completely stunned, but then also pragmatic. This was a narrator who was uncertain about the world, and whose circumstances have forced him to go beyond his tribe at the reservation, the the larger one outside.

Sherman Alexie, who won the 2007 National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction, reads from his book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

Gustavo Arrellano: Smart & Pugnacious in "Ask A Mexican!"

2008-07-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

What started out as a column for the Orange County Weekly is now the Everyman handbook on the cultural clashes and misperceptions between Mexicans and well, everyone else.

In addition to his usual journalism assignments with the paper, Gustavo Arellano has penned a weekly column that typically starts out with, Dear Mexican. Ask A Mexican! is syndicated in newspapers across the country and has a following of those who understand irony, and others to whom it simply falls flat. Some questions are curious about Mexican culture or history.

Gustavo Arellano, Photo from OC Register

Others are meant to be rude and degrading. Some are just bizarre:

"Dear Mexican, Why don't Mexicans like Science-fiction movies?"

Here's his answer in his typically sharpshooting manner:
"Dear Gabacho, One of my favorite ethnic jokes goes like this. Why aren't there any Puerto Ricans on Star Trek? Because they don't work in the future either." But Mexicans don't like alien films because they're always thinly veiled allegories about Mexicans if you believe University of Texas professor Charles Ramírez Berg."

No matter how someone tries to plot to throw Arellano off, he goes off into the archives of history or through volumes of books to find a quasi-historical/academic answer for the person he'll address as Dear Gabacho or a variant of. Arellano uses his brains and words as a billy club. He handles the questions deftly and with humor, and the voice that comes through is often irreverent --to both sides.

His book, which was published this year by Scribner, will go down as a classic. Not only is it funny, pugnacious and mocking, but it demands we look at perceptions of race and culture, questioning what it is to be an American.

Here he is in an interview at the Los Angeles Press Club:

Elmore Leonard

2008-07-01T07:12:00.000-07:00

Elmore Leonard

Short story writer, novelist and screenwriter Elmore Leonard was a copywriter working for Chevrolet supporting his wife and five kids. He submitted western stories to dime-store magazines. The rest, as they say, is writing and rewriting, eventually finding the right voice and a combination of hard work, persistence and luck. His style can only be described as short, sharp making its mark with a minimum of fuss. His stories move at pace that unfolds quickly, the patter between characters is filled with irony, humor, and accuracy. This is standard now for a man who has written 40 books, and whose "ten rules of writing" are well known if not followed by legions.

I was going through an old Moleskine book and found notes I'd taken during an interview with Elmore Leonard at UCLA. Among the gems I wrote down in regards to developing character were:

"The characters are made up, they're fun. I audition characters. If the character isn't interesting, if he doesn't talk, then he's demoted. But, those who don't talk are more likely to get killed!"

A Winner: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

2008-06-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

Illustration by Ellen Forney, from the book

The setting is the Pacific Northwest amid tall pine trees and blue skies. The tribe is the Spokane. The focus is Arnold Spirit, the gawky, fourteen year old nerdy teenager whose parents are alcoholics. His sister spends twenty three hours a day alone in a basement and his only friend is the school bully. Arnold stutters and lisps, he's prone to seizures. He's the human punching bag on the Spokane Reservation, a geek who makes sense of life by drawing comics because

"I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me."

His predictable life is interrupted one day at Wellpinit High School after being given a geometry text book and seeing his mother's name on it. Arnold already knows how downtrodden his people are, but when he realizes the textbooks haven't been replaced in twenty years, he throws it at his teacher. During Arnold's suspension, the teacher comes to him and explains the injustices his student feels are correct, that in fact here on the reservation there is no hope, and to find it he will have to get off the reservation. The story gains its momentum when Arnold choses to attend a "white" school twenty-two miles away.

Poet, Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter Sherman Alexie

This book is about the opening of Arnold's world, and using both the limitations and gifts of his tribe to find hope. Alexie deftly creates characters with both sophisticated realizations with sophomoric behavior and perceptions. His new friend Gordy at Reardan High School tells him:

"And, yeah, you need to take that seriously, but you should also read and draw because really good books and cartoons give you a boner."

This is Arnold Spirit's coming of age amid the incessant hopelessness of the Indian reservation and the gleam of his "white" high school. Alexie is wise not to let Arnold veer off the path and let this become a reality-TV teenage hi-jinks chapter book. He lets Arnold find his own identity by facing the loss of a friendship, alienation from his own tribe, death and grief, love, and the need to make new friends in a foreign environment. With a self deprecating but smart narrative voice, Arnold finds both hope and acceptance. He discovers that even though he is a Spokane Indian, he's a member of other tribes as well:

"And the tribe of cartoonists.
And the tribe of chronic masturbators.
And the tribe of teen age boys.
And the tribe of small-town kids.
And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners.
And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers...."

Finding one's way in life and a sense of belonging is the recurring theme in novels. If you've seen his 1998 hit Indie movie "Smoke Signals," you'll see True Diaries as an expansion on this theme. Alexie writes this coming-of-age novel with humor, skill and consideration. This book garnered him the 2007 National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. Frankly, I can't wait for this movie to come out.

Sherman Alexie accepts the National Book Award for YA Fiction 2007

Found On The Road: The Essentials of Writing

2008-06-09T14:02:00.000-07:00

I took my first novel class at UCLA Extension Writers' Program in the spring of 2002 because the advanced short story class was full. I had no intention of writing a novel, rather, Novel I was simply going to be a ten week look-see into an area I'd never considered. Through a series of exercises designed not so much to give us direction on 'how to get published" but to slow us down and teach us about the craft of writing, we had plenty of time to explore. Needless to say, I was hooked.

Looking back at the papers I saved, there were exercises on stream on consciousness writing, dialog, taking postcards and writing a scene based on the picture. There were more, and after many years of "ten week look-sees," I've learned the three most essential things for a writer are:

Quit thinking so much. Inspiration is at your fingertips everyday.
Patience is a necessity of writing.
It helps to have friends.

But I haven't worked on the manuscript for the past six years in a row. The writer in the studio only writing is only a fantasy. I had to work. I have kids. There's a house that falls apart. Some years, I took classes in poetry and literarure. For a year and a half --or maybe it was two, life took over and the novel just sat there untouched. I also read a lot. My advantage has always been (and maybe it's because I was raised in a small town) --I understand there's a time for everything.
But, a wonderful thing happened almost two years ago. My friends and I formed The Writerly Pause. A core of five, we --John Yelverton, Sovann Somreth, John Louis Peters, David Cossaboom, and myself have all taken turns being Indiana Jones.

For the past year, amid some daunting familial and financial upheavals, I've been working sporadically on the final rewrite of my novel. I don't think my own story is unique. There were times when I forgot the story line, when I couldn't remember the names of characters. Now, I understand that this was caused by the stress of the tumultuous times. It was never a matter of me being stuck in a rut --I would have loved a rut, but the day's schedule could literally turn in a moment. Often I had to write in short bits --stolen minutes of time between disasters. Through it all, I was encouraged by people like Frank Schaeffer and Patricia Wood as well as all my friends in The Writerly Pause.

The fecker is done, printed, ready to edit

I also have to say blogging was at times a lifeline on the days when I couldn't write because the stress of being a caretaker was utterly disorienting. Blogging is a form of conversation. And boy, did I need to talk! So thank you all!
Scene 74 was finished today. It is the final chapter. As it turns out, I like my book.
Tomorrow I'll follow the example of Frank and Patricia. I'll print it up, put it in a binder, toss it aside, and after a few weeks read through, make notations and then, in a final flurry... make the changes and then send it out to a few well-chosen readers. No it's not over. A new part is just beginning. But yes, this is a really great step.

Windfall: An Interview With Patricia Wood

2008-06-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

Patricia Wood on her boat, Orion
By Kanani Fong

“I don’t want to be paraded as an expert,” says Patricia Wood, author of the novel Lottery. “An expert is a mother or father who work day-to-day to understand their kid and to get the world ready to welcome him.” Wood knows a thing or two about the challenges of special needs children and adults. As a special education teacher, her hands-on experience was invaluable in creating her protagonist, Perry L. Crandall, a mentally challenged man who transcends all expectations in this debut novel. And indeed, it was the authenticity of Perry that both won the notice of fans, and even the 2008 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, where it was short listed this year.

As with most writers, Wood’s primary goal was to tell a good story. “But if I could tap into some consciousness, to get people to think about their assumptions, all the better,” she says. As a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaii in the area of education and disability, she's written extensively about special education, home-schooling for the disabled, and as an advocate for special needs students. However, it became apparent in all the academic journals and even magazines like Ability that they were all preaching to the same choir. “We know how far people can go,” she says, “yet not enough gets out to the real world. Normal people do not pick up a book to read about special needs adults.”

Rather than type out another article, or non-fiction tome, she chose fiction, which can be a more accessible way to reach a large audience and raise awareness. She wanted to throw a tire iron at the way most people think of the mentally challenged. “Oh, here’s the beggar who’s retarded,” she says, as a means of illustrating the perceptions that many people hold. The challenge was to create a character the reader could root for, but to flesh him out by giving him desires, goals, tragedies and more importantly, ideas.

“I wanted Perry to be loved for his perceptions, and for the readers to see his ability and gifts,” she says of the protagonist. Other people, like his mother have given up on him, and the schools have a low set of expectations. Pat believes this isn’t atypical, that benchmarks applied evenly across the board to a diverse group of people are unrealistic, and not a true measurement of ability.

“Learning isn’t linear. People learn in all sorts of ways,” she says, of her decision to let Perry’s grandmother yank him out of school, to work at their boatyard. Pat cites a nine-year longitudinal study by Jacque Ensign Defying The Stereotypes of Special Education in the Peabody Journal of Education in 2000. They compared special needs kids who were home-schooled vs. those who went through the traditional educational process. The kids who came out ahead were those who’d been under the guidance of the parent at home, or even on the road. “It was mainly due to the parent’s attitude. They excelled on a higher level because the parent could see the kid’s gifts.” Indeed, the key person in Perry’s life is his grandmother, Gram, who takes him out of school and teaches him herself.

Pat thinks of the possibilities in teaching and guiding special needs students. “I often think, what would happen if we taught public education in a variety of ways, using different skills? What if we could work 1:1 with these kids, go at their pace, follow their interests? What if we don’t make a such a deal that a kid can’t hit all the academic benchmarks, but we focus on finding their innate gifts?”

She’s seen the results of non-traditional learning. She and her husband live on a sailboat year round in Hawaii. “We meet cruisers who come into our harbor. Many of them have children, and they’ve been at sea for years. I met a family whose daughter had qualified for special education, but was still having difficulties in school. They decided to go away for three years. When they came back to live on land, they were petrified that they’d ruined their kids’ chances. But as it turns out, they were learning by doing. The daughter is now in regular education classes. She’s doing well.”

A relative of Patricia’s --who was at the profound end of the Down’s syndrome spectrum inspired the seeds of Lottery, though she is careful to point out that Perry isn’t based on him. However, she thought of him, and the responses others had to him. There were a lot of day-to-day things he couldn’t do by himself. As he got older, the stakes went up to find something so he could earn a small living. But they failed to find the right thing. Finally, someone thought to have Bic send them a bunch of pen parts. “This was the era when they’d send you all the parts and you’d get paid for how many boxes you would fill. He could put together Bic Pens faster than anyone else,” she says. “Lottery isn’t a book only about a financial one, it’s also about the lottery in life, the genetic lottery, the windfall one receives when they find something where they can achieve some success.”

Pat also made sure that she wrote about Perry’s sexuality. “Sex is a desire of those with mental challenges. It was important for me to include it. People like Perry want love, they want a girlfriend, they are curious about sex and they want it.” She points out that the perceptions and also many of the depictions on television and movies typically choose to render the disabled sexless.

Though Pat says that the story’s the thing, she hopes that it’s a vehicle for deeper thought and discussion. Perhaps the readers who will gain the most from Lottery are those with little or no experience with those with different abilities. “Love transcends mental acuity, age, weight, education, even morality.” The real lottery is when people go beyond fences that hold them back.

Patricia Wood’s book Lottery is available in paperback now.

Great Writing Course Opportunity

2008-05-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Writing At Godmersham Park
August 15, 16, 17, 2008
An intensive non-residential three-day course for creative writers.
For more information please go to their site. As far as courses go, it's not overpriced. I've seen courses go for way more than this in less than inspiring settings, with tutors that are... hmmmmm...
Besides, who could resist taking a course, working with a tutor on ground Jane Austen once visited? This is the house owned by Edward Austen Knight, brother of Jane. Of course you want to go.... so do it. Go have a blast!

The Ernie Saga --(really good writing)

2008-05-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

or why Al Martinez won't let his cat out...

"The dog was OK but that wasn’t the end of the story. A car swerved to miss the Pekingese and scraped another car. There was a fistfight. Sheriff’s deputies were called. Meanwhile, a man who claimed he was once abducted by occupants of a UFO saw the dog drop from the sky and thought it was an extraterrestrial."

Read the rest on Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Al Martinez's blog and be sure to say hello!

Update: BookExpo, Patricia Wood -- The Orange Prize, WP Openings & William Lobdell

2008-05-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

by Kanani Fong

You know the quality of something is to be questioned when they let The Writerly Pause have press credentials, or if their website is so crammed full of "gee whiz" technology that it sends all browsers into a tailspin. Thus is the tale of Book Expo America 2008 as it rolls into Los Angeles with the newest in publishing news and books. I'll be there on Wednesday, to report on the good, the bad, and wallow in the mediocre. This writer is hoping for some pretty good swag, or she's so outta there.

Image stolen from the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction

While The Writerly Pause appreciates the austere image of our friend Patricia Wood's book Lottery on the official Orange Broadband Prize For Literature (UK), we much prefer the one by us posted here on this blog, prior to her getting all fancy on us and being shortlisted for this prestigious literature prize. We're very happy for Patricia, and to all her naysayers all we have to say is, "We told you so." While you can read the "celebrity" review on the Orange Prize website by Matthew Rhys you can also take the quick and dirty route and just watch the remix we did last year.

A natural pairing for us: literature & books

This afternoon, after our usual "Grit and Crit" at the Pasadena Public Library, we went to Islands for something to eat. On a whim, we called Patricia, who was either on her boat in Hawaii, in England, Scotland, France or Germany. What can I say? Five writers, five scenarios.

Upcoming will be an interview I did with John Robison that I was holding for the "June" paperback release of his book "Look Me In The Eye." This has been pushed back until September, so we'll release it sooner.

Heads up (or about friggen time): Long time LA Times journalist and closet novelist William Lobdell has a book coming via Harper Collins. It's a memoir, "Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith While Reporting on Religion in America." William covered religion for six years for the LA Times. His research and writing during this time profoundly changed his life. I took a novel class with William at UCLA, and his writing always stood out. I'm pleased he's having this success.

Are you in the final stages of a novel or memoir? Have you taken writing classes? We have openings for our Grit and Crit sessions at the Pasadena Library.
Please submit a sample of your work to ninewriters@gmail.com, along with information about who you are and why we should't be afraid of you.

Words

2008-05-17T14:25:00.001-07:00

Chinaberry Tree
Originally uploaded by Like Paper Cuts

By John Yelverton

When I sat down today I intended to write about Southern Literature. But I spent the last hour or so reading the Book of Revelation hoping to find a title for my novel. It’s a Southern Gothic thing, and I think I hit on something. By the time I finished, though, the air around my head was so heavy and oppressive that I didn’t feel like talking about, say, Carson McCullers, or god forbid, Walker Percy. Even Darcey Steinke, if you count her as Southern, can be depressing as hell.

Speaking of Walker Percy, let me recommend a book that isn’t fiction, but is highly interesting, and sheds some light on his personality. That’s The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy.Published a while back, but still in print. Funny thing, the relaxed, congenial Shelby Foote comes across as the stronger voice, with an openness and an intellectual curiosity--much more so than the rigid and puritan Percy. I suspect Walker swallowed too much Kierkegaard. Foote never had the success as a novelist that Percy did, but he produced a fine history of the Civil War.

Turns out that what I really want to talk about is words—and not just any words, but real down-home stuff. What started me on this road was coming across a children’s book called Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree (by William Miller). Zora’s mother dies, and she climbs the chinaberry tree and looks out over the world her mother said she would conquer.

A chinaberry tree. All of a sudden I’m back Home—wind-grieved as the place was. (Thank you, Thomas Wolfe, and Shelby Foote.)

Chinaberries In Winter
Originally uploaded by Big Grey Mare

Don’t know if you’ve ever seen a chinaberry tree. We had one in our back yard until we cut it down to make room for a screened-in porch. The last one I saw--that I’m aware of--was on a lonely road in Georgia, next to a dilapidated farmhouse. (How’s that for Southern color?) They were once common in the South, and in other warm parts of the country. I imagine that most have been cut down now: they’re considered an invasive species, brought from India in the nineteenth century as shade trees. Round green crowns, limbs solid as a rock—a great tree for climbing. They produced small flowers that gave way to marble-sized green “berries.” By Fall the berries yellowed and softened into a casing that was filled with slimy, thick liquid around a seed. We kids used to squeeze them and squirt the seed at each other. I’ve heard those little seed pods were poison, but nobody ever died.
We didn’t call them chinaberry trees. In fact, I didn’t hear that name till years later. We called them chaneyball trees. (Pronounced ‘Cheney,’ as in ‘Dick.’)

And now I want to recommend another book, or set of books, called The Dictionary of American Regional English. There I found my word for the tree, a word that was in use (with some variations) as far away as Louisiana. (I grew up in North Carolina.) But if I ever wrote a story that had a chinaberry tree in it (and I may plant some in my novel), I don’t think I would call it a chaneyball tree. But maybe I would.

The Dictionary of American Regional English is a browser’s dictionary, and a wonderful one at that. In a sense, it’s not a reference book at all. If I were reading Faulkner’s The Hamlet, I don’t think it would be necessary to know that ‘rabbit grass’ is a very local, Mississippi name for sedge (the plant we called ‘broomstraw’ in North Carolina)—it’s not important to the understanding of the story. On the other hand, it might be good to know that ‘belly-buster’ (and ‘belly-flop’) was, in some parts of the country, an expression for coasting face-down on a sled on a snowy hill. Could Edith Wharton have used it in Ethan Frome?

But most of all, The Dictionary of American Regional English is just plain fun. It’s like looking through the family album and finding all those faded brownie photographs — a moment from long ago, caught. And like those brownie shots, these words are fading away, replaced by other forms, homogenized.

‘Kitty-corner,’ for example, was used (primarily) in the North; ‘catty-corner’ in the South. Who knew?

Where I grew up, ‘locust’ and ‘katydid’ were both used to mean ‘cicada,’ a word we never used, and probably didn’t know. And there they are, the locusts and the katydids, documented.

‘Midges’ are Northern gnats. An even more Northern gnat is a ‘no-see-um.’ (My wife’s mother in Maine says this.)

In the South we had ‘redbugs.’ We had ‘chiggers’ too — though I never called them that.

We wonder: were there rules for when you use the pronoun ‘hit’ instead of ‘it,’ in the same dialect?

And on and on.

The dictionary has been in progress forever (see http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html). Four volumes of the alphabet are out now (though Sk), and the final volume is due in 2009. Supplements will follow. If you’re interested, the work can be found in good-sized public libraries, and in college and university collections.
Enjoy!

--John Yelverton

Where's The Limo?

2008-05-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of each class, there's always one person who is sure that when they get their book published, a limo will be sent, Oprah will be waiting and they'll be rich. But then reality hits, and here they are --struggling with blogs, feeds, subscriptions and remixes like the rest of us. You can read more about journalist, teacher, & book doctor Dennis Cass on his blog.

Maxine Hong Kingston

2008-05-03T22:50:00.001-07:00

"I let them write their way home from war."

Amazon.com Widgets

I had the pleasure of listening Maxine Hong Kingston at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, where David Ulin of the LA Times Book Section did a masterful job of moderating a discussion. Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Kingston is an American writer whose work puts her in the ranks of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner.

Her first book, written in 1976, was Woman Warrior: Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts. The writer uses the myths told in southern China, brought to the new world by immigrants, reshaped to compliment their new life in America, to tell the story of growing up in a Cantonese-speaking neighborhood in Stockton, California. They are American myths, and Kingston is gratified when her work is seen as "American literature, and not those Chinese books." Through the process of talking story, the myths brought over on boats and planes and settled into the living rooms and kitchens and talked about to the generations that are born here. The book is written in a poetic voice greatly influenced by the cadences and rhythms of her childhood, and very much influenced by the process of "talking story," and remembering dreams.
Maxine Hong Kingston, photo from Koa Books

Dreams are a recurring theme in her work. She believes dreams are important, and can signify something that needs tending to, or our deepest desires. When she was a child, it wasn't uncommon for the family to come down in the morning and ask one another, "What did you dream about?" Talking about dreams was a practice handed down from one generation to the next. This was driven home when Hong Kingston went to China to find her mother's long lost sister. She found her. The first thing the aunt asked Kingston was, "How is your mother, and what is she dreaming about?" Luckily, Kingston had recently spoken to her mother, and had an answer for the aunt.

Like many writers, Hong becomes deeply involved with the characters she creates. When she got to the end of Woman Warrior, she knew all the adventures and experiences still continued. In a way, the characters she creates live life off the page, until she lassos them back to appear in the next book, older, or a bit changed. The imagination enables her to create a reality that includes the lifespan of a character that exceeds any one book.

Of her switch from novels to non-fiction, Hong Kingston cited the Berkeley Fire (where she lost not only her home, but her entire community) as one thing that helped her make the shift. After the devastating experience, she found she no longer wanted to write by herself, that in fact, she wanted the company of others. So she gathered friends and former neighbors as they wrote down their experiences. From this, she went on to work with veterans, helping them tell their stories of war. "I let them write their way home from war," she said. "They find they can make beauty and art from war." And this is the great thing about Hong. One senses her restlessness, her decision not to take anything for granted, but to keep pressing not only herself, but us, to look for answers.

Back To Writing & The Critique

2008-04-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

by Kanani Fong

"To be able to make progress on your work with people you've built an understanding with is invaluable."

Jo and Yelverton

Over the years, I've read both good and bad things about writing groups. Agents and editors often recommend them, while many writers have bad experiences and loathe them. There are online groups, and ones that have met for decades. Finding one isn't easy. It has to be the right mix of individuals, and while writing is a priority, what really makes the fit just right is if the members aren't hellbent on outdoing, competing or impressing one another, rather, they have to be a group that wants to have fun.

Last year, a few of my writer friends and I gathered each month to talk to published authors about books. It was a lot of work, which included corresponding with publicists, agents and author, making sure everyone had the book, scheduling a time to talk via phone with the guest author. We even started this blog.

Jo and David

The best was just getting together on a regular basis and having lunch after we would talk to an author. The fare ranged from a BBQ with burgers and sausage, to a potluck brought over to Pulitz er Prize winning author Al Martinez's h ouse. Our time together offered a respite from the long sessions at school. Quite frankly, it was the spark between us that kept us going, long after the enthusiasm of the program had faded.

The group has winnowed down after our homecoming with Author Frank Schaeffer in December. Rocky moved to Texas, both Vanessa and Karine joined groups closer to home. Those left had a chance to expand and add some new people. Because we've all been through the same writing program together, there's a familiarity with one another's work, and a funny trust that comes only from paying to suffer for so long. We decided not to add anyone new right now, and just help one another get through the tail end of our finals drafts and start the query process. We decided to meet every few weeks at the Pasadena Public Library. This library is one of the last great ones in the southern California region. Just being there makes us is inspiring. As Sovann said, "It has a Hogwarts feel." We are very happy to be out of the West L.A. area, and bring it into an atmosphere that is decidedly less LaLa Land and more literary.

JP, Kanani, Karine

Rocky, Sovann & Vanessa

We read one another's pages --3000 word limit, each reader allowed to comment up to 4 minutes, the writer responds for up to 10, but after all the comments are given. This group is beyond the stage of cathartic writing. In fact, we're all writing novels, which helps because we have similar challenges. We're on final drafts and have been working at this for more than a few years. Fortunately, we're familiar with one another's work, so we can get into character, storyline, and structure.

This week, JP sent around his latest synopsis. This was the second time we'd seen it, probably the 800th time he'd rewritten it. It was tighter than it had been before, but still, we found areas where he could improve it. It was also pointed out to JP that one of his characters needed to be at least mentioned in Chapter 1. Mind you, last December when he went through this long class on "How to pitch your novel," no one in the entire class (including the self proclaimed famous agent/teacher) had picked up on this. JP, who has already submitted it and has had one response, will now rewrite Chapter 1.

In mine, David discovered several typos and omissions. I told them of rediscovering the last 1/3 of my book that I thought had been lost in a crash, of constantly seeking ways to unfold a story, how to bring back stories to the front while not losing the thread of the story. In a way, a novel is like origami. Lots of ways to fold and unfold. But one way works best to make a swan.

In Yelverton's book, it was decided he used great subtlety in describing what could have been a grisly scene. He also has a new and improved opening scene, which we liked. Yelverton and I decided that we were pretty much rested up, and also sick of our manuscripts. Both of us are finishing out books in the next two weeks, before we meet up again.

The upshot to having a writers' group is that there is value to having your work reviewed by people who are both critical and familiar with your work. To be able to make progress on your work with people you've built an understanding with is invaluable.

The original group

We'll be back

2008-02-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

The Writerly Pause is on an indefinite hiatus. We've enjoyed sharing our experiences with you. For more blogging fun, please go to Get Lost With Easy-Writer for posts on life, travel, and writing.

Currently, Yelverton and Kanani are finishing their books. Kanani was relieved to find her lost last third of the novel, given that last year her cranky Mac took a permanent crash. John Peters is sending his book out for query. Sovann is getting ready to do the same.

We meet every 2 weeks at the Pasadena Library to discuss our work.

A Talk With Frank Schaeffer

2007-12-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

by Kanani Fong

"After 23 drafts, this wasn't shooting from the hip."

As the first author who ever offered to speak to The Writerly Pause, we think of Frank Schaeffer as family. Readings are an author's privilege, set up by the publishing companies or invited to talk to groups from hundreds to single digits. Regardless of the number, what does is that a writer is recognized and that they get out from behind the computer and talk about their work. And so it was that Frank and his wife Jeannie were on their way to a reading in Maine, when he pulled over into a run-down parking lot to speak with us about his memoir, Crazy For God.

His newest joins a number of his fiction and nonfiction books, as well op-eds published at the astonishing rate of about one every year or two. Crazy For God has been reviewed in a spectrum ranging from Jane Smiley in The Nation and Warren Cole Smith in the Christian news journal The World, as well as out on the C-SPAN, the Boston Globe and the blogosphere. The reason for such wide reviews is that he was born into an evangelical family, which helped to shape the religious right. He also walked away from it all. Frank's memoir is not only the examination, but the unleashing of all that has driven him in the past.

For readers familiar with his first three novels, Portofino, Saving Grandma, and Zermatt,"Crazy For God" provides an insight not only into the world of his fictional hero Calvin Becker, but of Frank Schaeffer himself. It's no secret that those novels took inspiration from his own life, and one needs to look no further than the first sentence of this memoir:
"Being raised inside a miracle makes you feel singled out. I wanted to fit into the world. I still do."

Thus starts the story of his life as the son of two charismatic and well known American evangelicals, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, founders of L'Abri. His parents were religious leaders opposed to theological modernism within the protestant church, puritans living near the lap of luxury in Switzerland. To the thousands who came through their mission, life at L'Abri was one of intense discussions and examinations of their values and relationship to God. Everyone from students to Billy Graham came to the Schaeffer dinner table. And indeed, by the time Frank was eleven, he could roll out the arguments that would support his parents' beliefs, as if by rote. But growing up in the Schaeffer household was anything but idyllic.

Schaeffer's biggest childhood point of conflict, much like his fictional protagonist Calvin Becker, was his mother. She was certain with how life should be. Life and fate in the Schaeffer household was strung like a silk thread between a crucifix and a tree outside:
"People's eternal destinies hinged on a word or tiny event, maybe on no more than an unfriendly look. Even an inappropriately served high tea on Sunday afternoon could send someone to hell. What if the sandwiches were prepared wrong and they went away with the impression that we were alike all those so-called ministries where they didn't even know to butter thinly sliced bread out to the edges?"

Yet today, in his journey to find his own spiritual identity, Frank discovered the thing to avoid is the certainty that you are right. This isn't easy in a world that wants instant answers and immediate gratification, where souls are either "lost" or "saved," and belief seems rooted in fear. Today, Frank practices Greek Orthodox faith, where he feels the "slow journey to God" and mystery is fully accepted is more compatible with the reality of how life works.

The writing of this memoir was a journey unto itself. Twenty three drafts, over 580 pages, now trimmed to its present 408. Frank contacted colleagues, asking them about their perceptions of him during the time he was involved in the pro-life movement. He asked his sisters to examine their childhood and write him letters. Many of these recollections are published in the book, though one of his sisters opted out. Frank also writes about his father's mood swings that might be diagnosed today as bipolar disorder, his mother's bitterness over her own unrequited dreams, his own dyslexia and failures at formal education in a British boarding school. This is by all accounts a modern American family, an image many evangelicals are loathe to show given their dependency on being not human, but telegenic in their ploy for dollars.

Many writers of their own memoirs ponder how much they should say about people they remember. But Crazy For God is Frank's chance to set things straight. He condemns present televangelists for their money grubbing and power mongering ways, which collide with anything spiritual. With this book, Frank Schaeffer's break from the religious right is now complete, and his faith has reached a deeper dimension.

His father, the late Francis Schaeffer, represented what he feels is missing from the evangelical movement: a love and understanding of the arts and popular culture, from the Roman empire to Bob Dylan and the present day, the willingness to hash things over and to see things differently. This is the main message Frank wants to make in his book. His father, though long revered by many conservative evangelicals, was much more than those who followed. Francis Schaeffer was a devoted patron of the arts and a well read philosopher. "Christianity has created a wide range of arts," says Frank. And he ventures to say that most evangelicals don't care about the arts, which to him are an expression of a person's spirituality.

This lack of the arts has created a society where freedom of choice has come to mean "having more things to buy." Frank believes that consumerism has become the highest form of expression, not the arts. In other words, you are what you drive, you are what you wear. Give money and you'll be redeemed. Spirituality at the swipe of your ATM. He sees consumerism as the biggest threat to a spiritual life.

We ended our talk by telling him that we were sending a care package in his honor to a military unit in Afghanistan because of his history of support for soldiers in books such as Faith Of Our Sons.

Crazy For God is a book that will make you think. It's the amazing story of a man very much searching, finding, losing, finding himself again, and learning to live with grace.

Other Links:
Frank Schaeffer's Official Site
C-SPAN Book TV
Frank's column in the Huffington Post
Any Soldier.com

Writer Impossible: "The Workshop Writer"

2007-12-10T23:25:00.000-08:00

Get Lost With Easy-Writer: "Make sure that it's not the taking of workshops that makes you identify yourself as a writer, but the reward of steadily working on your own --doing it everyday, learning, improving and finishing a piece."

On The Trail: Research For My Novel

2007-11-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

By John Peters

"Massaging the historical details into the story in such a way that is real to my character and not a history book."

"So, you must've done a lot of research?"
Being that my novel is set in 300 B.C., I’m asked this question a lot. The answer is yes, a ton.
The follow up question is usually, “What’s your process?”
That’s a little more difficult to answer.

Before I thought about writing a novel, I read Peter Green’s, Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C. When I finished, I was amazed at the variety of people Alexander had fought: Persians, Pashtuns, Phoenicians, Messagetae, Scythians, Indians and many more. I wondered who these people were and how they viewed the man we now know as Alexander the Great.

The research began and an idea for a novel was born.

At first, I reread Peter Green’s biography of Alexander and then I read a biography of Alexander by the Roman historian, Arrian. With this information I began my first draft. Initially, I tried to write, rewrite and read more books about the people of this time period, but the first draft was taking forever. I felt overwhelmed. Around page seventy, I decided to focus on getting my character’s story out. I used the events of the battle my story followed as a rough outline for the novel and followed where my character led me. I’d worry about rewriting and specific historical details later. That decision was liberating. My mind, unencumbered by these other concerns, allowed the story to flow onto the page.

Once the character’s story was told, I felt I could take all the time I needed to do the research. I did and I really enjoyed it. I took a class at UCLA on Ancient Perisa. I read the Illiad, Xenophon’s 10,000, and two more Alexander the Great biographies by Roman historians. I found the Osprey military guides that detailed tactics, battles uniforms and equipment. I read other articles in periodicals, on the Internet and more books. I visited the Getty Villa and watched movies such as 300, Troy, and Intolerance. The History Channel, Discovery Channel and as mentioned already, the Internet, were all valuable resources. The Internet had great information, from shipbuilding to ancient names to making reed arrows. Thank heavens for Wikipedia.

The research, laying in the new historical details and the rewriting of scenes with a better understanding of my character’s world translated into a second draft that took a year longer to write than the first.

While there is still some minor research being done during my third and final draft, the main focus is working with the language of the novel. Massaging the historical details into the story in such a way that is real to my character and not a history book. For example, my character wouldn’t know the names of the various types of helmets and units within the Macedonian army. But he would comment on the colors, weapons and armor of various units.

So that’s how I gathered the information about my character’s world and used it in the novel.

2008 Robinson Jeffers Poetry Prize

2007-11-20T08:10:00.000-08:00

Big, big news....

The annual Tor House Prize for Poetry is a living memorial to American poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962).
The first prize winner will receive $1,000 for an original, unpublished poem not to exceed three pages in length. Poets whose work is chosen for Honorable Mention will receive $200.

The final Judge this year is Robert Pinsky. Go to the Tor House site for more information and past winners.

Crazy For God by Frank Schaeffer

2007-11-09T22:39:00.001-08:00

On Sunday, December 1, we'll be talking to Frank Schaeffer. Talking to him is like returning home --he was the first published author who agreed to speak with us. We're pleased to be back with him, and we're working furiously to finish our novels before December 1 (or at least I am).

Right now, we're reading his book "Crazy For God, How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped found the religious right and lived to take all (or almost all ) of it back."

I thought I'd share two passages:
"People's eternal destinies hinged on a word or tiny event, maybe on no more than an unfriendly look Even an inappropriately served high tea on Sunday afternoon could send someone to hell. What if the sandwiches were prepared wrong and they went away with the impression that we were alike all those so-called ministries where they didn't even know to butter thinly sliced bread out to the edges?"

"Fundamentalists never can just disagree. The person they fall out with is not only on the wrong side of an issue, they are on the wrong side of God. ...."A church split builds self righteousness into the fabric of every new splinter group, whose only reason for existence is that they decide they are more moral and pure than their brethren. This explains my childhood and perhaps a lot about America, too."

We'll have loads to talk about. Jane Smiley wrote a great review in The Nation, and it was also reviewed in The World as well.

Report on our meeting today

2007-11-04T19:06:00.001-08:00

What writers do when they have a chance...
Yelverton & Rocky had a head start at the bar of El Portal. I bought drinks for Jo, David and myself, and I just don't remember much about what we said, but rest assured, we had a good time. If you weren't there, we missed you.

Topics we covered (not in order):
1. Rocky is moving to Magnolia, Texas on December 15. Let's hope by next summer, Rocky has ensconced himself as a literary type in Magnolia and has started a Writerly Pause chapter in Texas. If you're in Magnolia and you have a book you're working on, give us a holler. If you can get Larry McMurtry as a guest --then double good.

2. Frank Schaeffer will speak to us on December 1, 2007 at 10:00 a.m. We'll be meeting in Culver City, thanks to the nice folks at Hacker Douglass.

3. If you get the "special" maguerita at El Portal be aware that it will hit you between the eyes really fast.

4. We want to add more people. Jo has someone in mind, as does David. If you're interested, look on our sidebar for more info.

5. How can Yelverton be so thin and drink so much beer?

6. Kanani went back to the bar when everyone else had gone and had a coffee with Rocky.

7. We're thinking of starting a litblog with themes, guest writers, etc. etc. John had some great ideas.

8. We'll have a farewell party for Rocky & Laura before they leave. They will be in a hurry packing but we don't care. We need to send them off properly. We need a place with a piano so that Jo can sing, and so we can sing with her --ha ha ha ha.

9. Santa Anita racetrack at 3 p.m (after going to El Portal) is a lovely place to go.

10. We talked about books, Emily Dickinson, John Robison, Patricia Wood, Dean Koontz, Ann Rice, Haruki Murakami, Frank Schaeffer and I can't remember much more. David, as it turns out, has turned into a huge Murakami fan since we started. He's read 5 of his books. Yelverton has written to him. Let's hope we get a response.

Keep writing and loving the things you do....

What Writing Classes Are Like

2007-11-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

Someone was asking me what it was like taking a writing class. Hadn't I been a writer for years? Why did I take a class? What was it like?
Well, yes, it's a long story, but I was in India watching people sweep roads with small whisk brooms, carrying the rubble of concrete with their bare hands, saw beggars in front of the Taj Mahal. And I decided good Lord --I could do anything I wanted. So immediately upon coming back, I took the plunge into writing fiction.

Only I didn't want to do it alone. So I signed up for classes. I met friends, listened to teachers, I read loads of books. Poetry, short story, novels classes, literature. I used ever single thing that I'd ever learned --especially my childhood music lessons. Some classes were great, others were a practice in patience. There were great students and pompous insecure ones as well. Many writers were gifted, others were tentative. Some were focused, and more than a few were not. There were car mechanics, lawyers, moms, musicians, forgotten child actors claiming to be someone and trying to find themselves now, librarians, sales clerks, teachers and doctors. The lapdogs of the program would be any screenwriter who'd had some success that came into the program expecting to knock out a novel in record time. Some teachers listened, others droned. And the feedback ranged from helpful and spot on to callous and dumb

Funniest thing ever written on my papers by an instructor:
"Corny" "Cornish" "Too Corny" "Cornball" "Cornballish" --all on one overly long scene.

But still, being there was exhilarating. Eventually though, everyone leaves to work on their own, and if they're lucky, keep some of the mates and form a group like The Writerly Pause.

So when someone asks what was it like, it's difficult to come up with an answer. And the only way I can describe the experience is to ask you to watch this.

Because it's just like it.

Emily Dickinson: Called Back Back From The Grave

2007-10-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

by Jo Nelsen

“Hellooooo…Emily… are you there?” I crooned, bumping along in my Suzuki Sidekick through the streets of Pasadena. Entreaty aimed toward the heavens. Three weeks in advance of Halloween, I began, sometimes lowering the car window to cock my head outside, like a spaniel with her nose to the wind. Writerly Pause had an event scheduled, and summoned for interview was one of the dearly departed – Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, called back May 15^th 1886.

Instruction from the Spiritual Channeler had been insistent. “It’s only polite,” she said, “to let her know when you’d like to speak with her.” I couldn’t disagree. Etiquette nothing to sniff at in the Dickinson household. And in consideration of her legendary shyness, I promised there would be no IChat – just our intimate group to glean insights from her vast writing experience.

So it was with great expectation I arrived on the doorstep that evening in Glendale. Angel wings hopeful. The others were already seated at the table, where, appropriately, a white damask cloth was laid, and an exotic bouquet, plucked from Renee’s own garden, was poised in honor of our guest’s deep appreciation of everything floral.

Attendance was low. Spooks had undoubtedly dissuaded half the group owing to Emily’s aversion for large social meetings. Disappointing as that was, the laptop was set to record. Sound waves rose and fell across the screen in black and white mountain ranges, and it appeared we were ready.

“Let’s imagine…take a few deeeeeepppp breaths, feet on the ground, spine aligned, exhale through the mouth, and inhale the new,” the Assistant intoned. “Let’s invite the 4 archangels to come and join us for the session to sustain the energy, and especially the spirit once known as Emily Dickinson to enlighten and enrich, help us grow and learn…”

Emily answered right away. That was easy. Her voice was timid though, and as it turned out, eluded recording on Rocky’s trusty Mac. Dang!

We posed questions, including ones submitted from members absent. What follows is selective transcription. Skepticism seemed ill mannered. Judge as ye may whether or not we actually contacted the spirit we sought.

Miss Dickinson: Thank you calling me forth. I am very grateful and honored to be here. How may I be of service?

“Emily, you feared you’d be shut out of heaven because you sang too loud. Did they let you in?”

Well, depending on how you define heaven…yes, I made it!

John: “I wrote a little poem for you.

Oh Emily, we'd like a look

Beneath that stairway's little nook,

And learn how

When the nights were long

You sang your solitary song.”

(The Channeller’s face smiled in grateful acknowledgment.)

“Did you fear death?”

No. I firmly believed in an afterlife, and I proved myself correct by being here tonight. There is so much more to learn and know… I invite you all to embrace it.

“Should we all run out then and commit suicide?”

(With a chuckle) It will wait for you. Enjoy the human experience. It is special. I believe the more you can find joy in the human experience the more you will find it in the afterlife.

“What was the terror you said you experienced that you could tell no one?”

I’m not sure it serves a purpose to tell the secret any more…and I’m not sure, if I’m flattered by your interest or a little put off for you being so nosey. Either way, my secret is my secret and I’d like it to stay as such, decorum, discretion being the better part of valor.

“What was it like for you going from this world to the next?”

How can I describe such an amazing journey? In modern terms, there were flashing lights and special effects whirling in a tunnel, if you want to describe the almost physical experience. But overriding was the sense of joy, the lightness of release. There is so much more to know and experience than the physical body allows.

What do you miss most?

The smell of the garden!

(Immediately I moved the rose I’d brought to the session close to her, only to be informed that spirit can’t smell.)

“Are you happy with your published poems?”

Quite honored. Thank you. I am speechless that my poems have had such a warm reception; that so many have opened up their hearts for mine. It is a very great honor.

“Will you sign my book?”

Perhaps I would oblige, but I can’t be sure of the authenticity.

“Do you still visit the Homestead?”

Now and again. I have interest to be at the Homestead because it’s so full of love. In the afterlife, there are several ways to come back in human form. One can choose to be a guide, like a guardian angel. I am working my way up to being a Muse….I hope to pass on what I was given.

“Have you had the opportunity to dance with young people who understand your words?”

Oh yes, quite often I am with them when they discover my works. It is a joy to see their joy and feel such a connection. I am always there, as I am with each of you as you read my work.

“I am interested in history. Julius Caesar, for example. Have you had a chance to meet others who’ve passed?”

In the afterlife, spirits – like I am – are all of one giant energy source. We don’t keep the same identity. Most of us have lived many lives. Who we are is the culmination of all lives we have lived. I choose to be here in answer to your call, tapping into the creative source. One can call at any time for whomever one wishes to gain knowledge from. Everyone has their own Muse – one’s own individual guardian. Call her forth anytime for motivation, inspiration, support. Muses stand in between you and God.

“Have you heard of Bob Dylan? You’ll like him when he gets there; he forces rhymes too.” (That brought laughter.)

“You wrote, ‘Hope is a subtle glutton.’ How did you keep optimistic without the stamp of approval from others?”

I was my most severe taskmaster. By not going public, I created better work – I. I was my own harshest critic.

“What was your inspiration?”

THE WORLD IS THE INSPIRATION! Its foibles, beauty, endless supply of inspiration wherever you look.

“Did being shut off the world make you a better writer? More intune with your own thoughts?”

It was a great meditative place to be, a wonderful tool, but there were wondrous things I missed participating in. Keeping to myself was not without drawbacks. I was not driven to have family. Because of my shyness, my imagination, my inner eye was so developed. I had dream fantasies that were life fulfilling for me. But all that really matters is how you view your world – mind and spirit.

Good night. I hope to give inspiration. . I hope I can live up to that. Continued good writing. I pray you will all be published. Thank you all for your love – love of my words. It is my greatest honor. Thank you all.

Writerly Pause expressed our heartfelt thanks at the generosity of the Channeller indulging our adventurous natures, and headed for the nearest pub to unwind. Inspiration in the golden liquid of a cold beer.

This world is not conclusion;

A sequel stands beyond

Invisible, as music,

But positive, as sound.

It beckons and it baffles;

Philosophies don’t know,

And through a riddle, at the last,

Sagacity must go….

We thank Renee Nault for channeling Miss Dickinson for us, and Orly Arava for her ready assistance.

We've been busy this week....

2007-10-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

Frank Schaeffer's New Book

2007-10-18T10:24:00.000-07:00

Our friend, Frank Schaeffer, has a new book coming out November 1, with the wonderfully long title: Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back.

This is Frank’s non-fiction memoir. Those familiar with the (fictional) Calvin Becker Trilogy (Portofino, Saving Grandma, and Zermatt) will know the outlines of the story. Schaeffer grew up in Switzerland, the son of prominent American evangelicals. As he grew older, and prominent in the movement himself, he became disillusioned, and finally abandoned it.

Jane Smiley has written a long, favorable review in the October 15th issue of The Nation.
Here’s a quote: “[The book] offers considerable insight into several issues that have bedeviled American life in the past thirty years, and. . .gives us not only a handle on the mess we are in but also quite a few laughs (if you can believe that).”

More on "Crazy for God"
Ink Q&A on Powell's
Frank on The Huffington Post
Review on The American Vision by Gary DeMar

To order go here
For Frank's site, click here.
Listen to an interview with Frank about this book on the Interfaith Radio

California Poet, Robinson Jeffers

2007-10-18T08:54:00.000-07:00

The Carmel area holds a very special place in my memory. As a kid, I'd spend summers not far from there, and remember the rugged beauty --much of which is still there, however, there are far more homes now. I always wanted to return to live there, but things haven't worked out that way. Alas, let me get my book done, and work my way up the coast.

I've been reading a lot of California literature as of late. One person I've stumbled upon is Robinson Jeffers (1887 - 1962), who lived in Carmel in the first half of the 20th century. What has crept over me the past decade or so, is the fact that when I was young, the educational Eurocentrism and East Coast dominance pervaded our curriculum to the point where we didn't cover many western writers or artists.

Back then, few but serious writers and Californians knew about Steinbeck. With poetry, we were rightfully taken through Dickinson and Frost --even Burns, but weren't introduced to one of the most gifted and important American poets of the 20th century, Robinson Jeffers. Most likely it was his anti-war views that kept him out of the curriculum, that, and Jeffers's poems, such as Cawdor are nothing less than epic. Not easy fare for a young reader, though his description is more easily imagined by anyone growing up along the northern coast than the snow covered forests from east coast poets.

He was an anti-modernist, a bit of an isolationist --more so during WWII, when his antiwar feelings made him unpopular. He loved his surroundings --the rugged cliffs of Carmel, where he started building his stone house from granite, situated on the tors in 1918. Tor House still stands today, and is the home of a yearly poetry festival (take note: they have a contest each year, keep tabs and submit).

It was from here he pondered his relationship to his surroundings, and explored his feelings about love and the state of man. But here's an epic poet, one who wrote for himself. And so, as I was reading, I was aware of a lack of pretense. Opinion, absolutely. But there was none of the writing to please or to be popular (that you find in coffee houses). He wrote what he felt, in which there is a freedom that's rare, and to be deeply admired (even envied). Some, such as the following is deeply meaningful at this point in time.

Promise Of Peace

The heads of strong old age are beautiful
Beyond all grace of youth. They have strange quiet,
Integrity, health, soundness, to the full
They've dealt with life and been tempered by it.
A young man must not sleep; his years are war,
Civil and foreign but the former's worse;
But the old can breathe in safety now that they are
Forgetting what youth meant, the being perverse,
Running the fool's gauntlet and being cut
By the whips of the five senses. As for me,
If I should wish to live long it were but
To trade those fevers for tranquillity,
Thinking though that's entire and sweet in the grave
How shall the dead taste the deep treasure they have?

Three Poems by Robinson Jeffers

Bakeless Literary Prizes

2007-10-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

Deadline: November 1, 2007

"The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference of Middlebury College sponsors the Bakeless Literary Publication Prizes, an annual book series competition for new authors of literary works in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. The Bakeless Prizes, named for Middlebury College supporter Katharine Bakeless Nason, were established in order to support emerging writers. Winners of the Bakeless Prizes will have their book-length manuscripts published by Houghton Mifflin in its distinguished Mariner Original Paperback line. In addition to the publication prize each winner will be awarded a fellowship to attend the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in August 2009.

Judges for the year 2008 Prizes
Antonya Nelson, fiction; Tom Bissell, creative nonfiction; Eavan Boland, poetry."

For complete details, go click on the title above.

Fair Use & Copyright Explained

2007-10-10T15:44:00.001-07:00

Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University has made this humorous movie which explains fair use & copyright. Well worth taking the time to watch.

A Chat With Adrienne Kress

2007-09-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

"My father read to me every night when I was a child."

by Sovann Somreth

We had the pleasure of chatting with Adrienne Kress, actress, director, playwright, teacher, and author of Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. Adrienne lives three time zones away in Toronto,

Canada

. She had just wrapped up production of her play, “A Weekend in the Country.”

Alex is enjoying an August release in the UK under the name “Alex and the Wigpowder Treasure” with a sprightly cover. She will be sailing the Ironic Gentleman to US shores on Sept 18^th.

...UK Cover...................North American Cover

To pre-commemorate the Sept 18^th U.S. release of Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, The Pirates of The HMS Writerly Pause sacked and plundered the 18^th floor of a luxury high rise office building in Century City, CA.

So how do stories begin? For Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, it began with Adrienne listening to her father read bedtime stories as a child, “The Phantom Tollbooth” and anything from Douglas Adams to JRR Tolkein. The fascination turned to pirates’ stories as she grew. She always had it in her to write children’s stories. It was just a matter inspiration one fateful day when she visited the quaint town of Bath in England. She knew her little hero would live with her uncle above a cobble stone bridge, in a shop that sold nothing but door knobs.

Adrienne went to her room that day and cranked out 18 pages in the first sitting. She finished writing Alex in 8 months -and three days of panic when she heard the good news from her agent. Her book was bought through an auction in the US. She went with Weinstein Books because Ben and Harvey’s Miramax imprint was relatively new, with a limited release slate. This equates to more attention.

We sat down in the Brig of the HMS Writerly Pause for a Morse code Q&A conference call with Adrienne that went something like this: --. .-. . . - .. -. --. ... / ..-. .-. --- -- / - .... . / .-- .-. .. - . .-. .-.. -.-- / .--. .- ..- ... .

WP: When writing Alex, did you have visions of a franchise?

Adrienne: I didn’t have any plans to write a series and Alex is not. When we think of children’s books, we immediately think Lemony Snicket. But not everybody is looking for the next Harry Potter. Alex is completely wrapped up in one book. While I am working on a second book, it’s not a sequel per se. It will start with a new hero, this time a boy named Timothy. He will have his own adventure before meeting up with Alex and company three quarters of the way through.

WP: For a Y/A children’s book, the narrator in Alex throws around some big words. And is not shy on complex sentence structure either.

Adrienne: Ginormous words are OK. It never hurts to have a child learn a new word. There’s always a dictionary or an adult who can elaborate. As for sentences…yeah, I tend to be long winded.

WP: What kind of books did you read as a child?

Adrienne: Beverly Clearly, Judy Bloom, Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Smith Family Robinson, Treasure Island. I loved Enid Blyton, Patrick O’Brien and anything with pirates roaming the high seas. I even have initiation rituals for my house guests to act out pirate scenes in a trial by physical theatrics.

WP: What are you reading now?

Adrienne: I’ve just finished the latest installment of Harry Potter. I’m also reading “His Majesty’s Dragon,” a Napoleonic history adventure with dragons instead of ships.

WP: How much editing happened from manuscript to the ARC copy we received?

Adrienne: The biggest changes happened aboard the train sequence where I had them eat dinner five times, in a different way each time. Trains are very difficult to write. It was like writing a mini treatise. I eventually pared it down to three. I also added little goal setting reminders... “And Alex knew she had to get to Port Cullis.”

WP: And What is your writing process? Any outlines involved?

Adrienne: Structurally, Alex can be broken into three acts: Act I: Roald Dahl. Act II: Alice in Wonderland. Act III: Peter Pan. I don’t do outlines. I only resort to it to get through the rough patches. Not a big fan of tweaking a whole story once it is complete.

WP: There was a peculiar character typing away on a laptop aboard the Ironic Gentleman…what was her name? Fenelle. That was it. Was that you making a cameo appearance in the book?

Adrienne: Actually she was modeled after a good friend of mine. She

wanted to be in the book so I named her Fennel…Fenelle to sound French. I’m actually Alex in the book. I took a lot of my friends and gave them spice related names…like Coriander the Conjurer. He’s modeled after another friend of mine who has an affinity for magic tricks…slight of hand.

*************

So there we have it. Adrienne is an instinctive writer with a grand sense of adventure. From what I can deduce from reading the book, she has a natural sense of thematic story structure.

Let’s put little Alex on the dissection table:

The recipe for Alex and the Ironic Gentleman is elegant. Create a believable ten and a half year old tom boy hero, Alexandra Morningside. Alex, for short. Endow her with a strong sense of right and wrong in the world and put her to the test. Start with a father figure in an uncle and introduce an equally honorable grade school teacher, Mr. Underwood. Throw in a couple of bad guys, have them kill the uncle and kidnap the teacher. What follows is a sense of abandonment and a quest for a missing father figure. What follows is a test of who she should and should not trust. Alex ventures in search of Port Cullis where she hopes to find Mr. Underwood.

Adrienne’s father reading stories to her as a child played an unimaginable impact in her life. It was as if she imagined a world without her father, and then fashioned a story find him. This treasure of a book is meant to be read aloud, from adult to child.

Easy-Writer Gets Smart

2007-09-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

Miss Writer, Regrets

Did Flannery and Bill get it right?

2007-09-11T15:48:00.000-07:00

Thoughts On The Recently Old South
by John Yelverton

old.truck.trees.01.holg.colOriginally uploaded by morsteen

I’m writing a novel set in the modern-day South, and because of that, I’ve been looking back, reminding myself how we got here. And trying to sort out, in my own mind, what some writers had to say about the time back then, and how it conforms to my memories of growing up Southern.

Re-reading Wise Blood, I was struck by how important cars were to Flannery O’Connor—at least in her early work. (Flannery? you ask.) Hazel Motes spends more time buying his car, and worrying with it, than he does thinking about his theology. We see it again and again: a high, rat-colored car. In fact, there are two high, rat-colored cars in Wise Blood, one driven by Hazel and one by his adversary--almost his twin--the false prophet. The cars fight to the death, and Hazel’s is the winner. “Nobody with a good car needs to worry about anything,” Hazel says. And maybe that’s his moment of enlightenment, in O’Connor’s design. He doesn’t seem to have another. Or is it a metaphor for a bad choice? When he loses his car, he blinds himself, and dies in a ditch.

In “The Life You Save May Be Your Own,” the old woman (as she’s called) will give Mr. Shiftlet the car he repaired if he’ll marry the girl. (The title itself is from a highway sign.) And Shiftlet sure wants that car. “The body, lady, is like a house” he says, “ it don’t go anywhere: but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile: always on the move, always….” Mr. Shiftlet marries the girl and takes the car; abandons her somewhere down the road, and drives on. Another bad choice?

And then there’s the car that appears at the end of “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” A big black battered hearse-like automobile, as O’Connor describes it, bringing The Misfit, and an end to a grandmother’s life. (“She would have been a good woman…if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When you read Flannery O’Connor, especially if you’re from the South, there’s always an immediate sense of recognition: the speech, the characters, all so closely observed, and all seeming so right. And leaving aside the Catholicism (and Kierkegaard, and all that), the stories work on their own. The car as freedom? A sign of failed understanding and death? The soul on the move? Well, why not? O’Connor’s Southern primatives are forever finding small, even trivial, answers in a confused world, enlarging and seizing them, holding them close.

But did Flannery O’Connor get it right? Is this a true picture of the South?

Maybe for a certain period, and for a certain group of people--a narrow class of whites inhabiting Middle Georgia in the 1940’s and ‘50’s. But her characters are almost too ignorant, too naïve, and so limited they often seem mentally deficient. We see none of the cleverness, the sly intelligence, the manipulative skills that we find in a character like Faulkner’s Flem Snopes.

There never was a Hazel Motes. There never could have been.

One more thing about O’Connor. She turned away from the most important issue of her day. And that, frankly, was race. The culture and treatment of Southern blacks was background for her, when it wasn’t invisible. Once she even used it as a prop for another small—artificial--epiphany. Only late in life did she address the issue directly in her work, and still, it seems to me, her concern was with white culture. (Strange how the confrontation in “Judgment Day” reminds me of the confrontation in Mr. Sammler's Planet between Sammler and the black man.)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Faulkner never turned away. He looked at the South straight on. O’Connor was always wary of Faulkner. Reading him, she said, made her want to go back and raise chickens full time. As a Southern writer (she suggested) you don’t want to encroach on his territory or put yourself in his way. He’ll run you over.

But did Faulkner get it right? In one important way, he did. I’m thinking especially of Absalom, Absalom!

Imagine it: This vast edifice that Faulkner constructed, a lop-sided, insane structure, a story torn from the earth and built with the bodies of men. Gone, but living in memory. William Sutpen comes down the mountain (in the longest tracking shot in American literature), takes what he needs, builds his empire—Sutpen’s Hundred--and seeks to found a dynasty.

But in the end, it all turns on racism. And founders.

There’s an unyielding stupidity at the heart of Absalom, Absalom!, and the characters know it.

So too that “Old” South—not so old at that. An unreal society, full of harm for everyone who resided there. For hundreds of years a world structured out of collective insanity, so bizarre you had to live in it to believe it. Only in the 1970’s did it begin to change in any real way.
Or did it just go underground?

Flannery O’Connor once admitted that she couldn’t deal with the larger things. But Faulkner did, and got it right. So much shame in the past, and he’s shown it to us. But was he right, too, when he said that the past is never dead, it’s not even past. I hope not, for the sake of my own writing.

In the last pages of Absalom, Absalom!, Quentin Compson finishes the story of Sutpen’s Hundred. Having listened to it all, his Harvard roommate asks him, “Why do you hate the South?”

And Quentin replies, “I don’t hate it.” And he thinks: I don’t. I don’t! I don’t hate it! I don’t hate it!
Doesn’t he?

Getting Ready For Emily

2007-09-11T07:25:00.001-07:00

In October, we're having a seance with Emily Dickinson. Jo is doing a wonderful job getting us prepared.

Here is a favorite poem of mine. John has just pointed out that you can sing it to the Yellow Rose of Texas. Kinda puts a new twist on it. I think of Rock Hudson fighting in that diner at the end of the movie Giant.
But yes, it works. You can sing this to that tune... and several other poems of hers, I'm sure. Try it and let me know...!

There is no frigate like a book (1263)
by Emily Dickinson

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.

What's your favorite poem by Emily Dickinson? Can you sing it to the Yellow Rose of Texas?

You can rap to Emily as well:

How To Review A Book

2007-09-01T09:12:00.000-07:00

Over on Critical Mass, the National Book Critics Circle blog, John Freeman offered up his and John Updike's Rules for Reviewing

Though written 30 years ago, they still hold true today. I also think that most "book reviews" that we see on blogs are really recommendations. That goes for most of the "reviews" on Amazon as well. The most common mistake in "reviews" by bloggers are that they feel compelled to write a book report, and give away the plot.

I also think Updike's rules can be applied to critiques, which all of us here on the WP have both submitted to and given out.

What's a bad critique?
Well the worst have said nothing. The worst failed to even give me back my papers. These are the ones who walk around with a permanent slush pile in the head.

Next to worst, is the person who scrawls things in big letters, a yell on the page. Things collected over the years on mine and from other friend's pages: "Okay, so this is what I'm thinking... she's an adulterer, who gives a fuck, why should I care? I don't like her at all." Then later, "Can't we give her some oopmh?" "Why did the characters come off as a bad Hollywood stereotype?" "I guess this is a matter of taste, but I really don't like it."

The best? That'd be the person who doesn't put their personal ego into it, who looks for areas that need to be clear, who will point out inconsistencies, places where the plot seems to drag, or asks you some very tough questions and encourages you to add or look up information that'll make your work deeper.

Coming In September

2007-08-27T07:13:00.001-07:00

Sovann Somreth will write about our chat with playwright and YA novelist Adrienne Kress author of Alex and The Ironic Gentleman which will make it's US debut in September.

Next up: John Yelverton will write about Southern literature.

My Writing Process

2007-08-15T10:41:00.001-07:00

Friends and family teased me -- “Are you still working on that same novel? How long do you think it will take you now to finish?”

by Vanessa Elaine Braud

Currently I am rewriting my novel, The Picture Woman of Jackson Square. It is a southern gothic tale set in New Orleans and I have been working on it almost five years. When I first started all I had was a kernel of an idea. A painter from New Orleans who has a burned face. I bought a pack of single subject notebooks and went to town. Most of what I wrote in those first notebooks never made it into the current manuscript. But all of that writing was a benefit to me because through the process I found Shauna’s voice and discovered her true perspective on life. I believe that everything I wrote led me to where I am now. And even though there were many pages that did not make it into my book, those pages were crucial to me finding my characters, their true voice and the real story.

I was at a stagnant spot with my book for a long while. The dragging middle us writers call it. Friends and family teased me -- “Are you still working on that same novel? How long do you think it will take you now to finish?” I could sense it at social gatherings. People would roll their eyes. Think that I was living in some sort of delusion or fantasy. Every deadline that I set for myself blew past. And there was a time in the middle of this journey where I truly couldn’t see the end in sight and didn’t know if I would ever get there. All I had was big sections of my book with no through line to run from beginning to end. The sections themselves were so different that at times I wondered if I was writing two separate books and didn’t even know it.

The writing classes at UCLA I found helpful to generate pages. And we all certainly need plenty of pages to fill a book! But when it came to recognizing the structure: the beginning, the middle and the end and how it would all tie together it really became a journey of faith. It seemed that was something I had to figure out for myself. It was something that no writing teacher could teach me. The structure grew only out of the writing itself.

I have taken many writing workshop classes at UCLA. Some professors push an outline and say you should plot your book before you start writing. In those classes the outlines I wrote did not help me at all. It was at earlier stages of developing the story and I did not know the characters well enough. I did not know truly what they would do. My hat is off to anyone who can do an outline first. I will certainly be open to try it the next time around. But I think it may be back to the spiral single subject notebooks for me and, if so, I’ll welcome it.

Upon rereading my work recently I realized what my core need for Shauna was that she had to get out of the drug business and that the main thing that escalates and progresses throughout my tale is truly Shauna’s relationship with her dope dealer. Upon a second look I realized that their relationship and all its phases, how it changes and transforms was the real bones of my novel and finally I had direction and I had a core. I immediately cut the first twenty-five pages realizing I started in the wrong place. I was amazed at how much that alone opened up my characters for me and set them on a much better course.

Recently I enrolled in a different kind of class at UCLA. A publishing class called Prepare Your Perfect Pitch Package. It is taught by Lisa Cron of the Angela Rinaldi Literary Agency. A combination of her lectures and her positive energy has spurred me on to really wrap up this book. I did not know what I was getting into when I signed up for this class. But the exercises that we have had to complete I have found extremely helpful in the rewriting process.

First we started off with writing a query letter to an agent trying to sell our book. Second, we refined our first three pages and submitted them to the class. Lisa gave us a fabulous lecture on what makes good writing. She spoke about how your first three pages must pop and some elements that are necessary to be in those pages include: 1) be sure to start in the right place with your book. Make sure that trouble is brewing. Don’t enter one moment too soon. 2) Tell the whole story in your first sentence. You want an opening line that will tell volumes about your story or your character and 3) what is your book about? The meaning of your book should at least seem to be on the first page.

Our most recent assignment was to prepare a two page synopsis of our book. Can you imagine taking a 65,000 word novel and scaling it down to 750 words? I had to rewrite mine four times because each time it turned out too long. I still think I could scale it down more but at least I got it down to the required length. I think it’s a good exercise to reveal to the writer what the bare bones of the book actually are. But it’s only a super condensed version of my book. It’s far from the true experience of the setting, the texture and the nuance of the characters that took so long for me to build.

This publishing class has been a great tool for me to rewrite my work. I would recommend it or a similar class to anyone who is working on a book project with an end goal of publication in mind. Drafting our pages and telling our stories is no doubt a solitary activity. It is good to have at some point someone in the business to tell you what they think and to help you tilt your perspective away from writing your book to now how can I best market this book and sell it to the public?

To sum up my experience of writing and to give the best advice I can give to anyone who is writing anything whether it be a novel, short story or screenplay it’s this: keep the faith and keep on writing. Forget what your family, friends or neighbors say. Things will come together.

Lottery by Patricia Wood

2007-08-01T22:32:00.000-07:00

"Get into the details of your character's life."
by David Cossaboom and Kanani Fong

We met with Patricia Wood on a yacht in Hawaii.
Rather, she was on the yacht and in Hawaii. We were in a small dining room, two dogs underfoot, watching Patricia via an iChat.

Patricia’s CV would make anyone pause for a second glance. Army Medical Technician, professional horsewoman, special education teacher, a doctoral candidate in education. And now, at the age of 54, proving that writing is something that happens over time, she’s hitting a ball out of the park with her first and best-selling novel, “Lottery.”

The pitch for her book seemed to tell it all. “Forrest Gump wins Powerball.” While it helped garner the interest of an agent, it’s not what the book is all about. Lottery is the story of Perry L. Crandall of Everett Washington. With an IQ of 76, he is, in his own words, “slow but not retarded.” Taking the reader along for a ride that includes a warm and pragmatic grandmother, a boozing but kindhearted friend, and a treacherous family, the book centers on what happens to Perry once he wins the Lottery. This poignant but funny story is filled with wisdom.

We asked Patricia about the source of inspiration for her book. Of course, it would not be a typical story. No way! She had been giving writer Paul Theroux horse-riding lessons. One day, as she was leading the horse out, she got an idea. In a rush, she explained it to him. She told him about her father who’d won the lottery, about a relative who had special needs and of her work with kids as a teacher. He listened and when they finished with the lesson, he told her that he thought she should write this book and that it would be the first book of hers to get published.

And write, she did. Patricia the rider rides hard and fast. So does Patricia the writer. Lottery –from purchase to publication, was about nine months.

Our heads spun. How did she do it?

She told us the first and last part of the novel came to her first. Then she wrote from start to finish with few pauses to go back and edit. She made her way to the very end. Only after she re-read what she’d written, did she go back and rewrite. She did this several times in a week. Issues that were hard to resolve weren’t worried over excessively, but were left to reside in her subconscious. She also had readers --friends she trusted to give her feedback on the entire manuscript. Patricia would take a week off, and then this editing process was repeated several times.

When the manuscript was as good as she could get it, she was ready to pitch it to agents. She did. Several said no. But there was one perceptive person who said yes.

Now, 5 am calls are usually reserved for drunken ex-dates or relatives informing you that someone has died. Add to this one more: an agent calling from William Morris in NYC. Dorian Karchmar called Patricia and said, “I love your book!” Dorian has been instrumental in helping Patricia make informed choices --from the book auction, to all aspects of editing and publishing. As Perry L. Crandall would say, “That’s so cool.”

Here are some writing tips we gleaned from Patricia:

-The reason her characters are believable is in the details. What kinds of foods does he like? Does he bathe or shower? What clothing do they favor? Do they drink coffee? Tea? With cream or sugar? The little details will tell you a lot about the character.

-Work with the voice. Perry thinks slower than most. So Patricia found Perry’s voice by ensuring that the reader could feel the awkwardness of his thought.

“I miss Gram. I still do everything the same in the morning. I get up, go to the bathroom, use my electric razor, and comb my hair. I put on my jeans with my flannel shirt and an undershirt underneath. I put on my Nike socks with the cool arrow and slip on my boat shoes. I cook my oatmeal and do my words while I eat.”

-Use your experiences. All of them. Patricia used her father’s experiences after he won the lottery as inspiration for Perry’s. Her insight into Perry’s inner life comes from her experience as a teacher and also from a relative who had Down’s Syndrome.

We ended our conversation with the feeling that we had been privileged to take part in this chat. During our time with Patricia, wisdom was mixed with fun, laughter and on our side --food, beer and the typical Writerly Pause interactions. We’ll talk to her in six months to see how things have gone. We think the novel is echt.

Here's a sampling of how things have gone prior to her release date of August 2, 2007.

-Patricia's book is riding high in the blogging community. Already, her book has been reviewed positively and she has done several interviews.

-Prior to its official release date, on August 1, she broke through the top 100 books on Barnes & Noble.

-Having hired the firm of Goldberg-McDuffie Communications, Inc., articles on Patricia have appeared in trade and mainstream publications such as Redbook, USA Today, and the Honolulu Advertiser newspapers.

-A list of Lottery Aphorisms has been posted on the website Lottery the Book

-She's been interviewed on local station KHON in Honolulu.

-An audio version has been read by Paul Michael.
-Pat interviewed on WPOC in Baltimore.
Pat's book was also given positive reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Times-Picayune.

Sites to visit:
Patricia Wood's Official Site
Pat's blog
Reviews of Lottery
Reading Group Guide
TV interview on KHON
A review by Easy-Writer
Literary Lotus reviews Lottery

Look Me In The Eye, My Life With Asperger's

2007-07-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

Thank you to John Robison for arranging to have Christine Aronson send his upcoming memoir to us. You can find John at his blog Look Me In The Eye.

Critique Groups: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

2007-07-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

"Nobody ever learned or grew as a writer by listening to fawning praise."

by Guest Blogger Dave Cunningham

Who could be worse at taking criticism than a writer? We’re such thin-skinned animals – so easily bruised, so slow to heal, so protective of our babies.

Hearing that “your protagonist isn’t believable” could send you into a two-month depression, leaving your protagonist to stew in electronic limbo, awaiting a desperately needed revision that may never come.

Put your ego aside. You need all the constructive criticism you can get. So do I.

“You changed point-of-view in the middle of the scene.”

“All your characters sound alike.”

“Use more active verbs.”

And, of course, the old standby, “Show, don’t tell.”

I’ve worked with many critique groups and, under the auspices of the California Writers Club, started my own in 2002, the “Pure Fiction League” in Irvine.

Along the way, we’ve learned how to deal with the good, the bad and the ugly.

One guy reacted to criticism of his writing by lashing out at everyone else’s work.

“This sucks. You have no hope of making it better. It violates every rule for beginning writers. Throw it away and keep your day job.”

That falls under the category of “ugly.” Apparently, he thought a critique group was supposed to tell him what a wonderful writer he was and nominate him for the Pulitzer. When it didn’t happen, he attacked.

The “bad” sounds something like this: “I’m not really your target audience because I don’t read mysteries, but why do you have the murder on page six? You should keep us in suspense at least until the second half of the book.”

If you don’t know rules of the genre, just comment on what you do know.

You might think the “good” would sound something like this – “I loved it! I can’t find a single thing wrong with your writing! I can’t wait to read the next chapter.”

But you’d be wrong. Nobody ever learned or grew as a writer by listening to fawning praise. You grow when someone points out a better way to communicate your ideas, then you make the changes and realize they were right.

Critique groups are like snowflakes – no two are alike – and we encourage writers to sample all they can.

I know of one Orange County group of four successful, published, female authors who critique each other’s ongoing manuscripts and nothing else. Outsiders need not apply.

Another O.C. critique group of novelists is limited to six members. If you ask to join, they’ll say they can interview you, but someone has to die first.

I’m not sure where or when the first critique group originated, but a pretty good one surfaced in Paris about 50 years ago with members named Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.

Did Hemingway really need a critique group? Without question. According to Prof. Scott Donaldson, University of Virginia, this was the original beginning of “The Sun Also Rises:”

“This is a novel about a lady. Her name is Lady Ashley and when the story begins she is living in Paris and it is Spring. That should be a good setting for a romantic but highly moral story. As every one knows, Paris is a very romantic place. Spring in Paris is a very happy and romantic time. Autumn in Paris, although very beautiful, might give a note of sadness or melancholy that we shall try to keep out of this story.”

Fitzgerald convinced Hemingway to scrap his first 4,000 words. Hemingway’s new beginning: "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton."

I’ve heard that the optimum size for a critique group is six to eight members, but that depends on the structure and rules of the group.

The Pure Fiction League meets in a public place, until recently the Barnes & Noble bookstore in the Irvine Marketplace, so it’s always open to anyone who wants to show up. One night, we had 22 writers arrive and had to break into two groups for readings. Another night, we only had one – me. On a typical Thursday night, we would usually have about 10 writers.

We ask that writers bring no more than 3,000 words of typed, double-spaced, 12-point prose, with enough copies for everybody. A writer may read her own work or ask someone else to read it aloud. During the reading, members edit or mark quick comments on their copies.

Then each member has up to four minutes to give an oral critique, without interruption by the author or anyone else. When everybody has finished their critiques, we begin a 10-minute period of cross-talk, when the author and everyone else can offer other observations.

On a typical night, we’re able to critique two to four pieces. We keep a list of members who want to read their work, and whenever a writer is critiqued, he goes to the bottom of the list. Since only a few writers are actively producing new work at any time, members rarely have to wait more than a few weeks before getting a chance to read again.

To avoid the bad and the ugly, we try to maintain a “good” philosophy of critiquing. We ask that writers only bring finished work that’s as polished as they can make it. Then we try to improve it by suggesting alternatives (It doesn’t help writers to tell them “this doesn’t work.” Tell them why it doesn’t work and how it could be improved.) Everything’s fair game: plot, POV, character arc, dialogue, sentence structure, grammar, even spelling.

At the end of a thorough critique, I like to tell the writer what I liked about the piece. You can always find something good to say.

After all, we’re thin-skinned animals.

Dave Cunningham is a published novelist, ghostwriter and editor with 12 titles to his credit. The former state president of California Writers Club recently sold a screenplay and is working on another.

The Lifespan: Writer Chester Aaron

2007-07-03T18:17:00.000-07:00

Chester showing us the photos
he took as one of the soldiers who
liberated Dachau.
by Kanani Fong

"I work in the fields all day, then come in and write every night from about 10:00 - midnight."

It was time to meet the author of one of my favorite books, Symptoms of Terminal Passion. My copy is dogeared because I so admire the clean prose, the love stories that are never sullied by sloppy sentimentality. At the age of 85, this writer who has written short stories, memoirs, recipe books and novels over his lifespan would have something to share, some glimmer for those just starting out on the path. Chester Aaron is a man who has had an interesting life. He was born poor and Jewish in a coal mining village in Western Pennsylvania. And like many people, he had one incident that was defining:

"I graduated from a high school two miles away and went into the army in 1943. I served in France and Germany in an Armored Infantry unit as Number One gunner in a Heavy Machine Gun platoon. The only award I am proud of is the Combat Infantry Badge. I was with the troops that helped liberate the concentration camp of Dachau, an experience which, like my childhood, helped define the rest of my life." -by Chester Aaron for Zumaya Publications

I visited Chester Aaron at his solar house on a garlic farm tucked away in the foothills of northern California. I marveled as he talked about his life. Like many writers, he's achieved a lot in other fields as well. All of his life experiences are poured into his writing. For instance, long ago he x-rayed a baby girl with syndactyly. A few years ago, he was walking along the beach and saw a girl playing in the surf. Somewhere in his mind he put his prior experience together with what he was seeing and came up with the basis for his book, Home To The Sea, about an eighteen year old turning into a mermaid. I thought of something the writer and teacher Lou Matthews once said, half in jest, "Writers aren't really very interesting until they're over the age of 45."

We sat under the shade of a redwood tree. The sun shined on his garlic beds, a breeze came through, hummingbirds whirred, and a doe and her fawn walked nearby. Both courtly and down to earth, Chester served us his homemade jalapeño-garlic dip and talked of the wild turkeys and gophers that decimate his crops. "Look!" he said, pointing out to his garden, "is that a turkey?" But it wasn't. It was a shadow, moving about the tall dry grasses.

Of course, we talked about writing --after all, he's published sixteen books, both fiction and non-fiction. We acknowledged a narrowing of diversity in this literary world of blockbuster sellers, lists and charts. For some works, the only hope --even if they are quality works of craftsmanship, are small publishers like those offered by Guggenheim Award winner and NEA recipient Thomas Farber, who owns El León Literary Arts. Farber, who publishes unagented works, published Chester's collection of short stories, Symptoms of Terminal Passion. It garnered critical reviews from the halls of Harvard to NPR. In addition, despite the preconceived notions of inferior works, many skilled writers with more esoteric offerings are going the route of POD. Though Chester has had agents in his forty-year career as a writer, lately he's been self-publishing.

As planned, we went for dinner at a restaurant in an old logging hotel. Ages ago, he introduced the dish, bruschetta, to the owners. I had not been there since I was a child. To his astonishment, my recollections were completely correct.
Just goes to show, a writer sees things and remembers.
Even when he or she is a child.
And if they can hold onto this, one day, they might become a writer. Just as Chester did.
Here is my movie about my visit with Chester. You'll find out more about him here. I'll never forget my time with him.

Publicity Director Megan Underwood Beatie

2007-06-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

by Rocky Helderman

"Keep a list of everyone you know."

As every reader knows, a trip to the bookstore is a journey into a storehouse of enlightenment, adventure, romance, mystery and worlds previously unknown. But to a writer -- especially a first time author, it’s an avalanche of competition that can easily bury your work beneath famous names and best-seller lists.

How then, do you stand out above the rest? How do you get the exposure to motivate people to seek out your book? Megan Beatie, Vice President, West Coast Director and Senior Account Executive of Goldberg McDuffie Communications, recently met with the members of Writerly Pause to explain the publicists' role.

Today’s marketplace is far more complicated and instantaneous than ever. The traditional approach of sending authors out on book tours is no longer enough to ensure anyone will notice a new writer. Furthermore, publishers could be hesitant to invest heavily in promoting your work as you’ve no proven track-record. Though novels are assigned an in-house publicist, oftentimes they are swamped. An independent publicist who can tend to details and create a wider media blitz can be indispensable. That's when the writer hires a firm like Goldberg McDuffie, a New York based PR firm with over twenty-five years experience promoting quality fiction and non-fiction books.

When accepting clients, Megan's first requirement is that she has to like the book. Author and publicist share a relationship based on trust; they both have to believe in the project and each other in order to attain success. The best results are achieved when everyone is focused on advancing the author's novel, as everyone has an interest in future books.

Megan suggests that writers should plan to hire a publicist at least six months before being published to allow enough lead time to schedule any interviews, magazine articles, and public appearances so they coincide with the release date of your book to maximize your marketing efforts. A writer should also do their research to ensure that a PR firm is the best possible one for their book.

With so many new novels and writers on the scene, new authors should first play to their base; any groups, associations, contacts associated the publishing industry, however tangentially, should be made aware of your book. Word of mouth is still a potent medium. We asked her about blogs, and she was enthusiastic for the following reasons.

Blogs are a good exposure for your writing style. They offer a chance to be widely read for little little monetary investment. Second, a well-written and consistent blog establishes that you are a writer. It offers something that you can point to if asked about bona fides. The Internet is revolutionizing the publishing industry and its reach affects everyone in the business. It can also generate buzz about novels after publication. Sites like YouTube and My Space provide limitless possibilities for guerilla advertising campaigns by authors to get the word out. To this effect, The Writerly Pause was started as a means for for the Nine Writers to wade into the waters of the blogosphere by gaining experience through doing.

On a practical side of writing, Megan advises authors to read voraciously, things in their chosen genre and outside of it. Study successful books to see what works in the market. Compare your story to those on best-seller lists. Is it timely, does it tap into current trends or events?

Even a good photograph on the dust jacket can be important. And by this she means, something professionally done, with good lighting, hair and makeup. After the title, it could be the next thing potential readers check as they decide to take a chance on a new author. After all, reading your work is an act of faith; they'll spend hours with your words, hopefully you'll touch them in very personal ways, maybe teach them something they didn't know or recognize. They want to know who you are and a professional photo, perhaps one that emphasizes the book's story, can reassure them.

Media training is a skill that Megan also thinks is essential for writers, given that creating buzz involves using blogs, talking to interviewers, even having small trailers made and posted on websites and You Tube. There are questions every author should have answers for, such as
-Why did you write this book?
-What inspired you?

In today's marketplace, you're not just telling a story, you're creating a persona that competes with many different media.

About Megan Underwood Beatie
Goldberg McDuffie Communications, Inc. website

Rocky's Adventure With The Story On Megan

2007-06-15T10:17:00.001-07:00

Rocky is traveling in Texas.
As everyone knows, Texas is huge.
He had to drive to another town to find an internet connection.
Imagine Rocky driving through the flat plains of Texas stumbling through honky tonk bars looking for an internet connection. Finally, he found one. We did not ask where.
He sent the piece about our visit with Megan, but I couldn't open it.
Apparently, it's in some odd Texas code that only they can crack. The clue is probably in the movie "Giant."

Our Day With Megan Underwood Beatie

2007-06-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

We had a bbq for Megan Underwood Beatie, West Coast Communications Director for Goldberg McDuffie Communications. She is the publicist for many books, including the upcoming novel Lottery by Patricia Wood.

Watch for an article by Rocky Helderman, our chef, photographer, location scout, and one damned fine writer. He's in Houston until next week, and will have it up then. If you watch this slide show over and over again, it's like drinking many beers on a warm day. (Beer sponsor still needed. Please contact the WP). This is all so echt.

Also, greetings to everyone coming over here from Pat's blog. We hope you'll stop by often. Drop us a line if you want us to link to you.

Buzzometer

2007-06-04T23:58:00.001-07:00

New word: Buzzometer -- A marketing term. An inexact, but fun way to sense excitement also known as "buzz."

The Book Expo of America gives away ARC's at their annual conference. Once people have looked them over they can vote for the ones they feel will be the most successful. Here is a list of 45 forthcoming books . "Lottery" and "Look Me In The Eye" made the list.

Also, check out the revealing article About Best Seller Lists on Squidoo.

Next year the BEA is coming to Los Angeles! V.v. exciting.

Look What The Mailman Brought

2007-06-02T14:35:00.001-07:00

Alex and the Ironic Gentleman by Adrienne Kress. It's coming out September 18, 2007, by Weinstein Books (as in MIRAMAX Films --oh, that Weinstein!). Check out her site. She's utterly charming. And a huge congratulations to the author. We are flattered to receive your ARC. So far: Sovann loves it. David liked it as well. The rest of us will pick it up very very soon!

A High-Five To Noah Lukeman

2007-05-28T11:33:00.000-07:00

Noah Lukeman of Lukeman Literary has decided to make his book, How To Write A Great Query Letter available free through download. Each person is allowed to download it once, and it may not be copied or sold in any way. To get it, go here.

He has also written three other very good books that reinforce what we've learned at the UCLA Writers' Program (or should have). A Dash of Style is much easier than perusing The Oxford English Grammar --a gi-normous tome that once fell on my foot, otherwise known as being bruised by punctuation.

Please support Mr. Lukeman's generosity buy purchasing his other books at your local bookseller. Here are the links: The First Five Pages, The Plot Thickens and A Dash Of Style.

Fantasy Island Results Are In

2007-05-27T10:01:00.001-07:00

Sovann, Rocky, and Jo. Pat's book "Lottery" amid the spoils of salmon & beer.
The official WP Crab Dip recipe may be found here

A few weeks ago, each of us submitted a list of authors we thought would be interesting to spend some time with drinking beer and mai tais.

Here are six authors we'd like to speak with:
Joan Didion
Annie Proulx
Bill Moyers
Tony Hillerman
Dean Koontz
Haruki Murakami

Though the above list is heady, we also wanted to devote time to first time novelists. As you can see, we have a head start with Patricia Wood's upcoming book, Lottery. She couldn't be there with us, so we at least gave the book a ceremonial bottle. As you can see --by the spoils of our meal, the beer and ensuing conversation about her book, were heartily enjoyed. (Note: we need a beer sponsor).

We'll talk with Pat in July. Also, looks like like we might get to read John Robison's book, Look Me In The Eye, and maybe Adrienne Kress's book, Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. It all depends on their PR. If we do, we'll let you know. Fingers crossed. We are grateful for whatever comes our way.

And not to ignore the dead, we'll try for a seance around Halloween with Emily Dickinson. We hope she likes beer.

Next up is a meeting with Megan Underwood Beatie.

"Ms. Beatie is the west coast publicity director for the Los Angeles office of Goldberg McDuffie Communications. She has worked on the publicity campaigns of a variety of literary and commercial fiction and non-fiction, including the New York Times bestsellers He’s Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, Monica's Story by Andrew Morton, The Bodyguard's Story by Trevor Rees-Jones, America's Queen by Sarah Bradford, and 1st to Die and Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson."

We were discussing if we needed a mission statement or anything like that, and the only one we were willing to commit to was: "We like to eat, drink, laugh and talk about writing."

That's about as fancy as we can envision getting. Most of us are still at the lunatic asylum that is called the UCLA Writers' Program and have heavy writing and critiquing demands, so we like to get together and just relax. One more announcement: Don't miss Karine's performance in the William Saroyan play, "Hello Out There."

Reading, Writing, Authors & Mai Tais

2007-05-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

Over the next two weeks, we'll be planning the rest of the year's writers and topic matter for this blog. Each of us has submitted our "fantasy island" list of writers who we've always wanted to talk to. It didn't matter how well known the author was, but there had to be something about him or her that intrigued us enough to invite them to our virtual island of mai tais and dance.

We're a diverse group, not bound by genre or interest, and it's apparent in the lists that came in. The main list includes:
Haruki Murakami, Mary Oliver, Tony Hillerman, Orham Pamuk, Loung Ung, Barry Lopez, Umberto Eco, and Bill Moyers.

Just as interesting are the authors who have a smaller audience and aren't interviewed as often. Over the next week each of us will look into the submitted authors --there are over 50. For some of us, this will be our first time seeing what the author writes. We'll look on the web, scour used bookstores, borrow books from one another, and more easily --look them up on the web. We'll hold a vote to winnow it down, then we'll vote again and come up with a reasonable number to go after.

The only two that might cause problems in terms of getting in touch with are Emily Dickinson and Count Leo Tolstoy. But my friends assure us they have channelers.

We've also made room for first time novelists. To me, they're as exciting (perhaps even more) than someone who has been published dozens of times. There's true thrill reading an ARC, talking with the author as they're going through the process of giving a final look-see of their galleys and seeing their years of persistence pay off.

Someone asked me why we do this. The only reason I could come up with was that we're curious and in our ivory tower it's easy to forget about the wider world of writers. Besides, every writer loves glints of wisdom, which can even be found in polite refusals:

"I urge you all to listen to your own voices and tell your own stories in your way. There are NO rules. I think it's one of the greatest things about writing: writers come from all over and what matters is the unique quality of a writer --not apprenticeship, not hard work, not using this or that technique.

I wish you all the best, Anne Rice"

WP Meets Pulitzer Winner Al Martinez

2007-05-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

by Paul Crehan

"Simplify, simplify, simplify."

I turned the volume down on the Stones as I drove south on Pacific Coast Highway. A thought had crossed my mind, and I wanted to ponder it without Mick’s help.

A wise head and a warm heart. Why do the two often go together?

Though I didn’t know the answer, I knew why the thought had occurred. I had just spent an afternoon in the company of Al Martinez.

Just a couple of hours earlier, the WP had gathered from across Los Angeles County to hear this author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist speak.

Bearing cheese, guacamole, pie, wine, edamame, and wine, the nine of us closed our car doors and walked up a woodsy street toward Martinez’s Topanga Canyon home.

We funneled through his front gate and headed up his walk.

Currently a features columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Martinez has worked at the paper since 1972.

He is also the author of ten books, including a novel, The Last City Room; the non-fiction account, Jigsaw John (upon which the later television series was based); and his latest work, a funny and poignant memoir titled Barkley: A Dog’s Journey.

It takes a 7-by-4 inch block of single-spaced text to list the awards and honors Martinez has won as a writer. He is the recipient of the National Ernie Pyle Award, the National Headliner Award, the Journalist of the Year Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Meritorious Public Service.

In addition, he was a member of the Los Angeles Times writing teams awarded back-to-back Pulitzers in 1993 and 1994.

If his newspaper and literary careers weren’t enough, Martinez also has twenty writing credits for television movies; has created three network television series; and is an Emmy-nominated screenwriter for the movie, “Out on the Edge.”

Clearly this man had more than a few things to teach the nine writers who now stepped up to an already opened door and knocked.

We saw snow-white hair ghost up out of the shadows of a hallway, a flash of orange (a sweater), then the full figure of the man, a warm smile in greeting. To our “Hello, Mr. Martinez,” he said, “Please, call me Al.” A thick white moustache spread cheek-to-cheek above his smile.

We settled into comfortable tan-colored leather couches in his living room. We noted objets d’art here and there, sculpture, paintings, and books—stacks and stacks of books. Even if you didn’t know who lived in this house, you’d guess that the person who did loved art, the written word, conversation, ideas, and making people feel at home. Which we did.

Martinez began the meeting by telling us that he got his start as a writer because he stuttered as a kid. In 4th grade, he and his classmates were expected to give oral reports. But to fulfill his assignments was torture for the stuttering Martinez. Recognizing this, his teacher told young Al that he could submit his reports in writing.

Thanks to that wise teacher’s decision, not only did Martinez avoid further embarrassment, but he discovered a love for the written word—and a way of life.

He’s now “like a shark,” he told us, “always swimming forward. If I stopped writing, I’d cease to exist.”

Martinez was not a lot more than a “street kid from Oakland” when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1950 to serve in the Korean War. After his honorable discharge, he returned to California in 1952 and got a job as a feature writer and reporter for the Richmond Independent. After three years at the Independent, he took a job at the Oakland Tribune and wrote there for sixteen years, until the move to the Times, the paper that has been home ever since.

Early in his career, Martinez told us, he learned that not only did the writing life require talent, but discipline. His newspaper “day job,” as he called it, was a five-day-a week 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. stint, after which it was customary in the journalist community to hit the bars.

“But,” said Martinez, “I made a decision not to go drink with the boys.” Instead, at 2:30, he went home to his family—wife Joanne and children Cindy, Linda, and Allen. After spending time with them, he’d go into his home office and write two-hours every evening. He also gave up one week-end day to write and, quite often, a week-end night—missing, he told us, a lot of parties. It was in those early days that he learned the life skills that would contribute to a successful but demanding career as husband, father, and author.

“Discipline,” Martinez told us, “is an essential element for a writer.” Especially for one with a family. But, he clarified, “I don’t give up life.”

In those early days, too, Martinez said, he had no desk—couldn’t afford it—so he used a door laid across supports. His typewriter was second-hand.

Every day when he wrote, he did exercises to sharpen his writing skills. A favorite was to imagine three different people doing the exact same thing. He’d write, for instance, about three women lighting a cigarette, and would try to reveal their individual characters just by how they performed this simple action.

Since WP is always interested in the influences of the writers we meet, we asked Martinez whom he read as a young man and draws from still. He told us that Poe, Dylan Thomas, and John Steinbeck have been perennial supports for him.

(In a nice bit of life coming full circle, the Steinbeck Society is paying tribute to Martinez’s career in November of this year.)

Of all the writing Martinez does, he enjoys writing the essay most. For his twice-weekly column in the Times, Martinez will go through six drafts to come up with the thousand words that are finally published. His wife, Joanne, is his first reader, telling him what works and what needs another pass.

If there’s a trick to writing a good essay, Martinez said, it’s to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” And, he added, “don’t write down to people. That’s a losing proposition.” To that end, he said, he will not avoid a word if it’s exactly the right word just because it may be unfamiliar to his readers. “They can always look it up.”

“I’ve always tried to bring a literary style to newspaper work,” Martinez told us. As his readers know, there’s more than a touch of the poet in his journalism. As a consequence, “there’s never truly been a place for me as a columnist.” In short, he’s hard to categorize; but his readers seem to appreciate that fact: His column is the most popular feature in the Times’ Calendar section.

A successful essayist, Martinez said, has a point of view. “It attracts attention.” As for how he begins an essay, Martinez said he’ll get an idea, then start researching it. “The essayist should do the work so the reader doesn’t have to.”

Although Martinez is in his late seventies, it’s apparent from his voice and demeanor that he hasn’t lost any passion for communicating his ideas. We felt privileged that he chose to reveal to us that he is currently writing a play. Called War Buffs, the drama is inspired by the soldiers in his family—himself, a veteran of the Korean War; his brother-in-law, a veteran of World War Two; and other relatives who served in Vietnam and Iraq. The play has been “in his head,” he told us, “for ten years,” and is finally making it to paper.

As we noted a darkening in the room—Martinez’s white hair becoming more and more of a light source—we looked at our watches and saw that it was well past time for us to go. But we had one more question to ask him. What advice could he give developing writers like ourselves?

He replied that we should ask the following questions: Can you take failure? Can you sacrifice time? Will you commit to writing with passion—and yet still make a life? Can you endure pain? Our eyes steady on Martinez, we thought through his questions.

But, I sensed, none of us in that room was daunted by his challenging words: He had inspired and invigorated us too much.

As he stood at his door and said a warm good-bye to each of us, we filed up his walk with an even more lively step—and an even greater desire to write—than we had when we had arrived. Several of us, I guessed, were heading home to give up a Sunday evening to work on our books.

And that’s where I was headed now—home—zipping down the coast highway and pondering my question: Why do a wise head and a warm heart often go together?

Perhaps, I thought, it’s because wisdom is the love of warmth; perhaps, in fact, it’s the very urge to reach out to others, to show them how to get where they need to go.

Turning up Sunset Boulevard, I couldn’t wait to get home to share with my family what I’d learned this afternoon from wise old Al.

Al Martinez at The Los Angeles Times
Al's Story About "Peaches," The Oakland Tribune and His Editor Al Reck can be found
on the LA Times Pressmens Blog
Al Donates His Archives

Editor's Note --Postscript June 2007: After a career of over 50 years, The Tribune Company informed Al that his column would no longer be needed. He was given a buyout, along with 47 other veteran journalists at the Los Angeles Times. Their final day at the paper was May 31. His abrupt dismissal brought about over 300 calls and letters, and numerous condemnations from journalists and fans. His last column was on June 1, 2007. It may be found here on the LA Times Pressmen's blog.

However, recognizing their error, negotiations are underway between Al and the LA Times management to have him stay on. The Writerly Pause decries the callous way in which they tried to cut short his honorable career.

To read more about the disintegration of newspapers and Al's situation, please go here:
More on the push:
Bill Boyarski: Dumping Al
Ken Reich: Take Back The Times
Callous Treatment Of A Fifty Year Veteran
Mail from LA Observed: We Get Mail
Straight from the Lion's Mouth: The note from Al Martinez regarding his 'voluntary' departure

Newspapers nationwide are experiencing dwindling subscription and advertisements due to an increased competition with the internet for news sources. Coupled with demands for higher shareholder earnings and corporate executive pay, as well as increased labor and operational costs, companies such as The Tribune as well as all others are letting veteran journalists go. Just recently top Tribune executives cashed by selling shares.

Mystery Writer Marcia Talley

2007-05-03T19:11:00.000-07:00

By John Yelverton
"Write what you're passionate about. Don't try to hit a moving target."

Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of Sing It To Her Bones, Unbreathed Memories, Occasion of Revenge, In Death’s Shadow and This Enemy Town. The sixth book in the Hannah Ives mystery series, Through the Darkness, was released in September 2006. She is the editor/author of Naked Came the Phoenix and I’d Kill for That, star-studded, tongue-in-cheek collaborative serial novels set in a fashionable health spa and upscale gated community. Marcia’s short stories appear in more than a dozen collections, including the multi-award winning stories “Too Many Cooks” and “Driven to Distraction.”

Marcia lives in Annapolis, Maryland with her husband, Barry, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. The Writerly Pause spoke to her on a recent Sunday afternoon.

The Writerly Pause: You’re one of the many writers who came to writing later in life. What inspired you to act on the impulse to write?

Marcia: I’ve always been interested in writing, and have kept a journal for many years—something I think is imperative for any writer. I’m a breast cancer survivor, and knew that I had to make a change if I wanted to write. Time was moving. I had been commuting an hour each way from Annapolis to Washington for my job (as a librarian), and was afraid it would kill me. The final decision to stop came when I was stranded in a snowstorm on the way.

TWP: Did you take courses, sign up for a writing program?

M: No, I joined a writer’s group. I found them at a bookstore—they wanted people to read in the mystery genre. We’ve been together for ten years now, though we did have to expel a couple of members during that time.

TWP: How does the group work.

M: We meet once a month. We e-mail each other ten to thirty pages, but don’t discuss more than three submissions at a time. Working with the group gives us a deadline. We discuss POV and plot, and big overarching issues. We help with query letters.

TWP: Are there any men in your group?

M: (Laughs) One or two. We want the diversity.

TWP: How did you find your first agent, get published the first time.

M: I was accepted into the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Tennessee, and worked with John Casey. After he critiqued my manuscript, I threw away everything but the first chapter, and that became the first chapter of Sing It To Her Bones.

I later submitted the novel for the Malice Domestic Grant Award, and won. That got me my first agent and publisher.

TWP: What is your impression of publishing today?

M: It’s a very tight market, with only five major publishers. It’s harder for an agent to pitch a book with so few opportunities. And it’s strictly a business. If an author’s subsequent novels don’t show a modest increase in sales, she’s dropped.

New York City doesn’t know the next trend until it falls on them, but there are good, small quality presses.

TWP: Annapolis is the setting for your books. Is there any other place that you’ve traveled to that you would consider as a setting for Hannah Ives?

M: I’m working on a proposal where Hannah would go to England, but I would love to send her to the Bahamas.

I consider myself the Queen of Proposals, but in the past I tried to tell too much. Now I set the scene, talk about the character and get them in trouble. I don’t give away the ending.

TWP: Any advice about submitting manuscripts.

M: The query letter should be one page, about four paragraphs. Usually a synopsis of two to three pages is sent, and the first three chapters. The first sentence is very important.

TWP: How do you work?

M: I write after dinner. One of my rules is don’t fall in love with your prose, and that means cut. I read my stuff aloud. If it sounds wrong I cut it out. Everything has to move the plot forward, and I try to put in just enough detail. Writing short stories is a good exercise.

TWP: What did you read as a child?

M: Nancy Drew. So wonderful: an independent girl who solves crimes and drives a cool car. And Agatha Christie. She was my mother’s favorite. Agatha Christie is a textbook for writing the traditional mystery. I still re-read her for inspiration.

TWP: Who are you reading now?

M: P.D. James, Andrew Taylor, Phil Rickman, Cornelia Read. I especially recommend A Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard. I also read historical fiction.

TWP: Has your style changed over time?

M: I’m not as afraid of putting my thoughts down on paper.

TWP: Any last advice?

M: Write what you’re passionate about, and don’t give up too early. One of my friends had 140 rejections before being published.

Marcia Talley Official Website

Sewanee Writers Conference

Playwright & Screenwriter José Rivera

2007-03-27T17:20:00.000-07:00

By Jo Nelsen

"When I create a character, I wonder: Is he compelling? What does he do? How does he think? What does he feel?"

Only in Los Angeles can you bask in 82 degrees on a Sunday afternoon in March, and shoot the breeze with a writer nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Academy Award. There’s no formal invitation, no admission charge and no dress code– it’s just a casual hook-up with friends of friends who are writers.

Blue jeans and coffee, nine of us leaned in around a table at a rustic café. We were hungry – not for food, but for advice on writing well. Award-winning playwright and screenwriter nominated for “Motorcycle Diaries” in 2005, Jose Rivera spent an hour and a half sharing his adventures. Vivacious, with an impish smile on the verge of laughter, he was instantly likable.

We learned he started writing at 12 – a baseball novel because he wanted to be a pitcher, he said, but alas, he had no curve ball. He studied as an actor in college, graduated and went to New York where he struggled 6 years then got his break – a play in a 1983 contest won him $5,000 and a production. He quit his job as a copywriter on Feb. 26, 1983 – the day the check cleared and his life changed forever.

He reserves the first four hours of each day for writing, and never works on Sunday. His work begins at 8:30 a.m. “Four consecutive hours out of 24 may not seem like much,” he said, “but it allows time for family and friends.” Many hours are spent coming up with ideas and he writes about them later, he explained. Nine months of research went into the screenplay for “Motorcycle Diaries” but he finished the first draft in 4 weeks. Of course there were rewrites – more than 20, he said with a chuckle, recalling the volume of notes Walter Salles, the Brazilian Director, sent back to him.

“WRITER’S BLOCK IS GOOD FOR WRITERS,” Rivera insisted. “It’s organic – like eating something poisonous creates a mechanical function in our biology to repel it, or too much light causes the eye to close. Something inside the writer is rebelling; something in the writing is false, wrong, and the body stops the process,” he explained. When he has writers’ block, Rivera says he leaves the writing to do anything else – make a sandwich, or organize his work space – because the subconscious is trying to work it out and then the solution comes – “Ah ha!” (If you have insomnia you have to get out of bed or the bed becomes a torture chamber, was the analogy he used.)

Rivera talked about other projects: a screenplay for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and another about letters written by real people to the fictitious, Juliet, at the supposed site of her tomb in Verona. Presently, he is 40 pages into his first novel. “I’m sorry I put it off for so long. The novel is the written art potentially most influential. History is full of amazing feats in the novel.”

He’s worked with a hand picked writing group for 4 years – “something in LA that has lasted!” he joked. And the memory of the generosity of this artist who has made it, taking time for those of us who long to, will also last. Rivera, candid, and a wonderfully “ordinary” person with chores like the rest of us, when he left the group said he was going home to make dinner. We were already full.

Thank you, José.

Editor's note: Rivera has won two Obie Awards, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Grant, a Fulbright arts Fellowship, the Whiting foundation Writing Award and a McKnight Fellowship. He has also written many screenplays.

More About José Rivera:
Then It Must Be True
Plays by José Rivera
José writes on Latino representation in the arts
José's credits on IMDb

Frank Schaeffer

2007-02-28T23:49:00.000-08:00

by Kanani Fong and Rocky Helderman

"The impulse to write comes from really loving something. That's when I do my best writing."

The first novelist we spoke to was Frank Schaeffer, author of many books, including his latest, Baby Jack. He has had a rich career as an artist, filmmaker, and author of non-fiction and fiction. His books are numerous and span genres: from literary fiction of the Calvin Becker trilogy to the non-fiction NY Times best selling book "Keeping Faith" about his own son who enlisted in the Marines and served in Afghanistan.

"There is no distance between experience and being," so writes Frank Schaeffer. He looks for the truth about his characters and the story, thus bringing both intimacy and immediacy to his scenes. Whether it's a thirteen year old coming to terms with his Presbyterian Evangelical missionary parents in the Calvin Becker trilogy, (which includes the novels Portofino, Saving Grandma and Zermatt) his son's experiences as a Marine, or in his other nonfiction books on the military, Schaeffer's books ring with authenticity.

Baby Jack, is the story of a well-heeled family whose son enlists in the Marines. This isn't something done in Jack's family. People go to ivy league schools, they take top jobs in corporate America. They see Tannhauser and talk about Mark Rothko reds or blues. But Jack won't have any of it. He chooses the most extreme circumstance to question his own values, philosophical ideals and in the process becomes not only an adult, but a soldier.

The novelist deftly and unflinchingly dealt with the disintegration of Jack's family, their pain and the regret each of them has over their actions once they lose him. Ultimately, it is about sacrifice, loss, redemption and love. It was, as he said, "a book ripped from my guts." This is a timely novel during a time when the politics of war have very little to do with the soldier out there on the battle field.

We spoke to Frank Schaeffer over the phone. He was a generous and expansive speaker. We covered writing and also his views on the military.

Why writing?
Frank told us that he had "kicked around the TV and Movie industry long enough." Things weren't happening for him in regards to being able to tell a story. There are so many other players --producers, money men. So he backed into writing from low budget feature films. He believes that his impulse to write is tied to his training as a painter. "Writing, like painting, is a solo effort and the artist is the one in control of the medium." Portofino was his first novel he wrote after making movies and documentaries.

When do you write? Usually, in the morning when nobody else is awake. "I wake up at 5:00 and start when it's quiet. I like it when it is dark outside."

How many books have you written? "I have eight published books, and four unfinished manuscripts. The manuscripts will eventually be finished or used in different ways."

How many drafts do you complete? "I'll rework a scene endlessly. Sometimes 20 - 30 times. Really, I lose count. But with Baby Jack, I did eight drafts."

Tell us about your writing process.
"It's really a three part process:
1. The "scary" part, where there's a blank page and what's being tossed on there is raw and creative;
2. Editorial revision, where I'm reworking the story structure, the character's actions and emotions;
3. Editing and cleaning up. Line edits, making sure things are falling into place where they should.

The part that takes the most discipline is when there's nothing on the page. But just get something on the page and worry about the problems later. Also, never get to attached to something that's been written because it's sure to change.

Tell us about character.
"Characters have their own voice. They have to go where they want, and the hardest thing is letting them to it. It usually takes multiple passes through a scene, as well as stages to develop them. Many times the first pass is simply description. As I revise, each character becomes more defined."

Was it hard getting published?
"It was very difficult to find an agent for my first novel, Portofino. I've had a few agents. One went out of business! My current agent is the one that I have the best working relationship with." (Note: it turned out to be critically acclaimed and the start of a trilogy).

Your son introduced you to the military when he enlisted in the Marines. How would you say the military is perceived by most of the parents whose sons and daughters went to the same prep school?
"There's a lack of commitment and sense of duty to military service exhibited by the vast majority of the people I know, and by extension, most of the people we all know," he said. Frank pointed out that this legacy might be a holdover from the draft generation during the Viet Nam war, when anyone with money, connections, or ivy-league-college enrollment could wrangle a deferment. Military service still carries the stigma as a last resort of the unemployable by many people, including the politicians who so cavalierly send them to fight. "Unfortunately, the divide between the upper classes and the lower and middle classes is growing, and seems to be in a state of permanence when it comes to serving. The pool of soldiers comes almost exclusively from the lower and middle classes, which is bad for this country. It makes it less democratic and less fair. There is a disconnect between our leaders and those who serve." (Note: the last President to have children serve in the military during a time of war was Roosevelt).

What have you learned about the families whose loved ones serve?
"Marines are being sent back into combat. Regardless of their opinion --some are angry, many think the President is wrong, most have families --they will go. Their lives and inevitably for some, their deaths - present us with a stark question: Is citizenship only about enjoying personal preferences, or should we take responsibility for those around us, and by extension for our country? Since when did this 'fast track' become written in stone that it was the duty of the elites to take the route from prep school to ivy league and then to corporate America without making sacrifices? "

Would you support compulsory service?
"Yes. The US would benefit from a civil service requirement to offset the current situation where only the lower and lower middle classes are doing the heavy lifting. Not necessarily a return to the draft, but some investment to the nation's well-being by all social classes. Be it Peace Corps, Vistaworkers, UNICEF or the military, an obligation to serve this country in some capacity should be required so that not one group is shouldering the burden of serving."

What are you reading now?

The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972 by William Manchester
An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War that Came Between Us by James Carroll (1996 National Book Award in nonfiction)

We ended the interview after an hour. We marveled at how fortunate we were to have had this time with him. He was worldly, yet humble. Gracious, funny and above all, encouraging. What struck us was the intensity and passion that drives him, and how all these interests wind up as a springboard for his work. Frank Schaeffer is a man who stays with his creative endeavors until he finds his stride. We look forward to reading more books by Frank.

Frank's novels are: Baby Jack, Portofino, Saving Grandma and Zermatt. His nonfiction books are: AWOL, Keeping Faith, Faith Of Our Sons, Voices From The Front. He writes Op-ed pieces in newspapers and kept a column in The Huffington Post.

Frank reads Baby Jack at the Newburyport Literary Festival

How Our Group Started

2007-02-27T07:19:00.000-08:00

by Kanani

Because I've been asked, I'll post this at the beginning of our blog.

Last year, Frank Schaeffer announced that he was going to launch his new novel "Baby Jack" by talking to reader's groups.

"How about talking to an advanced novel class?" I wrote. I made sure to clarify that this wasn't just another ivory tower gig, but a class of working stiffs.
I thought he'd say, "Who the heck are you?"
But he didn't. Frank said yes. We would do it via conference call.
I told our workshop leader of this opportunity. He passed.

So, I had a problem. A New York Times Best Selling author said he'd talk to us, but I had no group.

I gathered people who I'd taken workshops with, ones who showed the most persistence and could also get along well. We bought and read Frank's books. On the appointed day, we gathered at Rocky's house and huddled over a conference phone. We talked to Frank for an hour. He was generous, funny and supportive of our efforts as writers.
When it was done, we decided to see if we could find other writers.
And we have. Four months, four authors. Now we are receiving ARC's, and we have more authors tentatively lined up. We're even involved in a book launch.
We started this blog to share what we've learned. It also serves as a springboard for some in our group who are new to blogging. So if you see a lot of posts by me, it's because some are gingerly taking steps into the blogosphere. They send the articles to me, I post them. For now.

But we do have some ground rules.

We receive or give no monies for interviews or sales of books.
We read a breadth of their material before we meet. We buy their books new, since they do not receive any payment from us to speak with them.
We never thrust our manuscripts, query letters, gushing letters from our spouses, mothers, or other people who love us in their faces. This is a really big no-no.
We let the interview takes its own form. We don't approach the writer with our own agenda.
We drink beer.