Plotting

Today I am plotting.

Not just plotting a story but plotting a writing career. Hmmm, doesn't that sound haughty and arrogant? Plotting a writing career. As if I have a writing career. As if I have a career of any sort.

Sigh. Such thinking does not help. Back to arrogance. Yes, I mean a writing career. You just don't wake up one morning and say you're going to go out and have a career. You start training, then you serve an apprenticeship and then (hopefully) you get on a rusty, creaky, lurching wooden escalator to success: taking on more responsibility, honing your skills, expanding your network, all that stuff. And then you retire.

Hmmm ... the word career doesn't sound all that great does it?

But put writing in front of career and suddenly the words perk right up. Yes, you write, you get better, you get rejected for years, you gain a little traction, you maybe win some awards and place some stories and maybe ... just maybe get published.

Sounds inspiring and sort of soul-sucking at the same time, actually.

Okay, then so where do I start. Well, I start by writing, which is what I'm wrestling with right now. I have a ton of ideas and difficulty concentrating. I spent years of my energy on a financial memoir, which has lapsed into a coma despite regular attempts to resuscitate it, so I'm going to let that project steep in failure for a while (dramatic much?) and look at some other projects:

I have a collection of short stories, called Lunch is So Hard,
a middle-grade fantasy novel
an idea for a mystery novel

And well, that's it. So I'm plotting what to do next. Every plot has peaks and valleys, right? A continuous line of reversals until everything looks hopeless? Well, I've got the hopeless down, so it's time to climb back up.

Time for plotting, which of course makes me think of villains. Heroes are easy to create; it's the villains who provide the true magic. Ben Bova writes:

In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil... Fiction mirrors life. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus of what they know in life and bring its realities into sharper, clearer understanding for us. There are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them.

David Lubar adds:

This is a brilliant observation that has served me well in all my writing. (The bad guy isn't doing bad stuff so he can rub his hands together and snarl.) He may be driven by greed, neuroses, or the conviction that his cause is just, but he's driven by something not unlike the things that drive a hero.

My middle-grade novel needs a good villain, one who thinks he or she is the hero of the story. Makes me wonder sometimes, in my own life -- am I the hero or the villain?

How I Started Chapter Five by Freaking Out

I need to write Chapter 5: Recessions I Have Known, but I'm scared. I’ve done everything but write in the last 40 minutes. I’ve posted on Facebook, changed my Apple password, bought a Seal album, helped Benny create a birthday card. And now I'm at my desk again. It's scary.

Who does stuff like this? Who sets their lives against the economy, who strings together the major events of their lives using recessions like fat beads on a string that winds and knots? I’m going to tangle this up.

I’m feeling some pressure. I want to send this out in September. Chapter Five was supposed to be a light revision and now it's a whole new chapter, possibly one of the most important chapters in the book.

 I’m trying to remember everything; the events, the memories, the history, the personalities. I’m having trouble focusing. I'm hyperventilating. It’s 10:52 and I’ve done nothing. I can’t stop thinking about the other things I need to do. I’m in a panic. How do I start a chapter about recessions? I'm in a panic. 

I'm in a panic.

Panic: a a sudden sensation of fear so strong as to dominate or prevent reason, replacing it with anxiety. A Greek word from the shepherd god Pan, who liked to frighten goats and sheep.

It’s also an old-fashioned word for a financial crisis, like the panics of 1857, 1873 and 1907. All triggered by worries over gold, silver or copper. Panic. All the goats and sheep scattered.

I'm trying to write about the 1973-75 recession. But it wasn't a recession, it was a Panic. 

Yay! I'm on my way! An hour later, I'm still typing madly.

There's got to be an easier way to do this.

Beaten and battered, but still fighting.

Journalism and publishing are two very different industries, and the differences go far beyond the whole double-spacing-after-a-period thing.

Journalists work in a fast-paced environment and our jargon reflects this: scoops, headlines, cutlines, pull quotes, banners, leads (or leads), deadlines ... see all those verbs? We scoop, we cut, we pull, we lead and then we drop dead.

If journalism’s time reference is quick and human, publishing’s time frame is more … geologic. An epoch can give way to an era between a book’s conception and publication. At last month’s Pacific Northwest Writers Association’s conference, we were “authors” not “reporters” who wrote “manuscripts” not “copy” to be “published” not “printed.” The jargon was more sedate: advance, slush, pitch, royalty, galley.

But despite these differences, the two industries face similar challenges these days, a clash between the old and the new, as traditional professionals fight to be heard above online newcomers. In journalism, these newcomers are called bloggers or “citizen journalists,” the latter embraced by online newspapers as a cheaper, faster way to get content.  In publishing, those new guys and gals are self-published authors.

In traditional journalism not so long ago, a story was pitched to an editor, the editor followed up on the story’s progress,  the story was submitted and edited, then copy edited, then proofed. Then and only then did the story go public. Errors and typos still slipped through, but the process worked to create the most professional result possible. Ideally, the finished result would be a professionally produced work, the product of a group collaboration, not one single mind, no matter how talented.

Similarly in publishing, for a book to hit the shelves, the writer pitches an agent who sells the project to a publisher. A whole table of people vet this acquisition: editors, marketers, production staff, publicists … they all have to sign off on it. Again, the final product, while not perfect, is professionally produced, the result of a group of talented minds.

Furthermore, both journalists and book writers have a formal apprenticeship, years of writing before you get the plum assignments or the book contracts.

The Internet has changed all this, of course. Now traditional newspaper writers compete with bloggers and “citizen journalists.” Traditional book authors compete with self-published authors. These nontraditional writers often display great creativity and talent and are formidable competitors not to be underestimated.

But with the barriers to entry in both industries partly dismantled, readers are flooded with books and articles in various stages of professional development. It can be difficult for readers to distinguish between a professionally sourced news story and an amateur blog post. Book readers surfing on Amazon’s wave of titles may lump together the professionally agented, edited, marketed and designed books and their self-published counterparts.

At the PNWA conference,  I repeatedly heard speakers say today’s books have to “break through the noise.” I hear this phrase in online journalism too. So the question for both journalists and book writers becomes, how do we uphold the traditional standards of  our industry while still innovating and accepting change?

One thing is for sure, looking down our noses at self-published authors and citizen journalists may make us feel better but won’t help anyone. My newspaper recently wrote about San Francisco International Airport’s crackdown on those newfangled ridesharing companies. In an effort to protect the taxi drivers who take passengers to and from the airport, SFO has conducted citizen’s arrests of Lyft and Uber drivers for trespassing.

Well, as a taxi passenger who has waited an hour for a taxi, endured baffling, circuitous routes to my destination or has had to scrape up cash because the taxi driver’s credit card reader was mysteriously broken, I say the traditional taxi industry in San Francisco has left a gaping customer service hole large enough to drive a gleaming, black Uber car through. Ridesharing companies are filling a need, or they wouldn’t be so successful, and taxi companies ignore this at their peril.

Traditional journalists and book writers can’t be like those taxi drivers. We can’t close ranks against the newcomers. They are now part of our culture and our dialogue. I believe in traditional publishing; I choose to prepare my memoir for agents. But I believe in self-publishing too, although it is not for me.

There is one word I don’t hear much of in either the journalism or publishing industries, probably because it was so self-evident. That word is “risk.” My newspaper is currently making enormous changes and taking huge risks. Publishers take big risks every time they acquire a book.

Bloggers, citizen journalists and self-published authors are considered the risk takers these days. But as bookstores and newspaper stands close every day while my own articles and book manuscript inch along the longer path to readers, today’s traditional journalists and book authors remain the biggest risk takers of all.

Dithering

I’ve been reading a blog called “Cup Runneth Over,” or something like that. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but a blog name is never just a blog name if the blogger is a literary author. With these guys, every damn thing in life must be delved or chewed or spun out ad infinitum. So there's a little box on the blog explaining the name, something about how reading and writing and loved ones fill the Cup of Life or something.

(Actually, the title and explanation are something different, but while I like to poke fun at literary authors, I do admire them and don't care to use their real blog title and mess up their fun.)

Anyway, this Cup Runneth Over blog has a neat feature that asks writers to detail how they spend a typical day. One day followed this short story writer who's published a book "to international acclaim." She helps get her daughter to school, then spends the day in her nightgown, typing on her laptop, which I think is cool. She admitted to spending a lot of time just messing around with her writing, puzzling out what to do next. She spoke of the process as a conversation between her and her story, back and forth, until both satisfied.

I like that, because I can get so impatient sometimes. (Who, me?) I start thinking that if I really knew what I was doing with a project, I wouldn’t have to change my mind every two seconds about what to do next. (Should I start the next chapter with the medieval legend, or a description of my new apartment's dirty floor? Maybe I should talk about the San Francisco commercial real estate market. Or the sounds of the city waking up, or a paragraph about eating a breakfast orange: "The sweet rind of my old life peeled away...)

Hmmm ... let's try to focus here.

Anyway, I liked how that writer described her process. It helps me give myself permission to dither. Dithering is important. This society doesn’t really support dithering: We’re supposed to be decisive, confident, able to make immediate, well-grounded decisions. I can do that if I have to, but if given the option, I'd rather dither.

The definition of dither is “to be uncertain or indecisive” in Britain and “to be in an agitated state” in the U.S. It kind of means both to me. The word actually comes from the 1640s, where it meant “to quake, tremble” and was a variant of the Middle English word didderen (late 14th-century). The vacillating, anxious connotation comes from the 1800s.

It’s a good word, and it has another connotation for me: I see dithering as a luxury, and you could even argue that it denotes status. After all, dithering takes time, and time is a resource increasingly rare these days. Only upper-class parents, for example, have time to dither over the best playdates, summer camps, tennis leagues or summer camps for their children. Only salaried professionals can dither over the best day to take off for a day trip or whether to visit the gym before or after work.

Hmmm, I’m starting to sound like one of those literary writers, taking a perfectly clear word and beating it half to death. But it’s okay to be little literary — I mean, isn’t the purpose here to write well? There are all kinds of ways to write well — sometimes you’re fast and careless and slapdash, and sometimes you dither and the next thing you know, you’re looking up medieval roots of words. It’s an occupational hazard.

Anyway, it’s time for this lady to end her typical day, and for me to end this post. So she put away the laptop and watched the Daily Show until she fell asleep. And now I'm thinking about how I’d like to spend my days, starting next week when my Robot Kid starts 3rd grade and I hope to begin writing in earnest.

But that’s for another post. I need time to dither.

Hold the Irony

From First World Problems:

"This screenplay I wrote is so far past post-ironic that it's actually approaching ironic again from the other direction."

April 21, 2012

"Scattered Thoughts Diabolical and Immoral"

When you're struggling through distressing times, there's nothing like a smug quote on adversity to make you feel worse. Here are a few supremely unhelpful thoughts from great minds on the topic and my churlish responses:

1) "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."
— Anne Bradstreet from her 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' in 1655.

Can you imagine the moxie it must take to title your random thoughts "Meditations Divine and Moral?" If I were to choose a similar name for my memoir, I"d call it "Broodings Cranky and Self-indulgent." Did she think of the title first, and then cast around for thoughts that could live up to that title? Such pressure!

And that whole "you must suffer through winter to appreciate spring" stuff sounds ridiculous anyway. I live in San Francisco now and consider its lack of seasons a huge benefit. I don't need to shovel snow for five months to appreciate flowers. I enjoy a nice daffodil as much as anyone.

2) "Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue."
— Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)

I have serious problems with this quote, which looks like a fancy Renaissance way of saying "That which does not kill you only makes you stronger." Apparently if you take a nice, good person and crush her like a bundle of tarragon leaves, her virtues are supposed to shine all the stronger. I contend if you take a calm, thoughtful, nice, caring girl and give her a chronic disease, a foreclosure, some hefty medical bills and a cheating boyfriend, she won't be so nice and calm anymore. Let's add a crazy boss and a loser nephew who sleeps on her couch for three months too. I'm not saying adversity can't be a learning experience -- I think it depends on the person. If our poor Tarragon Girl was snooty, entitled and self-satisfied, obsessed with decorating her house and unsympathetic to sick people, well then a little adversity could only help. Hmm, maybe I'm proving Frank's point here after all.

Here are two adversity quotes from unknown authors:

1) "A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner, neither do uninterrupted prosperity and success qualify for usefulness and happiness. The storms of adversity, like those of the ocean, rouse the faculties, and excite the invention, prudence, skill and fortitude or the voyager. The martyrs of ancient times, in bracing their minds to outward calamities, acquired a loftiness of purpose and a moral heroism worth a lifetime of softness and security."

I was actually with this one, until it started going on about martyrs' "loftiness of purpose."

2) "Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with."

Yeah, yeah, we all know it's the speck of grit that makes the pearl, etc. etc.

So learn from these four quotes about adversity. Time to get off your sofa and go get crushed!

Oh No, Now I Gotta Write It

So I've finished my preliminary research for my memoir project, which involved reading old blog entries, printing out a year's worth of NPR Marketplace highlights and digging up my 2007 planner. Yay me. Now it's time to write the darn thing.

To help me stay focused, I'm going to keep a treadmill journal, which I read about in an old issue of Writer Magazine. The article's writer compares it to running on a treadmill to train for a marathon. Each day you make five entries:

1) The date and time.
2) How long you will work.
3) What you plan to work on.
4) How it went.
5) When you will work tomorrow and for how long.

(Yeah, it's another goal list, and I'm the one who made fun of lists three months ago. Sue me.)

Anyway, here is my journal entry for today. Ron is taking Benny to a birthday party this afternoon at Golden Gate Park.

1) May 15, 2010 — 9:31 a.m.
2) Write from 2 to 5 p.m.
3) Spread out all my research and work on rough outline for memoir.
4) Started an hour late; walked all over the Inner Sunset lugging my computer and ended up working at home. Worked on themes, thought about the plot and outlined opening chapters.
5) Tomorrow: noon to 3. Finish VERY rough outline of book.

This is on Me

So I started writing my memoir last week after some pushing and prodding from Ron and my friend Fog City Writer. Writing a memoir sounded a little daunting to me, so I approached it in my typically nerdy way with some Internet research and a few articles from my Writer magazine.

It's actually kind of fun. Truth truly is stranger than fiction, and it's easier to write about my former neighbor who sits in her garden under a camouflage-patterned banner so nobody can see her than make up a crazy-lady neighbor out of whole cloth. The world is full of weirdos, and many of them like to wander through my life.

The challenge, as I see it (and what do I know, I've only been doing this for a week) is to tease out structure and patterns out of the experiences so you're not just writing "and then this happened and then that happened and then this happened and the bird died ..." Pick a definitive time span. Find themes. Write wicked character attacks that will likely get you sued unless you change the guy's name and give him a goatee and a pet iguana. Figure out what you learned. Figure out how you changed. If you didn't learn anything and didn't change at all, pretend you did.

I'm not precisely sure what I learned or how I changed in the year that I'm memoiring (April 2007-April 2008). I'm still a little high-strung. I don't howl in frustration anymore every time I drop a piece of toast on the floor and that's gotta be a plus. I personally hate the phrase "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Adversity does not always strengthen a person; sometimes it makes said person insecure and twitchy and uptight and prone to irrational behavior even after the adverse conditions no longer exist. Ever hear of post-traumatic stress disorder, Friedrich Nietzsche? I still have problems from a whiplash injury in 1996. No, it didn't kill me, but my neck doesn't feel any stronger. It feels more vulnerable, actually.