What is the Titicut Follies/Memoir Project, Anyway?

Since I talk about this now and then, and most people have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, I thought I’d ‘splain it. A little. For anyone who is interested.

First, it helps if you know something about the film Titicut Follies (1967), directed by Sam Wiseman. It’s much easier for you to click on the link, read a little about it, then come back here. Go on. I’ll wait.

You’re back already? Good. Well, my uncle was in that film. Pretty much anyone who has ever seen the film remembers him: He is the tall, thin, Russian dude. Vladimir. He is on the left in that photo, the psychiatrist is on the right.

Vladimir wages a sort-of quest in the film, to get the psychiatrist (and the committee) to send him back to Walpole, the prison from whence he came. In fact, in almost any discussion of Titticut Follies, especially on the Interwebs, people have stuff to say about him. Pretty much all of them are wrong in their suppositions. They assume that because Bridgewater housed notorious sexual predators (like the Boston Strangler), Vladmir must have been one too. They assume that he was mentally ill when he went there, or he wouldn't have landed there.

Thank you, Baby Cheeses

Yesterday, I sent an email to a client. This is the second book I’ve done with her, so I know by now how she responds to things. She was brave the first time around, with her first book, but some of it really stung, I could tell. She was never a tantrum pitcher or anything like that, but she tended to withdraw a bit, lick her wounds, then resist a little.

I know writers think editors like being mean, like ripping something apart. So not true. It sucks for us too. I really hate it when I have hard news to deliver to a writer. I mean, I love the challenge of improving a piece, or I wouldn't be doing this work. But there is a real downside, as well.

And in this case, she's already rewriting, based on an initial critique of the ms. So I am now editing the rewrite. I had to essentially say, sorry, but you missed. Again. I was a little worried.

And, appropriately enough for an editor, I worry about my language. It's never easy to say, "uh, we have a problem here." It's a tricky thing. As an editor, you can’t be so soft that the writer thinks it’s not that important. But you also can’t come on so strongly that it seems like you’re bossing them around, or just plain being mean. And in this case, I thought it was a critical problem, a crucial moment in the novel. If we didn’t get it right here, the rest of it wasn’t going to hang together, really.

So I drafted the email, as I usually do: First, going through and getting down my points, making the argument in the intellectual/technical sense, then going back through and softening the language, paying attention to the emotional side of it. Trying to be sensitive. For help, I turned on Barry Manilow’s Feelings. Ha, just kidding, but maybe I should. This is an area in which I sometimes feel unskilled.

(In an almost-completely unrelated note, I should say that I am learning that my tendency toward hoof-in-mouth disease—and to stampede over people’s feelings—may be innate. It is apparently the fault of my natal astrology. I am a Sagittarius. And I’ve been doing research, for an astrologer character I have in my own work, and so I’ve been studying my own chart. I found a description of Sagittarius the other day that explained its mythological symbol, half-Centaur (the back half, natch), half-Archer, with this lovely editorial gloss: “Any sign can make half-an-ass of itself, Saggie, but you’re the only one that’s born that way.” Ha! I’ve been giggling about that for days.)

Anyway, I finished the email—and with a glance at the heavens, asking for a little protection, perhaps a small Christmas miracle of my very own—I hit the send button.

Two hours later, the writer responded. I took a deep breath, and clicked open the email. And she said, essentially: "I knew you were going to pick on that chapter! You’re right. And I can’t believe how well I’m taking this, btw, but I am. I’m going to start rewriting next week. Don’t do anymore editing, I’ll rework it and send it back to you. Thank you! Merry Christmas!”

I feel like a proud parent, amazed at how quickly they grow up! She's a pro now. It's about the work, about getting it right, and getting it done. I love when this happens! It's also like being a teacher, and seeing the lightbulb go off over your student's head. Yes, thank you! And Happy Birthday, Baby Cheeses!

I See Said the Blind Man As He Picked Up the Hammer and Saw...

So, I didn’t think I would be doing any blog posting, well, maybe ever again. I keep forgetting about this thing. And I certainly didn’t think I’d be doing it during NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated (perhaps the one out of my three regular blog readers who isn’t a writer), it is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. (See http://www.nanowrimo.org/ for more information.)

This is my first year doing it. I’ve been meaning to do it for a couple of years, but I kept not remembering it existed until the middle of November. This year, I remembered in mid-October.

Anyway, the NaNoWriMo guidelines suggest that you do not pick up on a work in progress for this exercise. They are guidelines, not rules, because NaNoWriMo leads to nothing more than one's own satisfaction. It's not a contest, there are no prizes. It's more like a playgroup. A toddler playgroup: You sign on to play with your fellow writers, but you all play next to one another, independently, not cooperatively.

They explain their reasoning for not doing a work in progress, and I read that last month, and I ignored it. I decided to pick up on my Sophie and Marty thing (which, from this day forward shall be designated “MO” for magnum opus). I have about 120 pages of that story, and I love that story—though I keep getting bogged down in it—so I thought NaNoWriMo might be a good way to blow through the rest of the draft.

But: No. It appears that those folks know more than I do, which I really hate. They said that it’s too hard to get that word count when it’s a work in progress. (To get to 50,000 words in a month, you must average 1667 words per day. That is just over 6 pages of text PER DAY, which is no problem if you have no need to eat, sleep, earn a living, or goof off on Facebook.) The NaNoWriMo folks said you know your characters already, you are attached to them, you have something of an endpoint in mind, and you cannot really free yourself creatively, to just put one keystroke down after another, and get those numbers.

They are correct.

But, I’d been thinking a lot about the MO, and I'd just worked my way through a plot problem, and so I started the first day with a killer scene. Not literally, not the killer. A really great scene, I mean. But I realized, second and third days, that I just wasn’t going to be able to put up the numbers I needed on this project. It’s literary. It's too big, and yet too narrow, to just pound away on. I need more creative elbow room.

So, last night I started something brand new, with a minor character that I borrowed from yet another work in progress. I picked her up and I plunked her down three decades earlier and about 3000 miles east of where she was before. Now, obviously she is going to be different in this new time and place. But she was a minor character anyway, it’s not like I knew her that well to begin with.

I don’t want to say much more than that about it. I’m one of those people who can talk myself right out of a story. And I have an idea where this might end up, publication-ally. It is essentially a new challenge, one I thought of and accepted (in my own head) about two days ago.

One interesting thing about this is that the NaNo file is now schizoid. I’ve already done some bopping back and forth between the two stories. One MO scene, one new thing scene. (I really have to learn how to come up with provisional titles!) There are two stories going on in that Word file, and their only connection is that they are coming out of the same head.

We’ll see. I have no idea where I will be with this on November 30. But I am enjoying the freedom of the new story tremendously. And I believe what Jasper Fforde said in the pep-email he sent to NaNoers yesterday: You may end up throwing out these 50,000 words, but you will have learned something critical in the process, and you will be a better writer for it, and you will never regret the exercise.

And I’m happy to have finally joined in the true spirit of NaNo, the way it’s supposed to be done. AND I got a blog post out of it. Amazing!

Unconventional Marketing Tip #1: Make An Ass of Yourself

Last night: My friend came over to pick me up. We were going to another friend’s house for dinner, but we had a little time to kill. So we had a glass of wine. ONE glass. (But it was kind of a big glass, and it was almost 7pm. And I hadn’t eaten since breakfast at 11am.)

On the way to our destination, I spied a PetSmart. This reminded me that the little monsters were almost out of food, so I asked my friend to stop. And I ran in and grabbed some cat food and then I ran up to the register and plopped it down on the conveyor belt. Nobody in line. Fantastic: 30 seconds, and I’d be out of there.

Then I saw the sign, next to the cash register. It said: PLEASE LEAVE HAIRY ITEMS IN CART.

So, I asked the cashier: “What’s a hairy item?”

And he said: “What?”

I nodded at the sign, and I read it aloud, for his benefit: PLEASE LEAVE HAIRY ITEMS IN CART.

And he looked at the sign for a long moment, and then HE read aloud, kind of loud and slow—the way you might read to a small child, or an escaped mental patient: PLEASE LEAVE HEAVY ITEMS IN CART.

And before he was even finished, of course, I could see that the word was HEAVY, so I started laughing, and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t have my glasses on. And my eyes are fried.” I rubbed one, for effect. “I’m an editor and I’ve been working all day.” I shook my head at my own stupidity.

And he said, “An editor? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m a writer.”

“Oh, really?”

“What kind of stuff do you edit? Fiction or non?”

“Both,” I said.

“I have a draft of a novel. Would you take a look at it?”

And then, because I am nothing if not a salesperson, I said, “For free?”

“Yeah.” He gave me a winning smile.

So I smiled, and I glanced down at the cat food, and I said: “Can I have that for free?”

“Point taken,” he said, and laughed. “How much do you charge?”

“Well,” I said, “it depends.” And I started digging around in my purse, looking for a business card—except that I don’t HAVE business cards, I run an Internet business—so I pulled out a notebook and flipped to a clean page and I wrote down my email address, and I was about to write down my web site, except . . . I drew a blank.

Then I looked up at him, and I blinked a couple of times, and I said: “I cannot remember what my web site is.”

And he raised his eyebrows, and said, “Really?” He smiled tentatively, and I started writing down permutations of what it might be, trying to figure it out. And then I started explaining, while I was scribbling—that “I never visit my own web site, and it’s in my email signatures, so it’s not like I type it very often, plus I have a couple of email addresses that have permutations of the web site in it, which is REALLY what is confusing me at the moment—and no, it’s not http://, that’s the beginning of my blog, not the website,” so I very firmly crossed that out, “and I only had ONE glass of wine, but all I ate today was two eggs, plus I just switched ISPs, so I have to think about the whole Netzero/Comcast thing, and I keep messing that up”—and then I made a big circle around bookdr.net and I said, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s it.”

And I gave him the paper.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll email you.”

“Okay. Great.” And then I walked out the door.

REALLY.

About three steps out the door, I realized I didn’t have the cat food I just bought, so I turned around and went back in. He was holding the bag aloft, waiting for me.

Sunday morning. There is an email from him. He has attached a chapter. And it’s not bad. He can write. He wants an estimate for a line edit on a 120,000-word ms. That’s real money.

And the last line of his email reads: “Your web site is actually www.BookDr.net.”

An Edna St. Vincent Millay Kind of Day

Wow! Haven't updated this blog since May. Busy, busy--paid work, and my own writing. But I am turning over a new leaf. Though I am not posting original writing. Oh well. Sue me!!

Today, doing some research, I stumbled across Millay's name. It's been awhile since I read her, and I always regret not doing it more often when this happens. Two of my faves:

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.


Love Is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Writer's Block: Part I

Many of my writers-friends have been talking about being blocked lately. I don’t know why, but everybody seems to have come down with it at about the same time. Thankfully, I am NOT currently blocked, but I’ve been there. In fact, I'm slightly superstitious about writing about it. What if thinking about writer's block brings it down on me? Then again, if I were blocked, I wouldn’t be able to write about writer’s block, would I?

I’m not going to do a discussion of whether this condition actually exists or not. I think it does. As far as I’m concerned, the whole idea that “it’s just in your mind” is exactly the point. It is in your mind, the same way hallucinations are in the mind of a schizophrenic. I mean, the person standing next to a schizophrenic may not see the winged monkeys approaching in missing-man formation, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist for the schizophrenic, does it?

Anyway, I tend to find myself with two distinct variations of writer’s block:

1) Plain old writing blahs. I’ve got no ideas about anything, none of my works-in-progress interest me, and I think it might be time to take up knitting or something else, because clearly this writing thing isn’t going to work out.

2) Serious stuckness on a WIP. In other words, I have plenty of ideas for what happens after x, but I cannot figure out what x is, or how to get past it.

I’ll take the second first. The conventional wisdom on writer’s block is that the serious, professional writer gets herself out of it by writing her way out. In other words, you plant your butt in the chair, and you go at it, with fingers on the keyboard. It doesn’t matter how many words you write, or whether you throw every single one of them out, the point is that you work the problem in the most obvious manner for a writer.

This doesn’t work for me.

This approach makes me unbearably bitchy. I start resenting everything—my computer, the keyboard, my characters, my coffee mug. I feel imprisoned, and whatever creativity I might have brought to bear on the problem is instead expended on daydreaming up ways to torture the writers who maintain that if I cannot do this, then I am not a real writer.

I prefer the indirect approach.

I gather up my files of research and my rough drafts, and I get the hell away from my desk. I go somewhere else—even the couch is an improvement—and I page through my files and reread my roughs. I use my pens and highlighters and colored post-its--I have an office-supply fetish--and I find tidbits of research that can be inserted here or there. Or I run across a bit of research I forgot about, and that will prompt an idea, and I’ll write a scene—in pen, on paper.

I edit the rough drafts. I re-read my beta readers’s comments, and consider them again, now that it’s been a few weeks since I received them, and I’m done resenting the person who called my character “annoying.”

In short, I mess around with the ms until I have some ideas about other things that can be done with it--things that have nothing to do with what has me blocked—and then I eventually make my way back to the computer, and I mess with those problems.

The effect isn’t always immediate, but if I stick with it, I generally find that whatever it is that has me blocked begins to resolve itself. And the beauty of this approach, to my mind, is that I don't get emotionally involved in being stuck, because I am still working on the ms.

Usually, the problem resolves itself in a light-bulb moment. It tends to happen while I’m doing something entirely unrelated, like squeezing cantaloupes in the grocery store, and then I have to put down the fruit and scramble in my purse for pen and paper to get down this fabulous solution before I forget it.

Yeah, I know. People might think I'm weird. I don’t care. I also pretty regularly walk around talking to myself, trying out dialogue between characters. (See why I thought of schizophrenics?) I gave up worrying about what other people think a long time ago.

The next post will address the first problem, the general writing blahs.