Write what you know or know what you write?

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

When I was in college I was always told by writing teachers to, “Write what you know.” I was young and didn’t find such advice daunting as I pretty much knew everything until I was around 35 years old at which time I became an intellectual variation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Benjamin Button; knowing less and less about more and more until it seemed I knew nothing about everything. If I were to write what I am certain of at this point in my life, there would be a lot of fiction about my bowels. Some would argue that my fiction when I was young originated in the same place so there you are: Circle of Life.

I once took a class from Roger Welsch, the renowned folklorist, who advised his students to not sell themselves short on what they know. He recalled a previous student, flummoxed by her inability to write something grand and ageless even though she was still a teenager, the grandest experience of her life to that point involving Junior Prom. Dr. Welsch gave her an assignment: Think of something involving your family that you found interesting. The girl came back with the following tale: Her grandmother and grandfather lived in a small Nebraska town where everyone knew each other. It was in a time when people talked over the back fence and hung their wash on a clothesline. Every week the girl’s grandmother washed her husband’s pajamas and hung them on the line. When they were dry, she neatly folded them and placed the PJs in a dresser drawer where they remained until the next week when she removed the clean, unworn pajamas, rewashed them, and again hung them on the line. Why did she do this?

“Well,” the girl told Dr. Welsch, “my grandpa slept in the nude and my grandma didn’t want anyone to know. So she kept washing his clean pajamas and hanging them up for the neighbors to see.”

“It’s hard to make up stuff that good,” Dr. Welsch told his student.

So . . . can you only write about what you have experienced? Not necessarily. Frank Herbert created the world of Dune, J.R.R. Tolkien the inhabitants of Middle-Earth, J.K. Rowling the wizard’s school at Hogwarts. When I was a teenager, I loved books by Alastair MacClean, the Scottish schoolteacher who wrote The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra, and Where Eagles Dare. MacClean served in the British Navy during World War II, but his tales of mountain-climbing commandos, nuclear submarines, and double agents were concocted without the benefit of actual experiences. He learned about these things in the library, not by scaling Matterhorn or splitting an atom. He didn’t write what he knew; he knew what he wrote.

The other day I picked up my wife from an appointment across town. When I pulled up to the curb, she was waiting alongside a very old man.

         “This is Zane,” she told me. “We’re giving him a ride.”

         It turned out that Zane was 90 years old and had asked my wife for help in finding the right bus. As is her nature, she immediately created the Mayfield Bus Company and announced the departure time for the Marina route to be at exactly that moment. Zane got in the car and introduced himself. “Thank you for your kindness,” he said. “In exchange, you will get a really good story.”

It turned out that Zane had been born and raised in San Francisco, the son of a Scotch-Irish mother and Japanese father. His father was Issei; born in Japan. Zane had gone to high school in the city, graduating in 1942 just a few months following the attack on Pearl Harbor. World War II had begun, and not long thereafter, Zane and his parents were shipped off to an assembly area for Japanese-Americans where they lived in captivity for a few months before being sent to a War Relocation Center in Utah. He spent a year there before being allowed to enlist in the Army.

There was more and it was a really good story. However, what most intrigued me was that I had just finished writing a book about a young Japanese-American teenager who is sent to a War Relocation Center during World War II, eventually escaping by joining the Army. I had spent a lot of time on research, finding it fairly easy to get information about the timeline and physical settings. However, the feelings of a young man spurned by his countrymen are not found in the stacks of a library and I was interested to see if I’d gotten it right. Unfortunately, we arrived at Zane’s home before I could ask all my questions. Besides, he had moved on to other topics by then. “I moved to New York City after the war,” he told us. “I lived there for twenty-six years. I was a dance instructor.” He offered to give Pam and I free lessons. He said the rumba is easiest and we’d start there.

Zane’s home was in an assisted living facility not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. The sidewalk fronting the building was steep and we offered to help him to the door. “I can make it,” he assured us. “I can still do the moon walk. Have you heard of Michael Jackson? He did the moon walk. I can do the moon walk, too.”

And then he did.

As I drove home, creeping through downtown traffic, I began to consider scrapping my finished novel for one about a Scotch-Irish-Japanese dance instructor. It would require a lot of research about dancing, but I knew I could count on my old pal, Google. Of course, I would have to jazz up Zane’s story a bit. Let’s face it, how much mileage could I get out of the dance instructor angle? I figured a dance instructor who was also a mountain-climbing commando or a nuclear submarine captain or a double agent would be just the ticket.

“He was interesting,” I said to my wife. I was anxious to share my idea for a new book: “The Eagles of Ice Station Navarone Learn to Rumba.”

“Yes he was,” she replied, “he was very sweet. And his story . . . can you believe it? Why, you just can’t make up stuff that good.”

On writer's block and Orphan Black

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

I’ve had a bout of writer’s block. I think you know what I mean. It’s when you start a sentence and then have trouble finishing . . . no, wait . . . find the end to be elusive . . . no, that’s not it . . . and then are unable to . . . screw it. I’m going to go watch another episode of Orphan Black.

To be honest, I’ve not had writer’s block. I just didn’t have anything to say for a while, a rare condition welcomed by friends and family. I actually never get writer’s block and thought I’d share a few secrets of how to escape its grip.

1. Set a daily goal for a reachable number of words. Five hundred is a good number, but 250 works if that’s all you’ve got.

2. Work off an outline. When blocked, go to your outline. Rework it if necessary. Then write your 500 words.

3. If unsure why your main character has inexplicably declared love for someone on page 14 when it shouldn’t have occurred until page 100 (premature exclamation), simply use your best friend — the DELETE key — and then jump to then next part of your story that is compatible with life on the planet you’re creating. (Writing coaches might tell you not to do this, but remember Rule #2 aspiring failed writers: Ignore advice from successful writers and people in the publishing business. Trust that you know more than they do.) Of course, writing as if you are leaping about within some sort of cosmic time-space continuum makes revisions tougher. You have to fix your timeline and avoid abrupt  

breaks in the narrative.

4. Work on more than one project at a time. If your tale of Waldemar and the Martian Invasion bogs down, jump to your blog or perhaps a short story.

5. Read — preferably something outside the genre or subject matter of your project.

6. Give up and watch another episode of Orphan Black.

Right now I’m revising a book and working on another while trying to keep this blog running, and as previously mentioned, I've never had writer's block although last week I watched the entire first season of Orphan Black and am presently on episode four of the current season. At the present pace, I will either catch up with Sarah, Cosima, Alyson, Helena, Rachel, and the rest of the girls early next week or finish one of my writing projects.

On writing and mousetraps . . .

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

I’m taking a little heat for the title of this blog. The first comment I received (from among comments that number in the ones) was a variation of, “How dare you? I would never disparage myself. You need a therapist. I hate you.” I assumed that the respondent had utilized the SCALE approach (Standard Congressman’s Approach to Legislative Evaluation). The SCALE approach requires an elected official to read only the title of a bill that will affect the lives of millions. He or she then calls a press conference. After an opening statement that equates the proposed law to baby-killing and/or terrorism, the media are allowed to ask questions with all answers from the politician incorporating a comparison of Obamacare to the Bolshevik Revolution.

So . . . here’s the thing. This blog is not meant to discourage writers. It is not meant to glorify failure. It’s a satire — like Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay, A Modest Proposal, in which he suggested that the Irish might solve their hunger and overpopulation problems by consuming their own children. He wasn’t serious either. I know this, because I’m Irish-American and none of my ancestors were appetizers.

I began this blog a few weeks ago, shamelessly borrowing part of my title from Alcoholics Anonymous, an exemplary organization dedicated to helping people escape addiction. Essentially, they are fighting alcoholism just like I’m fighting the concept of “failed writers.” My goal is to prevent writers from feeling like failures. I’ll admit that the title of the blog is a bit misleading, the logic of my intent ostensibly inverted at first glance. However, please understand that I am the father of five children, all of whom were successfully shepherded through their teenage years. Four of the five were teenagers at the same time, subjecting me to a daily barrage of inverted logic. I am now an expert, having been trained by professionals, and can submit with considerable authority that Failed Writers Anonymous is not inverted logic. It’s a support group for people who feel their creative efforts only have value if credentialed by others. It’s also a way to provide a few tips on writing and publishing, all of which I’ve stolen from other sources. This is Rule #6, aspiring failed writers: In the words of Lionel Trilling, “Amateurs imitate. Artists steal!”

Artists don’t always treat one another very well. Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love, discusses this in a wonderful TED talk. Once an unpublished diner waitress devastated by rejection letters, she has used the pulpit granted by success to encourage artists to support one another. Good for her. She has escaped the throes of failure and now wants to be a sponsor, pulling other failed writers from the swirling maelstrom of other people's opinions. Many years ago I noodled around Hollywood for a couple of years, writing sketch comedy. I met a lot of people trying to break into show business: comics, actors, singers. One of the singers was a girl with an extraordinary voice. At the time, the best gig she had landed was singing “for only ninety-nine cents” in a Jack-In-The-Box commercial. She wanted to be in the movies but never made it, becoming just another girl who sang like an angel, yet felt like a failure. I hope she's heard Ms. Gilbert’s talk. I hope she’s still singing.

Artists come in many forms. I have a friend who sets tile for a living. He doesn’t consider his work to be artistry, but it is. The girl who sang like an angel was an artist as is Elizabeth Gilbert. It can be tough. Artists are sensitive and the world can be a bitch for sensitive people. We also ply our trades in a business environment where not all widgets are necessarily marketable. One might design the most beautiful mousetrap ever, then find that the public is unwilling to pay $100 for a mousetrap. Perhaps more to the point, you might design a mousetrap that simply doesn’t work very well, yet are compelled to continue building mousetraps by something inside that is both elusive and inexplicable; something as instinctive and obligatory as breathing. I don't know why people build mousetraps any more than I understand why I sit down each day to tap out a few hundred words. I do know that, like all things magically elusive, the chase is often more satisfying than the prize.

While there is much to admire about literary agents . . .

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

One of my favorite movies is The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. The lovely Gene Tierney plays a widow who rents a seaside cottage only to discover that it is haunted by its former owner, a crusty sea captain played by Rex Harrison. Of course, Mrs. Muir and the captain put one another off at first, then fall in love. Toward the end of the movie, Mrs. Muir writes a book about she and the ghost, which she then peddles in person to a London publisher. Let me pause here for a moment so that you can gather yourselves. You heard me right. She went to the publisher in person and he didn’t have Security escort her out of the building. In person; she went in person! Directly into the publisher's office!

I imagine most of my four or five followers have been through the Query First Don’t You Dare Call Or Show Up At My Office-Okay, What The Hell Send Me A Few Pages-Jiminy Crickets You Might Be Worth My Time Send Me A Full Manuscript-I’m Sorry There Is Much To Admire In Your Work, But Piss Off sequence that attends modern efforts to secure a literary agent. In Mrs. Muir’s time, publishers didn’t work with agents. They simply sat around drinking tea until someone who looked as good as Gene Tierney showed up with a manuscript that they promptly published. I imagine there are skeptics among you, but watch the movie yourself if you don’t believe me.

Anyway, it’s tough to land a literary agent these days because THEY ARE VERY, VERY BUSY. I’d repeat that for emphasis, but it’s already in caps. For aspiring failed writers, there’s a tip for you and Rule #5: Either repeat things unnecessarily or use a lot of caps. Your choice. So . . . agents are very busy. They’re like the President of the United States in that regard. He’s very busy, too (although I understand that if you write an email to him, you’ll get a response, so that makes him less busy than literary agents). Because they’re so terribly, terribly busy, literary agents cannot reply to all emails. If they are interested in you, they’ll reply. For me, this resurrects what it felt like to be a thirteen year old boy. I would write a very nice note to a girl I was interested in, including a poll at the end for her convenience:

DO YOU LIKE ME?

YES ___ NO ___

(CHECK ONE)

As with literary agents, I got a response if she liked me. Unlike literary agents, if the girl didn’t like me, she made fun of my buck teeth and got her boyfriend to beat me up.

Literary agents are the Holy Grail for many writers — nab one and all your problems are over; best-seller list here I come. However, aspiring failed writers, take comfort in the reality that even the best agents can’t sell everything they represent. This is why they have to be so selective. They can’t sell everything and they are VERY, VERY BUSY, remember? They need to first be queried with a short letter that reduces your work to as few words as possible; the less words the better. In that regard, literary agents are like contestants on the old Name That Tune show. For those of you younger than 900 years old, Name That Tune was a popular television game show on which a contestant attempted to guess the title of a song in the least number of notes. Many of them were quite good, naming songs after hearing only three or four notes. Literary agents are like that. They can pick a best-seller after reading merely three or four words of a query email. This is why there is a little cottage industry that surrounds the query letter. There are articles, webinars, conference sessions, even books that purport to unravel the mystery of the perfect query. It can be overwhelming, so let me give you the basic drill.

In your query, begin with a plot hook followed by a snazzy description of a character or event. Next, write something about yourself that is humble and yet confident; factual, but not boastful. If you have published and received an award, do not mention it unless it was a really important award. Same for reviews. Unless they’re from important reviewers or publications, nobody but your mother cares. It’s best not to be funny and never, ever waste the agent’s time. That’s a big one. Don’t waste their time, okay? Seriously. They are very, very busy. I think I’ve made that clear. Last of all, make sure you let the agent know why he or she was picked from among all the agents on the planet. Literary agents are people, too. They like to be courted.

My last book: Howling at the Moon, received unimportant awards, good reviews from unimportant sources, and contained short stories previously published in unimportant literary magazines. Therefore, in query-speak, it did not exist. There’s a contradiction here, if you think about it. If everything attached to my previous book was important, why would I be looking for an agent? Wouldn’t I already have one? And what’s wrong with mentioning good reviews, even if they came from the Dismal Seepage, Nebraska Tribune? It makes no sense to deprive a literary nobody from mentioning anything scented with even the faintest hint of praise. It’s kind of brutal out here. We’re creeping along on the laudatory fumes provided by our wives and mothers and the people in our writing groups, most of whom view constructive criticism as a blend of waterboarding and the sales techniques employed by clerks at The Limited who never, ever admit that a customer’s butt looks big in EVERYTHING!

It might seem that I don’t like literary agents, but I do. They have helped me to become the failed writer that I am today and I look forward to a lack of representation for many more years to come. I will, however, not stop sending queries as I know there’s an agent out there capable of rejecting my work after reading not four words, not three, but merely two words or less. That person is my Moby Dick and I shall query the seven seas for the rest of my life in search of her.

Good vs. Great Writing

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

My last kid graduates from college next month and he will receive his degree without having read a single novel as a class assignment. I have five offspring — two suffering from DFAFW syndrome (DNA From A Failed Writer) and three stepchildren whose bloodlines are pure. My stepchildren have had me around since they were very small, which poses the whole Nature vs. Nurture conundrum. Personally, I don’t buy the Nature concept. Both my biologic and step-children think my jokes are lame and know one is coming long before it spills from my lips. Apparently, I have an expression they’ve deemed my “joke face,” that telegraphs an impending punchline. I don’t mind the description, although it resurrects some painful memories as the nickname “Jokeface” meant something entirely different when I was in the seventh grade.

So . . . when I went to college, all freshman were required to take a course called English 101. These classes were generally taught by graduate students who fell into three categories: 1) first year grad students who were earnest and a bit awkward, desperately seeking to connect with their students in a meaningful way, 2) second year grad students who hated their students, and 3) third year grad students who really, really hated their students.

We were assigned novels to read. In my English 101 class, we read Portnoy’s Complaint, Catch-22, The Ox-Bow Incident, and Roughing It among others. We would discuss the books in class, making an effort to decode them with the assumption that the authors had hidden themes within an overarching narrative. As I recall, all of the authors hid Messiah analogies in their books. At least that was the opinion of the girl who sat at the front and never shut up. I’m not sure Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and Mark Twain  knew this, but would undoubtedly have been grateful to the Girl Who Never Shut Up for divining their true intent.

The graduate student who taught the class was at the beginning of his second year, his hostility not yet in full bloom. He hung in there with us for about a month before giving in, one day shouting at the Girl Who Never Shut Up, “The Ox-Bow Incident is not about the Messiah, you moron. It’s about the Nazis. It was a warning that mob violence could happen anywhere.”

For those who haven’t read The Ox-Bow Incident, it tells the story of three innocent men who are accused of rustling. A lynch mob tries and then hangs the men, one of whom is a bounder, one who is helpless and confused, and a third who is so obviously chaste and pure of heart, one might compare him to . . . well, you get the picture. To be honest, at the time I agreed with the Girl Who Never Shut Up as her analogy made sense and I wanted to date her. However, our grad student instructor set us all straight, revealing that Van Tilburg Clark, fourteen years after his book’s original 1940 publication, wrote that The Ox-Bow Incident was an attempt to illustrate the madness infecting Nazi Germany and to show that it existed everywhere, a disease that could become an epidemic when men allowed prejudice and fear to supersede the rule of law.

What do today’s young people read? Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games books, I guess. At least they’re reading. However, I learned a lot in English 101, especially after college when I re-read everything. The lessons learned were applied elsewhere. Unlike some others, I believe that one does use algebra and geometry past the tenth grade and that classic novels are teachers who do not hate us. I learned much about the conflict between academic and private practice medicine from Arrowsmith, about hubris and redemption from The Magnificent Ambersons, about the sexual double standard imposed on women from Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I think I also learned the difference between good writers and great ones. That can be a sobering lesson for a writer. We all want to be great, but must learn to accept that we may only be good. It’s no reason to give up any more than someone stops playing pickup basketball the day they realize that a career in the NBA is out of the question.

I wish my kids had been forced to read more novels in college. Even though the Girl Who Never Shut Up was wrong in her interpretations, the process of dissecting a work is an important part of becoming a writer. She became a writer, the Girl Who Never Shut Up. She’s good, but not great. Unfortunately, none of her books are read by today’s college freshman, because she spurns vampires and Amazonian archers. That’s a shame, because pretty much everything she writes is a Messiah analogy.

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

Some years ago I was contacted by an agent who had read a short story I’d published in The Long Story. He expressed an interest in representing me should I have something of greater length for him to consider. Being a Johnny-on-the-spot sort of guy, I waited for eight years to send him a novel about the parents of children on a cancer ward. He didn’t remember me. Go figure. 

“This book is well-written,” he told me over the phone, “but it’s too sad. I can’t sell it.” 

         “Do you not watch Oprah?” I responded. “There’s no such thing as too sad.”

         He then confessed that he never watched Oprah, something that surprised me as I assumed all agents hung on her every book club recommendation. He offered to read something else from me, should I write a book that didn’t provoke suicidal thoughts. The next book I sent him was more upbeat — all 180,000 words. His assistant read it, afterward renting a forklift that she used to transport the manuscript to a recycling center. She thought it well written, but too long.

Someday I’ll write about how long a book should be to make failure certain. However, the short answer is this: 180,000 words. Brian Klems, the online editor for Writers Digest and author of a new book, Oh Boy, You’re Having  Girl, would likely agree with me. He writes a daily blog that all aspiring failed writers should avoid. It cuts a wide swath across the writing discipline and includes grammar tips, advice on how to query agents and publishers, and ways to improve your characters or plots. A while back he wrote about word counts, submitting that short stories are 1500 to 30,000 words, novellas 30,000 to 50,000 words, and novels 55,000 to 300,000 words. He recommended against writing a 300,000 word novel, but I guess the message never got through to George R.R. Martin who wrote the Game of Thrones books.  

I recently started on a new book and decided to take Brian KIem’s advice. I wrote an outline with a projected word count of 70,000. I’m now at 75,000 with at least another 15,000 needed to wrap up the plot. This will put me in the 80,000 – 100,000 words sweet spot that agents think works best for a novel. However, I confess that it’s been a disheartening experience. I subscribe to the G.R.R. Martin school of thought. While I’ve never met him, I suspect he might consider 80,000 – 100,000 words to be adequate for a children’s book or someone with attention deficit disorder. I’m betting that he might consider any book worth reading to be about . . . oh, 180,000 words.