Thanks for the Nose, Got One Already

Opinions are like noses -- we all gots one of our own.

I know you've heard it. You might even have done it yourself. Someone rides by with their music playing too loud, and a friend wonders aloud how anyone could listen to "that crap." Among my redneck friends, it's usually rap like Tupac or Will Smith. Among my black friends it's most often country, George Jones or Conway Twitty. My mom says this about Metallica and Scorpion. For my ex it was Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters.

Is anyone asking what this has to do with writing?

My wife doesn't care for the sort of high, hard sci-fi I love and want to write. I'm not so much into horror, her favorite. Neither is particularly partial to romance novels, though they seem to make up more than half the publishing market.

We've all caught ourselves belittling something that doesn't interest us personally. We're trying to get out of that habit, because everything has value, and something to teach us about our craft.

Ladies and gentlemen, negative commentary is not the way to support your writerly loved ones. Don't steer them away from their interests, don't try to correct their choices to a more profitable field, and don't, please don't try to convince them that vampires are hot right now and so they should write about that. If you are an author and are making more in dependable royalties than the aspiring writer, then maybe, maybe such advice might be warranted, but don't do it unless they ask, ok?

What they need is not patronizing or formulae. What they need is encouragement, honest but constructive critiques, support, honest but constructive critiques, proofreaders, honest but constructive critiques, editors, honest but constructive critiques, approval and patience and comfort, and lest I forget to mention it, honest but constructive critiques.

Perhaps you notice a theme here.

What your writing friends need is you to hold them up, not tell them all the reasons it won't work. If you do that, you should stop calling them your friends, because you aren't acting like one.

The other thing they need is actual, realistic, but gentle and CONSTRUCTIVE feedback. That means getting off your lazy high-horse and actually reading their work, which any writer with half a brain knows is a significant investment of your time and energy that they should appreciate. It means pointing out the spelling and grammar and punctuation errors, the complicated and awkward phrasing, logical inconsistencies, any clichés, and the dull scenes where they drag on about details that don't really matter.

If you don't have time and energy for all that, it's ok; just don't ask for a free copy of the book just because you're family. If you can and do give them such support, don't be surprised if they dedicate the book to you - but don't assume they will, because maybe they promised this one to Mom. :o)

And for the record, Sabrina suggested this post, who cannot abide country music or most romance.
Her idea.

OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! CALL NOW!!!

I hate hard sell.

Ok, I'm as much a sucker for an interesting hook at the beginning of a book as the next guy, but...call me weird if you must...I don't want the whole book to be "exciting".

I like literary works. It doesn't get much better than Sojourner, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' final novel. Not much exciting happens, but the book is wonderful.  How can that be?

Yes, I do want something of interest in every chapter; in fact, on every page. It's just that "of interest" doesn't have to include explosions or cliffhangers or adolescent snits. Personally, I find really good writing to be plenty.

I hope someday to be able to write like that book. The work is subtle, but filled to the brim with anguish, joy, cruelty, insanity, loyalty, injustice, humility, and heroic sacrifice, all with no explosions.

In fact, most of the book takes place right on the single farm.  They plant orchards, and try to keep the sheep warm through the winter. The main character is a farmer who isn't very outspoken, but feeds his hogs, tills his fields, and daydreams a lot. He plays a flute. He marries the girl his older brother left behind, and they have kids. He has a buddy who's a drunk, and sometimes gypsies come set up on his property for a while. Wow! Are you excited yet?

I sat in the tub with my wife and read this book to her. We sat in the yard and read it. We read it in bed. We stopped now and then to savor the scenes, the language. We're going to use singed pages from an extra copy to decorate the house.

Then I pick up books where the writer throws me into a heated firefight, and I have to wonder why I care who wins. When it's over and I've figured out who the hero is supposed to be, there's a roaring car chase. Then a fistfight. Then the character must hide from the police, while the author narrates the deep personal relationship the character has with one of the officers by telling me "Bob had a deep personal relationship with one of the officers."

I'm sorry, but I don't want every scene in a book trying to tweak my adrenalin.  There must be pacing. There must be contrast. Too much becomes just the 7:15 train rattling my dishes, and eventually I don't even notice anymore.

What I want is an elegant turn of phrase that brings me up short and makes me realize what a character is feeling.

Pick up any of the classics. Open it at random to a few different pages. You'll likely hit some dialogue, some worldbuilding narrative, a tense scene of conflict. It's not always fever pitch.

You can't evoke real emotions in the reader until you get them to care about the characters. Ideally, a good book should hook the readers in the first page, and then reel them in as it progresses. If they aren't willing to read a few pages to develop a little rapport, then they are going to be limited to schlock.

So my job is to generate a good opening that doesn't read like a screaming infomercial, and follow it up with sympathy, depth and feeling.  That's a tall order.

Guess I'd better get back to writing.

Never Forget

Her name was Connie.  We were sixteen. I carried her photo for years.

She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and in many ways is still the standard against which I judge everything I see, and not just women.  Her smile was light and warmth, a flower direct from God to brighten this dreary world. Her giggle was soft and sensual, reminding us that it's good to be alive. Her adorable little button nose, her perfect skin, those deep, dark eyes that never seemed without a hint of mocking yet almost-innocent laughter...

Her birthday is December 12th. Her phone number, back before Alabama had another area code, was 2541. I can recite all ten digits with little hesitation, even now, thirty years later. I still remember the little scrap of paper torn from the edge of a notebook sheet with my kindergarden-ish scrawl of unevenly sized numbers; I carried it in my wallet for over a decade. I took it out now and then to feel the worn grain of the paper, and stared at the smearing graphite when nothing else could express my frustration.

I'd known her since we were twelve and the boys had tried to save the girls from wild dogs in the woods at camp, and she'd scornfully told us the howling was farmers' dogs nearby. We'd met at church social skates for years. At another camp at sixteen, we were the oldest there, and a natural couple. She told me I was handsome, funny. She told me how she got the scar on her breastbone running for the bus with a pencil in grammar school. We played footsie under the tables. I collected a bouquet of wildflowers for her off the lake, in a camp john-boat.

When that magical week was over and we were about to leave, I folded her into my arms and held her, standing in the sunlight on the lawn, and I heard someone say "I love you." It took me a moment to realize the voice had been mine.

Understand that this wasn't news to me; I had already discussed it with my best bud, who helped me collect the flowers.  It was just a stupid thing to say. She hardly knew me; yes, a week at camp had been fun, and yes, I knew I was head over heels, but I wasn't silly enough to expect she would be.  You have to give these things time. I knew that, but some prankster in the back of my throat just had to push out the phrase that was doing pirouettes in my brain.

She looked up at me like a deer caught in the headlights. I do remember that moment, though having played it over and over for three decades has likely distorted it a little. Even so, I don't delude myself into thinking it was a sweet smile, or a look of relief.  She was shocked.

But what she said was "I love you, too."

Now, why would she say that? Maybe, because it was true?

Well, yeah, maybe. But also maybe because it was the standard reflex response when you don't know what else to do at that rather awkward moment, when you're just hugging the fellow who has made a fun week away from normal life feel a little magical, and you want to enjoy it for a few more moments and maybe express some genuine gratitude before you get back to your your real life, with a boyfriend and whatever else. I don't blame her for what she did to me with that moment of careless confusion. It was an accident.

I still have letters I never sent. Don't get me wrong, I sent scores. I called. I even convinced her to go out to dinner with me once, but there comes a point when you need to take a hint; beyond that, a suitor becomes a stalker. She didn't return my calls and letters. I poured my heart into those reams of notebook paper, but I don't know if she read them. Eventually, I stopped harassing her with them and saved the postage, but I couldn't stop writing them. Pathetically impassioned please are still just pathetic when the recipient is merely annoyed.

She never knew the tears I wept across my grandmother's lap for the love I wasn't allowed to give her. She never knew the hearts I broke because mine was no longer mine to give. She had a baby, got married, probably went on to a normal life. I wonder if she ever even realized what she missed.

As Wesley said in The Princess Bride, "This is True Love. You think this happens every day?"

And yet, I am a better man for it. I managed to love again, in a less hormonal, more mature way, but quite sincere. I got my heart broken again, smashed and ground and scattered like broadcast planting. I played hermit for a while.

And I managed to love again.  For all the teenage drama of this post, I am happily married, and raising a son we carefully decided to bring into the world, even at my age. I can still love, still trust, and still accept that my lovely, witty and charming wife is human.  She is more beautiful approaching forty than most men will ever win, better educated with a GED and unfinished degrees in writing and criminology than most college graduates, and more practical, generous, and understanding than a schmekel like me deserves.

And she writes with me.

She has her own stories; family hardships, a failed marriage, male porn under the toilet seat to make a dense man close the lid ... She understands the value of my devotion, and is patient with my cornucopia of faults.

Why would I share all this with the world?

Because I'm a writer. It's what we do - I'm just more blunt than most.  When you read my stories, you shouldn't assume that a tale of rape is a personal experience, or any more than is one of murder - but believe the emotions.  They come from a real life with actual joy and grief, and a keen and honest eye that records those feelings, those moments, for later use.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” - Robert Frost
That's what I want in the books I read. That's what I believe readers deserve from the books I write.

That's what they'll get.