Warren Adler's Blog, page 35
July 24, 2015
Warren Adler’s “Confronting Your Bad Reviews” Featured on THE WRITE CONVERSATION
“Every serious novelist worth their salt believes in their soul that they have written a brilliant novel or multiple novels in which the reader will find compelling characters engaged in deeply imagined stories that profoundly illustrate the human condition.
What every novelist, traditionally or self-published, yearns for is for others to be moved by their work, to be praised, acclaimed, recognized and celebrated for what they truly believe is their masterful artistic performance.
Of course, they might deny such a characterization and offer the explanation that it is the only the work itself that matters to the true artist. And while such a conviction does have the ring of truth, human vanity and the power of the ego is too deeply embedded in the psyche to be denied.
With that thought in mind, how does a novelist whose work is presented to the scrutiny of allegedly influential reviewers react to those who trash their book?” Continue reading on THE WRITE CONVERSATION
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July 20, 2015
How Do You Confront Bad Book Reviews?
Every serious novelist worth their salt believes in their soul that they have written a brilliant novel or multiple novels in which the reader will find compelling characters engaged in deeply imagined stories that profoundly illustrate the human condition.
What every novelist, traditionally or self-published, yearns for is for others to be moved by their work, to be praised, acclaimed, recognized and celebrated for what they truly believe is their masterful artistic performance.
Of course, they might deny such a characterization and offer the explanation that it is the only the work itself that matters to the true artist. And while such a conviction does have the ring of truth, human vanity and the power of the ego is too deeply embedded in the psyche to be denied.
With that thought in mind, how does a novelist whose work is presented to the scrutiny of allegedly influential reviewers react to those who trash their book?
Think of the horror of being on the receiving end of such reviews after perhaps years of composition and effort. What must this do to the authors aspirations, vanity, self-worth, and, in a practical sense, sales, career hopes and, of course, legacy? The serious novelist believes in their gut that their work is deserving of acceptance and hopefully adulation, commendation, prizes and awards, perhaps immortality and, of course, sales.
I am reminded of the raw horror of such disdain by the experience of the novelist Theodore Weesner who died recently and whose first novel The Car Thief, a coming of age story, was excerpted and acclaimed by The New Yorker, Esquire and The AtlanticMonthly and cited by reviewers as brilliant and original. It was published in 1972.
He enjoyed years of prestige and received decent reviews for his other novels and years of teaching at various prestigious universities. Admittedly, he did not achieve the continued adulation and respect he had wished for, often acknowledged, after his brief spurt of literary celebrity, as a fine but largely unsung novelist.
But it was the letter he wrote to The New York Times book review after a tepid review of his novel The True Detective that illustrates the real agony of the disappointed artist and a cautionary tale of the dangers of putting too much faith in the opinion of others.
The Times Book Review, in its inimitable arrogance published Mr.Weesner’s letter, which I will quote in full:
“The book in question is one I worked on for more than five years and it came alive and does work—it is relevant and it is compelling…and the responses I’ve received from others have been genuine, extravagant, even passionate. Yet you chose to give it a short inconspicuously placed and—I just cannot deal with this—your reviewer did not even understand what he read. I repeat—your reviewer did not even understand what he read. And he printed it. You break my heart. You owe me much more than an apology.”
In essence, Mr. Weesner spoke for most novelists. It is the agonizing cry of all artists who present themselves naked and alone to a most indifferent and dismissive public.
There is a lesson here for all of us novelists who pursue our writing endeavors. Firstly, understand that all novelists had their share of bruises.
Here are some examples from an age where books were pervasive and there was not all the technological distractions we have today:
The Saturday Review, London cited Charles Dickens this way. “We do not believe in the permanence of his reputation.”
Le Figaro’s reviewer said of Gustave Flaubert, author of the immortal MadameBovary, “Monsieur is not a writer.”
The eminent critic Clifton Fadiman in one of his reviews of William Faulkner’s novel called it. “The final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor talent.
The literary goddess Virginia Woolf wrote of James Joyce, “I finished Ulysses and think it is a misfire.”
The Southern Quarterly declared that Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is “sad stuff, dull and dreary and ridiculous.”
And a legendary German critic cited Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks as a “worthless story of worthless people in worthless chatter.”
And this one by one of the great British literary critics about George Orwell “1984 is a failure.
I cannot fail to mention the opinion of the works of two of America’s greatest literary icons. The editor of Bookman said this about Mark Twain. “A hundred years from now it is very likely that of Twain’s works: “The Jumping Frog alone will be remembered.” And a London critic said of Walt Whitman “Walt Whitman is as unacquainted with art as a hog is with mathematics.”
I cite here a few examples gleaned from The Experts Speak by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky.
The lesson to be learned by anyone who chooses any artistic endeavor in today’s world where criticism is ubiquitous and mostly indiscriminate: It is a great achievement just to be noticed.
Everybody has opinions. Consensus has become a major miracle. Technology has given everyone a voice. No one can predict the future. Bad reviews, bad opinions, insults, verbal abuse, diminishment, jealousy, frustration, along with effusive praise come with the territory. In today’s environment celebrate you’re being noticed and, whatever is said about you and your work, be sure your name is spelled right.
Besides, good reviews are not necessarily a harbinger of future success. In our contemporary world everything passes at warp speed. Here today, forgotten in a wink. I’ll go with the folks who say that investing passion and creative energy into the work is everything. The real trick is to just keep at it. Do your best and stop complaining.
Mr. Weesner had his say. Good for him.
I read it in his obituary in the New York Times, of all places.
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July 7, 2015
Warren Adler’s “THE ART OF REMEMBERING YOUR ENTIRE LIFE” featured on LITERARY HUB
“So, when I wake in the morning, I never get out of bed until I have wrung what I can from my memory.
I try to go back to babyhood; I have managed to remember as far back as my days in a carriage. Sights and smells come back to me: the touch of my mother’s hands, her voice, my father’s face, his voice, his hands, the shape and feel and every bit of my parents’ physical selves…
I try to live in the moment of memory. The past stays alive even in the present. I have no knowledge of the exact mechanism of remembering, but it has become an integral part of my life and my writing.” Continue Reading on LITERARY HUB
This was also shared on BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog
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Memory is My Greatest Ally in Fiction Writing
I have been asked repeatedly how one can avoid the memory blocks that so often plague older people. As a novelist in my 87th year, I can attest that memory is the key to writing. Everything that happens in the life of a human being is stored somewhere in the brain, intact and perhaps as fresh and viable as when it was first experienced.
So, when I wake in the morning, I never get out of bed until I have wrung what I can from my memory.
I try to go back to babyhood; I have managed to remember as far back as my days in a carriage. Sights and smells come back to me: the touch of my mother’s hands, her voice, my father’s face, his voice, his hands, the shape and feel and every bit of my parents’ physical selves.
I have vivid memories of my third birthday and the names and faces of those among my relatives who were present.
I force myself to remember my grandparents on both sides, what they looked like, how they lived, what food they prepared, their Yiddish chatter, the rituals that they lived by. I can taste my grandmother’s lokshen kugel and her gefilte fish. (Her Hamantashen had no peer.) I can remember the addresses of their homes and the sound of their voices.
My grandmother’s hands were swanlike in their grace, with long white tapered fingers; their touch was gentle and warm. My grandfather’s hands were strong and suggestive of early physical labor. My mother’s hands were more like his and my father’s, more like his mother’s.
I try to remember their funerals and how they looked in open coffins. The first dead person I ever saw was my father’s mother, who died at the age of 56. She was made up to look lovely and almost alive.
I remember my grandparents’ home in Brooklyn, a tiny two-story house which became a place of refuge during the height of the depression when my parents were dispossessed from their apartment. I try to remember the configuration of their living space, and I can map out in my mind the way their rooms were laid out and can place where each person slept. Eleven relatives were housed in that little three-bedroom house: my grandparents, the Goldmans, my parents, my Uncle Sunny and Aunt Ida, my cousin Joyce, her parents Chic and Rose, and my brother Cyrus, and myself.
I can remember every single detail of that house and the look of all of my relatives, the cherry, plum and pear trees and the grapes that crawled up the fence for homemade wine, all growing happily in the tiny yard. And in the one bathroom, the big bathtub with the clawed feet.
I remember the party line old-fashioned telephone where the conversations were never private. I try to remember the telephone number but can so far only remember that it began with Dickens.
I try to recall the names of all my relatives, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my friends from the very beginning of my life, their names and faces, their voices, their clothes, the games we played.
I force myself to remember all my teachers from kindergarten onward and have come up with a roster of names from public school through college. I can name many of my earliest classmates. The crowd gets larger and larger as I progress.
I remember all of my girlfriends, my earliest loves and sexual experiences.
I can vividly remember all the actors and actresses and their names that appeared in the movies my mother and I went to every time they changed the schedules. In those days, movie houses were ubiquitous, and ours wasn’t more than a block or two from where we lived.
I catalogue in memory my favorite books from childhood to present, my favorite authors, my favorite radio programs, and all the old television shows. I can remember many of the commercials when radio was the go-to medium. Who can forget Lamont Cranston, the Shadow, and that creepy commercial – “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!”
I try to live in the moment of memory. The past stays alive even in the present. I have no knowledge of the exact mechanism of remembering, but it has become an integral part of my life and my writing. I do this every morning, and then I turn to my morning ablutions.
This essay was originally published on LitHub: “THE ART OF REMEMBERING YOUR ENTIRE LIFE”
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July 1, 2015
Should We Be Shrinking Fiction in America’s Common Core Reading Lists?
As a novelist I never realized how much skin in the game I had in terms of the Common Core curriculum. Only recently did I discover that fiction, according to common core, is being shrunk in favor of non-fiction. After reading a telling New York Times article that gives an in-depth overview of how non-fiction is coming to occupy a heftier portion of k-12 reading curriculum I went on to review Scholastic’s complete Common Core for Teachers Book Lists and was surprised to find that the selection of non-fiction books does in fact more than double the number of fiction books offered.
There is nothing wrong with providing young students with more access to non-fiction and its many manifestations that include all the documentation of historical facts, biography, science, government, analysis, travel, real life adventure and anything else in this category. Any scrap of informational reading is absolutely essential to a well-rounded education and deserves a prominent place in the education of young minds, but not at the expense of fiction.
Works of the imagination, of which fellow authors and I are proud dispensers, is not only essential material for a well-rounded curriculum, it is crucial. In fact, it should be expanded. Imagination, in my view, often trumps information and hard scholarship.
Fiction, Imagination, Education
Fiction provides the soul of education, without which students cannot truly attain a deep understanding of what makes us human. Life, past and present, is a story, our story, and it springs from the imagination of those who have dug deep into this mysterious well of truth to speak to us, inform us of the joys, perils and insights of the human experience.
What has trickled through the screen of life over the centuries and has given us our essential stories contains the critical guideposts of the human condition.
It is no accident that the works of our greatest writers, from the stories illustrated without words on cave walls to those who anonymously penned our earliest myths and fables and on to those works of such named authors as Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and many others who reside in the vast repertoire composed by creative authors in all parts of the world has endured through the centuries.
Within these works resides truth and wisdom plumbed from the imagination, without which we would be bereft of true meaning, our internal life impoverished. The connection between the written word and the mysterious workings of the brain that miraculously spins those fictional stories in the minds of their authors has had a profound impact on civilization and is far more important than our technologically obsessed authorities realize.
The Connection Between Fiction and Well-Being
Literacy is the foundation stone of teaching. To get people to read fiction is essential to their well being, their knowledge, their livelihood, their relationships, their ability to communicate and to share their thoughts and aspirations. Without such literacy a human being in the modern world lives isolated in the shadows.
Why not celebrate and honor the art of fiction, a construct which subliminally asks the quintessential question of human existence, which is “What happens next?”
Of course non-fiction has its place but the truth and wisdom embodied in fiction is of equal if not paramount importance to equip a student to shoulder the burdens and complications of an increasingly complex world.
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June 29, 2015
June 23, 2015
TARGET CHURCHILL Review by Regan Peruse
GET YOUR COPY OF TARGET CHURCHILL HERE
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June 15, 2015
Warren Adler’s “Top 10 (Normal) Struggles When Writing a Novel” Featured on WRITER’S DIGEST
Like every author on the planet, I’ve spent endless hours mulling over title options for my work. One strives, of course, to be both memorable and honestly descriptive of the content. But then, by and large, a great title is an art form unto itself and a great title does not necessarily signify a great book.
This guest post is by bestselling author Warren Adler. Adler is an acclaimed novelist of more than 40+ novels, a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and consistently writes about his experience as an independent, self-published eBook author with his own press, Stonehouse Productions. Currently in development for Adler is the Hollywood sequel to The War of the Roses – The War of the Roses: The Children, along with other projects including Capitol Crimes, a television series based on Warren Adler’s Fiona Fitzgerald mystery novels. Learn more about Warren and his new film/TV developments on his website here. American Quartet, book 1 of his Fiona Fitzgerald series is now on Kindle promo for $1.99 through June 24th. Follow him here on Twitter and Facebook.2. You get 100 pages in a novel and suddenly decide you’re tossing it all
This may seem insane but I normally know whether or not I am on to something good only after being 100 pages into a story. I’m willing to bet some of you go much farther.
3. Your friends think you’ve become a recluse because you spend so much time at your writing desk.
I’m usually very regimented about my writing schedule and typically wake up at about 5 a.m. and start writing until 10 a.m. There have been times, however, where I’ve spent an entire day in my study working on a novel. Little do these friends know the kind of dynamic journey writers go on in their work.
CLICK TO CONTINUE READING “TOP 10 (NORMAL) STRUGGLES WHEN WRITING A NOVEL”
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9 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Write
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June 8, 2015
The Huffington Post features Warren Adler’s “Writing Contests: A Cautionary Tale”
“These writing contests, with their prestigious sounding names, offer the impression of quality promotion for the winners and, of course, bragging rights which can be dubious and of suspect value. One wonders who the judges are that are taking on such a massive amount of submissions. Few of these contest sponsors reveal their methods or the people who read this mass of material and make their judgments.” Continue Reading here
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