Rosina Lippi's Blog, page 27

Kindle Paperwhite Drawing: tomorrow

If you haven't thrown your name in the hat yet, do it quick, right: here

census + map = insight

I've mentioned that I am very visually oriented, and also (what is probably obvious without me pointing it out again) I have more than a small dose of OCD. Which means I can't let things go until I'm satisfied.  So the research I do for my novels is painstaking. And also, to me at least, tremendously interesting. I always find the best possible maps for the location that I'm writing about. For The Guided Hour I found maybe a dozen maps published between 1880 and 1885, but only one of those really suits my purpose, so that while I'll consult many different maps, one becomes my source map.  The map I'm using was published in 1885, which means that it was most likely compiled over 1883-84.  Manhattan is divided into twenty-four plates (at the top of this post is a small detail from Plate 5, with my annotations). An example of a supplementary map is the Sanitary Map and Social Chart of the Fourth Ward of the City of New York, which accompanies a detailed report of the living conditions. Report of the 4th Sanitary Inspection District made to the Council of Hygiene of the Citizen's Association by E.R. Pulling, M.D., assisted by F. J. Randall. Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens' Association of the New York Upon the Sanitary Condition of the City, second edition. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1866. This map is far too early for a novel set in 1883, but it is very useful anyway. It helped me understand the real conditions in the tenements by providing actual data.  To be clear, it wasn't the map so much as the website put together […]

kindle paperwhite: for you CONTEST CLOSED

DRAWING CLOSED. I'll post the name of the winner early Wednesday morning.   I'm giving away a new Kindle Paperwhite. Random drawing, simple rules: 1. Enter once and only once (IP addresses are noted by the program) 2. Name one good book you've read that was published in 2012 or 2013, for the first time. So no new editions of something first published in 2001 3. I'll draw a name in about two week's time. You must come back here to find out if you've won. If I don't hear from the winner in five days, I'll draw a new name. Good luck!  

kindle paperwhite: for you

I'm giving away a new Kindle Paperwhite. Random drawing, simple rules: 1. Enter once and only once (IP addresses are noted by the program) 2. Name one good book you've read that was published in 2012 or 2013, for the first time. So no new editions of something first published in 2001 3. I'll draw a name in about two week's time. You must come back here to find out if you've won. If I don't hear from the winner in five days, I'll draw a new name. Good luck!  

Digging down to Conflict

Update: I spend a half hour or an hour every day sorting through old weblog posts in an effort to bring some order to the chaos (for example, if you care to have a look, the FAQ section is actually starting to come together). But every once in a while there's a post that's been culled somehow from the herd, so I have to either do some research to figure out where it originated, or repost it. Today time is short, so I'm reposting this, after some editing. The nature of conflict in a story is so complex it's hard to talk about. I've rarely run into a teacher or book that does a good job of laying out the very subtle manouevering that goes into establishing and building on conflict. There's a good chance I won't pull it off either, but I'm going to try. People who are just getting started with writing fiction often take things too literally. Yes, you need a major conflict. A couple married seventy years who are thinking about divorce? Yes, excellent conflict. But how do you put that idea into actions, into a story that makes the reader want to turn the page? You might set the whole story at the breakfast table, your two characters arguing and fighting — but that's very restrictive for you as a writer, and really hard to pull off well. Your characters will give you an idea of where to start. Imagine them sitting at a table with you. You are interviewing them. Writer: Sam, can you tell me why after seventy years of marriage you want a divorce? Sam: She's too damn picky. She never lets up. I'm ninety-two, I think […]

What I'm Reading: The Girl You Left Behind

It's not often that I'm so drawn into a novel that I can't put it down. In fact, I don't remember the last time that happened.  Now I'm reading The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes, and I find myself thinking about it constantly. This woman can tell a story, and she can write a sentence and a paragraph and handle dialogue. And by god, she can plot. The Girl You Left Behind is half historical and half contemporary, set in France and England.  That's pretty difficult to pull off, but she does it effortlessly. I read Me Before You first (also a great title) and that was  very good, thought provoking and sad and not-sad all at once, but The Girl You Left Behind is a step beyond. Moyes has more of a backlist, and I'm going to be reading whatever there is to read straight away. I'm not going to review either novel here, not now, because I haven't finished The Girl You Left Behind yet and also because I need to think about it for a while. But I wanted to say this. It's good to come across a storyteller who can handle  both extremes of emotion and the high and low points of experience so deftly. There is sorrow here, of the deepest and most moving kind, and a bone-deep understanding of what it is to lose someone you love.  There is also new love and friendship and animosity and fear. On a couple of occasions things come close to — but don't quite cross –  the line into too much. The historical half of the story is set in France during WWI, which is a little out of the […]

Kindle Gets Better

I have been in love with Kindle pretty much since day one. Early versions had their problems, most (but not all) of which have been solved.  Many people are nostalgic about print and don't want to go over to electronic books, but there are advantages to my Kindle which can't be denied: I have thousands of books in this house, but very few of them are books I'll need or read again. The books on my Kindle account are kept for me in the so-called Cloud. I may never read or need some of them again either, but if  I do, it takes about thirty seconds to download one and I don't have to search the whole house for it first.  When we move it's just the Kindle that goes in my purse, and not a hundred boxes that weight forty pounds each. Whatever Kindle books I own I can also read on my laptop. This is important for research, because while I can take notes on the Kindle itself,  I don't like flat keyboards. For academic or research work, I open the book on the Kindle app, which is more flexible anyway: better search and notation features. I can copy a paragraph I need to notes (and the citation information is automatically attached). Just the mere ability to search is like a dream come true when the issue is research. I can read in bed without disturbing the mathematician. I never lose my place in the book. There are some great new features coming (see the summary here): Starting in October, many (but not all) hard-copy book which (1) I bought from Amazon (new, not used) and (2) is available in Kindle format will […]

KIndle Gets Better

I have been in love with Kindle pretty much since day one. Early versions had their problems, most (but not all) of which have been solved.  Many people are nostalgic about print and don't want to go over to electronic books, but there are advantages to my Kindle which can't be denied: I have thousands of books in this house, but very few of them are books I'll need or read again. The books on my Kindle account are kept for me in the so-called Cloud. I may never read or need some of them again either, but if  I do, it takes about thirty seconds to download one and I don't have to search the whole house for it first.  When we move it's just the Kindle that goes in my purse, and not a hundred boxes that weight forty pounds each. Whatever Kindle books I own I can also read on my laptop. This is important for research, because while I can take notes on the Kindle itself,  I don't like flat keyboards. For academic or research work, I open the book on the Kindle app, which is more flexible anyway: better search and notation features. I can copy a paragraph I need to notes (and the citation information is automatically attached). Just the mere ability to search is like a dream come true when the issue is research. I can read in bed without disturbing the mathematician. I never lose my place in the book. There are some great new features coming (see the summary here): Starting in October, many (but not all) hard-copy book which (1) I bought from Amazon (new, not used) and (2) is available in Kindle format will […]

Newsflash via the NYT: Things are Tough for New Novelists

If you don't laugh at this, you'll really have to cry. If you're an aspiring novelist, you may find yourself weeping. The New York Times has an article about the pseudo-anonymous novel The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling. If you're not aware: Rowling wanted to see how publishing feels for the rest of us, so she used a pseudonym (Robert Galbraith)  to sell a mystery novel, which got only a few mediocre reviews and sold few copies. She planned to reveal herself as the true author but was sad that it got leaked so soon: "I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer, because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation, and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name" (quoted in The Author's Guild article on this same phenomenon). I don't know how to feel about this. The Queen dresses as a peasant and goes out to wander the city, and is surprised when her cover is blown. She intended to blow her own cover, but gosh, somebody beat her to it.  What's that about? The theories in my head are not complementary, so I'll let this aside for the moment after pointing out that Rowling stood to make no money from the novel, all the proceeds go to charity. The thing you need to know is, she wrote a mystery. It did not sell, and got mediocre reviews. Somebody leaked the fact that she was in fact the author, and sales are now through the roof. And positive reviews are pouring in. A lot of negative ones, too, but quite a few that glow on […]

The Trifecta of Storytelling, or the Whole Pie

I came across this diagram and decided to put it back up here, because it's useful. I, at any rate, find it useful when I'm thinking about what I'm writing.   The star in the middle represents the holy grail in fiction: a book that is loved by critics and devoured by readers. There are a few such beasts out there. Lonesome Dove always comes to mind when I think about this, a masterpiece of storytelling with characters who are going to outlive all of us, with pitch perfect prose and dialogue. The critics adored it, the public did too. It rode the top of the best seller lists for a good while, and made a lot of money. Most novels fail in one or more of these three key areas. What's interesting to me is that the litcrit crowd is vocally dismissive of one piece of this pie, but it's the one piece you can't do without if you want a novel to really take off, because here's the universal truth: people need stories. Human beings think and perceive and understand in terms of narrative and story. The story is what makes the reader turn the page. Strong supporting evidence for this can be found on almost any day's best seller list. There are books out there which have made fortunes for their authors, which are (bluntly stated) badly written at every level. Off the top of my head, two titles: The DaVinci Code, and Fifty Shades of Grey (and yes, I've read them both). What these novels have going for them are their stories, and some of the wildcard elements (marketing in particular can do a lot for sales). They are both built […]