Laurie Frankel's Blog, page 2
November 30, 2013
Chex Mix is awesome. I am like Santa.
Here is a list of reasons why books make the best gifts. (This is not self-serving. I don't mean my books. I mean books in general.)
1) They are long lasting. It takes on the order of, say, ten or fifteen hours to read a book during which whole time your loved one is thinking in the back of her head how much you must love her for getting her such a lovely gift. Then, after she's finished, it will sit on her shelf in her living room or her bedroom and remind her of you.
2) They are personal, intimate even. When you get your loved one a book he really loves, he not only enjoys the book, he feels full of warm, fuzzy feelings that you picked it for him, that you knew him so well you knew how much he'd like it, that you think so highly of him you matched him up with this really great book.
3) Don't know how to pick the book that will result in #2 above? Books have a solution to that problem too. Walk into, say, the Gap and describe your loved one's personality and interests to the people working there, and they will not be able to pick out a sweater well suited to your loved one. Walk into a bookstore and do the same, and the people there absolutely will. Today, as part of Small Business Saturday, authors will be visiting local independent bookstores across the country to help you pick the perfect book for your loved one. (Find one near you with this handymap and/or google your favorite bookstore to see what they have going on today.) They aren't selling their own books, you understand; they are going to meet you, listen to you talk about your loved one, and offer the perfect book. (Authors tend to be very well and widely read, and this is our superpower. We are like Santa in this way.) That way you get to say to your loved one not only have I given you this great book but it was picked out personally for you by [insert name of fabulous author here].
4) Even if -- perhaps, especially if -- your loved one owns some kind of e-reader, a book still makes the perfect gift. Now it's retro and nostalgic (sort of like the holidays themselves, especially for those of you still eating Chex Mix)(which should be everyone because Chex Mix is awesome). Now books stand out. Now your loved one will say, fondly, "Oh, I remember reading real books. How lovely." Personally, I like to go back and forth -- one ebook, one paper, one e, one paper. Your loved one will love having an actual object to unwrap and hold and smell and flip through and examine the cover of and then, finally, read and reread and look at and remember.
5) As regular readers will recall, books make great Christmas trees. Here's ours from last year. You can't do this with an ebook, my friends.
1) They are long lasting. It takes on the order of, say, ten or fifteen hours to read a book during which whole time your loved one is thinking in the back of her head how much you must love her for getting her such a lovely gift. Then, after she's finished, it will sit on her shelf in her living room or her bedroom and remind her of you.
2) They are personal, intimate even. When you get your loved one a book he really loves, he not only enjoys the book, he feels full of warm, fuzzy feelings that you picked it for him, that you knew him so well you knew how much he'd like it, that you think so highly of him you matched him up with this really great book.
3) Don't know how to pick the book that will result in #2 above? Books have a solution to that problem too. Walk into, say, the Gap and describe your loved one's personality and interests to the people working there, and they will not be able to pick out a sweater well suited to your loved one. Walk into a bookstore and do the same, and the people there absolutely will. Today, as part of Small Business Saturday, authors will be visiting local independent bookstores across the country to help you pick the perfect book for your loved one. (Find one near you with this handymap and/or google your favorite bookstore to see what they have going on today.) They aren't selling their own books, you understand; they are going to meet you, listen to you talk about your loved one, and offer the perfect book. (Authors tend to be very well and widely read, and this is our superpower. We are like Santa in this way.) That way you get to say to your loved one not only have I given you this great book but it was picked out personally for you by [insert name of fabulous author here].
4) Even if -- perhaps, especially if -- your loved one owns some kind of e-reader, a book still makes the perfect gift. Now it's retro and nostalgic (sort of like the holidays themselves, especially for those of you still eating Chex Mix)(which should be everyone because Chex Mix is awesome). Now books stand out. Now your loved one will say, fondly, "Oh, I remember reading real books. How lovely." Personally, I like to go back and forth -- one ebook, one paper, one e, one paper. Your loved one will love having an actual object to unwrap and hold and smell and flip through and examine the cover of and then, finally, read and reread and look at and remember.
5) As regular readers will recall, books make great Christmas trees. Here's ours from last year. You can't do this with an ebook, my friends.
July 3, 2013
Fun With Language!
As I have discussed -- here? elsewhere? mostly in my own brain? -- the beginning stages of novel-writing look a lot like wandering around the house aimlessly. Followed by writing. Followed by revision. Followed, only then, by obsessing about language. Novel-writing is long -- for me, in the early stages, language-matters are indulgences that interfere with the work that must be done: research, writing, revision, and wandering around the house.
But that obsession with language is hard to let go of. During early-stage novel writing, it comes out in other ways.
Example from some crackers I was eating this weekend:
Natural flavor with other natural flavor? Look, I hate to be a graduate student about this, but:
a) Can I get an S? Natural flavorS with other natural flavorS.
b) Or articles? A natural flavor with another natural flavor might also work.
c) What does this even mean? Are we talking about flavor or ingredients? Flavor means taste. Is their point that these crackers taste like two things? Crackers and sweet onions? Sweet potatoes (their main ingredient which is why I bought them. I am a sucker for sweet potatoes) and rice? Salt and crunchy? Bananas and bologna? Flavor and flavor?
d) Or do they mean ingredients? Because flavor does not mean ingredients. But that does seem to be what's implied here. I chose these, in fact, because their ingredient list was short, recognizable, and non-chemical. These crackers contained actual foods on their ingredient list, foods such as sweet potatoes and rice. But then you'd think the copy might read: Sweet potatoes with rice. Instead of natural flavor with other natural flavor.
e) Flavor means taste. All flavors are natural. Their cause might well be artificial, but their taste on the tongue is natural. And natural.
f) There are only two reasons makers of crackers put copy on their boxes: to make me buy them or to make sure I don't sue them for having done so. I honestly can't imagine which this is.
And then check this out:
This sign is in the women's locker room where my kid takes swim lessons. I can only assume this is vandalism, a joke, but if so it's awfully well done -- I couldn't see any scratched out or scraped off letters. It is, in any case, someone's intention, be it the makers and hangers of the sign or someone with a pretty good sense of humor. So I ask you:
a) Is the final word here meant to be gender? Because at the very least they probably mean sex.
Unless b) they mean gender in which case bravo and more power to 'em though I'm not sure that requires signage at that point. Maybe this is too long: "Children six years [of??] age and older must use the locker room which best aligns with their gender performance always acknowledging that that performance is culturally imposed and interpreted, subject to change, and may lie outside the two (falsely dichotomous) locker room options herein presented."
c) Or maybe it's literal where end=genitalia. Which I love.
d) Or maybe it bespeaks everyone's eventual demise. We don't want to think about it in very young children, but by six, you're old enough to consider that someday we must all shuffle off this mortal coil. Another too long sign: "Those whose off-shuffling will be in a car, a body of water, a hospital room, a mountain slope, or a dog park must use the women's locker room. Those for whom it will be a bedroom or other room in a private home, a yoga studio, a glacier crevasse, a boat, a ballpark, or a movie theater must use the men's locker room. We know you don't know, but guess."
But that obsession with language is hard to let go of. During early-stage novel writing, it comes out in other ways.
Example from some crackers I was eating this weekend:
Natural flavor with other natural flavor? Look, I hate to be a graduate student about this, but:
a) Can I get an S? Natural flavorS with other natural flavorS.
b) Or articles? A natural flavor with another natural flavor might also work.
c) What does this even mean? Are we talking about flavor or ingredients? Flavor means taste. Is their point that these crackers taste like two things? Crackers and sweet onions? Sweet potatoes (their main ingredient which is why I bought them. I am a sucker for sweet potatoes) and rice? Salt and crunchy? Bananas and bologna? Flavor and flavor?
d) Or do they mean ingredients? Because flavor does not mean ingredients. But that does seem to be what's implied here. I chose these, in fact, because their ingredient list was short, recognizable, and non-chemical. These crackers contained actual foods on their ingredient list, foods such as sweet potatoes and rice. But then you'd think the copy might read: Sweet potatoes with rice. Instead of natural flavor with other natural flavor.
e) Flavor means taste. All flavors are natural. Their cause might well be artificial, but their taste on the tongue is natural. And natural.
f) There are only two reasons makers of crackers put copy on their boxes: to make me buy them or to make sure I don't sue them for having done so. I honestly can't imagine which this is.
And then check this out:
This sign is in the women's locker room where my kid takes swim lessons. I can only assume this is vandalism, a joke, but if so it's awfully well done -- I couldn't see any scratched out or scraped off letters. It is, in any case, someone's intention, be it the makers and hangers of the sign or someone with a pretty good sense of humor. So I ask you:a) Is the final word here meant to be gender? Because at the very least they probably mean sex.
Unless b) they mean gender in which case bravo and more power to 'em though I'm not sure that requires signage at that point. Maybe this is too long: "Children six years [of??] age and older must use the locker room which best aligns with their gender performance always acknowledging that that performance is culturally imposed and interpreted, subject to change, and may lie outside the two (falsely dichotomous) locker room options herein presented."
c) Or maybe it's literal where end=genitalia. Which I love.
d) Or maybe it bespeaks everyone's eventual demise. We don't want to think about it in very young children, but by six, you're old enough to consider that someday we must all shuffle off this mortal coil. Another too long sign: "Those whose off-shuffling will be in a car, a body of water, a hospital room, a mountain slope, or a dog park must use the women's locker room. Those for whom it will be a bedroom or other room in a private home, a yoga studio, a glacier crevasse, a boat, a ballpark, or a movie theater must use the men's locker room. We know you don't know, but guess."
May 3, 2013
F**ing Translation
I am totally fascinated/horrified by translation. It puzzles me completely. It is maybe one of the most American things about me that I speak only a little bit of one language besides my own -- and not well. I wish for other languages. I long for them. For the usual reasons -- they would make me a better citizen of the world; they would make me a better and more welcome traveler -- as well as the literary ones: I want to read Anna Karenina in Russian,Inferno in Italian, One Hundred Years of Solitude in Spanish.
The world is such a small place and growing smaller and closer every day. Barriers tumble down. Technology brings us all closer together. So much of our experience of the world happens beyond language anyway. Blah blah blah. I don't buy it. Translation seems impossible to me. Miraculous, impressive as hell, and impossible.
Let's talk about Dante's Inferno. It's a poem. In Italian, it rhymes. When you translate it, do you translate it literally word for word so that you get the exact plot and images and individual words Dante chose? Or do you translate it so that it rhymes at the sacrifice, sometimes, of much of the above? Before you answer, consider that much of Italian rhymes, much more than English does. So rhyming poetry sounds different and means differently to Italian ears than it does to English speaking ones. This kills me.
"Um, I found a head. Does anyone know whose head this is?"
"It's yours you idiot."
"Really? Bummer. Man, I have a great body though, huh? Without my head, I look years younger. Anyone want it? Free head?" Another example is this: when Sam meets Meredith in Goodbye For Now, she says her friends call her Max, and he says, "Not Merde?" This is a joke. Because "merde" means "shit" in French. He calls her Merde throughout the rest of the novel because, to English-primary ears, Merde sounds like a cute term of endearment rather than a profanity meaning excrement. But what to do when you translate the book into French? My husband and I fantasized that they might change Meredith's name to Shitella or Poopina throughout in order to preserve the joke and its meaning/feeling/essence. (Right? Her name is Poopina, and the first time they meet he calls her Poop? Cute name if it doesn't mean, you know, "poop" to your ears. These are the things that amuse in my household). But instead, the very tasteful and talented French translator added a footnote the first time Sam calls her Merde which notes that it's in French in the original and otherwise has Sam call her Meredith. Which is perfect.
Translation: The author is gross. I, the translator, am not gross. It is her. Not me. Cursing is a translation problem even in one's own language. I'm a curser. I curse. I curse at home. I curse in print. To my ears, it does not sound crude or dirty or especially edgy. I grew up with cursing. My father was a curser before me. He was a precurser. (You see how complicated language is?) I curse because I really can't see denying myself any of the language available to me. I want it all. But if you're offended by cursing, it sounds different to you, it means something different to you, than it does to me. Simply, you need a translation, just like someone who doesn't read English. What I mean by -- and not just literal meaning but everything that goes with it: sense, feeling, emotion, reference, character development, setting, local color -- "damn" or "shit" or whatever is simply not what you hear when you read those words. It's a disconnect. It's a translation problem. I don't intend to indicate that this character is crude or course or morally bankrupt or religiously doomed because to me cursing=normal.
And in fact, in deference to those who would be offended, there's not a lot of cursing in my books. There's not a lot to begin with, and then I take a lot of it out in editing. Each time I come across a "bad word" (as if words could be bad), I consider whether someone out there might be offended and whether or not I could successfully change it to "crap" or some such. My first editor actually asked me to increase the cursing because she thought these were characters who would say "shit" rather than "crap." She was right.
Ironically, I hate yelling. All yelling. I hate being yelled at. I hate being yelled near. I can't abide people who yell at one another, at their kids, even at tv screens. When people yell near me, I leave. Or cry. Or both. Cursing is not about anger. And I certainly never ever ever say it to or at anyone.
Added bonus of adopting rather than being pregnant: I could curse as much as I wished while waiting for the baby to come. The French translation of Goodbye For Now is also special because it's the only one I understand even a little bit. I don't read any of the other 25-plus languages into which it's been translated. But I read a little French. I understand the very lovely French edition mostly because I know what it says. But it's also a wonder to read my own words unfamiliarly, to make new to me something I not only made up but have read dozens of times. It's as close as I come to the experience of being a real reader of my own book. Kind of cool.
The world is such a small place and growing smaller and closer every day. Barriers tumble down. Technology brings us all closer together. So much of our experience of the world happens beyond language anyway. Blah blah blah. I don't buy it. Translation seems impossible to me. Miraculous, impressive as hell, and impossible.
Let's talk about Dante's Inferno. It's a poem. In Italian, it rhymes. When you translate it, do you translate it literally word for word so that you get the exact plot and images and individual words Dante chose? Or do you translate it so that it rhymes at the sacrifice, sometimes, of much of the above? Before you answer, consider that much of Italian rhymes, much more than English does. So rhyming poetry sounds different and means differently to Italian ears than it does to English speaking ones. This kills me.
"Um, I found a head. Does anyone know whose head this is?" "It's yours you idiot."
"Really? Bummer. Man, I have a great body though, huh? Without my head, I look years younger. Anyone want it? Free head?" Another example is this: when Sam meets Meredith in Goodbye For Now, she says her friends call her Max, and he says, "Not Merde?" This is a joke. Because "merde" means "shit" in French. He calls her Merde throughout the rest of the novel because, to English-primary ears, Merde sounds like a cute term of endearment rather than a profanity meaning excrement. But what to do when you translate the book into French? My husband and I fantasized that they might change Meredith's name to Shitella or Poopina throughout in order to preserve the joke and its meaning/feeling/essence. (Right? Her name is Poopina, and the first time they meet he calls her Poop? Cute name if it doesn't mean, you know, "poop" to your ears. These are the things that amuse in my household). But instead, the very tasteful and talented French translator added a footnote the first time Sam calls her Merde which notes that it's in French in the original and otherwise has Sam call her Meredith. Which is perfect.
Translation: The author is gross. I, the translator, am not gross. It is her. Not me. Cursing is a translation problem even in one's own language. I'm a curser. I curse. I curse at home. I curse in print. To my ears, it does not sound crude or dirty or especially edgy. I grew up with cursing. My father was a curser before me. He was a precurser. (You see how complicated language is?) I curse because I really can't see denying myself any of the language available to me. I want it all. But if you're offended by cursing, it sounds different to you, it means something different to you, than it does to me. Simply, you need a translation, just like someone who doesn't read English. What I mean by -- and not just literal meaning but everything that goes with it: sense, feeling, emotion, reference, character development, setting, local color -- "damn" or "shit" or whatever is simply not what you hear when you read those words. It's a disconnect. It's a translation problem. I don't intend to indicate that this character is crude or course or morally bankrupt or religiously doomed because to me cursing=normal.And in fact, in deference to those who would be offended, there's not a lot of cursing in my books. There's not a lot to begin with, and then I take a lot of it out in editing. Each time I come across a "bad word" (as if words could be bad), I consider whether someone out there might be offended and whether or not I could successfully change it to "crap" or some such. My first editor actually asked me to increase the cursing because she thought these were characters who would say "shit" rather than "crap." She was right.
Ironically, I hate yelling. All yelling. I hate being yelled at. I hate being yelled near. I can't abide people who yell at one another, at their kids, even at tv screens. When people yell near me, I leave. Or cry. Or both. Cursing is not about anger. And I certainly never ever ever say it to or at anyone.
Added bonus of adopting rather than being pregnant: I could curse as much as I wished while waiting for the baby to come. The French translation of Goodbye For Now is also special because it's the only one I understand even a little bit. I don't read any of the other 25-plus languages into which it's been translated. But I read a little French. I understand the very lovely French edition mostly because I know what it says. But it's also a wonder to read my own words unfamiliarly, to make new to me something I not only made up but have read dozens of times. It's as close as I come to the experience of being a real reader of my own book. Kind of cool.
April 9, 2013
Why is This Night Very, Very Different From All Other Nights?
Passover this year was March 25 to April 2. We had our seder this past Sunday evening. We didn't make the first nights of Passover because we were moving. We missed the last nights because we were painting and the whole house was literally under wraps. We finished painting late Saturday night so Sunday was the day. We still haven't unpacked the seder plate so we used this:
It's a baseball chip and dip plate.
None of which however, I would argue, is quite as off or wrong as it seems.
Passover is a holiday celebrating, among other things, the coming of spring again and all that means: renewal, warming, hope, trying again/anew/some more. That is what the start of baseball season is about too so a baseball chip and dip plate fits right in. Spring itself comes not on schedule -- here in Seattle we had our first (and hopefully only) snow flakes of the the year on the first day of spring. So scheduling these things give or take a week seems appropriate too.
Passover is a holiday celebrating, among other things, storytelling. This is my kind of holiday. What's important is the telling and retelling of a story which is at once ancient, timely, and timeless. So being off calendar by a couple weeks seems small potatoes.
Passover is a holiday celebrating, among other things, homecoming. Some years that's more of a process than others. The years, such as this one, when that process is most protracted are the years it is both hardest and most important to do a seder, however belatedly. When I was in college, we used to schedule Passover for whenever I was home for spring break. I still don't feel quite moved in, quite home or at home, but this helps.
Passover is a holiday celebrating, among other things, symbolism. Again, this is something I can get behind. Except for the shank bone. Not eating meat makes procuring a shank bone a challenge. Also, it is gross. Careful observers will note the dog treat -- the only bone-shaped or bone-inclusive item we had on hand -- in place of a shank bone on the baseball seder plate. Dogs celebrate homecoming and spring-coming too you know.
Our new fridge. Well, our old fridge, newly painted. Anyone else out there have a purple fridge? Or think to yourself whilst gazing on your fridge, "I think I shall paint that purple."? Hmm, probably not. That is the difference between you and us. What does this have to do with Passover? Three things: food, painting-related delays, and storytelling.
It's a baseball chip and dip plate. None of which however, I would argue, is quite as off or wrong as it seems.
Passover is a holiday celebrating, among other things, the coming of spring again and all that means: renewal, warming, hope, trying again/anew/some more. That is what the start of baseball season is about too so a baseball chip and dip plate fits right in. Spring itself comes not on schedule -- here in Seattle we had our first (and hopefully only) snow flakes of the the year on the first day of spring. So scheduling these things give or take a week seems appropriate too.
Passover is a holiday celebrating, among other things, storytelling. This is my kind of holiday. What's important is the telling and retelling of a story which is at once ancient, timely, and timeless. So being off calendar by a couple weeks seems small potatoes.
Passover is a holiday celebrating, among other things, homecoming. Some years that's more of a process than others. The years, such as this one, when that process is most protracted are the years it is both hardest and most important to do a seder, however belatedly. When I was in college, we used to schedule Passover for whenever I was home for spring break. I still don't feel quite moved in, quite home or at home, but this helps.
Passover is a holiday celebrating, among other things, symbolism. Again, this is something I can get behind. Except for the shank bone. Not eating meat makes procuring a shank bone a challenge. Also, it is gross. Careful observers will note the dog treat -- the only bone-shaped or bone-inclusive item we had on hand -- in place of a shank bone on the baseball seder plate. Dogs celebrate homecoming and spring-coming too you know.
Our new fridge. Well, our old fridge, newly painted. Anyone else out there have a purple fridge? Or think to yourself whilst gazing on your fridge, "I think I shall paint that purple."? Hmm, probably not. That is the difference between you and us. What does this have to do with Passover? Three things: food, painting-related delays, and storytelling.March 12, 2013
Textverarbeitung
Here is an article from Slate last week on the first book ever to be written on a word processor. In 1968. 
The IBM MTST which stands for Mega Ton Snazzy Typewriter.* Costs more than your house. *Actually I have no idea what MTST stands for. The book's author, Len Deighton, explains, "Having been trained as an illustrator I saw no reason to work from start to finish. I reasoned that a painting is not started in the top left hand corner and finished in the bottom right corner: why should a book be put together in a straight line?" Which is a good argument. I'm not sure I'd have had the bravery/foresight/cash involved in knocking out a window of my home in order for a crane to install a 200-pound, $10,000 (1968 dollars, at that) typewriter in my home office, but the idea of processing words strikes me as remarkable even if you'd never heard of it before. 
You gotta love when the point of the ad copy is: we can't believe it either. IBM evidently never considered that these machines would be used by individuals. I get that these things were huge and expensive, but processing words has always, always struck me as the ultimate killer app. It's not that I can't imagine writing a book longhand or on a typewriter -- I can, and I imagine it was torture. As both a reader and a writer I came of age in a time of flexible, malleable, negotiable text. Messing with text feels like my birthright. It's as hard for me to imagine writing novels without a computer as it was for IBM to imagine me writing them with one, but I'm pretty sure I'd have chosen a different career. I thought a lot a lot a lot a lot about writing and technology for and of and as Goodbye For Now. Technotext is my text. But processing words, well that's just something I take for granted.
Me if I had to draft in hardcopy. I also like the note about how afraid he was of losing work to power outages. I am an anal backer-upper, so I totally get it, but anything electronic seems less worrisome than the alternative. I have long wondered how writers ever used to leave home in the days of hardcopy. What if your house caught on fire? Or the roof fell in? I have always had this backup plan: I would leave my hardcopy in the refrigerator. I mean dropbox is pretty awesome, but as a fallback, I'm not really doing anything with the meat drawer anyway. 
"Why oh why must I live in a time before cloud storage? Perhaps I am being karmically punished for caring more about my desk than my cute little dog."
The IBM MTST which stands for Mega Ton Snazzy Typewriter.* Costs more than your house. *Actually I have no idea what MTST stands for. The book's author, Len Deighton, explains, "Having been trained as an illustrator I saw no reason to work from start to finish. I reasoned that a painting is not started in the top left hand corner and finished in the bottom right corner: why should a book be put together in a straight line?" Which is a good argument. I'm not sure I'd have had the bravery/foresight/cash involved in knocking out a window of my home in order for a crane to install a 200-pound, $10,000 (1968 dollars, at that) typewriter in my home office, but the idea of processing words strikes me as remarkable even if you'd never heard of it before. You gotta love when the point of the ad copy is: we can't believe it either. IBM evidently never considered that these machines would be used by individuals. I get that these things were huge and expensive, but processing words has always, always struck me as the ultimate killer app. It's not that I can't imagine writing a book longhand or on a typewriter -- I can, and I imagine it was torture. As both a reader and a writer I came of age in a time of flexible, malleable, negotiable text. Messing with text feels like my birthright. It's as hard for me to imagine writing novels without a computer as it was for IBM to imagine me writing them with one, but I'm pretty sure I'd have chosen a different career. I thought a lot a lot a lot a lot about writing and technology for and of and as Goodbye For Now. Technotext is my text. But processing words, well that's just something I take for granted. Me if I had to draft in hardcopy. I also like the note about how afraid he was of losing work to power outages. I am an anal backer-upper, so I totally get it, but anything electronic seems less worrisome than the alternative. I have long wondered how writers ever used to leave home in the days of hardcopy. What if your house caught on fire? Or the roof fell in? I have always had this backup plan: I would leave my hardcopy in the refrigerator. I mean dropbox is pretty awesome, but as a fallback, I'm not really doing anything with the meat drawer anyway. "Why oh why must I live in a time before cloud storage? Perhaps I am being karmically punished for caring more about my desk than my cute little dog."
February 21, 2013
Fumblings
We are moving. Just across town. Less than five miles away. A minor change as far as these things go. But oh, as you know, moving is hell. This is because first you have to cull all your stuff, which is hard. Then you have to pack it, which is hard. Then you have to move it, which is hard. Then you have to unpack it, which is hard. Not to mention the business of procuring a new home and finding someone else to love the one you're in. Not to mention the emotional upheaval involved in the leaving of something as monumental as a home and the adoption of something as monumental as, well, another home. 
Roughly .0007598% of the boxes of books. Too. Many. Books. As you also know, when you move, you turn up a whole bunch of crap that needs to be thrown away (that is, recycled, donated, sold, or thrown away). One of the things I turned up today was the first printed-out drafts of each of my books. The best word for these is "fumblings." They are trying things. They are seeing what happens. They are totally free because there is so much change ahead of them. They are totally lost because they have no idea where they're going. But I do. They are harbingers, but they weren't at the time. They're amazing to look at because they are, indisputably, where you've been, but you just can't imagine how they got where they went from that place where they were. 
Instead of buying boxes and/or begging them from liquor stores as in days of yore, KarmaBoxx delivered these big, strong, clean plastic bins to my door and will pick them up from me after I move. Cheaper, easier, more pleasant, and much greener than cardboard boxes. Cool, no?
At the moment, from the bottom of the box-canyon, it doesn't feel like it, but moving houses is not nearly so dramatic, so changeful, as writing novels. My new house will have all the same words as my current one, the same general plot as well. That's true of the barest percentage of first drafts of my novels. And meanwhile, back at the beginning of book writing again, as I fumble about with the start of #3, nothing is so comforting as those early lost drafts. See where they were? See where they went? Doesn't seem possible, but evidently, it is.
My extremely cute and beloved current home. I'll post a pic of the new one next week when we're actually in it. Meantime, if you're interested in buying a very lovely house in the CD in Seattle, please do be in touch.
Roughly .0007598% of the boxes of books. Too. Many. Books. As you also know, when you move, you turn up a whole bunch of crap that needs to be thrown away (that is, recycled, donated, sold, or thrown away). One of the things I turned up today was the first printed-out drafts of each of my books. The best word for these is "fumblings." They are trying things. They are seeing what happens. They are totally free because there is so much change ahead of them. They are totally lost because they have no idea where they're going. But I do. They are harbingers, but they weren't at the time. They're amazing to look at because they are, indisputably, where you've been, but you just can't imagine how they got where they went from that place where they were. Instead of buying boxes and/or begging them from liquor stores as in days of yore, KarmaBoxx delivered these big, strong, clean plastic bins to my door and will pick them up from me after I move. Cheaper, easier, more pleasant, and much greener than cardboard boxes. Cool, no?At the moment, from the bottom of the box-canyon, it doesn't feel like it, but moving houses is not nearly so dramatic, so changeful, as writing novels. My new house will have all the same words as my current one, the same general plot as well. That's true of the barest percentage of first drafts of my novels. And meanwhile, back at the beginning of book writing again, as I fumble about with the start of #3, nothing is so comforting as those early lost drafts. See where they were? See where they went? Doesn't seem possible, but evidently, it is.
My extremely cute and beloved current home. I'll post a pic of the new one next week when we're actually in it. Meantime, if you're interested in buying a very lovely house in the CD in Seattle, please do be in touch.January 22, 2013
The Next Big Thing: Authors Tagging Authors
Sometime soon, I will write a blog post about Ruth Ozeki, who, ages before we met, changed my life in nearly all the important ways it has been changed. It's a pretty remarkable story, so stay tuned for that. Her new book,
A Tale For The Time Being
, has the greatest title ever and comes out in March, and really you'd think I'd have read an advanced copy by now because honestly I'm just not sure my patience can hold out much longer. Meanwhile, long after she changed my life in all those important ways, we met and became friends, and I'm very honored to be tagged by her in this bloggy-internet-y game of, well, tag. One author answers a list of questions on his/her blog, tagging at the end a handful of other authors who answer the same questions on their blogs, tagging a handful of authors in turn.
In her toss to me, Ruth mentioned that she hoped I'd talk about Goodbye For Now, even though the questions here are really about one's brand new or forthcoming or in progress work, and I shall. For several reasons. One, she asked me to. Two, my new, in progress work is just barely either one and not ready for discussion yet except by people married to me. Three, though I've answered these and similar sorts of questions on lots of other people's blogs, I haven't done so on my own blog. So here's theGoodbye For Now overview right where it belongs.
What's the title of your book (or story)?It's called Goodbye For Now. I'd titled it Dead Mail, but my publisher didn't think putting the word "dead" in the title held much wide appeal.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?It's a love story about a software engineer who invents a way for people to email -- and eventually even video chat -- with their dead loved ones.
What genre does your book fall under?It's fiction. Literary fiction I guess. At first I thought it was going to be sci-fi or at least speculative fiction, but in the end, the technology in the book just isn't that much of a stretch of the technology we have now and the uses it's being put to.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?Represented by an agency and publisher, here and around the world. Here, it's Doubleday/Random House.
Where did the idea come from for the book?At the beginning, it was frustration with Facebook and all the time we all spend online these days. I kept having the sense that the time and energy I was spending keeping in virtual touch with people I didn't even know was time and energy I was taking away from keeping in actual touch with my close friends and family. That's not what Goodbye For Now is about, but that is where the idea came from. Crankiness. Crankiness and Connectivity. (Hey, that would have been a good title too.)
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?Film rights have been optioned. Very exciting. The folks working on the movie are just amazing. It's great talking to them. The best part of the movie is it has almost nothing to do with me. Watching someone else take this project on -- including the casting -- is just incredible. I, for instance, have no idea who should play Sam and Meredith, so I'm delighted to leave that in the capable hands of the filmmakers. I have, however, been casting my fantasy version of the film with dead actors -- since Goodbye For Nowis all about virtually recreating the dead -- and I think Jimmy Stewart as Sam, Natalie Wood as Meredith, and Cary Grant as Dash would be lovely. Plus then Natalie could tell us what really happened.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?This is always a harder question to answer than it seems. Four months. It took me four months. Plus the summer before during which I wrote about one hundred pages that had to be more or less thrown out. Plus years and years worth of ruminating, scheming, dreaming, planning, reading, and figuring. And then four months.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?My grandmother and I were very close, and we emailed each other a lot. When she died, I had this idea that a good programmer could write software that could fake emails from her. I sat with that idea for years, convinced it was a great idea for a product, before I realized that I'm not a software engineer nor an inventor nor a developer, and that this was a good idea, not in real life, but for a novel. And luckily, I am a novelist.
Right, so tagging. Remember freeze tag? Remember TV tag? Man I sucked at TV tag. Anyway...
My friend and mentor, Jennie Shortridge, has her fifth (!) novel coming out this April, Love, Water, Memory . Great title, great book, great person all around. She blogs here.
My new friend Tara Conklin's debut novel, The House Girl, releases next month. I've read it, and it's wonderful. She blogs here.
In her toss to me, Ruth mentioned that she hoped I'd talk about Goodbye For Now, even though the questions here are really about one's brand new or forthcoming or in progress work, and I shall. For several reasons. One, she asked me to. Two, my new, in progress work is just barely either one and not ready for discussion yet except by people married to me. Three, though I've answered these and similar sorts of questions on lots of other people's blogs, I haven't done so on my own blog. So here's theGoodbye For Now overview right where it belongs.
What's the title of your book (or story)?It's called Goodbye For Now. I'd titled it Dead Mail, but my publisher didn't think putting the word "dead" in the title held much wide appeal.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?It's a love story about a software engineer who invents a way for people to email -- and eventually even video chat -- with their dead loved ones.
What genre does your book fall under?It's fiction. Literary fiction I guess. At first I thought it was going to be sci-fi or at least speculative fiction, but in the end, the technology in the book just isn't that much of a stretch of the technology we have now and the uses it's being put to.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?Represented by an agency and publisher, here and around the world. Here, it's Doubleday/Random House.
Where did the idea come from for the book?At the beginning, it was frustration with Facebook and all the time we all spend online these days. I kept having the sense that the time and energy I was spending keeping in virtual touch with people I didn't even know was time and energy I was taking away from keeping in actual touch with my close friends and family. That's not what Goodbye For Now is about, but that is where the idea came from. Crankiness. Crankiness and Connectivity. (Hey, that would have been a good title too.)
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?Film rights have been optioned. Very exciting. The folks working on the movie are just amazing. It's great talking to them. The best part of the movie is it has almost nothing to do with me. Watching someone else take this project on -- including the casting -- is just incredible. I, for instance, have no idea who should play Sam and Meredith, so I'm delighted to leave that in the capable hands of the filmmakers. I have, however, been casting my fantasy version of the film with dead actors -- since Goodbye For Nowis all about virtually recreating the dead -- and I think Jimmy Stewart as Sam, Natalie Wood as Meredith, and Cary Grant as Dash would be lovely. Plus then Natalie could tell us what really happened.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?This is always a harder question to answer than it seems. Four months. It took me four months. Plus the summer before during which I wrote about one hundred pages that had to be more or less thrown out. Plus years and years worth of ruminating, scheming, dreaming, planning, reading, and figuring. And then four months.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?My grandmother and I were very close, and we emailed each other a lot. When she died, I had this idea that a good programmer could write software that could fake emails from her. I sat with that idea for years, convinced it was a great idea for a product, before I realized that I'm not a software engineer nor an inventor nor a developer, and that this was a good idea, not in real life, but for a novel. And luckily, I am a novelist.
Right, so tagging. Remember freeze tag? Remember TV tag? Man I sucked at TV tag. Anyway...
My friend and mentor, Jennie Shortridge, has her fifth (!) novel coming out this April, Love, Water, Memory . Great title, great book, great person all around. She blogs here.
My new friend Tara Conklin's debut novel, The House Girl, releases next month. I've read it, and it's wonderful. She blogs here.
November 8, 2011
Paperback!
The paperback of The Atlas of Love releases today! Find it in a bookstore near you. It's a great choice for book clubs for the following three reasons:
1) It's easy to read -- funny, smart, good characters, and a page-turner.
2) There's much in it to discuss -- lots of timely, topical controversy and intrigue.
3) I'll gladly visit your book club -- in person or virtually (depending on where you are and where I am).
And stay tuned for exciting news about book number two which will also be accompanied by a new website and a new (more frequently updated -- 'cause there's only one way to go, right?) blog.
1) It's easy to read -- funny, smart, good characters, and a page-turner.
2) There's much in it to discuss -- lots of timely, topical controversy and intrigue.
3) I'll gladly visit your book club -- in person or virtually (depending on where you are and where I am).
And stay tuned for exciting news about book number two which will also be accompanied by a new website and a new (more frequently updated -- 'cause there's only one way to go, right?) blog.
June 22, 2011
Titles at The Awl
This is what I'm supposed to be doing with this blog, right? Reposting and/or linking to things I blog and write in other places? Here's an article I wrote about being forced to change my novel's title.
The Awl
is my new favorite thing to read online. Totally addictive.
April 22, 2011
Thrust Upon 'Em
Tomorrow night I'm doing an event I'm really looking forward to. Reading in front of people -- public speaking/performing of any kind really -- makes me so nervous that these events are hard for me. Everyone I tell this to says incredulously, "But you're a teacher." This is true and a good point, but it's so different somehow. I can't really explain it except to say that writing is an awfully solitary activity to do as performance. I am not self-conscious when I teach, at least not much. I am super, uber, total self-conscious on a stage of any kind at all.
Anyway, tomorrow's event is less me, more performance, more wine, more friends, more Shakespeare -- a good combo. Actors will be performing chapter two of The Atlas of Love , and though I'll be there to help, I won't be the main attraction. There will be other actors, other books and readers, plus music from my fabulously talented husband (signing Hamlet), plus lots of wine, plus Shakespeare's birthday. I defy you to think of a cooler event.
Many cheers to Debut Lit for making this happen and for supporting and celebrating debut authors and for realizing that just because traditional readings are sometimes boring, they needn't be. We're writers and actors and music makers after all -- a little creativity seems in order, no?
Please join us!!!
April 23, 7 -9 p.m. FREE
Bartholomew Winery
3100 Airport Way South, Seattle, WA 98134
(in the old Rainier Brewery building)
Anyway, tomorrow's event is less me, more performance, more wine, more friends, more Shakespeare -- a good combo. Actors will be performing chapter two of The Atlas of Love , and though I'll be there to help, I won't be the main attraction. There will be other actors, other books and readers, plus music from my fabulously talented husband (signing Hamlet), plus lots of wine, plus Shakespeare's birthday. I defy you to think of a cooler event.
Many cheers to Debut Lit for making this happen and for supporting and celebrating debut authors and for realizing that just because traditional readings are sometimes boring, they needn't be. We're writers and actors and music makers after all -- a little creativity seems in order, no?
Please join us!!!
April 23, 7 -9 p.m. FREE
Bartholomew Winery
3100 Airport Way South, Seattle, WA 98134
(in the old Rainier Brewery building)
