Randy Susan Meyers's Blog, page 56

When to Hold Em, When to Fold Em: Books in the Drawer

How do you know when to put a book away away and when to keep on plugging? Is it an ingrained personality trait (stubbornness?) that keeps one going? Does an innate wisdom kick in and tell you to give it up? How do you know whether you’re throwing good money after bad or giving up too soon?

Arthur Golden spent ten years working on Memoirs of A Geisha, which then spent 2 years on the NYT bestseller list and sold millions of copies. Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne passed an ultimately never-published book back and forth for years. Bestselling author Janet Evanovich admits to having three books in the drawer that will never see light.

Nicole Bernier, Beyond The Margins, reveals that Amy Bloom yanked back a novel which was accepted for publication, admitting in an interview, “It was my warm-up … It wasn’t anything of which I had to be deeply ashamed. But it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. Once I saw that, then I wanted it not in print.”

I have three books in the drawer (not counting half-hearted starts, odd-ball attempts, and a co-authored near-miss.) One of the three is from many, many years ago and I would be terrified to open it. After I finished that book, someone convinced me to show it to their ‘connected-published-cousin-in-law’, who, after he read it, told me directly that it was awful and a waste of his time. (Poor guy, huh?) His particular tough-love sent me away from the keyboard for years.

My second book-in-the drawer I think of as part of my trilogy:

Book One: The book in which I learned proper techniques for sharper writing and characterization, but forgot about incorporating sub-plots. I carry much tenderness for this book, for the characters, and am still in love with my opening paragraphs. I got an agent with this novel (not my current agent.) While this book was out on submission, I began writing my next one, which I quickly saw was a better book. This was:

Book Two: The book where I learned multiple points of view and how to weave major and minor plot-points, but where I didn’t learn that tiptoeing and/or being polite can weaken a book. I still had a reader-over-my-shoulder with this one. (I’m still attached to the story and the characters.) While this book was out on submission (former agent and I having made the decision to pull Book One in favor of Book Two) I began working on Book Three.

Then, in the midst of all this, my agent (who was concentrating on YA) and I amicably parted ways. Soon after I finished:

Book Three: The one where I became published: The Murderer’s Daughters. After all my downs and downs, this book sold quickly. As the long publishing process unfolded, I began my next book. Why did I choose to begin a new work and not return to my previous novels? First, I had a new story bubbling to get out. Second, I needed to be certain I could do the proper surgery needed to resurrect either novel.

Arthur Golden tore his book apart after six years: changed point of view, where the story began, and God know what else. Obviously, he was able to approach it with the cold eyes one needs to perform a truly great revision. I wrote Book’s One and Two quickly and without the store of knowledge, technique and voice that now comes to me with more easily than it did previously. If I resuscitate either of these books, I’ll have to be laser-cold and them as dispassionately as I would a novel picked randomly from a bookstore shelf.

Letting go of a book takes a certain kind of courage—the ability to consider those years as a self-schooling. Even if the story never sees publication, the time put in fed one’s future work. However, putting in the years, as Golden did, to shape and craft and stay with a work takes a different kind of talent, patience and love. Perhaps it is a personality test—I know myself well. Maybe it wasn’t courage that led to my shoving my books in the proverbial drawer, but impatience with the idea of ripping apart and refashioning them.

Possibly, inner-tuning forks tell us when to move on and when to hold our cards. Despite loving Book One, I think (despite those fantastic two paragraphs and all those slick, funny lines) it will sleep with the fishes. Much as I heave a great lazy sigh breath of ‘not again’ at the idea of cutting and then re-stitching Book Two, it continues calling me.

Friends have gone in both directions—starting over or holding on. At least three writer-friends I know are reaping the rewards of sticking with it. Others are feeling free and hopeful because they’ve started new projects.

How did you make the decision to keep on going or start over? What brand of courage did you need to grab? How do you find the strength to let go?

Maybe I’ll just grab that first sentence and incorporate it into Book Four.

Fat is Good for You & Chocolate is a Vegetable

“As they age, women who are overweight often look younger than other women.”

“Overweight people are no more likely than those of normal weight to die of cancer or cardiovascular disease.”

“During a ten-year time span, there was a reduced risk of dying for people in their 70’s who were overweight, compared to those of normal weight.”

“Doctors who study osteoporosis say a little extra weight may help strengthen bones.”

I knew there was a reason we said yes to a trial Wall Street Journal Subscription. In an article titled: A Case for Those Extra Ten Pounds, Katherine Rosman (here-to-fore to be known as the beloved Katherine Rosman) shared the above and other women-friendly news from a variety of reputable sources, including the Archives of Dermatology and the CDC.

Ladies, get out your stretch pants.

Now, they were talking the extra 10-15, not 100. And, naturally, the gold standard fat is not the kind I carry (one wants fat on the hips and thighs, not the tummy. Damn, I failed good fat!) But along with the above good news, Rosman writes . . . are you ready for this:

“A little extra fat may also act as a natural face lift . . . Indeed many of the newest cosmetic procedures aim to mimic the role of fat it the face, instead of simply filling in lines and wrinkles.”

Does this mean that Wednesday can once again be Prince Spaghetti Day?

Then, like a cherry on the sundae (which we can also eat) Rosman offers this from an expert:

“ ‘a little physical activity’ twice a week was enough to ameliorate some of the harmful effects of a sedentary lifestyle.”

What next? Walking is more effective in fighting disease if coupled with licking an ice-cream cone?

You probably think I’m playing a late April Fool, right? Or maybe it’s my plot. Put an extra ten pounds on all my buddies, and then, like the one-eyed woman in the kingdom of the blind, I’ll rule. Hey, I’d link you, but the online WSJ requires a password. However, there is a 2-week free subscription. Go ahead. Check the April 27th issue.

Oh, but before you joyfully reach for another Ring Ding, in the same issue, Jennifer Corbett Dooren writes “People who eat more chocolate are more likely to be depressed than people who eat less chocolate, a new study found”


But, she goes on to write, is this because depressed people turn to chocolate or that chocolate causes depression? It seemed that one of the doctors involved in the study strongly believes the former and recommends a daily moderate serving of chocolate, telling the Journal, “I tell all my patients, chocolate is a vegetable.”

So, I ask you ladies. What would you rather read? The latest diet in Vogue or the WSJ’s fun-filled Women-in-Wonderland news?

I know what side my bread is buttered on.

P.S. On behalf of truth is posting, I must add this: the same issue of the paper offers a pro and con case for getting a tan. Wait a minute. Isn’t the Journal a kind of conservative paper? Didn’t Murdoch buy it?

Is this a plot to get rid of us? Ten men to every woman? Good-bye feminism? Hello Handmaid’s Tale?

Naw.

Pass the chips. And don’t get any Bain de Soleil on them. And gimme my Journal.

Musing on The Muse (and the Marketplace) : A Writer's Conference

The first time I went to Muse and The Marketplace, Grub Street’s annual conference, I was so frightened that I could barely hold to the promise I’d made to myself: to speak with one agent. That’s all, I promised myself. One agent.

I did it. Nothing came of it, but I did it, and believe me, that was pushing myself way out of my comfort zone. I sat at one of the tables where you paid fifty dollars to sit with authors, editors and agents. I remember none of them, because I held my breath the entire time, certain they wondered why this middle-aged lady was shelling out fifty bucks when it was so obvious that she was a complete and utter loser.

I spoke to two people:

1) A man who told me he was writing a (humor) book on menstruation (really) called “Riding the Red Pony.” I am not lying.

2) I briefly spoke with a young woman, Becky Tuch, who was young and beautiful and I was certain was wondered why this middle-aged complete loser was at this conference, rather than home fluffing pillows or ironing her velour pantsuit.

But I did listen to Andre Dubus III, Matthew Pearl and Gish Jen as they spoke about their lives as writers, and though I felt very nose-pressed-against-the-glass, I felt myself being pulled ever more towards my goal and dream of publishing a novel. For me, there were no celebrities, no actors, or rock stars, who could excite me as did these writers.

Last weekend, I had the great good fortune of being on a panel at the Muse. Even more fortunate for me, it was a panel led by the most generous of writers, Jenna Blum, to whom I owe a great deal after having the great good fortune of participating in her Master Novel workshop at Grub Street.

Jenna, like so many at The Muse, is a giving writer, who understands the importance of putting out a hand after her own success (having become a NYT bestseller for her first book, Those Who Save Us, her legions of fans await the May release of The Stormchasers.)

Lunchtime, I sat with Elinor Lipman (at a table where others were paying fifty dollars—though I am certain it was a connection with Elinor, the editors and the agents they lusted for) who was as accessible and caring as she is multi-published.

At a party the previous evening, I met one of my all-time writing heroes—Dr. Pauline Chen, author of Final Exam, who, as she listened to me gush, put forward the warmth of one’s dream mother and who seemed genuinely thrilled about my book.

The Muse and The Marketplace is sometimes a place where one’s nose is pressed against the glass, and yet it is also a great equalizer. It’s where NYT bestsellers and multi-prize winners happily offer advice to those still climbing the ladder—no matter their age.

Actually, age disappears with the shared joy of books and writing. For instance, that beautiful young woman, Becky Tuch? We ended up sharing the joys of Jenna’s Master Novel workshops, being in a writing group together and are now partners with 11 others in a multi-writer blog.

Oh, and we’re also friends.

Thank you Grub Street. You’ve supported and grown a community of writers in Boston and beyond (neophyte to Pulitzer Prize winners) with respect and love for all.

Finally, STILL ALICE

Sometimes books sit on one’s to-read pile too long. Their cover becomes too familiar and perhaps you’ve heard so much about the book you feel as though you’ve read it already—perhaps by osmosis.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Still Alice waited too long. On the other hand, it was such a magnificent read, that last week, when my energy flagged and my attention felt less than flea-like, I was grateful that I’d been so stupid, because just when I needed it, this book swept me up and called to me at every free moment.

This story of Alice Howland, a fifty-year old Harvard professor, diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is a novel of family, marriage and motherhood as much as a story of this disease. Lisa Genova wraps the two tracks of the book—living inside Alzheimer’s, and living with your family’s reactions to your disease—seamlessly. This is first and foremost a beautiful novel. Then, second, it is a strikingly well rendered primer on the disease.

It seems to me, that most of what I’ve read about Alzheimer’s (and granted, it is not a topic I’ve searched out) has concentrated on the tragic consequences that the family suffers. Except for two pages, where we are given the briefest of Alice’s husband’s point of view, Still Alice stays inside Alice’s head. We are given access to Alice’s emotion, her secret plans, and most amazingly, taken with her as her disease progresses.

The searing message I took away from Genova’s book was not the horror of the disease—I’d already imagined that—it was the humanity of the disease. It was the awareness that moments of the horror of confusion and humiliation could be followed by times of happiness. I learned that family and friends (and making new friends) is as important, or more so, during this time as ever. I learned that patients with Alzheimer’s will lose their abilities to perform as they once did—but they retain their need of love and their ability to give love.

The title of this book is as apt a title as I’ve ever read. Alice Howland’s life has changed. Her work world is shattered and she, her husband, and her three grown children must build a new paradigm of family.

But she is ‘still Alice.’

A brilliant book. Thank you, Lisa Genova for writing it.

No Heroes, No Villians: THE SUICIDE INDEX

“In the airport, coming home from vacation, he stops at a kiosk and buys grapefruits, which he arranges to have sent to his daughters. They will stumble over the crates waiting on their porches, when they get home from his funeral.”

Thus opens this stark and haunting memoir, written in prose that surrounded me like clear clean water.

If the best books tell truth the best, then this memoir climbs to the top of the pile SUICIDE INDEX doesn’t necessarily tell universal truths, or even grand lofty truths, it tells the intense truth of Joan Wickersham’s experience of her family, and through her generous helping of genuineness—with no moments where this reader felt she was being fed anything shined up for the audience—the author gifts us with a read that is so present, so authentic, that I felt as though I walked beside Wickersham on her painful journey.

SUICIDE INDEX has no villains. It has no heroes (except perhaps for the mostly off-stage father of the suicide—dead long before the act takes place.) Chapters are presented as an index; a conceit of objectivity, which allows Wickersham distance to delve as honestly while taking nothing from the reader:

Suicide:

act of

attempt to imagine, 1—4

bare-bones account, 5—6

immediate aftermath, 7—34

In this before and after story of a well-loved father, the author attempts to make sense of his final act. It is also the story of Wickersham’s bristling and uneasy relationship with her mother.

The story of her father’s suicide is presented bluntly:

Wickersham’s father makes coffee.

He leaves the usual morning cup for his wife, the author’s mother.

He goes into his study and puts a gun to his mouth.

He leaves no note.

Wickersham searches for clues: Was it a brain tumor? Money owed from a sour business deal? His long-hidden depression? Did the mix of his abusive father’s emotional and physical violence and his own perceived and real failures finally form a poison strong enough to eat away at the protective lining (wife, daughters, grandson, brother, etc.) which should have precluded suicide as an option?

The twisted love Wickersham’s mother has for her husband—her vocal struggle with his never successful, and in the end tragically unsuccessful, attempts at business victory, at odds with her love and loyalty—is presented as fact, never as blame. The reader watches in horror as Wickersham’s father repeatedly tries to please his hypercritical wife. He rarely does. Even after his death she resents his stumbling. In the section labeled Suicide: life summarized in an attempt to illuminate, the author writes:

After he died, when we learned that the gun malfunctioned lightly—it put a bullet into his brain but did not fire with enough force to blow his head apart as might have been expected—my mother said, “Jesus Christ, he couldn’t even do that right.”

Joan Wickersham didn’t find the definitive answer to why her father killed himself. In the end no note was found, no secret unearthed that could explain his actions enough for the author to say, ‘oh, so that’s what happened,’ but she does a spectacular job of taking us with her on a journey not dissimilar to one most of us must take. Perhaps, like Wickersham, we try to learn why good parents killed themselves, or we question why parents couldn’t take care of themselves or us, some of us need to know how violence became such a constant visitor in our home. Or why we were neglected. But in the end, if we are lucky, we, like Wickersham, shape our past into something we can hold in our hand and our memory, and from which we can learn some measure of distance, despite how it pulls us back. Even with tragedy behind us, we learn to live with the dissonant rhythm of building our lives forward; even knowing our past always burrows inside.

Que Será, Será: Debuting a Novel--What happens?

At first writing seems the perfect job for a control freak. You are alone. At your desk. Making your very own world.These characters you’ve dreamed up, they JUMP when you say JUMP. Okay, perhaps they squirm away from your outline a bit. Or they do that thing where they start musing about the time in high school when they almost dated that awful guy and didn’t he have the worst clothes ever, and you gotta pull them back—but for the most part, everyone know who’s in charge.

Enjoy this.

Make it last.

Do not go to the next step until you are sure you have done all you can to make the greatest book you could dream up, write down, and edit.

Because now comes the part where the control freak in you might just freak out .

Let’s see. Take this simple test to determine how much you’ll enjoy experience of getting published:

1) When I need someone to help me take an important professional step, I like to:

a) Send out endless emails and letters to complete strangers so they can judge me!

b) Conduct extensive research to identify the best 35 candidates, hoping this will ensure a good match.

c) Pick the one person I want to work with based on my carefully formed opinions.

2) After procuring an agent (see above) I want to find a publisher based on:

a) Hey, whoever is willing to print my words is okay with me! Throw the manuscript out there and see what sticks! My agent doesn’t even have to tell me who is getting it.

b) Work in tandem with my agent, knowing that ultimately she will make the best choices.

c) Tell my agent exactly who I think will do the best by my book and have her write the letter I’ve dictated.

3) After my book is published, my plan is to:

a) Seeing that book out there is enough! I don’t care what anyone says about it, as long as I can hold a printed copy in my hands.

b) Work with my publicist constantly—knowing that I must also work on my own seven days a week for a while in order to get the attention of readers.

c) Have my publicist get reviews in all the major papers and follow up on every lead I suggest. Oh, and Oprah before she leaves. My book is PERFECT for her. And Terri Gross. And . . .

If you have all ‘a’ answers—you’re sweating it too little. The Universe may come through for you, but probably you shouldn’t count on it.You may need to learn some techniques for worrying. (I’m available for tutoring.)

If you have all ‘b’ answers, okay. You probably have a realistic idea of just how much compromise and work is ahead of you.

If you have all ‘c’ answers, well—prepare for agita.

This is what I’ve learned, 3 tiny months after my book launch. Debuting a book is similar to taking your beloved, cherished baby to market and putting her before a crowd of strangers, who plan to nudge her into shape and tell the world if she’s good enough to make it or if you should perhaps try making another new and better baby.

1) As a very smart agent said at last year’s Muse and The Marketplace Writer’s Conference: “No one will care about your book as much as you do. No one.” Thus, you can’t expect anyone will work as hard as you will. Lesson learned: if you want your book to get noticed, you have to be a partner in letting the world know.

2) Publishing is a long process with lots and lots of people involved. Many of them don’t care what you want and it all happens without your input. Waiting is what happens between looking for an agent and holding your beautiful book. Lesson learned: This is an excellent time to start drafting your next book. Because once you’re published, you will spend all your time promoting your book and yourself. Leading to:

3) Everyone has an opinion. For instance, I was having a massage: it was 3 months post-launch; tension had fused my shoulders to my ears. All I wanted was an hour of unkinking. My masseuse thought it was a good time to share her opinion of my character’s choices. Lesson learned: Once your book is out there, everyone wants to tell you what they think.

You will get reviews so good you will want to send them a dozen roses, chocolates and wash their car. Lesson learned: I’ve been told this would be inappropriate and perhaps punishable under stalking laws.

You will get reviews so hurtful you will want to hide in bed for a week. Lesson learned: There is a pot for every cover—but no cover fits all pots.

Catastrophes will happen: bookstores won’t receive your book in time for your reading; a glitch will send your Amazon page off-line the week you’re on NPR, an ice-storm will hit the night of your biggest event.

Blessings will rain down: readers will write emails that will warm you for days, long-lost friends will contact you with loving messages, unexpected kindnesses will unfold at that library you’re visiting and that bookstore where you’re reading, bookstore staff will knock themselves out for you, friends and family will hold your hand and hug you and provide so much love you think you’ll explode.

The good far outweighs the scary parts. And it is a miracle to share your work with the world. Wow, people, I mean strangers, are really reading your words! This is the career you’ve dreamed of.

You really are the luckiest person in the world.

But you gotta give up control. Once your baby’s out there—everyone owns it.

Que será, será

What will be, will be.

The Sticky Resin of History

Can writers riff or am I just a wanna-be musician? Today’s post in Beyond The Margins by my friend and member of my long-term writer’s group and multi-writer blog (and fantastic writer) Javed Jahangir, stopped me in my morning compu-reads, where the daily Beyond post is always a first stop. No one but Javed could come up with a line like:

“ . . . were we simply writers unable to snap off our stories from the sticky resin of history?”

Of course, I stole it for this post.

Javed writes of the difficulties of knowing how to tackle one’s history when writing. I think this is something that can be looked at large or small. There is the history of a country that one carries within one—even when leaving that land—and there is the history of a family which one carries—not matter where you travel.

In his piece, Javed references the push and pull of revealing all of one’s ethnic and cultural past. Is that not also true when revealing our family histories? Do we spill it out, perhaps all gussied up in fictional ribbons, or do we tamp it down and let it spill out in odd moments? (For instance when the vampire-hero begins musing on his over-bearing father at the moment of clamping his teeth into the heroine’s neck.)

When I wrote The Murderer’s Daughter, I drew on a history of violence in my family—but I don’t want to be known as “the domestic violence writer.” The novel I am currently pushing to it’s conclusion addresses infidelity and the waves of collateral damage it engenders. Will it make me a “family issues writer?” An ‘infidelity writer.”

So far, there is always a Jewish character or family in the mix of my writing. Thus, will I be labeled a “Jewish writer” even when my Jewish families break all stereotypes of what might be considered typical?

Javed has no final answers, any more than I do—though I find it interesting how some are labeled: Jewish writer, African-American writer, Bangladeshi writer, women writer, but rarely do you see white-man-writer. Does this make the WMW the norm and all else outside the norm?

Just asking.

Oh, and since Javed’s piece is so extraordinary, I’m making sure to guest post it here very soon. Thank you, Javed for allowing me to do that.

Using Pain Sauce in Novels

“Wondering how many powerful and heartbreaking novels would not have been written if there were no dysfunctional families." Kris

The above was the Facebook ‘status’ of a dear friend (in real life and Facebook.) An artist of many genres, she's one of the very best and constant readers I know. I do believe Kris could have a library operating just for her.

So, I’ve been thinking about what she wrote. Do writers of dreadful happenings all came from dysfunctional families? I wrote a book that begins with two sisters who witness their father murder their mother and goes on to explore the myriad ways this event shapes their lives. Did my father kill my mother?

No. But he tried to and my sister and I were there. My sister let him in (after being told ‘don’t open the door for your father’) and somewhere in the background I stood, a silent four-year-old. Did that shape my work? Oh, I am quite certain it did. Even though it is only my first chapter that holds any real family DNA, the ongoing emotional tenor and the themes are all ripples from my past: invisibility, abandonment, neglect—there is much that was drawn on.

How does this happen, this subtle weaving of truth and imagination? Does it always happen? One wouldn’t know without x-raying each writer’s past, but it’s a question I wonder about when reading a great book. What was that writer tapping into when they brought such depth to the page? Can a wrenching book be written without the writer taking a visit to their soul? In what ways do writers transmogrify facts into fiction?

For me, it’s not the individual events of my past that matter. I don’t want splay my family or me on the page, but I am certain I steal subject matter from the family tree and then, of course, blow things way out of proportion. A nasty-tempered uncle becomes the wicked aunt who abandons her nieces, just as one’s once-straying boyfriend becomes a larger-than-life monster of an adulterer.

Perhaps it isn’t that every writer of seething emotion needs to have experienced a war of family emotions, but that they need to be willing to access and admit (to themselves) the darkest parts of their lives. Then they must make it into a ‘what if’ intense enough to grip the heart. And then spill it back out for readers.

For me, it was only when life became calm that I could walk back into the storm. For others, I think it’s writing it down that makes them calm.

And the reader in me? She needs a hefty dose of other people’s words to get through the day and the best words are the ones that marinated in a whole bunch of pain sauce and then simmered down to the wisdom and excitement that makes me turn the pages.

Writing (and reading) About Sex

I tried to think of a, um, sexier title for this post, but they all sounded, um, icky, and the last thing I want when I’m writing about sex is an ick factor. Writing about icky sex: terrific. Writing icky about sex: terrible.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since Pia Lindstrom, an interviewer from Sirius Radio, shocked me out of my I-can-handle-any-question mood when she asked something to the effect of:

So, I was surprised by how much sex is in your book. You did it so well. People say it’s hard to write about sex. How did you do it?

Um. Um. Um. Now there was a question I hadn’t been asked before. Sex is included in my work. (Ask my mother-in-law. When she read one of my earlier works—an in-the-drawer-book—she told my husband that I wrote ‘sex novels.’)

Wait! Before you run to the bookstore in hopes of getting a fun sex novel, save your money. Buy something by Jackie Collins. The sex I wanted to convey in The Murderer’s Daughters was the gritty emotional side of the bedroom; the stuff we hate to admit is true.

I had to answer Pia (and fast.) How did I write about sex?

By praying no one would ask me about it.

By telling myself that my husband knows I am not writing about him (except for the good parts, of course.)

By realizing that writing about sex isn’t about insert Tab A into Slot B—it’s about the emotion behind the writhing.

By remembering what Elizabeth Benedict said in her wonderful book, The Joy of Writing Sex:

Benedict: A good sex scene is not always about good sex, but it is always an example of good writing.

It’s easier to write about sex when it’s ‘bad,’ when the character is damaging herself through the act, or using sex as panacea or cover-up, than it is to write about good sex. Perhaps it’s a variation on Tolstoy’s famous aphorism about happy families vs. unhappy families. All fantastic sex is remarkably similar in how it lights up the brain, while “I gotta get through this somehow” sex is a textured way to reveal the problems in a relationship, which leads to Benedict’s next point:

Benedict: A good sex scene should always connect to the larger concerns of the work.

When writing about my main characters, sisters Lulu and Merry, I wanted to show them reacting in wildly divergent ways to the same trauma (the murder of their mother by their father.) Naturally, their experiences of sexuality were defined by that horrendous act. If I wanted to reveal the ways they were affected by witnessing their mother’s death, I needed to go into their bedrooms, and not in a polite manner.

Benedict: The needs, impulses and histories of your characters should drive a sex scene.

Most readers can tell when in a sex scene, the writer has stepped away from the character and inserted a boilerplate moment. It’s easy to understand why a writer might avoid writing deeply about sex. Nobody’s comfortable with the idea that readers who know them might think they are reading a page from the writer’s life.

Which means, if you want to be true to your reader, you have two choices. 1) Take the readers off your shoulder and be willing to go all the way (sorry about that—couldn’t resist) in revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly, or, 2) Skip the sex and use the f a d e – o u t.

Benedict: The relationship your characters have to one another—whether they are adulters or strangers on a train—should exert more influence on how you write about their sexual encounters than should any anatomical detail.

Can I just say how much I hate clinical words in novels? I want writers to capture the inner monologue so well that there is only a very small space between character and reader. Thus, for me, the clinical terms leap out from a page as though the writer is shouting. It becomes a ‘look at me’ moment, rather than a ‘be in the character’ moment. Unless, of course, the character is a sex-ed teacher.

What goes on in a character’s mind as Tab A meets Slot B? Are they actually describing their partner’s body? In The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey, the following passage of a couple embarking on their first sexual encounter reveals the emotional and physical relationship of this particular couple without a single clinical detail:

From then on it was all haste and confusion. He undid a few buttons on her blouse and left her to manage the rest while he wrestled with his own clothes. She undressed quickly, eager to be hidden between the sheets. Edward, clumsy with his underwear, took a few seconds longer. Then he was beside her, the whole shocking length of him, and they were clinging to each other. It seemed to Dara that they were struggling to surmount some huge barrier—the barrier between not being and being lovers—and they must do whatever necessary to get over it.

From this passage, the reader immediately knows that Dara is not chasing an orgasm and that she is bringing to this encounter a truckload of emotional baggage.

This is what I want from sex scenes—secret glimpses into the soul, which are possible only at our most vulnerable moments: when we break apart and when we come together—and sex is often a time when those moments collapse into one.

Writing great sex is sort of like having great sex, I suppose—losing yourself in the truth of the moment. Except when you’re writing, you get to go back and edit it until the moments are just exactly what you want.

IMPERFECT ENDINGS

Seven years ago my mother called my sister and me to tell us she had cancer. The doctor gave her less than a year to live. Despite years of complicated mother-daughter relationships, we turned our lives around in moments and flew down from New York and Boston to be with her.

Our mother had never been one to bear up under pain and she dreaded the idea of being dependant. Hours after we arrived in Florida, she made us promise to kill her when “it became too much.”

When we tried to talk rationally—using words like illegal and jail—she gave us the same demanding glare we’d known since childhood.

You have to help me, she insisted. You girls know I can’t stand pain. Promise! Promise me now!

We, of course, promised. My sister and I had never been able to withstand the glare, and we weren’t about to rebel in the face of her imminent suffering. We did however, as always, use the only weapon at our disposal: the darkest of humor.

I’ll tell you what, my sister said. How about I kill you now?

My mother, as always, frowned and then smiled and began laughing.

You girls are terrible, she said through her head-shaking chuckles.

We relaxed, all comforted by the familiar routine.

In Imperfect Endings, a memoir of daughters being asked to help plan their mother’s suicide, author Zoe Fitzgerald Carter writes the following when revealing how her husband and she wrestled with Carter’s need to help her mother:

How long are you going to run to her every time she calls?

Closing my eyes, I imagine my mother lying in her bed, lonely and afraid. Not of death but of the long ugly road leading to death. And because I am her daughter, both by birth and by design, I’m trapped on that road with her until one of us, or perhaps both of us, can engineer her release. Which mean that, despite my husband’s anger and my children’s unhappiness, the answer is: Always. I will always run to her when she calls.

Imperfect Endings is about that never perfect relationship between mothers and daughters, about how even the closest maternal love is rocked by the push-pull of a mother needing a daughter’s help and a daughter’s need for unwavering support and love. Mixed in, there is often a daughter’s wish to know her mother’s true self and a mother’s wont to hide it.

Towards the end of the book, after the author reads some of her mother’s correspondence (as her mother sleeps,) Carter writes:

Wiping my eyes, I replace the letter in the envelope and go over and place it on her table. I lie down next to her on the bed, looking around the room and out through the windows as if to see and memorize what she sees lying here day after day, because I’m afraid she’s going to leave before I know who she is, and I will be left with only words and images, the mere outlines of my mother’s life.

I stopped at that passage, breathless with a pop of recognition—remembering how little I knew my mother, but how unlike the author, I was afraid of seeing too deeply into her soul, frightened of having to take her pain. At the same time, I realized how difficult it is to reveal sadness to my own daughters and how much I want to wrap all my experiences into a ‘story.’

Zoe FitzGerald Carter is a fearless writer, going deep into a family experience none of us escape, but few of us must face so head on.

My own mother died over three years after her diagnosis. Her death was as lucky in some ways as it could be for her. Cancer never overtook her. She suffered none of the indignities of treatments. She died suddenly and unexpectedly. In one last act of care giving, my sister found my mother and, as always, took care of everything.

Carter, noting her mother’s inability to acknowledge her fears or concerns, referencing Stephen Levine, reflects that people die how they live. This is probably true, but reading this book, I found a soothing corollary. Perhaps when we sit with the people we love as they die, we can change if we want.

Carter and her sisters find their ways to comforting their mother, even as it rips them apart, even as they don’t want to let their mother go on her self-chosen time-table. Imperfect Endings provided a perfect read and I thank Zoe FitzGerald Carter for bringing me into her mother’s home.