A.J. Race's Blog, page 2

Writing Nook

For many years now, I have never had what one would call a proper writing space. For a while, I wrote pretty much wherever I could set up my laptop, which more often than not meant I was doing a lot of writing in bed (not great for the back).

Currently my writing space consists of a series of incongruous items, fashioned into what I call a desk, but what is in reality the top of a former desk which began to fall apart after a move several years ago, a three drawer dresser that is full of mostly writing, the occasional charger, and a box full of receipts. And a chair that defies sitting in at the best of times.

A hipster might call this desk up-cycled. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but as desks go, it’s not the mahogany corner desk with matching hutch that I always dreamed of. Still, it has it’s charm and it more than performs it’s task for writing and design purposes. Recently however I’ve been longing for a change. Every so many months I like to change up the position of things in my bedroom, which would be fine, if not for the fact that at this point… everything I have has already been everywhere it can go in my room, several times over. So what’s a writer do to? Improvise. Utilizing a series of old bedsheets, and pushpins, I’ve managed to create for myself a comfortable writing nook within my bedroom that allows me a separate space in which to work. Inside I have my desk, a bookcase, and a laptop table I can move underneath the desk for extra room.

The setup needs a few finishing touches, including some artwork on the walls to really help foster the creative flow I’m looking for, and I want to work out a better organizational system than what I currently have but this nook has proved quite cozy and a fun experiment in DIY office space conversion. I’d also love, since my bookcase is here, to set up some pillows or cushions to create a little reading corner.

Ultimately time will tell whether or not I’m able to be more creative/productive in this semi-secluded office space, but I’m incredibly hopeful and excited all the same.

Filed under: writing Tagged: books, Novel, writing, writing space

Reading Franzen Part V Cont’d

From the outset one of the things I knew about Denise is that beyond being the only real likable character in the entire story, she’s the only one who doesn’t strike me as a selfish, spoiled brat, like her brothers, and she doesn’t seem to have the obsession of not turning out like her parents, to the point at which it nearly destroys her life, as do both Gary and Chip.

Thus far Denise has made this story almost worth these last three grueling weeks. Almost. Once again though it strikes me as interesting that it took several hundred pages to get interesting after a slump at the end of part IV and the beginning of part V, and though Denise is currently trying to forget about her lover I really wish Robin and Denise would end up together in the end because they’re the only couple, and for that matter, only characters I can actually manage to root for. So here’s hoping.

I really don’t know what to say about how this part ended, beyond the fact that it was wholly unbelievable. Literally. From the father falling off the cruise ship he was on, to, whatever is going on with Chip which… I have no words for. It’s curious to me that with everything Franzen has to say about genre fiction this book sure has taken a bizarre turn that even a genre author might find a bit questionable.

Filed under: books, review Tagged: books, Jonathan Franzen, Literary fiction, Reading, review, The Corrections [image error]

Giving Your Book Space

I’m way, way, way too much in my own head about my current work in progress. It’s becoming a distraction and a bit of a problem.

I can’t even manage to write a decent blog post at the moment because all of my thoughts are stuck on this current draft. Oddly, it isn’t so much that I’m having trouble with it, I’ve seen worse times, but I’m just so in the midst of it that I can’t see my way out anymore, and I know that’s a problem.

After giving it a great deal of thought I’ve decided that I’m going to need to put some space between myself and this story after this month is over. I’m still going to work towards my original February deadline, but I’m not going to hold it against myself if it just doesn’t happen.

It occurs to me that I’ve been going non-stop on this project since last year, which I would say is something to be proud of, but it means that I owe it to myself and my story to put some space between it and myself. I’ve known for a long time that you’re supposed to put time between yourself and the story, but I’ve never exactly known how to do that, and so it’s been something I haven’t taken seriously. But as artistic burnout lingers on the horizon, I’m coming to realize that perhaps this is something I’m going to need to take seriously in the future.

I don’t know how long the break is going to be for, or even what I’m going to do in the mean time, besides blog of course, and work on mapping out my favorite book as previously promised, but book wise, I really don’t know what my plans are.

Filed under: books, editing, writing Tagged: books, editing, novels, space, writing [image error]

author beware

Somewhere in my early teens (I can’t seem to remember exactly when), ever enamored with the idea of publishing and becoming a real published novelist, I decided to do some googling and came across a website for a literary agency and so I decided to submit to them. I was thrilled and terrified,  knew virtually nothing of the world I was getting myself into at the time. The response was surprisingly quick. They wanted to sign me, but they also wanted a hundred some-odd dollars to read my work. This should have set off alarm bells somewhere, but I was young and naive enough not to have done my homework before hand. I didn’t have the money myself, but my mother was more than willing to pay for it. We signed the contract and off we went. They reviewed the writing and even gave me quite a few pointers on it, it almost seemed legitimate.

But the more we talked about it with other people the more red flags started to pop up. You see the one thing we didn’t know at the time, that needs to be stated is that literary agencies, don’t ask for money. They get paid a percentage through royalties. I dissolved the relationship about a month or so in; I later found their agency on the Preditors and Editors website. It’s lucky it only cost me a hundred dollars and not several thousand as one might worry that something like this could cost.

It’s hard to be a writer, and sometimes we let the excitement of possibility get the better of our judgment, in my case, I allowed my excitement at the possibility of having an agent cloud my better judgement in learning how all of this works. Had I simply read a book on the subject I might have known that agents don’t charge you to read your book. This is a warning, to all my new writers and young writers out there. Be careful, there are unfortunately those who would take advantage of you without a second thought. Give yourself time, you may think you’re ready now, and perhaps you are, but sometimes, giving yourself time to get better is so much of a help. Truthfully, I would have been mortified if I’d been published back then, looking at some of my older work (as it does for many authors) makes me cringe.

Filed under: writing Tagged: author, books, literary agency, scam, writing [image error]

Reading Franzen Part V

The Generator

Summary:

Part V, is Denise’s story. The youngest of the three children, and perhaps the most likable character in the entire book, this part details her affair with a married man before college, and her subsequent, unrelated, failed marriage.

Thoughts:

Surprisingly I don’t feel like I have that much to say about part V. The fact is, a lot of this experience for me, is getting tedious. I have a good idea I know where it’s going to go, everyone’s going to do the final Christmas in St. Jude, Gary has already agreed to it, though it may destroy his marriage, Denise has agreed to it (from what I can tell), and Chip… may or may not be dragged there by Denise. The Christmas itself, which is the next part is going to be interesting and that’s going to be the deciding factor in how everything goes.

I could predict, and I’ve been wondering about this for sometime that at Christmas either the father or the mother will die. I predict a bit of fighting, but I also gather there will be some kind of like big turn around moment where the family comes together to grieve that. But maybe Franzen will surprise me. Part VI is, I believe, the final part of the book, which means that if something major is going to happen, it would have to happen then. So that’s my guess.

Filed under: books, review Tagged: books, Jonathan Franzen, Literary fiction, Reading, review, The Corrections [image error]

The Process of Summary

When I first started reading the Corrections I never really imagined I would learn all that much from the process of reading and blogging about a book. After all, I had kind of done so, many times before. All throughout grade school we were required to read a certain number of books each trimester and we were required to summarize what we had read. The summary part was always something I struggled with. How does one condense an entire novel into a few pages? Or even 1 page? I think it’s honestly one of the most difficult skills, but one that’s the most important, especially when it comes to publishing. You have to be able to talk about your book in a way that makes people want to read it, but more than that, most literary agents and publishers want to see a summary of what’s going on, in depth. So how do you break it down?

One of the things I’ve learned throughout this process is to break it down chapter by chapter. Giving yourself a short one to two sentence summary of what happens in each chapter allows you to see on a single page (or a few pages) what’s going on. From there you can visually decide what needs to be included in the overall summary or what can be put to the side. For example, each Reading Franzen blog post I write, begins with me writing down thoughts in a notebook as I’m reading. More often than not, the notes themselves won’t end up verbatim in the blogpost, but it allows me to have the general idea of what I’m going to say when I’m writing the post up later. It also helps me organize my ideas and try to get a handle on what I’m reading. There really isn’t much in the way of plot with what I’m reading currently, which makes it difficult to summarize beyond a paragraph or so, or even a few sentences in the case of Part IV.

The process has given me an entirely new way to look at summarizing my work and to ensure that I give myself plenty of notes to work from before I ever start summarizing, or even writing.

Filed under: books Tagged: books, novels, summary, writing [image error]

Reading Franzen Part IV

Part IV: At Sea

Summary

Alfred’s condition has significantly worsened as he and his wife take their yearly cruise; Enid finds solace in a new miracle drug called Aslan.

Thoughts: 

This was perhaps the most interesting part in the entire novel, 302 pages into the 568 page novel we are finally treated with intrigue in the form of a tragic story told by one of the passengers on the ship, a woman named Sylvia who’s daughter was brutally murdered by one of her patients. It’s the first part of the novel that’s actually felt real, and incredibly tragic, and yet it somehow retains this odd clinical distance that makes you feel vaguely sad, yet not quite emotional enough to actually cry over it, the way one might at the death of a character in any other novel. One of the many issues I have with Franzen, now having read the majority of this book, is there is this strange distance he keeps between the reader and the characters, it really lacks the emotional depth one would expect from a novel, and I can’t really ascertain whether this is deliberate or some oversight on his part, but it’s really quite frustrating. Even in something like the Casual Vacancy which is of the literary genre, there isn’t this separation… you feel for the characters, you hate most of them, but there’s empathy there. Almost no character thus far in the Corrections elicits empathy, merely apathy. I’m not really sure how you sustain a readers interest without some form of emotional connection with said reader.

Though the part is intermingled with technical details (Franzen is really obsessed with teaching us the chemical science of depression and emotions), and odd jumps to the past, it’s made all the more interesting by this story told by Enid’s new found friend, and her newfound comfort from her life in a drug called Aslan. (The Chronicles of Narnia are mentioned several times throughout the book, make of that what you will).

I really have nothing negative to say about Part IV, other than, somewhere along the line towards the final few pages of the part, while Enid and Alfred were at breakfast, everyone’s conversations were all over the place. Scattered to the wind with no direction. I’m going to assume this is meant to be from Alfred’s point-of-view, but given the novel’s propensity for leaping randomly from past to present, to otherwise unrelated random tidbits of information, it’s hard to say what this stream of consciousness style of dialogue is meant to mean.

Filed under: books, review Tagged: books, Jonathan Franzen, Literary fiction, Reading, review, The Corrections [image error]

Thoughts on Self Publishing… Three Years Later

It’s almost impossible to believe that it’s already been three years since my foray into self publishing. It seems like only yesterday.

I’ve written a lot about my thoughts on it in the months after, but now that I’ve put a good deal of distance behind me and now that I’m working once more on this current work-in-progress, I have some thoughts that I figured I would share with those of you who are new to this blog, and potentially new to self publishing.

Self publishing was probably one of the most terrifying things I’ve done, professionally speaking. Not only because it was the first time I was really putting my work out there to be seen and judged which is admittedly terrifying, but because it was literally all on me. Self publishing may be a team effort, but at the end of the day it’s your name on that book, and when you don’t have a publisher behind you any and all blame for a book that doesn’t do as well as you’d hoped or doesn’t look professional falls squarely on you. There’s almost no way to prepare for this, because in reality, knowing that everything is on your shoulders, is not the same as experiencing it. This was made glaringly clear to me when I caught sight of a several chapter title errors after I had already printed thirty plus copies of the book to sell.
Have a plan of action, and know what you’re getting yourself into. Self publishing is a business. You need to have a strategy for what’s going to set you apart from other authors. One of the biggest challenges in today’s market is that, with next to no overhead needed, anybody can publish a book. Anybody can put together a cover and have it professionally printed, indistinguishable from any other book on the shelf. Which makes it imperative that you stand out somehow and that more importantly you have a marketing plan. Part of my problem was that I was excited and nervous and I really didn’t think things all the way through. I thought I had at the time of course. I guest posted on other blogs, I blogged about it, tweeted about my book, and even held a contest, so I definitely felt that I tried, but it was tricky to balance writing and publishing. Which brings me to…
Publishing is a balancing act. Self published, traditionally published, the nature of the beast dictates that you be able to balance the world of doing your own publicity and actually getting the next book out there because at the end of the day you’re still only as good as your last book, so you need to make sure you’re continuously putting out material. As I learned with the sequel to my first self published book, which was far more successful than the first.

Self publishing is a completely different beast now, then even three years ago. In order to be a successful author you have to be versatile and be able to change with the times. It also requires you to take what you’re doing seriously, get all the facts, do your homework, and put your best foot forward. It doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll be successful. At the end of the day, failure can still happen, that’s a part of life. But there’s something to be said about putting your work into the world and giving it a life of it’s own. It’s probably one of the most terrifying, invigorating sensations you could imagine, but there’s nothing better than hearing from a fan that they loved your work.

Filed under: books, self publishing Tagged: author, books, novels, opinion, self publishing [image error]

Reading Franzen Part III Cont’d

Summary:

Part III follows the adventures of eldest son Gary Lambert and his family which is essentially the same family life he grew up in, in spite of his efforts to do better.

Thoughts: 

We can all go home, because on page 181, Franzen explains to the world that the whole point of the book is Gary the eldest’s sons attempt to ‘correct’ his father’s mistakes. I think that sums up what the book is about perfectly and I clearly don’t need to read any further.

Part of the problem I’ve had with the book from the beginning, and I’m starting to notice a trend with this genre is that there is a great lack of sympathetic characters. I realize this makes them true to life, and perhaps this is my genre background talking, everybody wants a character to root for, and you just aren’t going to get that with this sort of book. There’s no one you want to root for. There are characters you feel sorry for because they have to deal with the other characters, but there’s no protagonist that you really feel like, I care what happens to you, I want you to succeed.

In this part, Gary the eldest son, is basically recreating his father’s life, but in the way he feels his father should live. He has what he considers to be the perfect family and yet he’s in denial about the fact that he’s depressed. It’s curious because there are a lot of indicators that his marriage is a lot like his fathers, he doesn’t really love his wife, in fact he’s emotionally abusive to her in the same way his father is to his mother. It seems like his purpose in life is to prove to himself that he’s not his father, which seems to be a lot of the purpose of all of the children thus far. That they aren’t like their parents, but in that way, it seems they end up exactly like who they don’t want to be. They fall into the same pitfalls, which is of course relatable because there are a lot of people who don’t necessarily want to end up like their parents.

While I applaud Franzen’s ability to manipulate the readers emotions, the more I read of the story, the angrier I got, that doesn’t for me make it a good book. I’ve really given this story a lot more than I would have given any other book, typically if you can’t capture my interest within the first chapter I’m not the sort of person who’s going to give you a hundred pages to get into your groove, but by now I’ve given Franzen 200, and while I can openly admit that he’s clearly good at what he does in the sense that his story can make you feel what he wants you to, I don’t feel like it’s a story you get sucked into. You don’t necessarily see the world around you in the really visceral way you can with another book, or at least that’s the case for me. Beyond completely unlikable characters there’s the fact that the story seems to jump around all over the place, and I can’t help but feel that any other author, who was not already well known would not have been able to get away with such a thing. I’m not sure if the Corrections was Franzen’s debut novel or not, but it strikes me as odd that a book can just jump into the past without much warning.

Filed under: books, review Tagged: books, Jonathan Franzen, Literary fiction, Reading, review, The Corrections [image error]

Something to Try

 

A few weeks ago I came across this blog post by SheWrites.com (and was featured in HuffPo) called 52 Things—Ideas for 2015 in it, the author Brooke Warner, details fifty-two things authors should do in 2015. It’s a really great post and I highly recommend you check it out. One of the greatest things she mentions however is #26.

Map a book you love. It will teach you a lot to outline a book you’ve read more than once to see how another author thinks about structure, scenes, and narrative arc.

Outlining has always been a struggle for me, and even though I’ve already taken the time to outline the majority of book 2, I can’t help but want to re-evaluate my plans and I think mapping a book I love will help me out in my outlining efforts and hopefully in the future as well. If it goes well, I may map out a few books I love, in varying genres to really give myself a thorough look at different authors, different types of genres and storylines and what they all have in common, if anything, and how they differ. It’s going to be a really fun and exciting challenge for myself and I’m going to spend much of February working on that, as well as maybe updating my outline for the sequel to my current work-in-progress.

I still have every intention of reading my February author, Gillian Flynn and Sharp Objects as this was recommended to me by a friend of mine, and like the Reading Franzen posts these will go up Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, though hopefully at the usually scheduled 0830 time that most of my blogs go up at (assuming Ms. Flynn uses actual chapter breaks I think we’ll be fine).

Filed under: writing Tagged: author, books, outline, shewrites.com, writing [image error]