Rachel Lynn Brody's Blog, page 27

Conflicting Emotobooks?

Somebody get me an emotobook, stat. I need to figure these things out.

There’s been a steady background buzz/chatter, via the usual social network suspects, regarding emotobooks for about a week now. I looked into them about a minute ago.

Near as I can tell, an emotobook is a book created for consumption on digital platforms, with a text injected with pieces of abstract visual art. That art is meant to evoke a certain mood or feeling being experienced by the characters, thereby bringing a new level of emotional involvement to its readers.

Color me socked in the stomach. Is this a new evolution of the book, a new bridge in the gap between unillustrated texts and graphic novels? Is the writing/illustration a collaborative effort? What is the quality of the writing and is it possible for writers to create a piece that doesn’t wind up leaning on the ability of painting/artwork to provoke emotions? What does this mean for the commercial future of painting as an art form? Is using abstract art to evoke emotion in the service of the written word a new thing, or is this just an updating of the classical idea of illustration? Knowing how some authors have had negative reactions to having their works illustrated, what is the level of interaction between author and artist, here, and what will it become if emotobooks take hold as more than as passing fad? If an editor feels a writer needs “help” pulling an emotional reaction from their audience, will the decision be to make the writing more resilient and communicative, or to throw in a graphic that “nudges” the reader in the right direction?

Anticipating the answer to that last question makes me a little nervous, particularly in light of my feelings on the quality of writing in some recent bestsellers. At the same time…it’s an exciting idea, if executed well, and potentially opens reading up to much larger audiences. While my gut frets, “What about the ghettoization of unillustrated fiction?!” my mind replies, “Don’t be an idiot, art is not a zero-sum game.” So for now, I’m going to tell my gut to shut its big mouth, and see where emotobooks take us.

On the reader’s side, I’ve only heard good things about the experience of reading in this form, and I’m glad of that. Mostly, people are talking about the emotobooks making it possible for them to connect with what they’re reading to a degree they hadn’t quite understood before. A new way to open up the classics? I’m in.

Think about it: haven’t you ever had the experience of watching a movie, and that making it easier to get through a classic work of literature? I wouldn’t have been able to make my way through Jane Austen (who I grew to adore) if I hadn’t had the six-part BBC miniseries to help me learn how to read them to hand. But some writers don’t lend themselves (in my experience) to quite the same kind of graphic dissection. I’ve got about a hundred pounds’ worth of books by Russian writers, and as many times as I try, I can’t get into them.

Maybe I’m reading crap translations. But maybe having some emotionally evocative visual art inserted into “Crime and Punishment” would help me – and other readers – follow along.

Has the Auto Industry lost the Millennial generation?

A friend of mine (she’s free to call herself out in the comments) pointed out this really interesting article about the car industry and how it’s losing the next crop of drivers.

At the upper end of this generation, my car story is a little different. I haven’t owned one in years, and even when I “owned” (in quotes because it was still in my parents’ name) I was driving on my parents’ insurance.

When I got back to the US after living and working in Scotland, I chose one of the least car-friendly cities in the world as my new home base. And as I was saying during a conversation about this in mid-May: at this point in my life, I have no interest in owning a car.

I love public transportation. I love walking. I love not having to worry if my budget is suddenly going to shrink because gas prices have spiked, and I love not having to worry about waking up to find that my transmission has gone and I have to get it fixed and that’s $1500+ less that I’ve got in the bank. I have no car payment, and I know that my unlimited metro card and a handful of taxis will cover my transport needs throughout the month.

But apparently, auto makers are now offering to give free test drives and so on to non-auto bloggers. So I just want to be really clear: as a non-auto blogger of the Millennial generation, if any of those suits in Tokyo, Detroit or the other places the article writer cites are looking for a someone to test and talk about their product, I’m more than happy to make myself available.

So long as they’re picking up the tab.

NEW YORK MAGAZINE featured an article on car culture in New York in their June 4th, 2012 issue. WHY I DRIVE  by Justin Davidson was not available for linking at the time of this blog post as far as I can tell; if anyone finds a link please let me know.

Weekend of Epic, Part 2(B): No Sleep. Not even in Brooklyn.

When last we left our heroes, they were devouring burgers at the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. Midway through the meal, a bird flew in and grabbed burger out of one of our diner’s hands. I missed that bit, because I was getting my meal, so it’s entirely possible that they had decided to try and punk me with their darkly disneyesque tale of carniverous parakeets.

The world may never know.

We left Madison Square Park a little after two, Eric and Erin heading down to the WTC and me taking Miranda and her friend out to another of my friends’ apartments, in an old neighborhood where I used to live in South Brooklyn. The plan had become, over lunch, to get back together that evening and go for drinks at The Whiskey Ward.

On The Highway of Kings

As we rode the subway out to King’s Highway, my old subway stop (back in the days before the Lower West Side), the three of us alternately joked and chatted, discussed how totally stuffed we were, and pointed at interesting things (like the Statue of Liberty) while I told dramatic stories of being stranded at Cortelyou when a train went down on the track, and getting unceremoniously dumped off the subway and told, by the MTA, to “figure out” how to get home. Fifteen dollar taxi ride. Thanks, buddies.

We were bringing a bottle of wine and picking up ice on the way, which meant I got to take Miranda and her friend to some of the supermarkets I used to go to. First thing that hit me was just how much cheaper the groceries out there are. I mean, I shop at Trader Joe’s and try to be frugal, but as we walked past piles of fresh produce, my eyes nearly bugged out of my sockets. I spent a moment looking at the ice in the freezer. How much to bring? There were three of us, three bags would do.

Brooklyn was cooler than Manhattan (physically, not metaphorically, although at some times this too seems to be the case) but it was still hot out. If not here already, Summer was definitely coming. As we walked to my friend’s apartment, I pointed at shops that had been replaced and described what the neighborhood had been like when I last lived there a few years ago.

The party was great. We sat in the sun, ate dips and veggies and olives and steamed pork rolls and my friend’s AMAZING lasagne. There was a tequila bottle shaped like a gun; only thing missing was the trigger. And then someone mentioned that there was shade on the back porch, and we started a “pale people party” back there, which turned into a discussion about video games between Miranda, my friend’s nephew, and the my friend’s brother-in-law. Miranda and the nephew were trading tips. The nephew could not have been older than five. SO CUTE.

And Now for The Whisky:

If you’re over 21 and reading this blog, and you’ve never had single malt scotch: stop right now. Go to the nearest bar and chat with the bartender for a few seconds. Then ask her or him if you can please see the bottles for the Laphroaig (La-FROYG) or the Caol Isla (Cal as in calories, and Isla as in Fisher or Duncan or whatever her name is). Take the caps off and smell those scotches. Then come back and keep reading.

If you’re under 21, only time can help you.

Drink responsibly.

Now That You Understand What Good Whisky Smells Like:

Me, Miranda and her friend – we’ll call him K, from now on, which is so Kafkian it gives me a shiver, but whatever – walked into the Whiskey bar having discussed the fact that when someone said scotch, K kind of wrinkled up his nose a bit and made noises about how Jack Daniels or whatever NOT SCOTCH THING he had had wasn’t something he fancied.

Now, Jack Daniels is not Scotch. Scotch, for those of you who haven’t lived in the homeland of the thing for 4 years, is made in Scotland. It’s regional. It’s like champagne can only be made in that region of France. It has four ingredients. And yet different brands of scotch will taste as different to one another as apples and oranges.

Couldn't you just go for one right now?

We will get back to this in a moment. Eric and Erin arrived, and Eric and I (the drinkers of the group) went to pick up cocktails. I tried one of the bar’s specialty cocktails – something with maple syrup and marinated bourbon cherries? – but truthfully it wasn’t my thing. After passing cocktails around (cocktail etiquette, you understand, demands one allow one’s drinking partners the opportunity to avail themselves of your superior taste in libation), we all relaxed a bit and started just chatting.

I think that was the first point in the weekend when I realized just how “on” I’d been since the Thursday night reading, and it was definitely the first point at which I felt like I could really relax. Nowhere to rush off to, nothing more to worry about except enjoying the drinks and the company. Writing issues had been settled, future projects discussed, social engagements and tour guide duties fulfilled with great enthusiasm, and it was FINALLY time to just hang out with friends.

Because we were waiting for a couple more people to arrive, the second round of cocktails was more of a timing stop-gap. A whisky sour for me, this time. (Sidenote: Had an interesting drink called a New York Sour the other day – basically a whisky sour with a red wine float on the top. It does something interesting, kind of cuts the acid of the lemon in the sour. Worth checking out if you get the chance, and aren’t terrified at the idea of mixing red wine and whisky.)

Having reached the end of our cocktails, and still lacking two members of our party, it was time to switch to the real stuff. Standing in front of the list of available choices, the conversation became very serious. Which whiskies to try? What were the options? We wound up with an Aberlour, an Ardbeg (or was that switched to a Laphroig at the last minute?) and a Caol Isla. Yes, I ordered two whiskies. Refer to the cocktail rule, above. Plus, the fact that K thought Jack Daniels was whisky. *shakes head*.

Back at the table, we started the familiar three-card shuffle of passing glasses around the table, having the non-drinkers smell the whiskies, the drinkers take small sips. It was around this point when @CLImagiste and his wife (she who would, over the course of the night, become known as @codekneesocks) arrived, having battled trains all the way from outside Manhattan to get to us. And the whisky. They took the Bourbon route – and this was when things started getting interesting, because now we could illustrate how different regions making the same thing with the same ingredients could taste so completely different. Whisky – particularly the ones I favor – have a smoky quality to them. I like to go as smoky as possible when it comes to whisky, which is why Caol Isla, Laphroig and Ardbeg are good standbyes. Bourbon, on the other hand, has a much sweeter undertone. In fact, writing this, I kind of wonder what it would taste like if you took a sweeter bourbon and a smokier whisky and used them together to make a whisky-bourbon-sour. Would need to be exactly the right brands. Hrm. Suggestions in the comments!

I think one of my favorite things in the world is watching people who don’t know about whisky as they realize just how many variations there are on this most excellent beverage.

Somewhere in all of this, a discussion arose between me and L, @CLImagiste’s wife, and somehow it came up that apparently, in Catholic school, there is a code around the way in which the female students wear their knee socks. I want to say more about this but it involve’s someone else’s upcoming project, and it’s not my place to give hints as to the content of that work. But suffice to say I thought it was hysterical and the next morning when L signed up for twitter her username was @codekneesocks.

By now, it was getting to the time in the night when people want to eat things. After quick debate, we narrowed our choices to two potential spots: The Meatball Shop (LES branch, which was packed) and a Grilled Cheese restaurant. That served wine.

I don’t know how to make you understand how unbelievably good this grilled cheese sandwich was. Mine tasted like nachos. It was unbelievable, and pretty soon we were cutting off slices of different sandwiches and trading those around like they were cocktails, too. That’s one thing I *love* about eating out in New York, particularly with people who care about food. Everybody really *wants* everyone else to have the experience of trying whatever it is they’ve tried, and afterwards you have even more of a shared experience to talk about with them because you’re not just commenting on the feel of the restaurant, the service, etc. – you actually know the tastes the other people are referring to, and they know the same for your meal.

This was how the weekend ended up, then: at a tiny grilled cheese place on the Lower East Side, drinking wine and chatting with friends both old and new, before we all ultimately had to scatter back to our real jobs. More good-byes at the end of the night, and Miranda and I walking back to my apartment, planning what time we’d get up the next morning in order to make sure she got to her bus on time.

When I got home that night, I took a few minutes to write down in my journal – the calligraphically personalized one I’d picked up the day before – about just how happy I felt about the whole experience and about the specific things that had gone rightly and made me glad and hopeful about doing it again.

And Then Came Sunday

The next morning went quickly. Miranda and I popped into the cheese shop around the corner and she picked up some gifts for her family, then we walked over to the clothing fair on Broadway and she picked up a t-shirt and an Indiana Jones hat. Subway up to Times Square, walked her to the bus stop, came home.

Crashed.

Jurassic Park kind of became our mascot for the weekend. So it was cool to see this lying on the shelf at Goodwill when I wandered up to shop while crashing. I saw this movie four times in theaters when it came out.

So that’s that.

I just looked at my computer’s clock; as of this writing, all this happened just a week ago. The post is scheduled for early June. Either way, in either direction, feels more like a lifetime than just a few days.

A lot of times, in the arts, people talk about making sure your creative soul gets fed and with his reading I feel like I went from starving to sated to gorged on that front.

It reminds me how important it is to spend time around writers, and how important it is to schedule things like appearances and retreats and other writerly experiences, where you get in a room with other people who practice your craft and, for a little while at least, don’t have to worry about communicating the various frustrations and impossibilities of what you’re trying to do every time you fire up your computer and open a word document.

In that way, the weekend of the Hot Mess reading was pretty much an all-you-eat-buffet for a writer’s soul.

I hope reading about it has helped stimulate your creative appetite.

So What Now?

I have three upcoming projects on the horizon, and will be talking about them going forward. A small teaser for those projects will follow in the next week or so, but for now, just know that they’re there.

Thanks for everybody who’s supported the Hot Mess project. Keep spreading the word, leaving reviews for us on Amazon (please, it literally means logging in and clicking 1-5 stars, five being the best, and add words if you like) and buying those copies.

De Facto De-Funding at Creative Scotland?

From Joyce McMillan’s blog:

“Creative Scotland have instead decided to withdraw their entire middle range of funding, known as flexible funding, which offered basic income security on a two or three year cycle to small- and medium- scale arts organisations with a strong creative record. The result is to throw some 49 Scottish arts organisations from a condition of modest security, into a condition of complete insecurity, in which they have to bargain from project to project for their continuing right to exist.”

It was when I read the names of some of the 49 companies now in jeopardy that I felt my mental jaw drop: Vanishing Point Theatre Company, Grid-Iron, and the CCA in Glasgow (their equivilent of New York City’s MoMA) were included on the list. For the record, Vanishing Point’s Lost Ones, which I reviewed seven years ago during the 2005 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, has stuck with me like few other productions over the years.

Why I’m Opening My Big Mouth

I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, for four years, from 2003-2007. During that time, I attended Queen Margaret University College’s MFA program in Dramatic Writing; at the time, the theater department was run by Maggie Kinloch – who has since moved to RSAMD.

I dove headfirst into the arts scene. Edinburgh was where I started reviewing for The British Theatre Guide. It’s where my plays PLAYING IT COOL, STUCK UP A TREE, and MOUSEWINGS had their world premiers. I made numerous short films there, applied for and received funding from my university, was an active member in the Traverse Theater’s Young Writer’s Group (I was lucky enough to have two plays workshopped as part of the program), and traveled to INTERPLAY – EUROPE as one of their delegates.

This fall, my one-act play MILLENNIAL EX will be featured in a collection of short plays from around the world on the subject of marriage equality at a festival in Glasgow.

So I have something of an interest in what goes on within the Scottish theater scene, but rarely have the time to indulge that interest, and so was not aware of the current funding debate taking place until this morning. @MarkFisher was kind enough to point me towards information on the current debate, and that’s why I missed this morning’s sunshine and will now be spending the remainder of the afternoon inside as rain thunders down in Manhattan.

Theater Funding in Scotland vs. America – Where the Money Comes From

There are some things about arts funding in the UK, and in Scotland, which may be unfamiliar to some of my American readers. The main one, I think is:

In the UK, public funding bodies exist, geared toward distributing funding for (and thereby encouraging the development of) artistic forms of expression within a specific mission statement. They have the mission and responsibility to enrich citizens’ cultural lives and develop resources that showcase and develop both the country’s heritage and its future.

(My feeling is that in America, there is not a similar or analogous organization that answers to and is responsible for the funding of such a wide range of theaters and types of theatrical projects as is Creative Scotland. But that’s another discussion, and one I’m happy to have in the comments.)

These funding bodies and their missions, and the ways in which these obligations to fund are interpreted and fulfilled, are a point of contention between organization and practitioner. (Pardon the stealth edit as I try to make my point clearer.)

What the What?

Okay. Let’s say you have a theatre company in Scotland and want to apply for funding for this really fantastic idea you have. You go to Creative Scotland and fill out an application form. You pick the kind of funding that fits your project.

In the past, Creative Scotland had a category which funded on a project-only basis. Technically, these were grants that a theater company would receive, once per cycle (clarification stealth edit). They weren’t meant as funding that would keep the company running year round, but practically…

The Best-Laid Plans of Mice & Men…

…that doesn’t seem to be what happened. A number of companies, including, I would assume, those McMillan names in the above excerpt, have received grants from Creative Scotland to a degree where their project-to-project funding is sustaining their organization and where the loss of that funding puts those companies in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, it seems from the reading I’ve done this morning that Creative Scotland’s response is: we’re not defunding you, we’re just cancelling this form of funding. You shouldn’t have been depending on these funds in the first place.

Pardon the analogy, but to me that reads a bit like a drug dealer saying, “Well, it’s not withdrawal, because you weren’t supposed to get addicted to heroin in the first place.”

I’ll be interested to see how this situation develops.

For those who are interested, some additional reading

http://stramasharts.wordpress.com 

http://annebonnar.wordpress.com 

http://joycemcmillan.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/three-deadly-sins-of-creative-scotlands-bad-funding-review-column-25-5-12/

 

The Buying Habits of the Paying Readers of Self-Published Authors

A week or so ago, I had a conversation with a friend who reads a lot of e-books. While though her preferred genre – supernatural YA fiction – isn’t one where I’ve yet published, it was still great to hear her opinion on what worked and what had changed in the field since she had started reading e-books, particularly the self-published ones.

She’s noticed a couple of different trends:

- Where books used to be 400-600 pages, now they usually topped out around 250.

- Prices went up as series built their readership – and while she found this frustrating, she also acknowledged that it was a self-perpetuating system.

She also told me that every week, she gets a selection of free books, and those are the ones she reads – before she reads anything else. Which brought to mind something I had seen discussed a week or two ago, about how Kindle Select and its and free loans might be degrading the market for paying fiction readers. What my friend was telling me was exactly the opposite: the writers finding financial success were the ones whose stories were of a quality compelling enough to make people keep reading them. While the first book might be free, the second, third or fourth could rise as much as a dollar per volume in cost.

A while ago, I talked about why I wasn’t feeling particularly gung-ho about Kindle Select; for authors in specific genres, such as coming-of-age YA fiction, though, I suddenly understand where the impetus could come in to offer a short sample of work – but a whole novel?

My friend said that one of her frustrations with the indie market was a lack of well-edited work. By this, she was talking not just about proofreading, but about actual editing: someone who has gotten down in the trenches with the writer and helped them make their story as strong as possible.

I can understand why a reader might want to go on a short trip with an author, a setting, and a group of characters before setting out on a longer journey. But isn’t that what sample chapters are for? Is free, Kindle-Select-Accessible material a requirement for self-published authors who want to make an impact? If so, how might that impact writing trends overall? Is it just a YA thing? Just a genre thing? What about in literary fiction; what’s going on in those self-publishing circles? Is the tendency to read free books first part of why Smashwords and B&N sales are abysmal, because their platforms don’t provide options for free sampels?

HOT MESS: speculative fiction about climate change, is available for Kindle, Nook, on Smashwords and in print.. Cover design by Sarah Hartley.

Now, some of this is navel-gazing – after all, Hot Mess: speculative fiction about climate change is still selling steadily, and we neither used Kindle Select nor did I have other offerings for sale when the book was published.

But I do have other work in the pipeline. Haiku Of The Living Dead, for example, which is a Zombie Haiku compilation I’m putting together with Miranda Doerfler, which will likely not be eligible for Kindle Select because we’re allowing submissions to be made in public forums (including in the comments to this blog entry) accepting submissions throughout the week

So many questions. Clearly I have some reading up to do. But if any of my readers want to talk about their self-published-fiction-buying habits in the comments, your perspective would be appreciated.

Weekend of Epic, Part 2(A): Babeland, Fast Cars, Fast Tattoos & Not-So-Fast Burgers

As mentioned in previous posts, the weekend of May 17th was an Epic weekend of Epic Awesomeness. Mostly because Sare Liz Gordy, Eric Sipple and Miranda Doerfler, three of the authors from Hot Mess: speculative fiction about climate change, came to NYC and did a reading. Feel free to catch up – both on the Thursday reading and the Friday awesomeness that followed – before (or after) reading on.

Saturday morning, Miranda and I woke up and started on our way to SoHo. Mostly, we were going to check out the Wooster Street Social Club, which is where NY Ink was filmed. But as a secondary mission, we decided to detour through Babeland – just so I could show M that not all the, ahem, adult entertainment shops in Manhattan were totally skeevy.

Babeland is…well, I guess I’ll just let their website explain. Their website (and the store) contain what we shall call “The 50 Shades of Gray Collection.” Mostly we will call it that because they do. The collection itself is worth a laugh or two; mostly the book that inspired it was the butt of many a joke over the weekend.

Pun unintended, but unavoidable.

After Babeland, we headed over to Wooster Street and to the Social Club. There was already a line outside when we got there, and by “line,” I mean “loose collection of people standing around looking like they really wanted tattoos.” Wooster Street opened promptly at noon, and we ducked inside to take a look.

I don’t spend a lot of time in tattoo shops, so this was an interesting experience for me. The shop takes walk-ins, but the way they put together their list of walk-ins was really interesting to watch. Everybody lined up as the doors were opening and streamed into a tiny corridor; from there, you walked up to the front of the line and explained an idea of what you wanted to the guy who was checking folks in. He was in the midst of assembling some kind of complicated matrix that correlated design to tattoo artist. Miranda got in line, ready to get what may have been the coolest tattoo idea ever, but when we got to the front it turned out there was a $200 minimum. After quick debate, it was decided that saving up and coming back another time might be the most prudent course of action. We had her name taken off the list and skedaddled.

Given that no actual tattooing had taken place, there was plenty of time for us to make our way up to Madison Sq. Park – and Shake Shack – before meeting Eric and Erin (and a couple more folks Miranda knew in the NYC area) for burgers and shakes. We started walking and before we knew it ran smack into the Fab.com pop-up shop.

For those who don’t know Fab.com, it’s a website where you order cool, designed pieces that are then fabricated (get it? Haha) and sent out. A couple people I know have purchased from them in the past and been really pleased with what they got, although I know I’ve heard shipping times can be a bother. Anyway, they have a pop-up shop in SoHo at the moment (or at least, as of this writing) and you can go and look at the cool stuff they have for sale.

I got a free poster, which is now on my wall. I did not get awesome huge lifesize robot recliners, nor cute little robot climbers that stand by electrical outlets. Both exist. Pics to prove it.

The free poster is awesome. It reads, very simply, “Smile, you’re designed to.” And you know what?

Every time I see it, it makes me smile. It makes me smile to the point where I’m going to share it with all of you now, in the hopes that it makes one or two of you smile, as well.

After leaving the Fab.com shop, we carried on up the road until I spotted a sign that made my blood run cold. Or, well, made my blood run with shoes. Betsey Johnson, as you may or may not know, recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Her loss is the gain of many a deal-hunter in SoHo, though I couldn’t find any of the promised items at 60% off. I did spot some sweet shoes. Here is one pair.

If you want a full post on Betsey Johnson sale shoes, leave a comment, and I will see what I can do to make you wish you had lots of money to spend on completely impractical shoes. (You wish that already. I’m just saying I’ll show you more pictures, really.)

The store really was full of cute stuff, it’s just that I’m not a size that Betsey Johnson makes, and also I blew all my money on hanging out with cool people that weekend. And on gorgeous personally inscribed journals. Which you’ll have seen, by now, in the previous Weekend of Epic post.

Leaving both Fab.com and dear old Betsey behind as we continued our journey northward, Miranda and I passed a spot on Broadway near Bleeker – one of those funny little tent-city markets that tends to pop up here and there in larger cities.

This one is mostly clothing (surprise surprise, welcome to NoHo), but there was one shirt in particular that caught both our eyes.

You didn’t know A Clockwork Orange is one of my favorite films of all time? How sad for you. (Note for tweeple: you know how I always say I don’t re-watch things? This is one of few exceptions. This film is epic awesome amazeballs, and if you haven’t seen it and are over the age of 18, you must must must go see it right now. Yes, before you finish reading this blog entry. It’s available for streaming on Netflix. See you in three hours. (One day, I should really do a post about book vs. cinema as re: Clockwork Orange; absolutely fascinating comparison there.)

This was around the time when we found out that Eric and Erin had beaten us to Madison Square Park. While they knocked around Eataly (pretentious name, phenomenal products) waiting for us, Miranda and I hopped on the subway and headed up to meet them for the next experience of the day: SHAKE SHACK.

Except, wait. There was one more awesome thing that happened. Remember how Miranda decided not to get that tattoo? We figured out what she was really saving up for:

It’s a ’75. Asking price is $28,500. I wish I had that kind of change in my pocket.

Anyway. Back to Shake Shack. Do you know Shake Shack? Madison Square Park, opposite the Flatiron building, hosts the original location of Danny Meyers’ burgertopia empire, and often has the waiting lines to match. If you don’t know Shake Shack, you should totally go. After you finish the blog entry, though. You’ve already had a break from reading to watch a young Malcolm McDowell get brainwashed into being unable to abide by any sort of violence. Here we are waiting in line for our milkshakes and burgers. Did I mention, Eric and Erin had already *been* to Shake Shack on Thursday? I don’t think I mentioned that. Lucky bastards.

Here we are waiting in line:

From left: Miranda, Eric, Erin, Me

I swear there are times I don’t wear sunglasses. They just rarely seem to happen in front of a camera.

Back to the important part: BURGERS. I was a total glutton. Had a double shake shack burger and a shake, and then picked at Miranda’s fries (along with the rest of the table). I’m pissed because apparently the moment my buzzer sounded and I got up to leave was also the moment when a bird decided to dive-bomb Eric and grab a piece of his burger out of his hand and fly off with it. Well, that or I’ve been the victim of a practical joke based in the idea of a shared consensual reality in which I was not a participant.

This gets us to about 2pm on the weekend of epic, and brings this blog to just over 1300 words. Which makes me think it may be time to declare Weekend of Epic Part Two a two-parter.

Next up, for part two of part two: We head to a party in Brooklyn. Afterwards, in the city, there is whisky, hilarity, knee socks and grilled cheese. Tune in for the next segment!

Call for Submissions: Zombie Haiku

Sorry to double-load the blog today, everyone, but something rather time-sensitive has come up and I thought it was better to let you know today rather than on Wednesday’s normal update…because who knows what tomorrow might bring…

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
HAIKU OF THE LIVING DEAD

Zombie Haiku edited by Rachel Lynn Brody & Miranda Doerfler 

 

zombie haikuplural of zombie hai·ku (Noun)

Noun:






1.      A Japanese poem written by or about zombies, of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five.
2.      An English imitation of this.

Time is running out.

 

Submit your publication-ready Zombie Haiku to our project, HAIKU OF THE LIVING DEAD, and win inclusion in the anthology and a code redeemable for a free digital copy of the book (You may also pass it on to any friends or family, no restrictions!).

NO SUBMISSION FEE.

Submit to: ZombieHaiku@rlbrody.com

or Tweet your entry to @docsaico


THE CLOCK IS TICKING
SPREAD THE WORD.

Deadline 6/8/2012

In other words:

Miranda Doerfler and I are putting together a collection of Zombie Haiku to be published later this summer.  We’re accepting submissions until June 8th. The best Zombie Haikus will be assembled into a print book, while I believe our current plan is to publish all submitted Haiku in an e-book that will be made available for free to authors (and with free codes they’re allowed to share, once we get through KDP and move to Smashwords.). (Miranda, correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.)

So. Submit your Zombie Haiku to Haiku Of The Living Dead. And stay tuned. You never know when we might need your braaaaains…

 

Homework Takeaway #5: We’re Pretty Sure There Was A Big Bang

After several months – was it really back in January that I posted my most recent update in this series? – I picked up “The Elegant Universe” again and kept reading. On page 349 (in my edition), Green talks about how there was a moment where the universe from being opaque to being transparent.

He then goes on to describe the moment of the birth of the universe in terms that make me think about how he talks about black holes in the previous chapter (p 342-344?). I’m not a hundred percent sure why, but this part of the book reminded me a little of those four-axis graphs, with space on one axis and time on the other, and black holes sucking in all information. It brought to mind the image of a God’s Eye, or one of those cool graphic design things everybody used to doodle in high school (the nearest I can find via Google Images is the first graph used on this total stranger’s blog entry, but imagine four quadrants of that facing one another).

In the part of the book I’m reading now, Greene says this thing I mentioned earlier about how the universe had a moment where we know it went from opaque to when it went to transparent, and then he talks about how a “gas of freely streaming photons” were able to escape outward.

Now it gets interesting. If you remember back to Homework Takeaway #1: Light Ain’t Old, you’ll remember that photons are light particles.

In other words, if I may be permitted to wax romantic about this for a moment: at the beginning of time and the universe as we know it, there is a precise moment when a burst of photons, i.e. light, began to be emitted out of darkness. In the interest of investigating an age-old metaphor…sounds a little let there be light, doesn’t it?

Oh, and also: We are all made of stars.

Physics is awesome.

An Exercise in Editing, or, Why The Hunger Games Makes My Eyes Bleed

From the back cover of THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins:

Note that each of these quotes, from luminaries and sources including Stephen King (Entertainment Weekly), Stephanie Meyer (OMG she’s OBSESSED), and John Greer (The New York Times Book Review, talks about the plotting and structure of THE HUNGER GAMES.

Not a single one of the back cover comments brings up the question of the quality of the book’s prose. 

There are many reasons this might be the case: the marketing team may have learned that putting quotes about suspenseful page-turners sell more copies and left out things like “Collins’ prose challenges some of the greats of our era with its artistry and subtle evocation of the stresses that authoritarian governments manufacture to maintain control of their populations.” They could have left out, “Her words added an emotional depth and clarity to this packed, well-paced story.” They could have left out lots of things. I haven’t looked up the full reviews.

My personal feeling is that they cherry-picked quotes about pacing because THE HUNGER GAMES suffers from a case of seriously bad writing.

Which brings us to this blog entry. First, put away your blowtorches.

I want to be clear that I’m criticizing the writing in this book, not the plot, not the structure. The language. The word use. Collins is an author who presumably worked with an editor to get her words to this point, which they both considered publishable. Editors do a lot of different things when it comes to getting manuscripts ready for publication. One of those things is language. And I think both Collins and her editor fell down hard on that front.

My background with THE HUNGER GAMES:

I read chapters 1-4 on my Kindle when @tyyche gifted me a copy. I was at the tail end of two weeks of intensive editing work on Hot Mess, and while I could certainly see why Collins’ story was an entertaining one, the actual quality of the writing made it impossible for me to continue. I said at the time, and continue to maintain, that my guess is the book translates better to the screen than most adaptations. If I ever see the film, I’ll make sure to let you all know.

Anyways, fast forward to the end of May. My roommate’s copy is lying on the kitchen counter and it’s Memorial Day Weekend and after walking past the book a few times, I think, well, maybe I should pick that up and just breeze through it, so at least when people start defending it on Twitter I can come back with a more informed opinion than the one I have now, which is based on reading four chapters of the thing on a Kindle.

There was no way in Hell I was going to start reading the book from the beginning again. I backtracked about a paragraph into chapter 4, then continued with chapter five, which was badly written but at least kept moving, then headed into chapter six. It wasn’t until the last page of chapter six that I became aware of a string of paragraphs I probably would have let go through without too much rewriting: page 85 in my edition, from the point where the Avox girl is picking up Katniss’ unitard (UNITARD!) to the end of the chapter. This was the first time that the spare, simple voice beneath Collins’ prose really came out to me, and one of the first times (only 85 pages in!) where I felt like Collins had really hit her stride.

Then it was into chapter seven, and that wasn’t any bloody fun at all.

By this time, half of Twitter had figured out that I was actually reading the book I’d been complaining about for months, and I started getting snarky comments from my co-writer, Eric, particularly because I’d given him such a hard time back when he did the reviews of the first book for The Masquerade Crew. One thing led to another and when I started talking about how what I actually want to do is a top-to-toe rewrite on the entire thing, and I half wanted to do red marks all over a page from the book and show people what my editing process was like, Eric challenged me to do precisely that.

So everything after the break is his fault.

I Critique A Page From The Hunger Games

My Red Pen Exploded On This Page From Suzanne Collins' THE HUNGER GAMES

 

Now I don’t expect anybody to actually be able to read that, because I write in chicken scratches. But I think it’s important to focus on the amount of red ink on this page. I can *just about* tell what the author is trying to do with her prose, in terms of evoking an emotional response from her audience, but I think there is a lot of room for making this a far more evocative story that does service to the ideas and plotting she’s made room for.

DISCLAIMER: I’ve only just gotten to the travesty of the part-one-part-two break in book, which would be taken out if I had actually edited the thing, because it ads nothing that a chapter break wouldn’t do. So there are a couple questions that are like, “unless this is coming in later.” This is how all my writers get notes from me. You need to know how the reader is reacting WHILE THEY’RE READING YOUR STORY in order to know where the problem points are.

So here’s a translation of how my interaction with a page of THE HUNGER GAMES goes:

1. There is some coffee spilled up there, but what I wrote is: “will immediately bring “girl who played with fire” up – can you be more original/diff phrase?” I might add to that, on later passes, that because Katniss is meant to be such an iconic character, re-using/adapting another phrase from another bestseller is doing a disservice to the story she’s trying to tell.

2. “says micheviously” goes, to be replaced with “replies.” My justification: “(If we don’t know he’s ab it of a rebel by now, we need to rewrite/re-look-at some of his earlier scenes and portrayal of his character.)” I.e. she’s using an adverb that, if we’re doing our job right so far, should be completely unnecessary. Note: if the author really wanted to emphasize just how mischevious Cinna was at this moment, I think I’d encourage her to find a way of visually expressing that, rather than just taking the lazy route of “mischeviously.” My point is, there are better ways to communicate the idea than the words she’s using allow for.

3. I’m changing the comma to a colon in the line where Katniss and Peeta congratulate each other. Because, colon.

4. “as quickly as possible” – “Lazy/vague” (this is something writers start hearing from me pretty quickly as an abbreviation for a lecture on finding ways to uniquely express their ideas, or when I can tell they just wanted to get things out of the way. I understand needing to get an idea out, but this is why we rewrite. (If this post is a hit, who knows, maybe I’ll start a series on work of my own and how I edit/rewrite it).

5. From “The stress of the day” to the end of the paragraph, I feel like the author is missing an opportunity. My comment, “This feels thin, we’ll discuss later,” is because it’s a longer discussion than fits in the margins of the printout. But my basic issue with this section of the paragraph is that I don’t feel Katniss’ stress, I don’t feel her being worn out, and her crying wearing her out and being the one particular thing that wears her out doesn’t really ring true to me. Even if she’s not typically an emotional person, most people I know feel *better* after a really good cry, not worse. So there’s something between what the author wants to communicate and what I’m getting, as a reader, and I want to talk to her about that.

6. “Weird transition,” I write between “behind my eyelids” and “at dawn.” I continue with “Sounds continuous, but there’s a time break. Maybe play around with it?” The best on-the-fly editing suggestion I have is some kind of “And then…” trailing off moment (since she already says she’s drifted off with the flashing lights – does she mean they’re a dream, or those funny tetris shadows you get behind your eyes sometimes?) and then a more solid break at the beginning of the next paragraph: Instead of “At dawn, I lie in bed for a while…”  One implies that she’s been up all night, while we’ve already been told in the previous paragraph that she’s drifted off, so that doesn’t make sense. Instead, my suggestion to the author would be that she play up the more cinematic quality of her writing by doing the literary equivilent of a hard cut: ”Dawn. I lie in bed for a while…”

7. Swapping “A day off, at home.” to “At home, a day off.” The rhythm is better.

8. New paragraph where she thinks, “I wonder if Gale is in the woods yet,” because we’re shifting from that moment where she’s contemplating waking up to a moment where she’s recalling her past, and also because I say so.

9. “I think of Gale without me,” she’s gotten the lazy/vague tag again on the word “think” as well as “without me.” My question? “Doing what? Existing? Hunting, you say later, but even saying “doing all this and who knows what else” will help the rhythm.” As written, the line doesn’t give the reader enough time to digest the pause of what’s taking place, the shift going on in Katniss’ head.

10. New paragraph at “Both of us”

11. Instead of “pair,”: “Team? Or is this an evolution that you’re going to develop?” (This comment comes with a reminder of the above disclaimer, and the note that this is how I actually edit my authors’ work. I look at editing and rewriting as a very collaborative process. I like to think that’s part of why my work succeeds at what I want it to do.) Basically, I want the writer to know that she might be missing an opportunity here, but also that I understand that if she’s going to grow something else in later, why it may be a logical choice.

12. “bigger game” – “specifics.” Another variation on “vague/lazy”.

13. Her next sentence is a mess. I’ll type what she has, then I’ll type what my editing suggestion would be:

“But also in the littler things, having a partner lightened the load, could even make the arduous task of filling my family’s table enjoyable.”

Rewritten/edited suggestion: “In the littler things, too, a partner lightened the load. Having Gale’s help went so far as to make the (??) task of filling my family’s table enjoyable.”  Looking at that edit, I’d actually edit it further:

“In the littler things, too, a partner lightened the load. Having Gale’s help made the (??)  task of filling my family’s table enjoyable”

You’ll note the double question marks. I’ve given the author a separate note on that, because now we have a word usage problem:

Arduous 

ar·du·ous/ˈärjo͞oəs/





Adjective:




Involving or requiring strenuous effort; difficult and tiring.









Synonyms:
hard – difficult – laborious – tough – toilsome – severe

Cheers, Google.

Now it’s not that arduous is, what we call in copywriting, “factually incorrect.” There is no doubt in my mind that it is indeed involving or requiring strenuous fefort, difficult and tiring.”

But part of the reason we rewrite and edit is to make sure that we’ve found the best possible choice for the idea in our brain that we’re trying to get into our reader’s brain. This is why it’s important to read a lot as a writer, so you know the words you have available to you, but it’s also why it’s important for editors to work with authors to find the word that fits exactly what the story benefits most from having communicated.

Now. My feeling, as an editor, is that “Arduous” does not include an element of satisfaction or joy, and I feel like in those first horrible chapters, Kat did feel an element of satisfaction/joy in her hunting skills. She certainly has pride in her ability to fill her family’s table. So “Arduous” strikes me as wrong. The words I’ve suggetsed in my chicken scratches are things like “Sisyphean” and “grueling,” though now I’m definitely leaning toward looking for a word that’s more like Sisyphean.

“But Rachel! Sisyphean is such an awesome word! It refers to Greek mythology and that king who has to push the rock up the mountain then it keeps slipping out of his hand and he has to start over! It’s about tasks that can never be completed and require monstrous effort on the part of their doers! It’s perfect for what Katniss is actually undergoing, which is this long-lasting need to keep food on her family’s table at a subsistence level! Plus it brings a whole bunch of cool connotations with myth and heroes and blah blah blah blah blah….”

Ah, but we have a problem. I don’t buy for two seconds that Katniss knows what Sisyphean means, and she’s narrating the book, so we can’t use it. (My suspicion is that the publisher’s target audience might not have market tested as being as up on Greek mythology as many of my readers, which is also a perfectly valid reason not to use a word.)

So we’re not going to use Sisyphean. But we can keep looking. Because we care about this work and we care about making a good product that is not only entertaining. Let’s google lookup Sisyphean:

”

sis·y·phe·an/ˌsisəˈfēən/






Adjective:




(of a task) Such that it can never be completed.”

Blah. No exact synonyms. So let’s think a bit. How can we work with this paragraph/sentence so that the hopelessness of the idea of Katniss being able to feed her family, and what that takes out of her and how Gale lightened her load, can be expressed in a way that pinpoints the exact nature of her struggle? We’re going to work from my “revised” edit of the sentence, which I’m changing again now:

“In the littler things, too, a partner lightened the load. Having Gale’s help made the (arduous)  task of filling my family’s table enjoyable”

A lightbulb goes off: Can we just cut “arduous” altogether? And now I realize that I’ve spent twenty minutes trying to find a perfect word when this, as with my earlier comment about our knowledge of Cinna’s personality, is an answer entirely based on whether or not the author has done her job of making us understand, earlier in the novel, how having to provide for her family has effected our heroine.

So that would probably be my first recommendation to the writer: Cut the word, and we’ll work on making sure people understand, by the time they read on page 85 that having Gale along helped her with her struggles, just how much that would have meant in her struggle. If the author genuinely doesn’t believe the audience will appreciate that, at this point, then this isn’t where the rewriting needs to take place. Now, let’s compare:

Original: ”But also in the littler things, having a partner lightened the load, could even make the arduous task of filling my family’s table enjoyable.

Edited: ”In the littler things, too, a partner lightened the load. Having Gale’s help made the task of filling my family’s table enjoyable.”

14. My next note is an asterisk. “I thought back to the time before Gale” – NOT these words, but this could be a significant beat in the story. This bleeds into my commends on the paragraph as a whole, and I ultimately decide that the issue here is that she isn’t letting the entire paragraph breathe enough. THIS is where we can feel Katniss’ relief, as she and Gale develop their relationship in this and the following pages. Now, I’m not saying Katniss can’t be shell-shocked from her extremely traumatic life – that’s a valid characterization choice, and one that an author is free to make – but the deadness that results from that kind of trauma isn’t coming through for me in Katniss. By her own account, life was harder for Katniss before Gale’s arrival, but in the paragraphs where she describes meeting Gale, we get no sense through either pacing or word choice about the way her feeling shift. I don’t think this services the story, and I think it can be written better. From “It was a Sunday in October” (which should be its own paragraph), I want the writer to go back and do some rewriting to bring out the emotional side of Katniss’ experience of meeting Gale – one person in the book outside her family who we understand she is close to and understands implicitly – and what suddenly realizing there was someone she could rely on brought to her.

 

This, my friends, is why I struggle with reading THE HUNGER GAMES.

Not because I think the ideas are bad, not because I don’t think the characters have potential, but because I feel like I’m reading somebody’s lazy second draft. The structure and pacing and plotting are there, but there’s been no effort to bring a sense of craft, respect for work, or respect for language to the work, as far as I can see.

It’s also part of why I’m looking forward to seeing the film. So far, I haven’t even watched the trailers. But my instinct is that once living, breathing actors start inhabiting the parts Collins has created (and this doesn’t surprise me, since learning she was also a TV writer for Clarissa Explains It All), the motivations and specificities of the characters will be brought out by the actors’ interpretations of the events she’s provided. But that’s another conversation for another time.

Weekend of Epic, Part 1: Bagels, Lox, Braised Short Ribs, Gelato, Italian Ice & More

So. This time last week, I was sleeping. Why was I sleeping? Because I’d been up till 9:30am getting ready for the reading I was hosting at the Cornelia Street Cafe, for my book, Hot Mess. You can read all about that experience here, if you missed it last Friday morning. Suffice to say, fun was had, it was a late night, and everything was awesome. Sare had to leave early on Friday morning, so unfortunately wasn’t able to take part in the rest of the weekend’s festivities – but it was still great to have had her for as long as we did!

Shortly after writing that post, my parents,  who were still in town, took me and Miranda to an absolutely gorgeous breakfast at Barney Greengrass, which is one of the few places where even I will devour a bagel with cream cheese and lox. It was incredible. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

From there, we got a lift back down to Midtown, where we met up with Eric and Erin at the Disney store. I haven’t been in a Disney store in q-u-i-t-e a while, and I have to say, it freaked me out a little bit. Brought back all sorts of memories of the time my parents took us to Disney World when I was in first grade.

We didn’t stay there long, as Eric and Erin were done shopping and we wanted to show Miranda the famous Naked Cowboy of Times Square. That accomplished, the four of us tromped over to Bryant Park and sat and chatted and generally had a relaxing hour or so just hanging out in the park.

Eric and Erin headed off pretty soon then, and me and Miranda wandered over to the big library on Fifth and 40th/42nd. As it happened, they were having an exhibit on Percy Shelley. It said free. We went in. As we walked into the huge old building, admiring the architecture, we saw a sign: free professional calligraphic inscription with the purchase of any of the journals on sale in the gift shop.

So much for free. Part of the conversation in Bryant Park was about art supplies, journals and pens (this is what writers get excited about, you know?), so we made a beeline, picked out journals, and got inscriptions.

Then we headed downtown, where we were going to meet with my parents for dinner at Lotus of Siam…sadly, Lotus looked to be under construction.

Market Table was not under construction. We went to Market Table instead. Totally different kind of cuisine, but, as always – completely delish. I had some kind of braised short rib thing with horseradish crust (not spicy at all); my dad had lamb, mom had salmon and Miranda got garlic soup. I’ve only been to Market Table twice, now, but absolutely everything there is consistently amazing. As is the service. Highly recommended.

After Market Table we went on a mini ice-cream tour. It involved goat’s milk ice cream with goat’s milk caramel, for the lactose-intolerant among us, as well as Gelato, and then an Italian ice. Then me and Miranda took my parents back to their parking garage. And then we went and got cupcakes.

The leather skirt diet was clearly over.

Coming next week:

Weekend of Epic, Part 2(A): Babeland, Fast Cars, Fast Tattoos & Not-So-Fast Burgers