Robert Rayner's Blog, page 8

The Problem with Rain

The problem with rewriting is the rain.

 

Nothing against rain, of course.

 

I like rain. I like walking in it. I like watching it. I like listening to it. I like feeling it on my face, battering it or caressing it, I don’t care which.

 

But when I’m rewriting, and can’t think how to fix a problem in the draft and I’m not even sure exactly what the problem in the draft is except I know there is one because the narrative in its present state certainly doesn’t work or is missing something and I’m getting increasingly frustrated and I’ve run out of things to throw across the room to vent my frustration … Then I like to walk and think things through.

 

You see, for some inexplicable reason (a jarring of the brain cells?) walking helps me think things through, and as I think things through, I make notes, usually on a little voice recorder, sometimes in a notebook (trouble with a notebook is you look a complete nerd jotting notes as you walk, as if you’re a dreamy fey poet divining his muse from nature), and gradually the notes turn into an idea for reworking the narrative and suddenly – bingo! – the rewriting logjam is cleared and the redraft is flowing.

 

It usually works.

 

Except in the rain, because when it’s raining, neither voice recorder nor notebook works, the voice recorder because it has this habit of fizzling and crackling into silence when it gets wet and the notebook because it tends to disintegrate into a soggy mess when wet and my writing’s bad enough when dry but totally illegible as a sodden mush.

 

And that’s my reason – my excuse, to put it another way – for sitting at my desk for two hours before breakfast yesterday morning with the intention of rewriting the draft I’m working on (draft #15, actually) and producing half a page of scribbled non sequitur ideas all of which came to a dead end, followed by another two hours later in the morning that produced roughly the same.

 

Ideas have dried up, I suppose.  Right now, I wish the rain would dry up, too.

 

Arcadia in Acadia

Funny thing about leaves. They’ve been there since spring, unobtrusively doing their photosynthesis thing, and we hardly notice them, and then come fall – whoa! – just as they decide they’ve had enough of the hard work of gobbling up carbon dioxide, we’re gushing over them and photographing them and bus loads of tourists are clogging the roads in order to ogle them, as if we’ve never seen a leaf before.

All because of a bit of colour.

What is it with red and yellow and gold? Can’t we pay green the same compliment of wonderment? It’s like having two siblings, one the glittering star, the other unpretentious and self-effacing and unassuming, and pouring all our attention on the former.

      

Anyway, down to Acadia National Park in Maine, not so much to see the leaves – really! – as simply to enjoy its colours, all of them, and its lakes and mountains and trails and craggy coast and carriage roads and little towns, difficult exactly to pinpoint its allure, maybe part self-indulgent nostalgia, the way it recalls the English Lake District, similar with its lakes and colours and gentle, mostly benign mountains, where I hiked and climbed in solitude years ago, taking advantage of working as a journalist and compiling days off in lieu of pay for covering weekend stories and going north to almost deserted Cumberland in the off season, an off season that I suspect no longer exists.

There’s a kind of irony in Acadia’s transmogrification from its popularity in the 1920s as a quasi-wilderness getaway for the rich playing at Going Back to Nature and Roughing It In the Bush to its status now as one of the most visited national parks in the U.S. with around two million visitors a year.

And having decried the obsession with fall leaf colour at the expense of poor, overlooked, summer green, I’m of course including here a few pictures of Acadia National Park …. and its lovely fall colours.

So who says you have to be consistent?

     

Not quite Erroll Garner …

… But pleasant listening all the same …

 

It’s more important to know who will buy a book (and why) than who the book is by …

I read recently that the five main things that lead people to buy books, in order of degree of influence, are:

1 Cover

2 Blurb

3 Sample

4 Reviews

5 Genre

I don’t know if this is based on research or opinion, but doesn’t it mirror what we do when we’re browsing in a bookstore?

          

Three editions of the same book. If you were browsing in a bookstore, which would grab your attention? (Yeah, I know – none. But just supposing …)

We pick up a book, usually because the cover catches our attention. We turn to the back and read the blurb telling us what the book is about. We open it – at the first page, or at random, and sample a paragraph or two. We look for reviews on the back or on the opening pages. The genre (which I suspect may come higher in the order of importance) may have guided our browsing in the first place, or may be confirmed as soon as we read the back cover blurb.

A similar process applies to browsing on line.

What is interesting in this is who is responsible for what most attracts readers to a book. An artist designs the cover. Reviewers write the reviews (duh). Someone in production usually writes the blurb. What’s left? Aha! At last! Something the author is responsible for – the sample and the genre.

But it’s a relatively minor part in attracting readers, and serves as a kind of healthy means of keeping writers in their place.

(I should also mention, among key influencers, booksellers who steer readers towards books they think – or know – will appeal.)

So thanks to all the people who help to sell books.

St. Martins Idyll (2)

     

Writing brings a few perks – a bit of travel, the ability to work at your own pace and set your own deadlines, the pleasure of being greeted at school doors by students when you arrive to read and talk about writing.

And encountering the hospitality of people like Kathy and Rudy Zinn, at the Tidal Watch Inn, in St. Martins, New Brunswick, where I just paid a third visit to read to a group of Road Scholars (formerly Elderhostel) who came from all over the United States.

               

The inn was built as a home over a century ago by a prosperous family, the Skillens. In the 1800s it was the social hub of St. Martins, at that time a major shipbuilding centre and one of the richest communities in the British Empire.

        

Introduction from Kathy …                                 … and the ‘story so far’ before reading #1  

Now the house, in the form of the Tidal Watch Inn, is another kind of social hub, one for visitors to the serene and pretty little seaside town with its outrageously picturesque movie-set-unreal harbour, and its long sweep of beach with the famous sandstone cliffs and caves at one end and marshes at the other, and only a few kilometres beyond the stunning Fundy Parkway.

     

                                                         Covered bridges beside the harbour

Thanks to Kathy and everyone at the Tidal Watch Inn for their welcome and kindness, and to the members of the Road Scholar group for their interest and company and ready friendship.

     

 

The sweep of beach from marsh to rocks                     Nancy R. on the bridge in the lush gardens between the covered bridges     

A Festival, a Fall Fair, a Fabulous Wedding, and Another Wearisome Week of Not Writing

With the band playing at a festival, a wedding and a fall fair, and my getting ready for a new year of teaching music, as well as the actual start of teaching, it’s been a busy month on the music front, while writing has hit the doldrums as I wait to hear the fate of one teen story (i.e. rejection) and the release date of another (but almost certainly something will go wrong and it won’t happen).

In fact, writing has more than hit the doldrums.

I mean – why bother, when it’s going to end up as yet another story destined never to reach the world?

You may have noted the tone – just a hint – of scepticism in the paragraph above, a conviction that things will not turn out as hoped. It’s a kind of self-defence mechanism learned from the writing business which dictates that you assume the story you’ve just spent a year or more working on is rubbish (every time you work on it or re-read it you become more convinced of that) and will be rejected outright by every publisher in North America, or, if it’s accepted for publication, before it’s released the publisher will have a change of heart or will go out of business or the publishing house will be burned down or flooded or hit by a cyclone so that the release date becomes … never.

(My record for frustration is the publisher who had one of my stories on the publishing schedule for over a year and then decided not to do it after all.)

Hands up if you understand the source of my inveterate pessimism.

Ah well. There’s always the more productive music scene with which to cheer oneself up. Here we are – the band, Stepping Out – getting set up to play at the hugely and deservedly successful Charlotte County Fall Fair, at the Ganong Nature Park near St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

I don’t know what I write.What I mean is – I don’t know ...

I don’t know what I write.

What I mean is – I don’t know how to pigeonhole it. Not that a book necessarily needs to be pigeonholed, except for the various and ubiquitous blurbs (“Robert Rayner is the author of three adult novels, four teen novels, and nine young adult novels …”), and so that book stores know where to put it (unless they simply shelve all books alphabetically by author; would that work?), and so that publishers know where to place it and distribute it in their catalogues and promo stuff.

So – okay – I write novels, adult, teen and young adult.

Which prompts the question: What’s the difference – apart from the ages (YA 8-13 years, teen 14+ years) often noted on the back cover – between an ‘adult’ novel and a ‘teen’ novel and a ‘young adult’ novel (not to mention a ‘new adult’ novel)?

And when do you become ‘adult’, anyway? Driving age? Drinking age? The old ‘age of maturity’, twenty-one? Should ‘adult’ novels have an age classification on the back cover (adult 18+)? Maybe there should be an upper limit (adult 18-65. Not suitable for seniors.)

Partly, I suppose, it’s the reader the author has in mind as she or he writes. (Most important thing to keep in mind as you write, I tell students is – Who are you writing for?)

Trouble is, as many adults as teens read so called ‘teen novels’ these days, and as many older teens as adults have been reading so called ‘adult novels’ for years, in school if not out of it. (My friends and I were reading, amongst other writers, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs when we were in our early teens.) (Maybe that’s what did the damage.)

To compound the confusion, ‘young adult’ and ‘teen’ are often used interchangeably, and ‘young adult’ sometimes covers a wide age range. Although my ‘Libby’ books are classified as ‘ages 6-10’, and the Brunswick Valley series as ‘ages 8-13’, they tend to turn up on the same ‘young adult’ shelf in bookstores – alongside my ‘teen’ books.

Maybe the classification rests (arbitrarily) on the age of the protagonists, so that if a story is about 8-13 year olds, it’s YA, and if about 14+ year olds, it’s teen (or new adult).

All of which reminds me that my book website (www3.nb.sympatico.ca/raynernr) starts, Stories – for adults, teens, young adults, and children.

So maybe I do, after all, know what I write. Just not sure which books fit into which pigeonhole.

And still wondering if it matters.

Beginnings and Endings 5

I like ending stories on an ambivalent note. (Song arrangements, too. You can’t beat finishing on a major seventh.) I like to leave a little (or a lot) of doubt about what the future holds for the characters, and the reader wondering whether the ending is ‘happy’, or if tragedy is about to fall.

I think one of my best endings (by my own – highly suspect, of course – judgement) was in the teen novel, Footprints (Breakwater/Jesperson 2008).

(I’m tempted to ponder what I mean by a ‘teen novel’, but that’s a topic for another time.)

Here’s the end of Footprints:

Harper watches his friends from the corner of his eye. They are holding hands. Drumgold is saying something about worldwide injustice and oppression. He talks like that all the time.

Isora gazes at the sea. Harper wishes she’d pirouette in the sand, the way she used to. She’s not listening to Drumgold. She’s wearing the outfit she wore the day she set the bomb. She doesn’t talk much, and when she does, it’s of revenge for Dexter and George.

Droopy and Diamond Head are at the iron gate. They wave and smile. Drumgold and Isora ignore them.

Harper, glancing at his friends again, wonders which of them he fears the most.

Lovin’ the Liebster

I’m ridiculously pleased and flattered to be nominated for a Liebster Award by friend-of-I-don’t-know-how-many-years Rich Meyrick, author of the Jaspa’s Journey books, who writes a fascinating, beautifully illustrated (with his own photographs) blog about his extraordinary travels at https://jaspasjourney.wordpress.com/.

The Liebster is presented to bloggers by their peers, who in turn nominate their own favourite bloggers for it. Here’s how it goes:

You post the Award on your site.
You link it back to the person who nominated you.
You answer the seven questions posted by the person who nominated you.
You nominate other deserving blogs.
You post seven questions for the blogs you nominate.

So, first, here are my answers to Rich’s questions:

1. What made you decide to write a blog in the first place?

Simple: I was researching publishers, looking for a home for a novel I was working on, and twice came across the statement – If you don’t have a blog, don’t bother to submit.

2. Of all the blogs you’ve posted, which is your own personal favourite?

That’d be a children’s picture book short story I wrote years ago called Mr. Fitch (April 24th 2014), because I love the story, and am frustrated at my failure to have it published, after coming very close, and was happy to take the opportunity of sharing it with the two or three people who read this blog.

3. What is the absolute #1, must do item on your Bucket List?

Return to White Head Island, which is my absolute #1 must do item every time I leave it.

4. If you were exiled from your home country, where would you live, and why?

I’m already in a kind of voluntary exile – from England, where I lived until I moved to Newfoundland in my twenties. If I was exiled from Canada, I’d ask to be sent to somewhere like the Orkney or Faroe Islands.

5. Hot or Cold? Do you prefer the baking heat of summer or the chill days of winter?

Winter. Absolutely. Unequivocally. (I say that even after the long, hard winter of last year.)

6. Not including family or friends, who would be your ideal travelling companion, and why?

It’d have to be one of the dogs that has graced my life (read about them in The Last Dog, January 10, 2014), Maxim, or Roger, or Jesse. I wouldn’t trust anyone else – bar family members – to understand what I wanted, or didn’t want, from a travelling companion.

7. Character or Clutter? When photographing landscapes, places, etc., do you like to have people in your pictures, or do you feel they detract from the subject in question?

As a general rule – definitely no people. If somehow they sneak into the picture, I usually photoshop ’em out.

And my Liebster nominees are:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6197790.Lisa_Dalrymple/blog

http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/

http://litwist.wordpress.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4524261.Sarah_Butland/blog

For whom my questions are:

Who do you want to read your blog? (In other words, describe your ideal reader.)
Why do you write a blog?
Do you focus your blog on one particular topic, or leave it open for whatever grabs your fancy when you write it?
What is one of your favourite books – and (in one sentence) why?
What is one of your favourite movies – and (in one sentence) why?
What piece of music (any genre – song, symphony, aria, quartet …) evokes most memories for you – and (if it’s not too personal) why?
What is your favourite line from a book or poem?

Blueberry Blues

To paraphrase a friend’s comment: “We’re so blue!”

Actually, the band’s blue shirts were an accidental addition to the blue theme of the afternoon at the Wild Blueberry Festival in St. George, New Brunswick, but it meant we fit right in, among the blue outfits of Ms. Blueberry and her young friends, and of the blueberry processing plant in the background.

Looking back, I suppose we (the band, Stepping Out) could have played a whole afternoon of blues, so that our music blended with the theme of the afternoon as well as our shirts.

Not just the 12-bar variety with all its variations, but songs with blue in the title. Blue Bayou, Blue Velvet, Blue Suede Shoes, Blue Moon, Song Sung Blue, Blue Christmas, Blue Hawaii, Forever in Blue Jeans, Famous Blue Raincoat, Am I Blue?

And of course Blueberry Hill.

The list goes on (and that’s just off the top of my head), without even mentioning all the (real) blues titles or the eponymous blues, like Joe Turner’s, and Miss Celie’s.

(Why so much blue in songs, anyway? There’s the association with The Blues, of course, and, by extension, ‘being blue’, but the fascination with the colour seems to go beyond that. Why, for example, Blue Suede Shoes? Why not Yellow Suede Shoes?)

As it turned out, we added Blueberry Hill to the playlist almost at the last minute, as an acknowledgement of the band’s venue, the Festival’s ‘On the Farm’ afternoon, for which we provided background music for the crowds who came to see demonstrations and displays and tasting of blueberry products, and to view the blueberry processing operation.

Through the weekend the Festival featured lots of music, a ball hockey tournament, customer appreciation week at local businesses, charity yard sales, a spaghetti supper, a hoop-a-thon (another fund raiser), a car show, runs (or walks, if you preferred), and a church breakfast (with blueberry pancakes, of course).

In other words, the best of small town life.

Thanks to Granite Town Farms, of St. George, for organising the Festival, and for their contribution to both the economy and the vitality of the town.

And for giving Stepping Out a blue but fun afternoon.