Hayley Linfield's Blog, page 3

A Writer/Mom's Rainy Day Thoughts

This is supposed to be a blog about writing and the world of publishing, but what the heck - writers are mothers too!

This morning I sent my two boys off to school in the pouring rain, each of them carrying an umbrella and wearing a raincoat and rubber boots.  I watched them set off down the sidewalk, slowly... very slowly.  I wondered about calling out after them to keep out of the puddles, but I didn't.

Below, in silly poem form (and with an overwhelming number of exclamation points!) is my (maybe not so good) reason for keeping quiet.  Enjoy!

Don’t Jump in the Puddles!

Walk! Don’t run! You might fall down and skin your blessed knee!

Get off that rock! Stay off the grass! Don’t try to climb that tree!

You’re riding on your bike too fast! You’ll get hit by a car!

You can’t walk up to Johnny’s house. It’s really much too far!

You’re liable to get taken! You can’t go there alone!

Get off that fence! It’s much too high! You’ll surely break a bone!

For heaven’s sake, get over here! Stop walking through the mud!

Your coat and pants are dirty now! You’re boots are full of crud!

Stop jumping in the puddles! You’ve muddied up your shirt!

Don’t walk backwards! Turn around! You’re going to get hurt!

Moms and daddies love us. They want to do what’s right.

They want to keep us safe and sound throughout the day and night.

But sometimes they forget that children want to just have fun.

They like to wrestle, run, and jump in rain or snow or sun.

Yes, they’re safe inside their house, watching the TV.

No, they won’t get hurt at all. They’ll never scrape their knee.

But moms and daddies sometimes get their brains a little muddled.

‘Cuz what’s the point in living if you can’t jump in the puddles?

The Joys of Used Books

I was strolling North on Yonge Street in Toronto on a hot July afternoon when I came upon a bin filled with used books. I stopped to have a look since I’ve discovered several treasures in this way.

For example, I have a book, published sometime in the 60s, all about UFO abductions, and written in a very compelling, if rather sensationalist, way.

I also have a paperback about the past lives of children, which was a fun read, though disappointing in that neither of my children have started telling me about their past lives.

I’ve scooped up regular novels too. In fact, at a used book shop in Montreal I found the novel, “Sanditon,” which Jane Austen was writing at the time of her death. Someone finished it for her, though not in very typical Jane Austen style. Still, a good find.

Seeing nothing that interested me terribly in the sidewalk bin, I pushed open the shop door and went inside. There were books on top of books on top of books. A hand waved at me from behind a huge stack of paperbacks. It was the cashier, though she was practically buried beneath the yellowing piles.

“Can I help you?” came a voice from somewhere behind the books.

I was about to tell her that I was just browsing, but since I couldn’t see any organization in the books, I didn’t really know how to go about browsing. In fact, a lot of the books were in piles on the floor, some of the spines turned in, some with no writing on the covers at all. In order to ‘browse’ in a shop like this, I would need an entire day, and I’d only cover a tiny fraction of the selection available to me.

I decided to ask for specifics. Since I’d recently gotten a recommendation to read Romola by George Eliot, I asked for it. The hand waved towards the top shelf behind me. Sure enough, there was Romola alongside Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. This place was more organized than I had first thought.

I snatched a copy of Romola and let my eyes wander over the piles and stacks that surrounded me. I picked up a few volumes and set them down almost right away. Then my eyes fell upon a small pocket-sized book entitled “Spanish Stories and Tales.”

I’ve always been interested in obscure folk tales and legends. I find kernels of inspiration in the usually unknown stories. I’ve read and enjoyed the tales of Herodotus, a book of Chinese legends, several books on Japanese fairy tales (many of them remarkably similar to Grimm fairy tales), and international tales of warrior women. I find any of these stories can be a jumping off point for a potential novel.

In my book of Spanish tales, I discovered “The Cock of Socrates” by Alas, which should be required reading for anyone interested in either philosophy or religion.

I also discovered a gem by Jorge Luis Borges entitled, “The Secret Miracle,” about a Jewish playwright sentenced to execution by the Nazis. In his final moment of death as the firing squad rains bullets upon him, he prays to God to grant him one more year to perfect his floundering play. In that moment he is able to live in his mind for 365 more days, enough time to put his jumbled thoughts in order and feel good about the literary work he’s left for the world. He dies, a moment later, satisfied.

These stories made me wonder whether our interconnectedness is limiting our philosophical reasoning. Does anyone still sit around debating whether time exists, or whether the possibilities of thoughts are finite or infinite? Surely these answers are not available on Wikipedia.

Sometimes I worry about the volumes of used, little-known books out there languishing in jumbled piles in rarely visited book shops. Most of them will never be read again, yet many of them contain such pearls of dying wisdom.

I still intend to buy a Kindle (Good heavens, I’m the author of an e-book! I don’t know what I’m waiting for!) but I hope when I have my e-reader in hand and am busy downloading all those new gems that I still take the time to browse the old shops for those lost treasures.

On Writing Graphically

All writers hear it again and again. It’s the writing guru’s mantra: SHOW, DON’T TELL! And it’s a hard thing to grasp sometimes, especially when just telling the story seems so much easier. In fact, it’s not only easier; it’s more natural, isn’t it? My two boys ask me a few times a week to TELL them a story. They’ve never asked me to SHOW them a story. That’s up to TV and movies, right?

No, of course not. Active writing is a thousand times better than simple narrating. I can still feel my disappointment when I read Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, and discovered that the entire book is narrated. This might be a slight exaggeration, but I’m not sure there are more than four quotation marks in the entire novel. Tell-y writing is something that’s pretty pervasive among the classics. Didn’t we all want Emily Bronte to SHOW us the love story between Cathy and Heathcliffe, as opposed to relating it through the eyes and ears of the maid?

Of course those Victorian writers were shackled to an extent by what was considered appropriate for their times, but as Fifty Shades of Grey has demonstrated, anything goes nowadays. Indeed, a modern novel must contain a high degree of SHOW, or active writing, in order for anyone to want to read it.

But what happens when the subject matter is graphic? What happens when the characters in a novel are acting in ways that make the reader uncomfortable?

In those situations, it’s only natural for a reader to want to turn away from the book, and as readers, we’re welcome to do just that. I’ve certainly stopped watching many movies – good movies – because I was too uncomfortable to go on with it.

At the beginning of my novel, The Truth about Dandelions, the protagonist, a young woman struggling with her promiscuity, hates herself. She acts like a slut and with every sexual encounter, in which she attempts to assert herself and gain confidence, she falls lower and lower into the depths of self-hatred and despair. She’s pathetic and she knows it. She makes bad decision after bad decision, and readers can be forgiven for thinking she’s an idiot and a lost cause.

To write this part of my protagonist’s life in a show-y way is asking a lot of my readers. I’m basically asking them to trust me. I’m saying, through my writing, just get through this and she’ll come around. Stay with her.

Several of my family members (and I’m sure others as well) had a hard time getting through this part of my book, even though I assured them it wasn’t autobiographical. But still, they said, it’s just too graphic.

The thing is, how do you get into the mindset of a person who hates herself without showing the details? How can you feel her pain, her discomfort, her inner turmoil, without showing the meat of her actions, debased though they may be? And how can you show that, without making your reader feel uncomfortable?

This is a tough question. Surely really good writing can convey your protagonist’s discomfort without imposing those feelings on the innocent reader. Still, for writing to be honest, shouldn’t it take you places? True, it might take you somewhere you don’t want to be, and that’s fine. All you have to do is close the book and you’re transported back to the comfort of your own secure world.

Indeed, writing can fill you with sadness and tears, with annoyance and discomfort, and with hatred and revulsion. But of course it can fill you with joy and elation as well.

I still have a long way to go with my writing – I think every writer feels that way, even the most successful among us – and indeed, that’s the beauty of writing as a craft. It can always improve. There is no finish line. The road of writing stretches out in front of you with no ending in sight, and whether readers love my book or hate it, it’s a wonderful road to be on.

Fifty Shades of a Book Review

Fifty Shades of a Book Review

About a month ago I was given the best-seller, Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James. At the time I was finishing up another novel (The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which contains no sex at all – hope that’s not a spoiler…) and so Fifty Shades of Grey had to wait its turn.

I had, of course, heard about Fifty Shades of Grey. I had heard via twitter that the writing was “atrocious” and via Goodreads that it was “amazing.” A friend told me that when she was reading it she was inclined, now and then, to call her husband to bed, or to wherever she happened to be reading.

When I finally finished Setterfield’s book I opened up Fifty Shades of Grey, but we were spending the weekend in Toronto, going to a family wedding, and had lots of relatives around, so I didn’t really get a chance to sit down and get into it. I read the first page and immediately saw what the critics were talking about.

I’ve always been turned off by books that physically describe the protagonist, and I don’t like it when characters are referred to by their full names, unnaturally and for no apparent reason. I set the book aside until I was home and would have more time on my hands.

A little while later I picked it up again, but we were in the throes of the remaining days of school and I was, once again, distracted. The writing still wasn’t grabbing me. Little boys were running around spilling milk on the floor and a heat wave was upon us. Again the book was set aside. I still hadn’t gotten past chapter two.

One day, while browsing the internet, I came across a scathing review of the book. The reviewer bashed the writing completely, noting all the little things the writer did that bothered her. She questioned, “Why am I reading this?” The answer: she didn’t know. The review ended with the reviewer noting that, “I stopped reading on page 56!”

What?? Page 56?? The book has over 400 pages! She read a couple of chapters and had the audacity to write a scathing review??

Prompted by the nastiness of that reviewer, I found a day to myself and picked up Fifty Shades of Grey where I’d left off, and I think I learned something about that reviewer.

In the book, the main character knows that Mr. Grey is going to get her into things that she might not want to do, yet she makes the choice to enter into a relationship with him. That reviewer who stopped reading before the action got going? She wouldn’t have made the same choice. She would have run. She would have played it safe, not become invested. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reviewer was feeling that if she kept reading, she would have been drawn in and taken somewhere she didn’t want to go.

But what she would have found had she kept on reading, I suspect, is that she would have forgiven E.L. James for her overuse of the words, “wow” and “wayward.” She would have forgiven all the examples of tell instead of show. She would have glossed over the myriad examples of the characters (who are supposed to be American) using obviously British expressions, and she would have ignored the overused clichés.

Until around page 60, I could have put the book down and walked away, but once I passed the point of no return, well, it was the point of no return, and I read the entire novel in one day, finishing at about two in the morning. It drew me in and, frankly, exhausted me (in more ways than one…), and I was happy when my husband came home! (wink wink)

While Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t completely of the erotica genre (there is more plot, some symbolism – even if a bit too obvious – and lots of non-sexual moments) it certainly has elements of erotica. Of course not everyone wants to read erotica and that’s fine.

Maybe it makes people uncomfortable. Maybe it makes people feel guilty. Maybe it makes them acknowledge turn-ons they don’t want to acknowledge. Maybe it’s simply prudishness.

But come on! That nasty reviewer reminded me of the people who insist, while laughing through Tommy Boy or Zoolander, that these movies are beneath them, badly written, and stupid.

I say if you’re a prude, then admit that you’re a prude.

And if you’re going to write a review, read the whole friggin’ book!

On Emoting and the Writer's Personality

Last night I was wasting time by watching So You Think You Can Dance. After a group performance one dancer was called to the front of the stage where she was accused by the judges of not having enough personality. She said, calmly, that she knew she could do this, she knew she could compete, she knew she was good enough.

But the judges said that she didn’t say it with enough conviction. They wanted her to shout it out, leap up and down, be emotive.

In response, the poor dancer did the only sensible thing she could do: she started to cry.

The judges liked this. Ah, they said, see, she does have a personality. She would do. She made it through to the next round.

I seethed with anger at these stupid, simple-minded judges. Just like the judges on America’s Next Top Model, who every season attack some obviously shy girl for “not having any personality,” these idiots think that being loud and extroverted is the only acceptable personality to have.

If these judges are looking for a spokesperson, someone to stand in front of a camera and incite passion or excitement, then being extroverted and bubbly is definitely a must. Maybe part of the winning contract for So You Think You Can Dance or America’s Next Top Model is about promotion. It is, after all, a TV show.

And that’s the wonderful thing about writing: a writer doesn’t have to verbally emote. A writer can keep his feelings inside and then let them out on paper. A writer can be shy, quiet. A writer doesn’t have to jump up and down when she hears good news. She can be quietly happy. A writer can sit, calmly, behind the scenes, tapping out the next masterpiece on an old typewriter, beautifully alone, loving her solitude.

Can’t she?

Of course not.  At least, not anymore. In the publishing world, and particularly in the indie publishing world, a writer now must promote his or her own work, and promotion is hard to do without getting in people’s faces. Indie writers, for the most part, don’t have agents or publicists.

More than finding time to write, more than coming up with a great concept, and more than editing, the most difficult task for a huge number of writers is developing (or at least faking) that extroverted personality type coveted by the Hollywood bimbos and mimbos of our world.

If a writer wants people to read her book, she’s got to go out and tell people, “READ MY BOOK!”

And it’s helpful if she’s emotive about it.

Literary Fiction, Marketing, and the E-World

I have a confession to make: I don’t have an e-reader.  Also, I’ve never in my life bought an e-book. However, now that I am the author of one, I think I ought to go out and purchase a Kindle. A Kobo? Something with Sony and a lower case ‘e’ in the name? An iPad? Seriously, I’m pathetic. I still don’t really know the electronic world. I do know paper.

I have another confession to make: when I was writing The Truth about Dandelions I didn’t know what genre of fiction it was.

I knew it wasn’t romance because the love story wasn’t the only theme and I cannot and will not write the words “member” or “mound” to refer to male or female genitalia. (For that matter, I don’t think it necessary to actually refer to genitalia. We all know what we’re talking about when we read sex scenes, right? I refuse to spell it out.)

I thought maybe it was Chick Lit, and I tried to pitch it to agents as such, but without trying to sound pretentious or snotty, I think it was a bit deeper than Shopaholic Does Something or Other Fun and Crazy. (I do love Chick Lit, even if the genre is ‘dead.’ And I don’t buy that by the way.)

I was pretty sure it wasn’t Literary Fiction because in all honesty I don’t think my writing is that good. I’ve read Literary Journals like Prairie Fire and Descant, or rather I’ve tried to read them, but I don’t get them. I don’t understand them. For the most part, I don’t find the writing compelling. I find myself rereading the same sentence over and over and not really registering it.

Oh, what a horrible thing for a writer to have done: I wrote a book that did not neatly fit into a genre. No agent or publisher was going to want to take on a book that they didn’t know how to market. Stupid, silly me.

When I found a micropublisher, Wolf on Water, willing and excited to take it on, I thought great! But imagine my surprise when The Truth about Dandelions went live on Smashwords and Amazon under the category of Literary Fiction.

Really? I thought. Literary? I wrote something literary? I was flattered actually. In my eyes, literary meant worthy, important. I didn’t realize it also meant, at least in the world of e-books, boring.

Where’s the vampire sex? Where are the were-panthers? (Is that a thing?) And do you mean to say it’s over 100,000 words? According to Smashwords, that length is “epic.” Seriously?

Book reviewers and bloggers, I am finding, are mostly into Young Adult and Urban Fantasy, the first genre I haven’t read since I was in high school and the second genre I haven’t read, full stop. (I assume Urban Fantasy has something to do with sexy gangs and dystopian futuristic magical beings?)

So, what’s a writer of non-genre fiction to do?

Well, I have another confession to make: I don’t actually care about the money. I would rather a handful of intelligent, educated, influential people read my book and love it than sell a million copies of something that has no deep meaning for me.

So, what will I do? Just go on writing I guess.

By the way, if anyone wants to read my book and review it, that would be awesome. But I warn you, there are no vampires.

Sex, Religion, and the Internal Censor

I once went to a writing workshop that focused on typical ‘writerly’ issues, such as Overcoming Writer’s Block, Dealing with your Internal Critic, and Making Time to Write. The topic, however, that most resonated with me was Overcoming Your Internal Censor.  Though the workshop lasted eight weeks, I can’t actually remember how one is supposed to achieve this. I think the idea of the workshop was more to ask questions than to come up with answers.

I should start by saying that I’m a nice girl. (I italicized that on purpose. It’s a label, you see, more than anything else, though I like to think it’s grounded in reality.) Basically the nice girl has always been my image. I never smoked, was never attracted to bad boys, and always did my homework. Teachers liked me. I had a good relationship with my parents. My idea of a crazy party was lip-synching to Footloose and drinking Coke. You get the picture.

I don’t rock the boat. I avoid conflict. I’m happiest when everyone around me is happy. In all those what-personality-type-are-you quizzes, I’m the “pleaser,” the “B-type.” I don’t shock. I don’t offend.

Being an adult (in most ways – admittedly I actually like watching Toon Retro with my kids… Thunder Cats are sexy) there are a few ‘adult’ scenes in my novel, The Truth about Dandelions. Back and forth I went with my editor/publisher (Niika Nenn, from Wolf on Water Publishing) over a couple of these scenes.

“Give us more,” she wrote. “Women love details.” Basically I was being asked to juice it up, get racy, and be explicit.

Show us the sex.

But the thought kept running through my head: my mom is going to read this! My uncles are going to read it. How can I describe the quality of my protagonist’s orgasm if I think my mother’s elderly friend Mildred is going to be reading it? Can I really describe where he put his hands or how his tongue moved back and forth if my mother-in-law’s book club is going to see it?

The main character in my novel is an English Lit major, studying Tess of the D’Urbervilles. My protagonist points out that (spoiler alert) Thomas Hardy is so vague and subtle in his description of Tess’ rape at the hands of Alex D’Urberville that if one isn’t reading extremely closely, one will skip right over it and not even realize it happened!

As a reader, I definitely want more detail than Hardy was able to give (and who among us doesn’t wish that Jane Austen had given us just a bit more at the end of her novels?) but I refuse to write smut. (As an aside, I have no problem reading smut. I just can’t write it.)

Now I know there’s an area that lies somewhere between the what-just-happened? of Hardy and the throbbing-members of erotic fiction, and I hope I hit that middle ground in my writing. Basically, I hope Mom will approve.

Sex is one area where my internal censor sounds the alarm; religion is another. The protagonist in The Truth about Dandelions is extremely critical of organized religion, even casually referring to Jacob as “an asshole” and to Esther as “a bloodthirsty wench.” She insists that she couldn’t be friends with someone who defined themselves as “Christian.”

For someone like me who was raised in a (fairly) accepting, open-minded, country church, it felt as if I was spitting on the valuable education I’d been privy to. I’m pretty sure I have friends – good friends even – who believe in God. Will they still like me after my protagonist proclaims that all religious people are “whack-jobs”?

My internal censor was going berserk leading up to the release on June 1st of The Truth about Dandelions. It’s the same thing, I suppose, that has been running through my head ever since Grade Two:

Please like me. Please like me. No matter how forward, explicit, or critical my writing may be, please, please like me.

On Twittering...

Picture this scene:

The year is sometime in the 1800s, before that new-fangled invention, the telephone came along. A dusty street, such as one that John Wayne or Wyatt Earp might saunter down, stretches out for miles in the blistering sun.

On either side of this road there are huts, some made of logs, some slightly ritzier with milled boards for walls. Every shack has a rickety veranda or open porch on the front, and on every veranda, there are one or two people, sometimes three, perhaps a whole family. Some smoke pipes, several chew on long pieces of straw, a few drink grog out of metal mugs. Some sit in shaky rocking chairs, some hunker down on the veranda steps, and many stand, hands on hips.

Now imagine all of these people, at the same time, yelling at each other – not angry yelling – just trying to be heard.

Some shout out advice. Some tell jokes. Some repeat things that other people already said. If they decide to stop yelling, another person quickly takes their place. It never, ever ends. There’s never, ever any peace.

Oh, and all this yelling happens in 140 characters or less.

When I first heard about twitter this is how I imagined it – as millions of people shouting out millions of things all at the same time, falling, for the most part, on deaf ears, or at least on ears already occupied with their own yelling.

Why would anybody be interested in this, I initially thought?

When it was suggested that I join twitter, I thought, well, okay, but what the heck am I going to tweet about? Why would anybody be interested in anything I have to say? The first time someone I didn’t actually know followed me, I was baffled. Why would someone I don’t even know choose to follow me? It’s not as if I was tweeting profound thoughts or anything like that.

But then I started following people that I didn’t know personally, and I discovered something: people are interesting.

I’m now able to read cool articles that I would never have discovered on my own. I can read advice about book selling and marketing. I’ve made contacts with reviewers and learned about a lot of really exciting books and blogs from fellow authors. I’ve “met” people with similar interests to myself. I’ve even been inspired by poetic, funny, or philosophical musings.

At times I’m overwhelmed by the sheer volume of everything. It’s amazing to think that there are so many individuals out there and, if we want, we can all be interconnected. I don’t think the human brain actually has the capacity to really understand numbers past a certain point. Scrolling through the daily tweets sometimes seems like trying to keep track of every star in the night sky.

But some great advice I received (on twitter) made me realize that I only have to read and respond to as much as I want. The tweets will keep coming just the way thoughts and life keep on coming. I can only be a part of a small fraction of what’s out there, but I’ve got to say…

I’m glad I’m a part of it after all.

What, me? Blog?

I’m not convinced that hyper-connectedness via the internet is a positive thing for our world. I don’t even know if people are still saying internet, or is that just so 2005?

(I don’t even like the word blogger, aesthetically speaking.)


So how in the extremely-connected-world could I possibly be a blogger?
As I write, a wonderful (perhaps slightly paraphrased) quotation from David Suzuki’s, The Legacy, keeps running through my head: 

“We’ve become so dazzled by our technological accomplishments
that we have been blinded to their consequences.”

It rings out to me with so much truth… but what could possibly be wrong with being connected to interesting people you’d never meet in a million years? Advice, comfort, business networking – it’s all just a click away. Why is that not awesome? Why am I not fully convinced? What’s holding me back from total acceptance?


In the 80s’ classic movie, Pump Up the Volume, teenagers had to risk imprisonment for trying to connect, via illegal radio broadcasting, with like-minded kids. In this movie, a teenager committed suicide because he felt so alone. Now, kids can go on-line and find in seconds a community of thousands from all around the world who feel the exact same way.

(I don’t know if teen suicide rates have dropped or not – with raging hormones and an underdeveloped brain, there will always be some “reason” to kill yourself.)  The point is, Pump Up the Volume is now completely irrelevant. (But Christian Slater is just as hot as he always was, even if Hard Rain really sucked.)


Still, I hate that deadened, glazed look in my son’s eyes when he sits in front of a computer (or TV) and I can’t stand his vehement reaction when I tell him he’s had enough and it’s time for him to go and do something else.
I hate that my husband often can’t have a conversation with me without checking his phone every minute.
What’s more, I hate that Mac has picked up on this annoying side effect of their product and is now somehow using it as a marketing strategy! Grab one of these! You’ll never bother to look at the real world again!
There is an addictive component to the internet that most of us either ignore or don’t care about. (Let’s face it, if someone suggested that a certain drink or food was addictive, there’d be a frantic push to control it. I realize, of course, that the internet is largely uncontrollable – at least it is outside of North Korea.)
So how could I become a blogger?

This brave new world has grabbed me and pulled me in. I haven’t figured any of it out yet. Maybe I never will. But if you’re curious about my journey through this modern day wonderland, then read my blog – yes, I really wrote those words: my blog.