Recently I was asked by Donald Harrison, editor of San Diego Jewish World, if I would like to write for the newspaper. Last week I contributed a guest column about writing Until Our Last Breath and just today my first attempt at reporting an event is in the paper. I’m looking forward to doing more of this, and I have enhanced respect for what journalists do to turn live, streaming reality into organized, polished prose. To outsiders, it may look easy, because nothing but the finished product ever sees the light of day, but as the Italians say, “Che pasticcio!” (what a mess!) exists inside my head and on my desk before it’s ready to push “send.”
Here’s an update: I now have my own author page at San Diego Jewish World
Another ball hits the frame of my tennis racquet and careens off into a corner on my side of the court.
“How come you’re missing the easy ones?” my opponent asks.
“The characters in my novel won’t go away,” I say. “It’s like they’re right here on the court.” And then, suddenly they are. Here comes the heroine, Lili, strolling through the open gate. “I can’t believe you left me at home, she said. “You didn’t even let me unlace my corset before you disappeared, and I can hardly breathe.”
“And what about me?” Delphine, also sixteen, is standing beside her. “I was practicing curtsies for my presentation to the Queen of France. My thighs are killing me, and my back feels like it’s going to be stuck forever.”
She’s looking around. “The weather’s much nicer here. Back in your study, it’s November in Paris.” “And raining too,” Lili adds, as if it’s somehow my fault.
“Are you okay over there?” my opponent calls out.
“Can you move out of the way?” I ask the two girls. “I have to serve the ball.” Delphine sighs loudly. “Come on, Lili,” she says, heading for a row of chairs on the sidelines.
I serve, well aware I have two characters to impress. To my surprise it goes in, and when I win the point I hear applause from more than two pairs of hands. I look over and the entire cast of characters is now watching from the sidelines. There they are—every last dour, sweet, ditsy, scheming, lusty, loving, stern, warm, solemn, treacherous, precious one of them.
“Oh man,” I say to myself. “I’m toast.”
I’m down fifteen-forty and net my second serve. I toss a stray ball across the net to my opponent. His serve.He shoots a bullet to my backhand, and I return it down the line. Wow! Where’d that come from? Love-fifteen. He serves one of these weird twisty things that usually end up far away from where I’m swinging my racquet head, and much to my surprise there’s a clean pop on my strings as I connect again. Love-thirty. Fifteen-thirty. Fifteen-forty. Game to me. Expecting applause, I look to the sidelines.
They’re gone.
I picture them, finding their way over the few blocks from the courts to where I live. Cars screech to a stop to let them march across the street. What’s a crosswalk? What’s a red light? I cross my fingers for them. Maybe when I get home they will have recovered enough to resume the story. With any luck, they’ll tell me what’s supposed to happen next.
I love them all, but sure do hope they won’t use up the hot water and drink all the wine.
I’m a writer, so I love words. I couldn’t help but notice, when I spoke on a panel at theWest Hollywood Book Fair last fall, that almost all the advice I had for the audience could be summarized in words that started with the letter “S.”
I worked with this a little more to come up with the theme for a speech I gave on Presidents Day Weekend at the Southern California Writers Conference. I called the talk “My Years of Writing CopiouSSSSSSly: How I Wrote 20.5 Books in 10 Years and Remained Relatively Normal (I Think),”and here are some of the things I said about what writers need to have, be, or do to keep producing.
Sitzfleisch—A Yiddish term for—well, you figure it out.It’s the ability to stay put in your chair for long periods of time without jumping up to see what’s in the fridge, or who’s sent you e-mail.
Structure—A calendar with specific goals and deadlines (self-imposed are fine), and a work schedule (including quitting time) are really essential to keep from working too much.That’s a bigger problem for me than working too little, but I think it would work equally well in the opposite situation.
Stamina —Staying fit is crucial. I do tend to slack off on this when I’m in the middle of writing a book, but I try not to regress too much, since it affects my overall health, and that governs everything else.
Sanitation—Get out of the jammies and into the shower.Wash your hair, brush your teeth, and don’t forget to floss. Serioussssly!
Stretch–I have a small deck off my study, and amazingly, even going outside for a minute or two to think through a phrasing or a plot detail can have amazing results.
Side interests—Sudoku? Step class?Shopping?Calling on different parts of your body and brain is restorative.
Sunscreen—Take time out, even if it’s just for an hour or two. Find a pool to jump in or a patch of grass to sit on. Think “vacuoussssss.” Try not to think about what you’re writing, but even if you do, it will still feel like a change of pace.
Skin—As in “Superthick.” Learn to laugh at your reviews.Reading them aloud in a whiny voice helps.
Self-Confidence—writing well is never easy, but you can do it.Remember, it’s just a draft until it’s published.
Spellbound—This is something you have to be. You have to find your subject enthralling. Your curiosity needs to be boundlesssss.
Seniority—Writing is one of those things where it helps to have some years under your belt. Tell yourself that all that wisdom is why you need a larger belt.
Say “When”—at some point you have to say “I’m finished with this.”When you’re agonizing over commas, that’s a good clue.
Supporters, Sidekicks, Soulmates—Self-explanatory! If you’re lucky, you have a supportive family and friends, like I do. Another source of support is a writing group. I don’t participate in these because I get too wrapped up in my own work to pay quality attention to anyone else’s (I have difficulty reading even published books when I am actively writing), but many people find sharing works in progress essential to their productivity.
I asked people in the audience if they had any other “S” words of advice, and I got three good ones:
Sleep–I can’t believe I didn’t think of this. Maybe it’s because a good night’s sleep is rare when I’m in the middle of a book, although I do find that very often I wake up ready to rip with a new idea I must have been processing during the night.
Sucks!–Give yourself permission to write badly when that’s the best you can do. Or jump forward and write something that isn’t going to happen for another twenty pages or so, and go back and fill in the rest later
Speak–though I tend not to talk about what I’m writing until I’ve finished the first draft, one person in the audience said that it helps him to tell his story out loud, since it often gives him insight into what to do next or how to make it better. He told me afterwards he used to do this on long car commutes with his friends, but eventually he found himself driving alone, so he changed his ways!
Fellow writers out there in the blogosphere–got more?
Surprise! If you have visited any of my websites before, you were probably expecting the same old same-old, but now, after several months of work with Gabriel Porras and Patricia Maas of Blue Jay Technologies, my new, consolidated website is up and running. I hope you’ll take minute to look around! There’s a new blog page (“diary”), and a schedule of upcoming events (“calendar”) on the home page (past events will fall off after the scheduled date). Another neat feature is the photo gallery–click on a picture to enlarge it for viewing. I’ve included photos from my research trips as well as writing and hobby-related shots. “Book shelf” gives you access to pages about each of my books, and “Links” will connect you with places I’ve guest-blogged, articles, and other information about the subjects I’ve written on. Hope you like it!
I caught a tiny glimpse of heaven on State Street in Santa Barbara a few years back. It was the first bookstore I’d ever seen with a cozy reading area and comfortable chairs, and a little café selling banana bread and croissants to people reading magazines for free. I think it might have had a fireplace, but since it was a warm summer day, that part didn’t really register. Like a poem that hits right between the eyes, The Earthling expressed something perfect, something I’d always known but hadn’t thought of yet.
Last time I was in Santa Barbara, I headed straight for it. It so completely wasn’t there that I couldn’t even figure out where it had been. Sticky pages and coffee stains, or people reading for hours and not buying, were probably not what did it in. It’s gone now, most likely a victim of the crushing forces of online and megastore retailing.Just like so many other bookstores once part of my life.
I’m as guilty as anyone.Ordering books from the comfort of home is just so easy.And the chain stores have such a visible presence, often near somewhere I’m going anyway, that it’s become a habit to make my gotta-have-right-now book purchases as part of my other errands.Which is why, as I’ve made the rounds of local bookstores with advance copies of THE FOUR SEASONS, I’ve been giving the local bookstore scene more thought.
I love the mismatched chairs, the well-trampled area rugs, the glow of real wood and lamplight.I love the shelves with ethnic shawls and bangles, or packets of tea, or funny lapel buttons, or colorful yarn (as at the Grove Bookstore in San Diego), which say something about the personalities and interests of the owners.I love how the staff knows who among them the copy of THE FOUR SEASONS I left with them should go to first, and which regular customers will love it.I love that it will be on one of a few shelves of carefully selected fiction, not wedged among dozens of others written by authors whose last names start with “C.”I love their true caring about books, because I care about books too.
I can’t say my online days are over, or that I didn’t meet wonderful book lovers managing chain stores, but I feel a bit like I do at the end of a wonderful trip, when I say to myself that even though I could happily stay, it’s time to come home. I hope you feel the same.
