Black History Month 2021

Tags

Adichie, Black Author, Black History Month, books, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half a Yellow Sun, reading

I try to read a black-authored book during February., and it bothers me. It bothers me because I have to even protest such nonsense. The nonsense: why we cannot treat everyone the same. But I do. It’s not so much to add my voice to any protest but to reaffirm in myself that racism is a problem and if you’re not part of the solution … I suppose this is my meager contribution to solutions. I have countered many many idiots who claimed I need to watch better news or buy a gun or whatever nonsense they were spewing with my advice, “try reading a book.” I am convinced if we all became regular and varied readers, we’d all by much better off.

In the past few years for BHM I have read Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, Henry Louis Gates Jr’s Colored People, W.A. Spray’s The Blacks of New Brunswick, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and the short story collection Children of the Night edited by Gloria Naylor. I read all but Dhalgren for the purpose of reading black authors. Last year it was the end of February and I said damn, I should really read a black author. Then I stuck my head back into that beast of a book and never minded who wrote it. That’s a good thing, right? When you don’t even notice who the author is? It wasn’t till I got to a part he talked about a gang with blacks and whites in it and nobody cared that I realized he was black and I laughed at myself.

Black authors I’ve read outside of BHM. I think this is an important point to make. I read books for many reasons, and except for BHM, I do not read or pan books based on the author’s demographics, values, politics, religion, or anything else. I read Ender’s Game knowing full well the author was a bigot. I read Ayn Rand knowing full well that she was a nutcase. I am sorry to say I have to search for black authors I’ve read outside of BHM: Andre Alexis’ Fifteen Dogs, Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal, Adwoa Badoe’s Between Sisters, Alice Walker’s The Way Forward Is A Broken Heart, and of course Toni Morrison: Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Sula. I plan on reading more Morrison this year.

For 2021 I am reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun. This has been high on my TBR list anyway, and I think I can honestly say I am not reading this because she is black. I am reading it because she’s been highly recommended by a literary friend and it’s long past the time I gave her a go. I have also watched a number of her YouTube videos where I have learned things about racism that I did not know. For example, I no longer ask people of color where their ancestral home is. I only did that because of their skin color and accent, but I never did that for new white friends. I know Adichie is a very intelligent and gifted writer and I am really looking forward to this read, especially after reading the first page: … how the bungalows here were painted the color of the sky and sat side by side like polite, well-dressed men … Yeah, this author can write!

Slump Broken

Tags

additive style, blog, novel, reading, the manatee, Writing

I have not been working hard on my novels for the last couple of months. I don’t know what the problem has been. I’m not sure any writer can tell you why they back away from a project. I have been writing, just not my fiction.

This has not been writer’s block. The few times I’ve sat down, I was able to write. But then I later re-wrote it. And I re-wrote it again. I sat at Starbucks and outlined once again, fully satisfied with the scene’s future, and I sat on it. Funny how our guts tell our minds it’s not right.

Last week I wrote a blog post for The Manatee. It was a simple, stupid post, but I thought it was funny. Others have too and it has over 2500 hits. That’s nowhere near great, but it feels good to me. The interesting bit was I wrote it in one sitting, made no revisions, and the editor accepted it as is. I read it again today and I laughed again. I also found no errors or changes I’d make. Believe me, this is positive reinforcement.

I’ve been reading Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. We all know the history of that book, but what I didn’t know was it was written as magical realism in an additive style. If you don’t know what an additive style is, then read Tony Reinke’s blog. I am not enjoying the book, but it is making me ask questions. I want a little more grounding, more story, more empathy. As Bill Shatner says, “I Just Can’t Get Behind That.”

But something says such a voice might be what I am looking for in my next project, an additive style but with friction and trust. By the way, as I listen to Bill, the song is written in an additive style. So today I sat in Starbucks, pulled out TWSBI Micarta fountain pen, and wrote a 500 word story. Then Sean Rouse stopped by and we chatted about writing. Sean was so encouraging, and when he left, I felt elated, motivated, and ready. I went home, had a nap, a great dinner, poured a glass of Magnetic Hill blueberry wine, and finished my Québec chapter. I wrote in a more additive style than I had been, and it felt good. It not only felt good writing it but also reading it. It felt right.

A missing ingredient in my voice? Perhaps. This is a constant game of assessing and reassessing. But I feel good. I feel very good tonight, and it’s not just the wine. Anyway, enjoy the beginning of story I wrote today, written in an additive style. It has not been edited or revised except as I transcribed it. Nearly straight from the pen.

Her load was too big. He’d told that to her too many times, so many times that she stopped listening to him, so many times that he was sure she purposely refused to listen to him. Marion Black may not be the brightest streetlamp on the backstreets of Dallas – it only makes sense that if a lamp is punched, kicked, and clubbed with garden and auto-repair implements enough times, dimness would creep into the shadows of the mind – but if one person in a relationship stops listening to the other, then there is a good chance there is a communication problem and the relationship may be in peril. It only made sense that when he saw the dual forces of her stumbling with her wavering load of apricots, piled higher than her eyes, and the speeding 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 88, green, bigger than his mother’s mobile home, pristine as oil refinery piping before they encroached on each others’ spaces, before the inevitability of collision was imminent, and before she busted the Oldsmobile’s grille, that Marion Black would not move. His hands did not attempt to roll down a window, open the door, or press his truck’s horn (the horn was busted anyway). He wanted to think that he knew such actions were pointless, that he was powerless to save her, that she’d have kissed the Oldsmobile with her lips spread and apricots splattered, but if Marion Black is one thing, it is honest. No such thoughts coursed through his mind, and he was too dim-witted to create any visions to compensate for his emotional void. The truth came a long time after being realized. And the truth was Marion Black didn’t react when she and the Oldsmobile perished – the young driver of the Oldsmobile panicked and swerved into an oncoming 30 foot U-haul van, the front of the Oldsmobile collapsed, and the young lad kissed the back of his engine as it drove into his face. Marion Black never flinched, his mouth didn’t open, and no tears offered to be shed. He never even thought it was a cool – by any objective Texas standard, a slightly overweight woman overburdened with cases of apricots kissing the grille of a 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 88 travelling at 70 mph in a 30 mph zone performing seven and a half summersaults and plunging feet first into a chasing police car and wrapping her legs around the police officer’s face would be considered cool. Marion Black shook his head, said ‘my life as I know it is over,’ started his 1974 Ford pick-up (yellow and rusty), and hit the road. He didn’t even stop at their apartment for clean underwear and a beer. He drove onto highway30, said ‘I’ll follow that thunderstorm,’ and he drove. Three months later he stood in front of a sign that said Welcome to Vermont. He still hadn’t bothered with clean underwear.

Reading Update – 1st quater, 2015

Tags

books, Literary, reading, Writing

I’ve been a busy reader this year. I have set a goal of reading fifty books this year, and I am on pace to achieve it. Yay!

Last year I set the same goal and only reached 34 books. Boo!

So what’s different with this year? Well, I am keeping a journal. In the front, I write notes about the book: new or nebulous words, interesting lines, examples of technique, and general notes about the novel and the author’s writing. In the back of the book I maintain a to-read list and a daily log. I work this list from back to front. When the back meets the front, I will start a new journal. I have shelves full of unused journals I’ve picked up over the years.

Best Book

The Bluest Eye. This book still sits with me.

Enjoyed The Most

Orphan Train. The American immigration story, engaging.
The Fault In Our Stars. A simple story and trite writing, but Green knows how to create and maintain tension.
Carnival. Rawi can write!

Enjoyed The Least

The Crying Of Lot 49. Maybe if I was an adult in the 60’s I might catch on to it. It’s an unresolved conspiracy story. Like Lost or X-Files, you never find truth. A frustrating read.

Worst Book

Hunting Badger. This must have been released by mistake. Disastrous gaps and redundancies.

Learned Most From

Toni Morrison, hands down.
Rawi Hage is a first rate writer.
I made lots of Atwood notes.
Crummey is a fantastic, modern literary writer.

Genre Breakdown:

Literary: 8
Craft: 3
Historical Fiction: 1
YA: 1
Crime: 1

Rating Breakdown:

5 star: 5
4 star: 3
3 star: 5
2 star: 0
1 star: 1

Difficulty Breakdown:

5 star: 4
4 star: 3
3 star: 3
2 star: 4
1 star: 0

Sex:

Male: 8 authors
Female: 6 authors

The List:

Finished	Title	Author	Sex	Country	Genre	Rating	Difficulty
Apr-10	A Handmaid’s Tale	Margaret Atwood	F	CA	Literary	***	****
Mar-29	The Bluest Eye	Toni Morrison	F	USA	Literary	*****	*****
Mar-18	Orphan Train	Christina Baker Kline	F	USA	Literary	***	**
Mar-13	Sweetland	Michael Crummey	M	CA	Literary	*****	***
Mar-06	The Crying Of Lot 49	Thomas Pynchon	M	USA	Literary	***	*****
Mar-01	Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them	Francine Prose	F	USA	Craft	*****	*****
Feb-24	The Fault In Our Stars	John Green	M	USA	YA	****	**
Feb-18	Beloved	Toni Morrison	F	USA	Literary	*****	*****
Feb-04	The Trade	Fred Stenson	M	CA	Historical Fiction	****	****
Jan-31	The Maples Stories	John Updike	M	USA	Literary	****	***
	The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success	Donald Maas	M	USA	Craft	***	**
Jan-17	Carnival	Rawi Hage	M	CA	Literary	*****	****
Jan-17	Bird By Bird	Anne Lamott	F	USA	Craft	***	***
Jan-05	Hunting Badger	Tony Hillerman	M	USA	Crime	*	**

Reading Out Loud

Tags

editing, reading, Writing

I belong to an informal writing group. We meat once a month for brunch where we share our work. I hate speaking to people. If I talk to you, I have something I feel I need to say. It’s common for me to spend most of a day silent.

Writing is different. My brain seems to focus idea to my fingers, not my mouth.

I make a point of sharing my work, though, even if it is sub-par or not ready for proper presentation. It’s an interesting experience. Several times I’ve read works that I’ve read internally over and over, edited them to death, and thought they were ready for the general public.

Then I read them aloud.

Wow, it’s amazing how many times I’ve read sentences that didn’t make sense, didn’t flow right, or silly things like repeated words jumped out at me. Some words shouldn’t be repeated, not close together. Take the word “shadow” Say I wrote something like this. “I hid in the shadowed ally waiting for my mark. I had memorized her profile and her face; Bob gave me her complete file. I wasn’t prepared, though, for what she looked like in person. She walked out of the shadowed entrance of the club …” The word shadow stands out like a sore thumb. One of them needs to go. These are the glitches I make that I might not catch when I’m writing and editing, but reading them, particularly out loud, makes them jump out. It’s like passing your writing through a fine filter. “Oh look Martha, we caught a big shiny one!”

So yesterday I read scene five of my current novel. It’s a sequel to the previous scene. I try to follow Randy Ingermanson’s advice. If you do the math, my first scene is actually a sequel. I need to assess whether I stick with this low-key beginning or not. I see no way around it, though. My protagonist is low-key, and it suits her. But I regress. I liked the scene I read. I thought it was low-key but meaningful, deep even. It tied in my first scene’s themes — getting old and not fulfilling a purpose — with my initial scenes’ events, and I created the idea for the rest of the story over a bucket-list discussion. The idea for the trip — this whole story is about a trip — came from a friend which I thought was a brilliant deflection: it makes the whole crazy idea sound plausible which was my main goal.

Anyway, I read it looking for deep meaning, but it came out much slower and less exciting and meaningful than when I read it to myself. One sentence jumped out at me as needing work — I have no idea which one, except it was the first in a paragraph. I did achieve a couple of laughs during the reading, and that always thrills me, but there was an uncanny quiet while I read which matched my own feeling of mundane. I was worried I’d have to ditch the whole scene. The previous month I read my favorite scene, the real intense, shall we say engaging scene. One of the group caught on to what was actually happening and roared throughout. The others were mystified until the end. Yes, my work at hiding the true events worked. But I digress again. This week when I stopped reading, I looked up and around at all the faces. I saw stunned smiles. “That was really good/nice” and “I loved the flow; it’s so easy and clear.”

Okay, dammit. Move on. Get ‘er done, John.

Reading Today

Tags

editing, reading, restaurant, Writing

I am a member of a small, informal writing group. They are mostly older women, but there’s another guy. Today there were six of us gathered at a local restaurant for our monthly breakfast and sharing session.

This is not a formal, sanctioned group. It’s not sponsored by any writer’s federation, there are no fees, and no membership cards. We do it because we love writing and we believe sharing our writing and receiving feedback is important. I enjoy reading my work out loud. It’s scary, but I enjoy it. The reading comes to life that way. I hear its flow and meanings. I can hear if it works or not. Others can as well.

Today I read probably the most outlandish scene from my novel. It’s set on Parliament Hill in Ottawa during Canada Day celebrations. It was a long scene at 3600 words, and it was rather detailed. I ran through a number of descriptions and events to set up my “confrontation.” As my encounter began, one of the six women caught on and began laughing. I said darn, it’s too obvious. Only she laughed as it proceeded for its two pages, and she did laugh harder at each dialogue moment. I thought the others must have known and didn’t like it.

Fortunately for me, the others did like it; they just didn’t catch on to my ruse. Good, I thought, but they were so straight-faced afterwards.

I determined right away that it’s a scene you probably need to read twice if you didn’t get the ruse. I’m not sure I like this. I think it may detract from the story. I’m wondering if I have to bring it even more over the top

Naw. I say let the readers kick themselves for not getting the already obvious. Let them praise John for hiding the obvious so well.

It’s 64% edited and still plugging away. I’m now hitting the prose I wrote after NaNoWriMo, so I hope the writing I need to edit improves. I’m hoping I can get a lot more edited this week.

Canada Day

Writing Is Hard Work

Tags

consulting, editing, reading, work, Writing

There’s no way around it; writing is hard work.

I think back to my few years in management consulting in Ottawa from late 1989 to early 1992. I worked on some twenty projects and wrote those twenty reports. They were not fluffy little recommendations: “oh, I think you should do this. Yup, that might work.” No, these were 50 to 100 pages of fact, observation, discussion, and recommendation. They were followed by presentation and round table discussion with the clients. One of them was published in the 1991 Auditor General of Canada’s Annual Report. A man was fired over that one — good for him as he landed a nice position with a large IT company for his creativity. A report like this needed to be bullet proof. It needed to be close to perfect.

We did not write these reports alone. I did most of the work on my projects, so I did most of the writing. Others did the same for their projects. The firm of 25 consultants then helped me finish it off. A group of four to six volunteers — people with not much on their plate — would meet for a day in a board room. We’d read through every line and they would question me on every fact. If there was something they didn’t like about my story, they’d question it. “This sentence is weak” or “the facts don’t support your conclusion” or some other issue was to be expected, always. I needed to go into these sessions prepared, and there was always a partner or senior manager participating which added to the pressure.

We did excellent work, but let me tell you: it was hard work. I put in a lot of hours. I learned a lot about writing and editing.

My writing now is also hard work. Words that engage peoples’ minds are just as important as words that get people fired.

We had a saying at that firm: “the written word is called a medium; because that is what it is.”

We also used a Gunning-Fog index type of score. We wanted a grade (level) 8 score. I remember one time a first draft was a grade 12, and I didn’t know how to get it down. I decided to do what we did in our meetings: I went through every sentence and made sure it was simple and to the point. I got my grade (level) 8 through hard work. My writing up to this point in my blog is 5.1 per an online tool I found. http://textalyser.net/index.php?lang=en#analysis

I analyzed the first chapter of my current novel. My score is 6.3, and the tool suggests 6 is easy to read. I agree with that score, and one of the things I struggle with in writing fiction is not writing too simply. Most writers break up compound sentences; while I often need to combine simple sentences into compunded versions, and of course I don’t want it to sound forced.

I love showing rather than telling. *smirk*

I test my writing once a month at my writing club. Six to eight of us amateur writers get together for a Saturday brunch, and we share our work. This is a great test. When something doesn’t work, it stands out in my ear. I’ve actually stopped and said “blagh” when I’ve written something poorly, something I was sure was bullet-proof, and sometimes I’ll re-word things on the fly. Reading out loud and listening to the words is a great exercise for flushing out problems.

But it’s hard work. I currently have 100,518 words to read to myself out loud. Good luck with that, John.

Usually what I do is once I’m happy with a scene, I’ll set it aside for a day or many, then read it for enjoyment. I sit back, sip my coffee, and even mouth the words. It’s not easy to read out loud at five in the morning in a sleeping house, especially for an introvert. But you need to test the rythms and flow.  Almost always there’s at least one sentence that was garbled by too much editing. My brain knew what I wanted, but my fingers didn’t. Or all those reconstructions just didn’t work. Or an important point wasn’t made. Or timing was wrong. Or that just doesn’t belong in the story. Or it adds no value.

And that leads us back into grinding out prose which later won’t read well. It’s a never ending circle.

It’s hard work!

*only 56,220 words left to edit. Then I will read it through. Then I will let some readers at it..