Everywhere I Look I See Creative Writing

I ran across this link today (here) which lists the ten most painful insect stings as listed by Robert T. Gonzalez in  iO9. Ho-hum you are thinking, I didn't come to a great blog like Publish or Perish to talk about pabulum like insect stings. Except, what I like about it are the descriptions that the author presents of what the sting feels like. He pokes fun at the way wine tasters write and give some clarifications. My favorite is the description of the Paper Wasp sting.

Animal: Paper wasp
Schmidt Index: 3.0
Description: Caustic and burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.


Very clever. Made me take a second look and I feel confident anyone savvy enough to visit this blog will be have their curiosity piqued enough to click the link. 

A Bananas Foster Astray Sandwich

So, in an effort to promote my work and to hopefully find new reviewers I joined a group called Book Blogs. Today I posted my banner ad for Toe the Line and a short "elevator pitch" in their Promote Your Book forum (here).

I am now sandwiched between two works. One is Banana's Foster by Sandra Murphy. I haven't read anything about the book yet, but the title alone makes me want to know more.

The other book is by someone who seems to be quite prolific (at least on the Book Blogs site) whose name is Carlos King. He listed two of his books beneath mine, Prey and Astray. Those I doubt I will read unless they come with a strong recommendation. Still, fun to try and put some stuff out there and see what sticks.

Catching Fire

I finished the second in Suzanne Collins' series. I liked the first one. I read it in about three days. I liked this one as well. They are lively and quick and fun to read. It was as good as the first. Not the most literary novel, but fun to read and spirited. A good escape for a short time. 

One thing I noticed in this novel that I didn't notice in the first one is that Collins moves things along quite clunkily. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I don't particularly care for her endings, but now I'm finding her zips through time, where she writes a catch all phrase like "Gale and I practiced a lot over the next few months" a tad off putting. I'm the type of Joe who wants to know what that practicing was like. I suspect an editor told Miss Collins that the reader would be bored and she had to get to the games. Not this reader sister!

One last thing about this book. I love my Kindle because I can make notes and marks so easily. I see a fancy, five dollar, vocabulary word, I mark it. I notice a striking analogy, I highlight it. I like going back after the fact and selecting "See My Notes and Marks" and remembering these details after the fact. I clicked that feature for Catching Fire . . . nothing. No notes. No marks. Nuff said.

Fun fun fun! But that's about it.

Most of Writing is Re-Writing

Recently I exchanged emails with an author (truly, someone making a living with the written fiction word . . . living the dream I say!) and they agreed that most of writing is re-writing. It's stunning how much re-writing goes into a novel. I'm withholding reading from myself until I finish the second round of edits on my second novel On the Edge. I'm hoping I'm just a week from being done.

Nevertheless, the only thing I am allowing myself to read is books on the craft of writing and even then I only read it when "all electronics must be turned off" for take offs or landings.

To that end I'm trying to keep these things in mind (here). These are tips on why why my story might stink. Worth a look see if you are a writer. My favorite? Poo-poo Plot.

First the Beginning, . . . Now the End

Since my last post was on Catching Fire's first line, and I got such a phenomenal response . . . why not do it again?


“She’s alive. So is your mother. I got them out in time,” he says. 
“They’re not in District Twelve?” I ask. 
“After the Games, they sent in planes. Dropped firebombs.” He hesitates. “Well, you know what happened to the Hob.”
 I do know. I saw it go up. That old warehouse embedded with coal dust. The whole district’s covered with the stuff. A new kind of horror begins to rise up inside me as I imagine firebombs hitting the Seam. 
“They’re not in District Twelve?” I repeat. As if saying it will somehow fend off the truth.
“Katniss,” Gale says softly. I recognize that voice. It’s the same one he uses to approach wounded animals before he delivers a deathblow. 
I instinctively raise my hand to block his words but he catches it and holds on tightly. 
“Don’t,” I whisper. 
But Gale is not one to keep secrets from me. 
“Katniss, there is no District Twelve.”

Collins, Suzanne - Catching Fire

As I said, Collins is all about the "drop ending." Leaving the story off in what seems like mid-sentence in the hope that the reader will try the next in the series. This is no different. A tad better than the end of The Hunger Games, but still, leaves me hanging.

First Line: Catching Fire

I clasp the flask between my hands even though the warmth from the tea has long since leached into the frozen air. My muscles are clenched tight against the cold. If a pack of wild dogs were to appear at this moment, the odds of scaling a tree before they attacked are not in my favor. I should get up, move around, and work the stiffness from my limbs. But instead I sit, as motionless as the rock beneath me, while the dawn begins to lighten the woods. I can’t fight the sun. I can only watch helplessly as it drags me into a day that I’ve been dreading for months.


Collins, Suzanne -Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)

Heh.

Even as I read it, expecting alot since Miss Collins has the tendency to let novels end abruptly, naturally I was expecting a quick, punchy beginning, I thought, "that's not that great a first line or passage.

Thankfully, the rest of the book was more engrossing than the first line, but more on that later.

Always Amazed

Whenever I open my email and see the WSJ.com Editors I know that some silly question has been asked of Cynthia Crossen (see here, here and here). Despite my always being disappointed by the question I always read the article and I always come away glad that I did.

This time the question is about what books the writer's daughter should read at camp (here). I've read a few books about the wilderness, but only one of mine made the list. I will say though that my "to be read" list is now much longer thanks to this article. Among the new books on the list:

Another remarkable story of a nervy woman on a long camping trip is Robyn Davidson's "Tracks," a memoir of the author's hike across 1,700 miles of Australian desert with her dog and four camels. 


I also admired and enjoyed Cheryl Strayed's recent backpacking memoir, "Wild," for her hard-earned epiphanies about which sporting goods people actually need to survive a 1,100-mile solo hike. In some ways, "Wild" reminded me of Bill Bryson's very funny "A Walk in the Woods," but Ms. Strayed's account of her journey is rawer and riskier.

And although Deliverance was the only camping/wilderness story that I knew before this article, it only made Crossen's list because of the horror aspect. (BTW, if you haven't read it, do so, it's lyrical).


There's no better setting for ghost stories than camp, and here Dad could throw in a classic: Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw." Edith Wharton has a collection of ghost stories, and Susan Hill's "The Woman in Black" offers a macabre chill. So does James Dickey's 1970 novel "Deliverance," but that's probably going too far on the wilderness-as-setting-for-horror spectrum. The campfire story that scared me sleepless was "The Hookman," which is folklore.


Once again, glad I read it.

Ideas Generator

I marvel at from where ideas spring. Usually some of the most interesting ideas come from my brother (here and here). Some of the even better more fleshed out one come from my own dreams (here). My two novels have just sprung up during writing. This post in the Corner on National Review posted by Jonah Goldberg however (here) brings some very interesting ideas to mind. He quotes his own linked article as saying:

Kodak may be going under, but apparently they could have started their own nuclear war if they wanted, just six years ago. Down in a basement in Rochester, NY, they had a nuclear reactor loaded with 3.5 pounds of enriched uranium—the same kind they use in atomic warheads.

Imagine a novel about the closing of a huge technology plant and the disenchanted workers using that opportunity to loot the company for his own ends. He hijacks a moving truck which no one really cares too much about cause it's all going to the dump, and unloads it in his garage. Years later his son or grandson is digging through the junk and runs across a nuclear reactor. Sounds like NaNoWriMo 2013 is ready to go. 

Book Review: Tai Pan

I finished Tai-Pan by James Clavell the other day. I loved Shogun and had high hopes for Tai Pan. Then, whilst boarding a flight from St. Louis to Houston the other day a fellow traveler saw the book on my iPad and said "Great Book." All in all it is an apt review.

I already made a comment or two about a couple of passages in the book (here and here) and for the most part there wasn't too much that I stopped to highlight as I plowed through the novel. There were a couple, and I present them here:

I think it's so hard to write "out of body experiences" or showing when a character is confused or dazed. Clavell does a great job of that in this passage.

“I think Father is the Devil.” An involuntary shudder ran through Robb.

“That’s stupid, lad. Stupid. You’re just overwrought. We all are. The bullion and—well, the excitement of the moment. Nothing to worry about. Of course he’ll understand when …” Robb’s words trailed off. Then he hurried after his brother.

Culum was finding it very difficult to focus. Sounds seemed to be stronger than before, but voices more distant, colors and people bizarre. His eyes saw Mary Sinclair and her brother in the distance. Suddenly they were talking to him. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”

One of the characters is found dead and Straun describes the sight and the torture in a grissly way.

Struan went below and tried to sleep. But sleep would not come. Scragger’s end had sickened him. He knew it was a favorite torture of Wu Fang Choi, Wu Kwok’s father and little Wu Pak’s grandfather. The victim who was to be dismembered was given three days’ time to choose which limb was to come off first. And on the third night a friend of the man would be sent to him secretly to whisper that help was on the way. So the man chose the limb he felt he could most do without until help came. After the tar had healed the stump, the man was forced to choose yet another limb, and again there was the promise of imminent help which would never come. Only the very strong could survive two amputations.

It was fun to read another Clavell novel, but I'm concerned. None of his others might be as good as Shogun. 

Ups and Downs of Reading an Article

I read the question in my email that spurned the article Is the Novel Dead? by Cynthia Crossen in the WSJ yesterday (here). The question was: Occasionally I read about the "death of the novel." It doesn't look like the novel is dead to me. Does it to you?

Ho hum was my immediate reaction. Kind of a silly question don't you think? But then I thought to myself, so many of the questions that are used to generate articles seem silly at first . . . I'll go give it a try. So I did. I saw the graphic that showed a 1950's era poster for an H.G. Well's novel and my heart rate quickened. It slowed the further I read.

The article was about as ho hum as the article generating question, but it did provide fodder for this article. After reading it I thought about a class I had my freshman year of college, The 20th Century Novel. It wasn't a bad class. Not great, but not bad. When the professor asked us what we would do for future classes I thought it would be interesting to breakup the topic into subjects.

Subjects such as: 20th Century Romances, 20th Century Novels on War, Mystery Novels through the 20th Century, Sci-Fi Novels in the 20th Century, etc. I think any of these would make for a far more interesting class than just 20th Century novels.

By my senior year I found myself in a Charles Dickens class. lt was fun. Bleak House, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and more. Still, I think my idea had legs and wonder if some Aggie (or Maggie) isn't right now sitting in a Sci-Fi Novels in the 20th Century class and writing about the similarities between Vernor Vinge and Isaac Asimov. What fun!