Advice About Advice: Mind the expiration dates.

Yes, I'm giving advice about advice again. The thunder of approaching typewriters heralds the word avalanche known as NaNoWriMo and the explosion of writing advice posts on every site that even pretends to cater to writers.

I've been fighting a particularly nasty chest cold  recently, so about all I've been up for is reading and sorting through the books on my shelves. The unfortunate fact is that my library has as many books stacked on the floors as it does on the shelves. Which means (gulp) culling the herd.*

I'm sorry, but some of you will just have to go. Don't worry, we'll find new homes for you in the country where you can gambol and play...

In case it hasn't become clear in the past, there are a lot of books on my shelves about the craft of writing and what purport to be maps showing shortcuts through the labyrinth of publishing. Some of them are timeless. Tomes of inspiration that will never die. However, many, if not most of them are well past their expiration date.

Some of them expired before they hit the shelf. It's just that kind of industry these days.

It seems that almost every author of note from Norman Mailer to Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, eventually writes a memoir of the craft, which tracks their rise from being 'That weird kid**' to a giant in a world of words. Nearly all of these books are split about evenly between memoir and advice for new writers.

We like to think that if we follow in the footsteps of the great and the good, that we too can apply their formula and achieve success. That's certainly the conceit of most writing guides. The problem is that the industry that spat out most of the greats either no longer exists or is teetering on the brink of extinction.

As I face the decision on which of these many books to keep and which to discard, in the end it will come down -- as it always does -- to the writing. Unless you have a time machine handy, business and publishing advice from even as late as the 1990's and early 00's is essentially useless. Only the writing advice is timeless.

This is a theme I return to time and again. Just the other day, I talked about how much I liked Neil Gaiman's list of writing rules because it focused almost entirely on the writing. In order to be a writer, Gaiman tells us, you have to write something, and you have to keep writing it until it's finished. This is important because that's the only advice that will outlast the expiration date of all other advice.

Unless it's also a compelling memoir and worth keeping for that fact alone, any writing guide that doesn't boil down to this very simple concept goes in the Goodwill pile.

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* I would like to apologize in advance to anyone in the Puget Sound region who is startled by the whoop of joy originating from my wife's location wherever she happens to be when she reads that sentence.

** As much as I try to keep away from the idea that there's some sort of universal "writer lifestyle" that we all should aspire to, there's a nearly insurmountable pile of evidence that writers tend to arise from the ranks of "that weird kid".

Inspirations for Book Design: A Followup

Unless I start getting more book design gigs, I doubt I'll talk much more about the nuts and bolts of the thing*. If you have questions, post them in the comments thread on this post or the previous one and I'll try my best to answer them or send you someplace that can.

Please Note: The guidelines I jotted down yesterday are neither absolute nor inviolate (except the part about legibility. If I can't read your title, I probably won't read your book.)  Professional designers break the rules all the time. Design rules are like grammar rules: in order to break them, you really need to know what they are first.

That post is purposely incomplete; it's just meant to get you started and keep your cover from getting in your way. It's a starting point; as always, the rest of the journey is up to you.

For Further Reading: Inspirational Links and Places to Get Ideas

• The Casual Optimist:  Dan Wagstaff's beautiful and minimalist blog about books, book design, and the culture of bookstores and book people. Celebrates book design in a way you don't often see, especially the minimalist, retro, and vintage stuff. My advice: Start here.
• The Book Cover Archive: Exactly what it says in the title.  Great stuff. The best of the best. Lots of images and inspiration. (Every image displays first as a thumbnail: proving my point that great design is scalable design.)
• Chronicle Books: Some small publishers get it exactly right. IMO: Chronicle is at the head of that particular pack.
• The Book Designer: a blog about books and design and how they interact. Lots of great stuff.
• Melissa Evans: For those who are wondering "Yeah, but if I do buy that copy of Photoshop, what do I do with it?" I suggest this blog. Melissa is a graphic artist with a boatload of great, easy-to-follow Photoshop tutorials. 

*Yes, I am for available to hire on a freelance basis. If you want to enquire about prices, email me and I'll try my best not to shock you with my quote.

The 5 Most Useful P2T Posts for NaNoWriMo

At the request of several friends who are too busy trying to hit 50,000 words to paw through the archives for inspiration, I've assembled my personal top five most useful posts for the NaNoWriMos. I hope it helps you!  (Each heading is a clickable link.)

1. Last Year's NaNoWriMo Pep Talk
   I wasn't asked to write a pep talk for National Novel Writing Month.  But writing something no one asked you to write is really the point of NaNoWriMo, isn't it?  So in the spirit of the month, I did it anyway.
   
2. Where do you get your ideas?
   Where do Ideas come from?  It's the question every writer dreads and emphatically answers with "I don't know".  Honestly, I suspect that for most writers that's a bit of a fib -- we may not know where ideas come from in the cosmic sense any more than we can tell you the meaning of life, but we generally know where a specific idea came from, or at least what prompted it.
   
3. What if I get stuck?
   Especially during the month of November (cough-NaNoWriMo-cough), I get people asking me how to deal with writer's block. I admit that used to be a real problem for me until I developed methods of dealing with it when it happens, writing around it and generally stripping it of its power to hurt my productivity. In April, 2009, I compiled my 7 favorite tips for breaking out of a literary cul de sac.
   
4. What if I'm still stuck?
   Personally, I think that a big part of writer's block is the fear of it happening much more than the actuality of the thing.  It's the bugbear under the bed, the monster in the anxiety closet of too many writer's offices.  So what do you do to disarm a bogey man?  We mock them, of course. So, in the interest of a bit of fun and making fun of the bugbears, I've generated a list of some of my favorite and most oddball advice on writer's block. If my advice doesn't help you, maybe someone else's will...
   
5. Why should I listen to you?Listen to me only if what I say helps you. There's no such thing as "One Size Fits All" in either hats or advice. Only take what helps you; discard what that doesn't.

From all of us on the sidelines this year, cheering you on: Best of luck to you all! And we'll try to keep the vuvuzela blowing to a minimum.

Rock the Vote

The votes have been tabulated, the finalists chosen, it's time for the runoff election! It's time to make your voice heard and the choices will not be easy. I'm speaking, of course, of the race for the best book to win the National Book Award for Fiction in the past 60 years. Should the honors go to an anthology? Was the chief among equals the stories John Cheever, Flannery O'connor, Eudora Welty or William Faulkner? Or should it go to a novel? The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison or Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon? The National Book Award Foundation wants to know what you think. Which of these giants towers just that much above the rest? I'm not going to endorse a candidate, though I've already voted. Dust off your bookshelves, dear readers and polish your erudition. Remember that every vote counts -- your vote counts -- and those who don't vote don't get to bitch about the results. (Well, they do, but we're going to ignore them when they do.) At the moment, Flannery O'connor is way out in front and Ralph Ellison is following hard on her heels. Incidentally, people periodically ask me for book recommendations -- check the National Book Awards website for a list of some of the greatest works to be committed to the page in the last six decades. Good reading!

Bird By Bird (A Backlist Book Review)

Never has a writing book been more recommended to me.

Never has a writing book been pressed into my hand with greater fervor than this one.

Every professional writer I know has this on the shelf or has at least read it and probably been among those who tried to get me to read it.

Every one of these since the first one has been met with the secret handshake, the knowing smile, the nod: I write shitty first drafts too and I don’t feel bad about it. I’ve read Bird by Bird. And if you want to be a writer, so should you.

Since it was first published in 1994, author and writing teacher Anne Lamott has given us permission to be writers and for writers to be human. We don’t have to feel isolated and alone, sitting at the table in the café or in the corner of our garret apartment, wrestling with our demons as pencils and typewriters and laptops fight our attempts to get it all down on the page before it escapes. Anne’s got our backs.

All of the best writer’s guides have been at least one part literary memoir and Bird By Bird is no different. With humor and grace, Anne takes us through her unorthodox childhood with her writer father and his writer friends. When she finally finds her voice as a result of his fight with brain cancer, we are there with her as ghosts at her side as she struggles as all of us have to find the words to encapsulate the strange humor of the dying and the absurdity of life. From that absurdity of life, Anne draws her inspiration and her humor. And in the process she teaches us so very much about both writing and life as a spiritual journey.

Anne’s iconic tips for writing range from the empty 1 inch picture frame that reminds us to write in small assignments to the aforementioned permission to sit down and write a shitty first draft even if it seems all the other writers in the world are taking dictation from God. Get it all down, make it pretty later. Odds are that the people whose final drafts seem dictated from Beyond had a shitty first draft too.

With frank language and the humor of the sensitive soul behind the words, Anne draws us into her life and her classroom. She dwells on the fears and outright neuroses that all writers deal with, makes it ok for us to feel that way, reminds us we’re not alone in that regard either. There are others out there doing the same.

This book serves a larger purpose as well. She reminds us that we are all mortal. Each and every one of us is dying a little each day, and though she understands why we do it, procrastination is a sin. Every day you put off writing is one less day that you will have to write. And so much of the damage we wrestle with is self-inflicted. Perhaps the best advice she gives she is passing on from her father. She reminds us that no matter how big the project, no matter how big your subject or how daunting the research ahead of you, no matter many birds crowd your narrative, you don’t have to write it all at once -- just take it bird by bird.

The scent of burning paper...

I was reminded this morning that banned book week is fast approaching. It will begin September 26th and will feature the books that have been banned and/or challenged this past year.

Geoffery Chaucer, Montaigne, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Joseph Heller and JD Salinger have all been banned at one time or another. Many continue to face challenges from those whose reality cannot encompass the ideas that these writers explore. The desires of a moment or a person are too often allowed to outweigh the long-term good of a culture, and it is this that led all of the authors I just mentioned to face the fire.

Books of religion and history and science have all disappeared from the shelves at one time or another, victims of narrow minds and ideologies that brook no challenge. This is why Charles Darwin sits alongside the authors of the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah on the most-banned lists. Some of the greatest minds and most influential works ever to pass from pen to page have all been censored, blocked, burned and banned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_commonly_challenged_books_in_the_U.S.

 I challenge you to read something between now and Banned Books Week that someone didn't want you to read. Read anything from 1984 to Huckleberry Finn, to Hamlet or A Wrinkle in Time. Then come back during the week beginning September 26 and tell me about it. If you can, try to read a book you haven't read but only heard about. Then come back and tell us if what you had been told was at all accurate.

I have accumulated a stack next to my chair of books from various banned lists and I will be reading through them as quickly as ever I can and I'll let you know how it goes. Of course, there's no way I can finish them all between now and September 26th, but the reason for having a commemorative week is to remind us that we need to do this every week.

Read.

Read what you want to read. Read what challenges you. Read what people don't want you to read. Read because like muscles and brains, your freedoms will atrophy if they're not exercised. Feel free to recommend great challenging books to your fellow readers in the comments section!

Summer Reading and Recommendations

My reading list is shaping up and the summer is looking good if I can ever get through the first half of this re-write so I can reward myself with some fiction. Mystery/Thriller One should always be well-read within your genre and cognizant of the greats. These are the people that crowd the field I'm trying to elbow my way into... well, into the crowd that's gathered to touch the hems of their robes anyway. The new Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child is out. The reviews are consistently good: Pure thriller, shootemup adventure. Jack Reacher is who all those other anti-hero characters are trying (and failing more often than not) to emulate. The LA Times link I just gave you also bears mentioning because it brings up the crucial evolutionary step preceding Reacher, Parker by the late, lamented, Donald Westlake. Unabashedly macho, admittedly criminal, these characters are nonetheless compelling and if you do nothing else, read them to learn how to create empathy in your readers for characters that aren't entirely likable! After that, there's a new Michael Connelly mystery The Scarecrow which pulls its plot from the headlines, featuring a reporter (recurring character Jack McEvoy from The Poet) about to be fired in the latest round of budget cuts at his newspaper. He preps a story sure to send him out with a bang and soon all hell breaks loose. I haven't read it yet, obviously, but Connelly consistently proves that writing about cops, criminals and crime doesn't mean you're not creating literature. And with October's release of the new Harry Bosch novel Nine Dragons, I'm confident I won't be disappointed. Incidentally, I don't often recommend authors unreservedly, but if you've never heard of him (or even if you have), go out and find yourself some David Hewson novels. His new one "Dante's Numbers" carries a title that gives the mistaken impression that he's another Dan Brown clone, but he's been out there for years with his ensemble cast of characters, turning in consistent crime fiction from the mean streets of Rome. (Yes, Rome. As in Italy.) Start with "Season For the Dead" or "Villa of Mysteries" and you won't regret it. I've read a lot of literature by female authors, but it became clear to me recently that there's a paucity of women on my mystery/thriller shelves. (This revelation was prompted in part by the tempest stirred by Ian Rankin's remark about female crime writers being more violent than male writers of the same genres.) My reading table now includes some women who are entirely new to me including Val McDermid, Manda Scott and recent Edgar Award Winner Tana French's "In The Woods". All chosen based on recommendations of friends and by the old standard of reading the ad copy, back cover and first chaper while standing in the bookstore. More recommendations of overlooked feminine voices in crime fiction? Leave them in the comments!! The Classics Every summer I do my best to mow through some of the classics that I either missed or glossed over in the past. This generally includes one very old masterpiece. Last year was Canterbury Tales and Don Quixote before that, generally balanced by sundry modern works. This summer, I will be making my way through The Divine Comedy once more. I last read it as a teenager and didn't get it so much as have it spoonfed to me and that's no way to create a real appreciation for or understanding of a significant work of western literature. I'll be filling in around the edges with the collected short stories of O. Henry, Hemingway, Kipling and Chekov. There isn't a reader alive whose erudition couldn't be improved by the addition of more great short fiction. RECOMMENDATIONS SOUGHT! Being between novels, my non-fiction mental hummingbird has nowhere to alight and is madly flitting about between gardening books and home-improvement guides. I need something solid to sink my teeth into, a great biography I might have missed or a scathing expose of Cleopatra's court or something... I'm game for just about anything, so send me your recommendations. Nothing really scandalous or titillating, just a great non-fiction read in an area I might otherwise overlook. What's on your list?