I just created a page of books that have made it onto my permanent bookshelf and learned a few things. I noticed that I have almost twice as many short story collections as novels and that almost all of the novels focus on adolescent girls. Not exactly sure what that means. A woman at a conference once asked me if I intended to write YA fiction because for many of the in-class exercises my characters defaulted to that particular voice. At first I took offense. I want to write “real” fiction. Literary fiction. I read a lot of YA myself. It’s good. Really good. But for some reason, when she said that, I took it to mean that I couldn’t cut it as an adult fiction writer. Irrational, I know but that’s the price I pay for living inside this head of mine. So am I considering writing YA? Should I only write short stories featuring adolescent girls? I don’t know the answers quite yet. I am thinking that part of the reason I can get so stuck in my writing and not focus on one of my many, many half done projects is because I have not found my natural subject yet. Or am fighting it. Or avoiding it. Or forcing myself to be a certain kind of writer that I am not. So not real answers, just somem things to think about as the new year rolls in with all its possibilities.
I know this was supposed to be my “short story” month and it started off that way. But then two books that I had requested from the library came in so I had to read them and they were not short stories. I still like the idea of reading according to a theme each month. Not sure what this month’s is yet. I’ll have to figure it out today I guess.
“Going Away Shoes” short stories by Jill McCorkle
Debby Tyler is a mythical stereotype, the oldest child who stays home to tend the sick and dying mother while her sisters marry and have prosperous lives elsewhere.
These stories were like chips. I couldn’t stop at just one. In fact, I think I did the book a disservice by reading it too fast. It is definitely worth another more reflective reading. I made notes on several that I think may help me breathe life into some of my own stories. We get a glimpse into a range of women at various stage of their lives from a grandmother grieving the loss of her son while trying to connect with his daughter who seems almost foreign to her to a single mom dealing with the first Christmas eve with her sons after a divorce. I laughed out loud at times yet the stories are also deeply moving.
“Nothing Right” short stories by Antonya Nelson
“Never shake a baby,” the flyer insisted, “Never, never, never.”
I read everything she writes. Her stories give me glimpses into familiar yet totally unique situations. It feels like I am reading something completely new and original. In one story a woman learns of the death of her young lover from her husband. In another a grown woman returns home to take care of her younger brother after their parents are involved in a serious car accident. I love her dark humor. In the title story a man, angry at his ex, threatens to hire a hit man. “It was terrible, Hannah thought, when only a hit man would suffice.” The relationships Nelson depicts are intricate and layered and so carefully observed. Many of her books have made their way onto my permanent bookshelf and this one is no exception.
“Bad Mother- A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace” by Ayelet Waldman
I busted my first Bad Mother in the spring of 1994, on a Muni train in San Francisco.
Waldman garnered much attention after writing an essay where she declared that she loved her husband (Michael Chabon) more than her children. She was on all of the talk shows, including Oprah where other moms impaled her with their self-righteous indignation. Personally, I felt all those moms were jealous that Waldman was obviously still deeply in love with her husband and getting laid on a regular basis. The thoughtful and thought-provoking essays in this collection need to be read by every mother who has ever judged herself or another mom harshly. That includes just about all of us I’d say. She covers everything from our children’s homework being the bane of our existence to the heart wrenching decision she must make after learning her baby may be born with a severe mental defect. She never flinches from the honest experience of being a mom and makes us all breathe a little sigh of relief that we can now maybe go a little easier on ourselves.
“April & Oliver” a novel by Tess Callahan
Buddy has been lost for some time, his wipers whisking the thick Maine snow, when he spots a missed turn in his rearview and brakes.
I finished this novel in a day and a half because A) I needed to return it to the library today and B) It’s a page turner. But not a page turner in the usual sense. Most page turners, for me, depend on lots of action and mystery. Callahan has built a novel with such emotional intensity that I felt compelled to keep reading to see what finally happens. This book is definitely character driven yet compelling, not always an easy task. April and Oliver grew up together, virtual soul mates without any definite romantic connection. They grew up, apart and away from each other until April’s brother, Buddy is suddenly killed and they are thrown back together only now they are adults. Or trying to be. Oliver has given up a lot to become a lawyer and is back with a fiancee. April has never quite found her way and Oliver is naturally drawn to help and protect her. A delicious read that I lost myself in.
I once participated in NaNoWriMo. In fact, it was got me started blogging. I actually did it in September since November is a crazy month for me with the holidays and my daughter’s birthday and visitors staying with us. So I took it upon myself to write 50,00 words in one month and set up a blog to keep me accountable. I did it. I finished a first draft. Actually I consider it more of a down draft. I got 50,000 words down but there are POV shifts, tense changes, no real structure or plot yet. But what a rush to have accomplished that much writing in one month. I see the appeal. Especially when you know that thousands of other writers are pounding at the keyboard across the world at the same time. For the isolated writer, that’s no small comfort.
I haven’t participated since then. I still have the down draft of that novel that I return to again and again, still intrigued by the characters and story not to mention a novel-in-stories I need to revise, not to mention a collection of stories I am polishing one by one and sending out into the world not to mention several new ideas tapping at my subconscious waiting for their opportunity. The last thing I need is another messy draft to revise. The pace of NaNoWriMo is thrilling, invigorating even But the pace also leaves you with a huge mess to then cope with. I think if you write slower and more thoughtfully, you’re better off. It will not be a polished version by any means but it probably won’t be a barely coherent mish-mash of a skeleton of a story.
I like what Tayari Jones has to say about it here. I have a couple of friends who are participating this month and they have shaped it to fit what they need to accomplish on their individual writing projects. That’s the best way to approach it. Figure out what you need to and can accomplish in one month and ride that creative energy generated around the world with all of those writers huddled over their keyboards doing the same thing. Good luck!
This came to me last night as I finished one book and wondered which one to pick up next. I literally have hundreds of unread books lining my shelves. To narrow my options I decided to read only short stories this month. Month by month, for a while anyway, I will choose one genre or one author to focus on: memoir, novels, non-fiction, classics, essays. After reading the latest Poets & Writer, I am intrigued by Jonathan Lathem and would love to take a month a read what I can of his work. I also have several Michael Chabon books waiting to be read. A little structure to control the book choice chaos… not a bad idea.
“Waiting to Surface” a novel by Emily Listfield
It is possible, after all, for someone to vanish off the face of the earth.
I remember reading one of her first novels, “It Was Gonna Be Like Paris” and being drawn to her not only because I enjoyed the story but also because she was a writer who did not have an MFA. Over the years I’ve read her novels as they’ve come out, followed her career as an editor of magazines such as Self and Fitness. “Waiting to Surface” is a story close to her own. Both Listfield and her protagonist, Sarah married successful artists and both received a phone call informing them that their husbands had disappeared while in Florida. Over the course of the novel we watch as Sarah attempts to navigate life as a magazine editor and mother to her six-year-old daughter. Her husband, Todd was not officially dead. They had been separated but are now bound together in this odd kind of limbo. The story pulled me in not only out of curiosity about what happened to Todd but the careful observance of Sarah in the face of it.
“In a Perfect World” a novel by Laura Kasischke
If you are READING this you are going to DIE!
Here is yet another novel that explores my morbid curiosity about a post-apocalyptic world. The difference with this one is that we see the world slowly unravel and slip into chaos. The “Phoenix Flu” is the catalyst which eerily mimics our own swine flu fears. News of celebrities dying creates a world-wide panic as imports and exports are halted and Americans find themselves unwelcome in other countries. These are just the first dominoes as Jiselle’s world crumbles around her and her new step-children. I love the way Jiselle’s personal story of marrying a pilot and trying to adapt to an instant family is propped against this other wider story. It was thrilling and disturbing to read as if feels almost inevitable. Thoroughly absorbing and Kasischke’s background as a poet informs her prose with beautiful imagery and rhythm.
“The Wishing Box” a novel by Dashka Slater
My grandmother was doing the breaststroke in the YMCA’s steamy haze.
I picked this book up years and years ago at a used bookstore out in Phoenix. After all this time I pulled it from my bookshelf and found it was not at all what I was expecting. There is a magical realism quality to the story that reminded me of Allende or Esquivel. Julia is a single mom when she and her sister create a wishing box, calling for the return of the father who had abandoned them as children. Amazingly, he does return. The chapters alternate points of view and we get glimpses into their parents’ life before children. Woven throughout are chapters told from the POV of their aunt, a mystical woman who sees beyond what is visible.
“The Glass Castle” a memoir by Jeannette Walls
I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.
I was hooked from that mesmerizing first line and Walls didn’t disappoint. I was amazed at how she was able to tell the story without passing judgment on her parents. I wanted to hate them but she balanced their destructive tendencies with moments of beautiful loyalty and resilience and love. I was taken aback at our book club discussion when someone brought up her disbelief of the story. I wonder if James Frey and subsequent memoir scandals have forever jaded our experience of reading another person’s interpretation of their life story. And it is an interpretation. My sisters and I could each write a memoir and I’m sure you’d find it hard to believe that we all came from the same family. I was disappointed that such a well-written and engaging story was picked apart for it’s veracity, or supposed lack thereof. I read memoir on faith. Faith that the writer is telling her version to the best of her recollection. It is not my job to determine if moments that though I may find hard to believe are indeed to be believed. We read to enlarge our world and it is exactly those moments that astound us because they seem so foreign to our own small world, that open us up to another’s.
“Blame” a novel by Michelle Huneven
The first thing Millicent Hawthorne did after scheduling her surgery was to enroll her daughter Joey in a summer typing class at the local high school.
Patsy MacLemoore wakes in jail- again- but this time is different. This time two people are dead. This time there is no place to hide. Patsy, an alcoholic driving with a suspended license knows that the beautiful life she has known is over. For good. She goes to prison but even when released she is stuck in the prison of her own guilt, determined to atone for her mistakes. Decades later, a knew piece of information finds its way to her and she is stunned and confused about what it actually means. Her life has been balanced with her absorbing the blame she believed she deserved. But if she isn’t to blame, what does that mean to her life? To who she is? To how she sees herself?
“The Bright Forever” a novel by Lee Martin
I’m not saying I didn’t do it. I don’t know.
From that first sentence, the suspense is set and is kept taught throughout. On a summer day in a small Indiana town nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the town’s most affluent family, disappears after riding her bike to return some library books. The story is told from overlapping points of view, each one revealing something new or deeper as we go along, piecing together like a quilt what happened to Katie and the aftermath such an event has on a family and a town.
It looks like I set this blog up on June 6 and here it has sat, un-posted, un-updated, unread. I debated all summer how to go about keeping two blogs going when I can barely keep up with one. And really, how narcissistic am I to think that I have enough to say that will keep people reading two blogs? I looked at my first blog and realized that what inspired it has kind of fallen away. My design work has slipped off the radar. I do some collage art but the bulk of the blog is focused on writing and reading. So I may find myself maintaining two blogs or I may not. What finally got me to this new blog is the idea that I could let the other one fall away if needed.
Earlier this summer I re-focused my blog, trying to breathe some new life into it.While I am still intrigued by the process of living a balanced, creative life, my true passion lies with writing and reading. It’s how I spend much of my day. And these days, writers need a platform, so welcome to phase one of my writer’s platform. You can read the “About” page to see how I got to this point. From here on out I see this blog as a space to record and reflect on my journey down this writing path. I’ll share the ups and downs of my daily writing practice; classes or retreats I attend; mentors and guides I meet along the way; books I read; books I’ve read; the rollercoaster that is the submission process; quotes that inspire me; prompts that get me writing and some of it I will make up as I go along. I imagine this as a salon of sorts. A place where writers and readers can meet and mingle in cyberspace.
So, welcome. Grab a cup of tea, a glass of wine or a mug of cocoa and join me on this day to day journey of creating a writing life.
