It's Our First Anniversary!

Just wanted to polish off a quick post to celebrate the first anniversary of this blog, and I'll return to the discussion of beginners' problems in the regular post. It's been an interesting endeavor, keeping this blog. I've said a lot about setting goals and keeping them, and this blog is an example of how that works. I said I'd have a weekly post, and, minus the summer, I pretty much did that, so that feels good.

Some posts got a lot of feedback, some not so much. By far for me the two most exciting were my interviews with Chad Parmenter and Lesley Wheeler. They were both immensely kind to take time out to answer my questions, and I'm beyond tickled to think that, via my blog, someone out there might have discovered their work for the very first time! I've also gotten lots of great feedback on the craft posts, and it's another source of great pleasure to think I might have motivated someone to improve their writing. In a surprising twist, one of the most popular posts turns out to have been the Black-Eyed Peas & Quinoa Salad recipe! I have to try to post some more recipes, I guess.

So, what have you liked? Not liked? Please tell! I would love to hear what you'd like to see more or less of, and will try to please and come up with new ways of getting to the second year.

Thanks to all of you for reading!

Top Mistakes Beginning Writers Make, Part I

It’s time to spruce up the syllabus for the new semester, and that means lots of thinking about the kind of students I’ll be teaching and what they need to learn. I teach an introductory course, so that means truly raw beginners—students who may never have attempted to write creatively before. Over the years, one comes to notice repeating struggles, and, since I’m into counting lately, I thought I’d compile a list of the top mistakes beginning writers make. At first I thought I’d distinguish between prose and poetry, but, as I compiled the list, I soon realized that there’s so much overlap that such a distinction would be misleading. So, what follows applies to all kind of writing, except for the few isolated only for poetry, and those only marginally.

1. Too much dialogue. Perhaps it’s the fact that we watch more movies than read books these days, and movies, as drama, rely on dialogue more than the short story or novel do, or at least seem to do so. In truth, movies that are too “talky” often bore people. My husband hated Before Sunrise, for example, because all Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy did was talk. I still love that movie, and even the sequel, Before Sunset. Great freaking dialogue, but also great characters and a great story, which is the point: the problem isn’t too much dialogue, but, rather, misusing dialogue to tell the story that would be better told through exposition, summary, or action. The beginning writer doesn’t quite know how to manipulate other elements of storytelling, and so relies on dialogue because it’s familiar; we all know how to talk, how to tell a story, and so you wind up with long passages of characters explaining things to one another, or—evil of all evils!—to him or herself. Page after page of dialogue is boring and weird, and makes for skimpy storytelling. Characters should speak only when they have something to say.

2. Not paying attention to pacing. An offshoot of the pages of dialogue problem, pacing is the secret forté of the professional and the bane of the beginner. The beginner starts at the beginning and continues to the end, usually without too much consideration for what deserves attention and what should be skipped over quickly or even entirely. The balancing act between scene (a detailed account of a particular moment) and summary (an express recap of long periods of time) can be one of the hardest writing skills to master, but it’s the secret between boring and exciting reading. Get to the good part, and, when you get there, take it slow.

3, No patience with the story (no development). Also related to pacing is the problem of scanty development. Beginning writers want to tell the story as quickly as possible, and, while there’s a place in this world for flash fiction, even for micro fiction, the question of good development has little to do with word count. You have to learn to give the story the room it needs to be told well, and, too often, the beginning writer tries to shove a novel into a postcard. Writing is a slow, complex process, and, if the only reason why your story is two pages long is because you “just wanted to get it over with,” you’re in the wrong business.

4. Flat characters. Characters are often the first to fall prey to the scanty development bug. This one is good, that one is bad, and we really don’t know why. “She’s a typical ‘hooker with the heart of gold,’” the beginner will say, as if that’s a good thing. Flat characters are clichés (hooker with the heart of gold) or circumstances (the boss), not people. You have to provide motivations for your characters. We need to know why the do the things they do, say the things they say, and think and feel the way they do. Not only does this take time and space, but thought. You can’t just grab a character off the shelf—you must create one.

5. Naïve understanding of life. Part of the problem of the beginning writer is that usually he or she is young. Scientists have actually studied the adolescent and post-adolescent brain and its capacity for complex moral development, and found that young people tend to think in absolutes—good versus evil, for example. A sign of maturity is the ability to see shades of gray. Thus, the beginning writer tends to punish the bad guy at the end of the story while rewarding the good guy, as in fairy tales. No one is either wholly good or wholly bad, of course, but experience must teach you this. Students rankle when I bring this up. Being in college is all about becoming an adult, and it hurts to be reminded in any way how new you are at that, especially when you feel so secretly inadequate in the first place. Some students also argue that they’ve “been through more” in their short lives than “most people have been through at forty” (meaning me, of course!). True. Some people have unfortunate beginnings—poverty, abuse, illness, and death affect people of all ages. The way we process these events, however, changes with time. About one out every three introductory course stories involves someone’s death, for example. As we grow older, however, we come to realize that death is not only natural and common, but, quite frankly, nothing to write about. Most young writers have difficulty understanding how little drama there is to death, illness, even abuse. They may be part of a good story, but not de facto a good story by themselves.

6. No sense of interior conflict. This list is coming out ike a braid; recognizing the role of interior conflict is the next step after realizing that “the death of X” is not de facto a good story. It’s how Y reacts to the death of X that can—maybe—make for a good story. The beginning writer’s world is all about exteriority. Planes crash, bags of money are found, lovers are unfaithful: things happen to the characters, but the characters don’t change in any way, just their exterior circumstances. The good guy may lose his business, be crippled in a car accident, and have his dog stolen by his ex-wife, but, in the end, he’s the same good guy he was at the beginning of the story! Watch any soap opera and observe. Most times, characters weep frantically, scream at one another, and tear things up (notice that these are all also exterior manifestations of interior turmoil) when things happen to them. However, they remain either good or evil despite these circumstances. Learning to write about our interior lives, those inner struggles under apparently normal circumstances that we all experience and that define us more than our exterior circumstances do, is one of the first breakthroughs a beginning writer can have.

7. Senseless plotting. The lack of interior conflict in the beginner’s story often means that there’s a lot going on outside, and some of it just doesn’t make sense. You need to end your story, for example, but, because all you’ve got is a series of circumstances with no connection to fully developed character psyches, your only recourse is some story-ending event. The wedding. The graduation. The death. Even worse, the winning lotto ticket, the alien abduction, or the meteor apocalypse. That’s one kind of senseless plotting, the traditional deus ex machina that ends the story by ending the world or other exterior circumstances. It’s senseless because we all know that weddings, graduations, deaths, jackpots, aliens, and meteors aren’t real endings, just arbitrary ones (well, maybe meteors . . .). A wedding, for example, may or may not be a satisfying ending, depending on the conflict that lead up to it. If the conflict was whether or not the fiancé is the right person, the wedding itself is hardly going to answer this question, since most likely we won’t know for a long time afterwards. Yet, many superficially plotted stories end this way, as if the ceremony could wipe out all previous conflicts (no doubt this is also the reason why there are so many divorces, but I digress).

But that relies on you having identified a conflict to begin with, and the problem with many beginners’ stories is that there is no clear conflict. Characters are just walking around, attending a party, for example, and there’s nothing at stake. There’s no tension moving you from one moment to the next, no quest. You don’t know how to end the story because you don’t know what the story is. We’re peeping in on some people doing some stuff, but there’s no theme, nothing. That’s not a story, that’s an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

8. Misidentifying the drama / Wasting time on bad material. All of which leads to perhaps the most common beginner’s problem, not recognizing where the story is. You write up to the death of X, the devasting breakup, or the big wedding, giving often meticulous attention to all the little events leading up to The Big Event. The first cough that should have sent X running to the doctor but didn’t, the first spat over dinner that foreshadows (beginners love foreshadowing—they learned it in AP English) The Divorce, the meeting of the lovers as they caught each other’s eyes across a crowded room (the room must always be crowded). To make things worse, the beginning writer begins the story with “The day my [or his/her] life changed forever began with . . . .” Zzzzzzzzzz. Not only is no one surprised by these familiar trajectories, but also there’s very little drama before any big event. This is very, very difficult for the beginning writer to accept, that a Big Event on down the line somewhere does not create automatic anticipation. In truth, the more interesting stories happen after: after the death, the breakup, the wedding. How do the characters adapt to their lives after a change? The Big Event might mark some exterior spot on the characters’ lives, but the real story is where the interior conflict is, and that can be anywhere in relation to an exterior event. The beginner writes over and over about garden weddings and rainy funerals, but there’s just nothing there. The story is elsewhere.

9. Vacuum settings. Related to the problem of excessive dialogue, stories set in a vacuum are extremely common. Beginning writers are impatient with setting, and so you have characters running around generic high schools or clubs or whatever, or, sometimes, nowhere at all. Before you roll your eyes and claim that descriptions of setting are boring, consider how interested you’d be in a radio play. Though there are some fantastic radio plays, the form was overshadowed by television for just one reason: we could see the people in the play. The only way for us to be able to see the people in your writing is if you put them somewhere. If you only describe what they look like without telling us where they are, all we’ve got is paper dolls. Put them in cars that drive down streets in specific cities, or on horses galloping down a beach, or, WTF, in the vacuum of space, as long as they’re in a spacesuit tethered to a spaceship full of buttons and light and the smell of the spacetoilet. Characters interact with their settings, and are a product of them. A girl and a boy on a date in LA will not behave the same as a girl and a boy on a date in NY. One couple will ride around in a car, the other take the subway. And that’s just a minor difference. Beginning writers don’t “see” very well, or smell, taste, and feel, for that matter. They have an overdeveloped sense of hearing—people talki ng, phones ringing, music playing, shots being fired, tires screeching. Imagine you are writing instructions to a filmmaker. What should the set look like? Where should the actors be?

10. No idea how to revise. Beyond making a few grammatical corrections, the impatience of the beginning writer is nowhere more evident than in the revision process. The beginning writer often believes that the best writing is spontaneously produced, if you have any talent, that is. That’s the first stumble right there, equating revision with lack of talent. The beginning writer also has a hard time realizing that writing is work. The word “creative” is no help, either. Creative things are supposed to be fun, aren’t they? So, if you have to “work” at something, you’re not good at it, either, not talented. So, the beginner is stuck in an endless stream of first drafts. Even when he or she begins to accept that revision may—after all—be somewhat normal and acceptable, the beginner has no idea how to go about it, how to a) identify the flaws in the writing, and b) address them successfully. The beginning writer is essentially lazy, and would rather ride the adrenaline rush of the first draft than plod through the swamp of revision.

Ah, the beginning writer, that fragile, enthusiastic puppy! You break my heart. Tune in next week for the second half of this post, where I’ll finish with the general psychology and take a look at that other mysterious creature, the Beginning Poet. Till then, wish me luck in syllabusland.

10 Resolutions That Will Make You a Better Writer in 2012

It’s resolution time, and, hokey as they may be, they can actually work—you have the support of the whole world, who is also trying to start fresh. If you’re reading this blog, you should be considering some writing-oriented resolutions. Below are 10 relatively easy steps you can resolve to take right now to make yourself a better writer in 2012. Now is the time!

10.  Take a class. Hold your horses. Before you start complaining that you have neither the time nor the money to take writing classes, let me offer you some ideas. You don’t have to commit to some kind of degree, first of all. A single class can reinvigorate your writing, and you’d be surprised how cheaply you can find one. As far as time goes, there are one-day seminars that absolutely everyone can squeeze in. If you can, however, squeeze in more—a weekend retreat, a minimester, a full semester. The decision to take writing classes can mean anything from a couple of hours to a couple of years, so investigate what is possible for you. As with all goals, don’t trick yourself into not even trying because you set too impossible a goal. Just because you can’t do a two-year program doesn’t mean you can’t sign up for a weekend class. As to cost, a university class or a ritzy private seminar is not the only option. Community colleges are way cheaper, and sometimes even high schools have night classes even cheaper than that. Ask at the library, as well, to see if there are independently taught classes being offered. If not, there’s always Google! For the price of a week’s entertainment, you can have a class.

9. Join a group. Words must circulate. You can be a loner if you want, but it’s much easier to gauge how good your writing is when you hear back from others. You can also learn much from others’ triumphs and mistakes. Other writers provide not only feedback and experience, but support when you need encouragement or just a deadline to meet. Check your universities and libraries for existing groups, and if you can’t find one, start one! The ideal group size is about six people. Anything larger, and you can disappear, which is not what you want. But you can have a group of two or three just as well. Ideally, you can meet face-to-face, so you can see one another and go back and forth in discussion. Quite frankly, you can do about as well on Skype. In other words, there’s no excuse for you Emily Dickinsoning yourself.

A more in-depth guide to
this issue.

8. Carve out a writing space. This is a tricky issue. For one thing, don’t you dare use lack of space as an excuse for not writing. Shame on you! You can write anywhere. The only two things you need for sure are your brain and some kind of tool. If you’re not writing as much as you want because you don’t have “a room of your own,” or a desk, or a fancy computer, you’re just kidding yourself. First of all, what Virginia Woolf was talking about, more than a physical room, was psychic space. I’m not even going to get into that in this post, because that kind of trauma is something a little beyond quickie resolutions, and, moreover, beyond my expertise. If I ever figure out the social and individual psychology of writing, I’ll let you know. Meantime, these resolutions can get you a little of that psychic wellbeing you need to write better. What you don’t need, to get back to the point, is anything fancy. Basically, if you feel like you need specific space at all, anything will do. There are only two kinds of people: Starbucks people and Emily Dickinson. Starbucks people write at Starbucks. I don’t really like them or understand them, so suffice it to say that, if you’re one of them, resolve to spend X amount of time there, writing. You can also try your library, a park, or whatever public space works. You don’t need a laptop if you can’t afford one. The good thing about the library (as opposed to Starbucks) is that you can use their computers. However, good ole paper and pen will do. You don’t need Wi-Fi, either. Just figure out what you need, and get it.

The tools you'll need for
writing . . . .

But what if you’re an Emily Dickinson? If you’re blessed with a room, good for you. Don’t have a desk? Get one. Get a chair. This is not difficult. Your “writing room” is full of crap? Get a big blue bin and put the crap in it if the mess bothers you, or swipe it off the desk and let it fester on the floor if that’s your thing. The point is to write. Don’t have a room? Write in bed, like I do, on a laptop. Bad for your posture, but, have you ever met a writer with good posture? I do understand, especially if you live with others, the need to signal that you’re working and can’t be disturbed. Believe, me, I know. But if you can’t learn to deal with distractions, you have to find a way to carve that space or risk waiting for the perfect room to materialize the rest of your life. Throw out the skinny jeans that are never going to fit again and turn the closet into a writing room. Flush a wig down the toilet, tell everybody you can’t afford a plumber, and turn the bathroom into a writing room. Get an outdoor shed or some patio furniture and turn your outdoor space into a writing room. If all else fails, go write in your car. Trade it in for a van if you want more space.

Wondering how writers
use journals? Read this.

7. Keep a journal. Confronting your life regularly can do wonders for your writing. You don’t have to write very long entries, or every day (at least once a week, however). The important thing is that you take the time to write down, to literally explain to yourself, what you are doing. It’s really hard to say “I didn’t have time to write today,” for example, when you write down what you actually did: spent two hours watching a movie, fifteen minutes commenting on your friends’ drunken pictures on Facebook, and half an hour doing the dishes. Ditch the movies, ditch your friends, and get some paper plates or a dishwasher. You can do these things, but only if you realize where your time actually goes. A journal can help you keep track of the hours. If you didn’t meet your writing goal for a certain day or a certain week, explain. Confront your own psychology, and resolve to do better. Also, a journal keeps the writing muscle supple. Writing leads to more writing. A journal entry can be a very early draft of a poem or a story, if you write down things you thought or saw but “didn’t have time to write about.” On a day when you’re out of ideas, you can go back through your journal and find inspiration—and material.

6. Work on specific writing goals. Most of these resolutions can have the effect of helping you identify what you need to work on for your writing. Perhaps the class you take will teach you some new skill you need to perfect, or the writing group keeps pointing out that your poems lack form. Perhaps, in your journal, you notice that you’re constantly complaining that your dialogue sucks. You get the idea. Identify a set of writing goals—specific craft issues like dialogue, or maybe prosody or grammar—that you need to work on, and resolve to address them one by one. Take a class, read a how-to book, do exercises, or just practice, practice, practice. But don’t avoid your writing gaps any longer—identify them and conquer them.

A great book on prosody.

5. Read craft books or essays. Whether you’ve taken dozens of classes or none, one way in which writers can improve their craft is to read about it. There are bazillions of books, journals, and websites dedicated to the art and craft of writing. Resolve to incorporate these into your reading schedule in any way you think might work, as long as it’s regularly, so that you don’t “mean to do it at some point.” Designate a day of the week, for example, as craft day. Ideally, target your reading to your writing goals (#6). Troubled by the fact that you have no idea what “prosody” means? Read about it, dummy.

4. Read good stuff regularly. A writer who doesn’t read is most likely a poser. You can’t love writing and not read. My only caveat here is that you read good things. For example, spending half an hour reading the news on AOL is reading, but it’s functional reading, not good reading. Good reading means something that is well-written and will sink into your bones and make you a better writer yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to read in the same genre that you write. A prose writer can learn from poetry and vice versa. What it means is that you must create a symbiotic relationship between your reading and your writing, so that they feed each other. You must read actively and critically, noticing what you like and why. Incorporate your reading activity into your journaling—write about what you’re reading and why you like or dislike it.

Moreover, read regularly. Ideally, you should be reading for hours every day, but, if you really can’t, just fifteen minutes a day can start you off on the right track. Maybe you can’t read every day, but set aside a couple of days a week to do so. If a week goes by and you haven’t gotten to your book (or whatever), something’s wrong with either you or the book. Maybe your book sucks. Get rid of it! A good book is good in the first 20 pages, or it’s gone, baby! Not liking it but it’s highly recommended by a trustworthy source (not “Crazy Dude from the Liquor Store”)? Maybe you suck. Get a reading guide, read reviews, ask somebody. Give it another 50 pages to figure out what you’re missing. If, after 50 pages, it still sucks (to you), make a decision. Continue reading so as to figure out how never to write like this yourself, or chuck it. You’re dying, every minute. There’s no time to waste on a bad book when so many good ones are out there and you’ll never live long enough to read them all. Or, perhaps what’s wrong has nothing to do with the book at all. Are you watching movies and playing 52 Pickup again instead of reading? Check your journal if you’re not sure.

3. Set aside a specific time for submitting. “Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing,” Sylvia Plath once said, and this from a woman married to a philanderer. Don’t let this happen to you. Anything remotely finished should be out at all times. Don’t worry if it’s not “perfect” yet—if it isn’t, it’ll be rejected, and you can spruce it up when it comes back. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sent something out just because I’m so sick of it it’s either send it out or delete it forever, and, dontcha know, it gets picked up! Doesn’t mean you send out your garbage. Don’t embarrass yourself. But oftentimes, the quest for the perfect draft ends in a stinking pile of unpublished writing. Another reason writers often slack on the submitting is that it’s tedious. That’s why you must commit to a schedule. I had a really good streak of publications when I practiced “Submission Fridays.” No, it wasn’t some S&M thing—I simply committed to seeking out venues and preparing submissions every Friday, and it worked. Maybe a weekly schedule is too much for you, but at least once a month is a good goal. Something must leave the house at least once a month, or else you’ll have that stinking pile.

2. Set aside a specific time for revising. Often, a writer can get stuck in FDM (First Draft Mode). You get all excited, you write a first draft, and then you get all excited about something else, and write a first draft of that, and so forth. Nothing ever gets to publishable level. Commit to revising regularly, a time when drafting new material is simply not allowed. It can be fifteen minutes at the end of your writing time, or a certain day of the week—whatever works. But, even if you’re rather recursive in your method—you draft, revise, and edit all at once—you can benefit from a revision-only moment. Ideally, this should be a couple of days to a couple of weeks after the first draft, when the material has “sat” for a little while and you’ve lost the familiarity with it that can blind you to a good revision effort. Also ideally, you can have your forced revision time right before your forced submission time—that way, you revise, and out it goes!

1. Set aside a specific time for writing. C’mon, you knew that’d be number one! Duh. Again, it can be just fifteen minutes a day, or a couple of days a week—the more the better. It’s a job, and, if you have no other, you’d be remiss to put in less than 40 hours a week. Be a workaholic about your writing. Do more, always more. But don’t let the fact that you can’t do it full time stop you from doing it at all. A little writing is better than none, and, if you resolve to be regular about it—not “when you can” or “when I’m inspired” (ew), but Tuesdays and Fridays, 6-8 pm—you’ll write more. Remember, a writer writes.

The Greatest Stories Ever Retold

Christmas is a time for retelling stories—from the story of Jesus’ birth, to the countless viewings of It’s a Wonderful Life, to the retelling of family stories of past years, we never seem to tire of old stories, which is really weird in a culture otherwise obsessed with the new and disposable. Why are some stories worth retelling, and not others? And why are some retellings better than others?
 

The story of the nativity might seem like an exception, because retelling it is an act of faith. Nevertheless, it offers some explanation for why it bears so much repeating even to those outside the faith. Without getting too academic, one can still say that it’s one of those archetypal stories that tap into our most basic drives. The mythical birth, the rise of a common individual to the rank of God, the saving of the world through an act of sacrifice—all these are themes that recur in culture after culture in the most popular of stories.  Think of the parallel to Star Wars: another mysterious birth (the twins birthed by the queen hidden away separately), another simple boy who saves the day and restores good. The sacrificial element might not be as condensed as it is in the Passion, but it’s there from the moment Luke has to do his chores instead of going into Tosche Station to the moment he sets fire to the body of Vader, who dies in the attempt to save his son.

So why are some retellings of the same story so much better than others? My husband makes fun of me because of my penchant for issuing edicts. I have two edicts relevant to this discussion: no more retellings of A Christmas Carol, and no more vampire stories. My edicts are very useful, I think, because they stop me from wasting my valuable time that I could be spending on Facebook or writing this blog. I’m always very tempted to cave in to retellings of A Christmas Carol or vampire stories, and the edicts help me to resist, even if Scrooge is recast as Fidel Castro or the vampires are robotic. Somehow, these two stories, though archetypally appealing (the change of heart, the pros and cons of immortality), always fail to impress me in the retelling.

The reason is pretty simple, I think, and it requires that we clarify what we mean by retelling. Putting on a production of a play is not the same as retelling a story in print form. Let’s take another one of those often retold stories, Romeo and Juliet. Whether you’re attempting to be faithful to Shakespeare’s original or recasting the leads as a vampire and a klutzy teenager, if you’re performing the play your success will in some measure be dictated by the quality of the performances, or other production factors like staging, direction, etcetera. Ergo, you can have the same faithful rendition of the original performed by two different sets of actors, and one will be good but the other suck. This situation cannot be duplicated in print, since it would hardly make sense to rewrite the original as-is. Perhaps the most you could do is work on a new translation. To wit: a production is not the same as a retelling.

So, what about the vampire version? Are you guaranteed a good retelling (as opposed to a production) if you turn classic characters into vampires? Of course not, and herein lies my problem with the countless retellings of A Christmas Carol featuring Scrooge as Castro or Mickey Mouse or, what the heck, a vampire. You get all excited by the switcharoo, and then it falls flat. Nothing happens. The retelling fails.

Why? Because, when you retell a story, you still have to tell it well. You can’t just piggyback on an old story to carry yours. You still have to have all those elements of good storytelling in place to make it work: great characters, a complex plot, rich setting, and, of course, good language and a complex theme. If Scrooge-as-Castro is exactly like Scrooge-as-Scrooge, with the same actions and feelings, then what’s the point of resetting the whole story in Cuba? Therein lies the heart of the retelling problem: there must be a point to your retelling, and so many of the quirky versions of these popular stories seem to have none. What happens if we trade Scrooge in for a communist dictator is not a matter of what he would wear or what language he would speak. Such matters are simple exercises in replacement, not in creativity.

I’m currently reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, a novel about historical figure Thomas Cromwell. It’s a shame that I’m reading it as I am, here and there, this waiting room, these fifteen minutes before I fall asleep. It’s riveting, which is amazing, given that it’s a true story and one that has not only been told countless times before, but also read by me countless times. I’m a sucker for the Tudors, and I must have read a thousand stories about Henry VIII. I’m glad I don’t have an edict, however, because it would have kept me from reading this wonderful book. What’s so wonderful about it? It’s not just that she chose a comparatively minor figure (hardly minor, really, but most people go for the king himself or Anne Boleyn), although that does help. It certainly worked for Philippa Gregory, who also told this story very well in The Other Boleyn Girl, told from the point of view of Anne’s sister, Mary. More than the choice of focus, however, what makes Mantel’s novel so enjoyable is just the fine writing. She really humanizes Cromwell, who is usually seen as just a conniving figure, by giving him a family and complex feelings that have nothing to do with being “good” or “bad.” She also tells the story in present tense, in sparse, clear language that is immediate and gripping. She could write about her dog taking a crap and make it compelling.

So tell and retell all the stories that you want. Tell them straight, or tell them slant, but tell them well. Don’t delude yourself into believing that, just because you’ve turned all the usual characters into robotic vampires from space, you’ve got yourself an original take on an old story. Originality is not a matter of circumstance, but of thought. Mantel apparently spent five years researching the historical circumstances of Cromwell’s story, and didn’t turn a single character into a robot space alien, and yet this umpteenth retelling of Henry VIII’s shenanigans is the freshest thing I’ve read in years. In the end, there’s no such thing as a good story. When we hear a story, watch a movie, or read a book over and over, it’s not the story we’re enjoying, it’s the way it’s told.

Writerly Gifts

Well, what else did you think I was going to blog about this week? You’ve got one week left before Christmas, and those freaky writer-types on your list. Before you pull a Tribbiani and get them the 100^th fancy pen they’ve received in their lives, let me help you out. For one thing, you should think about the fact that just because someone is a writer or loves reading, it doesn’t mean that they don’t enjoy receiving the usual presents, like pretty scarves or fruitcake. But, if you want to get someone a gift that connects to their love of words, I have some ideas for you, all of which I’ve linked to Amazon. Just click on any of the pictures. Ain’t I helpful?

The obvious go-to gift this year (again) is an e-reader. The Kindle Fire is the hot one this year, I suppose, but the terrible thing about the e-reader idea is . . . . Well, there’s a few bad things. For one, make sure the person is receptive to the whole idea of e-books. Some people just aren’t. For example, although I love the idea of space-saving (you don’t know clutter until you marry two writer-academics and stick them in a one-bedroom), most of the books I want to read aren’t available as e-books, at least not yet. Poetry, for example, is not as well-represented in the e-market as prose, and a lot of the prose is also bestselling and/or genre fiction. Some little obscure book that I got in my head to read isn’t necessarily going to be available as an e-book. Moreover, if your writerly pal is receptive to e-books, it’s likely he or she already has an e-reader, or, if not, then someone else in their lives is going to get them one, or they’ve already gotten one for themselves. In other words, investigate.

A really great choice for
the general book lover.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s discuss old-fashioned books. First tip: when giving a book as a gift, get a nice edition. Splurge for the hardcover, the first edition, or the anniversary or other fancy edition if it’s a classic. A signed edition is especially valuable. It’s a gift, remember? I can get the paperback edition at the drugstore myself, thank you very much. Second tip: unless the book is rare and you want to preserve its value, take the time to write an inscription. Unlike an author signature, a gift inscription simply tells the person you are giving the book to something about why you’re giving it, and reminds them, later, whom they received the gift from. It’s an old-fashioned practice that not many people know about anymore, but I think it’s wonderful and adds a personal touch to the gift. Etiquette varies, so anywhere on the first page is fair game. For wonderful examples, check out The Book Inscriptions Project.

A book about bookplates.

While we’re on the subject of inscriptions, a great book gift that is not a book (and can also be cheap, although fancy, personalized ones exist) is bookplates. There are many kinds of bookplates, but what you need to know, basically, is that they exist! Lots of people have never seen one of these, but they are basically a means of putting your name in your book. Far from being simply a way to get your book back if someone borrows it or you lose it, bookplates can be an art form. Some are self-stick, some aren’t; do some exploring and find one you like.

Really cool bookplates.

But what about books themselves? Hold your horses. First, know that giving someone a book is very personal, just like clothes, movies, or music. Don’t give someone too specific a book unless you know them well, in which case you probably don’t need my help. If you want some general suggestions, here’s a few.

Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style. Anyone who enjoys reading and writing will appreciate this classic. It’s perfectly okay to have a working copy, like I do, and a nice edition, like the illustrated one.
A Freaking Awesome Dictionary. While MS Word comes with a dictionary and there are many excellent dictionaries online, someone who’s really into words will appreciate a good, comprehensive dictionary, especially one that is not for general use, like a usage dictionary, for example, or a latest edition that has the most recent changes to the language.

A Great Edition of a Classic Work. While a new book is a little risky if you don’t know someone’s tastes very well, there are a few books most people appreciate. For example, Shakespeare. While a comprehensive Shakes is a bit much for the average person, a nice edition of a single work—the favorite play, or, for the romantic interest, the complete sonnets—can make for a beautiful gift. Speaking of sonnets, if you really want to give a classic romantic gift, EBB’s Sonnets from the Portuguese is a real panty-dropper. Or, if you happen to know the person’s favorite author, go for it.

A Great Edition of a Children’s Classic. Okay, so I’m stealing the idea from Friends, but this is a really cool idea! I received a copy of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! when I was in college, and it was really romantic! The idea can also work for children, of course, or even new parents. You could even tweak it a little and get a revamped version of a classic, but the nostalgic swoon won’t be the same. Think Nancy Drew, Little Women, Heidi, Little House on the Prairie, or a nice Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

A Cross-Medium or Unusual Choice. Like the favorite author idea, but don’t want to give yet another copy of the novel or collection of poems you’re sure the person already has? Go the unusual route—art by the poet, a biography, a study, a work inspired by the favorite—in other words, something about the favorite writer rather than by him or her. Please note that the fan of Jane Austen may not necessarily enjoy a zombie version of her work.

A Beautiful Cookbook. People who love books are art lovers in general, and cooking is an art many writers love. Think about it: like writing, cooking is both art and craft, and something you do at home. Moreover, many cookbooks are way beyond a collection of recipes, and have a narrative and artistic component. If you want to give a book and the person cooks, a cookbook may be a fun gift, especially is you pair it with a great bottle of wine (something else writers are notoriously fond of).

Words & Music. Another thing word lovers love is music. Everyone is buzzing about the new Springsteen book, for example, which is a) a book, b) about music, c) a photography book, and d) a memoir. Springsteen is one of those musicians readers and writers love—excellent lyrics. Music is perhaps an even more personal choice than books, but if you happen to know a person’s musical tastes, I bet you can find a great book to go with it.

Art. From paintings to photography, some of the most beautiful book gifts are art books. Again, personal tastes make this choice difficult, but, if you happen to know what kind of art the person likes, a great art book is a wonderful choice, or an art print. A friend who knew I had written a Christopher Columbus poem recently gave me a beautiful print of Columbus before the Council of Salamanca. I thought that was awesome! Framed or unframed, if you can make a connection like that, you’re guaranteed a memorable gift.

A Book Related to the Person or an Upcoming Event. This takes a little more finesse, but a little thinking can land you the right choice without getting too risky. Is the person planning a trip soon? A great travel guide, dictionary, or historical book about the country can make for a great gift. Pregnant? A classic like Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. Any teachers on your list might enjoy The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What Ten Generations of Americans Think Is Normal, from the Beloit Mindset List writers, which lots of educators like to read to see “what the kids are up to.”

People don’t often think of books as gifts, but they can be wonderful: cheap, readily available, easy to wrap. The problem is that not everyone enjoys books, and that those who do can be intimidating and mysterious. You don’t have to guess at whether someone will like the book you choose, however, if you put a little thought into it. It’s no different from getting someone a shirt, really. And you never have to worry about sizing!

Complicated Musings on a Sad Anniversary, or Has Poetry Lost Its Audience?

A couple of days ago, December 4, to be exact, marked the fifth anniversary of the publication of my first chapbook of poems, Shapeshifting. Unfortunately, Spire Press, who published it, didn’t make it to the anniversary, dying just a few months short. My beautiful, weird-looking, neon-green chapbook is no more.  It has ceased to be. Ex-Spired and gone to meet its maker, who is me—I have a handful of leftover copies, there’s one still on Amazon, and some more floating around the new and used marketplace corners of the Internet. And that’s all, folks. 

It’s a headshot, but not a stray bullet. I’ve been evading becoming a casualty in this war for a while, and I guess it was my turn. If you believe in coincidence, synergy, The Matrix, morphic resonance, Jung, chaos theory, God—whatever you choose to call the way in which the universe organizes itself—I should have seen it coming. Some months ago I had been helping a friend of mine research how to start a small press. I warned him and warned him about how difficult it was to make a success of this thing, but he was adamant. I compared it to starting—and keeping—a successful restaurant in New York. Nobody wants to buy poetry anymore, I said.

And then there was the long discussion on Wom-po (the Women’s Poetry Listserv) about the popularization of reading fees for standard submissions, which started a discussion about poetry and the market, who gets paid, who doesn’t, who should. As a rule, only a tiny handful of magazines and journals pay poets (and other writers) money for their work. This tiny handful is usually the most elite and well-established of publications, and a few crusaders from the small-press brigades. The standard payment when you publish in a print venue is two contributor’s copies, or the honor of being published if it’s an online venue. Even this form of payment is decreasing, however. Sometimes you get just one copy, sometimes a discount on however many you’d like to purchase. Sometimes nothing. And now the move is to charge reading fees—the poet pays a small amount per poem or submission to be considered for publication.  Why? To ensure that the publication can continue, since not enough revenue is generated from sales and subscriptions. As I said, nobody wants to buy poetry anymore.

The next sign was the raging bitch fight between Helen Vendler and Rita Dove over The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Vendler wrote a really nasty review totally dissing Dove, who edited, for her choices. Too much of this, too little of that. Dove supplied an enumerated response defending her choices. Vendler didn’t care to reply (or to stoop). The whole thing is political; accusations flew, sides were taken. My interest in this discussion is not the content of the disagreement, but its subtext. Why such passion over just one anthology?

The reason is simple. This anthology wields some big power. It is one of a tiny number of anthologies that will be taught in the schools, and, for many, may wind up being the only poems they ever read. Thus, Dove’s decisions are disproportionately enormous. I’m not defending Vendler’s nastiness, but I do see where part of her passion is coming from (and am rather pleased with it). If there were more anthologies out there getting bought, taught, and read, Dove would be just one voice, just one opinion. Moreover, if there were more poetry of all kinds being bought, taught, and read, anthologies in general would carry less weight. You didn’t get enough Wallace Stevens in your anthology? Big deal. There he is on the shelf in the local bookstore, there he is on your daughter’s nightstand, there he is in the magazine at the dentist’s. But the sheer panic of Vendler’s attack is that there he is not; it’s not completely psychotic to assume, in a culture where so little poetry is circulating, that not enough representation in one influential anthology can eventually mean the disappearance of a whole poet. You could put out an army of alternative anthologies, but who would buy them? Nobody wants to buy poetry anymore.

Well, why the hell not? Don’t give me any bullshit about the economy. I just got back from Christmas shopping, and people are shelling out beaucoup bucks for all sorts of crap. $75 for a blouse from Lauren Conrad. $600 for an iPad. $400 for Jennifer Lopez sheets. $65 for the Naked 2 palette from Urban Decay. Compared to that, $15-$25 for a collection of poetry, $10-$25 for a subscription to a journal, or $50-$100 for a thousand-page anthology seems like a bargain.

So, if it’s not the money, what it is? I could spend the rest of my life citing people who discuss how American poetry, at least, has lost its connection to the public, become too academic or self-absorbed. Where’s the love poem you can recite to the honey? Where’s the patriotic poem you can read at the Fourth of July celebration? Perhaps that is why the only poetry that sells and gets taught in the schools was written over 100 years ago, with the exception of statement poetry of the kind Maya Angelou writes, which can be uplifting.

That is a really shortsighted argument, however, one that has at its heart the same panicked issue that is fueling the Vendler Vs. Dove smackdown: the mad scramble for the few poetry readers left. If there’s only two of them, let’s give them what they want, and if that happens to be rhymed loved poetry about sexy vampires, then so be it.

And that, my faithful reader, is what I propose is the problem. Not the lack of money to pay for poetry, but the incongruity of marketplace values with the thing itself. In a perfect world, there should be room and readers for all kinds of poetry—formal and free, uplifting and depressing, corny and serious, long and short, you name it. That simply can’t happen in a marketplace, however, because you can’t just “buy” poetry. Oh, you can purchase it, but you can’t enjoy it with the mere act of owning it. You have to be able to understand it and appreciate it in ways that have nothing to do with money, which is something that as a culture we have forgotten how to do. Something is “good” if you paid a lot of money for it, or if it’s a bargain, which means it originally cost a lot of money and you are so smart and clever for having gotten it for less. All our value systems operate on the concept of monetary worth, and poetry is circulating elsewhere. You don’t pay for poetry because, unlike a Whopper or a pair of flashy shoes, it doesn’t bring you automatic pleasure the very moment you buy it.

Gee, I hope you weren’t reading expecting me to come up with a solution. I’m just a poet, not an economist.

Bat & Poet: A Conversation with Chad Parmenter

Chad Parmenter received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri, and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Luther College in Iowa. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Harvard Review, and Kenyon Review, as well as being featured on Verse Daily. His debut chapbook, Bat & Man: A Sonnet Comic Book (Finishing Line Press, 2012), is a collection of poems based on the DC Comics superhero.

I first “met” Chad Parmenter in 2009. While preparing a class on contemporary formal verse, I came across Tony Barnstone’s wonderful article in The Cortland Review, “A Manifesto on the Contemporary Sonnet: A Personal Aesthetics.” Barnstone included Chad’s wonderful “A Holy Sonnet for His New Movie” in his article, and spoke of a collection called Batsonnets. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight had come out just the year before, so you can imagine my delight. Most of my students were batcrazy—what a wonderful way to do what Barnstone was suggesting to make the old form new.  In particular, I had one student who was a rabid fan, and I wanted him to read not just the poem in Barnstone’s article, but the whole collection. I searched and searched for it everywhere, but could not find it. Finally, I found Chad Parmenter on Facebook, and eventually discovered the collection was still in the manuscript stage. Chad sent my student an autographed copy of the manuscript for his birthday. Holy batkindness!

Imagine my delight again when, just over a week ago, Chad contacted me via Facebook to let me know the collection had found a home, with none other than my old friend, Finishing Line Press. The collection, due out February 2012, is now available for special preorder from FLP’s website, and features the wonderful artwork of Mark Cudd. Being a superhero addict myself, I immediately asked Chad if he would agree to talk about the collection for this blog.

Q: Talk about your subject matter—what say you to the claim that poetry and comics don’t mix? Do you worry about labels like “serious” when it comes to poetry?

A: For me, growing up, reading comics was a serious thing--it gave me an escape that I absolutely needed, being a shy kid with thick glasses and little to no idea of how to talk to people. Batman, in particular, appealed to me because of his ability to turn completely from one person into another by putting his mask on. Poetry provided me with some of the same things, and has since then—serious play, maybe.

Q: A related question: Many critics believe that American poetry has drifted away from the American public. How do you see your work in relation to the public’s tastes? Did you have a specific audience in mind as you crafted these poems?

A: Good questions! I'm still not really sure who I write for; I do it because I enjoy it a ton, and writing a bunch of poems about Batman appealed to me as a fun kind of challenge. My favorite audience is whoever wants to read the poems, and the idea that it's not a lot of people kind of appeals to me somehow—I grew up with poetry as something that not a lot of people read, and that gave it an indy sort of feeling that I think is still with me.

Q: Why Batman?

A: Batman popped into my head one day as a topic to aim at, and most of me instantly said, "don't do that, it's off the map of what you've been reading and there's no way you can get a bunch of poems out of it that will be any good." So part of my brain seems to have taken that as a dare, and run with it, and kept running. In the process, I found a lot about both Batman and the scared kid I was when reading him that still really draws me—persona, how to deal with loss, and how to negotiate darknesses of different kinds.

Q: Why sonnets?

A: I've written a number of free verse poems about Batman, but the sonnet seems like a form that really fits with him, and maybe the superhero as a subject (Bryan Dietrich starts his book, Krypton Nights, with a sonnet crown that really helped me to read). Superheroes, and superhero narratives, follow strict rules, and tend to follow them mostly the same way no matter what; life gets inserted into that formula, and it changes the formula a little bit, but the formula wins out. I love that!

Q: How is your Batman different from other representations?

A: D.A. Powell wrote a poem involving Batman, and Bryan Dietrich did, too; there may be other Batman poems out there that I'm not aware of, but both of those poets have helped me by treating Batman as a malleable character, and one to be taken seriously, not just as a kind of campy figure. I'm pretty much following their leads, and using Batman as a kind of malleable figure, if that makes sense.

Q: What advice would you give to others who are interested in writing about similar themes?

A:  Kevin Young, when I asked him that question, said, "Get obsessed," and that worked for me! I devoured Batman media of different forms, and tried to write about it from a bunch of different angles, until something seemed to click.

Q: What’s next for you, now that the book is coming out?

A: Thanks; I have a full length Batman collection that I'm shopping around, and a couple of other manuscripts that are also each explorations of a single topic—"my America," about photographer Edward Weston, and "Vivienne's Recovery," an homage to T.S. Eliot's wife, Vivien Eliot.

Q: Whom are you reading?

A: Right now, I'm reading Shakespeare, Ovid, a little bit of Heidegger, a bazillion different contemporary poets including Meghan O'Rourke and Rodney Jones, and, if this counts as reading, playing Batman: Arkham City on Xbox 360.

Well, that explains a lot. Talk about a postmodern aesthetic. That is what appealed to me about Chad’s poetry in the first place, and it’s a common thread through all the works  of artists who engage with pop culture: fluidity. There is nothing worse for art than codification. Art dies when artists stop pushing at the limits of how it is defined. It takes an agile mind to see the perfect fit between the sonnet form and the comic hero the way Chad explains it above. Thanks, Chad!

Read some of Chad's sonnets at Diagram, and check out more of Mark Cudd's beautiful work here.