In response to the Guardian’s excellent round-up of advice for writers from writers (Elmore Leonard’s advice being the best of the bunch), Salon’s Laura Miller offers up her own advice. The difference is she’s offering her advice as a reader, not a writer.

ALL WRITERS OF FICTION MUST READ HER LIST. IT’S SO RIGHT, IT SHOULD BE PRESSED IN BRONZE.

It’s shockingly easy to forget that we are writing these novels for readers, therefore we should have their interests and desires in mind. Miller does a fantastic job of crystallizing the mistakes we most often make. I won’t quote the whole thing, but my favorite bit is this:

The components of a novel that readers care about most are, in order: story, characters, theme, atmosphere/setting.

Of course, you already know that, writers. But don’t you frequently forget that you know it? Print it out and tape it above your desk.

I’m still technically a rookie in the fiction department, so you probably shouldn’t take my advice on anything. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist adding to the genre. And so I give you, McLaughlin’s Rules for Writing Better Novels.

1) Stop hating yourself. Actually, if you want to hate yourself, that’s fine, but please stop creating self-loathing protagonists. The strategy is so poignantly obvious. By creating a nerd/geek/loser/fill-in-the-blank misfit who repeatedly refers to him or herself as a nerd/geek/loser/fill-in-the-blank misfit, you’re trying to get the reader to effectively say: “Why no, protagonist (read: author), you’re not a loser. You’re amazing. So smart, so clever, so insightful. It’s the world that’s messed up. Here, have a cookie.” This is little more than a thinly-veiled attempt at getting the kudos you think you were cheated out of in high school. Get over it already.

2) Stay fit. Writing is back-breaking work. You have to sit for a long time to grind out all those words, then re-grind them over and over again until they sparkle. Take breaks. Go for a walk. Do yoga or pilates. Take up Tango. Something. But don’t become, what Woofy once called “a brain in a jar.” Writing is mind work, but it takes a fit body to endure the long sit.

3) Get dressed. Don’t shlump around in cruddy clothes or pajamas. If you look sloppy, you’ll feel sloppy. And if you feel sloppy, you’ll probably write sloppily. Would it kill you to put on a pair of trousers? Do you think Hemingway wrote in sweatpants? Honestly, I have no idea whether this will improve your writing. It’s more of a thing I have against the on-going creep of casual dressing, so take it for what it’s worth.

4) If at all possible, live within walking distance of a library. The walk there will clear your head before you begin writing. Plus, if you’re lucky, the nearest branch will not have wireless so No Tweeting For You! Just three solid hours of words, words, words, followed by a lovely walk home then lunch. There is no better way to enjoy the writer’s life. Seriously, a ham sandwich is always good. But after 2000 words and a nice walk, it’s even more delicious. Hopping out to a cafe to meet other writer friends is also good and has the added benefit of providing you with living, breathing thesauri.

5) Be fanatical in your commitment to the story, but clear-eyed in your understanding of the market. That does not mean that you should write for the market. You should only ever write what you passionately believe. Write the story you hunger to read. But, if the market for that particular genre or subject is small, think about other ways to earn a living. That way, you can remain true to your artistic convictions without having to worry about the rent.

I’m pretty sure if you follow those five rules, you will automatically achieve instant success. So, go get ‘em, Tiger!

P.S., if I’m wrong, just do what Elmore Leonard said. He’s pretty smart.

Hello there! In the interests of promoting blog travel, today I’m posting at the always wise Justine Larbalestier’s blog. Drop in for a visit and find out what it’s like to …

- be a rookie novelist and rookie Mom at the same time

- realize you’ve been whitewashing your fiction

- have your hair sucked

If you’ve never visited Justine’s blog, now’s the time. You can thank me later.

Ta!

Occasionally I have ideas that, while interesting, are either too weird to contemplate or too flimsy to withstand further exploration. Usually, these ideas fade into obscurity after a while, only to be replaced by other half-baked ideas. But sometimes I wonder if, among these mutant musings, there isn’t some unexpectedly genius notion, some wacked out idea that’s so bizarre it just might be true.

Take, for example, what I call Starbucks Personality Disorder.

Is it possible that Starbucks is to blame for most of America’s ills? Think about it. In the olden days, people used to have a cup or two of coffee a day and those cups were small. Even a “large” coffee in, say, the nineteen-fifties, would be dwarfed by Stabucks’ smallest offerings. Not only that, but Starbucks routinely increases the caffeine levels in its beverages, just to keep you hooked. Is it possible that all this extra caffeine is making us edgier? Angrier? With shorter fuses?

Personally, I had to give up caffeine completely a while back because of the horrifying mood swings it was causing, which I discussed in detail here. What if we’re having mood swings on a national scale? It makes you wonder if the Tea Party–a band of angry nut jobs if there ever was one–might be aptly named. Maybe they should switch to herbal and they wouldn’t be so angry all the time.

So what do you think? Mutant musing or world-changing brainwave?

Never trust the New York Times when it ventures into the murky waters of zeitgest or trend. Today’s front page features a story called, ironically, The New Math on Campus and is about the romantic bind college women apparently find themselves in now that they outnumber college men. Only problem is, their math is way off, as it so often is in studies that attempt to pin down so-called differences in the way men and women approaching mating and dating.

According to the article, a group of women from the University of North Carolina, where women make up 60% of the population, “slip on tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so, all for the benefit of one another…” because, according to one of the young women, “there are no guys.”

You know what then? Go to another bar. 60% is not a significant enough majority to explain the absence of a single male specimen at any bar in a college town. Maybe they’re next door. Or, I don’t know, studying.

At the University of Vermont in Burlington, where the student population is a staggering 55% female, apparently some of the students refer to the town as “Girlington.”

Huh? Are the other 45% not only male, but also invisible?

But it gets worse, as the interviewees for this increasingly breathless panic-feast go out of their way to reinforce the stereotype that girls can’t do math.

One of the North Carolina students complains that out of the 40% of the student body that is male, “there are maybe 20 percent that we would consider, and out of those 20, 10 have girlfriends, so all the girls are fighting over that other 10 percent.”

This is not a problem of male versus female enrollment in college. This is a problem of you being choosy and also, not knowing basic arithmatic. If 10% of the guys you’d consider have girlfriends, that means 10% of your competition is out of the picture too. Remedial math is in your future, I think.

Okay, so what’s this all about anyway? Why is the New York Times wasting its energy on a bunch of math-challenged young women who clearly don’t know how to use Google Maps?

Here’s a clue:

…this puts guys in a position to play the field, and tends to mean that even the ones willing to make a commitment come with storied romantic histories. Rachel Sasser, a senior history major at the table, said that before she and her boyfriend started dating, he had “hooked up with at least five of my friends in my sorority — that I know of.”

You know what that means, Rachel? It means your sorority sisters did their fair share of hooking up too.

But, of course, women “hook up” for different reasons than men, right? To answer this, the Times called upon Kathleen A. Bogle, author of Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus. According to Ms. Bogle:

“Women do not want to get left out in the cold, so they are competing for men on men’s terms. This results in more casual hook-up encounters that do not end up leading to more serious romantic relationships. Since college women say they generally want ‘something more’ than just a casual hook-up, women end up losing out.”

And here we have it. Women are being screwed by, well, being screwed. I can’t for the life of me figure out why there is such a hunger to believe that men are grunting promiscuous beasts while women are chaste husband-hunters. It’s so tiresomely last century and so obviously simplistic. Plenty of men want relationships. Plenty of women want to play the field. To suggest that a marginal increase in the percentage of women on campus has turned all women into victims of unfettered male lust is just daft.

But keeping women afraid is a popular past time in persistently patriarchal societies, and the Times and Ms. Bogle, are happy to play along. Their message is simple:

Women, fear your academic superiority. Fear your sexual liberation too. And while you’re at it fear for your eroding virtue as you succumb to the “terms” of men you yourself have deemed eligible.

Alternatively, take a look at the guys you’ve dismissed as “ineligible.” But only after you’ve taken a good look in the mirror yourself.

Since the little one came along, I have found myself doing and saying things I never would have dreamed possible. I have engaged in lengthy discussions on the nature and categorization of spit up. I have blogged about intransigent diapers.

Parenthood knows no shame.

But, of late, I’ve found the most bizarre sentences slipping effortlessly from my (and Woofy’s) lips, and I thought, in the interests of furthering my shame, I’d share them.

Also, I’m totes jet-lagged and unable to blog about anything else right now.

So here they are for your amusement:

“Addie, it’s not thumb time. It’s yum time.”
(in response to her propensity for copping a thumb suck between bites of food)

“Her name is Addie and she eats up all her peas” (sung to the tune of “Rio” by Duran Duran)

“You can fight me, Addie, but I will win. I will always win.” (my battle cry when attempting to change a diaper during “frisky time”)

Actually, “frisky time”

And, my personal favorite:

“Andrew, I am not getting on that plane with two nipples.”

My dignity is hanging by a thread and I can see baby-sized clippers in the little one’s hands.

Part 1 of my interview with the eloquent and inquisitive Liz Miller is up at the very excellent Ultimate YA Reading Group.

Among the many secrets revealed:

- Which character is my “id”

- How I deal with writer’s block

- Which elements of Cycler are ripped from my actual life

Go forth and discover!

With the arrival of the Apple Tablet, media companies are preparing for another paradigm shift similar to the one that revolutionized the distribution of music. One of the disruptive elements of iTunes, according to music industry people, was the way it upended the concept of “the album.” You no longer had to buy 12 songs just to hear the one song you wanted. Personally, I call that a big improvement, but it did impact cash flow. And eventually that cash needs to trickle to the musicians who attempt to earn a living making the music we love to download. Much has been written elsewhere about what many believe to be the well-deserved demise of the old music business model. I won’t add to it. But I’m curious what impact the Apple Tablet will have on books.

What if you could buy a book one chapter at a time? I would be well in favor of such a system, given that I am a finicky reader who rarely finishes a book. I’d much rather pay $1 to read the first chapter, then decide after that whether or not to keep reading. Even better, I’d like to read the first chapter for free. If I’m hooked, I’ll keep paying. But if you’ve lost me after the first ten or twenty pages, I’d like to keep my money, thanks, and read something else.

When technology disrupts industry, a lot of time and energy is spent trying to keep old business models alive. Too often these efforts are focused at the great middle man between artist and audience–publishing companies, newspapers, record labels, etc. These entities have the size, power, and influence to control the pace and direction of change. But what if we thought only of the artists and their audience? What delivery model serves us best? And can we exploit new technologies in such a way that consumers get what they want (for a good price) while the creators of content earn a living?

Or will the middle man suck both of these parties dry?

What do you think?

Hey folks. I’m the featured author this month at the Facebook group, Ultimate YA Reading Group, a terrific collection of fiction-hungry lads and lasses who keep us writers on our toes.

They’ll be running an interview with me later on, but for now, you can check out 7 fun facts about me that are sort of embarrassing. Just don’t judge me too harshly. And, by all means, keep the lights on!

Ta.

We writers have God-like powers. We create universes, invent people, then control them like pawns. We can force them into situations in which no real person would ever find herself. We can make them do things that are completely bizarre.

I say we can do this. But that doesn’t mean we should. I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I recently read a book where the author played God, much to the detriment of the story. Normally, I don’t critique books on this blog as a professional courtesy to my fellow writers. And I’ll refrain from in-depth criticism in this case as well. But I’m making an exception to my normal rule because the writer is of such stature that I’m sure he can take it.

The writer in question is Jonathan Lethem, who is very worth reading for whole hosts of reasons. But I think he got something very wrong in Chronic City and its something that has become a habit in fiction these days, particularly in so-called literary fiction. It’s a tendency to merely assert that something happens no matter how improbable or–and this is the critical point–inauthentic. When you are unconstrained by the demands and limitations of convincing and authentic humanity, you can have your characters do anything, say anything, believe anything at all. But is this a good thing? I think not.

There be SPOILERS BELOW!
Read the rest of this entry »

Where have I been?

I guess I’m a little overtaxed these days what with a new baby, a much-abused novel deadline, moving, and various other pursuits. But the internets have recently informed me that the present decade (the noughties? the zeroes? What did we end up calling it?) is coming to an end, and a shiny new one is about to begin.

A lot has happened to me personally in this decade but apparently the rest of you were out there doing stuff too, and since I am the Mistress of Meta, it falls upon me to deliver some insightful conclusions about what you were up to.

So….

1) You permitted the internet to insinuate itself into your personal life in ways you never would have dreamed possible. You became dependent on Google, MapQuest, Facebook, and email. You are currently experimenting with Twitter and feel that, although it appears to be quite silly, you find it difficult to stay away. You rarely print photographs any more, choosing instead to share them with strangers, acquaintances, friends, co-workers, and fellow high school and college alumnae. You are considering starting your own youTube channel in order to share even more of your private life with said peeps who constitute your web-based fame circle. You are beginning to wonder why no one has written a Wikipedia article about you. By contrast, in the last decade, you got cable TV. That was about it.

2) You earned a bucketful of strictly theoretical money in the stock market and/or real estate market, bought metric tons worth of shiny stuff on credit, and now, through no malfeasance on your own part, find yourself in debt, underwater, and/or unable to retire. On the plus side, bankers (whom you suspect–rightly–of being the palm-rubbing conspirators behind this frantic reversal of fortune) are still getting bonuses. You have begun reading up on the French Revolution.

3) You discovered that approximately one half of the United States population is comprised of people so morally, philosophically, and culturally different from you that you can’t believe we manage to share one interstate highway system–never mind one federal government. You think those people are completely insane and responsible for the impending downfall of the nation and probably western civilization as a whole if your own lot don’t hurry up and do something about it.

4) You almost never wear a belt any more. Your personal style has evolved to a degree of casual so laid back your great grandparents would have called it “wearing pajamas outside.” This does not concern you in the least and you consider people who dress otherwise to be silly.

5) You witnessed another war. No more comprehensible than any other war.

I think that about covers it. Let me know if I’ve left anything out.