Venus, Jupiter, the moon...and me

Jupiter, Venus and the moon put on quite a show last night. And if you'd had a glass or two of pinot, you were probably smiling back. Yes, you were grinning, swaying a little as you stared up, braced by the cold air.

Apparently, Venus was once habitable for a brief 400 million years, with beautiful oceans, but it was constantly bombarded with asteroids, which changed the atmosphere. Now it's dry, with an average temp of 850 degrees F. As soon as scientists come up with the doo-dad thingy that controls weather and atmosphere, Venus will be the first to be colonized. Egad, hate that word,"colonize." Reminds me of raping, pillaging, stealing. Not that there are any Venus creatures to rape or pillage. Just hope it won't be a planet full of golf courses and casinos-- a gated Vegas. We-- human beings--are evolving into a higher consciousness aren't we? Maybe Venus can be a big ol' meditation/yoga/retreat center left natural and untouched. Or better yet--move all the shopping centers and gold courses to Venus so Earth can heal and go wild again.

So what does this have to do with anything? Not much, other than it was an awesome sight, and talking about the heavens is a good way to procrastinate from the task at hand on this bright morning on Earth. When it comes to procrastinating about writing, I can get pretty creative. When I get desperate I start to clean. When I have a clean house-- I'm not writing--or not writing enough. Which reminds me, I'm out of Swiffers again.

Book and Hammer

After the rise of the automobile, the railroad barons who stayed in business realized they were in the transportation business--not the train business. Movies didn't silence the radio. And as James Gleick smartly points out in his NYT Op-Ed piece on Sunday, bicycles "invented in a world without automobiles," still outsell cars.

Reading from a computer screen, listening to an audio download on your ipod, or cracking a hardcover-- it's all reading.

Not to be Pollyannish about it (beats cynicism!), but the digital paradigm shift is bringing about unprecdented opportunties for folks in the storytelling business.

One of the best discussions I've read so far on this is Gleick's piece. You might say he really nails the issue: "As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete."

Publishers may or may not figure out how to make money again (it was never a good way to get rich), but their product has a chance for new life: as a physical object, and as an idea, and as a set of literary forms. Read the article here.

A Writing Room Success

Shivers of anticipation for a local writer and friend, John Jeter, whose first published novel, THE PLUNDER ROOM, will be in stores in January.

The co-owner of The Handlebar, a phenomenal concert hall, John was one of the first to sign up for the Writing Room, our local program for Upstate writers, sponsored by the Emrys Foundation.

He took Ashley Warlick's advanced fiction workshop, and met with success.
Here's more about the book from John's blog, along with blurbs from Ashley, Karin Gilliespie, and Ron Rash, and the story behind the book.

Fleeing Black Friday Madness

Never have been a fan of the Black Friday insanity, and proudly abstain from the 5 a.m. lines. I guess I'm not much of a hunter/gatherer.

<--- It's easy to lose your head over stuff.

But I sure do love being outside on a day like this one: 60 plus degrees, gorgeous sapphire sky, rosemary and pansies to plant.

A glimmer of good news today. Ron Rash's novel, Serena, made Janet Maslin's cut of "Books that Tower Above the Rest." So, yay. Ron is a mentor of mine. A good soul and an immensely talented writer who is getting some well-deserved attention lately-- but then folks from around these parts always knew he would.

Other books named that I just have to move up on my own list: Lush Life by Richard Price, Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich, A Mercy by Toni Morrison....and more.

I've been bad. Haven't blogged. But I'm back. First, with some book recommendations.
In the epistolary tradition, two novels who tell their stories through letters:

Dear American Airlines by Jonathon Miles "a scathingly funny, deeply moving story of a stranded airline passenger, whose enraged letter of complaint transforms into a lament for a life gone awry."
Bennie Ford, the protagonist, is a 53-year old failed poet turned translator who manages to leaven the dark disappointments in his life (failed marriages, estrangement from his daughter, alcoholism) with searing bits of wit. In short, he's a character you won't mind spending hours with at the airport bar, just to hear his biting, poignant story. I felt I was there at his elbow, listening, buying him another round.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society is told entirely in letters-- between a group of post-WWII correspondents. Warm, tender, and despite the tragic period of history it touches on, optimistic. The kind of novel your book group will agree is "charming."

Late Bloomin' Writers

A fascinating article in this week's issue of the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell on late bloomers and artists--and late blooming writers.

One of my favorite lines:

If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it take for your art to reach its true level.

I guess you might say contemporary patron equals spouse.

Open Spaces, Sacred Places

In today's NYT's Home section: a not-to-be-missed article, Public Spaces Meant to Heal by Anne Raver, about the TKF Foundation and its mission to fund community gardens in public (unlocked, ungated) spaces. From the article:

They include healing gardens in hospitals; teaching gardens and a community-built arboretum; a garden planted by inmates at a prison in western Maryland; a columbarium, or place to store ashes after cremation, for the poor in a garden in Falls Church, VA; and a tree-planting project at the University of Mryland...These gardens, which are open to all, very widely, but they have one thing in common: each is a sacred space, a place that somehow 'transforms you, where you are willing to give yourself up,' (Tom) Stoner explained...

The TKF Foundation--they have a TERRIFIC website--about the only one you can visit that will leave you feeling calm-- has just published a book, Open Spaces, Sacred Places about the dozens of spaces transformed into "homes for the soul." I plan to read it soon.

How to Make a Scene? Give Me a Break

From the Southeast Review's online weekly craft talk, my essay on scenes and scene breaks.

Weekly Craft Talk

by Mindy Friddle Scene Breaks: The Power of Space Let's say you're working on your novel and you're pleased with your pages so far -- you've got some narrative tension here, you've got two well-developed characters (with complex inner lives and secret yearnings) who are heading for a showdown, an emotional meltdown, a clashing. Ah, conflict! The stuff of dramatic tension. Things are coming to a head in your story -- you've parceled out some events, thrown in some foreshadowing, and now -- it's time to deliver. Maybe the crumpled receipt from Pandora's Boxxx is discovered in the laundry, or the DNA test comes back positive, or the mailman's shoes are under the bed, or the political rival is caught foot tapping in the public restroom -- the guano is just about to hit the propeller, and your characters are finally confronting each other and they scream? Sulk passively? Brandish firearms? The thing is -- you realize with growing horror -- you've got to write it -- this quarrel. Dialogue dripping with bitterness or fury or numbness, along with the usual pounding hearts, dry mouth, lump in throat, clenched fists, slamming doors. How are you going to do this? Try skipping it. Or at least skipping ahead. Take up with a scene after the emotional showdown -- an hour later, weeks, even years, down the road. Start with the ramifications, the shards of the relationship, the heartbreak, the epiphany after the falling out, and work backwards. You may find you don't even need to write the actual argument. Besides, that's a lot of work, capturing all that emotion. Get the reader to do it!

A revelation for fiction writers: our best work sometimes happens in the spaces between scenes. What you choose to leave out can add so much to what you include. Look closely at scene breaks around climactic events. By cutting away from confrontations, you can let in some air, and ratchet up the tension, too.

Here are a few examples:

When David Lurie, the protagonist in J.M. Coetzee's splendid novel, Disgrace, visits his daughter, Lucy, on her remote farm in post-apartheid South Africa, both become victims of a brutal assault. After his daughter is gang raped, David blames himself. Again and again in the novel scenes cut away -- just as David's rage boils.

For example, David relents and goes to the farmer's market for his daughter, Lucy. The catch is, he must go with Petrus, an African farmer whom David suspects is complicit in Lucy's rape. We do not see David discuss his misgivings with Lucy, hear his agonizing demands that she confront Petrus -- the actual argument between them is off the page. Instead, the scene ends with David's fuming (through internal dialogue); the next scene opens with him, having swallowed his anger, at the market alongside Petrus. Nothing else needs to be conveyed; any discussions or further actions would be superfluous.

Similarly, when Lucy's female friends seem resigned to the violence and dangers of white homeowners living in South Africa, the shrugging off of Lucy's assault enrages David:

Do they think he does not know what rape is? Do they think he has not suffered with his daughter? What more could he have witnessed than he is capable of imagining? Or do they think that, where rape is concerned, no man can be where the woman is? Whatever the answer, he is outraged, outraged at being treated like an outsider.

And then there is a break. Here is the next scene:

He buys a small television set to replace the one that was stolen. In the evenings, after supper, he and Lucy sit side by side on the sofa watching the news and then, if they can bear it, the entertainment.

At the end of the former scene, David is "outraged." Outraged, but impotent. For a while he seethes with fury, but he soon follows Lucy's wishes to put aside his anger and embrace the appearance of normality. Telltale signs of damage are embedded in this deceptively domestic setting just as wounds are buried in the characters' psyches: the television is "to replace the one that is stolen" -- a reminder of the robbery. And the two will watch the entertainment -- "if they can bear it."

The shock of the attack is still fresh; they are not yet capable of humor and conversation. But the quick scene change from fury to a false normality -- perhaps even denial -- again illustrates David's attempt to honor Lucy's insistence to forget the rape ever happened. In this fashion, there is no tedium in Disgrace. The scenes provide a startling snapshot of intense emotion before moving succinctly into a contrasting scene.

The "space" in Suzanne Bern's novel, A Perfect Arrangement, occurs between parts One and Two. Berne chooses not to include the actual climactic moment when Howard and Mirella, the husband and wife protagonists, confess their secrets to each other -- secrets festering for a hundred pages, mind you. Howard has had an affair he regrets, while Mirella has hidden her pregnancy from Howard, fearing her husband doesn't want another child. Neither has mustered the courage to discuss the troubling signs of delayed development they've both observed in their young son.
The confluence of these pending secrets increase tension in the novel, especially after we realize the impact of Mirella and Howard's secrets will be far worse on their family than even they fear. After all, we understand their relationship is limping along, though both don't acknowledge it yet. So after a number of false starts -- Mirella has attempted to broach the subject of her pregnancy with Howard over the phone, Howard has tried to launch his tale of betrayal over dinner -- Mirella and Howard reveal their confessions at the end of Part One:
He let his hand slide down her head, trailing his knuckles along the side of her face ... Howard went back across the room to his closet and opened the door again to reach for his bathrobe ...
But before he had finished tying the belt, she pressed her hands to her cheeks and said, "We need to talk."
White sheets of paper slipped across her knees, sliding across the blue floral comforter like playing cards from an oversized deck.
He said, "I know."
Part One then ends. Part Two takes up days after this scene:
"They say we're in for some rain," said Mirella, coming into the living room. "As if we haven't had enough already." It was the first time she had spoken directly to Howard in nearly two days.
We are not privy to the actual argument between Howard and Mirella --only the resulting emotional turmoil of their confessions. Howard sleeping on the couch, the chill of their silence -- much has happened, and we're eager to know more. Meanwhile, as the present events unfold, we are able to reconstruct Howard and Mirella's previous argument and witness how their confessions rocked their marriage.
Ask any Gestalt theorist -- if you can find one these days: we're wired to fill in blanks, connect the dots. This "self-organizing principle," as they call it, is responsible for our tendency to perceive the whole as greater than its parts. Perhaps that's why the spaces between scenes often engage the reader -- by allowing the reader to make connections, fill in the blanks: prompting her to imagine what happened, pulling her in. The next time you're tempted to write about an argument between characters -- a brawl in a biker bar, say, or a seething row between host and hostess at a dinner party -- take a deep breath, and skip it.

Q&A with Nicholas Sparks

The following interview with Nicholas Sparks appears in my "Author to Author "column in this week's edition of The Greenville Journal.
The Author: Nicholas Sparks
The Book: The Lucky One (Grand Central Publishing)
The Event: Nicholas Sparks will be at the Open Book signing copies of his new novel, The Lucky One, on Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 6 pm.

Nicholas Sparks is the author of 14 New York Times bestsellers. Several of his novels have been adapted into major motion pictures, including The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, Message in a Bottle and Nights in Rodanthe. Sparks graduated valedictorian of his class from Bella Vista High School in California, and received a full track and field scholarship to the University of Notre Dame. A former resident of Simpsonville, he wrote The Notebook at age 28 while working as a pharmaceutical salesman. The novel was published in October 1996 and quickly made the New York Times best-seller list. A major financial contributor to the creative writing master's program at Notre Dame, Sparks recently donated nearly $900,000 for a high school track program in New Bern, North Carolina. He lives with his wife and five children in North Carolina.

Q.Nights in Rodanthe (now a movie starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane) centers on a middle-aged couple, rather than an older couple (The Notebook) or younger characters. What was it like writing a love story about middle-aged characters?
A. To that point in my career, it was different, and as such, a nice change of pace. Prior to that, the characters either tended to be teens (A Walk to Remember), couples in their twenties or early thirties (The Rescue, A Bend in the Road) and older (The Notebook). Writing about middle-aged characters had a few challenges, but nothing extraordinary. The main issue I had to keep in mind was that both Paul and Adrienne had issues with their children and made sure that played into the love story in the appropriate way.

Q.You’re quoted as saying The Lucky One started with a simple image of a marine finding a photograph, and it grew from there. Do your novels usually start with an image that intrigues or inspires you?
A. Sometimes it’s an image, sometimes it’s a character’s voice, sometimes it’s an idea for the conflict that keeps them apart, sometimes it’s a character. It depends on the specific story, but for the most part, even if inspiration strikes, it never fills in the blanks for the vast majority of the story. The rest of the story comes through active thought, considering outcomes, and trying to imagine what the story will be like when it’s completed.

Q. The Lucky One involves the war in Iraq. A previous novel, Dear John, did as well. How did you go about researching combat in Iraq for both novels?
A. I read books, I read articles, I talk to people. Nothing out of the ordinary. Still, I like to make them as accurate as I can because I know that if I make errors (and I’m sure I do), I’ll receive tons of letters from veterans telling me what I got wrong.

Q. Picasso once said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” That certainly seems to be true in your case. You manage an incredibly disciplined schedule of writing 2,000 words a day, You read more than 100 books a year. Do you ever experience lags in creativity, the stress of looming deadlines, “writer’s block”? How do you cope?
A. I hate deadlines. I think all writers do, because creativity can’t be turned on and off like a switch. All novels have their share of “writing that isn’t hard” and “writing that is hard”: originality and creativity is always, always challenging. I just do my best to keep things in perspective. At 2,000 words a day, I always know in the back of my mind that it means I have to write 120,000 words or so to reach the 90,000 words that end up in the final draft. That’s only 60 days of writing. Usually, it takes 120-175 days to get those 60 days, but that knowledge is enough to keep me fairly balanced about the whole thing.

Q. Your website is a rich resource for writers who want to learn more about the process of writing. For example, you mention, “After coming up with an original idea, structure is always the most difficult part of crafting a love story.” Do you usually outline your novels? Are there other trusted readers who read your work before your editor sees your manuscript?
A. I don’t usually outline my novels because it doesn’t seem to work for me. As long as I know, in general terms, what the story is going to be, I’m able to start writing. That’s just me; there is no correct way to do this, and I’ve learned that every writer is different. As for readers who see my work before the editor? Only one. My agent, Theresa Park. If it gets past her, trust me, it’s a good novel. She’s probably the most intelligent person I’ve ever met.

Q. You’ve said that, “Publishing is a business. Writing may be art, but publishing, when all is said and done, comes down to dollars.” You’re one of the most successful and prolific authors working today, and yet you’re also quoted as saying, “I don't know that I love to write these days.” Does writing ever get easier for you? Is the process of writing each novel different?
A. Writing is easier in some ways, and more challenging in others. It’s harder to be original, for instance, since I’ve already written on a number of topics. It’s hard to be original in the specifics, since my characters have experienced a number of different ways of falling in love. It’s easier in that the quality of my writing has improved over the years, and that’s a goal I set for myself long ago.

Q.You are as loyal to your readers as they are to you. You mentioned that you “don’t want my readers to think I had strayed too far from the type of novels that I originally wrote. Many authors do exactly that -- stray too far -- and lose readers in the long run for doing so.” Can you see yourself ever departing from the love-story/tragedy genre and writing an entirely different kind of fiction? (Perhaps, as Stephen King has, under a nom de plume?)
A. Three Weeks with My Brother was a memoir, and I wrote an original screenplay last year. I’m also writing another screenplay this year, though I can’t say much more about it. As for writing a thriller or a horror or an adventure . . . I suppose I could, but I have no desire to do so. Many other authors do those things very well, so there’s no reason for me to do it. I’d rather stretch the love-story genre by incorporating different elements; danger, or the supernatural, for instance. Which I did in The Guardian and True Believe respectively.

Q.You’re quoted as saying that there are three ways a novel becomes a bestseller: the Oprah Book Club, critical acclaim, or word-of-mouth, and that “Over time, quality work will lead to an audience for your work. In the end, readers always choose.” From your perspective, do you see the digital world, print-on-demand technology, the Internet, the blogosphere, etc. opening new avenues or limiting opportunities for books and authors—our society’s stories and storytellers?
A. Both. But always, in the end, it comes down to the book, the author and the quirks of fate. People like to “curl up” with books. I just don’t see a computer ever being able to do that.

We know it's fall at our house when the 20-foot Helianthus Augustifolios, aka Swamp Sunflower, is in burnished bloom.

It's a perennial--the only perennial sunflower I know of. Some folks cut it back in July to get a bushier plant, but I prefer mine lanky and swayin' in the autumn wind.

Great companion plant with something spikey and purple and cool--Russian sage, for example-- to play off its bright drama. Plant them in full sun and the two become fast friends.



Purple and yellow have emerged naturally as the dominant colors in my garden. And right now the color purple is stunning-- in an eggplant.

Ambient Awareness

I joined Facebook about six months ago, and surprised myself by getting into it. Who would have thought reading all the What are you doing now? feeds from "friends"--from nodding acquaintances, to family, intimates, friends of friends-- would turn into a fascinating sort of Walt Whitmanesque broad view of the world?

"I'm listening to the rain," I wrote today, joining a chorus: from a fellow freelance writer: "Lydia is done with the chefs and is now working on Madrid," to "Betty attended a Rotary event at the newly renovated Carolina First Center last night," "Julie is missing her friend Richard today, ""Mike is missing bocci and zeppolis and the san gennaro festival in nyc," "Joshilyn is not sleeping. Ever again. Apparently."

So now I learn, from this fascinating NYT magazine article by Clive Thompson, that sociologists call this kind of social networking, "ambient awareness":

Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

A Shed with a View

I want one of these in my backyard-- the ideal writer's studio.

Through Kithaus you can order one and put it together and actually live there... fairytale cottages are the new McMansions. According to this NYT article.

I managed to put together my own faux-Shaker desk in January--New Year's Eve, to be exact-- I wanted to get a fresh start. It came in a box from Target and had screws, knobs and its own L-shaped little tool thingy in shrinkwrap-- and directions in Chinglish. ("Please be contented to affix tight screws.") Assembling my own Kithaus? A breeze.