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Ten Rules

By amy ross | Filed in japan, writing

I’m a little late, but I’ve been meaning to make a few comments about the Guardian’s compilation of Ten Rules of Writing from a host of different authors.

Sure, it’s cute to see what advice various famous authors have, and it never hurts to get a few tips on how to make this lifestyle work. But rules? Don’t most of us become writers exactly because we can’t stand following rules? It’s hard for me to imagine that the world’s next groundbreaking work of fiction is going to come from someone who always colored within the lines.

There just seems to be a lot of hubris for authors to claim they have figured out the secret of writing well, especially when it’s stuff like

Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
Fine, as long as you’re writing hard-boiled mysteries. Even Hemingway occasionally has people “ask” and “reply”.

Cut (perhaps that should be CUT): only by having no ­inessential words can every essential word be made to count.
What’s an essential word? Take this too far and suddenly you’ve cut everything… We’ll be left with no literature beyond defibrillator manuals.

Only bad writers think that their work is really good.
I suppose Truman Capote was a hack. (And believe me, the inverse is definitely not true — just because you think your writing is rotten doesn’t mean you’re a secret genius.)

Don’t have children.
Do I even need to comment on this?

Look, Mr. Important Author People, we’re all very impressed with your work, and we’re all very glad you’ve figured out a routine and system that works for you. But don’t assume this is a problem that only needs to be solved once, for everyone.

Oh, but I did rather like this one, from Margaret Atwood:
Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.

Now that’s writing advice! And I’ll keep it in mind on my flight to Japan tomorrow. Of course, I hate pencils and I happen to have invested in airplane-proof pens, so I guess even this rule can’t be extrapolated to everyone…

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Pretty Hate Machine

By amy ross | Filed in books, writing

Dave Eggers, Wyndham Lewis and Hate.

I have to share this link because it references many delightful things, from early twentieth century avant garde art to Bloomsbury bashing to a book called The Jews: Are they Human? (Though I mean really, being human is so overrated…) But my favorite part of the post was the author’s little google-powered (un)popularity test. Basically, she entered a bunch of authors’ names into google as part of the phrase “I hate _____” and compared how many hits each entry got. This is thought-provoking list:

Mary Karr: 0
Donna Tartt: 0
Ben Kunkel: 0
Marisha Pessl: 1
Ayelet Waldman: 1
Jonathan Franzen: 2
Michael Chabon: 2
Richard Powers: 2
Joan Didion: 4
Elizabeth Wurtzel: 89
Zadie Smith: 102
Jonathan Safran Foer: 120
Rick Moody: 374
David Sedaris: 774
Dave Eggers: 3880

Maria Bustillo’s point is that Dave Eggers is greatly despised by random people on the internet. But of course, what it mostly seems to indicate (as Mark Athitakis points out) is that Dave Eggers is more famous and actively talked-about than many other contemporary writers. Which is what intrigues me — can fame be measured in the number of people willing to publicly loathe you? It makes some sense — Donna Tartt (to pick a name from the list at random) is pretty famous, and probably has at least a few haters out there. But would anyone come out on a website and say specifically, in writing, that they hate her? They might be tempted, but then feel bad… how sad it would be for her to google herself one morning and be confronted with their pocket of vitriol. So people keep mum.

But someone like Eggers — you figure, if he googles himself (and surely he does three times daily), he will see a LOT of sites before he finds this one, and most of them will be saying very positive things. So even if he does eventually stumble across such a post, he can probably take the blow to his ego.

So in that sense, it’s sort of telling — at what point do you become famous enough not simply to have haters, but to have haters who believe that you are sufficiently famous that there can be no harm in bashing you on the internet? I’m not sure, but I’ve just decided that this is the level of fame I am going to shoot for. This is my new ambition.

(As it happens, there’s already one site containing the words “I hate George Ross” online, but of course, it’s not referring to me. Should I claim it anyway? Only 3880 to go until I’m more famous than Dave Eggers.)

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What can writers learn from musicians?

By amy ross | Filed in books, publishing, writing

So lately I’ve been hearing from a lot of frustrated writers (though most recently from literary enfant terrible Steve Almond) about how the current publishing model needs to change, and we should all look to the music industry for a system that allows non-mainstream talent to find its niche and gain success.

It seems like a good analogy, at first glance. After all, writers and musicians are about equally arty, and both art forms are distributed via mass-media (as opposed to say, sculpture or… beadwork).

But as much as I love the idea of being the literary equivalent of Built to Spill or Gravy Train!!!!, I’ve spotted some crucial differences between music and literature. Musicians don’t need a label to distribute their work because they can build buzz and sell albums at shows. And it’s relatively easy for a band to get booked for small shows, because bars and clubs are desperate for talent. They won’t always pay, but at least there’s exposure and a fairly captive audience. If you’re good, it won’t be long before people notice.

Already famous authors can work a similar angle by doing local readings. But the world isn’t exactly clamouring to hear unknown authors read. The temptation for many of us is to put writing on the internet to build buzz, but the internet is the opposite of a captive audience. Only the very grabbiest, pulpiest fiction has a ghost of a chance on the internet (if produced by an unknown), and that’s very limiting.

Does it have to be this way? I don’t think so. I think it might be possible to create a world in which unknowns could read a few pages of their stuff to a room full of drunks and maybe get a little recognition, if they’re good — kind of like poetry slams, or amateur night at the Apollo, or the Gong Show. I’d personally love to see such a thing in action, but so far… I haven’t thought of any good way to make it happen.

So… I’m putting the idea out into the internet. Maybe somewhere out there is an unpublished author more desperate/enterprising than I am, and I’d be glad to jump on his bandwagon.

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Bottoms Up

By amy ross | Filed in books, writing

Via Mark Sarvas, I’m getting a kick out of these Life Magazine photos of famous literary lushes. I have to say, the gallery is so big it makes you wonder if anyone in the world of letters wasn’t an addict of some sort. What do we think? Do altered states aid the imagination, or does the pain of creation require self-medication? Or were they all just doing it to be fashionable? (Or, perhaps more accurately, because it’s fun?)

And of course, the far more crucial questions:

Why does William Burroughs look so fabulous at any age?

And what the hell did Truman Capote think he was doing?

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More on the Remix

By amy ross | Filed in books, writing

Just finished reading Mark Athitakis’s energizing review of David Shields’ Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, and found it unexpectedly relevant to my last post. In answer to the question, whither contemporary fiction?, Athitakis gets this out of Shields:

The mash-up, the collage, the remix—this is the stuff of the future, and this is the stuff that Shields’ great fiction of the future must embrace. More Davis and Sorrentino, less Langer and Franzen. It will be brief, it won’t pretend to hide the author, and in its formal invention it will resist all efforts to assimiliate it.

So, there we are: back at begging/borrowing/stealing our material, either from other writers or from our own lives.

The thing is, philosophically, I’m pretty much behind this idea. But as a writer? I just can’t think of that much I really want to steal. In fact, I’ve tried to insert other writers’ words into my prose, but it always stands out, looking awkward — it just doesn’t flow right with the other stuff, the stuff I’ve actually written (probably to the credit of these other authors). Is it hopelessly regressive of me to even care about things like “flow”? Maybe I should boldly flaunt the seams in my writing! But I don’t know — although I’m sure it can be well done, I don’t really find anything inherently interesting about doing that.

And then there’s the other angle, the mixing of memoir and fiction to gloriously postmodern effect. Once again, I appreciate the idea, and I’ve seen it done marvelously well (I recently read Lauren Slater’s maybe-memoir, Lying, for class and was pretty much blown away). But as a writer… God, I’m just not all that interested in my own damn life (and so I hardly expect anyone else to be). Except for little slivers here and there, it’s not a story I feel compelled to tell, even with a fictional gloss over it.

So where does that leave us, as writers? I don’t want to write what Athitakis calls “more hackneyed novels with stale plots,” and anyway, I’m not hopelessly devoted to traditional narrative. But how do you write a non-traditional narrative that doesn’t sound just like all the other non-traditional narratives of your day? How do we make it exciting, and not just a gimmick? And just how exciting and original is this concept, anyway? Didn’t Joyce and the other modernists employ pretty similar techniques? In almost a century, haven’t we come up with any new tricks? If what we want is to create something fresh and new, is borrowing the best way to do that?

Um, yeah. I don’t know. But as I try to plot out my next novel, these are the questions that stress me out.

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Abandoned Shack, Partly Cloudy

By amy ross | Filed in books, scenery, shack, writing

Oh, my poor, neglected blog.  Would you believe that they actually give us a fair amount of work here?

This past week should go down in history…  Before it even began, I had dubbed it “Hell Week” thanks to a week-long workshop with Distinguished Visiting Writer Steve Almond, held every evening for two and a half hours.  It was actually a lot of fun — Almond is a very entertaining fellow, who somehow possesses the magical ability to demolish your prose while simultaneously making you laugh at your own ineptitude.  It’s a neat trick, let me tell you — if you ever have a chance to be workshopped by him, take it.  If not, check out his new chap-book, It Will Only Take But a Minute, Honey, which is half shorts, half writing advice.

(Or on second thought, don’t, since apparently you can only get this book directly from the author?  An odd choice, but what do I know?  Maybe it creates demand…  heightens the mystique.  Well, I’m getting a copy, so you can check out mine, if you want.)

Oodles more to share, but for now, I leave you with a few shots of my favorite abandoned shack: October edition.

HPIM4497
I got closer this time!

HPIM4496
Wheatland. Yes.

HPIM4492
Oh snap, a new angle.

HPIM4494
Threatening sky.

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Kamiak Butte

By amy ross | Filed in scenery, writing

Turned in my new story.  And actually, I’m heading out to turn the same story in again, this time as a writing sample to get into a class taught by Steve Almond.  I’m pretty excited about it (the class, not the story.  I have mixed feelings about the story.).

So now maybe I have a minute to work on the book, in between conjuring proposals for final papers.  Hey, remember when I used to go out and do stuff?  If not, check out some pictures I took from the top of Kamiak Butte, just north of Pullman.

Trees
You have to climb through these trees to get to the top.

view of moscow mountain
I’m pretty sure this is a view of Moscow Mountain, as seen from Kamiak Butte.

Vista with log
It is an empty, empty land.

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Big, Two-Hearted River

By amy ross | Filed in books, scenery, writing

Further updates from the University of Idaho Hemingway Festival…

Last night I went to hear Michael Dahlie, assorted U of I faculty, and a Hemingway scholar discuss their favorite Hemingway stories. It was a lively discussion, but one point they kept returning to was the whole “iceberg theory” of fiction… Hemingway’s idea that you can leave a lot of information out of a story, but as long as the author knows the info and has it in mind as he writes, the readers will somehow intuit this.

Dahlie made what was, I think, a somewhat unpopular comment at the time: that Hemingway could only get away with this because he was already known. I think there is a lot of truth to this. Not just that Hemingway was already famous and admired, but everyone knew what his favorite themes were: war, danger, alcohol, the impossibility of true understanding between men and women… So people knew what to look for. In my own writing, I gather that people rarely get the unseen thing I’m talking about; indeed, they rarely even try. Or possibly there’s a trick to it I haven’t figured out yet? But Hemingway says it requires only confidence. Ha.

I have a story to turn in on Thursday, anyway, and while I certainly wouldn’t call it “Hemingway-esque”, there is a lot going on in it that remains unspoken. We’ll see what the smart readers here in Idaho make of it.

Also, just because I hate posts with no images, here are some pictures I took out of car windows.

car shot

car shot

broken barn

Broken barns, man. This country is full of them.

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  • elissa posted on October 6, 2009
    well, at least it gets you to really think about things like character backstory, themes, sub-themes, symbolism, etc, even if ...
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