Fiction and fact

Last weekend, This American Life retracted a story -- the one told by the actor who went to China and did a stage show on the horrific conditions in Apple's factories. Conditions there ARE bad; but lots of the dramatic details (like guards wearing guns) were completely made up. Others were exaggerated or distorted.

He was interviewed on last weekend's show and the lies continued; he never admitted that he had lied. The reporters said talking to him was "exhausting" because of the way he qualified every statement, even his denials. He never came out and said anything, and he couldn't seem to see that he had distorted the truth and that it would have all been fine if he'd told audiences his stage show was drama BASED ON facts rather than fact. He said, only more indirectly, that the main point was true and his goal was to get people to care.....billing his show as "based on the truth" rather than true wouldn't have had the same impact. He's probably right about that!

Ira Glass and the others were outraged. Their passion for the truth, for fact checking, for getting every detail exactly right was for me the most interesting and dramatic part of the show (the guy who had lied gave me the creeps, frankly -- his smarmy voice was creepy in his original story and it was almost a relief to have a reason not to like him, before I just hadn't!).

Listening to the reporters talk made me think about fiction and non-fiction. I am guessing (guessing because I am not one!) really great reporters and non-fiction writers are driven by passion to get at the facts, to find out what REALLY happened. For me, research and learning are fascinating-- but that's not why I write, even when I'm writing non-fiction. Research in fact can often be an end it inself; for me, it's really different from writing.

Fiction writers (and like it or not, that's mainly what I am -- what about you? What drives your writing?) are probably driven by other things: the desire to express themselves, tell a good story, reveal an emotional truth, portray a world -- or just make things up.

Some people can't help doing this even when they set out to tell the facts. Carl Sandburg's biography of Lincoln contains a long account of a romance -- a woman (Nancy Rutherford???) Lincoln deeply loved who died. When critics pointed out, pretty conclusively, that this had never happened, Carl Sandburg replied:

"Well, it ought to have happened."

When is it time to give up on a ms.?

An agent told me recently that when she looks over her list, the mss. that ended up selling the best are the ones that took longest to place. What's the most number of times you or your agent have sent something out before it sold or you gave up on it?I love those stories of mss. that got rejected over and over, and then went on to become famous books -- here's a list of 14 books that became famous that were rejected over and over by publishers. Some I'd heard of, some I hadn't.....but I find it encouraging, especially the comments that must have seemed idiotic to the authors, like:
"Does anyone drown? [to the author of KON TIKI] Then it can't be very interesting."

But sometimes when a ms. doesn't sell, maybe it SHOULDN'T. Dear Genius has lots of stories about mss. that didn't quite work -- by people who then went on to write other things that worked brilliantly. For example:
"....I don't mean to sound cross, but I felt so hopeful when you left my place last weekend, and was a little depressed by the ms. when I read it (several times) this week...I wish I could be more constructive but until you do more on this it is pretty hard for me to be. I will say this: I think your first "chapter" can't be called "The Tiger," and you can't just say in two lines that this Frances was in bed and she couldn't sleep...."

Yes, it was the first Frances book -- published many rewrites later as Bedtime for Frances.

There is really no way for an author to know how it will turn out or which (worth working on or not) is true of a particular ms....what I have concluded about my own work is that it just depends on how interested I am in the story and TIME usually clarifies that. If, years after I first wrote something, I reread it, see the flaws, and want to fix them, I do. If I read it over, and think: "This is really GOOD! Someone ought to take it!" I keep sending it out, but with a different pitch. And if I read it over and wince, I file it or throw it away, thankful that it was never published.

And on an unrelated note: if anyone read the blog earlier today and saw the post about the "1 weird old tip" -- I was going to develop that into a real post by adding something about curiosity and fiction, but forgot that I had set it up so Blogger would publish it automatically. Sorry about that.

I think that post is a good example of something that wasn't worth working on further!

Writing a best seller

I've heard of three people who set out to write best-sellers and actually did: Ian Fleming, Robin Cook -- a doctor who measured his own pulse as he read best-sellers to see where it rose, and now, Amanda Hocking.

Amanda Hocking, according to that interview on NPR, had written about twenty novels, but was unable to get them published -- she thought maybe she was writing the wrong kind of book. So she went to Walmart and studied the best-sellers to see what sold well that she would be good at and enjoy writing. She came up with para-normal romance and has now joined that small group of authors whose books have sold over a million copies.

The analysis she did, I'm guessing, was only one (fairly small but maybe important?) part of her success. She sounded like a born storyteller--and certainly a hard, hard worker.

But the idea of taking that realistic look at what's selling and matching it up with your own writing strengths sounds like a really good one to me!

Even if most of us did that, we might not sell that many copies--I think to do that, you need to be not only gifted when it comes to creating characters people really care about and coming up with stories that keep readers turning the pages (those seem to be the main thing books that have sold super-well over time have going for them) but be lucky with your timing. It seems to me though that her analysis took some of the luck out of that: she didn't just keep writing -- she matched her strengths to the market and I think that was smart.


BEST SELLING BOOKS OF ALL TIME (impossible to know for sure--this is just one person's guess/estimate)

The Daily Telegraph's List

What IS a good plot, anyhow?

Plot is definitely the thing I struggle most with in writing. Sometimes I think I don't even understand what a good plot is! So I boiled some really good stories by other people down into one or two sentences. I think -- though maybe this is wrong -- that a plot that can't be summarized in one or two sentences probably isn't a plot.

So here are the ones I came up with. I was trying to get their essence -- if I've missed it, please correct me! And if you have more examples I'd love to read them.

THE PLOTS

A plane crash leaves a boy alone in the wilderness, where he survives until rescued.

A plane crash leaves a group of boys on an island where some kill others until (just as the pack is hunting the hero down) they are rescued.

A teenager who doesn't fit in travels in time to rescue her father from evil, finding love and self-acceptance along the way.

When a mother abandones her children in a parking lot, the oldest daughter leads them all on a journey that ends in them finding a home with their grandmother.

A set-in-his-ways hobbit goes off to burgle treasure for some dwarves; he comes home rich and unrespectable.

A bratty little girl loses both parents to cholera and goes to live in a house with 100 rooms all shut up and a garden. She tends the garden, makes friends, and turns into a nice child.

An adored only daughter is left at a boarding school, where she's the pet pupil -- until her father dies penniless. The girl is made into a servant until she is rescued by a friend of her father's.

Four siblings are sent to the country during the air raids; they find their way to another world, where they fight a witch, save the land from her power, and become its kings and queens -- and then come home, to find that no time at all has elapsed in their own world.

An orphan finds out he's the son of two famous wizards and is a wizard himself. He is taken to a school, where he is famous, too; there he makes friends, learns magic, and battles enemies.

A kind-hearted girl doesn't do anything to stop the other girls from being mean to a poor girl who claims she has 100 dresses--and then, when the poor girl moves away, is very sorry.

Two children who have lost their mother are excited when a woman from Maine agrees to come live with them and hope she will stay; she does.

A girl is blown by a tornado to another world, where she goes on a perilous journey to ask a wizard how to get home, not knowing that she had the power all along.

Do these sound good to you? To me, even all by themselves, they sound more promising than anything I've come up with -- but maybe that's just because I know the books have all done well!

PATTERNS?
The character can be tested, but stay the same; or the character can be changed by the adventure-- -- either can work. It doesn't matter. The character can have a goal (find that treasure!), or things can just happen to her (be sent or put somewhere by adults,often). Either way, the character is clearly defined at the beginning and then, because of who she is, one thing leads to another after the starting point.

Usually, but not always, the things that happen or that the character does -- the external circumstances -- are dramatic, exciting. But I think they can be small, too, as long as the emotional stakes are high (will Sarah stay to be our mother?).

To me, most -- but not all -- of these sound rich and satisfying. They have a kind of elegant simplicity and symmetry as well as high stakes....and most though not all of them would make me want to pick up the book.

Now if I can just keep working on MINE until it makes me feel the same way I'll be off to a good start.

Striking a goldmine?

Recently an older, much more successful author called me up, "to check in." I'm not going to say who it was, because it's not fair to blab out things about other people. They can do that themselves if they want to.

He asked (not for the first time) if I was going to ALA in New Orleans and I said no. He then proceeded to give me one of the most inspiring, life-changing talks I've ever received -- actually, I've probably received plenty of good advice over the years but maybe now it's life-changing because I act on it.

First, he said that if I want to sell my work, I can't just stay here all the time, "writing alone." I have to get out there and see what other people, other publishers are doing so I knew who to submit to. I said that I had an agent.

"You can't count on that," he said.

He said it was important to meet people, talk to people, create opportunities (he talked about this eloquently). I said that I wasn't good at selling myself (yes, all my responses sound like what my mother called "feeble excuses").

"It's not about striking a gold mine!" he said. "It's about laying groundwork."

I hope you agree that merits its own color and bold.

I think it's the most profound comment on how to work in this business I've ever heard. The romantic view is that you write the book (alone, inspired), send it in, and it becomes a bestseller. But in fact lasting success is usually achieved with steady, day-after-day plodding -- for the writing, one page at a time, hour after hour, day after day. (Or in the immortal words of Jane Yolen,

"Jarret, this is how it's done. BIC. Butt in chair.") For the selling, no matter where you are in your career it's the same thing -- steady effort, laying groundwork. In both, it's about getting better, through your own efforts.

When I go to the conference (and I AM going, who wouldn't, after that?) I'll go with the spirit that I'm there to:

* look and see who's doing books I like

* listen and learn

* introduce myself (following the rules Alvina posted here awhile ago)

* HAVE FUN

It's the only way. Despite my best efforts, my mss. may never get published, let alone ever be bestsellers. So I better enjoy the process -- ALL of it -- or quit the business.

And after all, how hard can it be to be in New Orleans, rooming with one of my best friends in the world, eating delicious food, looking at books, and (as Alvina said) talking to other people who love them?

Author's syndrome, a cure?

Does anyone else ever experience this? You're writing something you're supposed to be writing -- something hard. Maybe something you're under contract for, maybe something you've promised yourself you will write. And it's really hard.

Suddenly, a new idea pops into your mind -- not an idea for the book you're supposed to be writing about, but another book. A MUCH BETTER book. You tell yourself to get back to work on the novel you're supposed to be writing, but the new book would be SO MUCH better! Many reasons for this come into your mind, too, both to do with how bad the book you're supposed to be writing is and how GREAT the new one will be.

Usually, when this happens, I waste a lot of time resisting temptation, getting distracted by the new idea, thinking about it when I should be working, talking to my friends about it blah blah blah.

A few weeks ago, I discovered a cure.

I almost feel like saying -- "Try to guess what the cure is"

and then hiding the answer with blank lines, because the cure is so simple.....

But that would be childish. This is the cure:

Actually start to WRITE the new novel.

Guess what?

It's JUST AS HARD AS THE OLD NOVEL!

I think part of the fantasy (the unconscious part, perhaps?) of the new idea is that this other book is going to be so much easier, because it's such a great idea that it will practically write itself as you get swept along by inspiration blah blah blah.......

Ha!

Art vs. life -- more or less?

Awhile ago someone talked here about Miss Happiness and Miss Flower -- a story about the two dolls of the title (homesick for Japan) and the girl (homesick for India) who makes a real Japanese dolls' house for them. All the author's books I've read are as cozy as that.

I imagined her life had been, too -- she definitely seemed like a nice English lady with an overgrown garden and tea every day. So I was amazed when I read her autobiography -- one of her books, Greengage Summer, tells about some charming children who spend a summer holiday in France and have cozy adventures. In real life, she and her sisters and their mother DID go to France, and DID stay in a hotel sort of like the one in the book -- but their mother got really sick. The children could do whatever they wanted, and one of the things one of them did was get seduced / have an affair with an older married man, also a hotel guest -- as was his wife. The children and their mother ended up getting kicked out of the hotel for this sister's "scandalous" behavior (in the novel, a charming criminal somehow -- I forget how -- arranges for them to go home to their parents, who are both in England).

That was just one incident in a life that couldn't have been less like her stories-- the book ended with her and her children living in an unheated house high in the Himalayas (which sounded like heaven to me: she described the clean new wood and no furniture and teacups and plates from the bazzar, the almond trees in back and the views of mountains in front -- I've been to Kashmir and could imagine it all clearly). They had no money -- typically, her husband had stolen all her book money (and at one point there was a lot of it) when he ran off with another woman -- but it was lovely until one of the kids noticed ground glass in their food. Rumer Godden was too out of it on the drugs the cook had been slipping into HER food to notice he was trying to poison them all....There were lots of equally wild incidents in-between the two I've recounted here.

I can't honestly say I recommend this autobiography -- there were lots of gaps, and it was written when she was very old, so old that instead of describing some of the events she quoted from the novels she'd written about them. The book read as though she really remembered the novels better than the life.

But I'm glad I read it. Her life-into-fiction went the opposite way of most writers....at least, it seems to me that most novelists make their novels MORE exciting and adventure-packed than their lives. And she made hers less.

Maybe for her writing was an escape into a safe world where husbands stayed and supported you, people didn't try to murder you, and children left to fend for themselves found protectors. Is YOUR writing a reflection of your life or an escape from it? Both? Neither? An attempt to remake it? In the past, mine has I think been more of a reflection -- but maybe it would be fun to do the opposite, as Rumer Godden did.