Annie Sez It

This week's Facebook Find, from Anne Lamott's page:

Amen, sister.

"Publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage and change you in ways you cannot imagine. The most degraded and sometimes nearly-evil men I have known were all writers who'd had bestsellers. Yet, it is also a miracle to get your work published. Just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you, will fill the Swiss cheesey holes. It won't, it can't. But writing can. So can singing."

Inspiration: What's On Your Desk?

Nazareth 1979                                                                                                           © James King

Several centuries ago I was in Israel and found myself sucked into a soccer game with these young Arab athletes. Afterward, they insisted I take their picture. The result is probably the best photo I've ever taken. I framed it and keep it and on my desk. I smile every time I look at it.

Some days, when I'm casting about for what I'd like to write next, I stare at this picture. I want to go back, find this street again, locate one of these kids, and find out what happened to him and each one of his friends. I've a feeling their stories are more compelling than any fiction I might write.

Until then, I use this picture and these kids to inspire me to try to capture in words the immediacy and the emotion of a moment, the way I did by chance and nearly not at all but for their loud and exuberant insistence that day in Nazareth.

What do you keep on your desk for inspiration?

Irish Surprise

I wouldn't describe myself as superstitious, but sometimes something happens that causes me stand back and wonder: Is this a sign? a message from the gods?

When my daughter returned from a recent trip to Ireland, she brought me a nice bottle of fine Jameson whiskey, along with coasters bearing the King family crest. I was surprised that a book was part of the crest. I was also intrigued by the motto under the book, "Maireann a sgrioghtar." According the coasters' package, the words mean, "History cannot be destroyed."

Kinda boring. (Just the motto, Katie. I love the coasters!) So today, while struggling to complete a sentence and wondering, once again, what kind of nut case actually chooses to become a writer, I was staring at one of the coasters. I then Googled the King name and family motto. I found the same Irish words but with a different translation. This one read: "That which is written, lives."

I'm taking that one as a sign.

What are the signs that you are fated to do what you do?

Submitting a Novel: Proof That Time Stands Still

What do you call the period of time that spans the day you submit your novel to the moment you hear back--thumbs up or down--from an agent or editor?

Back in the day (pre-email), the time between mailing a query letter (or partial or full) and getting a response could be weeks... even months. I know this from years of calendar-watching experience. These days, however, thanks to email, you can get your rejection in minutes. This I also know from personal experience.

In either case, I believe that that period of time is known as "eternity."

It doesn't get any better after you've been published. In fact, there's the added pressure that accompanies a sophomore effort. As soon as you send off the manuscript you've obsessed over for two or three years, those inner demons start happily planting the fields of negativity and uncertainty that line your neural pathways:

• "S/he hates it; that's why you haven't heard." 
• "They're all gathered around your manuscript, pointing and laughing."
• "Do you really think this is better than the first one?:
• "That was your one shot, kid. This one is going to finally expose you as the fraud, the one-hit wanna-be writer."

The best advice I've received for handling this situation came on the day I learned Bill Warrington's Last Chance would be published. I learned it from Susan Petersen Kennedy, the president of Penguin Group. "Have you started on your next one?" she asked, soon after we'd met. I mumbled something about experimenting with a few different ideas. She shook her head. "No," she said. "You need to get started on the next one right away."

She was right, of course. I did. And a few weeks ago, I finished it. And I'm starting on the next one. Right here, smack dab in the middle of eternity.

Easy for Me to Say

"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never..." Winston Churchill

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it." W.C. Fields

This is a tough week for a lot of writers. I'm thinking specifically of the writers who found out yesterday that they will not be advancing to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest... and the writers who were eliminated in the first round... and those who will be knocked out of the running during the rest of the contest.

This is the contest that, to my surprise and amazement and eternal gratitude, I won in 2009. (Two years ago already?!) So I know the reaction to any comment I make about the need to keep trying, to not give up, might be, "Easy for you to say." As a matter of fact, I do try to avoid saying it because a lot of writers are sick and tired of hearing someone tell them to "buck up." But because this contest draws so many entries from so many extremely talented writers, I'm hoping a quick recap of my decades-long affair with rejection might help someone get back to the writing desk a little more quickly.

While I've wanted to write a novel since I was six or seven, I didn't realize that dream until I was fifty-five. Before I saw my name on the cover of a novel,  I wrote three other complete novels and dozens of short stories and poems that collected enough rejection slips to influence the stock prices of Boise Cascade and Weyerhauser. I've experimented with every approach to writing imaginable. Just try to name a writer's guide or advice book I haven't read. I've taken online writing courses and have tried several different "creative writing" software programs. On the advice of a potential agent, I paid an ungodly sum of money to a book doctor to help me get my novel ready for publication. That novel that was rejected almost as quickly as my check was cashed. On the advice of a different potential agent, I rewrote one of my novels as a screenplay. Have you seen the movie yet? Me, neither. I continued rewriting, reformatting, even re-genre-ing. And still the rejections poured in, every one of them a poke in the eye, a body shot to my self-confidence.

And here's an update: It doesn't end when you get published. There is absolutely no guarantee that my next manuscript will be published. And while the majority of reviews of my book have been, thankfully, positive, the ones that aren't--like the one I read the other day wherein the reader-reviewer expressed disappointment that I wasn't a more talented writer--do, in fact, sting. Getting published did not make my skin any thicker.

But if you're a writer and not someone who simply wants to be known as a writer, you'll keep going. You'll keep collecting those rejections, learning what you can from each one, but ultimately believing in your own hunches, your own voice. You'll put aside that nagging feeling that there are a few hundred other, more productive uses of your time than agonizing over a blank screen or piece of paper. You won't blame. You'll try not to complain. You'll just keep your butt in that chair and keep writing.

If you're not a writer, you won't. Now that was easy for me to say.

The Privileged Pain of Writing

Over on that delightful distraction, Facebook, one of my friends, Melinda Henneberger, expressed pseudo-annoyance with people who claim they just luuuuuuv to write. She later expressed the sentiments about writing I share: I prefer having written to the actual writing. One of  comments described writing as a "privileged pain."

Where do you stand? Privilege, pain, or both? Do you just luuuv writing so much that you would write even if you knew that you'd never get published, that no one was ever going to read your work? Is the drive to write so strong that you cannot bear the thought of going for more than a day or two away from the keyboard or pen and pad? If you were stuck on a desert island, would you write anything more than "Help!" in the sand?

Do you write in hopes of fame? fortune? an excuse to drink? a reason to flout the rules, cheat, act all artistic? Do you write because you want people to say, "S/he's a writer." Do you write with visions of your serious-looking mug on the back of a book, of people recognizing you as you stroll through malls, run through airports, search for seats at movie theaters? What's your excuse for the time you spend alone instead of in a soup kitchen, for spending more time with imaginary people than with your own family?

Samuel Johnson weighed in on the question this way: "No man but a blockhead, ever wrote, except for money." What say you?

Flypaper for Ideas

While we're on the subject of questions that come up during readings, another common one is, "Where do you get your ideas?"

The answer is that I have no idea. But when those ideas fly in from wherever they've been, I have two ways I try to capture them. The first is a Native American Dream Catcher, which I have hanging from the bookshelf over my desk. Bought it years ago on a family trip to Arizona. A somewhat more reliable method is a small, moleskin notebook. I try to keep this with me, along with a telescopic pen, whenever I'm away from the computer. The entries are rarely the stuff for full-length novels, but they often spark an idea for a scene or description. I was procrastinating this morning by flipping through my current "idea book," as my kids call it. Here are a few random entries:

- At airport, expired passport.
- Little girl on accelerating train, mimicking sound of accelerating train
- Richard Russo: "This novel is about how hard it is to shut your parents up after they're dead."
- Holes in rain boots
- Considering changing name of main character
- No longer considering it
- Wind chimes in back yard knocked off tree
- Chopin Waltz in A minor
- Lighting altar candles at St. Luke's
- My wife is in love with Clark Howard

Banal, no? But who knows: a character in some future story may have a wife who develops an obsession with a radio personality; an expired passport ruins a vacation and a relationship; a boy sets fire to a church. The point is to capture these ideas, no matter how innocuous they seem at the time. Something extraordinary can happen as you start to build on them. 

So go get your own Dream Catcher. In the meantime, though, answer me this: How do you capture those ideas for your next story/poem/novel before they fly away?

The Kindness of Strangers

After the book reading and signing in Columbus a few weeks ago, my friend Murph and I were doing an in-depth quality control check of his Irish whiskey (good, by the way... very good) when he asked me what the best thing about (finally) getting published has been. It was a tough question to answer because so many wonderful things have happened--from positive reviews to print, television, and radio interviews to seeing people I haven't seen in years show up at readings.

Near the top of the list, however, has to be the emails--and in some cases, actual snail-mail letters--from readers I don't know. These are strangers who have taken the time to write and tell me that they enjoyed my book, that it made them laugh or cry or touched their heart in some way. One of my favorite lines so far: "I don't remember you being in the house I grew up in, but it's apparent you were there." In another, a woman wrote, "I don't usually read novels, but I read yours. And now, I'll read your next one, too."

Those kinds of comments motivate me to keep writing. What about you? If you're a writer, what keeps you going? If you do something else, what drives you to do what you do?