Two of my favorite television shows of all time, and two of my wife’s favorite television shows of all time, are remakes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a remake of a film) and Battlestar Galactica (the remake of a poorly-executed television show).
Perhaps television in general would be better if we gave its writers more opportunities for revision.
“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
That is my favorite quote, and everyday of my life I attempt to live and breathe these words.
I am not always successful. There are times when I get lazy. There are days in which I fail to accomplish my goals. There are hours that I wish I could have back. But the one thing I never do is make an excuse for not accomplishing a goal or completing a task.
H. Jackson Brown was right. I have just as much time in the day as Jefferson or Einstein or Keller. And I have more labor-saving devices than they could ever imagine.
My only complaint with Brown’s quote:
He left two notable people off his list: Lofting and Schwarzschild.
In fact, I think these two men might be more impressive and more apropos than anyone else on Brown’s list.
Here’s why:
When people tell me that they don’t have enough time to write their great American novel or are waiting for a sabbatical or for their kids to get older before they begin writing, I laugh.
If you really want to write, you will find the time.
Lofting and Schwarzschild are perfect examples of this.
Hugh Lofting wrote the first Doctor Doolittle novel, The Story of Doctor Doolittle, from the trenches during World War I when actual news “was either too horrible or too dull to bear.” He wrote the first book as a series of illustrated letters to his children, so that they could continue to hear their father’s voice while he was stationed in Europe, fighting the Germans.
Lofting would write a total of twelve Doolittle novels over a thirty year period, and his second, The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle, went on to win the the prestigious Newbury Award.
It all began in an English trench amidst bullets and artillery shells and mustard gas.
Meanwhile, fighting in the same war on the Russian front, huddled in a trench similar to that of Lofting’s, German physicist Karl Schwarzschild provided the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity for “the limited case of a single spherical non-rotating mass,” which led to prediction of the existence of black holes.
In a letter to Einstein written from his trench, Schwarzschild wrote:
As you see, the war treated me kindly enough, in spite of the heavy gunfire, to allow me to get away from it all and take this walk in he land of your ideas.
In 1916, Einstein wrote back to Schwarzschild on his results:
I have read your paper with the utmost interest. I had not expected that one could formulate the exact solution of the problem in such a simple way. I liked very much your mathematical treatment of the subject. Next Thursday I shall present the work to the Academy with a few words of explanation.
Schwarzschild would die from pemphigus a year later while stationed on the Russian front, but his accomplishments are revered and relevant to physics to this day.
All of this accomplished in the midst of a World War.
During my last book tour, a woman told me that she was waiting for “just the right desk before she got started on her book.”
I laughed at her statement, and I fear that I may have offended her, but what would writers like Lofting or Schwarzschild have accomplished if they waited for the proper seating apparatus to arrive in their trench?
What would they think of someone who was not working for want of a proper desk?
Not much, I would imagine.
Some recent writing-related news that I thought I’d share:
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We sold the Korean rights to MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND this week, bringing the total number of languages that the book will be published in to eight! My super agent is simply super.
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The rock opera that my friend and collaborator, Andy Mayo, and I wrote has been approved for a staged reading at our local playhouse, complete with real actors, a real director and a real band.
This is the first step in a someday-maybe-full production of the show (and hopefully the sale of the script), and we couldn’t be more excited. We’re looking at weekends at the end of October or beginning of November for the reading, and once we lock up a date, I’ll be sure to share it. The reading will be open to the public, and there will be opportunities to comment on the script and music after the show via a moderated question-and-answer session.
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It looks as if I will be conducting writing classes at a local bookstore this summer, and this may include a class on finding a literary agent. I’ll keep you updated in the event that you are interested in attending.
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I have two appearances coming up in April and May.
I will be speaking at the the Books on the Nightstand retreat from April 8-10 in Manchester, Vermont. The registration for this event is closed, but if you love books and reading, you should consider downloading and listening to the Books on the Nightstand podcast, hosted by Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness. They are the organizers for the April retreat, and their knowledge of books and the publishing industry is second to none.
I will also be speaking at the Connecticut Book Festival on May 21-22 at the Greater Hartford Campus of the University of Connecticut. This event is open to the public and will include writers such as Wally Lamb, Jim Benn and Connecticut Poet Laureate Dick Allen.
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I think I have finally settled on my next book. Over the past month, I have been working on four different novels simultaneously, including a sequel to MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND. I was hoping that as I wrote, one story would assert itself as the next to be born and shine above the rest.
To be honest, this hasn’t really happened. All four stories are proceeding along nicely, but trying to write four books at the same time is making me crazy. So I’ve settled on one for now. My editor and publisher may request some input in terms of my next book at some point in the future, so my decision may change, but for now, I am officially working on THE PERFECT COMEBACK OF CAROLINE JACOBS, the story of a woman who decides to return to her hometown after more than twenty years in order to issue the perfect comeback to an insult that was directed at her in high school.
There’s much more to the story, of course, but that’s where the idea began.
Thanks as always for all of the support!
Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own jokes. —F. Scott Fitzgerald
This is a hard lesson to teach to ten-year old writers, who seem to want to shout at the world at every turn, but I agree with Fitzgerald’s assertion on exclamation points. They are almost always unnecessary and should be avoided like the plague.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I used a total of five exclamation points in my first two books. That’s a 230,000 word/5 exclamation point ratio.
I’m still sort of embarrassed by it.
Then there is the dreaded multiple exclamation points.
Ten-year old kids are also quite fond of the use of multiple exclamation points, and while part of me is happy to see any mark of punctuation at the end of their sentences, I tell my students that if they leave my classroom having learned to hate the multiple exclamation point as much as me, I will have done my job.
What frightens me the most, however, is the use of a space followed by a exclamation point at the end of the sentence, like the one I saw at the gym last week:
Congratulations, Jim. We think you look great, too !
See the space between the word "too" and the exclamation point? It’s as if the writer believes the exclamation point is too good to be attached to the sentence, and that by detaching it from the unworthy string of words with a space, it is both emphasized, glorified and sanitized in one simple keystroke.
Who does something like this?
Insane people.
That’s who.
Certifiable lunatics. Only the craziest of the crazy.
I’d warn the staff at the gym that a crazy person is on the loose, but what if the person who I am warning is the person responsible for the sentence?
I’m a father, now. I just can’t take that kind of chance anymore.
Despite my even greater hatred for the anonymous letter, an anonymous tip might be the only way to warn the staff that a potentially dangerous lunatic is amongst them.
I’ve had a few readers email me recently inquiring about news of my upcoming book, so I thought I’d offer an update: My third novel, Chicken Shack, which I finished in June of last year, has been slid onto the back burner in favor of my newest book. I was about halfway done with the new book, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, when my agent decided to bring the partial manuscript with her to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. She loved what little she had read prior to the trip and wanted to share it with scouts and editors. Thanks to this excellent decision by Taryn, the book gained a great deal of buzz at the fair, even garnering a mention in Publisher’s Weekly.
Since the fair, we have sold the rights to the book in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil and Belgium, which forced me to bear down and finish the manuscript on a timely basis, which I did last month. A completed manuscript is now in the hands of US and foreign editors for their consideration, and I am now in phone-watching mode, waiting for Taryn to call with more good news.
Though I’m still anxious for Chicken Shack to find its way onto bookshelves soon (it’s odd to be sitting on a completed novel and not doing anything with it), the response to the new book has been extraordinary, making it well worth the wait.
In the meantime, I am currently trying to settle on a new book. I started one, which I like a lot, but I’ve been told (and grudgingly agree) that it wouldn’t make for a good follow-up to Memoirs.
So I tabled that idea and started three other books, including a sequel to Memoirs, in the hopes that one of the stories would take off and assert itself as my next book.
Unfortunately, all three have been chugging along quite well, making the decision on which to write next a difficult one.
And no writer should ever attempt to write three books at the same time. I feel a bit like a philanderer, working on all three at the same time rather than applying all my time and energy to just one. I have always preferred monogamy in all aspects of my life, so this indecision is not sitting well with me.
I have no date on when Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend will be released, but as soon as I know, you will be the first to know.
Thanks as always for your continued interest.
I don’t mind endings that make you wonder what might happen to a character had another scene been written or filmed. Both Something Missing and Unexpectedly, Milo end with the protagonist’s future in doubt. But at least you know that both protagonists will have a future.
What I despise are endings in which the existence of the protagonist in a subsequent scene is in doubt.
This is why the last episode of The Sopranos annoyed me.
Either kill Tony or don’t. Don’t avoid taking a position on the matter by creating some multi-layered scene that might be interpreted as Tony’s eminent death but might not.
This was a mobster show. Whack the guy or don’t.
This is why I didn’t like the ending to The Wrestler.
Yes, it’s very likely that the viewer is meant to assume that Randy dies at the end of the film, but again, his fate is ultimately left to interpretation.
Does he suffer another heart attack as he dives off the top ropes?
Possibly. Probably.
But aren’t there medical personnel on hand?
Didn’t he survive his first heart attack?
Kill him or don’t.
Ambiguity in the possible death of a character is an act of cowardice on the writer’s part.
The original, 1963 version of Clifford the Big Red Dog is written like the first draft to one of my novels.
The plot does not begin until two–thirds of the way through the book.
On page 23 of 27, author Norman Bridwell writes:
One day I gave Clifford a bath.
Thus begins the four brief pages of plot that ultimately end the story.
Clifford is brought to a dog show and wins second prize, and Emily Elizabeth declares her love for her second-place mutt, regardless of his eccentricities.
That’s it. The whole plot. In four pages.
Everything prior to page 23 serves merely as character development.
Clifford plays hide-and-seek. Clifford is difficult to feed. Clifford chases off burglars.
Random anecdote after random anecdote about Clifford’s unique characteristics.
No plot whatsoever.
While my daughter has yet to complain about this obvious flaw in the story, I expect to hear about it any day now. She has nearly memorized the book, and thus her ability to analyze its narrative structure is probably only days away.
Sadly, while the ratio of character development to plot in my first drafts might be slightly better than Bridwell’s, it’s not far off.
Of course, that’s what I get for writing books without any plot in mind.
Hooray for my agent, Taryn, and her ability to fix my mess.
I was recently asked by an editor to describe my strengths as a writer, and after some fumbling about, I had to admit that I did not know. It’s a question that I’ve asked myself over the years, since so much of my success seems accidental.
I do not know the plot of any of my stories before I begin writing. Instead I choose a character and a place to begin and start tapping keys. While a story eventually emerges, it’s hard for me to take any credit since so many parts of my stories reveal themselves to me through the process of writing.
My books are said to be funny, but I never make any overt attempts at humor. In fact, when readers first told me that Something Missing was funny, I thought that they weren't reading carefully enough.
Even the occasionally clever turn-of-phrase is often stumbled upon as my finger connect with keys.
As a result, I’ve often wondered about what allows me to be successful as an author. Is it simply persistence and blind luck, or is there something specific that I do that makes my stories successful.
Then I saw a quote last week by author Ethan Canin that summed up what I think I do best.
Canin said:
Don't write about a character. Become that character, and then write your story.
This is what I do well. This is how I write.
Rather than envisioning a story, complete with characters, setting, conflict and themes, I simply imagine a character. I enter that character’s mind. I become that character, and then I begin writing.
As I wrote one of the final and most pivotal scenes of Something Missing, in which Martin climbs a set of stairs, prepared to meet his fate, I was inside Martin’s head, climbing those stairs with him, unsure of how the encounter would end. As the events unfolded for Martin, they unfolded for me as well, unexpected and surprising, because in that moment, I was Martin.
As I wrote the opening chapter to Unexpectedly, Milo and the word conflagration popped into Milo’s head, it popped into mine as well, without a hint of forethought or planning. Milo’s compulsions, a critical aspect of the book, came as a surprise for me, and they were delivered to me in the same way that Milo experiences his compulsions, suddenly and unexpectedly, because in that moment, I was Milo.
That is what I do well, and that, I believe, is why my writing career has taken off. For reasons that I cannot explain, I can occupy the mind of my characters with surprising effectiveness.
I am not the most talented writer. I have many weaknesses, some of which my agent and editor effectively conceal from the general public, and some that still find their way through into my stories. I am not the finest wordsmith, nor is my prose terribly sparkling.
But I can become the character, and then I can write his story.
That is what I do best.
I was on an escalator in the MOMA, and I heard a mother ask her son, “What was your favorite exhibit?” The boy hemmed and hawed and ultimately failed to answer the question.
I wanted to explain to the mother that a better question would have been, “What exhibit did you hate the most?”
This would have most certainly generated a response.
A fundamental truth about human beings, and especially about kids, is that they are more likely to remember the things that they despise rather than the things that they love. I can’t remember a single gift that my grandparents ever gave me save the socks and underwear that I received on Christmas.
It’s just more fun to complain.
And while the mom on the escalator might have preferred to know that her son loved the Mattisse exhibit the most rather than listening to him gripe about the creepy photography, getting him to gripe and complain about the worst exhibit would have been a more effective way of getting him to talk about his visit, and ultimately, he might have gotten around to talking about his favorite as well.
The same holds true in writing.
One of the most common essay topics in the history of mediocre writing instruction asks students to write about their favorite moment from summer vacation.
I find that I get a much more enthusiastic and interesting response if I give the kids the choice to write about their most miserable moment of summer vacation instead. More than half of the class typically chooses this version of the topic, and the responses are often humorous, detailed and utterly engrossing. Most important, the kids appreciate the choice and are more engaged.
Everyone is a critic, so why not embrace this tendency and get kids excited about writing.
It’s why kids took the time to write hate mail to author Neil deGrasse Tyson regarding his mention of Pluto’s recent loss of planetary stature in his book.
People write most enthusiastically when they are angry.
You’ve probably noticed this about me from time to time.
What is the point of the goddamn Caps Lock button? And why must it be as almost as large as the Shift key. And why did the morons who designed this keyboard put the damn button beside the letter A, making it a button that I am constantly striking by mistake. Who the hell uses Caps Lock?
Why is it so big?
Why isn't the button written in caps?
Why not put it beside the letter Z?
Or somewhere above the row of numbers?
And why not shrink the thing to a reasonable size?
If I had my way, I’d force the designer of my keyboard to swallow this dreadful key and laugh as it lodges somewhere in the idiot’s throat.
How’s that for a design standard? If you can’t swallow the key without choking, it’s too big.
I’m upset. Perhaps I’m overreacting a bit.
A month after my first novel, SOMETHING MISSING, hit the store shelves, I began receiving the occasional but persistent email from readers asking and oftentimes accusing me of having made product placement deals during the writing of my book. It would seem that my frequent use of specific brand names in the book had struck a nerve and caused them to wonder why an author would choose to be so specific. Clearly, they had not read anything by Stieg Larsson.
I answered those emails with the assurance that my attention to detail and use of brand names was only an attempt to paint the clearest picture possible in my reader’s mind. But I also told readers that if Subaru had wanted to pay me for my mention of my protagonist’s Outback, I would not have complained.
A year later, at my first author talk for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, a reader asked if I had ever considered contacting Smucker’s and working out an endorsement deal with them. The protagonist of that book, Milo, is saddled with the compulsive need to open jars of Smucker’s grape jelly, and so this particular brand of jelly is featured prominently in the book.
Again, I told the reader that the use of the brand name was not intended to garner any corporate attention or an advertising windfall, though I also admitted that it would have been a great idea had I thought of it soon enough.
The Wall Street Journal created quite a kerfuffle with a piece suggesting that it won’t be long before ads find their way into e-books.
With e-reader prices dropping like a stone and major tech players jumping into the book retail business, what room is left for publishers’ profits? The surprising answer: ads. They’re coming soon to a book near you.
I'm still reading books the old fashioned way, so I can't say for sure how I feel about the possibility of ads on an e-reader, but I can assure you that I would hate to see them on the pages of a pulp-and-ink book.
However, product placement might be a different story.
While I can’t imagine striking deals with companies before or during the writing of a book, I find myself wondering what would be wrong with my agent contacting companies like Subaru or Smuckers after the fact and attempting to make a deal?
If UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO is made into a film (it's currently optioned for film at this time), the producers will undoubtedly attempt to do the same, and even change the brand of jelly if necessary in order to make a profit.
Why shouldn’t authors also cash in when they can?
As I think about this idea, I find myself wondering if deals could also be struck during the writing of a book as well?
Consider this:
I am writing UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO. I decide that one of Milo’s compulsions will be the need to open jars of jelly in order to release the pressurized seals on the lid. I grew up eating Smucker's grape jelly, so this is the brand that I am inclined to use, but I contact my agent and inform her that jelly will be playing an important role in my next book, appearing multiple times and always in a favorable light. “I’m inclined to use Smuckers,” I tell her, “but the actual brand name is unimportant, so if you can make a product placement deal with a jelly company, go for it.”
Is there a problem with this?
Naturally, there would be a concern that an author might write a book with the sole purpose of product placement, or that the proliferation of product placement might somehow erode the creative process and bastardize stories, but wouldn’t those books stick out like sore thumbs?
Wouldn’t these authors be spurned as sell-outs?
Wouldn’t these stories ultimately be ignored?
Companies investing in literary product placement would want these books to garner favorable reviews and sell well, and as such, the use of product placement would need to be subtle and appear as a natural part of the story anyway. Over-the-top, ham-handed product placement would do these companies no good.
A brand of jelly was predestined to appear in UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, and if choice of brand name is arbitrary, why not make some money in the process?
I’m not entirely sold on the idea yet, but as a writer who frequently mentions brand names as a means of being specific, the idea of product placement and the profits that it might garner has a certain appeal to me.
Stieg Larsson’s books could have brought in a fortune on product placement deals.
Another fortune, that is.
Stephen King, in ON WRITING, writes:
If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second to least of your concerns. The least of all: polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway.
Sometimes a book can speak directly to your heart.
Here’s how crazy my writing process can be: I open the next chapter of my manuscript in a restaurant. Protagonist, father and son sitting at a table, waiting for their pancakes.
Why are we here? I ask myself.
I honestly don’t know.
Father and son begin a conversation. Protagonist listens.
Still not sure why we’re here. Can’t just be here for this conversation. This could have happened anywhere. It’s not even that interesting.
Waitress arrives with food. Maybe this is it. Nope, she’s not important. Darn. I was thinking that maybe we are here for her. But no.
Let me look around this restaurant a little. Take a full, 360 degree peek.
Ah ha! There he is! Sitting at the table across the room. I don’t know who that is, but let’s go over and find out. This is why we are here. This is why I started this chapter in this restaurant.
This is precisely the dialogue that took place in my head as I wrote the first 500 words of the chapter. In my mind’s eye, I scanned the dining room, saw the boy on the other side of the restaurant, sitting next to the red-haired girl, and instantly, I understood why I had started the next chapter here.
We were here for this boy. He is the important part of this chapter. About five hundred words later, I found out why.
Is that crazy or what?
There are many days when I feel more like a chronicler of some alternate reality rather than a novelist in charge of my fictional world.
One of the joyous aspects of becoming a published author has been watching people in my life take a crack at writing as well. If that idiot can do it, maybe I can do it.
I agree.
Today was an especially busy day in this regard.
In the span of three hours, I met with a friend about a novel that she is writing, spoke over the phone to a friend about the YA novel that he is now revising, and reviewed a possible Op-Ed piece for another friend via email.
Quite a bit of writing suddenly going on around me.
In discussing my friend’s novel, she explained to me that one of her struggles has been with deciding upon a theme of her book. She has several excellent, insightful ideas in this regard, and she’s not sure in which direction to take her story. Each of her choices are broad, complex and worthy of a novel, but in terms of making a decision, I was little help.
I was forced to explain to her that I am a simpleton when it comes to these things as literary as theme.
Do each of my novels have a theme or themes? Of course.
But did I have any idea what those themes were as I began writing?
No way. I was clueless.
I am simply a slave to story. My focus is upon character and action. Nothing more. So far, it has seemed to work out well.
SOMETHING MISSING is the story of Martin Railsback. When I wrote the book, I had no thought about what overarching themes my novel might contain. I simply followed Martin through the course of a few weeks, documenting his actions and recording his words and his thoughts. I didn’t even know that Martin was obsessive-compulsive until other people began reading the manuscript and commenting on his condition. I just thought he was just being Martin. Any theme that ultimately arose in the book was simply a function of the character and his story, and it had nothing to do with any predetermined plan on my part. I take no credit.
UNEPXECTEDLY, MILO is the story of Milo Slade. When I began the book, I thought that I was writing a novel about the struggles of separation and divorce, but once again, I was wrong. I was writing about Milo Slade. Nothing more. And his story veered off in a decidedly different direction than what I had originally envisioned. The themes that ultimately arose from his story were far more complex and satisfying than what I had originally considered, and once again, they were unintended and unplanned.
When I began my still unpublished novel CHICKEN SHACK, I wanted to write a book about independence, inner strength, and the ability to survive and thrive despite the abandonment of family and friends. Then my wife and agent read the first three chapters of the manuscript and both commented on how much they liked the fact that I was writing about the importance of family, and specifically about the relationship between brothers. I thought that they were both crazy. My protagonist, Wyatt Salem, and his brother, Jeremy, could not be any more different, and reconciliation between the two of them seemed impossible. But by the time I finished writing Wyatt’s story, I had to admit that Elysha and Taryn had been correct. It was a story about family, and specifically, a story about brothers. And oddly enough, they knew it before me.
I explained to my friend that the last thing I think about when I am writing is theme and suggested that she do the same. My job is to focus all of my attention on the characters and simply watch as their story unfolds, attempting to document as much of it as possible, as accurately as possible. In describing this process, I explained the origins of the most recent chapter of my current manuscript, one that she particularly enjoyed. My thought process went something like this:
I need a bully in this story. Yeah. A bully. Someone to be mean to Max. And I think I’ll have that confrontation take place in a bathroom. Yeah. A bully in a bathroom. Let’s see what happens.
That was it. My fingers began striking keys and I was off. A few thousand words later, the chapter was done. Character, action, dialogue, done.
I know. I sound like an idiot. But it’s how I work.
And while I’m beginning see a possible theme emerge in this new book, I’ve only written about ten thousand words so far. There’s no telling what might happen next. To assume anything at this point would be foolish.
So I’ll do what I have done for each of the previous books. I’ll be a slave to the story, worrying about nothing else but my characters and the things that they say and think and do. When the manuscript is finished, I will read it, and with luck, certain themes will become evident to me. As I revise, I’ll look to highlight and strengthen these emerging themes, but their origins will be entirely organic, born not from me but from the story.
Story dictates theme, at least for me. Theme never dictates story.
I think that when theme dictates story, the author often finds himself with a club in his hand, battering the head of the reader with his own thoughts and ideas rather than spinning out the story that he was supposed to write in the first place.
Either that or I’m just not clever enough to start with a theme.
When I start to think that writing is hard and writing novels is even harder, I will watch this video and remind myself about how lucky I am.
Some people do so much with so little.
It recently occurred to me that my wife’s lack of physical descriptors would make it hard for me to describe her in a book. “How would you describe me?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Dark hair. Great figure. Probably wearing sunglasses. That’s about all I got.”
She was not amused. “Oh yeah. Then how would you describe yourself?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Scars across the chin and forehead. Missing lower front tooth. Hairy arms and legs. Nineteen inch neck. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Permanently swollen right pinkie. Six inch scar across the right knee. Four inch scar across the right forearm.”
She conceded that perhaps some people are more easily described than others.
I am often asked where I get the inspiration and ideas for my stories, especially considering that I am fortunate enough to have so many ideas from which to choose. This is the kind of question that is impossible to answer with a single sentence, because I never know when I might stumble upon an idea that could make a great book. I tend to be the kind of person who asks a lot of “What if?” questions, and through these quandaries, my ideas are born.
But since that is a relatively meaningless answer, I thought I’d give you some specific examples of how some of my stories were born.
SOMETHING MISSING: Over dinner several years ago, a friend bemoaned the loss of one of her earrings. She opened her jewelry box and could only find one of the pair. I said, “What if someone broke into your house and stole your earring but left the other one behind so you wouldn’t suspect theft?” As I gnawed on a dinner roll, I found myself trying to imagine the kind of person who would break into every home in America and steal just one earring from every woman’s jewelry box.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, that was the moment that Martin Railsback and his story were born.
UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO: For a long time, I wanted to be a film director. At one point I had the idea for a movie in which three less-than-savory characters steal a video camera from a family on vacation in New York City. After watching the videotapes in the privacy of their cockroach-infested apartment, the trio realizes that the memories captured on the videotape mean more to the family than they could have ever imagined, and they decide to return the tapes to their owners. They watch the footage in order to glean clues as to the owner’s identity, and in doing so, they become uncommonly attached to the family as a result. This idea served as the basis for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO.
However, I also dipped into my own life for major pieces of the plot, including:
The separation and divorce from my first wife in 2003.
The two months spent in fourth grade helping a friend plan his escape to an uncle’s house in the Midwest. Chris wanted to run away from home, something he had done before, and though he never made the journey that we planned in the back of the classroom, I often wondered what might have happened if Chris had run away from home and had disappeared in the process. How would I have felt knowing that I had a hand in my friend’s disappearance, and how might it have impacted the rest of my life?
This became a major plot point in the story.
CHICKEN SHACK (an unpublished manuscript): There was once a potato chip factory in my hometown of Blackstone, Massachusetts that produced a brand of potato chips called Blackstone Potato Chips. The factory closed years ago, and on a trip back to Blackstone, I noted that the factory was now a funeral home. “ Wouldn't it be great if they still sold potato chips and handled dead people at the same time?” I said to my wife as we drove by. A moment later, the idea of a funeral home that also sells fried chicken landed in my mind and CHICKEN SHACK was born.
Once again, I dipped into my own personal life for other key elements to the story, including:
The disappearance of my brother, Jeremy, who I had not seen for more than five years after my mother died.
A public and, in the words of many attorneys, unprecedented attack on my character and reputation by an anonymous source several years ago.
My occasional forays into amusing and ultimately meaningless forms of vigilante justice, mostly as a teenager but occasionally as an adult.
MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND: The manuscript that I am currently working on (please know that until a book is published, these are all working titles, CHICKEN SHACK included) began with a simple conversation with my student-teacher about an imaginary friend that I had as a child. In the span of about four sentences, the idea for Budo and his story was born. Ultimately, I may bring in elements from my own life into the story, or I may weave in an additional idea or two from my Ideas for Stories list, but being so early in the process (less than 5,000 words so far), that conversation on the playground of my school has been enough to get me going.
BETTY BOOP: The idea for this manuscript, which I am tinkering with on the side, was born after reading about a 2009 law outlawing prostitution in the state of Rhode Island. Prostitution was actually legal in Rhode Island between 1980 and 2009 because there was no specific statute to define the act and outlaw it, although associated activities, such as street solicitation, running a brothel, and pimping, were still illegal. With the institution of the 2009 law, I found myself wondering what a prostitute in Rhode Island might do now that his or her previously legal means of earning a living were suddenly forbidden. I came up with an solution for my theoretical prostitute, and that is the basis for this book.
In the span of the last two days, I complete revisions on my manuscript (CHICKEN SHACK), sent it off to my agent and began a new book.
Actually, I’ve started writing two new novels since finishing the initial draft of CHICKEN SHACK. I’m thinking of one of them (BUDO) as my primary book (at least 2,000 words a day with a goal of being finished by September) and the other (BETTY BOOP) as something that I will tinker with when I need a break from the first.
I’m fortunate, so my agent says, in that I have many, many ideas for books. Apparently there are quite a few outstanding writers in the world who have great difficulty coming up with an idea for their next novel. While this may someday be the case for me, I currently have about ten ideas that I’m excited about writing, so it should be a while before I’m stuck without an idea.
I was recently asked how the process of choosing the next idea happens and how much of a role my agent or editors plays in the process, so I thought that I’d address the question here, since I’m in that between-books moment right now.
About a month ago, as I was wrapping up work on CHICKEN SHACK and beginning to think about my next book, I sent a list of six ideas for my next novel to my agent. These ideas amounted to no more than a few sentences of description on what I thought the plot of the novel might be, though this is always subject to change since I have no idea where a book is going or how it will end until I actually get there. For example, the description of SOMETHING MISSING might have read:
A thief steals things from homes that go unnoticed, and as he continues to steal from the same people over and over again, he becomes uncommonly attached to his victims.
As you can see, this description leaves out a great deal, but most of the meat of a story comes from the actual writing. I had no idea that Martin would be obsessive-compulsive or socially awkward or develop a love interest until I started writing. These things only emerged once I started pounding on the keyboard. With all of my books and even my short stories, a description like the one above is all I ever have or need before I start working.
I wrote six descriptions similar to this one and sent them off to Taryn. A day or two later, she sent back the two ideas that she liked the best. One was a novel very similar to the style of my previous work, featuring a quirky, misunderstood protagonist who misunderstands the world around him. Since I have been successful with this type of story before, Taryn felt that this idea had a lot of potential.
The second was quite different from my previous work, a more fantastical story written in the first person that both intrigued and scared the hell out of me. Taryn liked this idea a lot because it was the kind of book that would appeal to a wide audience, including the young adult market. Adult-YA crossover books have been very successful as of late, and Taryn saw great potential in this book if it was written with both markets in mind.
My wife also read my list and chose the same two ideas as Taryn, so I took this as a good sign and assumed I had my winners. I’ve since begun work on the second idea as I wait for feedback from Taryn on the revisions to CHICKEN SHACK, and though the first person narration is proving to be as challenging as I had expected, the story seems to be pouring out of me rather easily.
I also starting tinkering with the least popular idea on my list, a book with a female protagonist who, in the estimation of most, would be difficult, if not impossible, to make likable. Being a contrarian, I was probably drawn to this idea simply because so many people (and especially women) told me that it would not work. I’ve written two chapters of this book so far, about 4,000 words in all, and I allowed Elysha and one other female friend read the chapters in order to get their initial reactions.
Both women grudgingly admitted that they liked the character and the story a lot.
So I’m spending at least six hours a day this summer working on BUDO unless CHICKEN SHACK comes back from Taryn with a request for further revision. If I write 2,000 words a day, not an unrealistic goal and one I expect to surpass on many days, I should have the book done by the end of September. Since my first three books each took about a year to write, this would be quick by my standards, but I’m never really had the opportunity to write fulltime before.
My editor will not enter this process until it’s time to for publisher to make an offer on the manuscript. While I know some writers and editors work closely on choosing the topic for the next book and developing the story, these tend to be authors with multi-book contracts, so the editor has a significant investment in what the author produces next. Because I am still new to the game and working on a book-to-book basis, my editor works hard on the most recent manuscript once my publisher and I agree to terms, but in regards to the book I’m currently working on, she may ask me about the book out of curiosity but she doesn’t play any role in its actual creation.
That role currently belongs to Taryn and my small but important army of readers, about half a dozen in all, who will read my latest manuscript, chapter by chapter, and offer input. These people are more important than Taryn or my editor could ever be. They provide me with the immediate feedback that I crave and the commentary which helps to guide the narrative.
I owe my initial readers a great deal.
And so that is the process, at least so far. With luck, Taryn will fall in love with the latest draft of CHICKEN SHACK, and once we decide on an actual title for the book, she will send it off to my editor at Doubleday Broadway, who will, with some luck, also fall in love with the manuscript and make me an offer I can’t resist. And sometime in September, I will find myself needing to choose another idea again, and the process will start all over, most likely with a few new ideas added to the mix.
Too many ideas and not enough time to write them all is a problem, but it’s not a terrible problem to have.
Amongst my thousands of other projects, I’ve been working on a book of inappropriate nursery rhymes, based upon this little ditty that I came up with a couple years ago.
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go…
Doodie
What do you think?
Can you imagine it in picture book form, with the page break falling before the last line? With the right illustrator, I think it could be gold!
I’ve got others, but I’m not ready to publish the whole thing online yet.
The Facts of Life was a sitcom about four girls and their scraggly old headmistress, Mrs. Garrett. It was a painfully classic 80’s television programs that proselytized and preached lessons of morality to viewers each week. It’s also one of Elysha’s favorite childhood shows, so I hear about it from time to time.
We were chatting about the show the other day and it occurred to me how offensively stereotypical and stupid the names of the main characters were.
Blair Warner, the wealthy, snobbish socialite
Jo Polniaczek, the motorcycle-riding tomboy from Brooklyn
Tootie Ramsey, the African-American, roller skating gossip
Could these names be any more cliché, hackneyed and formulaic?
I have a hard time with names. I think that naming a character is an important part of the writing process, yet I often have a hard time doing so. Occasionally, a name will simply pop into my mind, ready-made and perfectly apropos, as did Martin’s name in SOMETHING MISSING. But more often than not, I find myself scanning baby-naming websites and running through the names of friends and former students in my head, hoping that I will stumble across the perfect one. This is how the protagonists of my second and third books, Milo and Wyatt, were named. In both cases I was scanning lists of names online when I came upon these two, and almost instantly I knew that they were perfect for the character in question.
Milo is a quirky, somewhat odd name that seemed to match my quirky and odd character quite well. It’s also the name of the protagonist in THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, one of my wife’s favorite books, so I liked the homage that I was paying with the name choice.
Wyatt is a vigilante, a man who seeks his own unique and amusing brand of justice. I wanted a name that was uncommon and no-nonsense, and Wyatt seemed to fit the bill. I also liked how the name harkens back to Wyatt Earp, the famous Old West lawman who also dealt in his own brand of justice.
Last names can be even trickier. I have no recollection of how Martin Railsback received his last name. Though it sounds a little silly, I think he was born with it. The character of Martin was so completely and thoroughly downloaded to my brain that he came to me fully-formed, first and last name included.
Milo Slade received his last name from a movie poster that I saw on a Metro North train as I pecked away on my keyboard. I liked the edginess and grit that a name like Slade possesses, and I specifically liked the way it’s juxtaposed to Milo’s first name and his overall character.
Milo is anything by edgy.
Wyatt’s last name changed several times during the writing of the book, and I finally settled on Salem because I thought it sounded right for the funeral home that his family owns.
Salem’s Funeral Home. It had a nice ring to it.
Elysha later pointed out that his last name also caused her to conjure images of the Salem Witch Trials and the ways in which Wyatt’s public persecution is similar to the persecution faced by the adolescent girls of Salem who were unjustly executed for witchcraft. While I love this connection, it was sadly not a conscious decision on my part.
Perhaps my unconscious was at work.
Then again, many of my naming decisions may have been made with the help of the unconscious parts of my mind.
Martin’s first name, it has been pointed out to me by many people (including my former therapist) is quite similar to my own, and Martin and I have a great deal in common (though I didn’t realize it while I was writing the book).
Milo’s name, like mine, also starts with an M, and the last three letters of Wyatt’s name happen to be the same last three letters in Matt as well.
Again, all unconscious decisions on my part but creepy nonetheless.
And naturally, my newest protagonist is named Betty Grape, a name that popped into my head as soon as I placed my hands on the keyboard. And like my own name, Betty’s name possesses a double T.
Weird.
But not as weird as naming your roller skating African American character Tootie.