Three important writing lessons, as described by my three-year old daughter

My daughter is only three years old, and yet I can already see the exacting eye of an editor in her. She cannot read yet, but as she watches television, she quickly and mercilessly identifies errors made by writers and producer and reacts accordingly.

Sometimes her critique comes in the form of words. More often her criticism takes the form of a waning level of interest in a television show or a refusal to watch at all. 

It’s been a fascinating and enlightening process to watch. Oddly enough, my three year old has been teaching me about my craft.

Three specific pieces of criticism have made an impression on me as an author. They are lessons that all authors should remember. 

1. Don’t overwrite. More importantly, don’t refuse editing. 

Yesterday Clara and my wife sat down to watch Mary Poppins for the first time. Clara has been watching some of the more famous musical numbers from the film on her mother’s iPad, but she had yet to see the complete film.

She still has yet to see the complete film.

While her interest admittedly waned throughout, her most telling comment came just over thirty minutes into the movie when she stood up from the couch and said, “Too long!”

She’s right. At 139 minutes, the film is far too long for most three-year old children, and it might be too long in general. As much as I loved Mary Poppins as a child, a two hour and nineteen minute children’s musical probably could have stood a little more time in the editing room.

Authors often have a great deal to say. We try to restrain ourselves as much as possible, but it often requires the expertise of an agent and an editor to bring our stories down to a length that will maintain a reader’s interest. It’s not an easy process. My agent has chopped whole chapters out of my book. Hours and hours of work and strings of carefully honed, treasured sentences lost forever.

But better to lose an entire chapter than to have a reader toss down the book and shout, “Too long!”

2. Conflict is King. Backstory and resolution are secondary.  

With almost any television show that Clara watches, she exhibits the same pattern of interest.  As the conflict in the story rises, she remains riveted to the program. But as soon as the resolution is evident, even if it has not yet happened, her interest immediately wanes. Sometimes she will walk right out of the room before the resolution even takes place. 

It’s a good lesson for authors to remember. It is the conflict that engages the reader. Backstory and resolution are necessary, but these elements should occur within the context of the conflict as often as possible and should probably occupy the fewest number of pages as possible. Keep the tension high throughout the story and keep the conflict ever-present in the readers’ minds and you will hold their interest throughout.

3. Keep your promises to the reader.

Clara does not appreciate when a television show goes off-book or changes genres midstream. Her favorite show at the moment is The Wonder Pets. It is a program about three pre-school class pets who moonlight as superheroes, saving baby animals around the world who are in trouble.

But occasionally the writers of The Wonder Pets decide to step outside this proven formula. In one episode, The Wonder Pets save an alien who is trying to return to his planet. In another, two of The Wonder Pets must save the third from peril. One episode is essentially a clip show in which the baby animals that they have already saved return to thank The Wonder Pets for their help. 

Clara hates these episodes. The alien episode scared the hell out of her. She fled the room saying, “Not this one! Not this one!” The other more experimental episodes never manage to keep her interest.

Clara is invested in The Wonder Pets because of the promise of baby animals being saved and returned to their parents by three characters who she adores. 

It’s a good lesson for authors who sometimes offer the reader one thing but then give them another. This can happen when authors fail to remain faithful to the genre in which they are writing, infusing their fantasy novel with a sudden splash of science fiction or bringing serious social commentary into what was supposed to be an escapist detective or romance story.

Authors make promises to readers and then must deliver on them because readers are not simply empty vessels awaiting for the author to impart whatever wisdom he or she deems worthy.  Readers are discerning customers who need to be able to trust an author before investing time and money into a book. There are many reasons that readers purchase books, but it is rarely because they think the author is a wonderful person and whatever he or she has to say will be worthy. Most often, they buy books because of the promise of the book. A promise of genre or character or plot or quality of the writing.

Authors must be sure to keep these promises or risk having their readers shout, “Not this one! Not this one!”

When you’re done pushing the baby out, I have a sentence to write, honey.

I sometimes read about authors who say they require a perfectly silent room maintained at precisely 68 degrees, with trash bags taped over the windows and a white-noise machine in the corner to write, and I think, ‘Who are these people, and do any of them have kids?’

This is a quote by Jennifer Weiner in a recent New York Times piece on authors and their use of Twitter. I liked it a lot and have often wondered the same thing.

For me, writing is messy process, accomplished within the spaces of my life.  I am often asked about when I write, and my answer is always the same:

Whenever I can.

Sometimes that’s four glorious hours on a Saturday afternoon, sitting in a bookstore or the library, completely undisturbed. That was supposed to happen yesterday, in fact, but life somehow got in the way.

Sometimes it’s the last fifteen minutes of my lunch break before my students storm the classroom.

Sometimes it’s between the hours of 4:30 AM and 6:00 AM, when everyone else in my house (including the dog) are still asleep.

Actually, it’s that time a lot.

But sometimes it’s the seven minutes of solitude that I have while my wife is giving our daughter a bath. “Seven minutes,” I tell myself. “Just write three good sentences.”

If you love to write, even seven minutes can be a blessing.

Should be a blessing.

I actually worked on my second novel, Unexpectedly, Milo, during the birth of my daughter (before everything went to hell and my wife ended up with a C-section). With a laptop on one side of the delivery room and my wife on the other, I rolled an office chair back and forth between the two as her contractions came and went.

When she was pushing, I was sitting by her side, holding her hand and encouraging her.

When she was resting, I was revising a section of the manuscript.

And my wife didn’t mind. She knew that the sale of that book meant that she could stay home with our baby for the first couple years of her life.

Smart woman.

So I write in the spaces of life. I grab moments whenever I can.

Too often I meet a would-be writers who tell me that they are waiting for a sabbatical from work, summer vacation, or the kids’ graduation before they begin writing.

I once met an eighty-six year old woman who told me she had an amazing story to tell that would make a great memoir, and someday she would write it.

“You’re eighty-six,” I said. “What are you waiting for? The clock is ticking, and it could stop at second.”

She didn’t appreciate the comment.

But I suspect that she won’t ever write her story (if she’s even still alive), nor will the people waiting for sabbaticals and vacations and for the kids to fly the coop. If you love to write, you need to write, and if you need to write, you will do it whenever and wherever you can.

Sure, it would be nice to have a soundproof room where my daughter’s inexplicable request that I teach her dolls to share goes unheard, but writing is messy.

At least for me it is. And I suspect for many other authors as well.

Damn. He read my mind perfectly.

I want this list, too, but I am too lazy to make it.

JK Rowling, author of the series of Harry Potter novels, recently revealed that she considered killing off Ron Weasley midway through the series.

"Funnily enough, I planned from the start that none of them would die. Then midway through, which I think is a reflection of the fact that I wasn't in a very happy place, I started thinking I might polish one of them off. Out of sheer spite.”

While I am glad that Ron survived, I’m happy to know that I’m not the only author who is occasionally motivated by spite.

This revelation has launched an interesting online debate about whether or not Rowling’s series would be better if Ron had died.

Jeff O’Neal at BookRiot argues that Rowling missed an opportunity to elevate her series in allowing Ron to live.

Characters that are at the center of readerly interest and value don’t always die in adult literature, but they always can. I’m not sure if this is the central thing that separates children’s literature from adult literature (or if there really is anything tangible at all), but it sure feels that way.

I’m not sure if I agree with O’Neal. While I am not surprised that Rowling’s three protagonists survived, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Harry died in the process of defeating Voldemort.

In fact, I thought he probably would.

O’Neal also requests a list that I would also very much like to see someday:

List I Want: Secondary Characters Who Die To Give A Story “Emotional Depth” Without Having To Kill The Main Characters. Such characters from here on out are to be known as “Fred Weasleys”.

The only character that I can think of to start this list comes from film:

Goose in the film Top Gun dies for reasons that could only be characterized as providing the story with emotional depth.

Anyone care to add to this rather pathetic attempt to launch this list?

Guest post: An essay on the power of getting to know an author personally

One of the unexpected joys of publishing a book is the connections that you make with readers around the country. 

A middle school student in a suburb of Chicago reads your first book, for example, and then writes an epilogue for the book as part of class assignment.

Then she sends you the epilogue, curious about what you think, and two years later, the two of you are still exchanging emails from time to time.

You’ve never met this person and probably never will, but you’ve found yourself a pen pal, and you are the better for it.

In this case the middle school student is now a high school freshman, and her name is Rachel.  Recently she wrote an essay for class about the power of getting to know an author personally.  She sent her essay to me, and with her permission, I have posted it here.

It served as a good reminder to me about the power of sending my stories into the world. 

_______________________________________ 

Authors Found Through E-Mail

Authors have always held a high place in my views. As someone who likes to write, authors have always seemed like magical beings who were able to create masterpieces. Being able to connect with an author was an opportunity for me to experience the power the story possesses. Personally, I get so affected by books and stories that sometimes their authors get lost. They don’t always get the credit they deserve for writing, because the story gets in the way a little. This is why I know that story can connect people. Having reached out to an author, he has become a real person in real life.

Realizing the power of story for me began with reading one book. I read Something Missing, by Matthew Dicks. This book was more than just a story. It was an experience. The characters came to life, and I was absorbed in the story. But then it ended. No closure, no complete resolution, just the end of the book came. I was devastated. I couldn’t let go of the story until it was done, and it wasn’t.

So when I was in 8^th grade, my teacher gave us the idea to write an epilogue to a book that we read. After thinking about what to write, I stuck with that idea and thought of a book. The first one to come to mind was Something Missing.

Since reading the book, I had thought of many different ways it could end. Many of them were similar, but with one or two minor differences or changes. I eventually ended up with what I thought was the best idea and started to write.

Since I knew Matthew had a blog, I decided to see if his e-mail was on it. I wanted to e-mail him to tell him about what I was writing. I found Matthew’s e-mail, and the very next day, I got an e-mail back. He liked that I was writing an epilogue, because his publisher had wanted him to write a sequel. He didn’t really want to, but was curious to see how others would see the story as it continued. But what surprised me the most was that he said he wanted to read my epilogue when I was finished writing it.

The fact that a published author was going to read my writing amazed me. I made sure that every word was just right and made sure that every detail or fact made sense. By the time I was finished, about eight people had read and revised it. I was absolutely sure that it was ready, and I sent my epilogue to Matthew. Not only was I proud of my writing, I was nervous to hear what he would say about it. I couldn’t wait to get a response.

A few days later, after constantly checking my e-mail, I got an e-mail back. This time, when I got the e-mail, I hesitated before opening it. I wasn’t sure if I should open it. The whole idea that I was e-mailing an author was something I couldn’t quite grasp at the moment. But I opened the e-mail. He liked my epilogue, and after that, we just kept e-mailing.

Now we still write to each other and talk about life and writing in general. He even said he might need my help with a character he is coming up with. He also keeps me up to date with his progress on his new books.

Not only was I able to communicate with an author, but I also got to connect to other people who read the book. Living through the same character creates a bond between people. Both people experienced the problems and conclusion of the character’s story, and it becomes common ground for communication.

Since my mom recommended Something Missing to me, it has become a common discussion point and debate. My aunt read the book too, so it’s something we all share and use that as a way to connect. When I received the first e-mail from Matthew, I called my aunt to tell her, since she loved Matthew’s books. My mom, aunt, and I talk about the e-mails along with the story. This has made the story so much more important and powerful for us.

The whole situation shows that story can connect people. This is why story is so powerful, because people can relate to each other over that story. For me, story has the power to connect people. If it wasn’t for story and books, I wouldn’t have contact with an author. I also wouldn’t be able to connect as easily with people who have read the story.

Story has so much more to offer us than just education or entertainment. Story can connect people who would have never met, or strengthen bonds between people who already know each other. Story is very important to me because it is so powerful. If story wasn’t powerful, with the ability to connect people, we wouldn’t have walls lined with books or feel the need to reach out to the story’s creator.

Thoughts from my first Moth GrandSLAM

On Monday night, I had the honor of telling a story in The Moth GrandSLAM XXII as a result of winning a StorySLAM competition months earlier. It was an amazing night for me. I did not win, but I managed to come in third, which made me fairly happy.

Honestly, my only goal was to successfully take the stage and not embarrass myself.  In that, I think I succeeded.

Here are a few of my thoughts and recollections:

1. The Moth judges always seem to get these things right. Erin Barker told the best story of the evening and was quite deserving of the victory. It was an honor to grace the stage with such a fine storyteller.

Being the only female storyteller of the evening, it was also quite amusing and apropos when the storytellers gathered on the stage at the end of the show and she told us to, “Suck it, boys.”

Can’t help but admire everything about her.

2. Nervousness is an odd duck. I was not nervous about telling my story until I arrived at the Highline Ballroom. But having been in the audience for a GrandSLAM before, I suddenly realized the caliber of storyteller who would be on display this evening, and the butterflies erupted.

One of my friends said, “It’s kind of amazing that you are telling a GrandSLAM story. Don’t you think?”

I did, and that was the source of the sudden anxiety. I had seen great storytellers on this stage before, and I realized that I would have to somehow uphold this tradition.

Thankfully, my nervousness disappeared once the first storyteller took the stage. Listening to someone tell a story reminded me that all I needed to do was tell my story. It wasn’t exactly rocket science after all.

My nervousness returned as I waited to be introduced from backstage, but as soon as I was standing before the microphone, the nervousness was gone again. I am hoping that if I am ever fortunate enough to tell another story at a Moth GrandSLAM, I will remain calm throughout the evening.

Sadly, two of my fellow storytellers and GrandSLAM veterans assured me that this would not be the case.

3. Driving into the city from the middle of Connecticut immediately after work to tell a story sucks. Driving home at midnight sucks even more.

I am extremely envious of these New York-based storytellers.

That said, I am also exceptionally fortunate to have friends who are willing to spend hours in the car and arrive home after 1:30 AM on a weeknight in order to support me. I couldn’t be more thankful.

4. My wife’s parents, uncle and cousin attended their first Moth event last night, and like all first-time attendees, they both loved it and couldn’t believe that they had not heard about The Moth until now.

When I try to tell people who are unfamiliar with The Moth what I was doing on Monday night, it can be difficult. I often rely on The Moth’s “True stories told live without notes” tagline, but until you’ve been to a Moth event or listened to the podcast regularly, you can’t really understand the magic of The Moth.

5. Many people ask me how I prepare for an event like this.  Here’s my process:

In order to prepare for telling the story, I never actually speak the story in its entirety. I fear that if I were to practice the story verbatim, it would begin to sound too rehearsed.

Therefore my goal is to tell the story in its entirety for the first time while I am onstage. Instead of practicing the full story, I memorize my opening and closing paragraphs and the transitions that will carry me through the middle of the story, which is also the bulk of my story.

As a result, my stories are never delivered as I initially write them. This is fine. I am often adding, deleting and adjusting as I speak based upon the audience’s reaction and new thoughts that spring to mind while I am onstage.

But the drawback to this method is that it prevents me from accurately timing my story. Since I have a 5-6 minute time limit to tell my story, not knowing how long the story is going to be is unnecessarily stressful.

Last night I received a guitar strum at the five minute mark, warning me that I had a minute left, and I immediately began dumping details in order to reach the end. As a result, I may have to rethink my means of preparation in the future.

6. Elysha and I had the honor of sitting with storyteller Joshua Blau, who is also a CPA and father of five (including triplets). Josh was uncommonly generous with his time and advice. He is a veteran of the StorySLAM circuit, a former GrandSLAM storyteller, and one of his stories was featured on last week’s Moth podcast. It was great to sit and talk with such an all-around nice guy.

It was also a relief to see him fielding calls from his kids and struggling with nerves prior to taking the stage. He made me feel slightly more normal and a little less amateurish.

Josh also informed me that recordings of all Moth stories are available for purchase. I’m thrilled.

Years from now, I can play these recordings for Clara and revel in her disinterested and general apathy over her father’s glory days.

7.  The two people who host the show, Dan Kennedy and Jenifer Hixon, are remarkable people.

Dan remembered me from my StorySLAM performance months ago and was exceptionally kind with his remarks about me. He was also able to quote a line from my story verbatim the next day, which I found simultaneously stunning and incredibly humbling. The man is a true professional.

Jenifer was equally kind, taking an hour from her Saturday on the Jersey shore with her family to help me choose the right story for the GrandSLAM.  Jenifer produces the show, but more importantly, she makes the storytellers feel like welcomed members of the family. Seeing her smile at me as I stepped onstage was all I needed in order to feel confident about my performance.

The Moth is fortunate beyond measure to have these two people doing such good work for them.

8.  The Highline Ballroom is great, but it was freakin’ cold last night.

Everything I wrote before the age of 30 was terrible

Ira is right.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Writers can teach each other a lot, but not this.

As an author, I’m always happy to answer the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” I particularly like this question when it’s asked at one of my author appearances.

My ideas tend to come from a wide variety of sources, so this question often opens to the door to a great deal of anecdotal material that I can use to entertain an audience.

Oftentimes, a novel is a combination of ideas. The innocent comment of a friend, an incident in the news, a piece of personal history, and an unanswered question all woven together to form a story.

But when aspiring writers ask me where I get the ideas for my novels in hopes of finding ideas of their own, I can’t help but wonder:

Has any writer in ever asked this question of another writer, listened to the answer and thought, “Oh! That’s where ideas come from! Now I know exactly where to look!”

Of all the things that writers can teach each another, it seems to me that finding the ideas for stories is not one of them.

I can suggest reading a lot. Reading widely. Listening carefully. Keeping your eyes and mind open. Writing down anything interesting that you hear. Asking lots of questions. Talking to people.

But as for where ideas are actually found? The source for every novel, short story, magazine piece, blog post, poem, and essay is different. Each is unique. Never again repeatable.

I couldn't begin to imagine teaching someone where my ideas originate.

But then again, I am a writer who is fortunate enough to have no problem generating story ideas, so perhaps I am wrong. Maybe I am unable to see the forest through my own trees.

Maybe there is a good answer to that question, and I haven't found it yet.

Thoughts?

Amorphous, blabbering blobs do not sell books: Learning to write physical description

When I wrote my first novel, Something Missing, I was lost when it came to the physical description of characters, and the characterization of many secondary characters was entirely non-existent. No one who read my original manuscript could tell how old my protagonist, Martin, was, or anything else about him in terms of appearance. I’d venture to say that not a single word of physical description appeared anywhere in the first drafts of the book.

There were a couple reasons for this.

First, I possessed a genuine disinterest in physical description which had led to an inability to write it. When reading, I tend to scan the passages of  description, looking for where the action and dialogue pick back up. I am rarely concerned with how a character looks or even what the setting might be, and so I reflected this disinterest in my own writing.

I am also a strong auditory learner with very little visual memory. I can spend the entire day with my wife and kids and not be able to tell you what they are wearing once they have left my sight.

I often can’t tell you what I’m wearing unless I look down.

Conversely, I can remember everything that was said to me during a day, oftentimes verbatim, and I can recall conversations from weeks, months and ever years earlier with great accuracy. It sounds like a wonderful talent to possess, but those who know me best will tell you that it doesn’t make the nicest person at times.

Sometimes it’s just better to forget what someone has said and move on.

My agent helped me a great deal during the revision process of Something Missing in terms of physical description, and since then, I've gotten much better at it.

I am more aware of it and therefore better at writing it.

A couple of strategies have also helped in this regard.

Once I knew about my problem, I started keeping lists of physical descriptors that I could use later on. I would pick up ideas from books that I was reading and by scanning faces in restaurants and identifying previously unnoticed personal attributes. I would literally write things like, "Oh, there’s more than one kind of eyebrow" and "Women wear lots of different stuff in their hair!"  Eventually I started to find it easier to include these descriptors in my fiction.

I've also started searching for photographs online that best represented certain characters in my fiction order to help facilitate the process of describing their physical characteristics.

My current manuscript, for example, has a 16-year old punk girl in it, so I searched online for photos of punk teenagers, found one who looked about right, and saved it to my computer. I referenced this photograph a great deal at the onset of the book and now I have the image of this character firmly set in my mind.

There is also a flashback scene in my manuscript from the 1980's. Unaware of female fashion at the time, I used Twitter to ask what punk girls from the 1980's looked like and received a bunch of responses that I am now incorporating into the book.

Slowly but surely, I have overcome this obstacle.

As my books were later optioned for television and film, I was asked by producers, screenwriters and show runners who I envisioned playing Martin or Milo or some of the other characters from my novels, and for a long, long time I was unable to answer what should have been a simple question.

But since I had no real idea what my characters looked like, I was unable to envision an actor or actress to play them.

One producer asked, “I thought novelists envisioned an actor for each part in  their books?”

I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that all I ever envisioned was an amorphous, talking blob of humanity.

I’m better now, both because I have overcome many of the barriers to physical description, and because I am better prepared for these kinds of questions.

But the biggest lesson I learned through this process has been this:

Just because something isn’t important to the writer doesn’t mean it isn’t important to the reader. Writing is a two-way process. You write the story as you see and hear it, but then you must revise the story for how the reader will see and hear it.

Forgetting to do so, or worse, refusing to do so, will leave your reader annoyed and lost.

If you are lucky enough to find a reader for your single-minded, inflexible, presumably precious narrative.

Stop counting words

I would like to offer an unsolicited, probably unwanted piece of advice to many of the writers who I meet in real life and especially on Twitter: Stop counting words.

Stop setting word count goals.

Pay no attention to those numbers at the bottom of your screen.

Please don’t get me wrong. There is no one in the world who believes in goal setting more than I do.

I post my New Year’s resolutions on this blog for all to see.

I work as a life coach to help others set and achieve goals for themselves.

The very first assignment that my students are given each school year is to establish a list of short, intermediate and long term goals.

I am writing a memoir that focuses specifically on goal attainment.

Goals are my thing. I set realistic goals and impossible goals. I modify, expand, and clarify them constantly. Most of my day is spent in the attempt to achieve a goal.

That said, the fixation of many writers on a daily, hourly, or even minute-by-minute word count (which I see on Twitter all the time) seems highly counterproductive and leads me to ask:

Okay, you wrote 500 words in the last 30 minutes.

How many of those words are good?

How many of those sentences were good?

Why did you stop writing to post the result online?

Why were you even watching the clock or the word count while you were writing?

Wouldn’t it be better to simple get lost in the story and forget about words and clocks?

Why would you ever want to leave your story to post a word count on Twitter?

Will that somehow make it a better story?

Do you think Dickens or Twain or Austin were counting words?

Most important of all, is word counting making you a better writer?

I don’t think it is.

What I would like to propose instead is this:

Sit down and write for as much time as you have. Write from the very first second until the very last second. Use all of that time to work on your manuscript. Instead of focusing on the number of words and the time it takes to write them, just focus on the story. The quality of the sentences. The development of plot and character.

No one cares how long it took Twain to write Huckleberry Finn or Shakespeare to write Hamlet or Toni Morrison to write Beloved.

Write a great book in the time it takes to write a great book, whether that be one year, five years or ten years.

Stop looking at those numbers on the bottom of your screen. Cover them with tape if necessary.

Pay more attention to the words above.

Pay all your attention to the words above.

My Moth story (or as close an approximation of the story as I can muster)

Hopefully the story that I told at the recent Moth StorySlam will one day be broadcast as one of their weekly podcasts, but many, many  outstanding stories are told at Moth events every month around the country (including the StorySlam that I won), so it’s certainly not guaranteed. 

However, I’ve had many requests for me to share the story here, so I thought I’d at least share the materials that I used to prepare to tell the story that night. 

In order to get ready, I first wrote down what I would like to say, as quickly and as naturally as possible, with as little editing as possible.  It took less than half an hour. 

Then I memorized the first paragraph and the last couple paragraphs, so I could be certain about opening and closing the story well.  Then I read and reread the story as I initially wrote for the next day or two, trying to establish beats and specific phrases in my mind.

In order to keep the story fresh and not sound overly rehearsed, I never actually practiced the story aloud.  Instead, I broke the story down into sections in my mind and then practiced keeping those parts mentally arranged, including the means of transitioning from one section to the next.   

In my mind, the story flowed like this:

1. How I became a pole vaulter
2. How to pole vault
3. Why I did not like Jack Daniels
4. The track meet
5. My victory
6. Jack’s defeat
7. Lessons learned

Seven parts.  I knew if I kept all seven parts in order in mind, with a means of transitioning from one to the next, I would be okay.

My only fear was the Moth’s five minute time limit.  Because I never actually spoke my story aloud, I went into the StorySlam hoping that I was close to the five minute mark. 

It felt like five minutes when I reviewed it in my mind, but I was never sure. 

All I wanted to do was tell my story as cleanly and clearly as possible.  That was the goal.  Winning the StorySlam was an unexpected surprise, especially considering the amazing storytellers who performed that night. 

So below is the story as I initially wrote it, though reading through it now, it’s clear that this story and the one that I told at the StorySlam differ greatly.  Sections of the story below were deleted during the telling, some intentionally and some by accident, and other parts were added as well. I like how the story came out on stage, and I think it was better than what is written below.  But this should give you a sense of the story as I intended to tell it.

Thanks so much for the interest in the story and all the support.  The date for the Moth GrandSlam has not yet been set, but I’ll be sure to share that information when it becomes available.  ____________________________________________________

In the spring of 1986, Coach Cronin decided that we needed two more pole vaulters on our high school’s track and field team.  At the time we had just one vaulter.  His name was Jimmy Deane, and Jimmy was the best pole vaulter in Massachusetts Division 3 athletics.  He never lost.

But there were track meets known as relays that required three competitors for each event, and in the case of the pole vault, this meant that three competitors needed to clear opening height, 7 feet 6 inches, or no scores would be recorded.  We were losing valuable points at these meets because Jimmy had no teammates, so Coach Cronin decided to fix that.

And so he took all the mediocre sprinters and long jumpers down to the pole vault pit in order to identify two new pole vaulters, and because I was both a mediocre sprinter and mediocre long jumper at the time, so I doubly qualified.

Now the pole vault is an interesting event.  It requires strength, speed and precision, but above all, it requires a healthy dose of insanity as well.  You stand on the end of a runway, holding a fiberglass pole about 10-12 feet long.  You then run as fast as you possibly can for about 18 steps, and as you take your last few steps, you raise one end of the pole in the air and jam the opposite end into a metal box set into the ground.  At that same moment, you throw your head back and your feet into the air, pulling back on the pole so that it will bend and then fling you over the bar as it unbends.

It an absolute act of insanity.  Perfect for adrenaline freaks, stoners, and guys who would separate their shoulders twenty years later diving for a ball in a meaningless teacher-student four square game.

There were about a dozen of us down at the pit that day, and two of us held onto the pole after jamming it into the box.  We did not vault that day.  I managed to wrench my shoulder as I flew off to the left, missing the mats completely, but because I was stupid enough to continue holding on as I literally tumbled into a ditch, I became a pole vaulter. 

And so perhaps the strangest assemblage of names to ever grace a pole vault pit came together that day:  Jimmy Deane, Jack Daniels and Matthew Dicks was born.

Fast forward to the day of the first relay.  Jack and I had been vaulting for about a month and we were occasionally clearing opening height.  Jack was a year older than me and at that point better than me, so when we arrived at the meet, I knew the pressure would be on me to succeed.

And here’s where the ugly little truth about team sports comes into play.  While I wanted my team to win and to earn the respect of my opposition, the truth is I wanted the respect of my team even more.  This was the only time we would face Uxbridge High that spring, so I would never see the opposing vaulters again.  But I would see my teammates every day that spring.  They would be the dispensers of coolness and acceptance in the halls of my high school.  I wanted to be viewed as a valued member of the team.

There are two ways about doing this in team sports:

Perform at a high level.

Perform at a higher level than your mediocre teammates.

Knowing I could not do the former, I opted for the latter.

My only hope was for Jack to fail, thus making me the hero.  This is what I wanted.   

And I didn’t like Jack very much.  Not only was Jack better looking and a better athlete than me, but he had the name Jack Daniels, an incredibly cool name for a high school guy, and I was saddled with Matthew Dicks.  That’s not Dix like the fort as so many people ask me, but Dicks like more than one penis.

It’s a tough name to have, as you can imagine.  Not as difficult as my father, whose name was Leslie Dicks but went by Les, nor as hard as my not one but two Uncle Harold Dicks who went by Harry, but tough.

And especially tough in pole vaulting, for you see, there is a lot of waiting around in pole vaulting, and in order to alert you that your turn is coming, a system was developed.  The officials would announce over the loudspeaker Jones Up, Smith on deck, Davis in the hole.  But for me, it would be Dicks up, Dicks on deck, Dicks in the hole.

Not the best way to foster concentration while every spectator within the sound of the official’s voice laughs at you.

Actually, Dicks Up wasn’t so bad.  I was still a virgin at the time, but the image it conjured at least offered me a little hope.

And so I stood at the end of the runway, Dicks Up, ready to vault.  And by some miracle of miracles, I cleared the bar on the first try.

I felt like a hero.  A million bucks.  And I felt better when Jack missed his first try.  I was cool under pressure.  He was not.

Then Jack missed his second vault, and for a second, I felt on top of the world, pleased to find that my prayers were being answered.  Yes, we would lose a lot of points as Jimmy’s eventual winning vault would not count, and yes, it might cost us the meet, but I would be declared second best vaulter on the team and that was all that mattered.

And then it occurred to me.  If Jack succeeded in his final vault, my vault would be all but forgotten.  With the pressure on and the drama at its highest level, if Jack cleared that bar, he would become Mr. Clutch, the guy cool under pressure, and the second best vaulter on the team.

That son-of-a-bitch had positioned himself perfectly to be the hero.  And I wouldn’t put it past Jack to have set this up on purpose.

And so as Jack ran down that runway toward his fate, I stared at his fiberglass pole, using all my mental energy to cause a mis-plant.  Not a broken pole, because that would give Jack an out. 

No, Jack had to fail, and it had to be his fault.

And he did.  And it was.  Jack’s plant was good but he kicked the bar on the way up, ensuring us the defeat and me the victory that day.  Daniels was in the hole and Dicks was indeed up!

Here’s the saddest part of the whole day:  Our team won the meet.  We crushed Uxbridge High that day, and as a result, my success and Jack’s failure went unnoticed.  Though Jack’s failure had cost the team points, it had not been enough to cost us the meet.

The team had won goddamn it.  But I lost.  No one even said a word to me about my successful vault, and it was at that moment that I realized a couple important things in life:

The world may revolve around me, but no one had really taken notice of it back in 1986.  It was sort of like the Sun in a pre-Copernican universe, and I am still struggling like Copernicus to right this wrong.

Everyone on my team were engaged in the same struggles that I was engaged in that day, so no one had any time to worry about a guy who would be lucky to clear opening height.  Jimmy Deane didn’t even care.

The only teammates to receive any attention were the ones who performed at a high level.  Not the best of the rest, but the best of the best.

And that was not me.  And it has rarely, rarely been me. 

Thank you.    

Are writers’ colonies good for writing or simply indulgent escape mechanisms for the undisciplined?

The first two paragraphs from a recent New York Observer column reads thusly:

They summer in the colonies, the writers of New York, scattering forth to the hills as the days grow more sultry: to Yaddo, to MacDowell, to Millay and Ledig House! They go to work, of course, to work uninterruptedly and produce literary classics, and then, after all that exhaustive working, to play Ping-Pong and drink. But what of those left behind? The husbands and wives who change diapers and listlessly push swings on garbage-strewn urban playgrounds while their spouses stroll the green glades?

These spouses have to speak in baby talk to screaming children while their lovers giggle at the witty asides of sculptors and poets. While the colonists collapse in Adirondack chairs with cheeks flushed from a riotous game of table tennis, the city-bound are taking out the trash and eating bad takeout.

My first thought:

How am I going to get my wife to agree to send me to one of these colonies, and soon?

My second thought:

Two weeks? Honestly, after a couple days I think I’d really start to miss my family. Why do so many people seem to want to have kids and then get the hell away from them as quickly as possible?

If I could just find about four hours of undisturbed quiet a day in a library, a bookstore, or my kitchen table, that would be golden.

Hell, I’d take two.

My third thought:

Why does anyone even need to go to a colony to write? Picnic baskets on your doorsteps at lunchtime? Jacuzzis and ping-pong? Drunken stupors and evenings filled with Adirondack chairs and extramarital affairs? It all sounds a little self-important, self-indulgent and overly precious to me.

And none of it sounds very much like writing.

It’s so odd how so many writers seem to want to disconnect the process of writing from diapers and dishwashers and family and fast food, as if the two cannot coincide.

It’s a nice thought, but I hardly think it is reality.

And I suspect that it makes for bad writing.

My final thought:

Sure, it might be nice to get away for a couple weeks to get some writing done, but honestly, what is wrong with the kitchen table? Or the local library? Or a bench at a local college? Or an office in the attic? I run into so many people who talk about the tools of writing and the location of the writing and the beverage of choice whilst writing but not the actual writing.

These colonies sound perfect for the undisciplined person who likes to think about writing and talk about writing more than he or she likes to actually write.

As a writer, I find myself needing to write on an everyday basis, regardless of the stark and tragic absence of picnic baskets and table tennis tournaments and extramarital affairs. For me, I write in between life. In the spaces between the diapers and dishwashers and family and fast food.

Regardless of what you may think, there are lots and lots of in-betweens if you are serious about assembling words and sentences on a page.

If you want to write and you want to publish, you make the time.

7 unexpected lessons learned during my first children’s book writing group meeting

1.  Long eyelashes on a man are considered attractive. 

Who knew? 

My wife subsequently informed me that my eyelashes are an average length. 

This explains a lot.

2.  Young adult fiction that targets teenage girls requires a great deal of physical description. 

More than I can stomach.

I can’t believe that it’s 20 years after high school and I still don’t understand the mind of a teenage girl. 

3.  Dark humor in picture books does not appeal to mothers as much as it does their children.

4.  The color, length and styling of one’s hair are important considerations to the average teenage girl. 

5.  A man and a woman can read a children’s story and come away having read two entirely different stories.

6.  A skilled reader and editor can say a great deal about just 900 words of picture book text.

7.  Illustrators have more fun.

My talk included wishing for the death of an elderly woman and the apparent arrival of her ghost

A couple of weeks ago I participated in the Books on the Nightstand Retreat, which I’ve written about previously. Nine authors came together with about one hundred readers to talk about books.

On Saturday morning I conducted a one-hour session on the decisions that authors must make in the process of publishing a book (ironic since I had been forced to decide upon two offers for my next book as we drove to Vermont), and then later in the evening all nine authors came together to speak to an audience of well over one hundred people on a topic of our choice.

The organizers of the event, the illustrious Ann Kingman and Michael Kindness, recorded these 10-15 minute talks and have been releasing them as part of their Books on the Nightstand weekly podcast.

This week’s podcast includes my talk.

I have yet to listen to the recording.

My original plan that evening was to speak to the group about my books, read a short passage from Unexpectedly, Milo, and tell an amusing story from earlier in the day. But I changed my mind as I rose from my chair and approached the podium and instead spoke about the writing and the need for more people to write in today’s world.

Since it was fairly unprepared, I am afraid to listen to the results. Every unrehearsed “um” or “ah” will be like a thousand tiny cuts into my soul.

I am a bit of a perfectionist, despite the absolute lack of perfection in almost everything I do. I live a life of perpetual dissatisfaction, but I don’t typically have to re-live my failures.

So I may avoid listening to this week’s podcast altogether.

Still, I think the talk went well despite my unprepared state, my wish for an elderly woman’s death, and the apparent arrival of her spirit mid-talk. If you are interested, you can listen to the podcast on the Books on the Nightstand website or download it from iTunes and perhaps become a regular listener.  And I did listen to the other author featured in the podcast, Ellen Meeropol, and she is most certainly worth a listen.

A dramatic reading of Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook

As I work on a semi-autobiographical book on productivity, I will keep this video in mind and attempt to avoid the pitfalls of self-indulgence:

In defense of revision

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.

Great accomplishments in the trenches

“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.

The latest

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!

Exclamation points say so much about a person

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.

Book news, including MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND

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.