Not acting my age

One added benefit of my recent mention in USA Today was the printing of my age, 38.

Many of my friends and colleagues thought that this was a misprint, assuming that I was much closer to thirty than to forty. I had more than half a dozen people ask me about it, and all were shocked to hear that the age was accurate.

While some based their assumption on physical appearance, most referenced my youthful, immature spirit. One friend said, “I never imagined that someone so close to forty could get into so much trouble. I thought for sure that you were much closer to thirty.”

Not exactly a compliment.

Another said that I didn’t come across as very grown up, so it was difficult for her to imagine me being as old as the article indicated.

Again, not a resounding accolade.

But still, I’d rather be perceived as a trouble-making, immature thirty year old rather than a safe, rule-abiding, grown up forty year old.

Storytelling on Twitter

For those of you on Twitter, you may be aware of the recent explosion of Twitter stories or novels, sometimes called Twisters, that people are now writing. They are essentially 140-character, self-contained stories, usually amounting to about three or four sentences. They remind me a great deal of haikus, particularly in terms of the turn that these stories usually take in their final sentence. The format seems to lend itself to a two or three sentence set-up with a final sentence of resolution, typically leaning toward humor or tragedy.

A bit Shakespearean, now that I think of it.

Requiring about 120,000 words to complete my own stories, this might not be the ideal form for me, nor does it seem very profitable, but they are oftentimes amusing to read, and I frequently find myself detecting the seed of a longer, more traditional novel within many of them.

If you’re interested in reading some, you can follow Arjun Basu on Twitter. He writes them almost exclusively, and I tend to like a lot of his work.

Here’s my own attempt at a Twister, which I will also post on my own Twitter feed:

May. Christmas lights still blinking. Cheerios in her bowl turned to mush. The milk had spoiled. Mom had been dead for at least five months.

Experience counts

My good friend often said that no one can write a decent book before the age of forty. Life experience, he believes, is required to write well.

I sold my book at the age of 37, three years under my friend’s presumed guideline. Sometimes I think I wrote it out of spite, just to prove the guy wrong.

Spite, I’ve always found, is the best reason to do anything.

I also become annoyed with myself from time to time for waiting so long to write my first novel, assuming that I could’ve done so ten or even fifteen years earlier.

But perhaps my friend is right. Though I have yet to reach the grand old age of forty, I certainly have a great deal of life experience behind me, and maybe this was in fact needed in order for me to be successful.

Guardian columnist John Crace would seem to agree, arguing that novelist and short story writer Jim Ballard’s life experiences before picking up the pen provided him with “a psychological and experiential depth” to his work.

Perhaps the broken home, the betrayal of my step-father, the near-death experiences, the near homelessness, the year I spent living with Jehovah Witnesses and a goat, the armed robbery, the arrest and subsequent trial for a crime I did not commit, and the public attack on my reputation and career have provided me with enough life experience to write successfully.

Perhaps it was good for something after all.

USA Today! Today!

An article appeared in USA Today by Carol Memmott on publishing in trade paperback instead of hardcover, and SOMETHING MISSING was featured prominently in the piece.

Very exciting!

My initial instinct was to run out and purchase fifty copies of the paper, but oddly enough, I have experience with this kind of thing and thought better of it. This is actually the second time that I have been featured in USA Today. Back in 1996 I was a USA Today Academic All American, and my name and information about my academic career appeared in the paper. Early on the morning that the article appeared, I immediately ran out and bought twenty copies of the newspaper, which only cost fifty cents back then, from three different convenience stores.

Those twenty copies were placed in a box with other memorabilia and have yet to see the light of day ever since.

There’s just never any reason to have more than one copy of the paper, especially in today’s digital world. So I’ll go out this morning and buy a copy of the paper, but I won’t go batty and purchase twenty or thirty.

One should be plenty. Well, maybe two or three…

Wyatt of Rockport, Massachusetts

I spent the past week vacationing in Rockport, a seaside town on the north shore of Massachusetts. It’s a delightfully quaint and historic little town, its streets lined with tiny shops, each filled with tons of character and individuality. As we explored the town, dining in the restaurants and stopping in many of the shops, I came to realize that this was exactly the kind of town where I could one day set a story.

My newest novel takes place in the fictional town of Killingworth, Vermont and the protagonist of the story is a man named Wyatt. As my week in Rockport proceeded and I began to get to know the town better, I began thinking about the possibility of transplanting some of these tiny little shops and restaurants into my fictional Vermont town.

They were simply too good to pass up.

With this thought running through my mind, I entered a knickknack shop on our last day in town, planning to purchase a Christmas tree ornament as a souvenir. My wife and I pick up an ornament during each of our vacations as a means of reminiscing about our travels as we decorate our tree each December. The shop immediately appealed to me, with its eclectic collection of ornaments, trinkets, signage, and other odds and ends. An ancient, gold-plated cash register sat atop a high counter, and manning it was an equally ancient gentleman who was teaching a small boy to play dominos. It was just the kind of scene that would fit perfectly into my novel.

After choosing an ornament, I brought it to the counter in order to pay, anxious to see the mechanical cash register at work.

“Hello, sir,” the elderly man said, dropping his dominos in order to ring up my sale. “I was just teaching Wyatt here how to play dominos. A dying art, if you ask me.”

“Did you say Wyatt?” I asked.

“Yes, I did. This is Wyatt. My grandson.”

Wyatt?

Coincidence? Fate? Serendipity?

Weird if nothing else.

Odd titles

As I attempt to settle on a title for my second novel, I am amused by the discovery that a prize is given out annually to the book with the oddest name.

It’s known as The Diagram Prize, named for the information and graphics company where it was born.

This year’s winner: The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais

Runners-up included Curbside Consultation of the Colon, The Large Sieve and Its Applications, Strip and Knit with Style and Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring.

My favorite: A tie between the 1992 winner How to Avoid Huge Ships and the 2006 winner The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.

Interestingly, no prize was awarded in 1987 and 1991. No book, it was determined, had a title odd enough to be worthy of the prize.

While all of the books on the list of winners seem deserving, I would love to see what the winner might be if non-fiction and technical books such as these were excluded from the running. Other than a collection of short stories, every winner on the list appears to come from the realm of nonfiction.

I’d love to see a prize for the oddest title of a novel each year. But I have far too many projects on my plate to organize such a prize, though I must admit that the idea is appealing.

Hopefully my second novel, currently titled UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, would not be in contention.

Interruption

Conversation between a three-year old and me:

Three-year old:  Hi.  What are you working on?

Me:  An questionnaire for my publisher.

Three-year old:  Why?

Me:  So that my readers can know me better.

Three-year old:  Oh. 

A second later...

Three-year old:  I've been working on the railroad, all the living long day.  I've been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away. 

So much for my questionnaire. 

A reader's guide

Random House has posted a reader’s guide for SOMETHING MISSING on their site, along with a summary of the book and a couple blurbs from other authors.

As the writer of the book, it was interesting to read the questions that were included in the guide. I’ve known the main character, Martin, for a few years now, and in writing the book, my primary goal was to convey the intricacies of this character to my readers. For me, Martin was always as close to being real as a fictional character could possibly be, and in reading some of the questions in the guide, I was pleased to see that some of the ways in which I chose to delineate his character seemed to work.

For example, question #5 reads:

In chapter two, Martin meets Alfredo, the Grants’ parrot. What makes Alfredo the ideal new friend for Martin?

In terms of establishing and maintaining relationships, Martin is as inept as a person can be, and so in thinking about the kinds of friendships and romantic entanglements that he might be able to maintain, the idea of a parrot seemed ideal to me. But in writing about it, I wasn’t sure if the reader would understand how Martin’s friendship with Alfredo might be the most real and meaningful friendship that he could manage. I wondered if the reader might just see Alfredo as an amusing anecdote within the context of the overarching plot. But in reading this question, I was pleased to see that this was not the case, at least for the person responsible for writing these questions.

Several questions struck me similarly.

I was also intrigued by question #14:

What do you predict for Martin’s future with Laura Green?

This question has been asked by many of my friends who have read the book, and most have assumed that I know the answer to this question. Honestly, I do not. If I had continued writing, I suspect that I would have found out, but I liked the ending point of the novel, and so that question will remain a mystery.

I’ve been asked if I might consider writing a sequel to SOMETHING MISSING someday, and while I would not entirely discount the idea, I have too many other ideas competing in my head to consider returning to Martin’s life anytime soon. But if I were to ever do so, I suspect we might find out about Martin’s future with Laura Green, which I am admittedly curious about from time to time.

A dangerous career

Last week I accompanied my wife to a Passover Seder at the home of some of her old friends. I didn’t know many of the people in attendance, but the host knew about the upcoming publication of SOMETHING MISSING and introduced me as a writer, prompting much discussion about books, writing and the publishing industry.

At one point I found myself talking to a psychologist who was explaining to me that recent brain research seems to indicate that writers and other creative types have neural pathways in their brains that differ from most people, and that these pathways allow for the formation of broader, more complex connections that spurn creativity.

I listened and nodded a lot, unsure what to think of the guy.

He then proceeded to tell me that this fairly unusual brain structure is a double-edged sword in that many writers, artists and similarly creative individuals experience higher rates of mental illness, disassociative disorders and suicide as a result of these complex pathways.

“I’d better be on guard,” I said with a grin. “I wouldn’t want mental illness sneaking up on me in the middle of a book.”

“Don’t worry,” my new friend suggested. “These problems typically arise in people who lack strong family connections or well-established religious beliefs. Or in people who have suffered severe trauma at some point in their lives. You have nothing to worry about.”

It’s odd that this man would assume so much.

In terms of strong family connections, my mother is dead, I haven’t seen my father, brother or step-siblings in years, and other than my sister and an aunt who I see a couple times a year, I have no relationship with any family members whatsoever.

In terms of well-established religious beliefs, I am a former Protestant who currently has no religious convictions whatsoever. I consider myself a secular humanist on the best of days.

And in terms of an incidents of severe trauma, I’ve had two near death experiences, been robbed at knife point and gunpoint, and experiences a decade-long bout with post-traumatic stress disorder until finally receiving treatment.

In the view of this guy, I’m a mental illness waiting to happen.

Who knew that writing could be so dangerous?

Not religious. Not spiritual.

The advanced review copies of SOMETHING MISSING have begun to pop up on eBay (thank goodness for Google Alerts). Even though the ARC seal on the book clearly states that the review copy is not for sale, apparently not everyone agrees.

Even so, the eBay seller indicates in their description of the book that:

This listing is for a softcover book titled "Something Missing" by Matthew Dicks. This softcover advance reading copy says not for resale on it.

It’s nice of the seller to acknowledge the rule against resale, even as they attempt to resell it themselves.

I don’t mind, to be honest. It’s exciting to think that someone wants to read it, regardless of how it ultimately finds its way into their hands.

But what is mildly disturbing is the means by which at least one eBay seller has characterized the book, labeling it as Religion, Spirituality, Christianity, Protestant.

SOMETHING MISSING may be many things, prospective readers, but my book is in no way religious or spiritual.

Morrison victorious

For those of you who didn’t follow the Tournament of Books that I had referenced previously, Toni Morrison’s A MERCY beat out Tom Piazza’s CITY OF REFUGE for the win.

While in college, I took a class that centered on the work of Toni Morrison and South African writer Nadine Gordimer, and as a result, I had to read every one of Morrison’s books up until that time, which included all of her novels save LOVE (published in 2003) and this most recent one.

I like Morrison’s work a lot. I don’t recommend reading all of her novels in the span of three months, but I think that her ability to convey story with an almost oral writing style that blends realism and the fantastic is wonderful.

Of all her books, my favorite it BELOVED, perhaps because it afforded me with my single greatest moment in a college classroom. In discussing the end of the book one day in class, a student asked my professor, whose name escapes me, why Morrison chose to imply that Beloved explodes as the novel concludes. Beloved is a ghost who the black community eventually attempts to exorcise, and though the book has numerous unrealistic elements (including a ghost), the explosion of BELOVED seemed an odd choice to this student.

My professor and many of the students in my class agreed, admitting that the choice had baffled them as well. My professor acknowledged that this was something that she had been wondering about for years.

Then my hand went up. In a timid voice, I suggested that perhaps Morrison’s choice of an explosion was referencing Langston Hughes’s poem A Dream Deferred.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

As a character, Beloved represented the loss of a child, and therefore a dream deferred. Perhaps Morrison was eluding to the last line of Hughes’s poem.

The class sat in silence for the moment, and then my professor walked over to me, placed her hand upon my shoulder, squeezed, and said, “I think you got it, Matt.” The pride and warmth on her face was unforgettable.

Of course, I have never been able to confirm this theory and secretly fear that I am wrong. If so, that’s okay. Those few moments in that classroom in 2001 were priceless, and whether or not I was correct will never change that for me.

But if you know that I’m wrong, please don’t tell me. I’m perfectly content living in my sweet, little delusion.

More from Vonnegut

Apologies, dear readers, for the lengthy departure.  But attempts to complete final revisions to MILO (now tentatively titled UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO), combined with the need to complete report cards for my students and a Border's Book of the Month Club questionnaire kept me quite busy for the last two weeks. 

But with all of those projects firmly behind me, I have a plethora of subjects upon which to write. 

Allow me to begin with some great news. 

For the past four years, I have been reading TIMEQUAKE, a novel by the late Kurt Vonnegut.  Vonnegut is probably my favorite writer, and when I began reading TIMEQUAKE, it occurred to me that this was the last Vonnegut novel that I had yet to read, and by all accounts, he had no plans to write any others.  This meant that I would have no more new Vonnegut novels to read, and as such, I made a vow to make this one last.

After his death in 2007, the assumption that TIMEQUAKE would be his last new novel for me became a certainty. 

I only allow myself to read a page or two of the book each week, permitting myself to re-read earlier sections of the text as much as I want, and I approach the five year mark with this book, I have yet to finish.  I'm about three-quarters of the way through, and though part of me yearns to finish reading it, I force myself to refrain.  Though I plan on re-reading many of Vonnegut's novels throughout my lifetime, these are the last of his words that I will read for the first time.

Or so I thought. 

This week I learned that Kurt Vonnegut’s longtime publisher, Delacorte Press, will issue 14 never-before published short stories by the author in a new collection entitled LOOK AT BIRDIE.  "Other original forthcoming titles will include a second collection of Vonnegut’s unpublished writings as well as a book of letters sent to and from the author over the course of his life."

I couldn't be more excited.

But now I am left wondering:  Should I go ahead and finish TIMEQUAKE and discover the fate of often-used, Vonnegut character Kilgore Trout or continue my snail's pace through the book?