How I don't write
/This is how Susan Orleans writes.
I can't even.
Hidden gems on my daughter's bookshelf and in my teaching career
/My daughter and I pulled this book off her shelf last night, written by a former student named Maddie and given to Clara when she was born seven years ago. It's been hiding in the back between other books.
My wife taught Maddie as well. One of those rare students who was blessed with having both of us as teachers.
I just adore Maddie's inscription to Clara, and she does as well.
It is quintessential Maddie.
No one tells you when you become a teacher that former students will remain in your life long after the school year has ended, and they will continue to touch your heart in so many ways years later. It's not quite as valuable as medical insurance or a pension, but in terms of benefits, it's close.
Just over the course of the past two weeks, I've been contacted by two former students.
One of these former students decided to look me up ("It's 3:30 in the morning right now, and I randomly googled you.") and discovered that since he left my classroom, I've published novels, written musicals, and launched a storytelling career.
Back when he was in my classroom, I was still a struggling writer without a credit to my name. He was surprised to see all that I had done since he had moved on.
He is currently attending Albertus Magnus in New Haven, CT. He's studying business management and is playing on their basketball team. He's considering playing professional basketball in Europe in two years. His email was inspirational and sweet, and it made my day.
Last week the other former student - now a senior at Suffield Academy - visited my classroom to inform me that he has the lead in their school play and invited me to be in the audience on opening night. He performed in my annual Shakespearean production - King Lear that year - and credited that performance as the birth of his love for acting.
Elysha and I will be in the audience in April when he takes the stage.
Incidentally, Maddie - the author of No Socks No! - attends Eastern Connecticut State University. She's a communications major with concentrations in advertising and public relations. She's also a double minor in history and digital and art design.
No surprise. She was a remarkable student in elementary school, and she remains one today.
She graduates in May. If you have any job offers, I'd be happy to pass them on to her.
Little Boy Wants to Read. Badly.
/I know it's my kid, but it's so damn cute.
Cruelest joke of 2015 involved a beautiful new baby and Bill Cosby
/One of the best ideas that I heard in all of 2015 was this:
When a friend of mine gave birth to her first child, one of her friends sent her a gift.
It was a book. This book:
Possibly one of the cruelest jokes ever.
I plan to spend 2016 desperately seeking opportunities to send other Bill Cosby titles to my friends and family. I was tempted to add it to my 2016 list of goals, but I decided that it was trite and ultimately unproductive.
But I'm still doing it.
Used copies, of course. Most of his books are out of print, and I wouldn't want to financially support Cosby.
The Book With No Pictures: Best testimonial for the book ever
/BJ Novak's The Book With No Pictures is one of those ingenious books that I wish I had written.
Same holds true for books like The Day the Crayons Quit, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, and The Quiet Book.
Clever ideas brilliantly executed.
And I am not the only one this thinks The Book with No Pictures is brilliant.
My son can't really read yet, but watching him "read" The Book With No Pictures is testimonial enough.
Four pieces of perfect truth on the nature of writing and work by Dan Kennedy
/Dan Kennedy is an author, storyteller, screenwriter, and host of The Moth's podcast and their live shows. I first met Dan in 2011 when I took the stage for the first time and told a story at The Moth.
He was hosting that night. I took the stage, shook his hand, and told my story. I won that slam, and after he called me back to the stage to take a bow, he took a moment to tell me how much he liked my story. He told me that is was funny and honest and a little sad. "A perfect combination."
I still remember the moment like it was yesterday.
Since that day, Dan and I have been in many shows together, both in New York City and elsewhere. It's always an honor to share a stage with him. Though I adore all of The Moth's hosts, I feel a special kinship to Dan. I am saddened when he is not present to hear my story.
I tell my stories first for my wife, Elysha, but I think Dan is a close second,
Dan is also a great follow on Twitter, and yesterday he spilled some serious truth about writing and life that was worth capturing and sharing with you here.
@DanKennedy_NYC There are people who write every now and then. And there are writers who are people every now and then.
@DanKennedy_NYC Most movies about life depend on giant change, chapters ending, chapters beginning. Real life depends on sticking with things.
@DanKennedy_NYC When it comes to work, you're gonna end up doing what you want to do. Period. Spend 10 minutes or 30 years fighting it if you insist.
@DanKennedy_NYC Buy books for yourself and for other people.
If you're worried about the guy being a little earnest or intense, fear not. Earlier that day, he tweeted about eating pie over the sink in the middle of the night.
Funny, honest, and sometimes even a little sad.
Recommended Reading
/When I visit a bookstore or library or book club to discuss my new novel, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, I also recommend books as a part of my talk. Audience members have recently asked for a list of the books that I am currently recommending, so here there are, in case you can't make it to one of my upcoming appearances.
Details about why I am recommending each below.
The Official Boy Scout Handbook: I still have my original Boy Scout Handbook, which is now more than 30 years old, but I still think it's one of the best books ever written, particularly for a young person. Turn to any page and you will discover something fascinating. Learn to build a fire. Identify poisonous snakes. Properly fold a flag. Build a lean-to. Purify water. Sign language. First aid. Astronomy. It's an amazing book that any young person would love, whether he or she is a Boy Scout or not.
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo: This is the first gift that my wife ever gave me, on our first date, and it's a book I love dearly. Written for children but perfect for adults, it's the story of a mouse who dares to be different in a world that expects him to conform. It's a perfect story, perfectly told, that has remained in my heart ever since I read it for the first time.
Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath: If you're a teacher or a parent or someone who needs to convey information or skills that must be retained, read this book. It's the single greatest teaching guide ever written. It makes ever book about teaching that has ever cluttered by bookshelf look ridiculous by comparison.
Ballisitics by Billy Collins: Collins is a great poet an a former Poet Laureate of the United States. This may make him sound impenetrable, but it could not be farther from the truth. Collins is amusing, insightful, and simple. I recommend that rather than buying the book, purchase the audiobook. He reads it beautifully. Create a playlist with songs you love, interspersed with poems. It's a joy to be driving down the highway listening to a Beatles or a Stones song and suddenly have Billy Collins reciting a poem to you.
The Fermata by Nicholson Baker: I love Baker's work, and this is one of my favorites. It's the story of a man who can stop time, and he uses this power to undress and then dress women, so they never know that they were naked. This description does not make it sound compelling, but it's a terrific story of a man who desperately wants to connect with the world, and when he finally does, the surprising results.
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon: This is a book of flash fiction. Though I love this book specifically, I am recommending it more as an attempt to get readers to give flash fiction a try. Flash fiction is stories written in a couple hundred words at most. It's an incredibly challenging way to tell a story, but when done well, is truly brilliant.
The Moth edited by Catherine Burns: This is a collection of 50 of the greatest Moth stories, originally told on stage, and lightly edited for the page. If you don't want to start reading at the beginning, start on page 200 with Erin Barker's brilliant story about her family. You'll soon encounter one of my favorite lines from the thousands of Moth stories I've heard over the years.
My book launch party was filled with many surprise guests and references to Dungeons & Dragons
/My most recent novel, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, published ten days ago on September 8. Originally my book launch party was slated for September 10, but that was the date of the Patriots home opener at Gillette Stadium, and I have my priorities.
My publicist understood completely, so the launch was moved to September 14.
A few weeks later, I had to point out that September 14 was Rosh Hashanah, and given the fact that my wife and many of my friends are Jewish, this date would also not work.
Please not that it wasn’t my wife or my in-laws or any of my many Jewish friends who noted the conflict, even though the date was made public and added to calendars for more than a month. It was me, a former Gentile turned reluctant atheist, who first realized the problem.
After I realized the conflict with Rosh Hashanah, we moved my launch again to September 17, which was last night. It meant that I needed to leave Colebrook, CT in the midst of a weeklong trip with my students to a YMCA camp to return home for a few hours, but that was fine.
Better than missing the Patriots game or disrespecting my wife’s holiday.
It was a terrific evening, and I thank each and every person who attended for making it a fantastic night. One of my friends counted well over 100 people in attendance, and I had many surprise guests, including:
- My aunt Paulette from South Carolina, who I haven’t seen in almost ten years and have only seen a handful of times in the last 30 years. She and her husband were traveling to Niagara Falls to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and made a detour in order to attend the event.
- Sarah, a high school student in Rhode Island who I have been corresponding with for almost two years about writing and publishing. I visited Sarah’s high school last year – where my former high school vice principal and nemesis is now principal – and she returned the favor by making the almost two hour trek to Connecticut to join us for the event.
- Sara, my friend and author from Vermont, who has now driven more than two hours to attend my last two book launch events.
- My superintendent, who told me that he would try to attend the event, but knowing the schedule of someone in his position must keep, I hardly expected him to make it. His willingness to give up an evening to support my work meant a lot.
- Many of my fellow teachers and colleagues, including one who had just returned from our YMCA trip hours earlier and was sitting in the front row.
- Maybe best of all, dozens of my former students, many all grown up and some who left my classroom just last year, all sitting or standing (there was a large standing-room-only contingent) in support.
Rather than reading from my latest novel, I spoke about how a high school teacher and an assignment on satire turned me into a writer and launched my first business, and how 20 years later a friend's request that I play Dungeons & Dragons with him and some buddies saved my writing career. I also recommended some books (including The Boy Scout handbook), took some questions, handed out some prizes, and signed many books.
It was an incredibly fun night and well worth the wait.
The author Julian Barnes would kill me, and defacing books is a terrible thing, but don’t you think this is also an AMAZING idea?
/While attending a book club recently, a woman told me that the book they read before my book was Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending.
“And something really strange happened with that book,” she said.
Almost as soon as the discussion began, the woman became confused. “It was as if they had all read a different book than me. They were talking about an ending that I hadn’t read.’
After some investigation, she discovered that the last ten pages in her book were missing.
The Sense of an Ending has lost its ending.
When I asked her if she thought it strange that the book stopped midsentence and ended so abruptly, she said, “Of course. But the book is called The Sense of an Ending. I thought the author was trying to say something specific by ending it like that. Like maybe this is the true sense of an ending. Without fanfare. In life, things stop suddenly. We don’t get neatly wrapped endings.”
Then I had an idea. The author in me despises this idea.
The rest of me adores it.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to go to the bookstores and tear out the last 5-10 pages in every copy of The Sense of an Ending that you could find? Give every reader the same experience that this woman had when she can to the false ending of the book.
Tear out the ending in The Sense of an Ending.
It’s a great prank. Don’t you think?
Today I feel like a real author – which doesn’t happen often – and not for any reason that you might imagine.
/I’m not sure if other authors feel this way, but most days, I don’t feel like a real author.
Its ridiculous but true.
I’ve published three novels – two with Doubleday and one with St. Martin’s Press – and I have a fourth publishing in September. My last book was translated into more than 25 different languages and was an international bestseller.
All three of my novels have been optioned for film or television.
I receive emails and tweets from readers all over the world daily about my books.
And yet when I’m completely honest with myself, I don’t ever feel like a real author. At best, I feel like I’ve fooled people into believing that I’m a real author, and at any moment, the literati will discover the truth and my last book will be my last.
Someone recently asked me, “When did you know that you had finally made it?”
Without any attempt at humor or self-deprecation, my instant response was, “You’re probably the only person on the planet who thinks I’ve made it. I’m not even close to making it. I don’t even know what making it looks like. I don’t think I’ll ever make it.”
I have no evidence, but I suspect that these feeling are true for many authors.
Thankfully, there are moments when this stupidity is challenged. Yesterday a reader send me a photo of her Book of the Day calendar. March 18 had been given over to my last novel, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend.
Oddly enough, this tangible mention of my novel, sitting atop a reader’s desk on a square of paper, made me feel more like a real author than many of the moments that should’ve convinced me long ago.
And I have no idea why.
Sequel Protection Service: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The Millennium) series
/So many times in my life, I’ve wished that I had avoided one or more of the sequels to a book or movie. Spoiling the beauty of an original story with a disappointing or (even worse) destructive sequel is a tragedy that should befall no human being.
Thus behold:
Matthew Dicks’ Sequel Protection Service.
Having suffered through scores of horrendous and damaging sequels, I have thrust the mantle of Sequel Protection Champion upon myself in order to spare future consumers the pain that so many of us have experienced.
I will tell you which sequels are worthy of reading or viewing and which should never be seen.
Quite heroic of me. Don’t you think?
Today’s subject:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The Millennium) series:
If you weren’t sucked into the literary frenzy of these three books a few years ago and are just starting to read them now, I urge you to stop with the first book. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a taut and unexpected thriller that I enjoyed a great deal. It was edge of your seat suspense, and most importantly, it was relatively believable.
As with many sequels, the ratcheting of action and suspense required to make the sequels successful also stripped the second book – The Girl Who Played With Fire – and the third book – The Girl Who Kicked Over the Hornet’s Nest – of any plausibility.
Lizbeth Salandar – the pseudo-protagonist – goes from a badass hero in the first book to superhero in the second and third, and she encounters villains with even more implausible super powers. The story becomes convoluted, and little is revealed by way of the character’s backstories in the two subsequent books to made their reading worthwhile.
Stop after reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. You won’t be disappointed.
_______________________________
Also, I plan for this to be an ongoing series of posts and would like a logo or banner of some kind for the Sequel Protection Service. If you are so inclined to design one and I like it (and I probably will since I currently have nothing), I will publicly recognize you here and be eternally grateful.
A student wrote something that made me cry while reading it aloud. And thanks to the rules of my “Make your teacher cry” contest, my tears were caught on video.
/For the past five years, I have offered a challenge to my fifth grade students:
Write something that makes me cry.
The contest was born from Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog, a book I once read to my students but no longer do because I always get weepy at the end.
There is nothing wrong with crying. There’s nothing wrong with crying in response to something you read. There’s nothing wrong with crying in response to something you have read many times before.
But crying in front of two dozen merciless fifth graders?
Not good.
Rather than reading Love That Dog, I’ve challenged students to write something that will make me cry in the same way Sharon Creech’s story makes me cry.
Here is how the contest works:
If you write a piece for the contest, I will read it aloud to the class while the writer records my reading on video. If I cry or get weepy in any way during the reading, I agree to post the recording of the reading to YouTube with a caption of the student’s choice.
For five years, dozens of students have tried. All have failed.
Until now.
Here is a recording of me, reading Julia’s piece aloud. Unlike previous contestants, Julia decided to write memoir rather than fiction. Clever girl. And in my defense, Julia begins weeping in the middle of my reading, which may or may not have contributed to my tears as well.
Regardless, I got weepy, so Julia wins. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, so she deserves the glory that comes with her victory. Enjoy.
Cat Heaven snuck up on me and made me cry.
/If you’re a cat lover or a book lover or a person who suffers from an ongoing existential crisis or simply a human being, Cat Heaven by Cynthia Rylant is a book that you will love as you possibly weep.
My daughter, Clara, is named after a character in The Van Gogh Café – also by Rylant – and while I love that book for obvious reasons, I love this one so much more.
I picked it up and read it to Clara before bed, not knowing what was hiding between the pages. It snuck up on me, finding a way into my heart by the third page and sending me for an emotional loop.
Rylant also wrote Dog Heaven, but I’m almost afraid to read it. As much as I love my cat, I’ve owned dogs for much of my life, and I’ve buried more than I care to remember, oftentimes as a child as the result of my parents’ atrocious disregard for their safety.
I fear that Dog Heaven may be too much for me.
Cat Heaven is a beautiful book with beautiful images by Rylant herself. Buy it. Make it the gift that you give ever cat lover you know this year.
I won’t be reading my novel to my children. For a damn good reason.
/My son asked me to read my novel, Unexpectedly, Milo, to him.
"Too long," I told him. "No pictures. Let’s find something else."
It also has an awkward and explicit sex scene in it (which I didn't bother to mention), so I think he'll be reading that one on his own some day.
Novelist Jose Saramago quit writing in 1953. Part of me wants to reach back in time and hug him. The other part wants to smack him.
/Nobel Prize winning novelist José Saramago submitted the manuscript of Skylight – his first – to a Lisbon publisher in 1953. Receiving no response, Saramago gave up fiction altogether. His wife says that her husband fell into a "into a painful, indelible silence that lasted decades."
Saramago returned to fiction in 1977 and would eventually write more than 20 novels before his death.
In 1989, having published three novels, he was at work on a fourth when the publisher to which he had sent Skylight wrote to say that they had rediscovered the manuscript and it would be an honor to print it. Saramago never re-read it and said only that "it would not be published in his lifetime."
His wife published the book in 2014 after his death in 2010.
When I first heard this story, I felt great sympathy for Saramago. A publisher ignores his manuscript, not even bothering to decline the work, and an author loses 25 years that could have been spent writing. By all accounts, his first manuscript was excellent, and the book has received rave reviews, so it’s not as if Saramago needed the 25 years for his talent to germinate. He was already brilliant in 1953.
He simply lost a quarter century of work.
That sympathy for Saramago lasted for about ten seconds, then I was reminded of all the authors I know whose first, second, third, fourth, and even fifth manuscripts were turned down by literary agents and publishing houses. Yes, as far as I know, all of these people at least received some kind of response from the entities that received their work, but still, I know authors who struggled for decades with rejections before finally breaking through.
Saramago was ignored once and decided to quit. He took his toys and went home.
My second reaction was decidedly less sympathetic.
I’ve read four of Saramago’s books, including Blindness, which won the Nobel Prize in Literature and caused my wife to weep for a week while reading it. I’m not much of a fan of his work. I think he was an exceptionally talented writer, and I have enjoyed his stories a great deal, but Saramago forgoes the use of chapters and paragraphs almost completely in his books. His sentences can run on for more than a page. He goes pages and pages without the use of a period, preferring instead to use commas. He doesn’t use quotations marks to delineate dialogue. In Blindness, he stopped using proper nouns completely. I can’t stand any of it. I think it demonstrates a complete disregard for the reader and an unnecessary barrier to his stories.
Still, a small part of my wishes I could reach through time and tell him to strengthen his resolve and try again rather than waiting for 25 years before writing again. I want to hug him and tell him that it will be alright.
Another part of my wants to smack him for acting like such a fool and not having the courage to stand up and demand acknowledgement.
Ironically, my friend, who has read Skylight, reports that Saramago was not using long sentences when he wrote it in 1953. Perhaps if he had found success with the book, he would’ve continued to write more conventionally and found a wider audience.
The moment for which every author longs, experienced by my wife.
/My wife was checking out books at the library when a woman stepped up beside her and handed Unexpectedly, Milo to the adjacent librarian.
“That’s my husband’s book,” Elysha said.
“What?” the woman asked.
“What?” the librarian asked.
“That’s my husband’s book,” she repeated. “He wrote it.”
“He did?” the woman said.
“He did?” the librarian said.
I can count on two hands the number of times I have seen one of my novels in the wild, and I have never seen Unexpectedly, Milo in anyone’s hands outside of friends and family. I see it on bookstore and library shelves all the time, but rarely in a reader’s actual hands.
I dream of the day when I step on a plane or walk across a beach or stroll by a row of treadmills and see a handful of people reading my books. For a few select author
The woman returning the book, it turns out, knows me. I attended her book club a few months back to discuss Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, and she has since read my other two books. In fact, the library where the woman borrowed the book places a rating sheet on the back page, giving readers the chance to assign a numerical score and add comments about the book. She had been the first to take the time to fill out my book’s rating sheet.
It was exciting for my wife to see someone plop down one of my books right in front of her, and part of me is glad that my wife was able to experience that “in the wild” moment. I spend much of my life trying desperately to impress her, so a moment like this helps my cause.
Still, books in the wild are a tough thing to come by, and I was a little jealous that she was there to experience that moment and not me. Perhaps with the publication of my next book, set for the fall, my opportunities for seeing my books in the wild will increase substantially.
Fingers crossed.
Mystery behind this photograph solved, though the solution was fairly obvious.
/Yesterday, I wished that I knew the story behind this photograph.
Thanks to a kind reader, today I know. It was a librarian, of course. Those fanatical zealots of books, always looking for a way, however crazy it may seem, to get a story into your hands.
Honestly, who else could it have been?