Advice From A Dude

What’s J Been Reading? [Bounty Day, 23 Jan 12]

I haven’t been posting about everything I read lately.  To be honest, the constant updating was a bit tedious and the feedback lukewarm.

But, every once in a while I find something that is just too good not to pass on.  The short story “What Everyone Remembers” by Rahul Kanakia is one of those stories.

This is a good example of fiction that breaks the “rules of writing” successfully.  For example, the protagonist-narrator is largely passive while the other characters take action around her.  Also, most of the story is dialogue.  Lastly, a lot of the information you need to understand the story is established by telling, not showing.*

Yet, this is a well-written, emotionally engaging story nevertheless.  The language is touching, the character interactions natural despite the strangeness of the main character.  I believe these aspects of story-telling are far more important to literary quality than most of the mechanistic advice we typically read in writing blogs and books.   I encourage writers and readers to take a look!

And, once you’ve read it, take a moment to think about how perfectly the title matches the precise boundaries of the story.

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* This final point might be more a consequence of length than style; if Kanakia were to make a novel of it, he might show more.

What Has J Been Reading? [America Recycles Day, 15 Nov 11]

Okay, you know what?  I’m really starting to like Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp.  Sure, it’s lazy and a bit too clever for its own good, simplistic and superficial, and full of potty humor so lame that it would make a 12-year-old roll his eyes.  But, a good deal of it is inspiredly moronic and/or moronically inspired.  It’s not what I would call “literature” but, as a parody of literature, it’s not half bad.  In some places, it is (if you’ll pardon the cliché) laugh-out-loud funny.

How did I miss the 160th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick yesterday?  Well, Melville House reminds me, and publishes a copy of the remarkable original contract for the book.  “Most striking … is how similar this is to a modern publishing contract, down to the wording in a lot of places.”

Also, there is an intriguing cast-bronze buckle dated to 600 CE, discovered buried on the Seward Peninsula.  Yeah, that’s way up in Alaska.  And, if 600 CE + Alaska + cast-bronze artifact doesn’t make you go “huh?!” then maybe you and I can’t be friends.  (Just kidding, of course we can.)

BEST READS OF THE DAY: A tie between an interview with author-songwriter John Wesley Harding (no, not the guy who “shot a man just for snoring too loud” … that was John Wesley Hardin) and a fantastic letter to the National Post about Philip Marchand’s review of Stephen King‘s 11/22/63.

What Has J Been Reading? [Robert Fulton's Birthday, 14 Nov 11]

Today, I put down the Raymond Chandler for a bit to start reading Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp on the suggestion of an acquaintance who noted similarities with my novella On The Head Of A Pin, which is also about a detective who meets Death.  So far, I find the book funny and clever, perhaps too clever, as if Bukowski is trying very hard to appear clever.  Also, I find it a bit childish and superficial.  I have seen it discussed as a riff on Chandler, but it reads more like what a Middle School boy might think is a funny take-off on detective fiction rather than a grown man’s literary commentary on it.  There are lots of sex and scat jokes, many of them treadworn.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself (I’m only on 22 of a 51-chapter book) but if you really want to understand the difference between Pulp and Chandler, read Pulp and what Andrew Mathis says about Chandler in The King Arthur Myth In Modern American Literature.   Also, I am discovering that Death + detective ≠ same story, although I am certainly better off being aware of Pulp and the comparisons readers will certainly be tempted to draw with Pin. Anyway, enough about that.

Author Elizabeth Spann Craig guest blogs at Writers In The Storm, sharing “15 Tips For Writing A Mystery.”  Reading through them makes me want to scrub On The Head Of A Pin once again.  But, no!  Must stop polishing and submit.  (My last scrub, which was supposed to be a final grammar-spelling check, ending up adding a full grand to the word count, which is exactly the sort of thing that made the last “final grammar-spelling scrub” turn out to be not-the-last.)

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What Has J Been Reading? [Diddy's Birthday, 04 Nov 11]

“I’ll Be Waiting,” a short story in The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler.

A science piece at Reuters about the end of a 520-day isolation experiment intended to simulate the psychological pressures of a manned mission to Mars.  Best line in the story: “A previous 420-day experiment ended in drunken disaster in 2000, when two participants got into a fistfight and a third tried to forcibly kiss a female crew member.” Which one of these two experiments do you think would make a better story?

A story at Jacket Copy about right-wing terrorists taking their cues from a wannabe author’s online manuscript cum “field manual, technical manual, and call to arms.”

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What Has J Been Reading? [Dominican Independence Day, 03 Nov 11]

BEST LINE OF THE DAY (from The Rejectionist’s review of Anonymous): “I find complaining about scholarly inaccuracy in a Roland Emmerich film to be analogous to expressing displeasure that Transformers does not correctly represent the mechanics of the internal combustion engine.”

“Spanish Blood,” a short story from The Simple Art Of Murder anthology by Raymond Chandler.

“Habeas corpus,” an ironically titled essay on the non-necessity of murder in crime fiction, by Lynne Patrick at Hey There’s a Dead Guy In The Living Room.  And, in the same vein, I’m catching up on the shenanigans at Slushpile Hell.

A science piece at the New York Times about how causing senescent cells to self-destruct could prevent many of the symptoms of aging.  Sounds like forced retirement for the microscopic set!

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I’ll Believe NaNoWriMists When They Put Their Reading Glasses Where Their Praise Is

Despite a few persistent voices decrying NaNoWriMo as an insincere stunt that overwhelming results in unreadable dreck, the yearly binge-writing contests inspires armies of cheerleaders who vociferously chant out its virtues … and drown out its critics.

But, I am skeptical of how sincere (or, at least, how well-thought-through) these paeans to the month really are. 

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NaNo No-No

I have been rough on NaNoWriMo in the past, and I have no intention of taking back my previous criticisms. 

However, I will grant one monumental ”fair enough.” 

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Addendum to Stephen King on Tabitha

My last post was a collection of quotes from Stephen King’s On Writing, all about his wife Tabitha and the critical role she plays in his phenomenal success.

I am not sure how, but one of my favorite anecdotes from the book slipped under my radar when I decided to write a piece on it.

It’s odd, actually, because this was the part of the memoir where I felt the sharp pang of jealousy that made me realize that Tabitha was the key insight I was going to take away from the book.

So, in the interest of being thorough, here’s my final excerpt from On Writing: Read more »

Stephen King on Tabitha – Selected quotes from “On Writing : A Memoir of the Craft”

I was hesitant to read Stephen King’s On Writing because I was afraid I would find little in it that was unexpected.  Keep sending out queries, ✔ check.  Don’t use this or that part of speech except when it works, ✔ check.  Read a lot, ✔ check.  Write a lot, ✔ check.

But, I did finally relent, and one key theme in the memoir struck me as more insightful than anything I had read about writing for years.  In fact, I think it merits a book of its own.  I am talking about the critical influence of people other than the writer in the success of that writer. For King, the most important other-than-the-writer person is his wife Tabitha.

No matter how important individual determination might be, for a social creature like Homo sapiens there is no such thing as individual success.  All success is cooperative.  There would be no Stephen King (as we know him) if there were no Tabitha King.

So, today I want to share what I feel are the most revealing and inspiring quotes on Tabitha from On Writing. Read more »

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