This is the first postcard I ever enhanced. I added the ship and the corgi. The ship’s wake turned out well, and I somehow managed to line it up so that the hull seems to reflect off the water. The card is from the 1930s. I attacked it in the 1990s.
As I prepare for yet another awesome vacation, I am reminded of all the bad writing advice that exists in the world, some of it provided by me. This stands out: “Bring your book on vacation with you.” This tidbit comes from Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer’s Block by Jane Anne Straw (2003).
After extensive testing, some of it chronicled in this space, I can attest that this advice is nuts. You are far better off bringing your flip-flops.
However, if you’ve established a daily or almost daily writing practice, there’s no reason to abandon this on your vacation. You can always sneak away for 15 or 30 minutes with your laptop or tablet or pad of paper or Olivetti portable typewriter. I like the final page of the benefits statements I receive from my health insurer, the page that’s printed with THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK.
Describe your day or the inside of your head. Try out openings or a big head-butting scene. It’s all practice and if you never keep any of it, you will eventually write something based on your beach-blanket or poolside scribbles. Good luck. Aloha.
Another find from the library book sale, and another brick in the wall of fiction. Cavalcade of the North, published in 1955, is still an impressive-looking tome. I only just winched it off the bed of a truck, so I can’t tell if I will be as surprised and delighted as I was when I read A Treasury of Short Storiesfrom the same decade.
However, I have owned this book long enough to have uncovered some warning signs.
There are only two women in the lineup.
There are zero indigenous writers.
French Canada has been cordoned off in its own 19-page ghetto (leaving 621 pages French-free).
The French stuff was written by Thomas B. Costain, who was a best-selling author but not in any way French.
Costain begins his introduction with “I have been convinced that few readers pay much attention to the introductions prepared for volumes of this character” before plowing on for 10,000 words that I know I won’t read.
(I would’ve written, “Here’s why you should read this introduction,” but it’s easy to play the Monday-morning quarterback. It’s hard to write a best-seller.)
I will, as always, report back. If there’s one thing that makes me cheerful, it’s a long book of short fiction.
I found the Chicago Manual of Style 16th Edition at the library book sale. It was published in 2010; it was the first edition of Chicago to go online. They are up to the 18th edition now. It is pristine and built like a linebacker, a 1,026-page, vacuum-packed guide to writing English words, sentences, and paragraphs that make sense, make your argument, and make angels sing.
Chicago was my brother…my captain…my king when I was a copy editor. I used to hum “I will survive” while paging through it. These days, I can live without Chicago. I write, someone else edits. And frankly, although searching a 101-page paper index is charming, it is infinitely faster to search online.
I opened Chicago 16 (not the album by the stupid band) to find the definition of the comma splice. Comma splices run free in Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, The Things We Never Say. I am impressed by this book, but not by the copy-editing.
“Comma splice” was not included in Chicago 16’s index. I finally found what I wanted under “sentences, run-on.” If I subscribed to Chicago, I could’ve found it online in their searchable version. I could also have found it in seconds at grammareer.com or any other free grammar resource.
Oh well. It was the last day of the library sale and they were charging $5 per bag of books just to get rid of them. I couldn’t resist.
Our tomato plants are gone, but Lucky (in pursuit) and Tango (spinning out) rock on.
She was launched in 1912 as the German liner Imperator. She had some teething troubles, and was nicknamed the Limperator. After spending World War I heroically tied to a pier, she was seized by the victorious Allies. The U.S. used the ship to transport troops home from Europe. In 1919, she was handed over to the British government, who handed her off to the Cunard Line. Her first Cunard Line captain was Arthur Rostron, who captained the Carpathia when that ship rescued 700 survivors from the Titanic.
The Titanic, of course, was the definition of teething troubles.
Cunard merged with White Star in 1934, and the merged company retired the Berengaria in 1938, so there’s the date range for this postcard. Berengaria ran aground several times, and if you had her wiring in your house you’d keep a fire extinguisher in every room, but she also came to the aid of a foundering liner in the middle of the Atlantic.
I inherited the rubber stamps from my friend Jack, and he received them as unmounted rubber images, so I can’t tell you the manufacturer. Probably a company that went out of business in the 1990s.
Girl smashes chess barrier
In honor of today’s female theme, I am happy to announce that Bodhana Sivanandan, an 11-year-old from England, just became the world’s youngest Woman Grandmaster in history. She played first board for the English team at the Women’s Olympiad in Samarkand. In her 10 games she was defeated once, by the 33-year-old WGM Deysi Cori of Peru.
As a chess player, I am far above average. But if I were to play 100 games against Ms. Sivanandan, I might manage a draw or two. I might win a game if she got bored or wanted to watch Stranger Things or The Baby-Sitters Club.
Weird girls unite
Chess-playing girls are not weird. But there is today a literary trend called “weird girl lit.” “Weird girl lit” is a reader’s label, says agent Danielle Bukowski. “No deals in Publishers Marketplace have ever been announced with the phrase ‘weird girl lit.’ ”
Instead, publishers announce weird-girl books “for fans of” Ottessa Moshfegh, Mona Awad, Melissa Broder, and Jen Beagin, even though these authors did not choose this label. Just guessing here, but I’ll bet Ottessa, Mona, Melissa, and Jen call them “books.”
Bukowski: “Everyone generally understands a weird girl book to be about a young woman who can’t cope with modern life and makes a weird choice to try to evade conventional expectations.”
This sub-sub-subgenre has gained so much steam that it’s also gained a backlash. Bukowski recommends Jesca Dawn’s TikTok series “Weird Girl Lit that doesn’t center white women.”
When I told Deborah about this, she said it sounded like a High Times headline: WEIRD GIRL, LIT.
Gone girl
Berengaria (1165–1230) was a medieval English queen. She might have played chess, though if she had there wouldn’t have been a queen on the board. She might have written weird-girl lit. Who else in that era could read and write except monks and royals? She might even have taken an ocean voyage, as her husband, Richard, took her with him on the Third Crusade. He must have thought she was weird because he dropped her off in France.
I worked with a reporter who always filed his copy on time. He was done. He was proud of being done. And on time. Except he had to check one last fact. He had to land one last quote. He just had to write a new lede or a more satisfying ending.
Editor: So you aren’t done.
Reporter: Oh no, I’m done. Except for one more thing.
This man suffered from perfectionism. This is surprising, because he worked for a newspaper and his life was deadlines. The surest way to defeat perfectionism is to face a deadline.
Where do you go to get a deadline?
If you’re a writer, you will have to create your own deadline. For example: I will finish the second draft of my novel by Dec. 31.
Or you can meet an editor’s deadline. There’s always a contest somewhere, or a special issue, or an editorial call for something only you can write.
Of course, unless you’re working for an employer where they have the power to fire your procrastinating ass, there is no penalty for missing your deadline. The coffee shop to which I sometimes flee will put coffee in front of me in January if I’m still working on my novel. This is a mind game, and the game is being played in your mind.
So let’s win it.
I recommend that you pick a realistic date to work toward. And when that date arrives, your story or novel or creative nonfiction hybrid is done. If you have to check one last fact, land one last quote, or rewrite every fucking thing, then your story isn’t done. It may never be done, because you will never be perfect.
Unless you are writing solely for an audience of one (you), it is now time to submit what you wrote to the test of the market.
Always remember Richie and Carl, the school board administrators in Community. After reviewing a new commercial for their pathetic school, Carl says with satisfaction, “It’s better than good. It’s good enough.”
Make your work as good as you can and then shove it out the door. Move on to your next idea, your next project, your next obsession. If an editor wants some improvements, that editor will ask for them. They are not shy.
The suspense and thriller writer Dean R. Koontz once said that he rewrites every page dozens of times before moving to the next page. I am not going to argue with Koontz, who has published more than 100 books while I am struggling with up to one (1) book. Perfectionism works for him. But for the rest of us…frankly, we don’t have that kind of time. We have a deadline.
Decades ago, at the highest levels of tournament chess, after six or more hours of exhausting play, it was time to adjourn. The master with the turn in hand wrote his move on a piece of paper, sealed it in an envelope, and handed it to the all-powerful arbiter.
The master’s seconds would spend the night working on all possible variations stemming from the sealed move. The opponent’s seconds would try to guess the move in the envelope and work out a defense or a counterattack. The two players would sleep, unless the guy who sealed the move realized he had screwed up. Then it was the sacred job of his seconds to prevent him from jumping out a window.
The next day, the arbiter would open the envelope and the master would make the move he had written down the day before. Many a game was adjourned two or three times. Chess, like the Cold War, went on forever.
None of this mishegoss happens anymore. Today, if your game goes into extra innings, there are rules to guarantee that you will finish the game on the day you started the game.
In writing, procrastination is something like adjournment. You get lost in the writing and suddenly realize you have to stop. Your boss insists you come to work, your kids insist on being fed, your partner insists that you go to therapy together. Or the clock was sucked into a time warp and it’s suddenly 2 a.m. You hit SAVE or cap your pen or throw something over the typewriter to keep the dust or the cat off.
What have you written? Have you written anything? Have you been staring? At a sheet of paper, a bird in flight, the wall in front of you?
Been there.
The only thing I don’t have in procrastination that the masters had in adjournment is my team of trusty seconds. If only Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, and F. Scott Fitzgerald could huddle around my manuscript with their felt-tip markers, drinking too much coffee while recalculating my plot and character arcs.
“Get some sleep,” Emily says to me. “You must start early—and take your dogs.”
Procrastination, in my experience, is no big deal. It’s your brain working behind the scenes, under the hood, beyond the horizon, above the clouds. Your brain needs more time. When your brain is ready, your brain will write. You’ll find a god in every golden cloister.
My revision of my novel slowed this past week as it dawned on me just how much rewriting will be involved in my revision. I am not simply re-imagining my original vision; I am writing thousands of words to create the new vision. It sounds tiring. It is tiring. It’s supposed to be.
I became aware of myself as a writer at the age of 11, in Mr. Gray’s sixth-grade English class. Every Friday was Composition Day. It was our challenge to write something there at our desks, on our ruled paper, and read it before the class. Some Fridays, we had an assignment, or what today would be called a prompt. On other Fridays, we were free to write whatever we wanted.
On those Fridays in that long-ago year I discovered three things: I could write under pressure to meet a deadline. I had zero stage fright. And my fellow sixth-graders enjoyed hearing what I had written and often broke into applause.
What did I write back then? I wish I had kept those smudged pages. I can still visualize what they looked like, just as I can see certain positions I found myself in on the chess board no matter how much time passes. I wrote whatever the day’s assignment required, and when I had no one to answer to but myself I wrote about my family. They were always good for a laugh, especially if I added Martians, robots, and outfielders.
In those days, the writers I wanted to be were the writers I read: Ray Bradbury, Andre Norton, C.S. Forester, and whoever wrote the boys’ baseball books starring such stalwart sluggers as Ace Atkins. If I had started writing at the age of 6, they might have been Crockett Johnson (Harold and the Purple Crayon) and Robert McCloskey (Make Way for Ducklings). As I grew up and the conviction I wanted to write grew stronger, I imagined myself writing like Thomas Wolfe, Charles Dickens, and W. Somerset Maugham. And then Margie Percy, John Updike, Franz Kafka, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
When Michael Cunningham sits down to write his next novel, he has a vision of what the novel will be: “vast and revelatory and awe-inspiring. It’s a cathedral made of fire.” But:
Even if the book in question turns our fairly well, it’s never the book you’d hoped to write. It’s smaller than the book you’d hoped to write. It’s an aggregation of sentences. It doesn’t remotely resemble a cathedral made of fire. It feels, in short, like an insufficient translation of a mythical work.
Cunningham calls this “one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction.” Another is the knowledge that you’ll never be Ursula K. Le Guin or even Crockett Johnson. Though I believe I would’ve done a creditable job with baby ducks trying to cross a damn road.
Cunningham, in Unsayable: A Life in Writing, which is an autobiography with writing advice or a writing manual with some memoir, knows exactly what I’m trying to say:
Writing is difficult enough without adding the imperative to evolve into the writer you wish you were.
To all of you out there who are writing here in my end-of-the-year writing challenge (I should’ve thought of a better name for this), keep writing. Be kind to yourselves. And read Unsayable, which was just published. The author provides the encouragement we all need…plus drag queens and ghost stories. I would like to have seen Thomas Wolfe try that.
Thank you, Franklin A. Gray, English teacher extraordinaire. When I read his obituary, I discovered that he had also been a radio announcer under the name “The Shadow.” Rest in power.
But first, our dog Tango, a noted corgi. Early this evening, on the deserted (I thought) campus of Western Washington University, she surprised a six-point whitetail deer and chased it for a quarter of a mile. Spoiler alert: The deer escaped.
Tango’s behavior taught me never to let her off the leash on campus again. But it also, in a weird way, reminded me of my Dad and how we both loved office supplies. When I was in high school and we found out that a local “stationery store” was having a going-out-of-business sale, we RAN to the car. We chased bargains, not ruminants.
Most office-supply stores today belong to a chain and everyone sells the same thing, but with different packaging and different celebrity endorsers. The last time a stationery store in my area expired, it was 20 years ago, we lived in Portland, Oregon, and the treasure I came home with was the colorful stickers we stuck on floppy disks in the 1980s.
Before Dad went to that great office-supply ammunition dump in the sky, he gave me all of the unopened boxes of pencils he had accumulated since he came home from World War II. I ended up donating many to an elementary school; a teacher there told me that his third- and fourth-graders chewed right through them. I sold other pencils on eBay. I still have enough to last me my lifetime.
There’s something about pencils, and their fragrance, that makes you happy. Like skipping stones. You can’t skip a stone and not be happy. You can’t open a box of pencils and not feel happy looking at all that unsharpened potential.
Two writers who have meant a lot to me, Thomas Wolfe and John Updike, wrote with pencils.
Wolfe, who was six and a half feet tall, used the top of a refrigerator as his desk. His preferred tool was a pencil almost as thick as a crayon. He scrawled 20 or 25 words on a page, then swept the page off the fridge and started on the next.
Updike, who liked to sit in a chair, wrote Couples and three of the four Rabbit books with a pencil.
Am I going to write the next draft of my novel with a pencil? How about hell no? I have about the same chance of finishing such a thing as I have of catching a deer.
I didn’t write this post with a pencil, either, but I did use a pencil (a Wolkins “Debut”) to write my to-do list today. And I’m now using a pencil (a red PMC Tailoring Pencil No. 249, proudly made in the U.S.A.) to cross out BLOG.
“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.” (G.K. Chesterton)
I needed a bench to cut wood using my handsaw. I wanted something low enough that I could hold the material in place with my foot but not so low that the tip of my saw would strike the floor of the garage. I mocked up this invention with cardboard, then bought some scrap wood at The RE Store, our local, one-stop, scrap-wood emporium.
Then I was sidetracked by other things—that is, life.
One day I decided I needed a bench to cut wood using my handsaw. While thinking this over in our garage, I spotted a rectangle of plywood that was the exact size I wanted for this project. I had already measured the damn thing and bought the wood. Yes, the Enterprise was once again stuck in a time loop.
Before I could drink enough coffee to gear up for this project, my wife and I went to an estate sale where I discovered a wooden, slatted box from a wine distributor. It was sturdy and it was the approximate dimensions of the bench I had designed in my head. I turned it upside down and borrowed a bubble level that was on sale. The box didn’t wobble and the bottom was exactly level. I bought it. My project was done!
Back around Memorial Day, I decided to cut my novel up with a handsaw. In other words, I required a Big Think. When I picked the book up again last week, I had done my thinking, but I had forgotten which files I was using, and the file names I had concocted in May and June were somewhat opaque here in September. I can’t say if I was back in a time loop or if my brain required a defrag and disc clean-up, but this predicament forced me to engage with each file and understand them all over again. I’ll call that a win.
So my first week of the end-of-the-year writing challenge (I should’ve thought of a better name for this) turned out to be mostly some frantic reorganizing, but by the end of the week, I was writing. A slow start is still a start, and as Joey “The Lips” Fagan proclaimed in The Commitments, “I believe in starts.” He wasn’t talking about tomato plants, either.
Good luck to you as we lurch into Week 2!
Writing tip of the day
If one of your characters is working in a profession you know little about, listen to some podcasts. Podcasts are an insanely proliferating species. If two people are in the same career, you can be certain that one of them has begun a podcast about it and asked the other to make a guest appearance. This is the fastest way for you to gain this information.
Look over their episodes and search for titles such as “How to Be a Success in Your First 90 Days” or “Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid.”
Consumer warning: Most podcasters are not trained broadcasters. They speak too slowly, they say um, you know, and like like like. They’ll wander off the point and waste time. Also, shows about professions often degenerate into festivals of self-congratulation or tales of how we did things in the old days. That’s why God invented the Skip function. Use it!
