Kibble in Your Bowl

(NOTE: The following is true unless your definition of “true” includes fact and honest-to-goodness real stuff. Embellishment is part of the writing and publishing tradition. Without these little excursions, life would be a series of dental appointments, legal complaints, and leafy greens. Better to have fun now while no one is looking. Growing up is put off indefinitely.)


Women’s Wear Daily for January 22, 2007

BERKELEY, CA: Sunday night in this quaint college town is usually sedate. Fraternity brothers shine their saddle shoes and sorority sisters rinse dainty underthings in anticipation of the next day’s classes taught by avuncular professors who chuckle at the occasional antic. Learning and pleasure are equally pursued under the redwood trees of Northern California. Many important people have come from this scholarly environment, like Ben Affleck, who is busy directing his first movie several hundred miles south in Hollywood.

Clad in a black Italian wool Claiborne jacket and blue-striped Hathaway shirt, Sal Glynn tossed his carelessly worn off-white US Wings silk scarf over his shoulder and seduced readers at the venerable Black Oak Books with candlelight-and-wine tales of publishing. Many of those attending were also dressed in their finery, ranging from organic cotton in this season’s liveliest colors to the latest in hemp skirts and shirts. Eyewear was also well represented: the eyes had “it” made by Dior, Brooks Brothers, and Gucci.

Bookman extraordinaire Lewis Klausner favored a dove gray Ralph Lauren spread-collar shirt worn dangerously casual sans necktie. His introduction invoked the names of Homer, Virgil, and Dante before handing the podium over to Sal. With nary a squeak to be heard from the twenty-five rapt listeners, Sal teetered in white Reebok running shoes and gave a precise accounting of the thrills awaiting new writers in the world of publishing. The too-short event ended by Sal signing copies of his newest book, THE DOG WALKED IN THE PUDDLE: AN OUT-OF-TOWN GUY WRITES WHAT HE WANTS TO PUBLISH.

We were lucky enough to be invited to the après reading get-together at Beckett’s Irish Pub & Restaurant on Shattuck Avenue. Over a delightful plate of beer batter prawns and across from a stunning portrait of Bono, Sal added a few more bits of salacious gossip about the current state of publishing. Books have much more excitement than we had previously thought and many are written with the express intention of being read. Imagine, words on a page strung together in sentences and divided into chapters! We melt at the thought.

Personal manger Mr. Detroit kept the spotlight on Sal by wearing a subdued Armani leather jacket over a Redwings jersey. When asked how the event compared to others, the Michigan native said, “Negotiations were tense. Sal demanded the evening closed to anyone wearing a tie-dye tee shirt and Black Oak prides itself on being egalitarian. Being at a podium is hard work, and staring out at a mass of colors not occurring in nature throws him off his stride. Thankfully, we came to an agreement at the last moment.”


Don’t forget the workshop in February. Sign up now.

WRITING WORKSHOP AND BOOK SIGNING
Sunday, February 4 at 2:00 pm
BOOK PASSAGE CORTE MADERA
51 Tamal Vista Boulevard
Corte Madera, CA 94925
(415) 927-0960


Okay, you need more than an afternoon. Get yourself down, up, or over to Big Sur for the weekend:

FOURTH ANNUAL BIG SUR FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP
March 9–11, 2007, 2 pm Friday to 2 pm Sunday
BIG SUR LODGE IN PFEIFFER STATE PARK
Henry Miller Library
Highway One
Big Sur, CA 93920
(831) 667-2574
www.henrymiller.org


The San Francisco/Peninsula Writers meets on the third Saturday of each month. On April 21, they will host “Are You Ready Yet? Drafting Toward Perfection,” with me as the guest speaker. Here’s the description: “How do you know when your manuscript is ready, or if you should call in a freelance editor for help? Writer and book midwife Sal Glynn will talk about the need for successive drafts, what to look for in each round of revision, and how to make room for the reader. He will also cover how to make research inform a story instead of buried under detail, and the use and abuse of adjectives.”

This informative and fun-filled event will be held from 10am to noon at:
Hobee’s Restaurant
1101 Shoreway Road
Belmont (near Ralston Avenue and Hwy 101)

Cost (includes a continental breakfast):
$15 for California Writers Club members
$18 for non-members
Reservations in advance are advised. Call the club hotline (650) 615-8331 or send an E-mail to reservations chairman, George Jansen, at reservations@sfpeninsulawriters.com

Mail your check to the chairman, or pay at the door.
CWC Reservations
657 Warwick Place
Hayward, CA 94542


NEXT: Muzzle Velocity

The Weather Outside is Frightful

(NOTE: The wrappings have been recycled, Mr. Detroit is in rehab recovering from a fruitcake addiction, and the tree has lost the last of its needles in the carpet. Time to get back to work. Going into the spring season means workshops and conferences. Writers like invitations to both for the free food, even lodging on occasion. A writer not having to eat his own cooking is a happy writer. Bon Appétit!)

Readings at bookstores can be fun for the reader and bookseller, and worry the writer used to banging at the keyboard in private. The writer soon finds out they should have followed the advice of their publisher and read every page aloud before sending in the final manuscript. Sentences looking good on the page sound terrible spoken from a podium. Before the event, the writer should read the excerpt into a tape recorder and make adjustments to fix any screw-ups. This also means the writer must listen to their own voice. No one outside of Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson have the vocal quality necessary for repeated listening.

The audience shuffles in. Five or fifty, the people in the chairs are an audience. Give me five loudmouths who will spread the word about the book any day over fifty shy folks who stay off the Internet and telephone. Fifty loudmouths are even better, but I try not to push my luck. (One hundred loudmouths will mean early retirement on royalties to a country with sunshine all year round.) The audience is curious and expectant, ready to catch whatever the writer decides to toss. Give them more than you have by asking and answering questions. Don’t know the answer? Tell the truth. Embarrassment is a temporary condition.

Minutes into the reading, the writer is aware of the dreaded fourth wall. This nineteenth-century theatrical term means the separation of audience from performer by the proscenium arch. Comedian Lenny Bruce referred to the complacent audience as “an oil painting.” (He’s dead, by the way.) A successful reading engages the audience and the writer is responsible to make sure this happens. A favorite bit of trickery is having a ringer in the seats who shouts out questions, some even rational depending on the ringer. Still the audience may be stiff by choice. The writer is consoled in the knowledge there are other readings in other bookstores.

Doing the book tour is part of a writer’s job, unless you are Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood. She is currently touting the LongPen after too many years of having to sign books for the unwashed readers who have paid for her home. The device is a remote-controlled pen and the writer scribbles on an electronic pad while talking through a video linkup. Metal arms work the pen until a dedication and signature fill the title page. Wow. No more shaking hands, airplane trips, and hotel rooms. Atwood does her signings from the comfort of her kitchen. Bloomsbury and Virago publishers have invested in the device, demonstrated with more than a few technical glitches at the London Book Fair. As a reader, I hope this fails. As a writer, ditto.

I will be talking live and in person about THE DOG WALKED THE STREET: AN OUTSPOKEN GUIDE FOR WRITERS WHO WANT TO PUBLISH at Black Oak Books in Berkeley, Sunday, January 21 at 7:30 pm. To heck with Atwood, I’m bringing a Lamy steel-nib fountain pen to scratch words on pages. Here’s the information:

Sunday, January 21 at 7:30 pm
BLACK OAK BOOKS
1491 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94709
(510) 486-0698

Shouts out to the kind and gentle folk who bought THE DOG for holiday gift-giving. Anyone who tossed Martha Alderson’s BLOCKBUSTER PLOTS PURE & SIMPLE and Buck Peterson’s CLASSIC CHRISTMAS SONGS PERFORMED BY BUCK’S DUCKS AND THE BIG BABE LAKE BRASS AND BONG ENSEMBLE into the stockings hung by the chimney with care also get special thanks.

Remember these other cool dates:

WRITING WORKSHOP AND BOOK SIGNING
Sunday, February 4 at 2:00 pm
BOOK PASSAGE CORTE MADERA
51 Tamal Vista Boulevard
Corte Madera, CA 94925
(415) 927-0960

FOURTH ANNUAL BIG SUR FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP
March 9–11, 2007, 2 pm Friday to 2 pm Sunday
BIG SUR LODGE IN PFEIFFER STATE PARK
Henry Miller Library
Highway One
Big Sur, CA 93920
(831) 667-2574
www.henrymiller.org

NEXT: Kibble in Your Bowl