ANY HERRING IS RED: Chewing Slippers for Success

(NOTE: You shed your skin/You’re one of them/That somber fool/Escape while you can/Escape while you can/You’re coming out of your shell/You’ve got a beautiful view/You’re gonna shake it off/This is the place/That you were born/It’s making a comeback/Since you’ve been gone)

An occasional reader sends a list of interesting questions, though unfortunately interlarded with personal slurs. As with any question, the answer is not what you want to hear. “This quoting from the canon has got to stop. A bunch of old, dead, white men who never wrote an email or held a smart phone say nothing about modern life and modern problems. Give me examples from new books. And speaking of new books, the ones I’ve been reading make me angry. I like genre fiction, you know, mysteries and thrillers and fantasy and romance, stuff that isn’t hoity-toity and you have to read with a pinkie sticking out, except I see a trend of fouling the plots with red herrings. You want to write about something interesting, write about the herring.”

PAST TRANSGRESSIONS

Guilty as charged on the first statement. The reason to quote from canon is these books have outlasted the wrinkled effects of time and are common to readers pulled through general education. To make a point by quoting an obscure book by an obscure author creates a wall between the reader and the writer’s erudition.

Canon means the books that contributed to the growth of a specific culture. Western canon begins in Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian before it gets around to English. What about the eastern canon, literature of China, Japan, Korea, Africa, India, Indonesia, and every country between? These are just as important and many times tell better stories.

At the beginning of the twentieth century it was possible to read every book ever printed, as long as the presses stopped when you started to turn pages. The task took a lifetime but could be done. Today there are too many books, not counting the self-published, and the writer has to choose a foundation they can build on for his or her own work. This means the canon. Think of it as a point of departure, a place to begin and continue from. Every writer creates a private canon of the books that influenced them the most and where they return for rejuvenation. This is just as valid as the Harvard Classics, more so on account of it remains open to expansion.

THE HERRING IS RED

Why is British food so terrible? Sausages that have to be fried long enough to drop half their weight in fat (three days), canned beans, anything with Spam, Yorkshire pudding, bread and dripping, and the certain death of trifle show an anger at what is supposed to sustain them. Add the kipper to the list of questionable edibles, a smoked herring with red interior and tasty only to those who enjoy tormenting sea life.

The “red herring” in fiction, especially genre fiction, means misdirection from the real culprit to create a false sense of suspense where there is none. One version of its origin is a kipper was used to throw hunting dogs off the scent of a rapidly receding rabbit. Many nineteenth century hunters claimed the practice was never done, but they also went after foxes so the sources are unreliable.

Agatha Christie was inordinately fond of the red herring, especially in And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express: one character is described as the evil-doer until near the end of the book when a missing clue shows the true evil-doer. The use of this plot device breaks the contract between writer and reader: the writer promises to be honest in his or her portrayal of persons and events, and the reader promises to join with the writer in finding the responsible scoundrel. An honest writer never uses a red herring to tell a story, or has kippers for breakfast or at any time. Leave them for the dogs.

YEAR-END SALE

Ever since the end of November you have been in and out of department stores, malls, and boutiques shopping for the right gift for Aunt Bessie, Uncle Tim, bratty nieces who deserve nothing but coal, a co-worker who owes you money, and sisters and brothers that save the ribbons for next year’s packages and think no one will notice. Make one last trip to your favorite local independent bookstore before hibernation and grab a copy of The Dog Walked Down the Street: An Outspoken Guide for Writers Who Want to Publish (Cypress House, $13.95) as a personal treat. You deserve every bit of friendly advice on its fresh off-white pages waiting to be thumbed. Learn about writing and publishing while sitting close to the fireplace with a hot toddy balanced on the chair arm. Skip merrily to www.indiebound.com for the closest independent bookstore so you can walk over and not worry about parking, unless it’s raining or snowing. Halfway is almost there.

NEXT: Romping with Dachshunds

PLOTTING THE NARRATIVE: Reindeer in the Dog House

(NOTE: Well, you see them folks all dressed so fine/Dancing, drinking champagne and wine/They’d pinch your pockets now if they could/’Cause they ain’t doing nothing but feelin’ good/Feelin’ good, feelin’ good/All the money in the world is spent on feelin’ good)

A certain publisher’s sales representative touted a new novel for fall by saying, “It’s plot-driven, better than slow narrative.” The rep and novel remain nameless out of professional courtesy, and not having enough obscenities to counter such a dumb statement. What makes a novel worth reading or writing is the narrative, the interior lives of the characters. Plot is important, the action that moves the novel forward, but the narrative stays with the reader long after the book is closed and shelved properly. Ever sit through a bad film adaptation of a favorite book? This is on account of being seduced by the original narrative. You wanted to see if the characters matched your imagination, and, well, at least the filmmakers tried.

The plot-driven novel is seen as a quick and easy sell, but those books rarely stay around after their first year of publication while the narrative joins literate culture, and with a little luck, enjoys a succession of reprints.

VIEWS OF A LEPIDOPTERIST

Vladimir Nabokov wrote, “The term ‘narrative’ is often confused with the term ‘plot,’ but they’re not the same thing. If I tell you that the king died, and then the queen died, that’s not narrative; that’s plot. But, if I tell you that the king died, and then the queen died of a broken heart, that’s narrative.” Of the two, one sticks with the reader while the other slides down the slick walls of memory. The reader remembers Anna Karenina, not Anna Karenina; Humbert Humbert, not Lolita; Emma Bovary, not Madame Bovary; and Huckleberry Finn, not Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Narrative is about emotional connection and plot is not.

STONE PLOTS

Winner of the National Book Award for Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone now reaches for the plot-driven novel with Death of the Black-Haired Girl. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, his publisher says this makes him “more straightforward and accessible.” But at what cost? Narratives take longer to write, and, on occasion, Stone has stretched this to seventeen years between books. This is not how to make a living at the writer’s trade, yet the care and attention has given readers such works as Outerbridge Reach and Damascus Gate.

LOYAL READER TAKES OFF

One reader of Stone’s novels since his first, A Hall of Mirrors, had a sales job that called for lots of highway driving. He stopped at a local bookstore en route to a meeting and purchased a copy of A Flag for Sunrise the day of its release. He canceled the meeting after reading the flap copy and rented a motel room. For two days, he stumbled along with anthropologist Frank Holliwell in the CIA-infested Central American country of Tecan. This is the power of narrative. He ate out of the candy machine next to the pool (Beer Nuts and Skittles mostly) and read, pausing only for a brief walk or watch the nightly news at 11 o’clock. He still regards those days as his best as a reader, even though he lost the job due to dereliction of duty or some such nonsense.

GET NOW OR GET DOWN

“Gosh darn, where can I learn about writing real good and how publishing works?” asks a single parent with too many children and not enough spousal support. The answer is same for everyone, regardless of age, religious affiliation, gender, or planet of origin: it’s the swinging and ringing and swaying The Dog Walked Down the Street: An Outspoken Guide for Writers Who Want to Publish (Cypress House, $13.95). What a thrill to finally have your questions answered in such an accessible format, and less expensive than an online study course. Log on to www.indiebound.com for immediate assistance in finding the closest independent bookstore. If you already know where it is, go before the crowd takes the last copy and you have to drive across town in holiday traffic. A word to the wise is repetitious.

NEXT: Chewing Slippers for Success

WRITING GROUP OR NOT: Combing Out the Ticks

(NOTE: Do whatever steps you want, if/You have cleared them with the Pontiff./Everybody say his own/Kyrie eleison,/Doin’ the Vatican Rag./Get in line in that processional,/Step into that small confessional,/There, the guy who’s got religion’ll/Tell you if your sin’s original./If it is, try playing it safer,/Drink the wine and chew the wafer,/Two, four, six, eight,/Time to transubstantiate!)

Writing is the loneliest craft on account of it’s hard to say “profession” when most writers barely earn $20,000 a year. The work is done in the basement or garage or unused backroom next to the camping gear used only once and the flies were too much of a bother to go out again. What many new and veteran writers complain about is the hours spent in search of the perfect sentence making the perfect story start breathing. Unless the writer is a career sociopath, he or she never knows for sure they are doing the right thing. They reach out for the company of other writers in the social circle known as the writers’ group.

GET TOGETHER

Writers’ groups are four to six people who support and critique each others’ work. They are only helpful when all the members are interested in the same kind of writing, whether fiction (literary or genre), nonfiction, poetry, or prose. Each is a unique discipline and a group will function best when it concentrates on only one. Cross-discipline groups suffer from confusion. Imagine a fantasy novelist trying to talk sense to an historian while the poet struggles through pages of blank verse. Since each is involved with communicating ideas through words, they should have parallel concerns. Not so. Now imagine a blender filled with car parts, starfish, and Ms. Turner’s seventh grade science class. Do you want to hit “frappe” on such a concatenation?

Groups fail when they attempt to accommodate everyone instead of being focused on the work. Inclusivity makes most writers stop before they start. One kind of writing is not better than the other, only different, and appeals to different readers.

NICE AND NOT SO NICE CRITIQUES

Groups meet once a week at homes, cafes, and coffee shops, where they are always nice to whoever will have them. The members make commitments to bring new and rewritten chapters or pieces, and some e-mail manuscripts several days in advance so others will have time to consider the works presented. Hard copies are brought and handed out, and then the writer reads his or her piece. Discussions over the quality and success of the work start about here.

The group must be a safe place without bickering or egotism, and allows real critiques to flourish. This means pointing out the strengths in a piece of writing as well as any weaknesses. A group that consistently trades in accolades and laurels is useless. Yes, a writer wants to know what he or she is doing right, but more importantly, what they are doing wrong. The focus for every member is making the writing better. Groups also have a certain amount of time they are effective. Once the energy flags in one group, disband and find another.

GROUP TAUGHT

Online is the best place to start your search for a writers’ group to suit your needs. Many online groups are available but the best is still the group that meets for actual, real live, social contact. Lying about why you haven’t done your promised round of revisions is real hard in person, and too easy by e-mail. Many groups operate of public libraries, making this one of the few instances of your tax dollars being used for something worthwhile. Take advantage while you can.

ANOTHER GOOD REASON

“That hair enlivened Marcia’s fingers, the crevices where they met her palms, the palms themselves. Her inner wrists shivered at the nearness of the silky warmth. Mesmerizing, how the classroom’s fluorescent bent one way on a curl’s crest and another in its hollow, while a single hair, fallen, made a sleek red thread on a sleeve.” This excerpt from the title story of red girl rat boy by Cynthia Flood (Biblioasis, 2013) is the best argument for buying a copy at your local independent bookstore or the publisher’s web site, www.biblioasis.com

CHANCE AT THE COUNTER

The advertising industry says an ad must be seen three times before a prospective consumer takes notice. Pish posh, we say. Consider this a billboard: “The award-winning The Dog Walked Down the Street: An Outspoken Guide for Writers Who Want to Publish (Cypress House, $13.95) is available right now for writers and the readers. Dandy thoughts, directions, and curses about the writing of books are waiting for your ready hand and eye. Buy now, buy often.” The wonderful folks at www.indiebound.com will direct you to the nearest independent bookstore, where happy-go-lucky shopkeepers will be glad to take your cash or plastic. It’s never too late when you leave early.

NEXT: Reindeer in the Dog House

HOT FOR A QUOTE: A Comfy Kennel at Last

(NOTE: Wheelchairs, they was locked arm in arm/Paired off pacemakers with matchin’ alarms/Gives us jus’ one more chance/To spin one more yarn/And you know that you’re over the hill/When your mind makes a promise that your body can’t fill/Doin’ the old folks boogie/And boogie we will/‘Cause to us the thought’s as good as a thrill)

Epigraphs are quotes that appear in the opening pages of a book, and at the beginning of each chapter. These quotes from other sources prepare the reader for whatever journey they are about to take. An epigraph can be witty, dour, out-right strange, or just informative, much like they were in their original situation. Most often used in nonfiction, epigraphs rarely occur in fiction.

BURN THE BARTLETT’S

Out in the marketplace are too many quotation books, the most well known being Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. The famous litter its pages saying stuff about stuff that comes in handy when you can’t think of what to say. Someone always said it better first. Following this nasty forbearer are collections by Harper and Oxford publishers, Quotations of Ronald Reagan, The Nightly Book of Positive Quotations, Quotations for Public Speakers, The Gigantic Book of Baseball Quotations, Warriors’ Words: A Dictionary of Military Quotations, and others weightier than a standard library shelf can hold safely. Each collection is used without much discrimination when all should be discriminated against.

A quote is barely a glimpse at a writer’s work. The writer needs to know what came first and what happened next before using that pithy and sublime line to open a chapter. This comes from reading well. Virginia Woolf said she couldn’t imagine reading without a pencil in hand. For those with unreliable memories and active library cards, the commonplace book is better still.

NOT SO COMMONPLACE

The Oxford English Dictionary has the term coming into use about 1578. A commonplace book, or book of common places, is defined as: “A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.” They were filled with anything the literate owner wished to stick between its covers: recipes, medical cures, travel tips, astrological information, how to make soap, prayers, livestock ailments, poems, and song lyrics.

Fancy autodidacts say commonplace is a translation of the Latin locus communes, means “a theme or argument of general application.” There have been many dandies among commonplace books, like those of John Milton and E. M. Forster. Two favorites are The Commonplace Book of Cookery by Robert Grabhorn (North Point Press, 1985) and John Murray’s A Gentleman’s Commonplace Book of Publishing (John Murray [Publishers] Ltd., 1996).

Now it’s your turn. Get a blank book and divide into sections according to your interests, say biology, food, architecture, and politics. The sections should be general instead of specific. Keep this by your side when reading and soon its pages will be filled with everything interesting, just right for finding the best epigraph. Note the name of the book the quote is taken from and the page number so you can do one final check it is being used as intended. Your commonplace book will put you far ahead of those losers combing through compilations, and brighten your readership as well.

BEST OF THE SHIVERING BEST

Unlike its loudmouthed neighbor to the south whose bestseller lists top out at ten, Quill & Quire, Canada’s book magazine, narrows the field to five. On the top of the best books of the year is red girl rat boy by Cynthia Flood (Biblioasis, 2013). “Flood crafts characters and situations that are at once iconoclastic and vividly alive,” says the Quill. “Her concentrated and elliptical writing strips away anything extraneous, resulting in brief, sharp tales that are as densely packed as poetry, yet as subtly constructed as an impressionist painting.” Instead of wishing you, too, could get such a great review, buy a copy at your local independent bookstore or gently abuse your credit card at the publisher’s web site, www.biblioasis.com

DO THIS, DO THAT, GET DONE

Anyone who does anything wants a copy of The Dog Walked Down the Street: An Outspoken Guide for Writers Who Want to Publish (Cypress House, $13.95), especially writers and the readers who read them. Suspicions about the arcane machinations of writing are confirmed, along with what really happens in those publishing companies owned by people we beat in World War II. Need more? For every copy purchased, an angel gets its wings. Log on to www.indiebound.com and go spend money at the independent bookstore nearest you. Next month is another year.

NEXT: Combing Out the Ticks

READ LIKE A WOMAN: Paw Prints on the Pillow

(NOTE: I’m lying in the shade of my family tree/I’m a branch that broke off/What will become of me?/Dear Mom, I’m lying here in this queen-sized bed./I’m thinking back/To all the stories you read to me./About the little animals who went to sea/In their beautiful pea green boat./But I can’t remember now/What happened then?/Dear Mom, how does it end?)

Culture shock happens when a traveler returns home after a long journey and finds the place they left is better than where they pay the mortgage. The responsibilities they avoided while traipsing in another country are waiting at the arrival gate. Most travelers accept this with reluctant surrender. Mr. Detroit goes right into truculence and attacks his friends with long-held grudges to stave off the loneliness of being home.

“Writing and reading, writing and reading, all these words about writing and reading and most of them are by men. It’s like the better and bigger half of the population doesn’t exist, or prefer keeping quiet. What about the women?”

CAUGHT UP IN GENDER

Writing and reading have the same purpose: to learn what we don’t know. Men read about men to learn who we are, why we are, and what we do. Why not read books by women to learn the same? What really matters in the literate world is craft and honesty, and these transcend any divisions kicking around. A list of good writers includes Sappho, George Sand, Jane Bowles, Marianne Moore, Anne Carson, Joy Harjo, Tess Gallagher, H.D., Iris Murdoch, and Patricia Highsmith. Add Djuna Barnes, Dorothy Parker, Mina Loy, June Jordan, Alice Walker, Alice Munro, Joanne Kyger, Lenore Kandel, Adrienne Rich, and Gertrude Stein to the list, along with Toni Morrison, Denise Levertov, Anne Waldman, Karen Elizabeth Gordon, Mary Shelley, Doris Lessing, Zora Neale Hurston, Jane Bowles, M.F.K. Fisher, Barbara Kingsolver, and that’s just to start.

Every man should read the books by these women, and others they find lining the shelves. To read is the beginning of understanding. As for women, with such a rich lineage they don’t have to read anything else.

THE BEST ADVICE FOR ANY WRITER, REGARDLESS OF CHROMOSONES

In her essay, “Write Till You Drop,” Annie Dillard says, “Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for later…give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, like well water.

“Similarly, the impulses to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give away freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.”

Only a writer who cares about her craft could pass along such wisdom so freely and fiercely.

HOT NEWS FROM THE COLD NORTH

Known for its crack-smoking Toronto mayor (heck, the mayor of DC, Marion Barry, had his two terms divided by a stint in jail for the same thing) and year-round need for flannel, Canada also produces good writers who are not Margaret Atwood. Publisher Biblioasis has recently released red girl rat boy, a collection of stories by Cynthia Flood. Her writing is full of place and people, and never complacent. Buy this book for anyone on your list, even cranky Uncle Ted, who will want to read the story, “Such Language,” aloud at the holiday family dinner. Harass your local independent bookseller for a copy or hit the publisher’s web site at www.biblioasis.com

CALMING THE BEAST

Mr. Detroit is humbled by the tirade and calls for Jaguar Milk (Leite de Onça), a favorite in Brazil during the June Festival. Toss a shot of milk and a half shot of condensed milk into a clean mug and stir. Throw in a shot of cachaça followed by a shot of cocoa liqueur. He sips it like he knows how to speak more than knife-and-fork Portuguese.

DO THIS, DO THAT, GET DONE

Gift giving is usually guaranteed to disappoint. You give the wrong thing and the recipient turns nasty. For many years, this has been going on but your troubles will float gracefully into the upper atmosphere with a gift-wrapped copy of The Dog Walked Down the Street: An Outspoken Guide for Writers Who Want to Publish (Cypress House, $13.95) stuck under the tree. Male and female writers and readers thrill at the sage advice about writing and publishing contained within its post-consumer recycled pages. Words set in type and printed with black ink are able to answer the big questions, and a couple of small questions as well. Load up the sled and log on to www.indiebound.com to find the niftiest independent bookstore near you. Life truly is grand.

NEXT: A Comfy Kennel at Last