“But it really happened.”

I was in an adult-ed writer’s group when I first heard this. I watched the woman become tenser and grimmer as the class—gently and with compassion—suggested that the gruesome events on the page could be presented in a manner more conducive to engaging the reader.

She listened for only a few moments—sadly, this group did not have the listen to critique in silence policy—before unleashing, accusing the group of everything from indifference to sexual assault on children, to not understanding how children really thought (this in response to our collective idea that 4-year-olds did not speak like 30-year-olds.) She shook as she lectured us on the horror of incest.

True that. Everything she said about her pain and suffering was true—but it still didn’t work on the page. My social services hat went on and I reacted to her effort at self-therapy on paper, attempting to bandage her up. Writing this way isn’t always a bad thing, but it’s not always good either—for the writer or the reader.

Writer X didn’t have the dramatic distance needed to make her story into (more…)

By Chris Abouzied

A friend of mine recently said she hoped readers would view her latest novel as literary, not “plotty.”  By that, I think she meant she hoped no one would discount the artistry in her work just because it served up a sexy story.

Hearing plot being pitted against artistry always rubs me the wrong way, but I had to admit she had a point.  No one was going to say, “The son sleeps with his dead father’s mistress?!  A literary star is born!”  Plot, for whatever reason, seems to be on a par with skeletons in the physiology of literature— (more…)

What grabbed me?

The Wall Street Journal tells us how The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo got its’ cover.  And for more cover coverage, Betsy Lerner introduces the nomenclature “Massengill Covers” into book lingo. Then there is this: Conservative vs.: Liberal Women’s Book Covers. Bonus: Publisher’s Weekly covers book cover trends.

Men famed and not admit their biggest screw-ups and mistakes on the Good Men Project.

NYT reports that Amazon says eBooks sales tops hardcover sales.

Eleven most over-rated things Mark Juddery is pretty interesting in his analysis of baseball, Star Trek, astrology and more.

Author and oft-reviewer Steve Almond takes the NYT to task for “trashing my new book” Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life and more. Steve’s a brave guy—perhaps he will next look at the number of men’s books vs. women’s books reviewed by the NYT and Boston Globe.

Agent and writer Nathan Bransford offers a reassuring Top Ten Myths About Our E-Book Future.

I’d have included Boston Globe reporter Stephanie Ebbert’s post Think of the Children even if she hadn’t mentioned my book and even if it wasn’t on a multi-writer blog to which I belong (Beyond The Margins) for the questions it asks: how do readers and writers cope with children in danger?

And in the life sometimes goes the right way department, a headline in USA Today reads: Openly gay Lutheran pastors to be welcomed to church roster.

I read a post on author Tayari Jones’ blog earlier this month, that hasn’t left my mind. She asks why books by black writers aren’t considered universal, starting her post with these words:

“In the last few years, black writers have been speaking out about double standards in the world of publishing. Among these are Martha Southgate’s NYT essay, “Writers Like Me” and more recently, Bernice’s MacFadden’s Black Writers in A Ghetto of the Publishing Industry’s Making. In these articles, both writers (who also are novelists) put into a public conversation the issues that black writers have been complaining about for years– like why is that stories about black folks that are written by white folks get so much traction. (The Help, The Secret Lives of Bees, Little Bee, etc.) How come books about us by us are not thought to be “universal”? Why are black faces on the cover of a book thought to be so alienating? At this point in the gripe session, I break out my favorite oh-no-he-didn’t moment– when someone asked me what percentage of my work is “black” and what percentage is “human.””

It’s not only a great post, it’s an important question for all readers and writers. For readers: you/we are missing a vast store of great books by staying within one’s cultural boundaries. We’re missing great reads, and as (more…)

When I taught in a batterer intervention program—an educational, not counseling program—we’d draw a triangle on the board to help the men look at their belief system. During this lesson on the hierarchy of power, we’d use different ‘systems’ so they could identify the ways they classified people.  Schools, corporations, and prisons were just a few of the organizations we sliced and diced.

They stratified prison, showing the prisoners on the bottom, squashed under the guards, wardens, politicians, and everyone else in the world. When I asked if the guards had any chance of having an “authentic relationship” with the prisoners as they loomed over them as shown in the hierarchy triangle, their laughs were loud and derisive.

When we asked them to define the layers of family, the woman usually laid on the bottom of the heap. Some men argued that the women rated a place above the male children, but they were always wedged under the husbands and fathers. Men who’d grown up in single mother households still stuck the father figure on top.

This doesn’t come from the air.

The Boston Globe today reported on another domestic homicide, the sixteenth in Massachusetts since January. Sarin Chan was murdered by an ex-boyfriend. The murder was witnessed by her 4-and 6-year-old children. (The article does not say if they are boys or girls, and it is not known if the alleged murderer is the father.)

Honestly? I feel a bit shaky writing the above. My novel, The Murderer’s Daughters, revolves around young girls witnessing their father murdering their mother, I worked with men who savagely beat (and some murdered) their partners. My father tried to kill my mother, and still I try to pretend (more…)

Eight great posts, essays, reviews, and factoids I read this past week:

1. Brilliant writer, Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, writes her 10 Rules of Writing in the LA Times.

2. There is far too much about the language of publishing misunderstood (or never understood) by readers and writers. Thank goodness we have Eric at Pimp My Novel and reveal and define the terms we have to know (stripped book? Neilson Book Scan? Co-Op?)

3. What makes a library be chosen as Library of the Year? It sure makes me want to visit Columbus, Ohio and read at one of their libraries.

4. Are authors in New York jockeying for the best places for book signings? An article by the Wall Street Journal tells us so.

5. In a fascinating New York Times review of a William Golding biography The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies: A Life by John Carey, we learn that Golding “confessed to a friend that he resented the novel because it meant that he owed his reputation to what he thought of as a minor book, a book that had made him a classic in his lifetime, which was “a joke,” and that the money he had gained from it was “Monopoly money” because he hadn’t really earned it.”

6. According to The Christian Science Monitor, “after waiting After waiting 100 years at the author’s request, this November the University of California Press will publish the first of three volumes of the Autobiography of Mark Twain.” Among other fascinating tidbits, Twain reveals his distrust of editors and shows where and how a piece of his was incompetently edited.

7. The world is plugging into “I Write Like” to find out which author they resemble. Apparently, Edgar Allen Poe writes like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

8. Instincts, the past, cultural trends: these and more are included in what literary agent Rachel Gardner tells us are what enter into how agents and publishers make decisions.

Everyone hates a fat woman. Or is it that a fat woman thinks everyone hates her? Or does a fat woman simply hate herself?

As someone who’s measured her worth in dress sizes, waistbands, and, when in the midst of bravery, the hard-core truth of pounds, I’ve felt all of the above. We are a harsh country, filled with both self-loathing and a Calvinist push towards walking off, dieting away, running away from, and when all else fails, surgically sucking out unwanted fat.

Do men suffer as women do? I’m not sure. I don’t think so, not as much—not when fat men on screen are allowed to bed and wed women as lovely as Katherine Heigl. I think being fat is painful for men. I simply don’t think they’re as reviled; they need to climb far higher up the scale to merit as much hate as heavy women.

I recently re-read (even re-bought, when I couldn’t find my copy) Food and Loathing by Betsy Lerner. From far too young, Lerner’s existence rested on her body size—real and perceived. The book begins thusly:

“It is 1972. I am twelve years old. It is the first day of sixth grade, and I am standing in the girls’ gymnasium waiting to be weighed.”

If your flesh doesn’t crawl with those words, if you don’t want to either go running for a cream cheese smothered bagel, or conversely, vow to stop eating as of tomorrow, this book will still (more…)

Ten favorite posts and articles that grabbed me this week and last:

Undercooking a Novel by Nathan Bransford, in which agent Bransford expounds on why novels are not pasta, but indeed stews. No al dente please.

Is 30 Rock Racist? Journalist Zeeshan Aleem asks the question on the Huffington Post and gets buried in comments. Aleem asks “If there is a forceful difference between past pernicious representations of a race and the contemporary one. In other words, does Tracy’s embodiment of age-old stereotypes of the black community look meaningfully different from what Americans saw in antebellum minstrel shows or in Amos n’ Andy in the 1950s?”  Very interesting.

The Author Background Check A kind of scary but should-be-read post on how publishers check out authors before signing the. Luckily, Alan Rinzler gives tips on how to watch out for yourself. (Hint: don’t lie.)

What if you had a very strict (French!) teacher leading your writer’s workshop? How would she translate comments like “When you hear: Your (more…)

By Becky Tuch

I never thought I would stop writing. But last month, for the first time in my life, I was waking up almost every day and thinking, “What’s the point?” It seemed ridiculous to me the amount that writers sacrifice just in order to write. All over the world, throughout history, we’ve given up time with our family, financial stability, fun with friends, sleep, sex, parties, food—all to have a few extra moments tinkering with the fates of people that don’t even exist. Stepping back, as I had never quite done before, it seemed mind-bogglingly preposterous.

I know what you’re thinking. Bex, writing enables us to be more present the rest of the time. If I didn’t write, the time I was actually with my family and friends would make me miserable and crazy.

If that’s true, then kudos for you. For me, that’s true some of the time. Other times, I am downright amazed at how happy life can be when I’m not writing. During novel development, I might be editing my manuscript in my head while a friend tells me about her divorce, or thinking about character motivations while balancing on my shoulders in yoga class.

Yes, writing helps clear the head. But often, it helps muddle it too. And last (more…)

Vacation Re-Run Post

It’s there every time I enter the barn: a love so palpable that I often feel my heart will explode. My partner and I founded Catskill Animal Sanctuary, a haven for abused and abandoned farm animals, in 2001, and what surprises me most six years into the work is not what callous people do to animals, not the long hard days, not the uncertainties inherent in rescue work. A volunteer once commented to me, “There’s so much love here it’s even in the dirt,” and yes, she was right. CAS breaths love. That is the biggest surprise.

It is unlikely I would have read that introduction to the engaging, well-written, and totally enjoyable book (okay, I want to say heart-warming, but am a little hesitant to use such a worn cliché) Where the Blind Horse Sings:Love and Healing at an Animal Sanctuary by Kathy Stevens if my sister Jill hadn’t given me a copy.

My sister and I are alike in many ways: we both eat more rapidly than a starving pack of dogs, money slides away from us faster than ice from roofs during sudden thaws, and we will both take up and research a new interest as though we were the first in the world to discover . . . you name it. The difference is, while I was probably Googling best skin serums, Jill found her way to the Catskill Animal Sanctuary where she now gives massages to nine hundred pound pigs with names, and washes hundreds of tin bowls used for feeding rescued and now pampered farm animals. It’s Jill who gave me the above book, written by the founder and director of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, Kathy Stevens.

My sister is a good and caring person. I may also carry the helper gene—but sadly, while her generosity extends to animals, I’ve always been a bit afraid of them. Thus, here is one more reason I am blessed to have her in my life: she helps me remember why humanity should care for and treat well all animals. In this book the author quotes Milos Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being: “True human goodness, in all it’s purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when it’s recipient has no power. Mankind’s true test consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.”

Each chapter in Steven’s book tells the story of another rescued animal. Rambo is an Alpha sheep who lets the staff know when another animal is in trouble. Paulie, a former cockfighting rooster, once ready to cause pain by sinking his talons, now eats lunch with people and accompanies them on errands. Franklin, a depressed pig, after years of neglect must be coaxed away from the known-comfort of his own filth—a goal finally and joyously met by the ever-patient staff. Buddy the titled blind horse, immobilizes by fear after being penned for years in barbed wire that would pierce him with every movement, is taught, through the author’s love and patience, to discover the joy of walking free.

Where the Blind Horse Sings reminded me that humanity might mean looking outside of humans to build our belief in goodness and perseverance. It reminded me how differently each person may experience joy. And it reminded me, how smart my sister is, to find such a good and special place where she can spend time healing pigs and other creatures, great and small, back to their rightful place in the world.

Get this for someone who loves animals. Absolutely buy it for anyone who doesn’t.