Laura Miller of Salon wrote a criticism National Novel Writing Month.

(Intrusive exposition: National Novel Writing Month is when tens of thousands of would-be authors plow through thousands of words a day in an attempt to create the first draft of a novel.)

Miller wrote that writers should not be celebrated with events such as NaNoWriMo. After all, we will always have too many writers. What we lack, however, are readers.

Miller writes:

So I’m not worried about all the books that won’t get written if a hundred thousand people with a nagging but unfulfilled ambition to Be a Writer lack the necessary motivation to get the job done. I see no reason to cheer them on. Writers are, in fact, hellishly persistent; they will go on writing despite overwhelming evidence of public indifference and (in many cases) of their own lack of ability or anything especially interesting to say. Writers have a reputation for being tormented by their lot, probably because they’re always moaning so loudly about how hard it is, but it’s the readers who are fragile, a truly endangered species. They don’t make a big stink about how underappreciated they are; like Tinkerbell or any other disbelieved-in fairy, they just fade away.

Rather than squandering our applause on writers -- who, let’s face, will keep on pounding the keyboards whether we support them or not -- why not direct more attention, more pep talks, more nonprofit booster groups, more benefit galas and more huzzahs to readers? Why not celebrate them more heartily? They are the bedrock on which any literary culture must be built. After all, there’s not much glory in finally writing that novel if it turns out there’s no one left to read it.

To be clear, Miller does not disparage all authors or even all unpublished authors. She insults authors who
a. Do not revise their material after writing their rushed first draft.
b. Do not read, just write.
c. Lack anything useful to say.

These are not new criticisms. Stephen King once said, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have to write,” and Hemingway (anecdotally) claimed, “The first draft of everything is pretty much (expletive deleted.)”

Overall, I agree with Miller, but her detractors also make some worthwhile points.

Serai1 replies:

While you’re at it, why don’t you write a column on what a huge waste of time it is to collect stamps? Or crochet doilies? Or bone up on football stats? How about making birdhouses; THERE’S a(n expletive deleted) waste of time for you. And let’s not forget scrapbooking. Damn, think of the millions of man hours (or woman hours) wasted on pasting ribbons and gewgaws and pictures in cutesy books. It’s disgusting!

Why is it that the ONLY hobby that invariably attracts snotty people with their sneering and condescension is writing? No other hobby gets this kind of acid (expletive deleted) attitude dumped on it.

Metasailor says:

It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and say, “The world has too many bad novels.” So? What’s far sadder is, there are too few people trying new things that really stretch their minds.

Softdog notes Miller’s hypocrisy, as she is a writer:

Yes, the reading public has lost their sense of propriety. Instead of, say, buying your book and dutifully consuming it and respecting your wit, they spend some of their time writing for themselves. For an entire month!

How self-centered. Unlike you, who is getting paid to write about yourself and your opinions. You aren’t a narcissist at all, because people are supposed to read you.

There’s more bile in the comments — some thoughtful, some not.

So, as to avoid overloading on vitriol, here’s a funny video of books falling down.



-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

It dawns on me that yesterday’s headline was poorly phrased. Permit me to clarify.

Anne Rice did not quit Dr. Seuss sneakers, just Christianity.

Another full trough today, let’s begin:
1. Entertainment Weekly lists 20 classic literary opening lines.

Most of the books indisputably deserve their spot on the list. You already know the opening to Moby-Dick and A Tale of Two Cities, even if you never cracked their cover. Other worthwhile entries include Fahrenheit 451, The Bell Jar and my personal favorite opener, Anna Karenina. Even most of the newer selections like The Color Purple and A River Runs Through It are well chosen.

I only question one inclusion: Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book.

Great openers should be iconic or, in lieu of that, immediately memorable.

“There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife” is evocative. It’s interesting, but it’s not classic.

That’s not even Gaiman’s best opener. I prefer Stardust’s “There was a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire” to “There was a hand in the darkness.”

“Shadow had done three years in prison” from American Gods might trump them both. At least it doesn’t begin with “there was a,” which are three of the worst words with which to begin a story.

2. The Word offers its take on nouns that are commandeered as verbs.

While it may be a pet peeve for the grammatically conservative, writer Erin McKean argues for the malleability of language.

“The history of English, however, suggests that the language is remarkably flexible in terms of what can be verbed ... Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like friend is declared not a verb, the problem isn’t that it’s confusing; it’s that the protester finds it deeply annoying.”

That last sentence cut me to the quick because I do find the verb “friend” deeply annoying.

McKean’s column was, in part, a response to the site notaverb.com.

Notaverb aims its vitriol at compound words like backup, cutoff, login, shutdown and startup.

Frankly, both McKean and Notaverb are right. Language is always changing, but “login” isn’t a verb. Neither are “shutdown” and “startup.” They are phrases, smashing a verb and preposition together. However, any outfielder would argue that “backup” is a verb, especially when a coach says it.

3. Remember Dave Holmes?

He was that guy who wanted to be an MTV VJ but lost to Jesse Camp. Then, he had a longer and more memorable MTV career than Camp.

He’s going to spend a year reading nothing but stunt books about how people did something for a year. Then, he’s going to write a book about it. In the meantime, he’s blogging about it.

I think this means that stunt books have gone metatextual.

4. This is a zedonk. It is what happens when a donkey and zebra procreate.



I can’t tell if it’s adorable or an affront to God.

Yeah, that last thing had nothing to do with books, but it makes you think.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Let's see which tag I reuse first, "zedonk" or "jesse camp."

Remember the hack test?

Well, it was supposed to be a program that assessed the quality of your writing through a series of objective criteria.

But it had a fatal flaw? Reading is, was, will always be a subjective sport. It’s like ice dancing or rhythmic gymnastics. You can hit all the technical elements, but you still need that artistic flair.

So I abandoned the hack test, but someone else had a similar idea and created the textalyser.

The textalyser measures “readability,” not quality, per se. It does this by measuring word and sentence length, repetition and variation. For fun, I textalysed Tricia’s review of What is Left the Daughter and my post about books and booze. No surprise — Tricia’s posts are deemed more readable than mine. The textalyser said her posts were slightly easier than the optimal and mine were more difficult.

Speaking of web sites that assess text, I Write Like tells writers of which authors their text reminds them. I’m not sure what I Write Like’s criteria is (and I couldn’t find any explanation on the site;) but it compared my Harvey Pekar post with Arthur C. Clarke. Then, it said Big Boi’s lyrics to "Shutterbug" were similar to the work of Agatha Christie.

Finally, I listed a bunch of Indians players’ names — nothing else, just names — and the site told me I write like David Foster Wallace.

So I wouldn't take any comparisons too seriously.

While we’re playing games on the net, try the Interactive Proust Questionnaire from Vanity Fair. Apparently, my answers to the questionnaire were very similar to Brian Wilson’s and Hugh Hefner’s. (I want to put that on my business card. Jason Lea — half Beach Boy, half Playboy.)

Unrelated note: On the 50th anniversary of the release of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Rumpus asks if the book is overrated.

One word answer: No.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Today’s post is all about Neil Gaiman. Place your bets on how long I can last without typing “oneiric.”

Gaiman co-edited an anthology of short stories, entitled Stories, with Al Sarrantonio.

It its introduction, Gaiman writes, “What we missed, what we wanted to read, were stories that made us care, stories that forced us to turn the page. Yes, we wanted good writing (why be satisfied with less?). But we wanted more than that.”

The Guardian Book Blog took issue with the comment, saying that the best writing must come with a good story.

To be fair, I’m not sure Gaiman would say any different. If anything, Gaiman seems to be saying that you can have a good story without good writing. (Harry Potter is an easy example but there are plenty of others.) But Gaiman said he wanted stories with both.

My co-blogger, Tricia, might argue that if a story is good enough, it is also good writing. She would not be alone in her opinion.

Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote, “A good writer is basically a story-teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.”

Others would argue that the two are inseparable. For the writing to be good, so must the story. (This is the point the Guardian seems to want to make.) Also, for the story to be good, the writing must be also.

Thomas Hardy wrote, "The recent school of novel writers forget in their insistence on life, and nothing but life, in a plain slice, that a story must be worth the telling, that a good deal of life is not worth any such thing, and that they must not occupy the reader’s time with what he can get at first hand anywhere around him."

I, personally, would distinguish between good writing and good stories; but I agree with the Guardian Book Blog in that the best examples of both have the support of the other.

Moving on, Stories includes short fiction from Roddy Doyle, Joanne Harris, Jodi Picoult, Peter Straub, Chuck Palahniuk and Michael Moorcock.

Doyle’s story, in the words of Gaiman, is “a beautiful, heartbreaking study of a mid-life crisis and the failure of a marriage.”

It also has vampires, which leads Gaiman to ruminate, “Like some kind of particularly tenacious vampire the short story refuses to die, and seems at this point in time to be a wonderful length for our generation. It’s a perfect length to read on an iPad, your Kindle or your phone.”

So there you have it. Short stories are the new vampires.

Finally, I wanted to leave you with Neil Gaiman and Damian Kulash from OK Go singing “Happy Together.”



-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. This begs for a Venn Diagram showing where I feel certain authors land on the overlap between "good writing" and "good stories."

P.P.S. Oneiric

I have a bit of ground to cover after disappearing for a week.

I could talk at length about Amazon getting into direct publishing or Penguin sex scandals. (Sadly, the “penguin” in question is the book publisher, not the bird. It would be funnier to write about salacious avian affairs.) But I’m too late to either of these topics to say anything new.

Instead, allow me to use this post as a purge for all of the worthwhile links that I have accumulated in the last seven days.

First, Michelle Kerns updates her Reviewerspeak Awards. For those who don’t remember, Kerns is meticulously following book reviewers so she can catalogue their most overused clichés.

Book reviewers seem to be aware of Kerns because usage of April’s most popular clichés has dwindled. Unfortunately, they have been replaced with others.

“Fascinating” and variations on “vivid” were the most common clichés of May.

In other news, Stan Carey has smacked back at the Queen’s English Society for its nitpickery. The society wants to “set an accepted standard of good English.” In other words, they want to regulate the tenets of the language.

That’s silly for a lot of reasons (and, seemingly, a tad jingoistic), but it’s not necessary for me to recapitulate Carey’s entire argument. Instead, I’ll leave you with a link and a quote:

This plaintive appeal is telling in many ways. It reveals the deep confusion that arises when one tries to reconcile language, in all its mutable complexity, with simplistic dogma and prejudice. It hints at a nostalgic hankering for the halcyon days when grammar education was based more on strict commandments (often imposed by grammarians to reflect mere stylistic preferences). It shows an arrogant presumption that right-thinking people ought to think just like them...

Since English seems to be changing faster than ever, no academy could hope to keep up. This is especially so because of the geographical reach of English and its consequent fracturing into countless overlapping varieties.

Elsewhere, The Millions details the joy of ghostwriting.

“I bristle at the term ‘ghostwriter,’” says [Michael] D’Orso. “It indicates dishonesty. It indicates hiding behind the scenes. I prefer collaborator. I’m not a shill.”

Finally, Minotaurs are the new vampires.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Thank you, Tricia, for keeping the blog warm while I was gone.

I don’t like to quit books once I’ve begun them. That’s the main reason I’m so hesitant to start anything longer than 300 pages.

I abide by the Lemon Law when it comes to books. If I hate or, more likely, am bored by a book’s first 50 pages, I’ll quit it without any sense of guilt.

But what about the case of Anna Karenina? The first 200 pages are fantastic and, then, momentum stalls. What do I do? I have 400 pages left. These remaining pages could contain soul-draining boredom or unexplainable brilliance. I could waste hours, days of my life slogging through barely tolerable prose in hopes of finding one or two passages that will justify my devotion. (Or, as my friend likes to call it, Bolaño-ing.) I could also cut my losses and move on.

The problem is, sometimes, it is worth it.

Karenina — worth it. The same is true of One Hundred Years of Solitude and even Moby Dick, though I’d advise people to skip the Cetology chapter.

But I’ve also read books that never recovered from a sudden loss in momentum. Soul Mountain seemed to be going somewhere until page 340. Then, the meandering began and didn’t stop until it reached the back cover.

So that’s the risk of quitting books. I might get stuck with The Deerslayer, but I could also miss Jane Eyre.

Sonya Chung of The Millions created seven categories for the books we quit and offered several personal examples. Here, I offer some of my own:

Books I Did Not Finish But Very Much Want to Try Again
1. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
2. The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair
3. Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan

Books That I’ve Already Tried More Than Once But Couldn’t Engage With, I Don’t Know Why
1. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (I do not know why, but Sinclair seems to be the author on who I have quit the most. You’d think it would be one of my established nemeses, Charles Dickens or James Joyce.)
2. Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Márquez

Books That I Found Mostly Painful and Likely Will Not Revisit
1. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
2. The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen

Books Written By Friends/Acquaintances That I May Have Been Destined Not to Like in the First Place, But Gave Them a Try For Friendship’s Sake
I have never read a book that qualifies. Most of my friends do not write novels. The exceptions have the sense to not want my opinion.

Shlogged Through and Almost Abandoned, But Kept On; No Pay-off, I Felt, In the End
1. Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Márquez
2. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
3. Anything by James Fenimore Cooper that was not The Last of the Mohicans.

Struggled Through, Maybe Put Down For a While, But Finished and Am Very Glad I Did
1. Pretty much any other Márquez book that has not already been listed.
2. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

In unrelated and more important news, Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo has been transferred to prison camp after calling for more freedom and greater democratic rights.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I was less than my prolific self last week.

I would have written more, but it’s poor form to blog from someone’s murder trial.

But I’m back and so is Michelle Kerns. If you don’t remember Kerns, she is the woman analyzing literary critics’ dependence upon clichés.

Her analysis (and accompanying graphs) are many positive things — fascinating, insightful and accessible. Unfortunately, those words are clichés, so I’ll just post a link instead of trying to describe it.

Of the publications she is following, Entertainment Weekly packs the highest percentage of clichés into their critiques. (Smart money bets EW remain the frontrunner through the entirety of Kerns’s experiment.) They averaged 1.1 cliché per 100 words. Time Out New York and Publishers Weekly trailed at .93 and .92 Kerns, respectively.

Yes, “Kerns” are the metric measurement for clichés per 100 words in a book review.

Kerns — the writer, not the unit of measurement — specifically picks on alliterations in her dissection of April’s reviews. Some of the alliterations, like “parboiled profundities,” I found clever. Some are admittedly pretentious, for example, “craziness crazily” and “This promising premise begins on promising premises.”

Elsewhere, Elisa Bassist asks, Have I Earned these Clichés? She writes about why she writes and comes up with, “It’s the closest definition I have of living.” Yes, she notes that her conclusion is a cliché. That’s why she gives her essay that title.

It’s much better than I’m making it sound, though I disagree with some of Bassist’s points. She describes writing as a “social act.” I would argue that it’s the opposite. Reading might be a social act; but writing, almost always, is done alone and for your own sake. If someone else reads a personal meaning into your own writing — wonderful! — but writing is a selfish process. It’s about you, even when it isn’t. (And, now, I have added my cliché to the stack.)

Bassist seems to acknowledge this when she quotes Jim Harrison.

“A writer [is] a small god who has forty acres as a birthright on which to reinvent the world.”

Two final notes — first, Elisa Gabbert has fun with Venn diagrams.

She says that most people separate “women poets” from “poets.” How can anyone divide the two? Whether right or wrong, I identify femininity with poetry. Most of the women I know are poets. Many just don’t bother to write it down.

Lastly, we finally have an e-reader that I would consider buying. The Kobo reader, from Borders, will cost $149 and come stocked with 100 classics, according to the Associated Post. That’s $1.50 per classic. Sure, I probably have most of these unidentified classics on my bookshelf already. (Whether I’ve read them or not is a different issue.) But it still sells for $100 less than competing e-readers.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I confess: I am a hoarder.

It's not to the point where you can't move around most rooms in my house or anything. But I watch those TV programs and I hear the people talk about how they can't throw out a broken lamp because their grandmother gave it to them or that it would be wasteful to toss items they no longer use, and I understand.

I like stuff. Old, broken stuff. Stuff I'll never use. Stuff I used to use. You get the drift.

But, my husband is not a hoarder.

So it was that we were clearing out our attic.

In a long-forgotten trunk I found essays I had written in high school. (I know, sad, but true.)

One of those musty papers, dated Oct. 3, 1983, was titled, "What is a good book?"

Here it is, in all its over-written glory!

Upon turning that final page of a book and snapping it shut, the reader will either breathe a sigh of satisfaction and smile or emit a groan of disgust and grimace. What makes a book leave its reader fulfilled in some small way? Disregarding personal tastes, because not everyone will like even a book considered to be a masterpiece, nearly all agree that a good book should have a universal theme, an interesting plot and believable characters.

A universal theme should speak to all, no matter the time or place. "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte is a book with one such theme. The story of the life of a young girl on the moors of England speaks the same message of the effects on childhood on later life to a 60-year-old woman living in the United States in 1983 as it would have to a 20-year-old man living in Italy in 1920.

Another timeless theme is embodied in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." The danger of beholding and criticizing sin in others but not in one's self is as great now as it was in Puritan New England. The author of a good book locates man in his universe and illustrates a basic belief common to all.

The ability to create a believable world is rare, but it is an essential part of a good book. The theme will never be passed on to the reader if there is nothing in the plot to hold his interest until the end of the book. Author Daphne DuMaurier has mastered the art of suspense as is evidenced in her novel "Rebecca." No one having read more than the first chapter would have the strength of mind to discontinue reading and not find out what will befall Mr. and Mrs. DeWinter, the novel's star-crossed lovers. Suspense is not the only element of plot that will grasp a reader's interest. The storyline of "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" by Thornton Wilder contains virtually no suspense since the outcome is known at the beginning. What holds the reader's attention is a kind of reverse suspense. One wants to discover the events which led to the result, instead of vice versa.

A possible definition for a good book is one in which the reader becomes totally and completely absorbed in empathy for the characters. This must be the most difficult thing for an author to accomplish - to create characters which seem to live and breathe, characters which think and speak as complexly as people, and characters which retain the ability to surprise and astound. Charles Dickens was a master of characterization. "A Tale of Two Cities" contains a vast gallery of characters, all distinct and complex entities. From the split personality of Doctor Manette to the avenging wickedness of Madame Defarge to the selfless love of Sydney Carton, Dickens' characters spring to life on the pages of his book. Margaret Mitchell's characters also seem to have a life of their own. The selfish and impetuous Scarlett O'Hara and the adoring, masculine Rhett Butler have been made immortal in the novel, "Gone with the Wind."

What is a good book, then? It is one which has credible characters, an interesting plot, and a universal theme, as has been aforementioned. But there is something more. There is that essential artistic quality which enables an author to depict the characters, themes, and plots that are products of his imagination in such a manner that they exist as real people, ideas, and situations for the reader. It is this undefinable characteristic which earmarks a truly good book and evokes the sigh of satisfaction at its completion.

- Tricia Ambrose

Post Script from Jason: One final treat for the weekend. The News-Herald Book Club explains how it can make your reading experience more enjoyable in video.

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My family didn’t celebrate Easter because my mom said it had its origins in a pagan fertility ritual. (Why do you think people dye eggs?)

Ishtar may have flopped in the Lea household, but it’s still going to be a Good Friday. Inhale the melange.

Craig Teicher addresses the relevancy of poetry from the perspective of critic.

But in almost any conversation on the topic of poetry reviews, one question comes up: what’s the point? This question isn’t always asked with the flippant air that actually means “who cares?” Often, people really want to know: what is accomplished by poetry reviews? Do they help sell books? Do they keep the art form in line? Do they spur writers into creating better poetry or kick bad writers out of the halls of Parnassus? Do poetry reviews help readers?

There is talk of keeping poetry “vital” and “alive,” but the article does not eulogize the art form or devolve into cliché.

In what can only be considered the greatest news of all time, Margaret Atwood is on Twitter. Even better, she’s blogging about being on Twitter.

She says having a Twitter feed is like having “33,000 precocious grandchildren.”

They really shone when, during the Olympics, I said that “Own the podium” was too brash to be Canadian, and suggested “A podium might be nice.” Their own variations poured onto a feed tagged #cpodium: “A podium! For me?” “Rent the podium, see if we like it.” “Mind if I squeeze by you to get onto that podium?”

My first thought reading her blog was, “Margaret Atwood would be the coolest grandma ever.” But I didn’t want to say that in fear it would be perceived as sexist or ageist. Then, Atwood called us precocious grandchildren and removed any possible awkwardness... just like a cool grandma.

(Atwood tweets. Alice Walker blogs. It is a wonderful time to love the typed word.)

Jan Freeman talks about banned words in newswriting and the repetition inherent in the business.

The call for “fresh language” is another cliché that demands a closer look. Sometimes repetition and formulaic language serve a speaker’s purpose better than novelty; sometimes the story really is the same — only the names have changed — and too much striving for originality may annoy and distract.

Finally, because it can’t be all good news, I offer two more reasons one might hate Amazon.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Are you tired of lazy critics calling books “timely,” a “tour de force” or “beautifully written?”

Do you wish reviewers would find a more creative way to express their pleasure or disappointment?

Don’t get mad. Play Bingo.

Michelle Kerns of The Examiner identified the most annoying book-review cliches and put them on bingo boards. Now, instead of rolling your eyes when someone calls a book “thought-provoking,” “powerful” or “readable,” you can cross off a square. After reading Kerns’s column, I found a pair of my old book reviews and saw if I reached Bingo. (Not quite, but I came close.)

I’ll make a deal with you readers. If I ever write a book review and you score a Bingo on any of the eight, supplied game cards. I’ll take you to the local bouquiniste and buy you something. (If you’re reading this from Colorado or Bratislava, I’ll have to mail your reward.)

Moving on, Matthew Simmons of HTMLGIANT uses Old Man and the Sea to teach how to write dialogue.

So, Hemingway wrote a book called The Old Man and the Sea. And in The Old Man and the Sea, an old man goes out to sea. And he fishes. And he hooks himself a big, big fish. And, for quite a lot of the rest of the book, the man and the fish pull at one another. For pages and pages they pull at one another. He—the old man—pulls at the fish. And it—the fish in the sea—pulls at the old man. They pull and pull and they fight and fight.

This is dialogue. This is how to approach dialogue...

When people communicate, they do so to reveal to the listener their wants and needs. I want to get away, says the fish. I want to reel you in and devour you, says the old man. I am pulling to get away, says the fish. You are pulling me further out to sea, and I will give you some line to tire you out, says the old man. Characters communicate with each other like this.

Simmons scores bonus points by attaching the image of an appropriately named Magic card to his column.

I would have appreciated if Simmons would have included examples of actual dialogue that he likes, but his point is still an interesting one.

Finally, I think this is saying the same thing as this.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

I don’t seriously intend to spend a year expounding upon the Guardian’s rules of fiction.

However, I do think some of them are worth revisiting. So, once in awhile, I will interrupt my reposting of Dr. Syntax and Bookslut anecdotes to discuss them.

Let’s start with rule number one from the first writer.

Elmore Leonard advises us, “Never open a book with weather.”

This rule is so obvious that we never mention it; and, because we never mention it, some people forget.

What’s the worst opening of all time?

“It was a dark and stormy night.”

There are several reasons this opening bites sidewalk. First, it’s redundant. Of course, the night was dark. It’s night.

Second, it begins with the most generic noun and verb in the English language.

Finally, the phrasing is predictable. You could jumble this sentence in almost any other order and it would be more interesting than, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

For example:
“The night was dark and stormy.”
“Dark and stormy was the night.”
“A dark night it was, and stormy.”

None of these openings will win you a Pulitzer, but they are all better than the original. (Maybe I shouldn’t say that. Madeleine L’engle won the Newbery Award with A Wrinkle in Time. Its first sentence: “It was a dark and stormy night.”)

But the worst thing about the weather is it doesn’t matter that much. You should never open with weather unless the setting is the most important part of your story. (Furthermore, your setting should never be the most important part of your story.)

It’s good to establish atmosphere, but it isn’t your first priority. No, your first priority is to build momentum, and you can’t do that with weather.

O. Henry doesn’t begin Springtime a la Carte with weather, but he opens with something just as bad. The only reason he gets away with it is because he apologizes. An excerpt:

It was a day in March.

Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation.

Sarah was crying over her bill of fare.

Most of us don’t have O. Henry’s flair for authorial admission, so we should save ourselves the trouble and avoid unimaginative, flat, dry and vacuous beginnings.

Leonard offers an exception to his rule. Barry Lopez, writer of Arctic Dreams, can write about all the ice he likes. I’ve never read Lopez, but here are the first few pages of Arctic Dreams.

There is a lifetime’s worth of material here.

The Guardian asked several authors what their rules for writing are. Sure, we’ve heard a lot of this advice before (adverbs and exclamation points, bad; thesaurus, good.) But it’s thrilling to hear some of these suggestions.

I mean, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar can explain his skyhook to you 70 times. He can demonstrate it, but you’ll never be able to imitate it. But that doesn’t make the explanations or demonstration any less thrilling.

Some of my favorite tips, though the entire article deserves to be read:

Elmore Leonard — Never open a book with weather. (Leonard’s advice is especially helpful because he notes authors that are exempt from his rules.

Margaret Atwood: Do back exercises. Pain is distracting. (I suspect she’s not being sarcastic.)

Helen Dunmore: Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue.

Geoff Dyer: ­Don’t be one of those writers who sentence themselves to a lifetime of sucking up to Nabokov.

Esther Freud: Cut out the metaphors and similes.

Here’s on for Tricia, from PD James: Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.

Anne Enright gets the best line of all: The first 12 years are the worst.

This may be the best article on writing I’ve read since Tricia and I began this blog. If you are a writer or wish you were a writer or like reading or have 25 minutes to kill at work until your lunch hour, read this.

Laura Miller, a writer for Salon, added five rules of her own. I have nothing to add, though I might reiterate for the 400th time that writers write. If you only think about stories you want to tell, then you are not a writer. You are a thinker.

Finally, MobyLives has a pair of updates on the Google Books settlement.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

We talk about language on this blog a lot. “For the love of language” is the second most common tag here. It’s only trumped by “book review.”

Language lovers such as Tricia and I enjoy the nitpicky stuff. I like complaining about how people misuse the words “ironic” and “random.”

(It’s ironic if there is a Borders bookstore at the border of Mentor and Painesville. It is not ironic if you have 10,000 forks and all you need is a knife. It is unfortunate, it’s bizarre place setting, but it is not ironic.)

But even I realize the misuse of irony is a small potatoes. Quite frankly, language is malleable. New inventions create new words. Slang bends standard definitions. For example, look at the way I used potatoes at the beginning of this paragraph. In this context, potatoes meant “issue” or “concern.” Generally, that is not the definition of a potato; but you all understood what I meant.

At its basest level, a word (or any other symbol) means what everyone agrees it means.

So it might not be ironic in the traditional sense if it rains on someone’s wedding day, but we know what Alanis Morrisette meant.

However, there are some times when precise language is not just a matter of quibbling.

Consider the word terrorist.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon notes how the definition of terrorist has been warped. He uses Joseph Stack as an example, noting that cable news networks are hesitant to label him a terrorist:

Fox News’ Megan Kelley asked Catherine Herridge about these denials: “I take it that they mean terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to?,” to which Herridge replied: “they mean terrorism in that capital T way.”

All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity.

Let’s try to keep politics out of this. This is not a political forum. It’s a book blog. But this is still a linguistic issue, like the misuse of irony. Granted, it’s one with more serious ramifications.

When someone misuses random, I bristle. When someone refuses to label Joseph Stack a “Terrorist with a capital T” because he is not Muslim, we have a deeper problem.

Words have been used denigrate specific populations before. (I don’t need to write a list of slurs to remind you.) Sometimes, those words are reclaimed or repurposed. They become more or less offensive as time passes. But we may be watching the creation of a new slur.

Language evolves as species do. Most of these language changes are responses to a changing environment. (We created an Internet, so we needed a new word to identify it.)

Sometimes, these language changes are made of stupid — guesstimate, for example. It expresses nothing new or clever, but it is still essentially a harmless change.

Occasionally, a language change is malignant.

So consider this my pledge. I will no longer complain when people say “utilize” instead of “use.” Let people apply the words “random” and “ironic” as they see fit, as long as I can understand them.

From here on in, I only pitch my language battles where it matters.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Four things, and for a change of pace, I’ll try to be concise.

Airen — the blogger and author who Helene Hegemann remixed — has replied to Hegemann’s assertions that she did not plagiarize him.

There was really no need for her to copy me. But she borrowed entire passages of dialogue. I feel like my copyright has been infringed.

Hegemann’s publisher could probably throw money at Airen to make this issue go away. Even if it does, I hope this worthwhile question is not forgotten. When does influence become plagiarism?

As a sidenote, in Airen’s interview, he said he quit writing when he gave up the drug-club-sex scene because he ran out of material. This begs another question. How much of good writing is dependent on its subject matter? We talk about language here a lot, but we don’t talk about the value of topic.

Thing two: New short story contest from NPR. The only rules are it must be shorter than three minutes when read aloud, and the story must be based on this photograph of an open newspaper on a cafe table. The winner gets to read their story on NPR and receives an autographed Alan Cheuse book.

Thing three: Google looks like it is willing to compromise with its eBook store. If Google settles, then the publishers seem to have won the e-book war. Here’s hoping they can make a profit.

Final thing: Maud Newton writes about how some authors are so good, they paralyze her.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

We wordies - wordsmiths implies a level I don't think we've reached - have our fascinations, don't we?

Jason has on more than one post shared his fondness for poetry and issued a challenge.

I'm more of a compulsive Text Twist player and Jeopardy! viewer.

In fact, our family habit is to eat dinner while watching the quiz show.

Last night's show featured a category called Word-by-Word Book Summaries.

Among the answers was:
Paris.
Mega-scoliosis.
Ding-dong.
Gypsy.
Death.
Fin

Question: What is The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Check out all the questions and answers at this fabulous Jeopardy! archive.

So I thought I'd try a few myself.

How about:

Plantations.
War.
Lovestruck.
Passion.
Survivor.
Land.

Or:
Wartime.
Sisters.
Struggles.
Loves.
Maturity.
Bonds.

Care to give it a shot, Jason?

- Tricia Ambrose

BTW, the books above are Gone With the Wind and Little Women.

In case you forgot, I hate Charles Dickens.

It’s nice to see someone much smarter than me — Icelandic author Steinar Bragi — agree. Bragi’s short story, “The Sky Over Thingvellir,” was included in the Best European Fiction 2010 anthology. In his Artist Statement at the end of the book, he wrote:

When it comes to Dickens, I weep with boredom over every single page he’s written; with time I’ve even begun to weep just seeing his books on a shelf. For those who haven’t read him, I would still suggest you do have a look, just so you can make up your own mind -- I’m not a fascist! But don’t spend too much time on it; really, it’s easy to make a quick survey: the first paragraph — of any of his books — is exactly like the rest of the book, and each of his books is exactly like the others. Nothing in Dickens will ever manage to surprise you. And if you want those characters, if you’ve really got a craving for those “Dickensian characters,” just go to a wax museum. It’s faster.

(Once again, I need to give credit to Bookslut for the initial post.)

On a completely different subject, the men of Three Guys One Book have compiled a list of 40 things a writer shouldn’t do. (Of course, these are literary men and not accountants, so they headlined it 50 Things a Writer Shouldn’t Do. These guys are no good with numbers. They call themselves Three Guys even though there’s four of them.)

All of the guys give good advice, even if you’ve heard most of it before. Jonathan Evison makes my favorite suggestion:

Don’t hide behind sarcasm.

Agreed, sarcasm is not clever and has not been clever since the early 1990s. Sarcasm is what happens when people run out of wit.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. New Year’s Resolution Update: Had to snowshoe with my night reporter Saturday for work YMCA program. Didn’t kill him, didn’t even threaten to. My managing editor suggested the night reporter and I were becoming friends. Threatened to kill managing editor.

New Year’s resolution update: I have not assaulted my night reporter, either verbally or physically. The true test will be this weekend when he have to bowl together for BFit4Life.

I’d welcome you all to the melange; but I’m in a surprisingly coherent mood.

I want to talk about a specific topic today, a topic that comes up whenever I attend a lecture or reading by a writer — any writer.

Inevitably, some person will raise their hand, stand from their chair and contritely ask the writer, “What advice would you give a first-time author?”

Also inevitable, the writer will give one of two replies:

“Write a lot and expect rejection.”

“Pick another career.”

Both suggestions are honest, but they are also glib and less helpful than more specific advice.

It was nice to see poet Christian Wiman give a more thorough answer. (Shout out to the Bookslut blog for providing the link.)

Read deep into your own tradition and memorize poems from all eras. Read literatures other than your own. Read history, philosophy, theology, science. Travel the world, if you can. If you can’t, travel deeply into your own neighborhood, training yourself to see what other people miss. Find some way of supporting yourself that’s apart from your art. Hopefully, this will feed your imagination and bring new material into your work, but at the very least it will create a useful buffer zone between what you do and what you earn. Keep in mind that all this is coming from someone who edits a poetry magazine for a living, doesn’t like to travel and has forgotten three-quarters of what he’s read.

Jean Henry Mead has also collected some genuinely good advice from other writers on her blog.

From Elmore Leonard: The first thing you have to learn is how not to overwrite.

Pulitzer winner A.B. Guthrie Jr.: I would give one piece of advice to would-be writers: if you don’t love the language, forget it!

Janet Dailey: Probably the greatest way for a writer to break into the business is to write in category, whether it be western, romance, mystery, or science fiction; that’s the place where the publisher has already learned there is an audience. That’s where fledglings can establish themselves and become a Stephen King, Mickey Spillane, Louis L’Amour or Agatha Christie. Excel and go beyond the so-called limits of the categories.

Parris Afton Bonds: Talent is cheap. The difference between a professional and an amateur writer is persistence. Selling is a matter of luck, really.

Irene Bennett Brown: A writer shouldn’t broadcast a story’s theme or wave it in front of a reader like a banner. That’s too much like teaching and preaching, which readers hate. I give my characters strong goals, and tough problems. Theme isn’t something you plan, it just is. It’s what your story proves and falls into place when you’ve done everything else right.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

... Not really, I just like that lyric.

Not surprisingly, Jason, I can't think of a book I regret reading.
Much as I did not enjoy Twilight and thought it was poorly written, I'm not sorry I read it.
In my broken recordness ... how can you fully appreciate the good without a little of the not-so-good? If "Twilight" were the only book you had ever read, would you have thought it better?
Who are these people who wish they had not read works as diverse as Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" and Lamb's "She's Come Undone" and Eugenides' "Middlesex"? What is it they wish they had done instead of spending time with these novels?
I can see I've asked too many questions - talk about poor writing! - but I am truly baffled.
There are so many books on my list for this year I can't wait to get cracking.
I'm sure some I will enjoy more than others, some will be better written than others, some will have better plots, some will speak to me for inexplicable reasons.
But, regret reading any of them? That's not my way.
- Tricia Ambrose

My New Year’s resolution is to stop taking my anger out on my night reporter.

Let’s see how long that lasts.

The end of the holidays is a great time to talk about regrets. Maxed out your credit cards? Drank your weight in egg nog? Hooked up with the wrong person at the office Christmas party? There’s plenty to regret by January.

GoodReads is asking people what they regret reading.

Unsurprisingly, Stephenie Meyer’s polarizing Twilight series own the four of the five top slots. The list was littered with bestsellers. (It makes sense. The more a book is read, the more it can be regretted.)

I was more surprised that Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones and J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye took the seventh and eighth slot, respectively.

A few other critical darlings appeared on the list, which was compiled by popular vote. Ayn Rand, Toni Morrison and Thomas Hardy all made the top 50. (I guess some vengeful high school students could have voted, but how many of them are trolling GoodReads?)

I rarely regret reading a book, because I usually get something — a character, quote or single turn of phrase — that I like. For example, I loathed much of Finnegan’s Wake, but I still enjoyed some of Joyce’s coinages. (My favorites were caligulate, meandertale and lustsleuth.)

A book’s bad would have to severely outweigh its good before I regretted reading it. That having been said, I could see why Meyer would be an easy target.

She got some critical buzz, raising people’s expectations, and her plots deal with high-school concerns and move at a glacial pace. In fact, Twilight is one of the few books that I would say I regretted reading. (Heart of Darkness, voted 94, would be another.)

I imagine Tricia, with her no-book-is-good-or-bad policy, would regret nothing. Am I wrong?

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

Everything I know about poetry, I learned from hip-hop.

Without knowing it, I learned the figurative trope of antanaclasis. Same goes for kenning, metonymy and assonance.

Antanaclasis is when a person uses the same word twice, but the word’s meaning changes with each repitition.

For example, Vince Lombardi once said if someone isn’t fired with enthusiasm, they’ll be fired with enthusiasm.

Cam’ron taught me antanaclasis when he rapped, “Get him a Mauri flow, from the Mauri show/[Mess] around, y’all gonna be up on the Maury Show.”

In fact, Cam’ron’s entire style is derived from assonance and antanaclasis. Of course, I didn’t know that as a 17-year-old. I just knew he liked to repeat vowel sounds and words with different denotations. (No man has wrung more meaning from the words “China” and “white.”)

I knew that Pimp C was using “Whitney” and “Bobby” as slang for cocaine and marijuana, respectively. I didn’t know that scholars called that metonymy or that it’s a poetic technique that dates back to Sophocles.

No, I learned that when I read Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip-Hop by Adam Bradley.

Bradley is an assistant professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College who earned his doctorate from Harvard University. He analyzes rap lyrics for their use of poetic techniques.

The associations Bradley makes are stunning but appropriate.

Just in the introduction, Bradley notes that Ice T’s “6 ‘N the Mornin’” uses the same cadence as Langston Hughes’s Sylvester’s Dying Bed.

Not impressed, you say. Everyone knows Hughes has influenced every “black” genre of American music since the blues.

OK, he also associates the tradition of kenning, in which two poets would compare their virtuosity by assuming cumulative titles, to the Smoothe da Hustler and Trigger tha Gambler hit “Broken Language.” Raekwon with James Baldwin. “Rapper’s Delight” and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Bradley does it all in his Book of Rhymes; and, as silly as some of these juxtapositions seem, Bradley makes them work.

Book of Rhymes would best serve someone who loves hip-hop but doesn’t know poetry or vice-versa. Honestly, if someone is well-versed in both, Bradley’s text will be unnecessary.

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

P.S. Bradley’s hip-hop cred is solid for a Harvard grad. He references artists as diverse as Immortal Technique and Kool Moe Dee. However, he botches at least two facts in his book.

One, it was Big Boi, not Andre 3000, who proclaimed he was “cooler than a polar bear’s toenails.”

Two, Notorious B.I.G. did not end the story rap “N---- Bleed” by crashing his Range Rover. It was his pursuer’s Range that got towed because it was double parked by a hydrant. (That’s a serious detail to someone who memorized almost the entirety of Life After Death in 1997.)