By now you know the story of Charlotte Rogan.  Princeton educated, a mother of triplets, the wife of a lawyer, a quiet writer in the quiet hours, Rogan had written several novels and tucked them away before she finally, "practically on a whim," according to the New York Times story, sent what would become The Lifeboat to an agent.  The rest is history.  After twenty-five years of writing in near secret, Rogan has become an overnight success.

I read The Lifeboat yesterday.  I remain in the thrall of its intelligence.  There's not a sloppy sentence in this book, nor an excess line.  Grace, its heroine (?), is masterfully complex, and so are the issues that unwind across these pages.  It is 1914.  A ship has gone down in the Atlantic.  A crowded lifeboat is cast about on open seas.  Easy rescue doesn't come.  Survival is at stake—but whose, and at what cost, and what will the civilized say about the surviving later, in a court of law?  Who is sane, who is acting, what is true, and what are the options if there is no land in sight and water is short and dangerous factions have formed?  Is it possible not to choose a side?  Can we ever adequately explain, even to ourselves, the choices we make in extreme, inhuman moments? 

Rogan further complicates her story by further complicating Grace, the young woman, recently married, who is on trial with two others when the book begins.  Grace has, in some ways, bludgeoned her way into the high society she craves.  She has gained her husband at the expense of another woman.  She may have gained this seat on the lifeboat at the expense of something else.  Is she a good person?  Do we root for her?  Are any of us untainted?

Psychologically taut, finely paced, quietly but masterfully suspenseful, The Lifeboat, despite its setting on the high seas, never leaks from itself, never goes off on a stray tangent.  It's a remarkable debut, as focused a novel as I have read in a long time.   

Display Comments Add a Comment

It has been six years since your last novel was published, and I gather you weren’t writing for some of that time. What were you doing? Jack Daniel’s and the “Today” show?
Living, it’s called living. You might call it wasting time, but I just call it living. Going bird hunting, reading books, watching the Red Sox, doing things with my wife that we wouldn’t have time to do if I was writing a book. There’s a whole lot to do once you can get out from under the yoke of working.

— excerpted from "Richard Ford Is a Man Who Actually Listens," Andrew Goldman interview, New York Times

Display Comments Add a Comment

It had to happen eventually. Today Jamie Ford is not on the New York Times bestseller list--ending our phenomenal run of 130 consecutive weeks on the list. That is two and half years without dropping off.

Wow. Just wow.

Maybe I shouldn't be having a blog entry announcing this fact but you know what, Jamie? It's an incredible achievement no matter how I talk about it.

So I raise a glass of champagne to you and your wonderful debut novel: Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter & Sweet.

For us, there has been no bitter.

And I have a feeling that this week isn't the end and that we will be popping back on in the not-so-distant future.

Cheers!

Display Comments Add a Comment

In this week's New York Times Magazine, Mark Bittman and Thomas Keller tackle classic French cuisine, attempting several recipes out of master chef and La Pyramide founder Fernand Point's seminal cookbook Ma Gastronomie. "Fernand Point was not one of your gym-going, globe-trotting, Ph.D.-equipped chefs. He was a roast-chicken-for-breakfast-eating, two-bottles-of-Champagne-at-lunch-drinking,

Add a Comment

Lena Dunham, the creator and star of the hyped and critical darling HBO show Girls, spoke to the New York Times about what she likes to read and where she does it. Currently she is reading “Bad Behavior” by Mary Gaitskill (a collection of stories, one of which became the inspiration for the movie Secretary,) Diane Keaton’s memoir and “Having it All” by Helen Gurley Brown, among other things. It’s not surprising how well read Dunham is since it is evident in her writing.

What are your thoughts on Lena’s reading list? Have you watched GIRLS?

Add a Comment

It never ceases to amaze me when op-eds appear in newspapers about young-adult (YA) books. Here are the usual flavors:

• YA books contribute to the degradation of teens.
• YA books are too dark and scary.
• YA books have stopped sending messages about morals.
• This YA book should be banned (even though I have not read it).
• YA books are turned into movies too much.
• All YA books are like Twilight and Harry Potter so why are people still reading them?
• Dude, what is up with YA? I thought it was a fad.

Most of you already know that we have been blessed with another lovely opportunity. Last week in the New York Times, author Joel Stein shared his opinion that Adults Should Read Adult Books.

Of course, he is entitled to his own opinion. In his mind, it is totally not the business for an adult to read anything that resembles teen subject matter. It is embarrassing and as adults, we should only read “adult” things and have the common decency to leave those YA books for the kids. Seriously, grow up ya’ll. LOL.

So with that said, I want to share with you my opinion: Adults Should Read Anything They Want.

I could possibly be a little biased because I’m an adult who writes YA fiction. But even before I dove into this particular type of literature (yes, it is literature), I was an avid reader of YA books.

For me, reading YA novels doesn’t mean that I’m childish or irresponsible. I don’t want to “relive” or “revise” my teen years. I was drawn to these books because I wanted to be engrossed in a fascinating world with dynamic characters who are doing interesting things.

The fact is that adults read books that speak to them. Romance. Science Fiction. Fantasy. Contemporary. Mystery. Horror. Young-adult books have all that covered and then some.

Joel Stein has every right not to read a YA book. Like ever. But it’s sort of sad because I’m thinking he would really like The Fault in Our Stars. :)

For me, I think he missed the most obvious point: Maybe adults are reading YA books because they love good story-telling.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Truth be told, I'm still struggling in these parts, and hence the sluggishness of my blog presence.  I do hope to regain my perky self (Was I ever perky? Is it even appropriate at my age to be perky?).  But between now and then, I would like to share two news items (both from the New York Times) that friends have sent my way.  My taste, my interests must be verging on the transparent.

Story number one:  Draft.  This is the new Times Opinionator feature that promises "essays by grammarians, historians, linguists, journalists, novelists and others on the art of writing—from the comma to the tweet to the novel—and why a well-crafted sentence matters more than ever in the digital age."  Jhumpa Lahiri's gorgeous piece "My Life's Sentences" recalled, for the ever-lovely Melissa Sarno, a piece I had written here, about my obsession with the construct.  (Thank you, Melissa, for making me famous today.)

Story number two:  Your Brain on Fiction.  This Annie Murphy Paul essay on reading and the effects it has on our brains reinforces what those of us who have defended lies and lie telling (well, we have defended novels) have been saying all along:  "Reading great literature...enlarges and improves us as human beings."

I personally think the "great" matters in that Annie Murphy Paul essay.  Which takes me straight back to my obsession with crafting fine sentences.  Not easy sentences.  Not obvious ones.  Not the ones you've seen plenty of times before.  But the ones that make us think.

Thank you, Melissa, Mandy, Paul, and Bonnie for making sure I see the good stuff.  Thank you, Melissa, for pairing me with Jhumpa herself.

Display Comments Add a Comment

By Robert F. Hurley

Greg Smith’s March 14, 2012 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs” is a familiar story for those who follow the betrayal and repair of trust. Smith tells a story of his frustration and disillusionment at Goldman changing from a culture that valued service to clients to one that rewarded those who made the most money for the firm even if it betrayed client interests. To be clear, from a trust violation standpoint, Smith suggests that Goldman lacks integrity because it holds itself out to clients as being their servants when in reality the firm is focused on manipulating clients to buy or sell securities that benefit Goldman’s interests more than the clients’. If this is true, Goldman is saying one thing but doing another, which is duplicitous and lacks integrity.

What is interesting about Smith’s resignation letter is that it tells the all-too-common, inside story of how firms lose their way and violate trust. The message here, and one that is consistent with the BP, News Corporation, Toyota, and Lehman violations, is that these betrayals of stakeholder trust have root causes that are embedded in the organizational system. At BP there was rhetoric about safety after the 2005 Texas oil refinery explosion, but real currency of the realm continued to be profit; so they chose to save 7 million dollars to drill a Deep Water Horizon well that they knew was not the safest option. At News Corp, they said that rogue employees were responsible for the first hacking scandals (that it was not inherent in the system), but it was later revealed that hacking was a strategy used in the News Corp system to gain advantage among news outlets. Toyota had a strong quality culture, but a flawed and Tokyo centric recall system that failed to notify US drivers about cars that had been recalled in other countries. Lehman systematically overrode its own risk management practices because growth and profit is what really mattered.

Betrayals of trust by tyrants and government agencies show similar patterns. Time and time again incongruence in the organizational system cause major trust violations, which lead to demonstrations of trustworthiness by some aspect of the system, only for some other aspect of the organization to undermine it. A failure to align all elements of the organization’s architecture toward achieving its stated mission and values is what causes these betrayals of stakeholder trust.

High trust firms like Zappos, Google, Proctor and Gamble, and QuikTrip don’t fall into these traps. They do the hard work of clarifying mission and values, and they align leadership, culture, reward systems, and all of their core processes (product development, supply chain, etc.) toward serving stakeholders’ interests. These stakeholders — customers, suppliers, communities, and employees — know that these firms can be counted on reliably. The data is clear that these high trust firms derive many competitive advantages in lower employee turnover, more customer loyalty, more organizational resilience, and even higher stock price from this service. Doing the right thing and doing it consistently is a virtuous and effective way of doing business.

The good news for Goldman Sachs is that trust failures can be repaired and reputations restored. Mattel recovered brilliantly from its lead paint problem in toys made in China; Bill Clinton went from the disgrace of the Monica Lewinsky scandal to being a leader in global causes and presented as the world’s CEO in the media . But the path is not easy. Real trust repair requires

Add a Comment

 

Many years ago, while at university, one of my professors required that his students write their own obituary. He told us that by writing our obits, we would begin to truly appreciate ourselves and others as individual human beings with innate worth and lasting value. He also said that until we stood back and looked at ourselves as a stranger would see us, we could never really know who we are.

Like most college students, we went along with the program as outlined and did as we’d been instructed. The lesson had interesting consequences for me along the way. I doubt any of us ever forgot what we learned from it.

Trying to look at your image in the mirror, as a stranger would, isn’t an easy task. Self-perception is always influenced by experience and what others have told you of their observations and expectations for you. The physical aspects that have always seemed flawed, or perfect, or questionable are your first impressions.

When you go past the physical to past experience, deeds, and failures with their requisite successes, you dwell on those bits that were less than perfect, less than desirable. Accepting the flawed episodes from a past that can’t be changed is a timely process. Without that acceptance, the successes ring as hollow and lifeless. Small indiscretions overpower small kindnesses. Praise is mitigated by remembered slights. And the cycle continues.

The act of writing one’s personal obituary allows for reflection on the overall picture of a person’s life—yours. The fact is that an obituary is merely a personal profile. It places the person within the framework of their own history.

Family and friends come to the foreground, along with major accomplishments within the person’s life. It’s not concerned with failures, but with successes, relationships, and contributions. It concentrates on those areas of one’s life that reflect the spirit and philosophy of the person.

The amount of detail held within the paragraphs that encompass a person’s life story depends on the purpose of the writer. Make no mistake; the obituary is a telling of a person’s profile or life story in miniature. It can celebrate that life, magnify it, examine it, whatever the writer wishes to convey. It can also bring to light the otherwise unknown deeds of a person, secrets held by those who knew her best.

By the time I finished my assignment, I’d reaffirmed several key points about myself. I’d come away with an acknowledgement of those relationships which mattered the most to me and knew why they did so. My failures up to that point had been assessed and laid to rest. I’d owned all of them, some for the first time, and they could no longer haunt me.

Successes, some of them never properly acknowledged, came to the foreground. I’d never before thought of those times I’d been in a rescue situation as successes. My actions had been necessary to keep another from greater harm. I’d not categorized them as anything other than being in the right place at the right time.

The exercise became a kind of “It’s a Wonderful Life” scenario. When approached that way, failures meant nothing, had no value. Only successes counted, and few, if any, of those for me had anything to do with money or personal gain.<

Display Comments Add a Comment

 

Many years ago, while at university, one of my professors required that his students write their own obituary. He told us that by writing our obits, we would begin to truly appreciate ourselves and others as individual human beings with innate worth and lasting value. He also said that until we stood back and looked at ourselves as a stranger would see us, we could never really know who we are.

Like most college students, we went along with the program as outlined and did as we’d been instructed. The lesson had interesting consequences for me along the way. I doubt any of us ever forgot what we learned from it.

Trying to look at your image in the mirror, as a stranger would, isn’t an easy task. Self-perception is always influenced by experience and what others have told you of their observations and expectations for you. The physical aspects that have always seemed flawed, or perfect, or questionable are your first impressions.

When you go past the physical to past experience, deeds, and failures with their requisite successes, you dwell on those bits that were less than perfect, less than desirable. Accepting the flawed episodes from a past that can’t be changed is a timely process. Without that acceptance, the successes ring as hollow and lifeless. Small indiscretions overpower small kindnesses. Praise is mitigated by remembered slights. And the cycle continues.

The act of writing one’s personal obituary allows for reflection on the overall picture of a person’s life—yours. The fact is that an obituary is merely a personal profile. It places the person within the framework of their own history.

Family and friends come to the foreground, along with major accomplishments within the person’s life. It’s not concerned with failures, but with successes, relationships, and contributions. It concentrates on those areas of one’s life that reflect the spirit and philosophy of the person.

The amount of detail held within the paragraphs that encompass a person’s life story depends on the purpose of the writer. Make no mistake; the obituary is a telling of a person’s profile or life story in miniature. It can celebrate that life, magnify it, examine it, whatever the writer wishes to convey. It can also bring to light the otherwise unknown deeds of a person, secrets held by those who knew her best.

By the time I finished my assignment, I’d reaffirmed several key points about myself. I’d come away with an acknowledgement of those relationships which mattered the most to me and knew why they did so. My failures up to that point had been assessed and laid to rest. I’d owned all of them, some for the first time, and they could no longer haunt me.

Successes, some of them never properly acknowledged, came to the foreground. I’d never before thought of those times I’d been in a rescue situation as successes. My actions had been necessary to keep another from greater harm. I’d not categorized them as anything other than being in the right place at the right time.

The exercise became a kind of “It’s a Wonderful Life” scenario. When approached that way, failures meant nothing, had no value. Only successes counted, and few, if any, of those for me had anything to do with money or personal gain.<

Add a Comment

Sleep did not befriend me last night (come on, I thought, what did I do to you?), but I made good use of time of the dark and restless time.  First, I prepared a series of reading/writing exercises for my visit to Villa Maria Academy today in honor of World Read Aloud Day.  We'll read Helme Heine's magical THE MARVELOUS JOURNEY THROUGH THE NIGHT as adults, for example, and then define our idea of paradise.  We'll dwell with the simple words of William Carlos Williams.  We'll write from different points of view and ask ourselves what makes for a first-chapter cliffhanger.

It will be fun, I think.  I'm just hoping that I can locate my speaking voice between now and 9:15 AM.

When I was all finished that, I decided to download one of the Kindle Singles I had read about yesterday in Dwight Garner's New York Times story.  My choice, but of course, was Ann Patchett's Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life, though in about five minutes I'll also be downloading Jane Hirshfield's Heart of Haiku.

In any case, there I was, four A.M., as wide-eyed as my puffy eyes would allow, reading Patchett's primer on writing.  My verdict:  Spend the $2.99.  Please.  It's memoir, it's advice, it's fantastic stuff on Grace Paley and Elizabeth McCracken.  Patchett is realistic.  She's not ashamed of the facts.  Writing is hard work, she reminds us.  And it doesn't get done until you show up to do it.

A sliver:

If you want to write, practice writing.  Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish but because there is something that you alone can say.  Write the story, learn from it, pull away, write another story. Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sentiment:  The only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap.  Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama.  We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the fresh water underneath.

 Boy, I needed that.

And on another, final note:  That is not my dining-room table (though it is a restaurant where I tend to take my clients).  But if I did own that table and if I did have that much light, I'd work right there, writing the bad stories down so that I could finally (it's taking long enough) get to the good ones (they must be somewhere).

Display Comments Add a Comment

Conversations about teens, technology and distraction are nothing new. When mobile phones first started to move from the domain of Important Business People at airports and into the hands of the general public, we worried that their presence in schools would be too distracting for students. (And we still have to tell the cinema-going public–including an awful lot of people over the age of 18–not to text or talk during movies.) Now that more and more schools allow students to bring their own laptops or tablets to classes, we worry about filtering and blocking sites like Facebook or YouTube during school hours.

And now there’s the question of reading on digital devices, and the threat of distraction by the device itself–or, at least, that’s what New York Times business writers Julie Bosman and Matt Richtel would have us ponder. Is tablet reading “more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity”?

I don’t know about you, but I’m a multi-platform reader. I have a (print) book in my car in case I find myself early for an appointment. I have OverDrive on my Android phone and my iPod Touch, so that I can easily check a book out from my local public library if I’m on the go. I have a Nook Color, which I mostly use when traveling (and that my partner has all but co-opted after giving it to me for my birthday). And I’m constantly picking up (print) books at work to read at the desk, many sucking me in enough to get tossed in my bag to read at home.

And here’s my secret: I’m always a distracted reader.
 
Things I have done while reading a book:

Looked up a word I did’t know (sometimes on a built-in dictionary, sometimes online, sometimes in an actual print dictionary)
Looked up an event or a person on Wikipedia when I didn’t get a reference
Responded to a text
Put on music
(Half) listened to NPR
Eaten Chex mix
Attempted to keep my cats from eating Chex mix
Cooked a meal
Flown cross country

Things I have occasionally failed to do while reading a book:

Get off at the right subway stop
Leave for an appointment on time
Check something in the oven before it starts burning
Prep for a class coming in last period
Finish a level in Lego Harry Potter
Feed the cats dinner on time

None of the things I listed apply only to e-reading, by the way. Most of them have happened in the last month with print books, actually. And here’s the thing: once I was done with all those things (or done failing at those things), more often than not I went back to reading my book.

But what say you, reader? Does your Kindle or Nook or iPad make reading a “21st century cacophony”? Do you long for a 20th (or 19th, or 18th) century “solitary activity”? Can your teens relate to those who say the lure of apps and email is just too great when reading on a tablet?

Add a Comment

Julie Bosman's New York Times feature on author Patricia O'Brien intrigues us.  O'Brien had sold five novels, the story goes, but could not sell a sixth, entitled The Dressmaker, thanks to the sales of her previous titles.  O'Brien's agent suggested a pseudonym.  O'Brien agreed.  Within just three days The Dressmaker had sold for a very nice sum under a new author name, Kate Alcott.

There was some lingering subterfuge to attend to, of course.  Some funny back and forth—a new email address, scanty personal details—with an editor who believed she had bought the work of a first-time author.  But it wasn't until it was author photo time and the first blurred photo that the author sent was deemed no good that the gig was finally up, the truth spoken.

As one who teaches memoir and advocates for the truth in the form, it's hard to know how to feel about this.  I mean, we're talking about fiction, after all.  And the pseudonym business surely isn't new.  And I'm certainly one of many writers who wishes deeply that the sale of her future books were not so tied to the sale of books she already wrote.  We aren't always responsible for what happens to our books out there—can't insist on publicity, can't do much about where our books sit within our publishing house's priorities, can't dictate whether or not ads will be taken, whether or not a tour will be financed, whether or not the book resonates at this particular time, whether or not a lot of things.

But when I try to imagine keeping the charade going post sale—interacting with an editor under false pretenses, say—I wonder if I would have had the gumption to keep going, editorial letter after editorial letter, conversation after conversation.  I suspect I'd be one of those who would have early on had to blow her cover.  Working with an editor is personal, in the end.  And novel writing can be akin to confession.

Display Comments Add a Comment

At First Book, we work hard to make an impact: we put over 8 million new books into the hands of kids in need across the country this year. And we’re mindful of how many amazing organizations there are out there, both nationally and locally, that could use your support.

So we were pleased to see the New York Times Opinionator blog list First Book today as a nonprofit that is making a major difference while staying on the difficult path towards self-sufficiency, describing our work as a “particularly good use of charitable dollars” (we agree) and “proven to work” (also true).

Commenting on the way First Book’s model marries “altruism and profit”, Tina Rosenberg writes:

If you give books to children who don’t have them, good things happen — they become interested in reading, and they read more. Having lots of books in the home is as good a predictor of children’s future educational achievement as their parents’ educational levels.

But good things also happen to the publishing industry: First Book has harnessed its large network of education programs to create a guaranteed market and persuade publishers to make low-cost versions of some 2,000 titles — allowing publishers to reach the 42 percent of American children who were not in their market before. Fifty dollars buys 20 books for a child who has none.

We hope you’ll support First Book this holiday season. Every $2.50 you give provides one new book for a child in need. It’s a great way for you to make sure your hard-earned and well-considered donation goes to support something that works.

Add a Comment

It's not like you haven't seen the list of the New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books already, since I'm late on the uptake. But for my own records and general comfort level that I'm paying attention to such things, here they are with my little thoughts.


Along a Long Road
written and illustrated by Frank Viva (Little, Brown)
Yeah, I can see why this was chosen. Interesting art, though not one of my favorite books this year.

A Ball for Daisy
written and illustrated by Chris Raschka (Schwartz & Wade)
Generally I don't love Raschka's art, but I liked it here. The loose style of his work matches the playfulness of a puppy very nicely.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon: Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures
written by Katherine Paterson, illustrated by Pamela Dalton (Chronicle)
Simply gorgeous!

Grandpa Green
written and illustrated by Lane Smith (Roaring Brook)
Clever, touching, and brilliant in concept and illustration.

Ice
written and illustrated by Arthur Geisert (Enchanted Lion)
Really? The book with the pigs? Okay, I guess.

I Want My Hat Back
written and illustrated by Jon Klassen (Candlewick)
Still trying to get onboard with the hype on this title. Also, while I like the illustrations I don't think it falls into the best illustrations of the year.

Me … Jane
written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell (Little, Brow

Display Comments Add a Comment

The day has come!  Shel Silverstein’s newest poetry collection, EVERY THING ON IT, is on sale today!

You can get a peek at the book by using our Browse Inside feature, and check out the downloadable activities.  The New York Times also wrote a lovely piece about Shel Silverstein as an unexpected “authority on education.”  And don’t forget to check out Shel’s poems on NPR’s Morning Edition (seriously, you haven’t lived until you hear Shel’s editor Toni Markiet read “Italian Food” out loud!).

The reviews are coming in and they positively glow about EVERY THING ON IT:

“This posthumous collection of Silverstein’s poems and illustrations is not only familiar in design, but chockfull of the whimsical humor, eccentric characters, childhood fantasies, and iconoclastic glee that his many fans adore.” ~ Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Like the boy holding the delightfully absurd hot dog with everything piled upon it, this collection offers a Silverstein smorgasbord that won’t linger on the library shelves.” ~ School Library Journal (starred review)

“Adults who grew up with Uncle Shelby will find themselves wiping their eyes by the time they get to the end of this collection; children new to the master will find themselves hooked.” ~ Kirkus Reviews

It’s a historic day, and we’re so excited to share it with you, readers.  And if you’d like to share memories and/or favorite poems by Shel Silverstein in the comments, please feel free – we’d love to hear it!

Add a Comment

The ever-provocative Dwight Garner opines about the productivity of Important Novelists in today's New York Times, expressing a desire for work that yields "heat as well as light"�and a frustration with "the long gestation period [that] is pretty typical for America's corps of young, elite celebrity novelists."  Says Garner (who cites Eugenides, Franzen, Tartt, Chabon, and David Foster Wallace among the slower working novelists):

Obviously, some of this is about personal style. There have always been prolific writers as well as slow-moving, blocked, gin-addled or silent ones. It’s worth suggesting, though, that something more meaningful may be going on here; these long spans between books may indicate a desalinating tidal change in the place novelists occupy in our culture. Suddenly our important writers seem less like color commentators, sifting through the emotional, sexual and intellectual detritus of how we live today, and more like a mountaintop Moses, handing down the granite tablets every decade or so to a bemused and stooped populace.

The economics of novel writing (how many must teach, for example, to survive) and the tugs on a novelist's time (book tours, interviews) clearly, Garner notes, run interference in a writer's life.  It's likely that other things are also to blame—life itself, for example, by which I mean the need for a writer to live deeply so that he or she might know even more deeply.  Then there are the demands of research—how long, one wonders, did David Foster Wallace have to steep himself in the arcania of tax code before he could even begin to find the story inside The Pale King?

As I read Garner's piece, I reflected—as I often do—on my own "productivity."  I published my first book in 1998; by the end of next summer, with the publication of Small Damages with the rocking house Philomel, fourteen of my books will sit across the room from me on the shelf.

Some would categorize that effort as prolific.  In fact, I feel anything but.  I may have published my first book in 1998, but I was writing long before that, and many of my books—Small Damages being a prime example—went through ten years of work, more than eighty drafts, and two genres before it became the story it was always meant to be.  Still Love in Strange Places (W.W. Norton), published as a memoir, was for a decade a novel about El Salvador before I spent three years turning the fiction into fact.  You Are My Only, which will launch in a month, was three very different books (written for adults) before I wrote it as a young adult novel.  And I am, at this very moment, utterly overhauling a novel for adults that I was so sure was cooked to order six months ago.  I am, in some ways, starting from scratch.

Writing has never been, for me, a straightforward process.  Publishing has been anything but.  I am trying to suggest that as writers we work and work (when time allows, when the day job on occasion eases up), but we rarely control the outcome itself.  The story comes on us, at us.  It dawns, it reveals, it retracts.  It's there for a moment, and then it scuttles away, and as much as we would like to put ourselves on a publishing schedule, our imaginations are countries unto themselves.

Today I wake, for example, to a scene that has eluded me for weeks.  The same darned scene.  The same patch in the same

Display Comments Add a Comment

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday weekend!  It seems that Mother Nature decided this weekend really did herald in the autumn, as it’s drizzly and chilly in NYC today.  It turns out it’s the best weather to hunker down and catch up on blog reading.  Here are some interesting links we’ve been reading lately:

• The Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2011 shortlist just came out and CONGRATULATIONS to author Veronica Roth (DIVERGENT) for her nomination in the “Published Author Blog” category.  Thanks to Lee Wind at I’m Here, I’m Queer, What the Hell Do I Read? for the link (and congrats to his nomination as well)!
• There’s still time to have the teens in your library or classroom vote for YALSA’S Teens’ Top 10 – they have until September 16th.
• Family of robots? Bookshelves of Doom does it again: makes me laugh hysterically first thing in the morning before I’ve even had coffee.
• The time has come: awards buzz is in full effect.  Heavy Medal has started their coverage of all things Newbery.  There doesn’t appear to be a link yet, but keep an eye out for Horn Book‘s own blog, Calling Caldecott.
• Liz Burns over at A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy had quite the ordeal, courtesy of Hurricane Irene.  Read her story and check out her links of other bloggers with Irene stories.
• Snape voted the favorite Harry Potter character?  Really???  It’s a total upset.  Me, I’m a Hermione fan through and through.  And you?
• Sam over at Parenthetical has a fascinating blog post, “To RSS or not to RSS?”  Really?  Only 6% of North American, Internet-using consumers use an RSS feed once a week or more?  That floors me, as I couldn’t live without Google Reader to help me keep it all organized (and I couldn’t live without my Bloglines before that, nor could Liz).  What do you think?  When everyone and their brother has a blog out there, how do you keep it all organized?
• Once again, Seattle Public Library closes for a week due to budget cuts.  I think the quote at the end really gets to the crux of the problem: “You kind of take it for granted – and then suddenly you miss it when it’s gone.”
• Doing last-minute book buying for school?  Here’s a list of some back-to-school titles from the New York Times.

Have a great (short!) week, everyone, and enjoy the cooler weather!

Add a Comment

Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope? :: The New York Times
The Problem is Not the Books :: Saundra Mitchell
And This is Why the Problem is Not the Books :: Saundra Mitchell
Writing Toward Teen Boys -- The Conversation Continues :: Beth Kephart
Too Much Teen Paranormal Romance :: YouTube

Display Comments Add a Comment

I am what the savvy might term a slow adopter. I tend to like things as they are.  My movies on the big screen.  My books between their covers.  My conversations in person, face to face.

That is not this world.

And if I am less than knowledgeable about Facebook (I am, perhaps, one of its least organized and aware members), have failed to take on Twitter, am not inclined toward Google +, only just yesterday did justice to my LinkedIn profile (how shabby my former presence was), and make more mistakes in typing Blackberry texts than any living writer, I am coming around to the way the world works.

I have an iPad 2 and I use it to read the New York Times (except the Times magazine, which I still prefer to hold), to catch up with the Inquirer, to read the occasional Kindle or iBook.  (The New Yorker and Food and Wine and Vanity Fair still come, old style, to my house.)  My email friends are legion.  I'm an old-time blogger (holding my ground here, refusing to vanish).  And lately I've been thinking about (not dreading, but embracing) the new ways in which the publishing industry works.  Why not an Amazon single, for example, if the audience is already primed for it?  And why not a book with multi-media illustrations—something web friendly, something e-alive?

It's the middle of August.  The days have been long.  I prefer autumn to summer.  I look toward the new season with hope for my October 25 release, You Are My Only, with eagerness to connect with some of you at a variety of talks, and with the high suspicion that I'm about to change the way I go about making of (some) books.  

Display Comments Add a Comment

By JULIE BOSMAN Published in The New York Times: August 9, 2011 “The publishing industry has expanded in the past three years as Americans increasingly turned to e-books and juvenile and adult fiction, according to a new survey of thousands of publishers, retailers and distributors that challenges the doom and gloom that tends to dominate [...]

Add a Comment

Julie Bosman of the New York Times brings us this good news today—the publishing industry has grown over the past three years, according to a recent BookStats survey.  From her news story:

“We’re seeing a resurgence, and we’re seeing it across all markets — trade, academic, professional,” said Tina Jordan, the vice president of the Association of American Publishers. “In each category we’re seeing growth. The printed word is alive and well whether it takes a paper delivery or digital delivery.” 

Let us take a moment, then, in these darkened times, to celebrate the good news and to congratulate so many of us for never giving up hope in the first place.  The important thing, I think (and this indeed fueled my recent post about historical fiction), is never to panic when it comes to purported book trends.  We are human beings.  Stories feed us.

Display Comments Add a Comment

Pirate Picture Books Ahoy!

Add a Comment