Some of my favorite reads (and examples of Voice!) this year: Agnes Parker . . . Girl In Progress, by Kathleen O'Dell; The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, by Rodman Philbrick; I Am A Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want To Be Your Class President, by Josh Lieb; Hold Still, by Nina LaCour; Gorgeous, by Rachel Vail; The Monstrumologist, by Rick Yancey. (All images from GoodReads.)
All right. So here's the promise Lee and I made to the world in our latest e-blast about the SCBWI Westside Schmooze.
Subject: The SCBWI Westside Schmooze -- Wednesday, October 13th at 7 PM
Does October mean thrills, chills, and suspense to you? Well, it should if you attend the next meeting of the SCBWI Westside Schmooze! Because on October 13th, at 7 PM, we will meet to unmask . . .
VOICE: The End-All Definition
That's right. Editors and Agents often say that while they can fix everything else in a manuscript, Voice is that one special quality a manuscript must have from the start, for them to fall in love. Yet when it comes to defining what Voice IS, even the greats flounder, with many falling back on the axiom "You know it when you see it."
What is THAT about? Are we in the business of describing things or aren't we?? At the next Westside Schmooze we aim to settle this mystery once and for all--AND come up with an End-All Definition--by showing great examples of Voice, analyzing WHAT IT IS, and sharing exercises that will help each of us find and perfect our own. For Picture Book through Young Adult, fiction and non-fiction. Let's do this. It's time.
Now, I'll admit I've been frustrated in my life lately, and I wrote this email with a mad gleam in my eye when the weather had taken a turn for the worse.
But.
I think it's hilarious to set out to do "impossible" things--especially because (in my experience) 60-65% of the time, it totally works. Most of the time, the only
My friend managed to get through an entire day of work last week with horrific food poisoning, without taking any time off. He hid the symptoms all day long—when people passed by his office, when he attended meetings, when he drove across town for a conference (at which, it turned out, he had to speak).
"Every time someone walked by my office, I was like, 'Hey!' and then as soon as they were gone, you know," he said, holding his arms around himself and closing his eyes. "Rocking a little."
I could not stop laughing at every detail. The sweating. The shaking. The strategic running up back stairwells to remote restrooms so bosses and new interns wouldn't see him—both so they couldn't stop him and introduce anyone, and so they wouldn't hear . . . anything. Or know how long he'd been in there.
My friend couldn't understand what was so funny. Being a decent and humble guy, he kept interrupting himself and trying to change the subject with, "Sorry, this is a really boring story," and "And that is way more than you wanted to know about that!" And I kept laughing and saying No, I want to hear more!, and before I could explain why, he would remember something else and go on.
Like how, at one point, before heading across town to a meeting, he stopped at his house, because he had ten minutes to spare. And then he barfed a little, and thought, "Okay. . . ." pant, pant. "Now I'm good." Then he had to sit down again and spend a couple minutes breathing. Then he was running late and had to go.
Because he was only stopping for ten minutes, he parked on the street instead of in the garage. When he got back into his car, he went, "YEAHHHHHH!" Both hands gripping the wheel, face screwed up, screaming. "YEAAAHHHHHHHH!!"—twice—before starting the engine.
I laughed the hardest at that. I totally grilled him about it.
"What do you mean?" I said. "You were just . . . psyching yourself up?? Do you psych yourself up like that in general?? Whenever you have something hard to do?" I thought of all the scenes I'd seen on TV with guys karate chopping themselves in mirrors.
"Yeah. Why?" My friend had no idea why this was interesting.
I kept asking why he didn't go home—or stay home—and my friend insisted that at every turn, he thought the worst had passed.* Until it was too late again.
(*I found out later from his wife that, in fact, the worst did not hit until he was driving home from his meeting, and she came home to find him shivering, feverish, moaning. She was completely frightened. She thought it might be swine flu. At which point I rebuked him roundly, because if there is any chance you could have flu of any type—especially right now—you have to go home!! It's the responsible thing to do!! But he insisted he knew the whole time what flu felt like, and even though he didn't know what was going on, it wasn't that. I find this sketchy and scandalous, but anyway, he didn't have flu, so we'll leave it at that.)
The rest of the episodes from his day were equally entertaining. The stuff of nightmares. Opening a document with 20 minutes before a meeting, and realizing it's 140 pages. Getting to the conference, which your boss's colleague said the company only needed someone to show up at, and realizing you're one of the few attendees with a nameplate. Thinking frantically of what you're going to say, the whole time the long-winded panel is working its way around to you. Pulling off your spiel so that people are coming up afterward to shake your hand and say they appreciated your presentation, even while you're too disoriented to realize you parked your car in the wrong lot.
I kept pulling details out of him. It amazes me when people don't realize
OH MAN. I have to tell you. Lots of times I wonder what a lip reader would think if he or she saw me in my car. Others would see my lips moving, but maybe they would think I had a Bluetooth headset. But a lip reader would know: cheesy love songs.
Today I was sitting in a café, in my usual sunny window, and I’d had a great writing session all morning but now my brain was fried. And I looked right out the window—the same window I sit in every day--right into people’s cars.
Lots of people were singing! Driving by; stopped at the light; heads bobbing—no lip reading necessary. Singing and car dancing.
I am so happy.
In order to clean my apartment (and restore order), I must expend energy and heat, which increases total disorder in the universe. In order to not contribute to world disorder, I need do nothing.
My apartment is very peaceful right now. We are spinning along together—it and I—through the universe, through time—disturbing no one.
A disorderly desk is a sign of a peaceful mind. Happy. Working.
I was doing well with the kid-level science books. I made the quantum leap to
Stephen Hawking, however, and now I understand nothing. But I am wiser about my apartment.
I think Stephen Hawking also just told me that even if our universe began contracting tomorrow, my apartment would still get messier. (As opposed to cleaning itself up, which is what he thought could happen before.)
I'm having great nonsensical fun with all this, since it’s all one to me.
Stephen Hawking
also just told me, in so many words, that the mere effort of
trying to learn has already, apparently,
also increased world disorder by at least ten million million million times the amount of any information—correct or incorrect—I could have possibly gained.
The question thus becomes, Why try?
Ah. Why indeed . . . That’s like asking what makes us human . . . (she says as she climbs into her rocket ship and fastens her seatbelt, revving the engine and undoing the earth),
r
Blast off!!
P.S.
I wrote this a few hours ago, before picking my husband up from his week-long business trip. As soon as we got home, I told him exactly what I just told you. I was all, “Tonight I learned that any effort I put into creating order in this apartment would only give off heat and energy, which would contribute more to the total
disorder in the universe.”
He said, “So we should never clean the apartment.”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “Well, we knew that. It’s the Law of Entropy. You write it with a big
S.”Why do people
know these things???
(And does the fact Damon has all this science information lodged so readily in his brain that—as far as I know—he hasn't used
ever—explain why he can’t remember who told us which funny anecdote at which dinner party how long ago?? And is the fact I
don't have this knowledge the reason that I can??)
P.P.S.
I've also been thinking a lot about
this old entry.
“You know what bothers me sometimes, just randomly, Damon?”
“What?”
“How come I can’t win American Idol?”
“American Idol is about more than just singing. It’s about the whole package. You have to—”
“I’m talking about just singing.”
“You said ‘win.’”
“Never mind ‘win.’ How come I can’t audition? Like, get up on a stage and sing. Like, belt out a song. I can’t do that.”
“You can’t have everything. You do know that, right?"
“And also, how come you can't audition?”
This created a pause. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good performance,” D said finally. “Neither you nor I work at it.”
“You were in a boy band.”
“I was.”
I didn’t like the way this conversation was going. I can’t have everything.
“I’m going to try out," I said, feeling oh-so me suddenly.
“Go ahead. We live right here.”
That's the thing. We do live right here. I don’t watch any television, yet I’ve seen this show in person twice (well, the second time was actually The Next Great American Band, which wasn’t aired live so took four hours)—just because my friend is friends with the (a?) producer and keeps offering me tickets. The line for American Idol tapings goes past my door every week. The audience members take my parking spot!
I’m going to try out.
r
P.S.
I’ve been thinking about the show more lately, because Lee’s been posting about it [here, here, and here] at his awesome, totally thoughtful blog. Check it out!
Sometimes I get giddy with my own genius. Everyone knows how great it feels when you first get a new idea, right? And how, not that long later, it’s kind of equally hilarious to realize your idea might not be that brilliant after all?
Well, even better than that feeling of first genius is old genius! When you find a scrap of paper in your own handwriting—or a document filed away on your computer—of an idea you once had, and you're all, “Hey! Did I write that? I’m a genius!!”
(An analogous situation would be, say, if an inebriated friend called your husband’s cell phone in the middle of the night and started making hilarious declarations about the people in his life—like, eye-opening, too-much-information revelations—and then when you repeated those statements to him in broad daylight, he got all, “I said that?! I never said that!!” all hostile and with the crazy eyes. And just as you thought he was going to get really mad and call you a liar, he goes, “Hm! I’d agree!” Agreeing with himself!)
Getting back to my own example:
Wouldn’t it be funny if these forgotten, brilliant ideas weren’t actually by me? Like if some actual genius was planting ideas in my “future stories” folder and I was finding them, like dollar bills slipped into my purse by friends who want to pay me back for dinner (but who will never, ever get credit—silly friends!—because I am not organized enough to know the treasure isn’t mine)?
Genius!
That would be genius.
Like cheering on that marathon runner who has just a few final steps to go - I raise my glass in a toast to the one and only GregoryK!
For those who don't know - (and whoever you are - how could that be?) GregoryK of GOTTABOOK has spent the last 30 days writing hysterical, original poems as part of National Poetry Month.
If you haven't had the pleasure of his silliness check out his site and read his month-long stream of poems (...and his Oddaptations are pretty darn funny too!)
And in my best rhyme-schemed way - I say:
Here's to Greg K -
Or GottaBook, as he's known.
Spent the last month
makin' up poems.
His rhymes made me laugh
In all sorts of ways -
I guess it's back to the prose
Starting on Tuesday.
Way to go Greg! It was really fun to read 'em and I imagine funner to write 'em.
To tell you how much the poetry took out of me, I then disappeared without commenting on nice posts like yours!
When you gonna do a booktoon-a-day???
And thanks for the nice words....