National Novel Writing Month -- Update: A partial of Searching for Rachel Edelstein

Since so many people have been so kind in the last two weeks as I have struggled to bring a little of this novel to life -- and there have been times when I've seriously doubted it -- I have a small treat for you. Very small.

Here is a little of the beginning of Searching for Rachel Edelstein.

This is only a little more than a page and doesn't really tell you what the story is about. But I thought I'd do this anyway.

Remember: This is part of a first draft. It has no polish. Much is likely to be re-written one day.

Enjoy. Thanks for the support and thanks for reading.

Searching for Rachel Edelstein

By

MB Dabney

00,000 words

 

BEFORE

 

The blade of the shovel sliced across his face, gouging a deep cut, from his hairline down across the cheek to his chin. Dazed, Muller dropped the gun and staggered backwards. Rachel raised the shovel again and brought it down.

Hard.

The rounded part of the shovel caught him squarely in the face, flattening his sharp, pointy facial features. The blow dropped him to the ground and Rachel continued savagely beating him. Fear and anger overwhelmed all her sensibilities. She kept hitting the man lying helplessly on the ground.

Rachel didn’t know Ellington was behind her until he reached around and grabbed the shovel in mid-swing, stopping her from again striking her helpful victim.

“That’s enough, Rachel. It’s over.”

When the autopsy was done on Johann Muller the next day, his face was nearly undistinguishable.

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

“Rachel, you haven’t answered.”

 

The subway car rhythmically rocked Rachel side to side as she blankly stared ahead, almost like a zombie, oblivious to her immediate surroundings. The clang of the metal wheels on the track below didn’t phase her, nor did the sight of the fashionably dressed young Korean woman across from her. She was uncomprehending of the aroma of the man in the tattered clothes seated to her right, although those unfortunate enough not to have a seat turned away from him and his assault on their nasal passages.

It was perhaps muscle memory that guided Rachel from the subway stop to her shop, Guilford and Sons Antiques, in the Union Square section of lower Manhattan. Once inside, the shop greeted clients with the smell of mahogany and old money. The items on display reflected it, because it wasn’t a shop for a spend-thrift.

Guilford and Sons specialized in furniture for any room – cabinets, seating, tables, wardrobes and armoires, decorative objects and occasionally rugs. There also was a small area dedicated to classic photography and prints.

To accommodate its customers, the shop could arrange shipping to anywhere in the U.S. – for a hefty price. Global shipping was also available, for an even heftier price. But New York’s wealthy rarely blinked twice at the expense.

Rachel had not changed the name of the shop when she purchased it years before from the sons of the late owner, reasoning that keeping the former male owner’s name on the front windows would probably help her business in the city’s male-dominated antiques industry. It certainly would be better than having the name Rachel Edelstein front and center.

Or so she told herself.

In an emotional sense, that pissed Rachel off, as it might with any black or Jewish woman. And since she was both, she was doubly pissed off. But from a business sense, she was willing to let it slide. After all, she had herself to feed and her employees to support, though that hadn’t been a problem recently.

 

 

 

 

Searching for Rachel Edelstein

In a less than two hours, I will start my next novel during National Novel Writing Month, Searching for Rachel Edelstein. It will be a follow-up to my 2010 NaNo novel, The Last Tontine Survivor. But this is not a thriller.

Rachel is a black Jewish woman in Manhattan. While she was conflicted about her dual ethnic heritage in the first novel, it was not central to the plot, which involving looking for her grandfather and millions of dollars he took from the Nazis in the 1940s while trying to stay ahead of killers who were after her.

In this novel, Rachel, having survived the chaos from before, takes stock in her life and decides to seek out her estranged family in Virginia. Raised virtually as a white woman in New York, Rachel will come truly face-to-face with her blackness for the first time.

I have written out about three pages of an outline for the novel but haven't finished it. So I will be flying blind a little. But that may be good. It will certainly make reaching the 50,000-word goal by Nov. 30 at midnight a serious challenge. I hope I am up to it.

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

And thanks for reading.

Writers retreat

Just finished packing to leave for the Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime's second writers retreat, which again will be at Bradford Woods, 30 miles south of Indianapolis. The chapter sponsored a weekend retreat in 2014, which was tremendously successful.

Looking forward to work sessions, talking and working with other writers, and just spending time alone to write or just walk through the woods and think.

I plan to finish an essay I have been working on for a while and a somewhat long short story. Also to bounce a couple of ideas I have for a novel in November.

Should be great. Looking forward to a great weekend.

Thanks for reading. See you in October.

WHAAAT? That can't be right!

I was in Alexandria, Va., last week in the same hotel -- Hotel Monaco on King Street -- where I stayed in August 2015. During my stay last year, I posted something on Facebook about my experience right after I arrived. And I decided on the one-year anniversary of that FB post, I'd revisit it and share it with you on my blog. It's not so much about writing as it is an experience.

It was a worrisome and stressful situation in 2015 but read what I wrote to the end. While it could use a little editing and tightening in places, it expressed how I was feeling at the time. I could re-write it but decided not to.

So here it is, from Aug. 25, 2015. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for reading.

******
So we had just registered in a hotel, some 600 miles from home, and were getting off the elevator on the way to the room when my cell phone rang. It was my dad. Now I told him I would be away – we discussed it yesterday – and I called him before I boarded the plane this morning. But when he called, he sounded confused, said he wasn’t feeling well and wanted me to come over. He sounded scared, which scared me. I told him to call 911 – there’s a hospital a half mile from his house – and I started trying to reach relatives back home.

To make a long story short, he’s okay. Medical personnel at the hospital checked him out and he’s okay, except somewhat dehydrated. I spent more than two hours trying to remain calm and keeping my worry at bay. And I’m grateful to my Uncle Arthur, Aunt Sharron, cousins Turae and Eric, and brother David for checking on my dad and keeping me informed as I considered the difficulty and possible costs of ending my trip and going home.

It was beautiful outside today and not too hot. There was no reason to sit around doing nothing but worrying while we waited to hear from relatives back home. So Angela and I went to have lunch, settling on a French-style café in the next block, where we sat at an outdoor table and enjoyed a couple of salads and watched the foot and vehicular traffic.

It was warm and pretty outside, and news was good from back home. But despite an exterior calm that I had been keeping for some time, I struggled getting my emotions in check. I felt stressed and couldn’t return to feeling normal.

 Then, I looked up at a passing truck for a food company called Warner (I think). And on the side of the truck was a picture of a grandmotherly looking woman and under the picture it mentioned something about recipes from Aunt Pussy.

WHAAAT? That can’t be right! Aunt Pussy?

I blinked and looked again. It really said Aunt Peggy.

So I also want to thank the Warner company and Aunt Peggy. They brought a smile to my face and lightened my mood.

Aunt Peggy, indeed.

A writer's block blocker: Someone walks into the room . . .

As writers, we have all had to deal with writer's block; that condition when we are staring at the blank page and nothing is coming out. It's a difficult and scary situation.

Writers have written about it so much -- in books, blogs, videos, newsletters, in person, etc. -- that it's a small wonder that the problem still exists. Yet it does.

And so I decided to put in my two-cents worth.

That's not to say I have the remedy. If I did, there wouldn't so many novels, short stories and essays that I have started and never finished. Plus, if I had the remedy for writer's block, I'd be a millionaire. What writer wouldn't be willing to pay me a king's ransom for the cure to a serious problem that affects us all?

For some time, I have thought writer's block is basically just boredom. You are bore with what you are writing. And if that is the case, then so will the reader.

I think the quickest cure to that is to write through the problem as quickly as possible. Instead of a lot of imaginative description and detail setting the scene -- the look of the flowers, the smell of the air, the feel of the breeze, the sound of the birds, the feel of the dying person's pulse -- just write "Helen died on a Monday afternoon" and move on. The faster you get through it, the faster you put wirter's block behind you.

But a couple of years ago, someone told me about a wonderful cure to writer's block. Obviously, it really only works in fiction, and not in all fiction. It's best probably in mysteries or suspense fiction, although it can still work in a romance or other genre.

When you don't know what to write next, have someone walk into the room with a loaded gun in their hand. Regardless of what's going on in the scene prior to that, having someone walk in with a gun will change and energize everything. There are so many possibilities. Is it a man or a woman? Are they there for good or ill? Are they even in the right room? It doesn't matter because a load gun dramatically changes everything, both in fiction and real life.

So, the next time you are blocked, try adding a loaded gun, or at least some other weapon. You will be amazed with the results.

And hopefully, it will help your story. If nothing else, it could put a smile on your face as you consider all the possibilities.

Thanks for reading.    

Do you know Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

It's a joke, of course. "Do you know Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?"

I first heard it on television many years ago, as a child, actually. I think it was on the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The punchline is: "I didn't know he moved."

To get the joke, you need a modicum of knowledge of U.S. history and even as a child I got it. And later, as an adult, I used the joke as the baseline (and a low baseline, at that) for determining whether a person had any understanding or knowledge of history. You'd be amazed at the number of people who don't.

As a writer, you need to hit the sweet spot between people's knowledge and understanding of your topic or subject, and your presentation of something new and imaginative. Lean too far on the former and the reader will get bored and stop reading. Can't have that.

But to lean too heavily on the latter could result in the reader lacking context. And again, the reader could stop reading. Can't have that.

My beta readers -- a select group of friends and colleagues and others -- like my writing, which is great. Members of my critique group are great at pointing out problems in both my writing and storytelling.

But as a fiction writer, I am still insecure. Am I giving my reader something new and imaginative but without a context they can understand? Am I just writing what others have written before? I truly don't know.

I was much more confident as a reporter. I generally knew what I wrote hit the mark. But fiction seems so much more subjective, although I know it's not.

 Anyway, I'm working on it. But in the meantime, do you know Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

Thanks for reading. 

A long sentence

A long sentence isn't necessarily a better sentence. Often times, it's just a long sentence.

Word.

Thanks for reading. Now get back to writing.

The ending

Last week, I wrote about the beginning of a novel or short story. Or more specifically, I wrote about the sentence that comes AFTER the first sentence, the second sentence, which must also be a grabber and keep grabbing.

Today, I want to skip past the beginning, over the middle, and go straight to the ending. Because it is the ending that the reader will most likely remember first.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a fan of my short story Miss Hattie Mae's Secret. She loved the beginning and, I admit, I do, too. Of all my published and unpublished fiction, it is perhaps my favorite opening. (As I posted last Aug. 1, in this blog, the first two paragraphs have a total of only five words. ["Miss Hattie Mae Farted. Often."] It is minimalist to say the least.) But the reader, who enjoyed the story, was upset with the ending. She wondered what happened next. And, in not knowing, was somewhat vexed.

(For those of you who haven't read the entire story, it ends with the county sheriff coming to visit Miss Hattie Mae to discuss the newly unearthed secret that she has kept for eight decades.)

One of the goals in writing, particularly in genre fiction such as mysteries which I write, is to tie up loose ends. Miss Hattie Mae's Secret started and ended with her, all 95 years of age, on the porch and farting. I originally planned to write more but when I got to that point I stopped because I thought I said all that needed to be said. Anything further I left to the reader.

In all stories, real and fictional, something happens before the point where the writer begins the story and something happens after the story ends. Fictional life, as in real life, is part of a continuum and the writer, almost arbitrarily, begins and ends the telling wherever they choose.

But as a writer, you do want to leave the reader satisfied at the end. Otherwise, they may feel like they wasted their time. You don't want to do that. Case in point, my favorite book from last year. The Martian. I loved the story and enjoyed the book. And, having read it several times, do not think I wasted my time. But I wasn't thrilled with the ending, which was just after Mark Watney is rescued and is beginning his seven-month journey home. The movie, I think, did it better. It ends with Mark back on earth and training new NASA recruits on survival.

I think I approach an ending in fiction the way I always did as a daily journalist. When I got to the end, I stopped writing. When you have said it all, just stop.

And so it is with this.

Thanks for reading.

The end.





   

 

After the opening line, what comes next?

So, what's the next line?

From writers to editors, from agents to teachers and writing coaches, from publishers to Internet bloggers, everyone in the writing and publishing industry stresses the importance of a good opening line. It's almost as if you don't nail the opening line, you might as well give up and go home. While I doubt readers care as much about this as writers do, I don't doubt its importance, which is why I -- like so many writers -- sweat that first line.

Oddly, we don't tend to get as insane with what comes next -- the second line. And why not?

That question came to mind thanks to a friend and former colleague.

The venerable sage Joe Boyce was a Chicago cop back in the late 1960s -- sit back and contemplate that for a second. A black cop in Chicago in the late 60s -- before getting the journalism bug. He spent time at the Chicago Tribune before heading off to Time magazine, and then finally to the Wall Street Journal before retiring. He's a musician now and enjoying retirement.

Last month, on his Facebook page, he started posting a one-sentence prompt -- the opening sentence -- and asked his friends to write the next line. But one line only.

Some people wrote an interesting sentence, full of thought, full of promise. But frankly, some people wrote unimaginative, boring stuff. They seemed to give it no thought at all. And other people failed to read his instructions fully and wrote more than one sentence.

But I took it seriously. And I followed Joe's  instructions.

Regardless of the prompt, I tried to write something as compelling as the first sentence. Because it's the next sentence and the next sentence and the next that makes for good, consistent writing and storytelling. I knew that, of course, but Joe just reminded me of it. Your writing can lose a reader at any point. Therefore, the next sentence is always important.

So, Joseph, thank you, as always, for keeping it real.

And to everyone else, thanks for reading. And keep writing.

ABNA

Read the announcement today that Amazon this year is not hosting its annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. ABNA is probably now gone forever.

That makes me sad. It was a fun contest that not offered a slim chance of getting a publishing contract, but it also was a great gathering place for authors like me to meet and befriend each other. A large number of my Facebook friends are from ABNA. Only one have I ever met face-to-face -- and then only once and briefly.

I will miss that -- getting ready for the contest, chatting with the others, offering and receiving advice on my writing, offering and receiving encouragement when the inevitable comes.

There are forums with former participants but it won't be the same as during the late winter and into the spring when the contest unfolds. It was a gathering of like-minded people who cheered each other on and cried with each other when elimination came.

Last fall, Amazon announced a "reader-powered publishing platform" called Kindle Scout and encouraged past contestants to consider that as a publishing option. In today's announcement, Amazon mentioned Kindle Scout again.

I'm assuming the company feels that is a better and more cost-effective method of finding new authors and new voices. And now, without the contest, I guess I may pursue that.

But regardless of the outcome, I doubt it will be as much fun as the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Sorry to see it go.

But onward and upward

Thanks for reading and keep up the writing.  

Writing to Writer's Digest

In my e-mail in-box last week, I noticed a call from Writer's Digest for stories on the experience authors have had during National Novel Writing Month, which is held each November. As you know, the challenge of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.

I wrote a piece last night of my first NaNoWriMo experience and the non-writing challenge I faced that year -- the year I learned I had cancer.

Take a look below at what I sent Writer's Digest.

Keep writing and thanks for reading.

---

I have accepted the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge five times, starting in November 2009, and have completed the challenge three of those times. The novel I wrote in 2009, An Untidy Affair, and the one I wrote in 2010, The Last Tontine Survivor, both made it to the quarterfinal round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) competition. I entered Affair in ABNA in 2011, while Tontine was a quarterfinalist this year. I also wrote a novel during NaNoWriMo last November and plan to enter that work, The Deadly Game, in ABNA in 2015.

 

I love NaNoWriMo because it truly gives you, the author, the right to write, to sweep away all the external and internal stumbling blocks and to focus on the task at hand -- 50,000 words in 30 days, or an average of 1,667 a day.

 

I am a freelance journalist by occupation and write all the time. But fiction is different and was, back in 2009, much harder for me. Unlike a news or feature article, a novel is like having a long, elaborate daydream which is written down. It's how I approach it.

 

That first year, I wasn't sure I could do it. But I decided to try and settled on a story idea in the spring of 2009. It was to be an auto racing novel, with the protagonist facing major challenges both on and off the track. I love auto racing -- open-wheel cars in particular -- and know a lot about the sport. But the story would still require a lot of research on the technical side, which I planned to do in the summer and fall.

 

In early July 2009, I learned that I might have cancer, which was confirmed just after Labor Day that year. And suddenly, I couldn't write fiction. Faced with the challenge of my life in the real world, I couldn't daydream the dreams necessary to write fiction. I was stuck in the real world. I was focused on learning everything I could about my cancer so I could make a reasoned decision of the course of action for treatment. For seven weeks, I sought advice from six different doctors, including leaders in the field. But it wasn't until late October that I made a decision I was comfortable with.

 

Problem was, it was much too late for me to do the research I needed for the novel. So I decided on a murder mystery because it is a genre I enjoy reading and am comfortable with. I decided on a setting and a theme I was familiar with so that there wouldn't be much research needed, and I could do it while I was writing in November.

 

I hate outlining for a variety of reasons but knew I couldn't write 1,667 a day, everyday, without knowing where I was going in advance. Therefore, I hand wrote a nine-page outline in narrative form and also completed a spreadsheet to track my daily progress. 

 

Shortly after midnight on Nov. 1, I started, and after 90 minutes had 1,100 words. I was surprised that the first sentence in my outline turned into nearly 900 words of text in the novel. I wrote later that day after church and completed 3,200 words that first day. On the second day I completed 2,940 words and 3,500 the third day. I was writing twice the rate I needed. With the encouragement of NaNo writers in the Indianapolis area and others I met online, I continued at that pace and reached 50,000 words on Nov. 15, and completed the first draft four days later, for a total of 54,000 words. (With revisions and re-writes, Affair is complete at 74,000 words.)

 

In 2010, I outlined again, and challenged myself to write twice as many words a day as needed. Tontine is a suspense/thriller and I finished the first draft on Nov. 18 (instead of Nov. 15) only because I attended an out-of-town meeting that November and lost three days of writing. (The final version is 76,000 words.)

 

Last year, I reached 50,000 words again on Nov. 18 because what I learned from failures in 2011 and 2012 was that I need a decent outline and need to jump well ahead of the daily word count. Get a lot done quickly in case of troubles later. It's hard for me to catch up on the word count, so I never get behind. But that's just me.

 

I'm already working on research for NaNoWriMo this November. Finally, I plan to write that auto-racing story.

 

My advice is prepare as much as possible ahead of time, set difficult but achievable goals, find writing partners and stay in touch with them, write something everyday and, most importantly, HAVE FUN writing. Whatever you write is going to be crappy but you can start fixing it on Dec. 1. You can't fix it if you don't first write it.

 

If you write and have fun, you will find your word count going up quicker than the approach of the Nov. 30 deadline. So HAVE FUN.

 

Cancer

I haven't brought up the subject of cancer in more than a year, since Feb. 21, 2012, by my reckoning. And I wouldn't today except that it was heavily on my mind yesterday, which is why I didn't post yesterday.

As many of you know, I am a prostate cancer survivor. I had external radiation in the winter of 2012. Since then, I have visited my urologist every six months for a check up on my PSA levels. If i had chosen to have my prostate removed, my PSA level would have dropped to zero and that would be it. But because I merely 'cooked' it, my PSA levels have been dropping but aren't at zero.

And therein lies the rub. While I am told things are doing fine and I shouldn't worry but should come back in six months as scheduled, it doesn't feel like I've put cancer totally behind me. I feel like it's the sword of Damocles hanging over my head. But there isn't anything I can do about it.

The doctor yesterday told me it is normal to have a check on my PSA level every six months for FIVE years after treatment. And for at least annually for the rest of my life.

As for me, I just wish it were totally over. It doesn't generally affect my writing but I know it can. I just want it done.

Oh well, thanks for reading as I rant. Good luck with your writing.

Editor's note: I don't feel like re-reading this now and correcting things so if there are mistakes or you can't understand something I just said, I'm sorry. Maybe I will do it another day. mbd

Random thoughts

Hello, my readers. Sorry I have been a little distracted for the last couple of weeks. Whenever possible, I have been planing for my next novel but I have been interrupted a lot.

The main reason for the disruption in my work and in blogging was my daughter's high school graduation. Or more precisely, getting her out of high school.

For reasons I won't go into on this blog, my daughter was short a course credit required for graduation. So, since early May, my wife, daughter and I worked many hours getting my daughter to complete an online course in three weeks -- work that should have taken three months. In the end, her principal set a 4 p.m., May 25, deadline for the school to hear from the online administrators that she had passed the course or she couldn't walk with her class at the graduation ceremony the following day.

They got the fax notification at 3:42 p.m., with just 18 minutes to spare.

I stressed out enormously over this graduation. Education is extremely important and something my wife and I greatly value. So getting my daughter out of high school and moving her onto the next major stage in her life development was important. I have earlier blog posts about being a worrier but I was probably more stressed about this graduation-thing than any other thing in quite some time. (There are other details I haven't mentioned regarding my daughter's graduation, so I wasn't just going nuts over the ceremony.)

But she walked and we were all proud.

On Sunday, my oldest daughter and I attended the Indianapolis 500, which we do every year. It was a thrilling race in incredible heat. But she and I survived it and had a wonderful time. I have been a Dario Franchitti fan for many years so I was pleased that he is now a three-time winner in what I think is the world's greatest auto race.

All that is to say I haven't gotten as much writing done in the last two weeks as I should have. But I'm trying to get back into the swing of things.

So, keep writing and thanks for reading.   

The 100 best first lines

More than a year ago I came across a list of the 100 Best First Lines in novels, as decided by the American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University. This is mostly literary fiction and goes back as far as the 17th century. But there are novels from the 21st century.

First lines are difficult. You want to get them right because they can propel the reader further into the novel. But getting the length, tone, structure, language, feeling and all the other elements correct is a very difficult task.

From the list below, which starts with truly the best first line (from Melville's Moby Dick), I tend to think the best lines are short and descriptive. Some are punchy, some not so much. The truly long ones, such as No. 95 (Double or Nothing) are boring.

Of my novels, my famous first line is from An Untidy Affair. It goes: I'm sometimes called a dick and I abhor the term.

Actually, I thought of it a week before I wrote it down because I knew it was going to be a first-person POV of a struggling private eye, but I hadn't worked out the entire story yet. I didn't want to start it before I knew the end.

I'm going to post the entire list below -- and mention the copyright at the end -- but here are the numbers of some of my favorites: Nos. 6, 13, 18, 26, 29, 38, 39, 40, 49, 54 (which I truly believe), 61, 62, 65, 80, 81, 94 and 99. I won't even begin to mention the ones I hate.

What are some of your favorites on this list? Are there some you think should be on the list that aren't? You can let me know.

Anyway, enjoy. Thanks for reading.

___
Following is a list of the 100 best first lines from novels, as decided by the American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University:

1. Call me Ishmael. - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. - Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. - Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. - James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. - George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. - Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

12. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell)

14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler (1979; trans. William Weaver)

15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. - J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. - James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. - Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. - Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759n1767)

20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. - James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. - Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. - Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. - William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)

26. 124 was spiteful. - Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. - Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)

28. Mother died today. - Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. - Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. - William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz)

32. Where now? Who now? When now? - Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles)

33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." - Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)

34. In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. - John Barth, The End of the Road (1958)

35. It was like so, but wasn't. - Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995)

36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled. - William Gaddis, J R (1975)

37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

38. All this happened, more or less. - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

39. They shoot the white girl first. - Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

40. For a long time, I went to bed early. - Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (1913; trans. Lydia Davis)

41. The moment one learns English, complications set in. - Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)

42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. - Anita Brookner, The Debut (1981)

43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; - Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

44. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

45. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. - Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation. - Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974)

47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. - C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. - Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

49. It was the day my grandmother exploded. - Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)

50. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. - Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)

51. Elmer Gantry was drunk. - Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927)

52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. - Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)

53. It was a pleasure to burn. - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

54. A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. - Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)

55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. - Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)

56. I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me. - Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)

57. In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. - David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)

58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. - George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

59. It was love at first sight. - Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? - Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971)

61. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. - W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)

62. Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. - Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. - G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

64. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

65. You better not never tell nobody but God. - Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

66. "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

67. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

68. Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. - David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

69. If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. - Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)

70. Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. - Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1960)

71. Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. - GŸnter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959; trans. Ralph Manheim)

72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. - Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)

73. Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. - Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists (1966)

74. She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. - Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)

75. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. - Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

76. "Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. - Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)

77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. - Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. - L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

79. On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. - Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)

80. Justice? - You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. - William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. - J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)

82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. - Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." - Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)

84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. - John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

85. When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. - James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)
86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. - William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948)

87. I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled. - Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)

88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. - Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

89. I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city —and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. - Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. - Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. - John Hawkes, Second Skin (1964)

92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. - Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)

93. Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. - Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away (1986)

94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. - Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. - Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (1971)

96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. - Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988)

97. He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. - Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. - David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. - Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. - Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

Copyright 2011 pantagraph.com.

4 Golden Rules for Being a Writer -- Now wait a minute

I was reading an online edition of Writer's Digest this week and happened upon an article by author Anne Fortier, who wrote JULIET, a novel about a young woman who discovers that she is descended from Shakespeare's Juliet. Great premise, by the way.

Fortier's article, "4 Golden Rules for Being a Writer," appeared on Chuck Sambuchino's blog. (The blog address is below)

http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/The+4+Golden+Rules+Of+Being+A+Writer.aspx

Now I originally agreed with Ms Fortier's suggestions until I started to think about them in greater detail. And the more I thought, the more I started thinking some of her suggestions were something out of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. (Fortier is originally from Denmark, which is a beautiful country.)

Her first rule, Start at square one, essentially says forget about networking.

"The world is full of people who know people who know an agent. But you can save yourself a lot of time and disappointment by ignoring them. Because the truth is, no one really knows anyone, and even if they did, it is probably not going to help your chances one bit," she says. ". . . if you run around looking for them, chances are you will still end up back at square one, wondering why you just wasted six months on hearsay."

I'm sorry but that's crap.

While I don't think you can hang your hat on such long chances, there are numerous examples of people who connect with an agent or publisher through social and professional contacts. I know of two people who just this year got agents through knowing someone who knew someone. In both cases, the aspiring authors were prepared for an opportunity if it came. So when it did, they ran with it.

Ms Fortier's second rule is Do your homework. She is right about this.

Not only should your manuscript be "finished, brilliant, formatted correctly, and edited to near-perfection . . . the same goes for the query letter," Fortier says. "Invest the time and do a proper job; this is the most important page of your entire manuscript."

I think this is where I somehow must be failing. Yes, as you know, I have honed my query to the best of my ability but apparently something about it doesn't entice agents. Not sure what, so I continue to work on it. But it is a tight, 250 words. And I think she is right on this point. It is probably the most important page you will write.

Rule No. 3 is Pitch your book before you write it.

"What I mean by this is that you can save yourself a lot of time and headaches by thinking ahead to your query letter as early as possible in the writing process. Once you've done your homework and know what a query letter needs to accomplish, you are very likely to look at your finished manuscript and groan," she says. "So, make a point of thinking through the story early on, with the pitch in mind."

I agree in part and dissent in part.

I agree you should think your story through but she seems to suggest that you should write out an outline before you start. I know I lot of writers who do outline but just as many who don't. And there are successful writers in both camps. It is through hard work and the re-writing process where you keep your novel being "a rambling, pointless, dead-boring excuse for a book." And if you do that, it won't end up being "un-pitchable" as Ms. Fortier suggests. You should think ahead but you also must allow the story to develop. In the end, you could end up with a better story than what you originally considered.

The last rule is Don't jump the gun. "The book world looks pretty darn big from your office chair, but it actually isn't. So, once you have compiled that beautiful list of desirable and reliable agents (once again: by doing your homework), make sure you don't waste it. Don't send query letters to more than one agent at a time," she writes.

That is insane. There can be scores of agents who potentially may be interested in your book. But the response time for most agents is between two and eight weeks for queries, or so they say. Some answer in minutes while others never respond. If you send out only one query at a time and wait for a response, it could take you more than a year, at the earliest, to get through your list of potential agents.

Sambuchino says carpeting the industry with a query doesn't work and he is probably right. He suggests sending out a small number, say, seven, and if that doesn't work, there is probably something wrong with the letter. You can then hone the letter without having invested too much time in a letter that doesn't work.

That is reasonable.

But I agree with Fortier when she says, "Don't test the water by sending your second-best. Be patient. Finish the book. Write the most attractive query letter ever. And then sleep on it. And sleep on it again. Remember: an agent is not some opponent you need to blitz; an agent is someone who would like nothing more than to be your ally. All she/he needs is a good reason."

As with most advice, you have to take from it what works best for you. In that way, you will be prepared when opportunity comes knocking. And even if you fail to accomplish your goal, you can be comfortable in knowing you did your best.

Thanks for reading and, above all, don't give up.

Query advice

In my every-other-Wednesday critique group, two of the other writers last night passed around query letters to critique. One we went through one as we sat. But the other one we took home to read and will critique once we see each other again.

After reading the letter, I decided to write the author privately.

It must be stated that I'm not the best source for what is an effective query letter. If I were, I wouldn't have the tons of query rejection responses sitting on the hard drive of this laptop. But I think I have a handle on what is not a good letter.

Unfortunately, the query letter I took home wasn't very good.

The person who wrote the query is an excellent writer. I have read numerous examples of their writing and find it well-crafted, thoughtful, tight and entertaining. The writer is a great storyteller, with great imagination and color.

But to my complete surprise, none of that was displaced in the query.

It was flat and unfocused. I wasn't sure who the main character was (except that the author only mentioned one character by name but I still wasn't sure if they were the main character), and there was no conflict in the letter. The author also failed to clearly identify the genre and didn't mention the word count.

Nearly nothing in the query would entice me to read the whole letter. If I didn't know the writer, I would have stopped reading after the first paragraph.

I e-mailed them suggesting that they clearly identify the main charcter, show the challenges they face and the forces standing in their way. And I hope my comments weren't too harsh. I didn't mean for them to be.

Being in this group has helped me tremendously. I hope I was of help to this author. I haven't heard back from them. So only time will tell.

Thanks for reading. And never give up.

First draft

I opened my e-mail this afternoon and saw an advertisement for a course at Writer's Digest University called "12 Weeks to a First Draft." Now that sounded catchy. I was also interested in the idea of a fast first draft because National Novel Writing Month is in two months and members of the newest critique group I am in are planning a novel-writing workshop at a local library to help kick off the month.

Several of the selling points for the WD course included, "How to employ writing techniques to facilitate the first draft of your novel," "How to maintain a writing routine with clear objectives," "How to pace your novel," and "How to implement literary conventions such as plot, character, setting, style, exposition, dialogue and tension in your novel."

All those are good, of course, but I also hope the course stresses one truly important fact, which is something they could give for free: Writing is hard work and there is no substitute for planting your butt in a seat and doing the hard work.

For for the uninitiated in writing a fast work (and particularly for people who might also want to try NaNoWriMo), I hope the course doesn't place too much emphasis on all those "literary conventions" such as plot, characters and setting. While those are EXTREMELY important, I think the most important things to remember are setting a realistic goal for completion and working every day to achieve that goal. I strongly believe if you focus too much on the mechanics of writing a masterpiece, it is too easy to get bogged down and discouraged, and thus not finish.

There will always be obstacles to finishing -- obstacles over which you have no control. You don't need to add more.

I think the best advice is sit down and write. A compelling plot, exciting characters, believable dialogue and good setting, if you don't get it done in the first draft, can be -- and, in fact, will need to be -- added in later drafts. You have to remember, it is only a first draft. Get it done.

Thanks for reading and keep writing.

A damn good writer

I had a couple of hours free this morning after a client postponed an appointment at the last minute. I could have -- and should have -- used the time constructively. There are a couple of things I need to edit. But I wasted the time watching television. Well, kinda wasted it.

I watched several episodes of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," a show a genius named Aaron Sorkin created several years ago. Unfortunately, it ran for only one season. I got the entire show on DVD at the public library.

I loved that show. Really loved it. I was so sorry it was canceled. But given the problems I could imagine Sorkin probably put the network through, I wasn't surprised. But I loved the show because, like so many other Sorkin efforts -- the film, "The American President" and TV shows like "Sports Night" and "The West Wing" -- the writing was beyond brilliant.

After the first handful of episodes of "Studio 60," the show began to slip, much like "The West Wing" did as it reached middle age. (That about the time Sorkin was fired from the show.) But, like "The West Wing," "Studio 60" redeems itself at the end.

Whenever I watch "Studio 60" I am struck by the writing. It is clever and funny and well-done and well-executed. And I love good writing. It doesn't matter whether it is Sorkin or Sting or Richard Pryor or Lennon and McCartney or August Wilson or Ernest Hemingway or the Marx Brothers. Good writing is good writing. It is inspiring, certainly for me. It makes me want to do what I do better.

I didn't have a good day yesterday. Personally reasons, professional reasons, it was a whole bag of reasons (including after a small piece that probably cost 99-cents came off of my MG and disengaged the throttle. I had no power. I got a guy to come out and fix it and I got home). I wasn't sure I had what it takes to succeed as a fiction writer. I fought off bouts of self-doubt, though I was also sure I wasn't going to give up.

Today, however, I feel inspired, partly because it is beautiful outside, partly because of "Studio 60," and partly because I have the talent to succeed. I may not be able to write like Aaron Sorkin but I am a damn good writer. And knowing that is what will keep me going.

Have a good day and thanks for reading. Now go out and write something good.

Write what you know.

The current issue of Writer's Digest is "The Big 10" issue in which the editors and writers share many of the 10 secrets of writing and success. They examine productivity, top books and markets, plot problems, and more. They have interviews with 10 best-selling authors, where I noted with amazement that not a single one of them was black. But that is a matter for another blog posting.

What immediately caught my attention, however, was the 10 Rules of Writing from writing experts. And most importantly, for each of the 10 rules, there was a reason one expert said you should follow it and another reason another expert said you should break it.

The whole exercise was exhilarating and confusing. What advice do I take?

Super agent Donald Maass, whom I unfortunately missed last October at Bouchercon, says write what you know. That means, he says, "write what you see differently, feel profoundly and know is important for the rest of us." But author Natalie Goldberg says the opposite. She says be curious, and look for "what lurks beyond the familiar, safe streets."

Good advice from both. But which do I choose? (As a writer for nearly all my professional life, I go with write what you know. But that's what research is for -- so there will be things you know.)

Write 'shitty first drafts.' John Smolens, an English professor and best-selling author of a number of books and short stories, says follow that rule. "Really, do you have a choice?" he asks. While columnist, teacher and author Nancy Kress says first drafts "can certainly be rough and sloppy," but that doesn't mean they have to be shitty. She says you can only write as well as you can write. A first draft can be messy but "a mess can be fixed. Shit is just a waste. And a first draft is never a waste."

More good advice from both sides of an issue.

And it goes on. Write every day, John Dufresne says, because you have to. Not so, says James Scott Bell. It's not possible to write everyday if only because life will sometimes intrude, he says, plus you regularly need the break to recharge your creative batteries.

Read what you like to write; silence your inner critic; if you want to get rich, do something else -- all great topics, and all with conflicting points of view.

But not necessarily. If you examine them closely, you can see similarities in the points of view. So what I took most from the article is that, as a writer and as a person, you have to be true to yourself. That is where the real truth is and it is from that place that you want to reach readers.

Do what feels best to you. That may not have been what the experts intended but it's what I got from them. Otherwise, all their advice is nothing more than background noise.

Thanks for reading. Search inside yourself and keep writing.

When the author gets tired

I was sitting yesterday reading the latest novel in a series from an author I enjoy and discovered the author, whom I will not name, was getting tired. There didn't seem like anything new from characters I have come to love and the plot was so forced it totally stretched my suspended disbelief.

I think the author is near the end of this series.

Now that is okay. Writers get to the end of a series all the time. The problem is resolving all the conflicts that have been sustained over the course of the writing. You want the reader to be satisfied with the conclusion.

For example, I love how the Harry Potter series concluded. It tied up loose ends and the reader felt a sense of closure that was not evidence prior to the end of Book Seven.

I have two series in mind based on characters in books I have written -- Jason Mitchell, the reporter from DEATH AT THE JUNGLE-BUNNY JOURNAL and THE DEATH OF ART, and private eye David Blaise from AN UNTIDY AFFAIR. I see a number of stories with Jason, who is a lot like me, but a nearly unlimited number of possibilities for Blaise. And he is written in first-person, which is also interesting. I think at some point I would need to resolve certain issues with Jason but could leave Blaise nearly forever.

Anyway, if I am ever successful with either of these, I hope I realize when I have had enough of them. I don't want them to be dry, stale creatures that I keep alive only because of a contract.

But for now, that possibility is long off. I have to actually get a publishing contract first. Well, I am still working on it.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day.