I’m writing from the motherland this week. In preparation for the long flights required to get here, I loaded my netbook with works in progress to work on during my gadget’s long battery life. I then spent the longest plane ride catching up on movies and TV shows through the video on demand system and slept on the shorter legs because I’d watched too much crap instead of calibrating my bio-clock to minimize jetlag. I told myself there would be plenty of downtime at my parents’ house and I would get lots of writing done there. I’m very good at lying to myself.
There has been loads of time during my first week here that could be used for writing, but the same thing that always happens when I visit happened again. Spending my days speaking Swedish means I can’t put English worth a crap on the page. My sentences are all wrong. I reverse the noun-verb order and can’t find a synonym to save my soul. My sentence structure becomes super simple and my work read like a first graders’ “What I did this Summer” essay. Read more »
Frank Zafiro is the author of the River City crime novels and also writes mainstream fiction under the name Frank Scalise, which is his actual name. Born and raised in Spokane, he joined the U.S. Army after high school graduation and served in Military Intelligence. He’s been a Spokane police officer since 1993 and has served as patrol officer, corporal, detective, sergeant and lieutenant. His current title is captain.
Zafiro has written seriously since he was thirteen, starting out with short stories and poetry. Last week I reviewed his River City series. If you didn’t read that post, let me summarize: I’m a big fan. As Frank’s latest stalker groupie, I emailed him with a bunch of questions about his journey towards publication and being a writer while working full time.
Here are the questions and his answers. Enjoy!
When and why did you begin writing?
When? Well, like most writers, I began pretty early. Maybe eight or so? But by ten, I knew I wanted to be a writer, so that is the age I usually give in response to this question. To be honest, I don’t ever remember I time where I didn’t want to be a writer.
Why? The same reason almost each of you write…because I’m a writer.
I know that sounds like I’m being a smart alec, but I’m really not. Much in the same way that a musician plays music or a carpenter works wood, I write because it is who I am. I’d write even if I couldn’t get anyone to read what I’ve written. I am a writer. I write. I suspect that most of the people reading this understand perfectly. The rest probably think I’m being pretentious. Read more »
So, both are signs of the evils of e-books? Or, this is just normal stuff that happens when the market (and the world) adjusts to new technology and market models? Questions, comments, concerns?
Frank Zafiro is an author that many people have recommended to me, but for one reason or another I never got around to reading his stuff. At a recent book signing I finally purchased Under a Raging Moon, the first book in the River City Crime series published by Gray Dog Press. (Coincidentally, this is where our own Marcus Corder now spends many of his working hours.) I finished the novel in one sitting and then rushed down to Auntie’s to purchase Heroes Often Fail and Beneath a Weeping Sky. Now I’m impatiently waiting for the fourth book, End Every Man Has to Die, which won’t be out until March 2011.
River City is fictional, but readers familiar with Spokane will recognize street names and landmarks mentioned in the books. The novels have fast paced plots and fantastic characters. As many of you know, I’m a fan of women’s fiction with strong female leads, but my other weakness is police procedurals and crime/legal thrillers. (My TiVo also have season passes to all flavors of Law & Order.) I love these plot driven books, but they won’t keep my attention unless I’m invested in and care about the characters. In a recent Willow Springs interview, Jess Walter talked about how crime fiction often focus too much on plot but that the complaint about literary fiction is that there isn’t enough story. He thinks there’s a “sweet spot in the middle” that an author can aim for. Zafiro’s novels hit right at that perfect spot and this is one of the reasons why I’m such a huge fan. Read more »
Like Amanda, I’ve been pondering Shira’s posts about comedy and sarcasm. I’ve been trying to figure out what makes something sarcastic successful, did some googling, and found a gem of a site called Sarcasm Socitey. Among the many things to laugh and giggle at (and learn from) on the site is a list of sarcastic quotes from brilliant minds. (Told you I’m a sucker for quotes.) One of my favorites is from George Bernard Shaw:
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
One of the reasons I find this so funny is because many people would apply that quote to me. I’m a prattler; I talk all the time and about anything and nothing. (Even in graduate school a teacher told me to wait for five other people to speak in class before I opened my mouth again.)
So, the conclusion I’ve come to is that the best sarcasm is one that is inclusive of the person laughing at the joke. Even though stand up comedians who tell jokes at other’s expenses can be funny, the really, really funny ones are the ones who laugh at themselves or laugh at us–”us” as in the society we are all apart of.
And to connect sarcasm and writing: my friend Virginia told me about a sarcastic and very funny blog about the publishing world called SlushPile Hell: One grumpy literary agent, a sea of query fails, and other publishing nonsense. Although it seems like all the jokes are at the expense of the writers who send in inept query letters and therefore not within the definition of successful sarcasm I just gave you–I still find them funny. Maybe because it makes me feel better that other people write more idiotic queries than me (I can be petty sometimes), but also because the contests this blog runs through Twitter get hilarious and brilliantly smart entries.
What do you think are the necessary ingredients in successful sarcasm?
Thanks to smart phones, one of the most common phrases in today’s English language is “there’s an app for that.” If Little, Brown Book Group’s latest book technology experiment is successful, authors will soon have to think about what supplemental materials will serve their readers’ small phone screens.
In the UK, the number of books available as iPhone apps passed the number of games for the first time this March. As Alison Flood of The Guardian reports, writers Ian Banks and Martina Cole are some of the early adapters and are working with their publisher and a software company to enrich their readers’ experience.
Readers who have bought the paperback of Banks’s latest novel, Transition, will be able to scan a unique barcode on their edition with their iPhone, and companion features for the novel will be transmitted to their screen.
We could probably convince Mark Knopfler that writing a book isn’t exactly “money for nothin’” and these authors aren’t playing “the guitar on MTV,” but other than that it’s pretty close to the Dire Straits song. Okay, so you might have to use your imagination to hear “Hawaiian noises” and see “bangin’ on the bongos like a chimpanzee,” but as music artists of earlier decades had to make videos for MTV to create hits, authors now put book trailers on YouTube to keep up with the Joneses—actually, the Roberts and the Pattersons. In other words, it’s not enough for writers to worry whether we are photogenic enough for the book jacket portrait, now we can also be anxious about appearing natural on film.
…the trailer is fast becoming an essential component of online marketing. Asked to draw on often nonexistent acting skills, authors are holding forth for anything from 30 seconds to 6 minutes, frequently to the tune of stock guitar strumming, soulful violin or klezmer music. And now, those who once worried about no one reading their books can worry about no one watching their trailers. (A mother still nursing her 8-year-old: 25,864,943 views; recent best-selling maternal memoirist: 5,124 views.)
I’m a sucker for inspirational writing advice from already established (or even just published) writers. Most of the time I find that it’s not their actual advice that inspires me as much as knowing that they too suffer from writers’ block, got rejected multiple times, go through periods of self doubt, etc.
A few months ago Oprah.com had an extended Advice for Aspiring Writers feature with interviews of authors such as Toni Morrison, Jeffrey Eugenides, Michael Cunningham, Mary Gaitskil, John Edgar Wideman, and Walter Kim.
My favorite quote in this extravaganza of inspiration is from Kim:
At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what’s required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren’t. Confidence is what politicians, seducers and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. It’s the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.
What’s your all time favorite quote from a writer (about writing)?
If you love essays, then you will love Patrick Madden’s Quotidiana. If you want to learn more about the essay form, then you will be thrilled when you discover that Quotidiana has all the information you need in one place.
(kwo•ti•de•A•na)
N. 1. The land of everyday, commonplace things; 2. The online compendium of 381 public-domain essays.
Patrick Madden says he created the site “…as a teaching aid, a substitute for photocopied coursepacks, a variable grab-bag of essays that could function better for a variety of classes than a printed anthology could…” and it definitely is that, but it is also a delicious indulgence for those of us who love this form of writing.
Here are some quick links for my favorite parts of the site. Let me know what you think of it. You can also join the Quitidiana fanpage on Facebook from the site to receive updates about the site and other interesting essay happenings.
The Essayest American Essays: A collection of modern essay that Madden, his students, and his friends think truly represent the essay form. Classical Essays: Biographies of and essays from a great number of known and not so known historical essayists. Interviews: Great interviews of writers like Brian Doyle, Terry Tempest Williams, Scott Russell Sanders, and Kim Dana Kupperman.
It’s summer, I don’t have to go back to full time teaching until the fall and in between the projects on my to do list for this time off (garden work that will never happen, filling out the paperwork for becoming an American citizen, brushing the dog, planning for lessons, watching bad TV) I thought I would do some writing. However, my motivation to put words on paper plummeted to the lowest low when Monday’s mail brought two rejection letters. Scott, Shira, and Sam have already “barked” on the subject and I don’t have anything to add other than that this video cheered me up. Here’s Irish comedian Dylan Moran as the main character in the TV series Black Books reacting to a recent rejection letter.
What do you do to cheer yourself up after one of these missives show up in your mail or inbox?
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