News
My banjo is out of tune (2010-01-30)
When you write, you always wish that your years of thought and hard work and rewriting will result in a magical concoction that will seduce the mental pants off your readers and turn them into quivering little jellies at your feet, unable to look up the full expanse of you--magnificent, you!--forcing them to cover their eyes because otherwise the light from your brilliance will make them go blind. This, friends, never happens; never-with-a-heaping-of-nuts with an early draft. I know this. And yet I always hope.
So I shouldn't have been surprised--nay, distraught! for days! silly Lauren!--when my dear agent got back to me with tact and kindness to say that well, I should probably rewrite a great deal of the book. It's not quite working the way we both want it to.
Actually, he said, "You've got a great foundation, there, kid, a really beautiful house, but it's like I f***ing hate that f***ing addition from the eighties, right? I mean, who built that s**t?" Actually, not--he never said "f***ing," or "s**t," but this is the emotional truth of the exchange, and the way I choose to remember most things, and yet another reason why memoir-writing is not for me.
And so--back to the grind. Long days, longer nights. But sometimes you wait for someone to call you out on things you're not certain about, yourself, and when they do, it feels like a strong gust of wind in a pent-up room. It's scouring and fresh and makes everything feel clean and new again. Which is right. And I want this book to be good--so good it does dazzle and make people go blind. That's what it should say on the jacket copy: Please, readers, go blind when you read my book! If you still reading this, I haven't succeeded! Go read Shirley Hazzard, now.
It's hard not to get down on myself. But that's when the old novel-magic happens, when everything in the world seems to be conspiring to help you out, when every book you read has a nugget you can mine, when writing embedded in the sidewalks gives you the perfect names for your character, when your husband says something out of the blue that gives you another angle on a scene. And for the past few days, the little monkey-boy in my house has been playing with one of his million hunks of plastic that play tunes, carting it around with him wherever he goes, and this one tune grated on me, jangling my nerves, until I actually listened to the lyrics. Then I started laughing. It's a song called "Bit by Bit," and it's about a band that wakes up to find their instruments out of tune, and instead of crying, they spend all day tuning their banjos. And then they're happy. Over and over again, novel-magic was trying to tell me something.
Here I go, surprisingly happy to tune the f***ing s**t out of my f***ing banjo of a book. I'll be sure to check in when it's playing music again.
So I shouldn't have been surprised--nay, distraught! for days! silly Lauren!--when my dear agent got back to me with tact and kindness to say that well, I should probably rewrite a great deal of the book. It's not quite working the way we both want it to.
Actually, he said, "You've got a great foundation, there, kid, a really beautiful house, but it's like I f***ing hate that f***ing addition from the eighties, right? I mean, who built that s**t?" Actually, not--he never said "f***ing," or "s**t," but this is the emotional truth of the exchange, and the way I choose to remember most things, and yet another reason why memoir-writing is not for me.
And so--back to the grind. Long days, longer nights. But sometimes you wait for someone to call you out on things you're not certain about, yourself, and when they do, it feels like a strong gust of wind in a pent-up room. It's scouring and fresh and makes everything feel clean and new again. Which is right. And I want this book to be good--so good it does dazzle and make people go blind. That's what it should say on the jacket copy: Please, readers, go blind when you read my book! If you still reading this, I haven't succeeded! Go read Shirley Hazzard, now.
It's hard not to get down on myself. But that's when the old novel-magic happens, when everything in the world seems to be conspiring to help you out, when every book you read has a nugget you can mine, when writing embedded in the sidewalks gives you the perfect names for your character, when your husband says something out of the blue that gives you another angle on a scene. And for the past few days, the little monkey-boy in my house has been playing with one of his million hunks of plastic that play tunes, carting it around with him wherever he goes, and this one tune grated on me, jangling my nerves, until I actually listened to the lyrics. Then I started laughing. It's a song called "Bit by Bit," and it's about a band that wakes up to find their instruments out of tune, and instead of crying, they spend all day tuning their banjos. And then they're happy. Over and over again, novel-magic was trying to tell me something.
Here I go, surprisingly happy to tune the f***ing s**t out of my f***ing banjo of a book. I'll be sure to check in when it's playing music again.
Waiting. And waiting. And waiting. (2010-01-19)
My husband, who normally has the temperament of a fifteenth-century martyr mid-flame, leveled with me yesterday, saying "Oh my god. You're totally unbearable right now, Leggy." Which is what my loved ones call me, most particularly when I'm being unbearable.
I know it. I am. The problem, you see, is that my otherwise charming and beautiful agent has had the next novel in his ruddy paws since Thursday, and the anxiety is just about killing me. I've averaged a six-mile run every day since then. I've read eight books and written precisely three words and spent an hour at the bakery today deciding whether or not to buy that slowly deflating krueller, which eventually became so flaccid that I gratefully walked away, and have answered the phone with lightning speed only to not even try to pretend to be glad I'm talking to whoever I'm talking to, and can't bear email, and have paced so much I've lost five pounds.
You see, I have a highly unscientific rubric when I give something to my agent. It seems to bear out that the longer he holds a piece of work before calling, the less he likes it. The equation looks like this:
intrinsic value = page count/time held by Bill before he opines
The world goes a little grotesque when I'm like this. I suspect conspiracies when the neighbors allow their yap-yaps to poop on my mondo grass. People seem to be spouting nonsense at all times, which I must pretend to think is funny or else risk quizzical glances and questions about if I'm okay. I suddenly have great, heartwrenching empathy for teenaged girls who must feel like this twenty-four hours a day. Poor, sweet, terrible creatures. I feel so violently toward other writers who are doing great things--even friends of mine!--that I asked my bookish father-in-law a few days ago what the opposite of schadenfreude was, because I was being consumed by it, and he blinked rapidly and said, "Envy?" Which is exactly right, if awful to admit.
Tonight, we're going to try a little movie therapy and definitely chocolate and maybe even another run on the treadmill if things don't calm down.
In the meantime, here's a picture of kittens.
I know it. I am. The problem, you see, is that my otherwise charming and beautiful agent has had the next novel in his ruddy paws since Thursday, and the anxiety is just about killing me. I've averaged a six-mile run every day since then. I've read eight books and written precisely three words and spent an hour at the bakery today deciding whether or not to buy that slowly deflating krueller, which eventually became so flaccid that I gratefully walked away, and have answered the phone with lightning speed only to not even try to pretend to be glad I'm talking to whoever I'm talking to, and can't bear email, and have paced so much I've lost five pounds.
You see, I have a highly unscientific rubric when I give something to my agent. It seems to bear out that the longer he holds a piece of work before calling, the less he likes it. The equation looks like this:
intrinsic value = page count/time held by Bill before he opines
The world goes a little grotesque when I'm like this. I suspect conspiracies when the neighbors allow their yap-yaps to poop on my mondo grass. People seem to be spouting nonsense at all times, which I must pretend to think is funny or else risk quizzical glances and questions about if I'm okay. I suddenly have great, heartwrenching empathy for teenaged girls who must feel like this twenty-four hours a day. Poor, sweet, terrible creatures. I feel so violently toward other writers who are doing great things--even friends of mine!--that I asked my bookish father-in-law a few days ago what the opposite of schadenfreude was, because I was being consumed by it, and he blinked rapidly and said, "Envy?" Which is exactly right, if awful to admit.
Tonight, we're going to try a little movie therapy and definitely chocolate and maybe even another run on the treadmill if things don't calm down.
In the meantime, here's a picture of kittens.
The Mighty Kevin Brockmeier (2010-01-09)
is coming to town. That's right, the man behind the magnificent novels The Brief History of the Dead and the Truth about Celia, and the story collections Things That Fall From the Sky, and The View From the Seventh Layer; recipient of practically every prize on Earth; and among the Granta-nominated Best American Novelists under 35 (with which I concur wholeheartedly) will be at the Headquarters Branch of the Library tomorrow, Sunday January 10th, at 1:00 pm.
Come one, come all! Hear one of the best practitioners of American fiction in person as he reads from his work! Gape in stunned awe as he whittles words into scrimshaws of storytelling magic!
Also not to miss are his book recommendations. Practically all of the great books I've read in the past year were first suggested by Kevin.
Plus, he's just really kind and sweet and a good person.
So, help fill the gorgeous reading room on the top floor of the library on a chilly Sunday afternoon, and give Kevin a huge, warm welcome back to Gainesville.
Come one, come all! Hear one of the best practitioners of American fiction in person as he reads from his work! Gape in stunned awe as he whittles words into scrimshaws of storytelling magic!
Also not to miss are his book recommendations. Practically all of the great books I've read in the past year were first suggested by Kevin.
Plus, he's just really kind and sweet and a good person.
So, help fill the gorgeous reading room on the top floor of the library on a chilly Sunday afternoon, and give Kevin a huge, warm welcome back to Gainesville.
For the record... (2010-01-04)
...I never "squawk." How unbecoming.
The month away from the digital age was both eerie and fulfilling, like a long day spent at a drippy old spa in Budapest. I came into 2010 full of energy, my brain winnowed and lean, calmer than I have been since I discovered VAX in college. VAX, for those who are too young or too old, was an early blogroll from the not-quite-punch-card computer days, when a person on the network posted "plans" in archaic sans-serif fonts, and could find out what other people's "plans" were by "fingering" them. As with all addictive personalities at Amherst at that time, I spent hours "fingering" other people. True story. (The nomenclature, in retrospect, speaks presciently of the semi-masturbatory impulse behind a chock-full Google Reader, blogroll, Facebook status bar, whatever-whatever has burst into existence since I began my program of digital asceticism).
Okay, well, yes, I'll admit to it--I'm highly imperfect, and did cheat a little. About eight times I checked my email, but didn't open anything that didn't scream "Emergency." I sent out about three emails--two to my husband asking him to say something that would keep me from marching my novel off a bridge, and one very sad family email when my dear dog Cooper died, which wasn't the way I would have wanted to spread the news, but I wasn't using my phone just then at all.
(An aside for Cooper, who was the gentlest, kindest dog, who sat at my feet when I wrote almost every word that I've published since I was twenty-three, who trained for six marathons with us, who protected us from robbers and scary tomcats and postmen and thunderstorms and light nervous breakdowns, who, held his sits for so long that once we forgot him and watched a movie and came back downstairs to find him sitting patiently in front of his full dinner bowl, who frequently defenestrated himself through the largest windows in the house when left alone for too long, to whom once I had jokingly referred as my "muse" in an interview, which the interviewer didn't take in the spirit of irony in which I had intended it and the resultant article did, admittedly, make me look like a grade-A freakshow, but--Onward! Cooper, I miss you and you better find me another furry little muse-puppy up there in canine nirvana. Or else--no treats and a very long sit).
I do like the state of my brain these days, but have to say that I probably won't undertake such an experiment again. I missed my friends and the nice people online whom I have never actually met but who I still consider friends. I missed seeing my first niece's sonogram (we don't yet know if she's a girl, but I'm pretty sure from the blob I saw that she is a she) and almost didn't see two book review gigs or a request for a letter of recommendation by one of my favorite former students of all times. I felt at times that everyone else was at a party that I only pretended to scorn. I sat alone in my moldy papasan chair trying to read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, all the while hearing the shrieks and feeling the bass in my bones; I could see wigs and kittens being thrown out the window; I could smell the funny smoke that was being smoked; I pretended not to see the trickle of booze that came in through the crack under the door; and I had to steel myself not to give it all up for a gluttony of hedonistic digitizing.
It was worth it. I did a ridiculous amount of work. Ragdale was superb: imagine an Arts and Crafts manor in chichi Lake Forest, filled with real old Stickley furniture and William Morris prints, right on the edge of a pristine prairie filled with snow--you could look but only the foolish or hearty or non-Floridian actually went outside every day, so you were stuck inside, and what could you do but work. There was a cook named Linda who makes dreamy dinners. There was all the coffee anyone can need. I had a bathtub. There was a ghost in my room who put her protoplasm on the ceiling every night. People come together at 6:30 in the evening starved for human interaction, and I heard some great, great stories. The staff was magical. The holiday party insane. Holy heaven, and I hope I get to go back again.
Off now, to do some tinkering. My sister has a copy of the book, and in the somewhat likely chance that she gets back to me one of these days and says, "Eh, well, I think you may need to abandon ship," I may be working on this thing for another year. (Just kidding, Hyperion!) I'll be working myself to sawdust and bone until it's in, anyway. I have to. I can't get another Cooper until it's in.
The month away from the digital age was both eerie and fulfilling, like a long day spent at a drippy old spa in Budapest. I came into 2010 full of energy, my brain winnowed and lean, calmer than I have been since I discovered VAX in college. VAX, for those who are too young or too old, was an early blogroll from the not-quite-punch-card computer days, when a person on the network posted "plans" in archaic sans-serif fonts, and could find out what other people's "plans" were by "fingering" them. As with all addictive personalities at Amherst at that time, I spent hours "fingering" other people. True story. (The nomenclature, in retrospect, speaks presciently of the semi-masturbatory impulse behind a chock-full Google Reader, blogroll, Facebook status bar, whatever-whatever has burst into existence since I began my program of digital asceticism).
Okay, well, yes, I'll admit to it--I'm highly imperfect, and did cheat a little. About eight times I checked my email, but didn't open anything that didn't scream "Emergency." I sent out about three emails--two to my husband asking him to say something that would keep me from marching my novel off a bridge, and one very sad family email when my dear dog Cooper died, which wasn't the way I would have wanted to spread the news, but I wasn't using my phone just then at all.
(An aside for Cooper, who was the gentlest, kindest dog, who sat at my feet when I wrote almost every word that I've published since I was twenty-three, who trained for six marathons with us, who protected us from robbers and scary tomcats and postmen and thunderstorms and light nervous breakdowns, who, held his sits for so long that once we forgot him and watched a movie and came back downstairs to find him sitting patiently in front of his full dinner bowl, who frequently defenestrated himself through the largest windows in the house when left alone for too long, to whom once I had jokingly referred as my "muse" in an interview, which the interviewer didn't take in the spirit of irony in which I had intended it and the resultant article did, admittedly, make me look like a grade-A freakshow, but--Onward! Cooper, I miss you and you better find me another furry little muse-puppy up there in canine nirvana. Or else--no treats and a very long sit).
I do like the state of my brain these days, but have to say that I probably won't undertake such an experiment again. I missed my friends and the nice people online whom I have never actually met but who I still consider friends. I missed seeing my first niece's sonogram (we don't yet know if she's a girl, but I'm pretty sure from the blob I saw that she is a she) and almost didn't see two book review gigs or a request for a letter of recommendation by one of my favorite former students of all times. I felt at times that everyone else was at a party that I only pretended to scorn. I sat alone in my moldy papasan chair trying to read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, all the while hearing the shrieks and feeling the bass in my bones; I could see wigs and kittens being thrown out the window; I could smell the funny smoke that was being smoked; I pretended not to see the trickle of booze that came in through the crack under the door; and I had to steel myself not to give it all up for a gluttony of hedonistic digitizing.
It was worth it. I did a ridiculous amount of work. Ragdale was superb: imagine an Arts and Crafts manor in chichi Lake Forest, filled with real old Stickley furniture and William Morris prints, right on the edge of a pristine prairie filled with snow--you could look but only the foolish or hearty or non-Floridian actually went outside every day, so you were stuck inside, and what could you do but work. There was a cook named Linda who makes dreamy dinners. There was all the coffee anyone can need. I had a bathtub. There was a ghost in my room who put her protoplasm on the ceiling every night. People come together at 6:30 in the evening starved for human interaction, and I heard some great, great stories. The staff was magical. The holiday party insane. Holy heaven, and I hope I get to go back again.
Off now, to do some tinkering. My sister has a copy of the book, and in the somewhat likely chance that she gets back to me one of these days and says, "Eh, well, I think you may need to abandon ship," I may be working on this thing for another year. (Just kidding, Hyperion!) I'll be working myself to sawdust and bone until it's in, anyway. I have to. I can't get another Cooper until it's in.
(Semi) Success! (2010-01-01)
Hey all, this is Lauren's husband Clay here. While Lauren was having her "Analog December" we thought it would be fun if I kept the blog going, sort of like when unknowns substitute for your friendly local or npr news commentator during the holidays. It never happened though, for no good reason other than I'm not that good about blogging.
Now that it's 2010, Lauren can come back (thank goodness--I was getting a bit tired of answering her phone). In fact, she immediately squawked about my inattention to the blog, and so I thought I should at least post once.
Happy New Years!
Now that it's 2010, Lauren can come back (thank goodness--I was getting a bit tired of answering her phone). In fact, she immediately squawked about my inattention to the blog, and so I thought I should at least post once.
Happy New Years!