Once upon a time . . .

One of the challenges all writers have is how to grab reader interest from the get-go.  Most begin their stories or novels with one of two things:  either a large thud of expository writing, or a battle/car chase/explosion of some sort (either physical or emotional) in which bad things happen to characters no one yet cares about.

May I suggest there is a better way?  In the beginning of your work, communicate three things:

1. What your character yearns for; what he longs for with all his heart and soul.  This should be something meaningful, something worth yearning for and something that’s going to hold the reader interest over the course of your work.
2. Why your character cannot easily attain what he longs for.
3. An initiating incident that shows the reader something new has begun or something has changed, forcing your character out of his familiar (even if uncomfortable) world.

If you can do that — and if you can do it through the use of sense details, dialogue and action rather than a thud of exposition — you will be well on your way to luring your reader down the path to the deeper, more complicated, regions of your fictional forest.

The decision of where in the story to start is usually arrived at by trial and error.  Meg Files, in Write From Life, gives us a metaphor for the story beginnings:

A story on the page is like a house where a party is going on.  The reader enters the story by opening the front door (no knocking necessary).  The party is already in progress.  Nobody introduces the new guest.  The partiers are too far gone already.  There’s a drunk in the kitchen, an argument in the living room, a pair kissing in the bedroom.  The reader begins by stepping into the middle of the story, at a critical point perhaps, just before the neighbors’ complaints bring the police pounding on the door.

 As we begin writing a story, we don’t know what all is going to happen or who is going to show up, so we get started however we can. We spend three pages making canapés and cleaning house.  And that’s okay.  Later though, we delete those pages and find the true beginning.

I talk about opening in greater detail in this interview with CBC Reads and we’ll also be discussing it in this month’s Sharpening the Quill Workshop on June 29th, in case you’d care to join us.

Still, things are going on out there in the world and I thought I’d share them here.  First, Canada Writes published an interview with me about openings . . . you know, waking up with a sock in your mouth.  You can read more by clicking here. 

Then, too, Jared Bland, who’s the new Books Editor at the Globe & Mail, interviewed me for a new feature they’re doing on what influences a writer.  I am particularly pleased with this since it involves a cartoon of me, a cartoon which makes me look ten years younger and a little like Jane Urquhart, which is quite flattering.  Here’s the illustration, by Anthony Jenkins:

An idealized vision — and no one will every recognize me!

You can read the interview by clicking here.

But really, don’t you think I look like Jane Urquhart:

Jane Urquhart, whom I would be proud to resemble!

And now, must run, because the Rescuepoo has just dashed in with his squeaky toy, insisting it’s PLAYTIME!  Who am I to disagree?

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/06/06/lauren-b-davis-drink-piece/

Photo by Michelle Siu. Taken in an alley. Fitting.

And, just as quickly, I thought — oh dear, here come the nasty letters.

This has always been a touchy subject, and I suspect it will be an even more contentious one now that the Writers Union of Canada is voting on whether to allow self-published writers into the union.

I’ve written about the subject before, here and here.

Jonathan Bennett has written an interesting blog on the subject.  In it he says, “self-publishing deletes an essential component in the writing of important literary work: time. If no one shelves a rejected novel anymore (indeed, if there no longer is such a thing as a rejected novel), if small presses all die because the do-it-yourself-craze makes them redundant, the world will have fewer great, even half-decent, works of literature. And we already have so few.”

I agree with Jonathan.  And I know some people will say this is easy for me to say, publishing as I do with a large publishing house, getting nominated for awards and being a best-seller and all. Don’t I give a tinker’s cuss for the plight of the struggling artist?? (Think of John Cleese here and that bit about sitting around on your spotty behinds. Snort.)

But it hasn’t always been that way.  I was rejected for years, and then I published a bit and then was rejected again and didn’t publish for a long while and then I published again and I might or might not ever publish another book.  That’s the writer’s life.  I think Philip Roth had it right when he told a young writer, “I would quit while you’re ahead. Really. It’s an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and you write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it’s not any good. I would say just stop now. You don’t want to do this to yourself. That’s my advice to you.” Although, as I’ve said elsewhere, he had me a ‘torture’.

There are no short cuts, I’m afraid.  I’m grateful I didn’t publish any of my early work.  It was, frankly, pretty terrible, and people with excellent judgment told me so, although I didn’t much like it at the time.  Only the space of years and what I’ve learned about writing since has taught me to look at the work objectively and see how dreadful it was. Had self-publishing been an option, however, I probably would have done it, filled with hubris and the desperation to publish as I was.

I would have sent my brilliant darlings out into the world, where they doubtless would have been smashed beneath the heel of an uncaring public and, broken-hearted, I doubt I would have kept on.  Oh, I might have kept writing in my journals, might even have started a wee blog, but I do not think I would have stuck my face back in the publishing fan.  Even with the support of good publishers and objective (by which I mean not-paid-by-me and therefore willing to be brutally honest) editors, publishing is a rough business.  To go into the coliseum as an untried, unarmored youth, carrying a sword made of twigs rather than tempered steel, is suicide.

How many writers with the talent necessary to write fine books will publish too soon, before they’re ready, and be crushed or utterly ignored, which is much like being crushed?  How many fine books will not be written as a result?

But the companies making money on the desperation of unpublished writers will go on making money, while small literary presses, which are the life blood of emerging writers, may very well go under.

You know, I spend a good deal of time with people trying to stay sober.  When they first show up in those church basements where we hang out, they are desperate, and they want twenty years of sobriety and they want it NOW.  I remember feeling like that myself.  But someone takes them aside and tells them that the only way to get that twenty years – and the wisdom and clarity that comes with those years – is to do it one day at a time.  You can’t rush it.  If you do, the quality of your sobriety will suffer, and ultimately, you may not stay sober at all.

Publishing’s a lot like that.

Lauren B. Davis is following strong on the heels of her hit book Our Daily Bread with The Empty Room (HarperCollins Canada) hitting the shelves just one year later.

http://globalnews.ca/video/594558/author-lauren-b-davis-talks-about-her-critically-acclaimed-novel-the-empty-room

In a couple of hours I have the great joy of being interviewed by Shelagh Rogers for her CBC show, which will be aired later this year, and then I teach a class and hang out at the book launch.

I’m having a great time — especially after the wonderful interview with Steve Paikin on his TVO show The Agenda yesterday.  (I’ll post that in a couple of weeks when it airs.)

Still, I’m really missing my dog.  So, here’s a picture because yes, I’ve become one of those people who posts photos of my pets.  Snort.

Bailey finds a sunbeam

I ask,  people like what?

Well, these folks say, you seem like a pretty happy person, more or less, and you have a great marriage and you like where you live and you love your dog and you don’t worry about having enough to eat or your health, so why don’t you write about nice people?

Nice people? I ask (because although I know what they mean, I like to tease.)

Yes, I don’t like a lot of your characters, they’re too . . .

Messy? I ask.

Yes.  Messy.

I be the dog doesn’t mind if his friend is messy.

Ah.  Well, here’s a little secret: I’m messy.  I think most people are, even if some dress nicer than others and don’t have stains on their trousers, even if some live in fancy houses and not under bridges, even if some have never been to jail and don’t know how to make potato peel liquor in a toilet. And I kind of like messy people.  No, not kind of, I do like messy people.  Some of my best friends are messy and complicated and imperfect.  They’re my tribe, my family, my people.

I have a friend, Sister Rita.  She’s a member of the Sisters of Saint Joseph.  I once asked her why the order was dedicated to Joseph.  She laughed and said, because he’s not the main show.  She said the Sisters serve the ‘dear neighbor without distinction’ and do whatever is needed.  I bet they help a lot of messy people, like fallen women and sufferers from disease and tax collectors, you know, the people a certain carpenter from Galilee hung with and  fed with bread and fish and wine and . . .

Sometimes what I do with my stories is bear witness.  It might not be much, but my hope is twofold — that someone might recognize him or herself and not feel so alone, and that someone might just look at the next messy person they see with a little more compassion.

My new book — THE EMPTY ROOM — is about an alcoholic woman, and it goes on sale today.  I’m an alcoholic.  Some of my best friends are alcoholics — messy and complicated and broken people.  I love their stories, because every day one of them stays sober is a miracle, and I’ve grown to believe in such things, messy though they may be.

Here’s what we’ll be doing:  “THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOOD WRITING: YEARNING AND SIGNIFICANT DETAILS” –  We’ll learn how to ensure readers care about the characters in our work, and explore the ways a writer creates emotion: significant, concrete details; specificity, memory flashes, physical signals, sensual selectivity, etc. We’ll look at examples, do writing exercises and generate story ideas.  Come prepared to do some writing and have fun!

Here you go:

Blog Platform Designed for Book Lovers – BookLikes – Goes Live

Named by its users as “Tumblr and Goodreads combined”, BookLikes offers a new way of sharing reading experiences by integrating functions of a blog platform and book social site.

14th May 2013 – BookLikes announces its public launch after eight months of beta tests. The service, a blog platform for book lovers with strong social component lets users create a personal webpage with blog, virtual bookshelf and reading timeline. It’s a mix of a Tumblr-like blog platform, book cataloging site and social network which provides new possibilities for book lovers.

“The experience gained from creating the first version of BookLikes which was a typical book-social site showed us that readers want something more, they were seeking more personalization on their reading profiles and more ways of expressing themselves than only by writing book reviews. We decided on a big change, gathered feedback and implemented users’ suggestions. That’s how the new version of BookLikes arose.” – says Dawid Piaskowski, BookLikes’ founder.

BookLikes is a blog platform designed particularly for people interested in books, with functions dedicated to readers which makes it a better choice for book bloggers than other platforms, e.g. Blogspot, Tumblr or WordPress. The service makes it possible to easily share book reviews using specially designed templates. Users can look for books from the largest bookstores from all over the world, connect books with their writing and shelve them on a personal virtual bookshelf. Within eight months of beta testing, it gathered 8000 bloggers who set up their webpages and shared their reading life.

“I love Booklikes because of the clean design, simple and easy to use and the fact that you’re basically posting your reviews on a mini blog on the site itself I think that’s what makes it so unique than the other book sites out there. (…)” – says Caroline, book blogger and BookLikes user from Canada.

BookLikes launches new functions and personalization features once a week. Upcoming releases include new personalization features, synchronization with other book-social services and open API, which will allow synchronization of BookLikes with reading apps and will open doors for developers to create new applications for BookLikes. Now BookLikes offers book databases from 12 countries: Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA and within next several weeks plans expansion on other countries.

***

For more information please visit http://BookLikes.com/press or contact Dawid Piaskowski, BookLikes CEO – dawid.piaskowski@booklikes.com, tel. 0048-666-326-326

A woman who works with the terrific organization People and Stories wrote to me a few weeks ago and asked if I remember a student I’d had from my prison classes a couple of years back, whom I’ll call John.  Of course, I did remember him.  He’d been in prison for a long time, although he was still young. He was also funny, smart, kind, enthusiastic about writing (and pretty much everything else), optimistic (against all odds in a place like that), filled with a joyful faith. . . in short, he was a pretty good guy.  I don’t have all the facts about what landed him in prison, so I won’t go into that, but suffice it to say it had to do with being felony stupid, and full of the sort of bad luck and bad judgement endemic to fifteen-year-olds that results in long prison terms.

Well, John has now been transferred to a facility which acts as a transition between prison and halfway house. Still very much a prison, but no quite so grim as where he was. While there, he’s been taking part in the People and Stories program.  The first day of class, he asked if she knew me, and as happens, she does.  (I’ve done work with People and Stories before.) John spoke fondly of me, apparently, and of the work we did together in the writing class.  He’s been writing.  He’s excited about going home . . . and … well, would I, this woman asked, be willing to come and lead a session before he’s released?  Would I?  Absolutely.

So today, I saw John again.  You have to understand this sort of thing rarely happens.  Inmates are not allowed to contact teachers like me. I’m not allowed to contact them.  (This is wise and prudent, for obvious reasons.) When inmates get transferred (and they get transferred a lot), they simply disappear.  When my class was cancelled, they were never given an explanation as to why.  I’m just gone.  One learns to live with it.

I don’t know who was happier, me or John.  He looks great.  A little older, a little calmer, a bit more bulked up, but just as kind and open and full of optimistic faith as ever.  As part of the session, he read a story he’d written.  It was good.  It really was.  I laughed and said, “What the heck did you do, save every handout I gave you and study it?”  He laughed, and said yes.  Well, what do you know.  What do you know.

When I first met John he reminded me of a too-big-for-his-feet puppy, bounding everywhere, tripping over things, full of crazy energy.  It seems he’s grown into his feet, metaphorically speaking.  His writing shows the growth.  He says he wants to be a writer, and I say, why the hell not?

He’ll be out in a few weeks and he has a lot of support lined up, which he’ll sure need.  It’s rough out there on the streets for anyone, but for a young man with his past, it’s almost impossible.  Still, he’s got a line on a couple of possible jobs, and he’s got that optimism, and that faith.  If I was to bet, I’d bet he might just beat the odds.  He just might.

We gave each other a big hug as I left.  It felt wonderful to know he won’t be there long; that this part, at least, will be behind him. I’m going to cling to that.

So, it was a great day.  Still, as I drove away, I couldn’t help thinking about my other students, the ones who just disappeared into the system, back to the streets, off into lives I’ll probably never know about.  I think about those guys, and wish them well  . . .I hate saying ‘them’ because if I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned there’s no such thing as ‘us’ and ‘them’.  Just all-my-relations.