Ladies Who Read

The wonderful sentence I mentioned in yesterday's blog is from a review of Summer Reading in Sunday's (6/3/07) New York Times Book Review. Anne Mendelson wrote the review. She is a freelance writer and editor.

"The clank of narrative machinery being hauled into place is rather too audible at the outset, before the three dovetailing plots take on a graceful momentum of their own."

It's really hard to begin a book. There are a gazillion rules - no backstory too early; no flashbacks too early; ditch the prologue; don't intoduce too many characters at once; make sure the reader knows what the book is "about" in the first few pages; stick in lots of reasonance, with appeals to all five senses; start with actions, not driving or on an airplane; don't begin with a cliched phone call. These are rules for genre fiction, at least mystery-suspense genre, and if you're fabulous, you can break the rules, but a beginning writer better not. So the"clank of narrative machinery," aka the setup, being hauled into place is often heard. I definitely see it in Promiscuous Mode and also in World of Mirrors. As long as it's not too 'pat,' one hopes the reader is enthused, because that is what tells her what the book will be about. Can't win for losing.

Apropos of seeing the name "Wolizer," I thought of a high school teacher of Spanish and English, Miss Walters. A spinster, as they were then called, she taught English and Spanish in a tiny town out west. She cared for an aging mother, which must have been why she got stuck there. No men suitable for a phi beta kappa English major within 90 miles. I remembered her as homely, but when I looked at the yearbook photo, she wasn't. I owe her an apology for thinking her dorky, for thinking of her as a loser, for thinking she was old and ugly. God, did she teach us to diagram the hell out of sentences, to do a bang-up job on a research paper. We laughed at her Castillian accent, which sounded so phoney among all the Latino Spanish. I can still hear her voice asking, "Quien falta?" Who's absent? So, sorry Miss Walters, wherever you are. You were a cool lady.

Today I print all 500+ pages (Courier 12) of World of Mirrors to send to the agent. It's not a question of will be like it, but will he think he can sell it? Maybe he has contacts in Germany. I wouldn't care where it was sold. It would be fun to do a signing in the cute bookstore on the island of Hiddensee, where there are a couple scenes in the book.

Now I will hie myself into the kichen to make the food processor bread. When we were newly weds, I used the word "hie" in a scrabble game and S.O. had never heard of it. Ha ha . Do YOU know it? I think my grandma used it.

With flour up to her elbows,

Grapeshot