Still playing catch up

Not recovered yet from The New England Crimebake, but at least I'm not waking up feeling like I've been tasered.

On the writing front: Last week I took the first pages of the novel my writer's group liked (loved is much too strong a word) best, a novel that one agent really liked, but he didn't represent that sort of book, and passed it on to his colleague and "it didn't really work" for her. Another agent liked, but was only selling cozies, and this ain't your Aunt Agatha's knitting mystery. Nope.

One publisher said the beginning was rushed (I was following the current "wisdom" to drop a body in Chapter one and had slashed the first 40 pages to get there), and also that the character wasn't believable, yet they asked for any future novels. Go figure.

So, after heard from an agent that the East German book (because of old technology, not the writing) is pretty well unpublishable, and not being able to figure out a way to bring new technology into the picture, that book will either be retired to the backup drive or brought into the world via POD. Haven't decided. Too bad the wait was so long the technology is historical. Yup, that's right. Remember CD-ROM's? No? Thought not.

So, I dusted off the "Wisconsin Book," Promiscuous Mode and took the first 6 pages to the writing group and with the years gone by, they thought it pretty much sucked,. Not of course, what I wanted to hear, and some of the writing did seem a little kludgey because in the meantime I've knocked off another 200,000 words writing this and that. More experience and all.

So . . . wondering what to do. Don't really want to sh__can 3 novels, nosirreee. Nobody wants to do that. So there I was last Thursday, driving to Toastmasters, only 6 minutes from the house, and barely time to think of anything, but a new beginning popped into my bed, practically fully-formed.

So I wrote it. Anyone reading these 6 pages gets the whole setup, and should fully understand what the book is "about." And the body drops later, but we get a chance to "meet" the body. How this is going to work out is anybody's guess.

Made a fab Vietnamese shrimp recipe last night. Lots of good veggies and seasonings. Tonight is goulash soup again. All holiday shopping done, and now the pears have to ripen and we're good to go. Grocery crowded. Everybody's cooking up a storm.

I enjoyed Jane Kramer's article on cooking Thanksgiving in foreign countries, having done that once myself.


Grapeshot

Novel in Process: some good; some bad

It's always instructive to take a critical look at one's own writing. I find ups and downs. Of course the ups are nice to read, the scene is humming along, one is showing not telling, and then, eeek! What was a thinking? Does that even make sense? Where was my grammar angel? How did I go to sleep at night after having written a sentence that bad?

One of the first things I learned, at the first writing conference I attended was that almost everything can be fixed? Cardboard characters? Yup? Stupid plots? Probably. Grammar, spelling, punctuation? Assuredly.

I don't know if an incredibly stupid plot can be fixed, but it probably can be. With lots of work. Knuckle down to the manuscript and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Hemmingway did. Everyone does, or should. My understanding is that Robert Parker does not, but maybe he is better than us.

Someone is always better. It can happen that almost everyone is better. I entered a first rate univeristy from a small town high school where competition was sparse and I was an academic standout. At the prestigious university, almost everyone was better. Prep schools, big city high schools. And they all knew how to study. I had just breezed through. My self-esteem went into the toilet and then mucked about in the sewer for two years. Writing can be the same way. You are pretty good in your writer's group or writing course and then you run into people who can write rings around you. Knuckle down. And remember what they say about persistence.

You gotta show up. Manuscript in hand, synopsis, query, pitch, looking civilized and with your best manners.

It's a bitch.

Mystery, Science Fiction and Fantasy

I got out my robot fish story this week and spent some time on it. There were some bad sentences and also some boring sentences, and I trust those have been put to bed. This wasn't really a crime story, although drug running and spying played a major part in it. It is certainly not a mystery. The fish was mostly science fiction and part fantasy, but most of all it was a character study. Odd how these stories take shape.

My other short story, now submitted, was also a character study. Nothing much happens, but it's what doesn't happen that's important. Maybe I am a literary writer. Fortunately, the story is still a "story" with a beginning, middle and an end.

I have a cat story, told, of course, from the cat's point of view that I need to get down on paper. For me, short stories take forever to write and re-write. Almost as bad as a novel.

Then there's my long short story about an accident that also needs to be told. Most of the research is done, the plot is in place. So write it, girl.

And Maxine is waiting, with a kid running around in an electrical storm trying to find a lost cat.

Where do you send science fiction? I found three magazines. I'm sure there are more. You can google them if you want to submit. They also pay pretty well, a fact that gladdens the heart.

Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, and Asimov's Science Fiction. I'm so glad I found them. The fish, Francis, is glad, too. Francis is amazed that he can experience "glad." Now I'm wondering about my cats.

Grapeshot

National Book Awards

Congratulations to the winners and the nominees. This is indeed a stellar list. Yowza!


Fiction Winner Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country (Modern Library)
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project (Riverhead)
Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba (Scribner
Marilynne Robinson, Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Salvatore Scibona, The End (Graywolf Press)

Non-fiction Winner Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (W.W. Norton & Company)
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (Alfred A. Knopf)
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals (Doubleday
Jim Sheeler, Final Salute: A Story of Unfinished Lives (The Penguin Press
Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order (Harcourt)

Poetry Winner Mark Doty, Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (HarperCollins)
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Reginald Gibbons, Creatures of a Day (Louisiana State University Press)

Richard Howard, Without Saying (Turtle Point Press)
Patricia Smith, Blood Dazzler (Coffee House Press)

Image of Peter Matthiessen from: www.nytimes.com/.../LeClair-t.html?ref=books