A Misunderstood Phrase

Justine Larbalestier has a post up called Write What You Know, NOT! in which she claims that the old adage "write what you know" is "rubbish."

I don't think the phrase "write what you know" is rubbish, at all. It's misunderstood, is what it is.

When I was a teenager, I hated being told to write what I knew. It made me incredibly angry. I lived on a small, rural farm, and I most definitely did not want to have to write about cleaning the barn or feeding the heifers or whatever the hell my father had out in the second barn at any particular time. I felt the teachers were trying to control me when they told me to write what I knew. They were keeping me from writing the mysteries, spy stories, and comedies I liked to read. My mother always told us, "The whole world can't be wrong and you right." I can distinctly remember thinking that I would show everyone that they were wrong and I was right and that I could be a writer without having to write what I knew.

Fast forward twenty freaking years, by which point I had published two short stories and one essay. I caught the attention of an editor at G.P. Putnam's Sons and began working on a book of short stories about aliens. The basic premise of the collection involved aliens dropping in on two suburban brothers who were left to deal with them on their own because their mother was too busy to notice there was anything unusual going on.

I had to come up with material for these stories. I had given my older son a birthday party with an Olympic Games theme. So I did a short story about a birthday party with an Olympic Games theme and had an alien crash it. He was wearing an outfit based on one my younger son wore when he was a toddler. The older boy did a science fair project on pulleys, so pulleys figured prominently in another story about an alien. I did a story about a dinosaur and an alien because the younger boy had a pair of shorts with dinosaurs printed on them that I just loved. (I did have a thing for his clothes, didn't I?) I used the neighbor's dog in a story. We had friends who were musicians, so I made the parents musicians. My husband plays the guitar, so that was their instrument.

After the book was published, an acquaintance said to me, "Loved the book. It was so real. It was about things that really happen." A lightbulb literally went off over my head. I didn't think the poor woman believed in aliens. I knew that she was talking about all the details that came from my life as a suburban mom. I thought, Oh. That's what they meant.

I realized in a blinding flash of light that writing what you know means writers have the option of turning to their lives for the details they need to describe characters and settings and to come up with plot points. That's dramatically different from having to write only about what has actually happened to you. Writers' lives aren't strait jackets. Nobody is holding a gun to their heads forcing them to write about that babysitting experience in 1986, or their grandmother's wake (though I do have a pretty good wake story) in '91, or every up and down in their marriage.

But when you need a town for a setting, being able to use one you know sure beats having to come up with one from scratch. And it can end up sounding a lot more realistic, too, because it's based on something real. A school building you remember, the camp your uncle owned, the house you lived in when you were in first and second grade, jobs your family members have held, the vicious dog that used to live next door, the food you ate on vacation...the barn those heifers you had to feed were kept in...all these things are things you know and can use. Any way you want.

Larbalestier talks about doing research for books. When you do research, that becomes something you know. You are then writing what you know.

My life is so intricately woven into my books that someone reading them could end up knowing so much about me it's frightening. And, yet, I've written two books about aliens and am working on a third. I've written about people who have lived a life dedicated to environmentalism to a degree I can only imagine. I've written about a lot of boys. The books aren't about me.

Because I still hate the expression "write what you know" I prefer to think of what I do as writing who I am. Whatever you want to call it, it has never kept me from writing about anything I wanted to write about. On the contrary, it has made all my writing possible.

A Little Late For Me

a.fortis at Finding Wonderland directed me to something called One-Pass Manuscript Revision at HollyLisle.com. Now, once (or if) I ever get back to work, I'll be slogging through...ah...the nineth...draft of a manuscript. (I am not bragging.) Now is not the time to tell me I could have done it all at once.

However, what I find particularly interesting about Holly Lisle's revision process is that it begins with theme. I've been thinking about theme and its significance a lot this fall and winter, and it makes a great deal of sense to me right now to begin with that.

Maybe next time.

There's Nothing Wrong With Being Thrilling

I am definitely a Suzanne Collins fan. I liked all but the last of her Underland books. And I found the actual game portion of her The Hunger Games exciting, an excellent thriller.

However, this book has been discussed on listservs all year. It's being talked about as having award potential. I just don't see it.

In The Hunger Games a ruling elite suppresses twelve districts it defeated in war by selecting two teenagers from each one (in a scene very reminiscent of The Lottery) and forcing them to fight to the death in a televised reality show. Seeing their kids murdering each other on television is supposed to show these folks that they have no hope. At the same time, the ruling class in the capitol city finds the games wildly entertaining.

I find this premise very...random. There just doesn't seem to be any compelling reason for anyone to have hit upon this particular device for breaking the will of an opponent.

I think I have trouble accepting the premise because I don't find the world of the book very well defined. The story takes place in North America sometime so far in the future and after so horrendous a war that the United States no longer exists or even seems to be remembered. People no longer use recognizable names. In fact, some names sound very Roman, as if the culture has been thrown into the past.

And yet they still have reality television?

A lot of things in this book just didn't work for me. The government of this society can create entire little worlds for the games to take place in and then turn them into theme parks for the wealthy instead of reusing them for the next games. It can control the weather, for crying out loud. It needs the Hunger Games to control a downtrodden population? I don't think so. The games appear to have been going on for seventy-four years. That's at least three generations. In that time the society hasn't changed in any way? How big are these districts that need to be controlled? What's going on in the rest of the world? What's with the girl who is introduced but never dealt with?

I'm guessing we'll see her in book two of what I've heard is going to be a trilogy.
In spite of all my reservations about the world building in this book, I am more than willing to admit that once the games in The Hunger Games begin, readers are in for a thrill ride. That's plenty of reason to read it.

The Hunger Games has been nominated for a Cybil in the Fantasy and Science Fiction YA category.

Tintinologists?

I have to admit, my interest in Tintin is limited to the fact that a young relative was a big fan a few years back. In fact, he learned the splendors of interlibrary loan because of his love of Tintin. I, myself, am not a tintinologist.
Nonetheless, I read all of A Very European Hero in The Economist.

Link from the child_lit listserv.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Early Christmas morning I had two dreams totally unrelated to the day. In one either I'd written a play based on one of my books or someone else had. It got terrible reviews. In the other, someone wrote one of those memoir/something else books that was totally about what a poor job I'd done writing The Hero of Ticonderoga.

I am desperate to get back to work tomorrow.

In more upbeat Christmas news, I received a copy of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Selected Essays, Lectures, and Poems, a copy of E. B. White's Writings From The New Yorker 1925-1976, and a gift card to an independent bookstore.

I thought I bought and gave enough books as gifts to keep the publishing world afloat for another year. But maybe not.

Books Have After Lives

Sometimes when you have books out in the world they live their own little lives even when you're not being particularly literary because you've been making candy for days.

This week I learned that Saving the Planet & Stuff received a mention in an article called The Text Generation: Fiction That Incorporates Digital Communication by Melanie D. Koss, which was published in the September issue of Book Links. The article was about books that "include...tools of communication, both as snippets embedded within or completely replacing a conventional narrative structure." Planet was included because the main character uses e-mails and Instant Messenger. It was categorized with Books for Older Readers, which is exactly how I see it. It was published for ten year olds and up, though.

This was great recognition for Planet. Unfortunately, it's...out of print! This is a case of a book living it's own little after life.

I had planned to try to find a paperback publisher for it this year. I didn't even get started on that, though I did get the rights to the book reverted to me, which is actually as close to being on top of a situation as I ever get.

I am enjoying the recognition Planet received because I'm not attached to any concept of in print...out of print...print this...print that...

Turning To Children's Books For...Comfort?

I don't know what it is about well-known children's titles that seems to beg for this kind of treatment. But, you know, they do.

My favorites were the old-time classics, Lassie Can't Come Home and The Pauper and the Other Pauper.

Thanks to the child_lit listserv for this one.

No Matter What I'm Doing, I Can't Wait Until I Can Do Something Else

Christmas seems like such a good idea at the end of October and beginning of November when it is still in the future. But when I have to spend a lot of time (I'm a slow writer because I'm just plain slow) shopping for presents and then wrapping them and then making candy and cookies and pet de soeur and tourtiere, even though everyone here hates the latter and I don't actually like it but damn it once a year I'm going to feel as if I have some kind of cultural identity...

Where was I going with this? I remember.

When I've been deeply involved in a writing project, so much so that maybe we've been eating hot dogs a couple of times a week as well as store bought cookies, I feel very excited as I approach the end because I think that means I'll be able to take a break and maybe buy us some real food and clean that nasty stuff out of the shower stall. Now I've been treating Christmas like a job this past week because I couldn't stand having it hang over my head anymore. I've been deeply involved in that. As I approach the end of the holiday marathon, I'm longing to get back to real work. I'm getting all kinds of ideas for projects I've been thinking about for years and haven't been able to get to. The various word processors I've been working on this fall look very good to me right now.

I can't wait for Christmas to come and go.

Is It Magical Realism? Is It A Graphic Novel?

I have been a bad Cybilista, not keeping up with graphic novel posts the way I'd planned to. So today I am doing penance by discussing The Savage by David Almond, which has been nominated for a Cybil in the YA Graphic Novel category.

The Savage is the story of a boy whose age I'm not sure about, though he seems a little on the young side for a YA to me. Soon after his father dies, he starts writing a story about a savage kid who appears to come to life so that he can deal with a bully who has been tormenting his creator.

Does he really come to life? Did his author commit the acts in the night instead of the savage?

While this story seems a little familiar to me, it is very well done. Child readers may very well find this storyline very intriguing. What's more, the book is relatively short. The draw of the story combined with the unintimidating length of the text could make this book a real draw, particularly for less enthusiastic readers.

I first became acquainted with David Almond's work when I read Skellig while doing a little magical realism study. Just as The Savage involves a child who has experienced the trauma of a parent's death, Skellig involved a child who was experiencing the trauma of a sick younger sibling and a move to a new home.

One day after doing my magical realism reading, I was supposedly doing a bookstore appearance but really just hanging out with the bookseller because she had very few customers and didn't make a single sale the two hours I was there. The bookseller had a background in some kind of therapy. She said that when books involved "magical elements" with a character who had experienced some kind of trauma, said books were not considered examples of magical realism. The magical elements had to exist with no possibilty of them being explained as an emotional response to a traumatic event.

I don't know if she was right, but it was an interesting point.

Anyway, getting back specifically to the book at hand, The Savage is heavily illustrated by Dave McKean, who also illustrated The Graveyard Book. While there are more illustrations than I'd expect to see in a regular novel here and some of the pages could be described as being broken into panels, I really don't see this as a graphic novel. There's way too much text and the illustrations illustrate. I don't think they carry any of the story.

Fuse #8 did a lengthy review of this book earlier this month, complete with many links to other reviews and miscellaneous information.

The Newbery Wars?

I've been chatting, so to speak with a couple of people about the interest general papers have been showing in Anita Silvey's School Library Journal essay on the Newbery Award. Yesterday I realized these "Is the Newbery doing its job?" articles remind me of the Mommy War pieces you used to see in the '90s. They were feature articles that were designed to be divisive and polarize women into two camps--working versus so-called nonworking mothers. The Newbery articles seem similar to me, an attempt to set up Newbery detractors and supporters who can then gather into opposing camps. Conflict is newsworthy and presumably sells magazines and papers.

I can't see this going very far, though. For one thing, though children's literature does inspire volatile feelings (children's titles make up a big part of banned book lists), those feelings are nowhere near as personal as those enflamed when a person thinks her parenting skills are under fire. Whether or not I'm a good mother will determine how successful I am at getting and keeping my genes in the gene pool. We're talking primal here! Whether or not I think last year's Newbery winner was any good? Eh.

In addition, we're told over and over again that people aren't reading. The number of people who know what the Newbery is and which book won it last year (ah...ah...Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!) is nowhere near as great as the number of people who have given birth.

So, really, I think this is a conflict that's going to sputter along but never erupt into a real war.