Writing The Path

Panda ruining my new laptop

So I'm writing-writing again. I do make the distinction between what I do here --which is a different kind of writing (blogging). It feels really good. Writing a novel is like creating a life path. If only they could have just said that during my years taking classes.

"Okay, so yer character starts here, and your job is to help them find their path to an end."*

Not so easy, in fact a real puzzle. The main reason is that while finding their path, the writer is also finding their own. Where does writing fit in their life? How much time to invest? What is the writer's own identity? (An everchanging answer). In the process of writing we discover much about ourselves. I can't imagine someone not emerging transformed in some way by the process of writing a book. When the writing is going good, perhaps we've reached a stage of transcendence and the words are just unfurling themselves before us onto the page.

It also explains why all writing --be it blogging or some other form is addicting.** In the process we're solving the puzzle of who we are, adding this, subtracting that, shoving something over. But I have to say that writing a book is probably the hardest --because we're alone, no one leaves little comments from time to time, and at times it feels like we're writing into a void.

That is, until we remember that our characters are with us, waiting for us to guide them along the path.

*"That'll be $350. Cash, Visa or Mastercard. No Discover or AMEX. Thank you for taking my workshop."
**It's why my friend Frank Schaeffer can pump out two books a year, and have another 8 in the hopper.

Book Review: Operation Homecoming

A soldier writes home to his mother:

"Dear Ma,

They call them HERO missions. They are the worst kind.

It's the body bag in the back, that makes the trip rough."

Think of this as a book that belongs to all of us. It was born out of our collective psyche, as Americans who are witness to an event that is shaping our generation and those after.

The Kitchen Dispatch: Military Book Review: Operation Homecoming

Sarah Chayes: Indiana Jones' Modern Day Girlfriend

Gotta love a woman with messy hair

Okay. This woman will kick your butt.  If she were a milspouse she'd be my best friend. And probably anyone's who reads this blog.

I'm reading a fascinating book by Sarah Chayes, who I've featured in an interview with Charlie Rose a short while back. Her book, "The Punishment Of Virtue" is about her leap from NPR correspondent to an NPO founder, military adivsor and a local Afghani tribal observer, and post-Taliban reconstructionist. Chayse writes in an unpretentious, cards-on-the table kind of way. This book is the missing conversational link that helps people understand the generations-old system of tribal structures in a region we've heard little about. It helps us understand what we're facing. She illustrates why Afghanis put more faith in individuals than they do institutions, which is why the American approach of creating them is met with difficulty.

Two of Chayes's traits are her articulate manner and candor. She doesn't hesistate to describe the mendacity of the tribes in her surroundings, the sloth and self-isolation of reporters, the frustration of Marines who want to build a road. Chayes admits how in the early days, much of the reportage wrong because of the collective journalists's lack of understanding of both history and culture. We learn how her editor's biases at NPR killed reports on the subtleties (Marines wanting to be part of the solution and build a road), instead opting standard, humanitarian-in-a-can stories instead. While these are stories we like, they overlook other nuances that complete our understanding of the aforementioned history and culture. (Coincidentally, it's also the reason why milblogs are so great to follow).

When her assignment ended, Chayes quit NPR. She founded Afghans for Civil Society, the monies of which were raised in a very American way. She went home to Masachusettes, held a series of town hall meetings, talked about the work to be done, and got pledges from individuals. With this she founded her NPO:

"Afghans for Civil Society (ACS) seeks to bring about a democratic alternative for Afghanistan that opposes violence and extremism and encourages a nascent civil society."

In other words, ACS isn't mute when it comes to the political reconstruction of an area receiving heavy subsidies. ACS would, through practical efforts, work to influence a society away from the cycle of corruption and violence entrenched in its system of continual wars, governors and war lords. This deviates from the standard NGO, which subcontracts powerful lords to distribute the goods. The money they give often goes to line their pockets, while millions are left in poverty. There's little leverage used to demand better governance.

Crazy? Yes. Impossible? At times. Yet Chayes takes us along on the bumpy ride from Kabul to Kandahar and points north, south, east and west. We go with her to buy rock, only to discover that she can't, see her finagling her way to get it, only to have to bail people out of jail. She shows us how the locals duped the Army Civil Affairs Team into drilling two wells, when the team had just told Chayes they wouldn't give her a $1k subsidy to help ACS drill a well in the same village. How did the locals get the civil affairs team to do it? They changed the name of the town when they were pitching the project to the two visiting CA team members. We're with her as she discovers the entire region has collective PTSD. A society living amid war and destruction for generations, and one that when it comes to subsidies knows how to best milk the system for the benefit of the few.

Substitute Sarah Chayes For Marian

We meet the cast of characters: the proud, the noble, the charmingly corrupt, and the all out vicious. Through it all is the unflappable American, Sarah Chayes, who by all accounts would be Indiana Jones's Marian Ravenwood had Marian sold Stilton in a cheese store, leapt into reporting on food in Paris, covered the war in Kosovo, and had showdowns with Afghans like Abdullah, the Karzai family's engineer (who is now her de-facto deputy). All in all, this is a woman to be watched and a book that deserves to be read.

Note: As with my day-to-day blog, Easy-Writer I'll be doing book reviews. If you're an author, please ask your agent or publicist to request to send me an ARC. I'll read the synopsis and see if it's something I want to read. If so, I'll accept it via US Mail. All book reviews will be archived over on the sidebar. If you seem truly interesting, I might even interview you via the phone (or in person) as I did on my literary writers blog, The Writerly Pause.

Book Review: Three Cups of Tea

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house
That your eyes might be shining for me
When I came.

-TE Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

For those of us who fell into T.E. Lawrence's account of the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turks, Three Cups of Tea should fill a void we've been missing. Like Lawrence, Greg Mortenson is a rare storyteller, adventurer, and former soldier. He's also a father, husband, humanitarian and a fearless taskmaster.

"The little red light had been flashing for five minutes before Bhangoo paid it any attention. "The fuel gauges on these old aircraft are notoriously unreliable," Brigadier General Bhangoo, one of Pakistan's most experienced high-altitude helicopter pilots, said, tapping it. I wasn't sure if that was meant to make me feel better."

After a failed attempt to scale K-2, he wanders into the small forgotten town of Korphe, high in the mountains of North East Pakistan. Recovering from his trip, he asks the village chief if he can see the school. Mortenson is taken to an open plot of land where the children are without a teacher. They're seated on the ground, and the wind is blowing their pages. Mortenson pledges to build them a school. This rash decision will lead him to his lifelong cause: breaking the cycle of poverty by providing a balanced education.

But it isn't easy. Along the way, we ride with Mortenson as he works shifts at night as a nurse, trying to save enough money to build his first school. Back in the Bay Area, he lives in squalor, and fruitlessly writes letters to find a benefactor who will underwrite the project. Amazingly, he does. And there starts the tale of buying supplies in a foreign land, underestimating, transporting them on the Khyber Highway in a truck too big for the narrow, winding road. We read about finding a wife, and along the way he gets kidnapped, has two Fatwahs declared against him, and is approached Kirghiz horsemen who have ridden over the Irshad Pass to the equally remote Charpurson Valley in Pakistan to build a school for them. The reader is taken through the "stans," --Baltistan, Waziristan. We learn of the the Wazir, Pashtuns who had not only defeated Alexander, but later, the British as well.

This is a great read not because it's an adventure or a tale of the the human spirit. Three Cups of Tea is essential because it's an approachable primer for those who want to understand how the the Taliban and Al Qaeda used a lack of publicly funded education to their advantage. It's estimated they built twenty thousand schools of their own, known as madrassas. As Mortenson points out, not every madrassa is a hot bed of extremism, but it does give easy access to foment their own interpretation of the Koran.

"They admired war because it was the occupation they could adapt to. Their simple belief in a messianic, puritan Islam which had been drummed into them by simple village mullahs was the only prop they could hold on to ad gave their lives meaning."

Three Cups of Tea gives the reader a greater understanding of the problems of the region, its tribes and the landscape. More importantly, Mortenson makes a good argument for building schools to break the cycle of poverty and giving reason to go toward a brighter future, offering an alternative to the extremist movement. He, along with other Muslims, views the education of girls as essential to rebuilding peaceful communities. As of 2008, Mortenson's non-profit Central Asia Institute built 78 schools, educating 28,000 students, which includes 18,000 girls. Three Cups of Tea is an incredible story of humanity and offers a deeper understanding to the region in conflict now.

Three Cups of Tea is available in paperback through the site, a portion of which goes to building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Creating Characters: Making yours live a full life

My toughest editor, Panda

Writing fiction is a funny thing. It requires a fair amount of manipulation, while trying to be spontaneous at the same time. One worries about whether or not their characters are living full lives, express a range of emotions. So yes, we stress as we write, especially in the final 55,000 word $*(#$&*! draft.

I was thinking of this when I took a break and went surfing. I came across a dynamic man who was a novelist's dream. His name was Major Steve Hutchison. He re-enlisted in the Army after having been retired for 17 years. During this time he earned advanced degrees in psychology, became a university professor, met the love of his life and was by her side through her cancer (which she would die from), worked in corporate health care and then decided to re-join the Army. He was deployed to Iraq. Anyway, sad thing is that he died from the wounds of an IED. While the press gave him the distinction of being the oldest soldier killed at age 61, amid his peers they didn't think about his age, but loved him for his unfailing leadership coupled with pranks.

"He’d often strut to the shower in nothing more than tighty-whiteys, even with females around. When he passed younger soldiers on runs, he did so in non-regulation short-shorts, with pride. He never, ever secured his chin strap on his Kevlar helmet.

Once, he was so mad at the Army’s attention to uniform detail, he didn’t wear a T-shirt to a base ceremony.

"That was awesome," Nestor said. "Man, I laughed so much that day. He didn’t take any BS."

In one of his biggest capers, he adopted a dog. A stray crossed his path and from then on, Hutchison brought it scraps from breakfast, lunch and dinner. He wrote a memo authorizing the dog as a member of the unit and requesting it get shots from the base’s vet. He signed it himself.

Soon his boss, Col. Warren Perry, learned of the transgression. Hutchison merely did what so many soldiers do when caught breaking the rules: He lied.

He said he’d get rid of the dog, but he found the pooch a foster home. It didn’t work out. When he sneaked the dog — he’d named it Princess Leia — back on base, Perry was back on his case.

"I said, ‘They can only make you retire again, sir,’" Rieckmann said with a laugh."

So let's recount all the interesting things: the college professor, the love of his life, losing her, the tighty whiteys, the issuing of a memo, the lying to a superior, the dog named Princess Leia. The fact that a dog is added into the mix punches the reader in the gut. That it's all true, is simply inspiring.

In the final analysis you can say, "Gosh, I really like this guy. He's watchable. I wish I had known him." It's every writer's dream.
Princess Leia arrived from Basra on June 1. (She is now living in Michigan with his friends. Was transported by the Humane Society) Read: Loved Ones Meet Fallen Soldier's Dog | WUSA9.com | Washington, DC |

Read the rest of the fine article at Stars and Stripes.
And check out Baghdad Pups, the program run by the SPCA International that helps to bring soldier's dogs back home. While the transport cost per adopted dog is around $4k, these dogs are often the touchstone for the soldiers who are in incredibly scary situations. If you can, send them a few bucks.

My Screwed Up Writing Life: A response to the great Jim Belshaw

On his blog, Personal Reflections, Jim Belshaw has written his thoughts on the struggle to identify oneself as a writer. Jim, a very good writer of everything from academia to business, is writing a non-fiction book on the history of New England, Australia. It's a weighty tome, and it involves skill, vision, research and great passion about the topic. Fortunately, Jim has all of these qualities.

In his post, he tells us about the distinction he used to make between those who write using the words as a tool to make a point/ get a job done and those who do it because writing and the exploration of it is central to how we express ourselves.

Jim points out that a writer is someone for whom the writing is central, not just a way to get a point across. They must do it. He's given me an unexpected nod, acknowledging me as a writer.
I'm immensely flattered by this.

But it always wasn't like this for me.

California Delta

I never wanted to be a writer. I wasn't one of those kids who hang out at poetry jams with a portfolio of poems, or a notebook. In my small town, no one read poetry outside of a textbook. There weren't role models to show me writers existed beyond the back page of book jacket, no book fairs or reading groups.

Instead, creativity came in other forms. I'd draw, going through reams of paper. As a teenager, I'd buy ridiculous patterns from Germany and France to make my own outfits. I played the piano and flute, discovered Basie, Brubeck, Earth Wind and Fire, along with Bach in one stupendous year. During hellishly hot summers, I rode my bicycle for miles along levees for hours, and shunned company during our summer holidays to walk alone on the beach. Later, I received my college degree in fine arts, though I can't remember the name of a single classmate. Everything I did was training for being a writer. But the cradle was learning to be alone. That I didn't mind and still prefer my own company probably is the sign of someone destined to become a writer.

An artist or a writer will tell you that it takes precedence over everything --sometimes badly so.
I like writing more than mothering, than keeping house, than money, than being married. I like it more than being nice. And this is the time when writing is a real nuisance because balance isn't something we're very good at. Admittedly, writers are hell to live with, and our worst roommates are ourselves.
The hierarchy of a writer's life (if left to themselves) would probably be like this:

1. Writing
2. Cat or Dog
   
3. Heat and AirCon
4. Food
   
5. Sex (though sex can jump to 3, it may never take the place of 2. And the writer who replaces number 2 with sex is usually seen as slightly off-kilter later on in life --see Norman Mailer).

Fortunately, we rarely get our way, thus rendering lists like the one above useless. Our lives are complicated and we learn that the writer without stress, or one who gets their way all the time is thundering, but dull (see Gordon Lish).

Lastly, I agree that writing in itself is a craft. I learned it on the job, through a writer's program in workshops, and studied poetry. Interestingly, I've learned less from books on writing than I have from novels by great writers such as Harriet Doerr, Thomas Keneally, Eric Newby, Edward Abbey and through the rewriting process. Perhaps this is what separates the wheat from the chafe --we've had people pushing us along, those who have offered critiques on a weekly basis. Though we don't mind being by ourselves, we didn't get here alone.

Writing is a gigantic puzzle that I see and hear. I've learned the importance of rhythm in writing. By manipulating tempo and sound through choosing the right words, one can shape the mood of piece, infusing it with artistry.

But alas, every writer gets stuck. Simply put, writing is thinking. And sometimes we over think, we get too intellectual, we worry about things we can't possibly predict, when in fact we should write more spontaneously. When I find myself in a tight spot, I turn on some jazz and just start pounding to the beat, letting the words spill out and finally, yes... I'm at it again, experiencing the pleasure of putting images into words.

Just like Jim.

Rewriting Miss Penny

In July, I fly to NYC to pick up a manuscript that has been long in the writing to do a bit of editing, re-structuring and generally pulling the storyline together. It has taken Penny 10 years, maybe more to put it together, but even longer than that when you count the years it was tumbling in the writer's mind.
I know the manuscript already, had seen it in a very very rough stage at a writer's workshop at UCLA. So that part is good, but the real allure was the writer herself.

They just don't make 'em like this anymore.

Miss Penny grew up in Manhattan during WWII. Her parents were wealthy, and so Penny enjoyed the type of private school where you throw ceramics and talk about communism while planning your next trip to Paris or Madrid. She was a model, John Ford was entranced by her and flew her to Hollywood for a screen test. She became a writer, a journalist, then a successful Chief Editor of a fashion magazine based in NYC in the 60's and 70's. She worked for the papers, she knew all the designers, she drove a convertible sportscar and bought a huge 4 story townhouse in Greenwich Village.

She used to swap parking spaces with Calvin Trillin, dated other famous authors like Tobias Wolff who decided she liked poodles more than men. And speaking of, she had several husbands though only one daughter. The author traveled through Bamiyan in the 1960's, left publishing and became a filmmaker. She is the most fun person to have a drink with, the worst driver when sober. Needless to say, this woman has a history and stories like hers are ones that you come across and think, "No, that can't be true."

But then you find out that it is.
Oh, how much fun I'll have!

Chapter Headings, Blurbs and Sarcasm

I met my writer friends at the UCLA Writers' Program. Though most in the group pictured have their own way, there remains a core of four. Recently, I got this note from Sovann.

Kanani- I would only number the chapters if the story deals with fantasy or if it is a children's book or something historical. But for a contemporary piece like yours I would avoid naming chapters, but I would definitely start the first letter of every chapter with velvet embroidered giant letter of the fanciest font on the planet and make the rest of the fonts arial. You should be able to feel the fuzz on the "E"! -Sovann

I take everything from my group seriously. Here is my response:

Sovann,
Yes, I think a giant capital letter in raised velvet to start every chapter is definitely called for. I'm planning on writing my own blurbs by Sydney Sheldon, Jacquelynn Susann and Jackie Collins for the back. Jackie's fake blurb might be more difficult to do, since she's not dead yet. But then, there are a lot of people who don't know that, so probably no one will notice. Anyway, I might bill it as

"Plodding in the footsteps of Syd, Jac, and Jackie..."

During our ponderous lectures from Les, I was able to plan infomercials starring Dionne Warwick. I'll have a special: buy three books, get free astrological advice. Or I might pair up with Joan Rivers on QVC: buy a book and get fair bashing about your clothes.

The cover should look like painted Velvet, and feature a naked-lady mudflap design with a picture of a river running through it . The letters will be in silver foil, and I'll change the name of the book back to "Deep River" to be suggestive of Deep Throat. True, my book has nothing to do with that, but I'm all for cross-branding to make a sale. Can you blame me? Believe me, I dream of slick fiction to make the big bucks so I can have a yacht on the Riviera like Sydney Sheldon. He is, after all, our literary hero who lived until the ripe age of 90.

"It takes me several months to finish the first draft. My secretary types it, and I go back to page one and start rewriting. This version can number anywhere from 1000-2000 pages at a time, ripping all the scenes apart, getting rid of and creating new characters. Two months later that draft will be finished and I'll start all over again. I do that for 12-18 months, doing up to a dozen different rewrites. My publisher doesn't see a word until I bring him the final draft."

One to two thousand pages! The man was a writerly stud! He surpassed that guy in the class where every chapter was a sex scene! Sheldon had what I seek: friends, success, happiness and a secretary. Sydney was "da man."
xxxoo
Your Writer Friend, Kanani

Kent Haruf: Tight Prose On The High Plains

click to order

This is the stuff you dream of writing. It's the stuff that makes you forget about cooking, or going to bed at night. Kent Haruf 's prose is spare and unsentimental, yet lithe as winter wheat blowing in the wind. He depicts everyday people who live in areas that are usually overlooked. The pregnant, homeless girl; the two ranching brothers who've never married; the woman who's lived with the tyranny of her violent father and later, the feebleness of a younger brother, and the social worker who has seen too many tragedies unfolding before her. All of his books take place on the high plains of Colorado, a rugged unforgiving landscape only for the most hearty who can endure isolation, wind and sand.

A finalist for the National Book Award for fiction, Plainsong artfully weaves together the lives of six people in the small farming town of Holt, Colorado. What's astonishing in how smoothly Haruf does it with a minimum of fuss and such exactness --one can only compare the structure to great architecture.

In each of his books, the characters come alive because of the emotional truths. Here's a bit from his first novel, The Tie That Binds, where the narrative voice just rolls along, spelling out the truth in a way that's matter-of-fact, but also descriptive. The overall effect is poignancy without sentimentality:

"But she was crying then. There wasn't any sound to it. It was past the point where the puny sound of a human voice can make any difference. She walked out of the house away from her father towards the hayfield to tell Lyman, with the unregarded tears falling onto the breast of her blouse. After that, I know of only two other times in her life that Edith Goodnough allowed herself to cry. Neither was at the death of her father."

The skill with which he writes, the choosing of the right words, when to put in short, sharp passages of description is so well wrought, that one is never distracted from the pull of the story. His latest book issued in January 2008, West of Last Chance, is about the lands and people of the high plains he writes about. Those who like Willa Cather's My Antonia, will no doubt find the same strength of character and storytelling as well.

The Apostrophe

Are there gaffes in punctuation that bug you?
Mine is overuse of the apostrophe.
Like this: Walk-In's Welcome.
Or this: Its'

I'm not going to take people through the Oxford Guide, which serves as a handy platform for cocktails on my side table. But there's no such word as its', and the apostrophe notes possession or is a conjunction of it is. Yeah, call me the grammar police with a gin and tonic.

So it's walk-ins, not walk-in's. And it's its.
And now back to my regularly scheduled cocktail.

Pugnacious, Learned & Mocking: Gustavo Arrellano

What started out as a column for the Orange County Weekly is now the Everyman handbook on the cultural clashes and misperceptions between Mexicans and well, everyone else.

In addition to his usual journalism assignments with the paper, Gustavo Arellano has penned a weekly column that typically starts out with, Dear Mexican. Ask A Mexican! is syndicated in newspapers across the country and has a following of those who understand irony, and others to whom it simply falls flat. Some questions are curious about Mexican culture or history.

Gustavo Arellano, Photo from OC Register

Others are meant to be rude and degrading. Some are just bizarre:

"Dear Mexican, Why don't Mexicans like Science-fiction movies?"

Here's his answer in his typically sharpshooting manner:
"Dear Gabacho, One of my favorite ethnic jokes goes like this. Why aren't there any Puerto Ricans on Star Trek? Because they don't work in the future either." But Mexicans don't like alien films because they're always thinly veiled allegories about Mexicans if you believe University of Texas professor Charles Ramírez Berg."

No matter how someone tries to plot to throw Arellano off, he goes off into the archives of history or through volumes of books to find a quasi-historical/academic answer for the person he'll address as Dear Gabacho or a variant of. Arellano uses his brains and words as a billy club. He handles the questions deftly and with humor, and the voice that comes through is often irreverent --to both sides.

His book, which was published this year by Scribner, will go down as a classic. Not only is it funny, pugnacious and mocking, but it demands we look at perceptions of race and culture, questioning what it is to be an American.

Here he is in an interview at the Los Angeles Press Club:

A Winner: Sherman Alexie's "True Diaries"

Illustration by Ellen Forney, from the book

The setting is the tall pine trees and blue skies of the Pacific Northwest. The tribe is the Spokane. The focus is Arnold Spirit, the gawky, fourteen year old nerdy teenager whose parents are alcoholics. His sister spends twenty three hours a day alone in a basement and his only friend is the school bully. Arnold stutters and lisps and is prone to seizures. He's the human punching bag on the reservation, a geek who makes sense of life by drawing comics because

"I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me."

His predictable life is interrupted one day at Wellpinit High School after being given a geometry text book and seeing his mother's name on it. Arnold already knows how downtrodden his people are, but when he realizes the textbooks haven't been replaced in twenty years, he throws it at his teacher. During Arnold's suspension, the teacher comes to him and explains the injustices his student feels are correct, that in fact here on the reservation there is no hope, and to find it he will have to get off the reservation. This is where the story gains momentum, when Arnold makes the choice to attend a "white" school twenty-two miles away.

Poet, Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter Sherman Alexie

This book is about the opening of Arnold's world by using both the limitations and gifts of his tribe to find hope. Alexie deftly creates characters with both sophisticated realizations with sophomoric behavior and perceptions. His new friend Gordy at Reardan High School tells him:

"And, yeah, you need to take that seriously, but you should also read and draw because really good books and cartoons give you a boner."

This is Arnold Spirit's coming of age amid the incessant hopelessness of the Indian reservation and the gleam of his "white" high school. Alexie is wise not to let Arnold veer off the path and let this become a reality-TV teenage hi-jinks chapter book. He lets Arnold find his own identity by facing the loss of a friendship, alienation from his own tribe, death and grief, love, and the need to make new friends in a foreign environment. With a self deprecating but smart narrative voice, Arnold finds both hope and acceptance. He discovers even though he is a Spokane Indian, he's also a member of other tribes as well:

"And the tribe of cartoonists.
And the tribe of chronic masturbators.
And the tribe of teen age boys.
And the tribe of small-town kids.
And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners.
And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers...."

Finding one's way in life and a sense of belonging is the recurring theme in novels. If you have seen his 1998 Indie movie hit, "Smoke Signals," you'll see True Diaries as an expansion on this theme. Alexie writes this coming-of-age novel with humor, skill and consideration. This book garnered him the 2007 National Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. Frankly, I can't wait for this movie to come out.

Sherman Alexie accepts the National Book Award, 2007

Windfall: An Interview With Patricia Wood

Patricia Wood on her boat, Orion
By Kanani Fong

“I don’t want to be paraded as an expert,” says Patricia Wood, author of the novel Lottery. “An expert is a mother or father who work day-to-day to understand their kid and to get the world ready to welcome him.” Wood knows a thing or two about the challenges of special needs children and adults. As a special education teacher, her hands-on experience was invaluable in creating her protagonist, Perry L. Crandall, a mentally challenged man who transcends all expectations in this debut novel. And indeed, it was the authenticity of Perry that both won the notice of fans, and even the 2008 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, which has short listed it this year.

As with most writers, Wood’s primary goal was to tell a good story. “But if I could tap into some consciousness, to get people to think about their assumptions, all the better,” she says. As a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaii in the area of education and disability, she's written extensively about special education, home-schooling for the disabled, and as an advocate for special needs students. However, it became apparent in all the academic journals and even magazines like Ability that they were all preaching to the same choir. “We know how far people can go,” she says, “yet not enough gets out to the real world. Normal people do not pick up a book to read about special needs adults.”

Rather than type out another article, or non-fiction tome, she chose fiction, which can be a more accessible way to reach a large audience and raise awareness. She wanted to throw a tire iron at the way most people think of the mentally challenged. “Oh, here’s the beggar who’s retarded,” she says, as a means of illustrating the perceptions that many people hold. The challenge was to create a character the reader could root for, but to flesh him out by giving him desires, goals, tragedies and more importantly, ideas.

“I wanted Perry to be loved for his perceptions, and for the readers to see his ability and gifts,” she says of the protagonist. Other people, like his mother have given up on him, and the schools have a low set of expectations. Pat believes this isn’t atypical, that benchmarks applied evenly across the board to a diverse group of people are unrealistic, and not a true measurement of ability.

“Learning isn’t linear. People learn in all sorts of ways,” she says, of her decision to let Perry’s grandmother yank him out of school, to work at their boatyard. Pat cites a nine-year longitudinal study by Jacque Ensign Defying The Stereotypes of Special Education in the Peabody Journal of Education in 2000. They compared special needs kids who were home-schooled vs. those who went through the traditional educational process. The kids who came out ahead were those who’d been under the guidance of the parent at home, or even on the road. “It was mainly due to the parent’s attitude. They excelled on a higher level because the parent could see the kid’s gifts.” Indeed, the key person in Perry’s life is his grandmother, Gram, who takes him out of school and teaches him herself.

Pat thinks of the possibilities in teaching and guiding special needs students. “I often think, what would happen if we taught public education in a variety of ways, using different skills? What if we could work 1:1 with these kids, go at their pace, follow their interests? What if we don’t make a such a deal that a kid can’t hit all the academic benchmarks, but we focus on finding their innate gifts?”

She’s seen the results of non-traditional learning. She and her husband live on a sailboat year round in Hawaii. “We meet cruisers who come into our harbor. Many of them have children, and they’ve been at sea for years. I met a family whose daughter had qualified for special education, but was still having difficulties in school. They decided to go away for three years. When they came back to live on land, they were petrified that they’d ruined their kids’ chances. But as it turns out, they were learning by doing. The daughter is now in regular education classes. She’s doing well.”

A relative of Patricia’s --who was at the profound end of the Down’s syndrome spectrum inspired the seeds of Lottery, though she is careful to point out that Perry isn’t based on him. However, she thought of him, and the responses others had to him. There were a lot of day-to-day things he couldn’t do by himself. As he got older, the stakes went up to find something so he could earn a small living. But they failed to find the right thing. Finally, someone thought to have Bic send them a bunch of pen parts. “This was the era when they’d send you all the parts and you’d get paid for how many boxes you would fill. He could put together Bic Pens faster than anyone else,” she says. “Lottery isn’t a book only about a financial one, it’s also about the lottery in life, the genetic lottery, the windfall one receives when they find something where they can achieve some success.”

Pat also made sure that she wrote about Perry’s sexuality. “Sex is a desire of those with mental challenges. It was important for me to include it. People like Perry want love, they want a girlfriend, they are curious about sex and they want it.” She points out that the perceptions and also many of the depictions on television and movies typically choose to render the disabled sexless.

Though Pat says that the story’s the thing, she hopes that it’s a vehicle for deeper thought and discussion. Perhaps the readers who will gain the most from Lottery are those with little or no experience with those with different abilities. “Love transcends mental acuity, age, weight, education, even morality.” The real lottery is when people go beyond fences that hold them back.

Patricia Wood’s book Lottery is available in paperback now.

The Essentials Of Writing

I'd made the jump from commercial to creative writing while sliding feet first into middle age. So I took my first novel class at UCLA Extension Writers' Program in the spring of 2002 because the advanced short story class was full. I had no intention of writing a novel, rather, Novel I was simply going to be a look-see into an area I'd never considered. Through a series of exercises designed not so much to give us direction on 'how to get published" but to slow us down and teach us about the craft of writing, we had plenty of time to explore. Needless to say, I was hooked.
Looking back at the papers I saved from that period, there were exercises on stream on consciousness writing, dialog, taking postcards and writing a scene based on the picture. There were more, and through this I learned the three most essential things for a writer are:

1. Quit thinking so much. Inspiration is at your fingertips everyday.
2. Patience is a necessity of writing.
3. It helps to have friends.

But I haven't worked on the manuscript for the past six years in a row. No, I did other things. The writer in the studio only writing is only a fantasy. I had to work. I have kids. There's a house that falls apart. Some years, I took classes in other things, like poetry. For a year and a half --or maybe it was two, life took over and the novel just sat there untouched. I also read a lot. My advantage has always been (and maybe it's because I was raised in a small town) --I understand there's a time for everything.
But, a wonderful thing happened almost two years ago. I met my friends and we formed The Writerly Pause. There's a core of about 5 people, and we --John Yelverton, Sovann Somreth, John Louis Peters, David Cossaboom, and myself have all taken turns being Indiana Jones.

For the past year, amid some daunting familial and financial upheavals, I've been working sporadically on the final rewrite of my novel. There were times when I forgot the story line, when I couldn't remember the names of characters. Now, I understand that this was caused by the stress of the tumultuous times. It was never a matter of me being stuck in a rut --I would have loved a rut, but the day's schedule could literally turn in a moment. Often I had to write in short bits --stolen minutes of time between disasters. Through it all, I was encouraged by people like Frank Schaeffer and Patricia Wood as well as all my friends in The Writerly Pause.

This blog was a lifeline on the days when I couldn't write because the stress of being a caretaker was utterly disorienting. These were the times when all I could do was blog...blogging is a form of conversation. And boy, did I need to talk! So thank you all!
Scene 74 was finished today. It is the final chapter. As it turns out, I like my book.
Tomorrow I'll follow the example of Frank and Patricia. I'll print it up, put it in a binder, read it through, make notations and then, in a final flurry... make the changes and then send it out to a few well-chosen readers. No it's not over. A new part is just beginning. But yes, this is a really great step.

Maxine Hong Kingston, An American Writer

I had the pleasure of listening Maxine Hong Kingston at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, where David Ulin of the LA Times Book Section did a masterful job of moderating a discussion. Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Kingston is an American writer whose work puts her in the ranks of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner.

Her first book, written in 1976, was Woman Warrior: Memoirs Of A Girlhood Among Ghosts. The writer uses the myths told in southern China, brought to the new world by immigrants, reshaped to compliment their new life in America, to tell the story of growing up in a Cantonese-speaking neighborhood in Stockton, California. They are American myths, and Kingston is gratified when her work is seen as "American literature, and not those Chinese books." Through the process of talking story, the myths brought over on boats and planes and settled into the living rooms and kitchens and talked about to the generations that are born here. The book is written in a poetic voice greatly influenced by the cadences and rhythms of her childhood, and very much influenced by the process of "talking story," and remembering dreams.
Maxine Hong Kingston, photo from Koa Books

Dreams are a recurring theme in her work. She believes dreams are important, and can signify something that needs tending to, or our deepest desires. When she was a child, it wasn't uncommon for the family to come down in the morning and ask one another, "What did you dream about?" Talking about dreams was a practice handed down from one generation to the next. This was driven home when Hong Kingston went to China to find her mother's long lost sister. She found her. The first thing the aunt asked Kingston was, "How is your mother, and what is she dreaming about?" Luckily, Kingston had recently spoken to her mother, and had an answer for the aunt.

Like many writers, Hong becomes deeply involved with the characters she creates. When she got to the end of Woman Warrior, she knew all the adventures and experiences still continued. In a way, the characters she creates live life off the page, until she lassos them back to appear in the next book, older, or a bit changed. The imagination enables her to create a reality that includes the lifespan of a character that exceeds any one book.

Of her switch from novels to non-fiction, Hong Kingston cited the Berkeley Fire (where she lost not only her home, but her entire community) as one thing that helped her make the shift. After the devastating experience, she found she no longer wanted to write by herself, that in fact, she wanted the company of others. So she gathered friends and former neighbors as they wrote down their experiences. From this, she went on to work with veterans, helping them tell their stories of war. "I let them write their way home from war," she said. "They find they can make beauty and art from war." And this is the great thing about Hong. One senses her restlessness, her decision not to take anything for granted, but to keep pressing not only herself, but us, to look for answers.

Writing Space

Hemingway writing in Africa

A lot of people at public places not only surf the internet, but also write everything from screenplays to novels. With coffee by their side, the general buzz of the atmosphere around them, often with earbuds helping to create the right mood, they hack out their day's work.

For awhile, I used to take my laptop over to a jazz bar, and get work done over there. I'd have breakfast, knock out some prose, and also fall into a conversation with a varied lot that included a masseuse, a waitress, a police officer, a pianist, and even friends who'd stop by. It was my way of getting out of the house, of walking 2 miles and exercising, then setting up shop. I really loved working there --it was fun. And surprisingly, I got work done.

Last year, my laptop died. Having limited funds, I purchased a desktop, thus guaranteeing my wandering days were over. However, I didn't mind because I'd found that I prefer my little study. I like the resources I have around me. The books I can grab to look up a fact, or find a bit of inspiration from. And like many writers, I also do laundry while I'm hacking away. But often it does feel like I'm chained to my desk, or at the mercy of my cat and dog, which is why I have my little Moleskine book with me everywhere. I write in it, take notes or sometimes jot down entire scenes. Lacking a laptop, my Moleskine has become my own variation of one.

My favorite writer's room is that of Al Martinez, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from the L.A. Times. It's shaded by large oak trees, and has a view of lush greenery. There are stickers with funny sayings, books upon books, a rolltop desk with pencils, mugs, and at last... his computer. I believe had I looked I even would have found a typewriter. This was a room that was built by a 65+ years of writing. I didn't take any photos. It would have been like me photographing the Pope's boudoir, and somehow, I just couldn't bring myself to do such a thing.

Back in the day of Hemingway and Faulkner, they weren't dependent on either cables, wi-fi, or even electricity. Imagine the little case with the typewriter --no worries about whether or not there'll be an electrical jack nearby, or what would happen if the entire system crashed. Really, if you think of it, not having these worries is a luxury. Anyway, Hemingway wrote everywhere. Here's his place in KeyWest, or in a hotel room with a desk shoved up in front of a door and a mirror. But wherever he was, in whatever space whether small, large, having resources or not, he held to the maxim as evidenced in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald: "There is only one thing to do with a novel and that is to go straight on through to the end of the damned thing."

And the same holds true today.

The Guardian ran photos of Writer's rooms. Go ahead, have fun looking at them!

Writer Impossible: The Memoir

Since the kerfluffle with fake memoirist and gangsta-poseur Peggy Seltzer, I've read two memoirs, both oldies. First, André Leon Talley's childhood and young adulthood memoir "A.L.T." Second, Diana Vreeland's own, "D.V." (Note: It must be a sign of greatness to be able to use only one's initial for a memoir). In addition, I've also re-read Peter O'Toole's riotous romp, "Loitering With Intent, The Apprentice." Each has grand stories to tell, storytellers who could regale you with interesting tidbits for hours. The writers were and are keen observers of the world around them, and understand their place or purpose. All three also tell it in a way that is not only truthful, but compelling as well. Would I want to be a guest in a ride-along in their car? You bet!

I'll take the first three lines of each from Chapter 1:
From DV:

"I loathe nostalgia.
One night at dinner in Santo Domingo at the Oscar de la Rentas', Sifty Lazar, the literary agent, turned to me and said, "The problem with you, dollfact" --that's what he always clls me --"is that your whole world is nostalgic."

From A.L.T:

"I shall begin by writing about luxury. I can't be sure exactly what image you'll drum up, but I suspect that it will either be swathed in silk and brocade or dressed in a custom-made English suit."

From Loitering With Intent:

"Uncommonly nippy is it in this old house, where you find me loitering at the base of the stairway in the hall, glum and with iced trotter unhappy in their station on the cold slabs of black and white chequered floor."

Immediately the stage is set. Vreeland, Talley and O'Toole take the reader on a romp. Talley tells you about his childhood, where luxury meant large Sunday meals, pressed sheets, and carefully chosen clothing for church. Vreeland regales the reader with a story about back plasters and Jack Nicholson, then segues to finding the house she left in 1937 on Hanover Terrace. And O'Toole takes you into the world of his early years at RADA.

Missing are tired pity-me flags, the long explanations, the apologies --so evident in lesser memoirs. Usually the one-shots, the pity me poor mommy, pity me poor alcoholic son who has wasted all his money on boozing and drugs.
If they did, I probably wouldn't even have finished the first chapter.
I'd of scrapped them to the book heap reserved for the rats and mice to make warm bedding with for cold nights.

Vreeland, Talley and O'Toole have a wonderful ability with language with which to provide descriptions rich in variety of words and sounds (yes, you can read them aloud). This creates a visual memoir -we can see it, hear it, taste, touch and feel what they're writing about. They have the elusive gift of voice.

"Robert famously was a womanizer, drank whiskey by the bucket, could curse blisters on granite; a martinet at work, he was rollicker at leisure; erudite, theatrical, godless, practical, his industriousness was boundless, his will and determination invicible, his phrasemaking raw.."

(I'm not sure if it's because he's Irish, but O'Toole has a natural inclination for run-ons. But you get the point).

Do they take creative liberties in conveying their stories? Probably. Maybe things weren't as golden in other aspects, but they're not sharing those with the reader at this moment. And memory is a sticky thing --I'm sure I was a size five for decades. However, what they're writing about rings true because of the details given and the voice is so consistent. They aren't playing with pitch or meter, what's coming out is natural and unfettered. And to me, this is the mark of a good memoir: one that told in a compelling and amusing way that has a broad use of language to create visual descriptions.

But above all else: what's written about really did happen.

Writer Impossible: Blogosphere Book Reviews

Another late night. Time to peruse book reviews written by bloggers. I've found a mixed bag. Mostly what I've seen are people confusing a critique, an opinion (usually a recommendation), and a report. I know, I'm quibbling. But there is a difference. Especially since everything on the blogosphere is seen as a review.

Most of the books covered by bloggers are recommendations. Someone likes a book so they pass it along. They aren't critical, indeed have no reason to be --but they are enthusiastic and they want you to know about the book. Since people spend more time on blogs than they do reading newspaper book review sections (which are a dying species), and since printed literary journals are fighting for their existence, what bloggers do to promote reading can't be underestimated. I think new writers who don't become conversant in blogging are missing out.

There are a lot of bloggers who confuse a review with a book report. They break down the plot, beginning middle and end. In other words, they give it away. They're less successful identifying themes or conveying what the author was trying to do, and point out how he was or wasn't successful. In these I've found the one thing lacking is clarity of prose. The review goes on and on. They have a difficult time identifying what they're responding to and why. To them I say, go with the old art school critique:

"I'm responding to this piece because..." or "I identified with this because..."

You don't have to tell us the answers verbatim, but it helps if you know the source of your opinion.

Interestingly, I found more positive notices than negative. It seems that bloggers are less comfortable writing about what they're indifferent to, which can put a blogger in an awkward spot if they've hounded the author for an ARC. I've heard more stories from authors when a blogger befriends an author and requests one. The blogger announces to the blogosphere they've gotten it. They read it and say absolutely nothing. The author is waiting, their blogger buddies are waiting. Sensing a breach in blogosphere friendliness, the blogger offers something terse: "A noble first effort. The author really had a good time writing this."
To these bloggers I say, heed John Updike's advice:

"Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like."

And then there are a very rare breed of bloggers who feel they are standard bearers. The world must be held to their view of how things should work. Dutifully, they will break apart the book, tell you every single perceived fault, then pull out the bully club and give it one final swat by saying something like, "by the way, I found out that only a handful turned out for his reading in Sparta GA." Perhaps they're not answering the question posed above: "I'm responding this way because...."

I consider my articles about books to be recommendations (opinions). I write about what I like. I put in the url so that you can look it up and order it. That it's commercial can't be denied. Believe me, I read many books that I don't care for, but I don't write about those. Writing about something you hate and doing it intelligently is far more difficult that espousing the virtues of an author or book. True criticism is a lot more than whether or not you like something. To those pros who can do this, my hat is off to them. Maybe someday, when I can control my inner snark, I'll toss my critical words into the Mixmaster as well.

Anyway, the blogosphere has changed everything. Recently I submitted a recommendation. When it came time for me to categorize it, I chose "opinion." The editor wrote me back... "your piece was a review." I responded, "No, it was a recommendation." Same cat, different breed. I guess I'll have to learn to meow better.


The above article was first published on BlogCritics.org

The Organic Source: A Story

The daughter thinks about art.

Memory 1: The mother worked in the garden. She hauled rock, mows the lawn, trims the tree, plants bushes. A well-dressed neighbor lady walked over to her. "I feel so lazy," she said to the mother. The mother shrugged. It's what she did. Perhaps it was less the ambition the neighbor lady perceived, as much as it was creating a living sculpture from plants, water, sun & shade.

How could the daughter not love gardening? Especially at the house in the country, where avocados grew next to orange trees, 8 vegetable beds grew with a wild profusion of green beans that were planted to form a teepee, heads of broccoli the size of a plate and an apple tree with a tree house.

Memory 2: The mother, who was well into her 50's, decided to take up the piano. Never mind that her daughters blasted through lessons for ten years. Forget that her youngest hated the lessons, only went because she was driven. The mother progressed from scales to chords and accomplished the playing of a song the youngest daughter can sing to this day, "Down in the valley, valley so low. Hang your head over, hear the wind blow...."

How could the daughter not love all sorts of music? Opera, jazz, big band, rock... you name it, she listened to it. Only stopping when the man she married laughed at it, proclaimed much of it intellectually inferior. Until one day, she pulled out all her albums and started playing them with impunity. From there, the rest got sorted out too.

Memory 3: The mother shaped lumps of clay into little people. She also made dishes, bowls, vases. They were funky little things, not elegant, but rustic and oftentimes rough. The little people characters amused only the mother and often the daughter would find them perched in pots outside, carefully arranged in two's or threes.

Much to the daughter's chagrin, she obtained her degree in fine arts. Her area of study --ceramics. However, at this point in time of her young life, the last thing she wanted to remember were the baby blue pudgy ball like characters living in her mother's pots back at home.

Memory 4: The mother dropped the daughter each week off at the library. A huge modern building filled with adventures beyond the farmlands bordering the town. The daughter would check out books --five or six at a time. She'd go home and lie under the dining room table to read.

The daughter became a reader.

Memory 5: The mother wrote letters.

The daughter had penpals at the age of 8. When she was 13, a pen pal's mother met her and said, "One day you'll be a writer." However, the daughter didn't know what it meant. She quickly forgot it.

Memory 6: The mother was a dressmaker. She taught her daughter to make her own clothes.

An imperfect seamstress, the daughter applied the lessons of construction, structure and form as she built her own life.

Memory 7. The mother dies.

The daughter becomes a writer. Many year later, someone asks, "When did you decide to be a writer?"
The daughter thinks back on her childhood. She realizes that her mother's creative projects were her way of reaffirming her own humanity. The daughter understands the importance of art, the relationship to all things --be it fashion, cooking, writing, gardening or raising one's children.
She offers this reply: "I never decided, it just seemed natural."
The daughter now has a daughter of her own. She looks at her and hopes that she does as good a job as her own mother did, bringing art into her life.

Writer Impossible: Modulation and Tone

You, The Piano Man
For Glenn on his 120th Birthday

The flies of stress buzz around my head
as I cross out a transition in prose.
It should start on a low note,
trill higher, gain momentum,
and swoop to a singular, brilliant ping.

But alas, I am stuck --and I have flies.
You, the piano man have always had notes,
words, and music on the brain.
So I phone: 011 61 2 a line to Darlinghurst
where you live amid pianos, music and poetry.

You, the piano man, put down coil setters and gauges.
I only hear silence, and the
flies round my head are getting louder.
“Tempo change,” you finally say.
“That’s it?” I ask.

You, the piano man, catch my L.A. sigh.
A gasp that whisks across the ocean.
“Pace?” I ask.
“Mod-ul-ation,” you say. “Got it luv?”
“No sweat, pet. I've got it,” I say.

A key change --imagine biting a peach
and instead of it squirting, summer’s unleashed,
with John Phillip Sousa and gingham dresses.
Or a dog that plays a sad cello
'cause the cat's run off with the moon.

The flies of stress die away. I'm no longer stuck.