Why do we write?

(My opening remarks for the 2010 James River Writers Conference: http://www.jamesriverwriters.org)

When I find myself thinking about this conference, and why so many of us are here, I find myself asking why is it that we write? Answering this question is simultaneously simple and impossible, personal and universal.

We write because words make us simultaneously giggle and blubber; we write because we have tiny beings called characters in our heads pounding their miniature fists against our brains as they beg to have their voices heard; we write because when we find words that work well together, we want to marry them on a riverbank on a sunny June afternoon; we write because if we didn’t, we would be pathological liars; we write because we have an odd habit of twisting words like licorice, tweaking, cajoling, poeticizing, intensifying, and making simple sentence structures shine like new; we write because the muse is calling; we write because a book we read in 3^rd or 6^th or 11^th grade revolutionized the existence of literature in the world; we write because we want to be bestsellers; we write because the world needs to know what we have to say; we write because we have to.

Now, maybe you’re one who’s here because when you find yourself in the midst of accomplished authors, you have a desire to pick their brains like monkeys searching for nits of lice. Maybe you’re here because with Scarlett O’Hara as your witness, you will never be rejected again, or perhaps you do not want to go gentle into that good write, Curiouser and Curiouser, indeed, I know, but again, I’d like to welcome you to the 8^th annual James River Writers Conference.

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Now here's my question for you: why do you write?

The Voice of Apple

Move over, iPod, iPhone, and iUniverse. What’s the talk of Apple this weekend? It’s all about writing, voice, and emails.

Have you ever been in a creative writing class and been assigned to write in the style of Falkner? Of Hemingway? Of Austen? Of Dr. Seuss? It’s a great exercise for experimentation and breaking out of your normal writing habits. Now think Steve Jobs. What would his voice be like? Brief, perfunctory, and prosaic is my guess – not that this takes away from the man’s brilliance in other areas.

The story of the weekend is this: emails were sent from Steve Jobs’ email to an unhappy iPhone customer. The electronic messages went back and forth a few times, were brought to the attention of Boy Genius Report and eventually MacDailyNews, and suddenly were the iTopic of the iBlogosphere. Now, whether or not true correspondence existed between Steve Jobs and the occasional customer, happy or disgruntled, I would still argue that the personal attention wins Apple some points. Steve Jobs is apparently known to take time for occasional emails like this – brownie points, Steve Jobs, for remembering the power of the personalized written word! – however, not surprisingly, this weekend’s report shows the emails with the Richmond, Virginia customer were not really coming from Steve Jobs.

What does this really mean? Not much in the large scheme of things, in my opinion. We shouldn’t be shocked that a man like Steve Jobs doesn’t take the time to answer every email just like we shouldn’t be stunned that Hollywood stars and D.C. politicians have ghostwriters for their memoirs.

The impact of this story to the writers among us is larger, though. Our skill is necessary. The ability to transform voice, be it in character dialogue or marketing materials, is a talent that can be appreciated, a talent that is needed in the creative and the business world, and a skill that if honed can allow the novel-not-yet-sold authors among us a pay-day and extra practice.

Happy writing, everyone!

La Fin: When to Stop Scribbling

There is that moment when the final sentence has been typed, where the writer sits back and basks in the glory of accomplishment. The seemingly impossible has been achieved. Where others have failed, you have succeeded. The project that gave you sleepless nights, that made you feel schizophrenic when your characters spoke to you, that sometimes produced a drug-like state where words trickled off your finger tips onto the keyboard like you were a tool in the process rather than the creator – that project, your novel, is done. But is it really?

“Finished” is such a fickle word for the literarily inclined. Just because that last line is written doesn’t mean that the project is anywhere close to ready. For someone in that purgatory between finishing the last page and editing the manuscript to a point where an agent pounces hungrily upon it, this poster (http://www.826national.org/content/258/novel-poster-picture-gallery), with proceeds going to 826 National (http://www.826national.org/), made me really happy and made me ponder.

To me, there are many levels of finished. There is first-rough-draft finished. There is adding-character-profundity-and-vigor finished; typing-up-loose-plot-points finished; conclusion-of-grammar-and-spelling-check finished; line-by-line-poetic-brilliance finished, (the last I strive for and pray to achieve).

As a writer, when is it time to call the manuscript done, or is it ever time? To all the writers out there, what would you say?

Sophistication or Bibliomania?

In a time where sophistication wasn’t measured by the size of one’s flat-screen television or the apps on a smart-phone, the library was where one proved one’s merit. In my travels, the library of the Festetics Castle in Keszthely, Hungary mesmerized me and put my own personal library to shame.

This library, as you can see from our video, is two stories high, with volumes across genres, across languages, and from across time. The detailed, dark woodwork and marble floors lend grandeur to the words protected on these bookcases. My only complaint was that these dusty manuscripts weren’t accessible to the literary tourist, but I could understand the desire for preservation.

My favorite room had a hidden door covertly concealed within the shelves. This was a library overflowing with stories, and surely not all of these tales were those written upon pages.

In 2010, those among us who treasure and build our collections of tomes might just be considered hoarders. There’s even a psychological disorder for those addicted to collecting books: bibliomania. But there’s something about the collection of books that can never be matched by a “library” on a Kindle. There’s something nostalgic and magnificent, something we as writers understand more than anyone else.

Am I alone in my ardor?

The Travelling Scribe

Summer is nearly upon us, and though we may not be in school anymore, the siren’s call of the summer vacation pulls at us like a memory of the students we once were.

When we travel, we as writers had a different perspective than most. We are students of humanity, explorers of cultures with a magnifying glass and an archeologist’s brush, and eavesdroppers of the world’s tongues. Writers don’t just go on vacation. We go in search – in search of what exactly may differ between us, but adventure, romance, character, scene, perspective, and mystic are all editing tools of the travelling scribe. Our familiar worlds and words are left behind.

In Barcelona, I once sat at a corner café as a leathery skinned old man pulled a thin leash behind him attached to a wooden dog. The carved creature on its stick legs bounced across every divot in the cobbled street, and perhaps it was this energy that kept the old man talking to the wooden pet. What drove this man mad – be it the ghost of a dead dog or the tragedies of his past – was surely heartbreaking. I haven’t yet entered this man or this moment into a work of fiction, but it has stuck in my memory for years, waiting for the opportune story to strike.

Hiking north on the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut, once I encountered a grizzly backpacker with his lips parted and dry headed in the opposite direction. He asked how far behind us was a stream. Confused, we explained how the last water source was five miles back and watched his reaction of sheer dehydrated desperation. According to our maps, a riverbed was two miles ahead of us; however, the drought of 2003 had dried it up. There had been no water during the last thirteen miles of his southbound trek. Imagine his mindset, his fear, his challenge. Imagine his glory at taking gulps from our water bottles.

Why do I tell you my stories today? I’m off again, capturing a new adventure, new details, new voices, new plots, new tastes for my tongue, and new accents in my ears. I also say this, of course, because my weekly blog is going on vacation as well.

I’ll be back soon. Happy writing and good luck with your pursuits of publication!

New Twain in the Times

Our cars may not fly, but with every passing year technology does make our world more and more like the world of the Jetsons. Little Elroy reads his books on screen, and we all have handheld gadgets that facilitate our daily affairs.

Yet technology has recently allowed us a glimpse into the intriguing literary past. Anyone who has ever written a high school paper, shaped a brilliant manuscript, or simply shook his or her head at the language of certain television advertisements understands. Whittling words is a skill and an art. Mark Twain above so many others understood this, and now we can see a bit more from his standpoint.

Last week, the New York Times published notes from the personal library of Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself. These were not his forgotten stories or unfinished outlines. These were his critiques of published writing that were not up to snuff – to steal an idiom from his century.

Who were the targets of his brutal critiques? Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling, and Robert Louis Stevenson were, among others.

“The English of this book is incorrect & slovenly & its diction, as a rule, barren of distinction,” Twain wrote in Lew Wallace’s 1906 autobiography, Wallace, of course, also being the author of Ben Hur.

Sometimes blunt, often brutal, and always sincere, the man the world knows as Mark Twain had a thought or two about what makes writing great. These books were examined and released in photos via the New York Times in honor of the one-hundredth anniversary of his death on April 21^st.

A man of critical tastes but honorable intentions, Twain once wrote in The Prince and The Pauper, “When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.” Twain certainly didn’t starve minds in his day, and due to this latest release, our want of worthy words has been satiated again.

For more: http://documents.nytimes.com/twain-books?ref=nyregion

The Ethereal Short Story

As great writing migrates to electronic devices, the short attention span of contemporary audiences seems to be the last hurdle for a beautifully crafted book. Suddenly, for the first time in a century, the oft forgotten short story is primed for a come-back. Ether Books saw the need and released an app for the iPhone this week.

The short story emerged with the arrival of the magazines and periodicals created to quench the new literary thirst of a larger literate middle class in the nineteenth century. Hawthorne, Balzac, and Turgenev’s fictitious wordplay won the readership of the public. Poe and Chekhov followed, as did others, yet as the twentieth century matured, so did the length of the popular story.

While in the 1920s, F. Scott Fitzgerald was paid $4,000 for a single short story in the Saturday Evening Post, today, few publishers will acknowledge the writer and his short story collection, no matter how pleasant the prose. Literary journals have their readership, but this is a miniscule fraction of the reading public.

Yet in this age of immediate gratification and sound-byte attention spans, the short story may newly have rekindled audiences. Ether Books may be starting a new electronic reading trend. Short stories may be on the brink of revival. Starting with an exhibition at the London Book Fair today, the lusciousness of letters may have a new life. I’m hoping so.

Check it out for yourself: http://www.etherbooks.co.uk/