22nd March 2013
The CEO at Simon&Shuster sent me a letter this week. Well, not just to me but to all of their authors. For a fast-heartbeat moment, I thought this was the declaration of their bankrupcy or their decision to cut themselves free fom all upcoming (and patiently waiting) authors.
But no, the letter was about piracy, and not the high seas type. They say not to worry; they say they are on top of the problem (truth be told, I didn't know there was one) and they have hired a Digimarc company (as though I know what that is!) to filter through untold numbers of sites looking for illegal copies of our books. Right now, at my stage in the publication process, anyone wanting to read my book, be they illegal or otherwise, would seem like an attractive prospect. Thank goodness there's enough interest in stories for people to want to steal them. This was going to be the topic of this week's blog, but it ranks up there with drafts of other people's poetry in terms of holding one's interest. (I didn't read the whole letter, just skimmed.)
People with blogs are able to spot where their hits are coming from, and this week in an unprecedented turn of events, I received thirty hits from Latvia! Last week's blog was about Irish poet WB Yeats, so maybe they have the good sense to appreciate good poetry over there in Latvia. Petition your booksellers to buy my book, Latvians, and I might be coming to a book shop near you!
For those of you following my work on the sequel to the novel that has yet to be published (March 1st - put it on your calendar) I am on page 155. I am taking a long time over this one, just because March 1st is an eon away and I have a long time. What I am doing with this book much more than I usually do is keep going over what I have written and filling in the cracks. My normal method is to churn out a book fast in one sweep and then go back over the whole thing. I hope this story has all the required phases of build up, climax and denoument (funny how this sexual metaphor permeates much of art) - if it does, then it will be a miracle because I am just trundling along like a person in a wood with a flashlight (not sexy at all), seeing what takes my fancy.
I have been reading books on time, and there is a lot out there about time as illusion, which all works in my favour, because only if time is rigidly linear do I have a hard sell with my time travel book. However, I am making the decision right now not to refer to it as time travel, as this evokes the idea of someone climbing into a time machine with whirring wings and dings and shooting off through some vortice or other in fin de siecle clothing. I want to refer to what happens to the protagonist in my book, Maggie, as "Time shift." It's not like she is going anywhere; she is just slipping into another reality. If the thinkers thinking great thoughts on this subject these days are right, then all possible realities are present in every Now in a dimension that sort of runs perpendicular to this series of nows. Enough on that. But let it be noted now that I only started reading this stuff half-way into my second book in the series. I think there might be three in the series, because I have some pretty wild ideas for a third book.
But it's all just a juggling act, keeping the reader interested, going back and making sure the saucers are still spinning on the tops of the sticks.
Sunny skies over The Rocky Mountains and their foot of new snow, while I sit and muse on the threat of piracy, while Latvians are watching the sun go down, and many a book is secreted off the internet into dark closets and read by candlelight.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Saint William Butler
16th March 2013
My agent got a thumbs up this week (well, maybe not that enthusiastic - he got a green light) for a little compensation to me from the publisher for my publishing date being set back. He asked them to provide me with postcards to promote the book, presumably sporting the book cover (which hasn't been chosen yet) and the date of publication, which as we all know is now March 1st. Curses. The good thing about this is that, once they put the date on the postcards, they won't be able to move it around any more.
The other good thing is I get to choose the book cover before too long. I used to think an author got to come up with a book cover, but I have been told by the powers on high that it is the art department, which would take offense at my suggestions, as though it were a vote of no confidence. I hope they give me some good options - no studs in kilts and women in high heels. This is a particular bugbear for my agent, so I am hoping he exerts a little pressure here. He's quite good at that.
Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day, a holiday I didn't even know existed utill I moved to the US. How many people in Scotland are going to celebrate Saint Patrick? But there is a lot to be said for the Emerald Isle. Its history is similar to Scotland's, in that it was (and in Scotland's case, still is) a victim of English imperialism. Ireland, however, managed to preserve more of its mythology and its connection with its ancient past than did Scotland. Ireland also managed to slough off English propoganda earlier, and have a populace that actually believed in its ability to be its own soverign self. In Scotland, the brainwashing has had a more lasting effect, perhaps because the hammering has been more persistent.
Anyway, not to wax lyrical on the subject of Scottish Independence (though I would be happy to) let's remind ourselves that Ireland has produced an uncanny number of great writers. I am currently reading a very nicely written book about Ireland, its geography and mythology called "The Red Haired Girl From The Bog," which reminds us how far removed we are from the mythos, how great the migration that has taken place in our sensibilities from our hearts to our heads in this post-enlightenment age.
There is James Joyce, for one. Seamus Heaney, for another. Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw. Edna O'Brien. Frank McCourt. And then there is William Butler Yeats, whose poetry is more than an arrangement of mere words. It is an ocean into which you fall and are subsumed again into the mythic consciousness of the race.
Try this: And aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.
And this (and then I'll stop) - my most favouritist poem, not just of his but in all of the English language:
I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head
Cut and peeled a hazel wand
And hooked a berry to a thread
And when white moths were on the wing
And moth-like stars were flickering out
I hooked a berry to a string
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
And gone to blow the fire aflame
Something rustled on the floor
And someone called me by my name.
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And vanished in the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone
And taste her lips
And take her hands
And walk among long dappled grass
And pluck 'till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.
I have that off by heart, because that's where it belongs - in the heart. It's called, "The Song Of Wandering Aengus." Thank you, William Butler. The poor man spent most of his adult life in pursuit of Maude Gonne, a handsome tall woman who has a history in her own right, being a leader in the Irish movement. She never gave in to him, though. Was she crazy?
Anyway, a great tradition in Irish literature, because they never lost their story-telling. Somehow the church didn't manage (though it tried) to stem a great literary imagination.
In Scotland, we had John Knox who, heir to John Calvin, was good at stamping things out (except his desire for young girls - he married one at the age of 58. Ah, the sexual intrigue of the church!) We had the witch burnings, and we had a lot of cowering, especially on the part of Scottish women. Creativity is the first thing to go when you put a people in a box, when you tell them to be something they are not.
Still, Scotland has had its share of writers. Robert Burns, for one (a man who resisted all boxes.) We have a great writer in Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song, one of my favourite books. We have Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. We have JK Rowling, who isn't really Scottish, though she penned her first Harry Potter words in a small cafe on George the Fourth Bridge in Edinburgh (a fact advertised these days in the cafe window!)
Outside my window the clouds are uncharacteristically low over Colorado, the wind unusually swift and moiling. It reminds me of a morning in Scotland.
My agent got a thumbs up this week (well, maybe not that enthusiastic - he got a green light) for a little compensation to me from the publisher for my publishing date being set back. He asked them to provide me with postcards to promote the book, presumably sporting the book cover (which hasn't been chosen yet) and the date of publication, which as we all know is now March 1st. Curses. The good thing about this is that, once they put the date on the postcards, they won't be able to move it around any more.
The other good thing is I get to choose the book cover before too long. I used to think an author got to come up with a book cover, but I have been told by the powers on high that it is the art department, which would take offense at my suggestions, as though it were a vote of no confidence. I hope they give me some good options - no studs in kilts and women in high heels. This is a particular bugbear for my agent, so I am hoping he exerts a little pressure here. He's quite good at that.
Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day, a holiday I didn't even know existed utill I moved to the US. How many people in Scotland are going to celebrate Saint Patrick? But there is a lot to be said for the Emerald Isle. Its history is similar to Scotland's, in that it was (and in Scotland's case, still is) a victim of English imperialism. Ireland, however, managed to preserve more of its mythology and its connection with its ancient past than did Scotland. Ireland also managed to slough off English propoganda earlier, and have a populace that actually believed in its ability to be its own soverign self. In Scotland, the brainwashing has had a more lasting effect, perhaps because the hammering has been more persistent.
Anyway, not to wax lyrical on the subject of Scottish Independence (though I would be happy to) let's remind ourselves that Ireland has produced an uncanny number of great writers. I am currently reading a very nicely written book about Ireland, its geography and mythology called "The Red Haired Girl From The Bog," which reminds us how far removed we are from the mythos, how great the migration that has taken place in our sensibilities from our hearts to our heads in this post-enlightenment age.
There is James Joyce, for one. Seamus Heaney, for another. Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw. Edna O'Brien. Frank McCourt. And then there is William Butler Yeats, whose poetry is more than an arrangement of mere words. It is an ocean into which you fall and are subsumed again into the mythic consciousness of the race.
Try this: And aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.
And this (and then I'll stop) - my most favouritist poem, not just of his but in all of the English language:
I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head
Cut and peeled a hazel wand
And hooked a berry to a thread
And when white moths were on the wing
And moth-like stars were flickering out
I hooked a berry to a string
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
And gone to blow the fire aflame
Something rustled on the floor
And someone called me by my name.
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And vanished in the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone
And taste her lips
And take her hands
And walk among long dappled grass
And pluck 'till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.
I have that off by heart, because that's where it belongs - in the heart. It's called, "The Song Of Wandering Aengus." Thank you, William Butler. The poor man spent most of his adult life in pursuit of Maude Gonne, a handsome tall woman who has a history in her own right, being a leader in the Irish movement. She never gave in to him, though. Was she crazy?
Anyway, a great tradition in Irish literature, because they never lost their story-telling. Somehow the church didn't manage (though it tried) to stem a great literary imagination.
In Scotland, we had John Knox who, heir to John Calvin, was good at stamping things out (except his desire for young girls - he married one at the age of 58. Ah, the sexual intrigue of the church!) We had the witch burnings, and we had a lot of cowering, especially on the part of Scottish women. Creativity is the first thing to go when you put a people in a box, when you tell them to be something they are not.
Still, Scotland has had its share of writers. Robert Burns, for one (a man who resisted all boxes.) We have a great writer in Lewis Grassic Gibbon - Sunset Song, one of my favourite books. We have Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. We have JK Rowling, who isn't really Scottish, though she penned her first Harry Potter words in a small cafe on George the Fourth Bridge in Edinburgh (a fact advertised these days in the cafe window!)
Outside my window the clouds are uncharacteristically low over Colorado, the wind unusually swift and moiling. It reminds me of a morning in Scotland.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Best Sellers
9th March, 2013
"A Best Seller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was selling well." S. Boorstein.
This quote resonates enough that it must tell at least part of the story. Consider the books that have made this list during their day and then fallen quickly into obscurity (I happen to like John Fowles, "The French Lieutenant's Woman," on the list in 1970, but you never hear anything of it these days.) You have to hope that there's more to it than that. Something in us wants to believe that the cream rises to the top.
So, let's look at the ten best selling works of fiction of all time:
(1) A Tale of Two Cities," by Charles Dickens. That's not too surprising, but I'd have guessed A Christmas Carol would have outsold it.
(2) The Little Prince. Big surprise. It's a nice story and everything, but who would have thought it would have that wide world and enduring appeal?
(3) The Lord of The Rings. I would have expected to find Tolkein here, though I could never get into those books myself.
(4) The Hobbit. Ditto.
(5) The Dream of the Red Chamber. It was written in the 18thC, and I really ought to read it, now that have heard of it.
(6) And Then There Were None." Agatha Christie. I have never read anything by Christie, but they must be good!
(7) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. CS Lewis. I loved this as a child, but it's a children's book, isn't it?
(8) She by Henry Rider Haggard. Another book I haven't heard of.
(9) The DaVinci Code. I read this one, but as literature it barely squeaks by.
(10) The Catcher in The Rye." Well, it's somethingof a classic and perhaps the reason John Lennon is dead. It was given to us to read in High School in rural Scotland, and my guess is I wasn't the only one who couldn't make heads or tails of it.
It is widely accepted that the best seller list connotes neither academic value nor literary worth, so what's it there for? What does it mean in the long run that a certain book, say any of the three romance books that are currently on the best seller list, sold this or that number wihtin this certain period? Perhaps S. Boorstein is right after all.
A sobering thought is that 500,000 books are published a year and over 98% of those will sell under 500 copies. The Harry Potter series has sold 450 million copies, and The Berenstain Bears 260 million. The figures dance and swirl in a kind of nightmarish field of possibility. The Bridges of Madison County, a phenomenally badly written book, sold twelve million, and Goodnight Moon 16 million. The Malleus Maleficarum, a manual for hunting and executing witches, was a best seller in its seventeenth century day, even outselling the Bible. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows sold 44 million, just above "Jonathon Livingston Seagull."
The more I go on, the more I suspect Boorstein is right and being on the Best Seller List doesn't mean much except for the ch-ching of pennies dropping into your bank account. But, come to think of it, a person could fall asleep listening to the sound. The New York Times Best Seller List is like the Oscars - you really don't want to watch it, but you end up in front of the TV from the moment the stars hit the runway. Flim flam, all. Yet something there is in us that loves it.
"A Best Seller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was selling well." S. Boorstein.
This quote resonates enough that it must tell at least part of the story. Consider the books that have made this list during their day and then fallen quickly into obscurity (I happen to like John Fowles, "The French Lieutenant's Woman," on the list in 1970, but you never hear anything of it these days.) You have to hope that there's more to it than that. Something in us wants to believe that the cream rises to the top.
So, let's look at the ten best selling works of fiction of all time:
(1) A Tale of Two Cities," by Charles Dickens. That's not too surprising, but I'd have guessed A Christmas Carol would have outsold it.
(2) The Little Prince. Big surprise. It's a nice story and everything, but who would have thought it would have that wide world and enduring appeal?
(3) The Lord of The Rings. I would have expected to find Tolkein here, though I could never get into those books myself.
(4) The Hobbit. Ditto.
(5) The Dream of the Red Chamber. It was written in the 18thC, and I really ought to read it, now that have heard of it.
(6) And Then There Were None." Agatha Christie. I have never read anything by Christie, but they must be good!
(7) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. CS Lewis. I loved this as a child, but it's a children's book, isn't it?
(8) She by Henry Rider Haggard. Another book I haven't heard of.
(9) The DaVinci Code. I read this one, but as literature it barely squeaks by.
(10) The Catcher in The Rye." Well, it's somethingof a classic and perhaps the reason John Lennon is dead. It was given to us to read in High School in rural Scotland, and my guess is I wasn't the only one who couldn't make heads or tails of it.
It is widely accepted that the best seller list connotes neither academic value nor literary worth, so what's it there for? What does it mean in the long run that a certain book, say any of the three romance books that are currently on the best seller list, sold this or that number wihtin this certain period? Perhaps S. Boorstein is right after all.
A sobering thought is that 500,000 books are published a year and over 98% of those will sell under 500 copies. The Harry Potter series has sold 450 million copies, and The Berenstain Bears 260 million. The figures dance and swirl in a kind of nightmarish field of possibility. The Bridges of Madison County, a phenomenally badly written book, sold twelve million, and Goodnight Moon 16 million. The Malleus Maleficarum, a manual for hunting and executing witches, was a best seller in its seventeenth century day, even outselling the Bible. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows sold 44 million, just above "Jonathon Livingston Seagull."
The more I go on, the more I suspect Boorstein is right and being on the Best Seller List doesn't mean much except for the ch-ching of pennies dropping into your bank account. But, come to think of it, a person could fall asleep listening to the sound. The New York Times Best Seller List is like the Oscars - you really don't want to watch it, but you end up in front of the TV from the moment the stars hit the runway. Flim flam, all. Yet something there is in us that loves it.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
They Bleed
2nd March 2013
I ran into a writer friend of mine in the grocery store shortly after he had published his fourth novel with a major publisher - he was congratulating me on my upcoming book (at the time it was more upcoming than it currently is...) and he commented, "Now you'll have to face the reviewers."
Issac Asimov once said, "From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly."
Unless you fall into the artisitic calibre of Mozart ("I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my feelings,") you are going to bleed. I have been doing my homework, so here's another quote I like about reviews: "Bad reviews are the tools of the dark side." (Eric Benoit)
When I am going to buy a book from Amazon, I invariably look at the graph they provide which shows how many five star reviews, how many four, three, two and one star reviews a book has garnered. I looked up my four published writer friends, and their graphs all look about the same: mostly you get five star, then the numbers decrease with each rating. (I like to read the one star reviews because they can get quite nasty.) But this pattern goes for almost any book you can think of.
I looked up the following cross-section of titles: Little Women, Grapes of Wrath, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, All the Pretty Horses, Uncle Tom's Cabin. To the great credit of American readers, only 50 Shades of Grey gained more one star than five star reviews. Otherwise, the story was the same.
For authors who have almost only five star reviews, you have to turn to Dickens and Shakespeare (though I was curious at the two "one star" entries against Romeo and Juliet and found what were probably the words of exasperated high schoolers - one said the play "sucks," the other merely penned, "I hate it.")
Amazon recently cleared its books of all five star ratings that had come from an automated source, but that can't stop every author's friend and relation swelling the figures a little. I know I'll get every friend of mine to endorse my book. Even some that don't know they're my friends yet.
But I figure there's a limit to how many people an author knows, and the book won't sink or swim because of these kind of reviews. If you have ten reviews and they all say the book is a smashing read and they couldn't put it down, it's a fair bet the author knows the reviewers. I have yet to read a book I couldn't put down, and I have read some books that, as Emily Dickinson said, lifted the top of my head off. If it's that good, I want to savour it, and I put it down a lot. I just don't lose sight of it.
So, blood or no blood, there is still a lot riding on a first novel. As my agent says, it's better to have no novel published than one that sank like the Titanic.
I think I had better get out the bandages...
I ran into a writer friend of mine in the grocery store shortly after he had published his fourth novel with a major publisher - he was congratulating me on my upcoming book (at the time it was more upcoming than it currently is...) and he commented, "Now you'll have to face the reviewers."
Issac Asimov once said, "From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly."
Unless you fall into the artisitic calibre of Mozart ("I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my feelings,") you are going to bleed. I have been doing my homework, so here's another quote I like about reviews: "Bad reviews are the tools of the dark side." (Eric Benoit)
When I am going to buy a book from Amazon, I invariably look at the graph they provide which shows how many five star reviews, how many four, three, two and one star reviews a book has garnered. I looked up my four published writer friends, and their graphs all look about the same: mostly you get five star, then the numbers decrease with each rating. (I like to read the one star reviews because they can get quite nasty.) But this pattern goes for almost any book you can think of.
I looked up the following cross-section of titles: Little Women, Grapes of Wrath, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, All the Pretty Horses, Uncle Tom's Cabin. To the great credit of American readers, only 50 Shades of Grey gained more one star than five star reviews. Otherwise, the story was the same.
For authors who have almost only five star reviews, you have to turn to Dickens and Shakespeare (though I was curious at the two "one star" entries against Romeo and Juliet and found what were probably the words of exasperated high schoolers - one said the play "sucks," the other merely penned, "I hate it.")
Amazon recently cleared its books of all five star ratings that had come from an automated source, but that can't stop every author's friend and relation swelling the figures a little. I know I'll get every friend of mine to endorse my book. Even some that don't know they're my friends yet.
But I figure there's a limit to how many people an author knows, and the book won't sink or swim because of these kind of reviews. If you have ten reviews and they all say the book is a smashing read and they couldn't put it down, it's a fair bet the author knows the reviewers. I have yet to read a book I couldn't put down, and I have read some books that, as Emily Dickinson said, lifted the top of my head off. If it's that good, I want to savour it, and I put it down a lot. I just don't lose sight of it.
So, blood or no blood, there is still a lot riding on a first novel. As my agent says, it's better to have no novel published than one that sank like the Titanic.
I think I had better get out the bandages...
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Dasein
23rd February 2013
Trust the Germans to come up with as an apt a word as Zeitgeist. German is the leggo language, where you can snap off one word and stick it to another to create a whole new concept. Zeitgeist is one of those words, from Zeit, meaning Time, and Geist, meaning Spirit. Dasein is another good German leggo-word, from Da, meaning There, and Sein, meaning Being. Zeitgeist translates as "the spirit of an age," and Dasein as "The art of being," or being present, being a silent witness, just Being There.
In a way, being in touch with the Zeitgeist requires a certain Dasein. I bring this up, because I have been thinking this week about the role of the artist in society, and I think it has to do with both of these German conundrums. In our age of hyper-individualism, we have to some extent lost sight of the role of art as anything but sheer self-expression. These days, if I stand in front of a piece of visual art or sit down to read a new author, I am only being asked to see the relationship between the psyche of the artist and the piece of art. The larger context, to some degree, has been lost.
Traditionally, however, the artist played the role of the chorus in Greek drama. He/she was a mirror reflecting back the action, the simple Dasein held up to the Zeitgeist of that particular drama. If you think about the writers that have endured, you will find this quality about them. They are witnesses of their particular Zeitgeist, reflecting it back to the general population. Dickens, The Brontes, Orwell, Hesse, Steinbeck, to name but a few, belong here.
But, just as a mirror only reflects what is there, the Zeitgeist resists manipulation. It is what it is and must find its own way to expression, which it does inevitably. In other words, the artist shouldn't set out to be a bearer of the Zeitgeist. The artist can only be the silent witness, and that requires a level of unconsciousness. This is why, though a part of me wants to regale against a book like "Fifty Shades of Grey," or even "Harry Potter," the better part of me knows that it is an expression of the times.
The focus of the writer (let's steer away from the more controversial visual arts) should just be the writing. Whatever else comes through will be a function of the writer himself or herself , and that has to do with his or her quality of Dasein. (Don't you wish we could just plunk for the German here and talk about himself/herself as one thing - the neutral, "One.")
Now, I read early Barbara Kingsolver with relish. "The Bean Trees," and "Animal Dreams," were very good books. But along the way, she veered off into the land of social conscience. On the face of it, it would seem that social conscience would go right along with the concept of Zeitgeist, but in a way it is its opposite. In the arts, that is. Zeitgeist is a mirror, it's not a vehicle for anything other than itself. By the time Kingsolver was writing "Prodigal Summer," she was hanging decorations on the outside of the Zeitgeist mirror. It's a hard thing to do, but the writer has to trust that what they have to say will come out in the writing without them trying to say what they have to say.
Which all comes down to Being There (Dasein.) To being present. It is the voice of the author that is the vehicle, not the issues. It is the silence within which the artist finds himself/herself (Wo man sich findet.) It is the silence that speaks the loudest.
Trust the Germans to come up with as an apt a word as Zeitgeist. German is the leggo language, where you can snap off one word and stick it to another to create a whole new concept. Zeitgeist is one of those words, from Zeit, meaning Time, and Geist, meaning Spirit. Dasein is another good German leggo-word, from Da, meaning There, and Sein, meaning Being. Zeitgeist translates as "the spirit of an age," and Dasein as "The art of being," or being present, being a silent witness, just Being There.
In a way, being in touch with the Zeitgeist requires a certain Dasein. I bring this up, because I have been thinking this week about the role of the artist in society, and I think it has to do with both of these German conundrums. In our age of hyper-individualism, we have to some extent lost sight of the role of art as anything but sheer self-expression. These days, if I stand in front of a piece of visual art or sit down to read a new author, I am only being asked to see the relationship between the psyche of the artist and the piece of art. The larger context, to some degree, has been lost.
Traditionally, however, the artist played the role of the chorus in Greek drama. He/she was a mirror reflecting back the action, the simple Dasein held up to the Zeitgeist of that particular drama. If you think about the writers that have endured, you will find this quality about them. They are witnesses of their particular Zeitgeist, reflecting it back to the general population. Dickens, The Brontes, Orwell, Hesse, Steinbeck, to name but a few, belong here.
But, just as a mirror only reflects what is there, the Zeitgeist resists manipulation. It is what it is and must find its own way to expression, which it does inevitably. In other words, the artist shouldn't set out to be a bearer of the Zeitgeist. The artist can only be the silent witness, and that requires a level of unconsciousness. This is why, though a part of me wants to regale against a book like "Fifty Shades of Grey," or even "Harry Potter," the better part of me knows that it is an expression of the times.
The focus of the writer (let's steer away from the more controversial visual arts) should just be the writing. Whatever else comes through will be a function of the writer himself or herself , and that has to do with his or her quality of Dasein. (Don't you wish we could just plunk for the German here and talk about himself/herself as one thing - the neutral, "One.")
Now, I read early Barbara Kingsolver with relish. "The Bean Trees," and "Animal Dreams," were very good books. But along the way, she veered off into the land of social conscience. On the face of it, it would seem that social conscience would go right along with the concept of Zeitgeist, but in a way it is its opposite. In the arts, that is. Zeitgeist is a mirror, it's not a vehicle for anything other than itself. By the time Kingsolver was writing "Prodigal Summer," she was hanging decorations on the outside of the Zeitgeist mirror. It's a hard thing to do, but the writer has to trust that what they have to say will come out in the writing without them trying to say what they have to say.
Which all comes down to Being There (Dasein.) To being present. It is the voice of the author that is the vehicle, not the issues. It is the silence within which the artist finds himself/herself (Wo man sich findet.) It is the silence that speaks the loudest.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Vox Clamentis
17th February 2013
I am still on hold with regard to my agent's intercession for me at the publishing house. But this much I know: they're not going to budge on the publishing date. March 1st 2014, it is. What I am pushing for now is to be granted an official "acceptance" date for the manuscript (i.e. the date it left the editor's office) because that secures me two things:
(1) The publication date won't be pushed any further back (within the terms of the contract, they have to publish within eighteen months of this "acceptance" date.)
(2) My second payment cheque
I encouraged my agent to let me in on what he had proposed to the publishing house to make the medicine a little sweeter, but he wasn't coughing. He says it has to do with the promotion of the book and will cost them money, so my editor has to go to her boss for approval. This will take time.
The title of my novel should be switched from "Veil of Time," to "It Takes Time," because it is taking a bloody lot of it. Time being the theme of my book, I ought to have more understanding for the illusory nature of time. And I do, really.
In the meantime, a writer friend this week was urging me to exert pressure on my agent to get on with hawking my other books. Because it's not just this book that is held up with this new publication date, but my eight-book backlog. However, by the terms of my contract I am obliged to show my next novel to Simon&Schuster, though any offer they make on it has to be agreeable to me. Also, by the same terms, I cannot publish another book within six months of the first. So it's just a big bung-up all along the line.
I am toying with the idea of taking a writing class by Paul Harding this summer. His book "Tinkers," is one I admire and keep going back to, so I figure I stand to learn something.
No pearls of wisdom this week. I am speaking from the wilderness, a place where time loses all meaning and no sound echoes back.
I am still on hold with regard to my agent's intercession for me at the publishing house. But this much I know: they're not going to budge on the publishing date. March 1st 2014, it is. What I am pushing for now is to be granted an official "acceptance" date for the manuscript (i.e. the date it left the editor's office) because that secures me two things:
(1) The publication date won't be pushed any further back (within the terms of the contract, they have to publish within eighteen months of this "acceptance" date.)
(2) My second payment cheque
I encouraged my agent to let me in on what he had proposed to the publishing house to make the medicine a little sweeter, but he wasn't coughing. He says it has to do with the promotion of the book and will cost them money, so my editor has to go to her boss for approval. This will take time.
The title of my novel should be switched from "Veil of Time," to "It Takes Time," because it is taking a bloody lot of it. Time being the theme of my book, I ought to have more understanding for the illusory nature of time. And I do, really.
In the meantime, a writer friend this week was urging me to exert pressure on my agent to get on with hawking my other books. Because it's not just this book that is held up with this new publication date, but my eight-book backlog. However, by the terms of my contract I am obliged to show my next novel to Simon&Schuster, though any offer they make on it has to be agreeable to me. Also, by the same terms, I cannot publish another book within six months of the first. So it's just a big bung-up all along the line.
I am toying with the idea of taking a writing class by Paul Harding this summer. His book "Tinkers," is one I admire and keep going back to, so I figure I stand to learn something.
No pearls of wisdom this week. I am speaking from the wilderness, a place where time loses all meaning and no sound echoes back.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
The Year of the Horse
February 10th 2013
This is the Year of the Snake, and I am a Pig (well, I like to say Boar, because that fits in with the Pictish stone carvings in my novel and in with the place where I grew up in Scotland.) I was looking at my astrological forecast for the Year of the Snake, and it said that I should lie low this year and put off any big ventures for a year. So, I called up my agent and my editor immediately and said, "Look, you have to pull all the strings you can so that I can put this publishing thing off until 2014. Next year, the Year of the Horse, is going to be much more compatible with launching my career, because the horse likes to be in the limelight, unlike the snake who has sneaky energy and likes to work behind the scenes. The Year of the Snake has to do with steady progress and attention to detail, so, please, in my best interests, could we wait and not publish until next year?"
My agent said he didn't think they could do that - I mean, there are all those potential readers out there, waiting for September so that they can read this book. At my insistence he broke down and talked to my editor at Simon and Schuster, and with much reluctance, they took a look at their 2014 calendar and said, "Okay. We will put Claire McDougall's book on the March 1st slot. But tell her this is the last time we are going to do this."
Because I spend my time dreaming up fiction, this is the way I cope with devastating news. It's a way of thinking of March 1, 2014 and not crying, because it is an entire bleedin' year from now. Do you want the truth? Then here it is: I e-mailed my editor this week and asked if she could give me a firm publishing date, in September like she said. Her e-mail came right back. It said my firm publishing date is March 1st 2014, the year of the horse. (She didn't mention the horse. I put that in.) I admit I cried. I admit I whisked off an e-mail to my agent which said, "Can they really do this?" Unfortunately they can. My agent said, "I'll talk to them." He did. The publishing date it still March 1st, but he said he talked them into something to my advantage, the details of which he couldn't give me because Hurricane Nemo was banging at his door and he had to run from his office in fear of his life. (He really did! I'm not making that part up. Well, he wasn't in fear of his life, but he was anxious to get home.) Point is, whatever sweetness he hath garnered for me from this debacle, I will not know until he has dug his office out from under piles of snow. Alas, cruel fate!
Tune in next week for an exciting update.
In the meantime, I am still in denial. Just yesterday someone asked me when the book was coming out (as they always do) and I told them September. People are going to think I am making this up. Just to give you a time-line to put all this in perspective. I signed a contract with my agent in July 2009. It wasn't for this book, but that's how long he has been trying to get me in print. I signed a contract with Simon and Schuster for this book in March 5, 2012. So it will be almost exactly two years before the book is published. As I pointed out to my agent, the contract says they are supposed to get the book out within eighteen months, but, as he pointed out, the clock doesn't start until my final manuscript is actually "accepted." This means the point in time when my editor handed my manuscript off to "production," which was October of this year. This is all news to me.
All I am saying is that things had better start moving a bit faster soon. All I am saying is that this business is not for the faint of heart. Writing your book is the easy part. You have to hope there is a bigger plan at play here. That's all you can do.
This is the Year of the Snake, and I am a Pig (well, I like to say Boar, because that fits in with the Pictish stone carvings in my novel and in with the place where I grew up in Scotland.) I was looking at my astrological forecast for the Year of the Snake, and it said that I should lie low this year and put off any big ventures for a year. So, I called up my agent and my editor immediately and said, "Look, you have to pull all the strings you can so that I can put this publishing thing off until 2014. Next year, the Year of the Horse, is going to be much more compatible with launching my career, because the horse likes to be in the limelight, unlike the snake who has sneaky energy and likes to work behind the scenes. The Year of the Snake has to do with steady progress and attention to detail, so, please, in my best interests, could we wait and not publish until next year?"
My agent said he didn't think they could do that - I mean, there are all those potential readers out there, waiting for September so that they can read this book. At my insistence he broke down and talked to my editor at Simon and Schuster, and with much reluctance, they took a look at their 2014 calendar and said, "Okay. We will put Claire McDougall's book on the March 1st slot. But tell her this is the last time we are going to do this."
Because I spend my time dreaming up fiction, this is the way I cope with devastating news. It's a way of thinking of March 1, 2014 and not crying, because it is an entire bleedin' year from now. Do you want the truth? Then here it is: I e-mailed my editor this week and asked if she could give me a firm publishing date, in September like she said. Her e-mail came right back. It said my firm publishing date is March 1st 2014, the year of the horse. (She didn't mention the horse. I put that in.) I admit I cried. I admit I whisked off an e-mail to my agent which said, "Can they really do this?" Unfortunately they can. My agent said, "I'll talk to them." He did. The publishing date it still March 1st, but he said he talked them into something to my advantage, the details of which he couldn't give me because Hurricane Nemo was banging at his door and he had to run from his office in fear of his life. (He really did! I'm not making that part up. Well, he wasn't in fear of his life, but he was anxious to get home.) Point is, whatever sweetness he hath garnered for me from this debacle, I will not know until he has dug his office out from under piles of snow. Alas, cruel fate!
Tune in next week for an exciting update.
In the meantime, I am still in denial. Just yesterday someone asked me when the book was coming out (as they always do) and I told them September. People are going to think I am making this up. Just to give you a time-line to put all this in perspective. I signed a contract with my agent in July 2009. It wasn't for this book, but that's how long he has been trying to get me in print. I signed a contract with Simon and Schuster for this book in March 5, 2012. So it will be almost exactly two years before the book is published. As I pointed out to my agent, the contract says they are supposed to get the book out within eighteen months, but, as he pointed out, the clock doesn't start until my final manuscript is actually "accepted." This means the point in time when my editor handed my manuscript off to "production," which was October of this year. This is all news to me.
All I am saying is that things had better start moving a bit faster soon. All I am saying is that this business is not for the faint of heart. Writing your book is the easy part. You have to hope there is a bigger plan at play here. That's all you can do.
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