Naked, but Still Writing

We all have our personal equivalent of the “naked dream” where your vulnerable anatomy is revealed to an auditorium of peers who publicly humiliate or unmask you in some way.

Lately I’ve been exploring the feelings that come up around bad reviews and negative criticism since publishing my two new books, Make a Scene, and Write Free. Fortunately for the sake of blog post material, I received another crappy review, this one asking the very question that pulls at the seams of my tightly sewn writer’s persona, rendering me naked to the jeering crowd.

Why, asked the gentleman, should he have expected a book on writing to offer him anything useful when the author had not published a novel to speak of? (I paraphrase)

Was I, the gentleman pointed out in his cocksure manner, another example of the old axiom, “those who can’t do, teach?” (my words).

I’m afraid to admit this one stung precisely because I have asked myself this same question, waiting to be revealed as a fake. What if all those novels I’ve written—the prerequisite “5 or 6 unpublished novels hiding in a drawer” are all I will ever have to show of a literary life? What if all the hours I’ve spent building structures and implanting characters within them, spinning out tales and stories and yarns, never produce a saleable work of fiction?

Should I then turn off my analytical eye, blind the part of me that is, for some reason, pretty darn good at seeing and understanding the elements of the craft of fiction even as I struggle to make them work for me?

My answer is that I believe there is a difference between someone who teaches but does not practice their subject, and one who teaches and practices and still has a ways to go along the path, maybe a lifetime. I may not be "there" yet, but I'm still on my way.

Terena on KMEC

Terena and the Medusa's Muse editor, Jane Mackay, were interviewed on KMEC radio last week. The show is now on line on the KMEC website. KMEC is a low power, community radio station in Ukiah, Ca. 105.1 FM

The Midnight Society

(3-21-3008. The interview is split in two with lots of great Punk tunes)

Toward the end of part two, Terena explains how to submit your work to Medusa's Muse.

Review of Audrey, Wait! Robin Benway's debut novel

Audrey, Wait! by debut Young Adult novelist Robin Benway hits stores in April. Should you rush to your local bookstore and order it this minute? The answer is a resounding, musical YES, with heavy bass beats and non-synthesized drums in the background.

This is precisely the sort of YA fiction I hunt for but don't find often enough. It's fun without being vapid, fast-paced without sacrificing well-developed characters, and sweet without ever veering into saccharine land. The pacing is tight, and every scene delivers humor, tension, or pathos in just the right doses. Most of all, though, Benway manages to nail the voice and mindset of a modern teen girl with startling honesty and spot on accuracy.

Here's the premise: Audrey breaks up with her self-absorbed musician boyfriend on page one. Good riddance. He proceeds to write a breakup song called "Audrey, Wait!" The catchy number shoots to the very top of the pop charts and Audrey finds herself thrust into a brand new existence, one filled with paparazzi, online discussions about her love life, and teenie-boppers imitating her offbeat fashions.

The plot has momentum and moves nicely, but my favorite aspect of this book is definitely the attention to detail in Benway's character development. Every one of the main players, and even a few of the minor ones, are quirky, intriguing, and endearing. In particular, Audrey's best friend Victoria has such zest and energy she leaps off the page. She's also deeply human with very believable flaws, which makes her even more memorable and affecting.

Don't take my word for it, though. Get thee to thy bookstore and reserve your copy now. Robin Benway is a mega-talented writer, and if there is any justice in the world of YA fiction Audrey, Wait! will shoot to the top of the charts the second it hits the shelves.

Small Press Month

Not only is March Women's History Month, but it is also Small Press Month, celebrating the contributions of small and independent publishers to the book industry.

Small Press Month, now in its 12th year, is a nationwide promotion highlighting the books produced by independent and small publishers. The website calls it "An annual celebration of the independent spirit of small publishers, Small Press Month is an effort to showcase the diverse, unique, and often most significant voices being published today. This year's slogan is Celebrate Great Writing."

What is a small press? There are several definitions depending on what country you live in, but in the U.S. it means a book press that publishes less than 10 titles a year and earns less than $50 million. If that's the definition of a small press, Medusa's Muse must be a Minuscule Press, with just one or two books a year and earning less than a thousand bucks. Is there a mini-press category?

Wikipedia has an excellent definition of a small press . Here is part of that definition:

Since the profit margins for small presses can be narrow, many are driven by other motives, including the desire to help disseminate literature with only a small likely market. Small presses tend to fill the niches that larger publishers neglect. They can focus on regional titles, narrow specializations and niche genres. They can also make up for commercial clout by creating a reputation for academic knowledge, vigorously pursuing prestigious literature prizes and spending more effort nurturing the careers of new authors.[3] At its most minimal, small press production consists of chapbooks. This role can now be taken on by desktop publishing and Web sites. This still leaves a continuum of small press publishing: from specialist periodicals, short runs or print-to-order of low-demand books, to fine art books and limited editions of collectors' items printed to high standards

There are thousands of Small Presses in the United States alone. One of my favorites is Soft Skull, which put out the funny, fantastical story "The Good Fairies of New York," by Martin Miller, the tale of two Irish fairies who get lost in New York City and create havoc as they compete with each other over who "has the best human." Woza Books produces the excellent children's book, "The Call to Shakabaz" by Amy Wachpress, which was a finalist in the USA Book's National Award for children's fiction. The award winning British press Dedalus Books has been in business since 1983 creating haunting, visionary, and beautiful works and is on the verge of closing shop thanks to the end of the British Arts Grant which has helped support their work since the 1990's. Be sure and grab one of their books before they disappear. If you're in the mood for fairy tale or romance,go to Drollerie Press. Their books are as beautiful as their website. And did you know that the works of Henry Miller were published by New Directions Press, one of the pioneers in the Publishing industry?

Independent publishing has a long and prestigious history, from Anais Nin painstakingly typesetting each page and self-publishing her book, "House of Incest," to the now famous "Chicken Soup" books. I am proud to be a part of this tradition. As Walter Mosley says on the Small Press Month website, "The life’s blood of contemporary and modern literature is in the custodianship of so-called small publishers. Without them, there is no future for literature."

Embrace the spirit of independent publishing and pick up a book from a small press today.

Too old to be published?

I read an article in the latest Writer's Digest called "Publish your first book after 50" by Scott Hoffman (Writer's Digest. April, 2008). It states, "As difficult as it is to publish a first novel at any age, does it become more difficult as you get older? The honest answer is yes..." What the...? The article then focuses on how to beat the bias against older authors, which is great, but the whole topic made me stomp around the house with that magazine crumpled up into a violent looking tube, shouting, "Are you telling me I only have about 9 years to get my novels published before my writing is considered expired? Before I become too old to market? I just figured out how to write, for #$&^$* sake!"

Turning 40 was bad enough. I'm no longer considered sexy or attractive by popular culture's standards. My boobs droop and my tummy won't stay tight, no matter how much I suck in my gut. Getting gray hair was another annoying fact of life I've had to live with. I am no longer in the demographic for "Bust" magazine and am supposed to read "More," which focuses on career women over 40. I'm no longer a "Hip Mama." But I lived with it. I embraced my 40's with excitement and vision, ready to let go of my own youth obsession and claim my full fledged womanly power, along with my growing womanly figure. I started a publishing company and am going back to school to learn a new, better paying career. But this? Too old to be a writer? This is too much!

Why is an older writer considered a bad risk in the book industry? Part of it has to do with the idea that people over 50 don't know how to use the internet, are afraid of email, and run screaming from MySpace. In this technological age, being internet savvy and willing to self promote via social networking is mandatory. So right there, younger writers with their blackberries and interactive blogs have the edge over older people who are just now figuring out how to use a cell phone. When books are being written in Japan on cell phones in text messages and published to acclaim, you know technophobes are in trouble.

Fine, I'll accept that, but don't lump all us so called older people into the technophobe category. I for one am learning everything I can about the internet, even going so far as to learn XHTML. Yes, I know the difference between HTML and XHTML. See, I know my internet.

I finished the article, noting every myth about older writers and how to overcome them. Remain energetic. Don't mention the "R" word (retirement). Keep your ideas new and fresh. Yeah, yeah... good advice. Advice for every writer, so why is this pointed at ME? I know I'm not 50 yet, but the idea that my writing-clock is ticking like my biological clock did in my 30's is extremely disturbing. Tick-tick-tick... you'd better get published soon or you never will. Hurry, hurry. Find a good idea. Finish that last novel. Go out there and hunt down a good partner/agent to get knocked up/published before it's too late. Eeeeeeekkkkkkk

I'm calm now. Got a little dizzy there for a minute. These mid-life panic attacks are overwhelming sometimes. I wonder if it's like menopause? Instead of hot flashes, I get heart palpitations thinking about how fast my life is going. I was supposed to be a famous writer by now. Instead I'm a 41 year old publisher with a drawer full of stories no one will read. Then I remember Tillie Olson. For one brief Spring when I was living in San Francisco and going to college, I worked for Tillie Olson, one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. She raised a family while writing stories and wasn't published until she was in her 60's. She was one of those beautiful, intelligent, fiery women I idolized and I decided to be like her someday. Maybe I am? I'm not as well spoken or intelligent as she, but I'm still young and I'm learning. I have at least 20 more years to achieve the goal of being like Tillie Olson.

Aging sucks. It really does. When my knees hurt and I have to squint more to focus when trying to read a street sign, I really hate getting old. And yes, I know, it beats the alternative. I know how lucky I am to still be here on planet Earth, living a creative and fulfilling life, watching my daughter grow up, while sharing this journey with wonderful friends and a man who loves me. So I will try very hard not to take that article to heart. I will try not to let the idea that my creative time clock is about to strike midnight and my chance to go to the ball will be over.

Because when you examine the pros and cons, being 41 is a lot better than being 16.

Surviving the Bad Review

I would like to update an old axiom today. It will now go: Into every writer's life, a bad review must fall.

Naturally this is not something we writers want to hear. As we construct our opuses out of fairy-wings and vodka shots, we all secretly hope to be catapulted not only to fame and vast wealth--but to be canonized. I don't care if you write trashy romances with badly stitched plots--I'll bet you want it too: to be loved, idolized, held up as the standard to which all other books in your genre should aspire. You're only human after all--which means, ruled by your ego,that sleazy little car salesmen in all of our souls.

The bad review, I have come to believe, is the universe's way of trying to reel us in. And no matter how plainspoken or thoughtful said review is, ultimately, to the one who is on the receiving end, it is inevitably the meanest thing ever written by a clearly inferior person.

Still, it makes you feel like crap.

And yes, I've just gotten one this week. Fortunately it wasn't from Kirkus or Booklist (as if they would ever review trade books on the craft of writing anyway), but from some anonymous member of the masses at Amazon.com. With democratic forms of marketing come democratic forums for voicing opinions--it is par for the course, in other words. Like Bob Marley sang so righteously: "You can't please all the people, all the time."

Aside from the fact thatthe reviewer got my gender wrong (even though the bio clearly states that I am a SHE) I ask you to look at the contradictions contained in said review. How can he say THIS:

"Make a Scene is packed with helpful concrete suggestions and information..."

and at the same time, say THIS:

"His passion for state-of-being verbs and qualifying adverbs turns the the book into a 270-page drone in which nothing is more important than anything else."

If the book is indeed "packed" with "helpful concrete suggestions" in what reality can it also be a "drone" in which "nothing is more important than anything else?"

My only answer is that the reviewer is a quantum physicist and comes from the point of view that a particle exists both somewhere and nowhere at once. Therefore, my book is both helpful, and not helpful at all to him. This is the only way I can understand it.

Either that, or my conspiracy mind thinks that maybe one of my "competitors" in the field of scene writing (who shall remain nameless) hired someone to write a nasty review of my book to make it seem less palatable. Therefore, perhaps he never even READ it! Yes, maybe this is it!

What you are seeing are the stages of reconstruction that the sleazy-little car salesmen of my ego must go to in order not to feel like a total hack. Who cares that a publisher felt my book was worthy of being published, or that many others have had very nice things to say about it. I am a writer--therefore I hear the worst first.

The only thing that saves me from looking for a full-time gig in some soul-sucking retail mall is humor. And the knowledge that for every bad review, the good ones still balance out the scales.

(That, and imagining force-feeding my entire book to the reader while he is tied to a chair.)

I remain open to suggestions.

--Jordan

Forever Young by Jody Gehrman

One of the many things I love about writing young adult fiction is it gives me the power to be sixteen again. If you're one of those people going, "God! Sixteen? Why would you want to go through that again?" I totally understand. The putrid smells of high school hallways, the rigid social caste system, the longing, the angst, the gym teachers. Who would relive those horrors voluntarily?

The operative word here is fiction. I don't revisit my teen years the way they actually were. I mean sure, flecks of memory get lodged in there, tiny autobiographical moments, but the thing that keeps me coming back is the chance to be sixteen again the way I should have done it the first time.

It's one of the more seductive aspects of writing fiction in general--the power to revise history, fast forward through the boring bits. When I write my character's journal, I don't dither in the circular, self-obsessed, overly-philosophical masturbation my real high school journals are filled with. At least, I hope I don't. No, my heroine, Geena, is way too smart for that. She tells stories, she spouts pithy observations. Most of all, she keeps her sense of humor, which is something I'm afraid I frequently lost sight of when I was sixteen.

In real life I'm thirty-six, so there's twenty years between me and my sixteen-year-old self. It's an interesting stage in life to be holding a magnifying glass up to youth. Mid-thirties is the first time many of us pause to really absorb the idea that Forever Young isn't exactly an option. I mean sure, we all know in theory that aging happens, but somehow, in the dewiness of youth, it always seemed like it happened to someone else. As my thirties wear on, the idea of aging is slowly becoming much more palpable: crow's feet, weird little facial hairs, being looked through instead of at by twenty-something hotties.

Like most writers (and, come to think of it, superheroes) I live a double life. I spend my early mornings as a funny, precocious sixteen-year-old, full of fresh vitality and verve. I spend my afternoons as a thirty-something English professor trying to make writing interesting for the flesh and blood youth culture who wander into my classes. It's a strange life, I guess--inhabiting two very different people all in the same day--but it works for me. Maybe it's a little like commuting by plane. You wake up in L.A.; it's springtime every day. Then you get in your little jet and fly to New York, where the buildings are colored with age and the gothic spires reach for the gloomy, clouded sky. You can moan about the jet lag, worry about how different these cities are, or you can sit back and enjoy the ride.