Laura Lippman's newest

I love her novels. And not just because she sets a lot of them in Baltimore, a place I spent a few fun years. (Yes, that Baltimore...)



 
I don't listen to as many books as I'd like. I really prefer holding the book in my hands. 
But this audio is amazing. 
Great reader -and such a compelling story.

I downloaded a PODCAST, via the NY Times, of the author talking about her book.
Tomorrow's walk will be very interesting!  

 You can read the post HERE that I wrote about meeting Lippman at the Writers in Paradise conference.




And a review that I'll wait to read till I finish! (I have one disc left. Then I may just have to borrow the actual book from the library.)
Writers can learn a lot from this book. Tightly plotted, great characters and their backstories, authentic setting. Super book!

Plotting, one approach

 Yesterday while driving, I heard a great interview with one of my favorite writers, Laura Lippman.
I'm still waiting for AFTER I'M GONE from my library reserve. I may have to break down and buy my own copy. 
As soon as I finish The Goldfinch. (more to come on that book!)



You still might be able to catch the Lippman interview on the Bob Edwards show. 
There's this, from his website:

Monday, February 24, 2014:  Laura Lippman wrote her first seven books while working fulltime as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun. She left journalism in 2001, but kept a deadline driven writing style, publishing a book nearly every year. The latest, After I’m Gone, revolves around a cold case investigation into the disappearance of Felix Brewer.

Although I've long been a fan, I actually met her at my one and only  
Writers in Paradise conference.
As we sat in a big circle, she talked plotting.

She calls her method the "distant shore school of plot." She always knows what's happening across the water, at the end. She knows the one big secret, but we (her readers) don't and even the protagonist doesn't. Although she knows the ending, she's also a fan of what she calls "Landmine Fiction" (don't you love that?). The zingers that go off along the way to that distant shore.

Here's an earlier NPR interview:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8983711
(You can actually listen from that link.)

More on her plotting:
If you think about a book as a journey you're going to take across water, and you're standing on one shore, and you can see the other side, and so you set out and you think you know where you're going, you can see it, but the water itself may surprise you. The currents may run more swiftly than you expect, or it may be shallow, you may run aground, and then as you get closer to the other side, it turns out that some of the things you thought you saw and you thought you knew are different.
You thought you saw a horse, and it turns out it was a dog, something like that, and so while you have a sense of where you're going, you are prepared to be surprised and to have the journey be quite different from what you thought it might be when you set out.

That process can be true of drafts 1-3, with discoveries still occurring. I believe very strongly in what I call the organic solution, revelations based on what the story has revealed so far. 

Much of the above is from this interview. 
(But oh how I wish bloggers/ websites/ whatever would not make their background black... )

http://www.spinetinglermag.com/Laura_Lippman_Interview.htm

More on THE END

According to my scribbles in a notebook, this quote about ENDINGS came via Virginia Euwer Wolff.

(But since I can't verify it, please don't quote me.)

I love it, no matter who said it.

"It's not exactly a WOW! or an AHA! 

But it's a cross between them, a WHOA!"

Click here for a few more words about endings, via my week with Ann Hood et al at WRITERS IN PARADISE a while back. And guess what-- they're already accepting applications for the 2014 conference in St. Petersburg, in January, with great writers.

HERE's the link to that excellent conference:

http://writersinparadise.eckerd.edu

Speaking of Endings:

Wouldn't you like to spend a week in January, learning and writing, 

looking at this at the end of your day?

Next Up

 Laura Lippman's newest. Out in 10 days!
She was one of the instructors the year I did Writers in Paradise.
 She's a gem of a writer and such a great teacher.  

CLICK HERE for a blogpost I wrote after a session with her at that amazing conference. (January in St. Petersburg- what could be better?)



What an excellent review she got in the New York Times.
Read it right here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/books/and-when-she-was-good-by-laura-lippman.html

("“And When She Was Good,” with its title reminiscent of a spooky, overlooked 1967 gem from the Philip Roth archive... "
Surely Janet Maslin knows about the nursery rhyme --And when she was bad she was horrid?)

Putting it on my To Be Read list right now. Perfect book for the end of Summer.

If you're not convinced, check out this, from her publisher's page:

Her brilliant stand-alone novel, And When She Was Good, only reinforces the fact that she stands tall among today’s bestselling elite—including Kate Atkinson, Tana French, Jodi Picoult, and Harlan Coben (who raves, “I love her books!”). Based on her acclaimed, multi-award-nominated short story Scratch a Woman, And When She Was Good is the powerfully gripping, intensely emotional story of a suburban madam, a convicted murderer whose sentence is about to be overturned, and the child they will both do anything to keep.

The Challenge of Plotting

Last week on the Southern Writers' Blog, my day was up. I was at a loss for words (truly). So I wrote about something I'd like to know more about: I wrote a few words about Plotting.

It's best to learn from the experts, right? So I'm rereading a Writer Magazine article about plot, featuring Dennis Lehane, Gayle Lynds and Stuart Woods, three who know of which they speak. Dennis is in charge of the Eckerd College Writers in Paradise conference- a fantastic week in St. Petersburg, Florida, in January just when the weather should be at its best. He spoke to us last year throughout the week, and let me just say I was hanging on most of his words. So when I found the Writer Magazine interview I'd saved, I reread it. And it is full of gems.

Lehane on plotting:
I put a character on the page and I have him want something-it could be as simple as a cup of coffee-and he goes out to get that thing. And hopefully, he bumps into another character and then another and conflict will gradually develop. I'm not a good plotter in the early stage of a novel. The trick is to remind yourself that no one's ever going to see those early stages of a book, so let yourself loose and let your characters loose and see what happens. Then go back and rewrite it all to make it look fluid.

Whew. Great advice. Now I can begin something new, messy and disorganized, without fear of anyone peeping...


Related posts: Writers in Paradise, 2009
The Dreaded Plot

So what?

Yesterday my friend Lee, from my late, lamented writers' group in New Jersey, and I had a phone meeting to discuss our writing. She'd given me an assignment to come up with three new essay topics. I'd thought about this and had a vague idea (very vague) of something to write about. She hadn't. But that's OK, instead we talked about writing and how hard it is to come up with endings that mean something. What Ann Hood kept pounding us over the head with at my Writers in Paradise sessions:

1. What happens?

2. Then what?

3. Then what?

4. So what?

So what? This is what really matters in a personal essay. Otherwise, it's just a moment in time, a slice of history, a fun story I might tell my friends and family in an email. Not that interesting to the rest of the world.

So this morning I took out my notes from that conference and reread Day 1 with Stewart O'Nan, and I stopped at this quote:
"Start big, finish big, in the middle go as deep as you can."
He was quoting short story writer Lorrie Moore but the same applies to any good writing.
Figuring out those endings, though, that's the hard part about writing personal essays. I said that to Lee yesterday and she laughed. What? she tells me, Did you forget writing's supposed to be hard?

Then I kept reading my notes from O'Nan's lecture and he said the same thing. Writing is hard work. But he also said we need to learn about writing from reading- reading best sellers, poetry, great fiction and bad fiction. So that's the fun part. The reading. Today I'm reading every personal essay in my vast files and figuring out the So What.
Otherwise, I think I could ask another question about these proposed essay topics of mine:
Who Cares?

Writers in Paradise, My Book List

Although this random, un-alphabetized, somewhat messy list I've created offends my Librarian Sensibilities, I'm telling myself that it's a blog, not a bibliography. So here's my list, mostly taken from recommendations in Ann Hood's non-fiction workshop, with a few additions from Laura Lippman's Roundtable and listening to the other speakers. It is not all-inclusive. It does not include books written by our instructors/ speakers (Stewart O'Nan, Ann Hood, Laura Lippman, Michael Koryta, Ann Rittenberg, Jill Bialosky, Marc Fitten, etc). Nor does it include books on our recommended reading lists for reading before the week began. Just random and messy, you were warned.

Writers in Paradise Recommended books, January 2009

Ann Hood’s Nonfiction workshop:

Fly Truffler

Mercy Papers: a Memoir of Three Weeks (by Robin Romm)
A good example of structure.

Natural History of the Senses (by Diane Ackerman)
Dirt
Secret Currency of Love
Boys in My Youth (especially “Fourth State of Matter” by Joann Beard)

Liar (example of unreliable narrator in memoir)
Drinking: A Love Story (by Carolyn Knapp)


Other instructors’ references:
Arrogance (by JoAnna Scott)

Under the Red Flag (Ha Jin) “writing is kind of a mess but the truth of the story comes through”

Lorrie Moore (for examples of surprising the reader)

First Comes Love (by Marion Winik)

A Three Dog Life (by Abigail Thomas)

Writers in Paradise, the End

Since Friday was jam-packed and I had no time to write, this entry will cover the last two days and I'll try to keep it brief. No promises.
The morning session was a panel on publishing, two editors, an agent, an editor of a literary magazine. Mostly what they said is what anyone who follows the business knows. Write your best. Don't let an editor/ agent be your First Reader- give your manuscript to as many good readers as you can, before it leaves your house. Don't be a pain in the butt client. Read what's out there but don't copy what's out there.

On Friday afternoon in Ann Hood's memoir workshop, she touched on other forms of creative non-fiction. We started with her take on personal essays. "In some ways as challenging to write as short stories." Ann quoted Grace Paley's statement that a short story is always two stories: the obvious one and the one happening beneath the story. The climax is when they come together and clash. And that can also happen in a personal essay.

Saturday morning started with the editor of The Chattahoochee Review. Good advice about submitting to literary magazines/ journals. An agent followed, with more publishing advice. We learned that everybody's happy when a book sells 15,000 copies. A lot sell only 2000. More advice, excellent and specific, about crafting the query letter. She even tore apart the letters (anonymous) of a few brave souls willing to have their letters used as samples. Very brave souls.

Then to our last session with our amazing teacher. Highlights? She reminded us again to use those similies sparingly: it's hard to find a great one. You defeat what you are trying to say if your simile (or metaphor) is jarring. Sometimes you don't need anything. It just gets in the way. We talked about about structure, about the container. How some pieces seem to cry out to be short, for example, four months of time passing, a specific road trip.

Since this class has officially been about memoir, I'll end with something Ann Hood said today about the hard things, the sad things that memoir is often about. "It's hard to decide what's interesting when it's your own life. But think about what's interesting to the reader. It's all about the literature."

Writers in Paradise, only 3 more days

In some ways, I'm excited about finishing and getting back to work, using some of my new thoughts and advice from this week. But I hate to think the time spent in these workshop sessions will be no more.

Today started out with a lecture by Nahid Rachlin on writing memoir. She read from her book Persian Girls and spoke very briefly about why to write memoir. "Unless you're famous, why would anybody read your life?" The writing. Write characters as interesting as those in fiction and use words that sing. I'm hearing that a lot this week.

When I asked Ann Hood that question in our afternoon workshop, she said nonfiction's like everything else we write. Why write? To make sense of the world.

And good writing is crucial. Vibrant and lively language move a story. To illustrate her point, she read from Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan, especially noting the verbs-- dangle, bend, glide, snow sifting. And the metaphors and similies (No weird similes that stop the reader in his tracks!)

Then we talked about flashbacks. Ann's a big fan of space breaks and says sometimes this is a better way to introduce a flashback, no matter what we learned about using a memory prompt- a device such as hearing the ringing of a bell. (Though I still think in writing for children, it might have to be clearer than just a space break.)

Other tips from today?
Always use said as a dialog tag. The actual dialog should tell you if it's a shout, a hiss, a query.
Not "Sarah Elizabeth, come here this second," Mama hissed.
Actually, I kind of like that. But in writing for adults and especially memoir, cut the hisses and the smiled dialog as much as possible.

In memoir- get rid of all the I remembers, I recall, I thought back. Just slows us down.

Lots more advice as we critiqued our two classmates today. That's what I like about this class. The instructor actually teaches as she critiques.

Throughout the almost three hour session, Ann shared several more book recommendations, many new to me. List to follow. Next week.

Day 3, Inauguration Day in Paradise

This morning's lecture on Endings was like a college class. In fact, it was. Almost two hours on endings. More than I can take in, blog about, or probably ever need to know.

On to the afternoon workshop. (after a long mid-day break when the Inauguration was shown in the auditorium on a large screen)

Ann started the session sharing the way she gets tension into her writing. Excellent tips, too long to enumerate here, that looked like a football playbook when she sketched her plan on the whiteboard. That one moment may have been worth the price of the week's conference. I now have a revision trick, one that works in fiction and non-fiction, to heighten the emotional content of my writing.

Then we analyzed another New Yorker essay (we'd read Granny's Bridge by Tony Earley on day 1). This one was "Family History: Alone at the Movies." Ann pointed out that even in such a short piece, the Mother's slight dialog makes her come alive. The ending tells us so much. Reading these essays and getting Ann's take on them -- that no matter what you are writing, you need to include when, where, why, dialog, character development and the all-important SO WHAT-- pretty much made my day. That and her description of revising for emotional tension.

I could have left happy right then.
But we analyzed two more manuscripts, each for a full hour. Those writers went away with total satisfaction and a plan. That's what they said.

Tomorrow we have a Day of Rest. Nothing planned. Time to read.

At the beginning of the conference Dennis Lehane gave us this admonition:
Take full advantage of the week. Remember, when you want to talk about gerunds and onomatopoeia in the regular world-- "mutant issues"-- nobody gives a shit. In your regular life, non mutants don't care. You can't convert them. So while you are here, get into completely meaningless debates and revel in this time.

So far, I haven't had those discussions with my fellow writers at the Workshop. Then again, maybe I live in a mutant world. I do know a lot of people who love reading and writing, and even gerunds.

Day 2, in Paradise

At 10 AM, I walked into a large room with circles of folding chairs, mostly already filled up with my fellow Writers in Paradise participants. Today's first session was listed as Roundtables. The idea was come and go, join a circle being facilitated by one of the presenters, move on if you like. I took the last seat at the circle nearest the door.

Then Laura Lippman joined my group. I didn't move for 2 hours. I missed opportunities to hear Dennis Lehane, Stewart O'Nan, all the other presenters, but wow. I learned a lot.

I'm a Lippman fan from my 12 years of living in Baltimore. She writes crime fiction, old stories often taken from her days as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Here are a few gems from my notes (though I was listening and there was quite a dynamic interchange going on about writing and reading, so I didn't write much).

When asked how she plots. She calls her method the "distant shore school of plot." She always knows what's happening across the water, at the end. She knows the one big secret, but we (her readers) don't and even the protagonist doesn't. Although she knows the ending, she's also a fan of what she calls "Landmine Fiction" (don't you love that?). " It may not matter now, but mostly these zingers will go off later. This in reference to much of what she plants along the reader's path. Not exactly red herrings, but they might be.

About Rules: She likes George Orwell's rules, especially the last one: Break the rules. Remember my reference, somewhat ironic, to Elmore Leonard's rule about the weather? She loves weather. Often starts with it.

More on her concrete tips for writing out of a muddled middle later.

In the afternoon, we critiqued three manuscripts with Ann Hood. I've been in workshops where participants moved around the table and commented, then the leader gave her suggestions and that was that. That's not the way this works. So far, we've spent an hour, occasionally more, on each 25 page memoir. Interspersed with her critiques, Ann continually gives us tips, advice, suggestions that apply to all of our writing.

Today, for example, the question of prologues came up. "When chapter one and the heart of the story are set in different places, different times, and you need to know the earlier stuff, you need a prologue." Or you may need a prologue. The prologue says "this is what you need to know to read my book." Or it can be a different point of view being expressed, such as an earlier time, when the main character was a child.

This comment came because someone's piece had a prologue and she wanted to know if it worked. That's how most of what we are hearing happens. Because of the writing being discussed. We also talked about connected essays, the need for a central theme (if it's going to be a book).

More words of wisdom from my afternoon session?
Only specifics ring true.
Semi-colons are an evil form of punctuation (ditto ... and !).
But we all know that.

Tonight Ann Hood read the first thing she was able to write after the death of her young daughter, the prologue to the memoir about her daughter, and she finished with the chapter from that book about her daughter's love of the Beatles. Evening sessions are open to the public.

In introducing Ann Hood tonight, Dennis Lehane told us that after she'd taught at the conference last year, he didn't even think of not inviting her back. All the writers here are cool, he assured us. But Ann's even more than that. She actually cares if you learn something.

He ended his introduction with a quote from The Princess Bride:
Life is pain. Anyone who tells you different is selling you something.

Writers in Paradise, Day 1

OK. I probably overestimated my abilities. I told my writing friends I'd be blogging about the conference each day. After Day 1, I can see how this might be overwhelming. To me and possibly to anybody reading this.

So I'll keep it brief and fill in details as they come up in future posts. Because this conference, after only one day, is packed full of helpful, amazing, interesting stuff.

Stewart O'Nan spoke first. I'd just read his new novel: Songs for the Missing. I love his writing. He spoke about his journey, beginning in his basement writing room, through conferences, and eventually an MFA from Cornell. He's a big believer in reading to learn how to write and gave us numerous challenges in that department. (I guess I'll have to tackle Joyce Carol Oates after all.) He reads to look at sentences, their construction, to notice words. More of his advice?

Set your big scenes big.
Surprise the reader. (Change the tone. Make an unreliable first person noticeable. Shock the reader.)
Keep your characters with you. Carry them around Feel yourself as that character.

"Writing is like reading a good book. You live in that world and don't want to leave."

Then I moved to my afternoon memoir workshop with Ann Hood (the reason I wanted to be a part of this conference. Love her writing.)

"You can't write non-fiction unless you tell the truth. You can't worry about what others think."

Since I even worry about what others might make of my fiction, this is food for thought for me.
She quoted Gregory Maguire. The What if, Then What, And then, And then thing. A great way to get at the story. In non-fiction (and in fiction), the most important of these questions is the next one: So What?

In all writing, the focus should be right there at the beginning, in the first sentences. We should know where we are and what we are in for.

Tips I think I'll work on:
1. Picture sentences. Close your eyes. If you can't picture it, it needs help.
2. In non-fiction, use all the devices of fiction: dialogue, setting, character, action, climax, resolution.
3. Find a central metaphor (examples: knitting, fire), something that gives your story meaning.

That's about all my brain can process at the moment. Stay tuned.

What I'm Reading Now

1. Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning. Nice to read a first novel by a fellow Floridian, Danette Haworth. Violet's got a voice that's appealing and true. Great cover on this book, strong characters, and set in a sleepy little town in Florida.

2. What I Saw and How I Lied. I'm reviewing this one for the Christian Science Monitor, and my first reading didn't impress me that much. But, hey, the book won the National Book Award. I gave it a second read. And now a third as I write the review. I think this book grew on me and even the peachy-keen slang became an inseparable part of the appeal. Plus, I don't know a teen reader who will resist the cover.

3. Truth and Beauty. When I got the exciting news that I will be a part of Ann Hood's nonfiction workshop next month at Eckert College, I immediately went to the library and looked for the "suggested" reading list books. But I found Truth and Beauty on my own bookshelf. Ann Patchett is a favorite writer of mine. I think Bel Canto might be my top recent fiction book. The writing here is topnotch, but the subject matter is tough. I'll never be able to write like Patchett, but I'm hoping I'll learn a few tricks at the Writers in Paradise conference in January.

4. The Blues Route by Hugh Merrill. My so-far-pretty-vague-but-will-be-better-by-Wednesday (when it's due) topic for Writers in Paradise is The Blues and The Delta. I have a whole stack of books, and this is just one of the more helpful ones.

Now, back to work.

The Art of the Essay

Having spent the week pondering non-fiction, I've now decided that a lot of what I need to know can be found in William Zinsser's book On Writing Well. The date I carefully wrote on the endpapers of my copy is December, 1982, which must be when this slim volume came into my collection. I wish I'd taken better note of the book's advice then.
But it took the encouragement of what I now think of as my Essay Writing critique group before I attempted a personal essay. Thankfully, I had some great writers guiding me through this genre. Just google fellow member Lee Stokes Hilton on the New York Times website and read any one of her essays. I'm partial to her Gumbo piece, gumbo being near to my heart. Plus I participated in her greens ribboning tutorial during one particularly important gumbo afternoon. Not only is Lee an accomplished writer, she's a terrific cook. We don't call her the Kitchen Goddess for nothing.

So now she and I are applyingfor the Writers in Paradise conference in January and, should we both be accepted, we have to come up with longer-than-our-usual essays to workshop. That's why I've pulled Zinsser off the shelf to reread. "Up to 25 pages" sounds intimidating even if the workshop topic is Life Into Words.

I stopped skimming the book and started absorbing every single thought when I came to Chapter 12: Writing About a Place because no matter what I write- fiction, non-fiction, email, letters and even this blog- PLACE is always there.

"People and places are the twin pillars on which most nonfiction is built," says Zinsser.
For me, that reads characters and setting, family and home.
So now I'll get down to the details. Smells, concrete prose- statistics and names and signs, oddities and tackiness. I think I can do this.

Twenty-five pages still seems like a lot.