The Week’s “What Next?” Contest

THE WEEK (motto: All You Need to Know About Everything That Matters) is a great weekly news magazine. We love it. It’s full of great writing from all over the world.

Well, last week on the last page they added something new, a contest. The prize was one year’s subscription to The Week. We were asked to come up with the opening (first five sentences or so) of a romance novel starring Sarah Palin. I entered but didn’t win. Their winner is here.

Here are my and Mary’s entries:

Sarah whispered into his ear, “I thought guys like you were only in, you know, books. Not only can you can field strip and clean a Glockenspiel TRX-7 assault rifle, but you know about my, well. . . everything, even my plumbing.” She winked.

“Yeah, well, when you’ve watched Red Dawn as many times as I have, you learn a thing or two about guns.” He fished his plumber’s snake into Sarah’s cleaning outlet. “And plumbing’s easy. You don’t need a fancy license or nothin’. Just have to know that water seeks its own level.”

Sarah moved closer. “Just like me and you, huh?”


* * *

“If it were wrong, why would God make it feel so good?” Sarah bit her lip and fiddled with the top button of her blouse. “I mean, God does work in really mysterious ways doesn’t he?”

Joe set the toilet on top of the wax ring. “I guess so.”

“Say you don’t know, Joe.” She winked into the mirror. “Sure he does. How else would I have been given a charge card with unlimited credit for my new wardrobe? God knew I needed it.”

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On to this week’s contest, “the next dumb study.” If you’re interested, entries are emailed and due by 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday, Jan. 19.
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Conundrum for the Day

I listen to the podcast of National Public Radio’s Only A Game. The other day I heard a story about the collecting of stories for The Best Sportswriting of 2008. This set me to wondering, given that, whether we writers mean to or not, we use sexual symbols in our prose (see my previous post – I Think About Baseball When I Write), do sportswriters think about sex when they write about baseball?

I Think About Baseball When I Write

Crawford Killian has an interesting post about “Sexual symbolism in fiction“. Mr. Killian taught writing (if memory serves, though it might have been English Composition) at Capilano College for forty years and has written several novels. What brought the subject up was he had commented on the passing of Michael Crichton and how Crichton had been blatant in his use of sexual symbols. A commenter said, basically, “hogwash.” The post was his response.

I recommend the complete post. I liked his summary:

[Y]ou’re always going to write about sex, whether you intend to or not. Sex is a symbol for the basic human society, what Vonnegut called the “Republic of Two.” And the symbols you use—Room 101, a wizard’s walking-stick, a rose, a 9mm Glock—will tell your readers a lot about your story…and maybe about you as well.

It’s all enough to make Jane Austen blush, or perhaps she knew.

In other news, Andy Borowitz asks How Big Is Obama’s Package?

Multiple POV or Head Hop?

One tenet for writers, besides write, write, write, is read, read, read.

I don’t recall where I read it, but a published author said (paraphrasing), “Don’t just read the great stuff, read lousy stuff too.”

A couple years ago, I put the first ten thousand words of my story (working title: Timber Beast) on YouWriteOn.com, a website in which wannabe-published authors upload the beginnings of their stories in order to be noticed. (For a good overview and critique of YouWriteOn.com go here.) In such online slush piles,you’ll find loads of manure, compost, chaff, and the very occasional gem. Try it. If you want to learn how write better, read other folks’ work and then explain what works and what doesn’t work for you, and more importantly, to you—not necessarily them.

The idea of YWO is to review someone else’s nascent novel and get a credit to have another member review yours. The site posts the reviews online for the community to read and comment on. YouWriteOn.com has reviewers rate the story, 1 (poor) to 5 (best) on eight criteria:

  • Characters,
  • Story,
  • Pace and Structure,
  • Use of Language,
  • Narrative voice,
  • Dialogue,
  • Settings, and
  • Themes and Ideas

Each month, the five stories scoring the highest ratings receive professional reviews from editors in the stable associated with the site.

My critiques would often cite the author’s use of the ‘head-hop.’ I would be ensconced with a character, knowing his thoughts and feelings, and boing…I would find myself in another character’s head. Narrative voice affects the reader’s perception. Head hopping is #2 on the top ten list of mistakes made by newbie novelists.

Peter Selgin says, “Of all the problems plaguing amateur works, none is more common or fatal than mishandling of viewpoint. Typically, the problem results not from a chosen viewpoint being violated, but because no viewpoint has been firmly established to start with, so there is nothing to violate.” He reduces it down to a simple equation, “NO POINT OF VIEW = NO STORY.” – The Writer, August 2007.

The edittorrent editors discuss multiple POV in Telepathy, interpretation, and POV shifts.

I suspect that some form of multiple (but controlled) POV will be “the” POV of the 21st century, as omniscent was the dominant POV of the 19th C and single POV of the 20th C.

This doesn’t mean bouncing around from one head to another in a scene.

Sometimes as I read a passage, I feel ejected, like suddenly I’m not in Tom’s mind, I’m in Joan’s mind, or dangling helplessly in between. When I go back and read to figure out why, it’s often actually a deep POV issue, where the writer has Tom interpreting something from the way Joan speaks or behaves… but because there’s no “Tom thought” in there, it sounds like JOAN.

Edittorrent’s post on how to handle narrative voice to keep from swatting POV as if it were a Ping-Pong match is worth reading.

Of course, once you are published  like James Rollins and writing fast-paced thrillers and making the New York Times bestseller list, the rules get relaxed and don’t bind so much.

What I Want for My Birthday

My thanks to Ann McFeatters for saying what we want.

We [at least Americans like me] want competence. We want adults in charge. We want an end to partisan bickering. We want the billions we entrust to our government to be handled wisely. We want our nation’s credibility abroad restored. We want an end to our soldiers’ returning to Iraq and Afghanistan for two, three and four rotations. We want our bridges and water mains to stop collapsing. We want our children to get educations that qualify them to take their places in the world. We want every man, woman and child who needs health care to get it without having to go into bankruptcy.

Hello 2009

I thank JA Konrath with providing a list of resolutions for writers that I could edit for my 2009 resolutions:

  • I will finish revising the damn book.
  • I will start on the next book.
  • I will listen to criticism.
  • I will update my website.
  • I will master the query process and find an agent.
  • I will quit procrastinating in the form of research, outlines, synopses, taking classes, reading how-to books, talking about writing, and actually write something.
  • I will refuse to get discouraged, because I know Konrath wrote nine novels, received nearly five hundred rejections, and wrote over one million words before he sold a thing–and I’m a lot more talented than him.

2008 — Maybe We Shouldn't Look Back

If you haven’t already, take a few minutes and read Dave Barry’s Year in Review: Bailing out of 2008.

My favorite quote:

John McCain, still searching for the perfect running mate, tells his top aides in a conference call that he wants ”someone who is capable of filling my shoes.” Unfortunately, he is speaking into the wrong end of his cellular phone, and his aides think he said ”someone who is capable of killing a moose.” Shortly thereafter McCain stuns the world, and possibly himself, by selecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a no-nonsense hockey mom with roughly 114 children named after random nouns such as “Hamper.”

2008 — Maybe We Shouldn’t Look Back

If you haven’t already, take a few minutes and read Dave Barry’s Year in Review: Bailing out of 2008.

My favorite quote:

John McCain, still searching for the perfect running mate, tells his top aides in a conference call that he wants ”someone who is capable of filling my shoes.” Unfortunately, he is speaking into the wrong end of his cellular phone, and his aides think he said ”someone who is capable of killing a moose.” Shortly thereafter McCain stuns the world, and possibly himself, by selecting Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a no-nonsense hockey mom with roughly 114 children named after random nouns such as “Hamper.”