Search
The Mark Blog is a writing resource featuring the Mark Program participants.
Want to share your news in electricPEN?
Blogs We Like
Monthly archive
- May 2012 (12)
- April 2012 (21)
- March 2012 (22)
- February 2012 (21)
- January 2012 (19)
- December 2011 (13)
- November 2011 (14)
- October 2011 (22)
- September 2011 (25)
- August 2011 (26)
- July 2011 (10)
HTC and the P-Word Again
Over on another blog there was a conversation about books that are HTC (hard to categorize). A well-regarded agent lamented that perhaps she’s lost her edge because she finds herself turning down beautifully written books that are just too HTC. Books that are too hard to package, too hard to market, too hard to ultimately find a home for.
This is a subject I’m obsessed with, selfishly, because my book is fragmented and meandering and definitely doesn’t fit into the mold of a traditional memoir. Someone I deeply admire said my book is like a Robert Altman movie, which I found both wildly flattering and completely disheartening. (Never mind the fact that it’s still in a draft stage and I really don’t know what it’s going to end up looking like. Pffft. Details.)
I hope there will always be a place for the work that doesn’t fit into traditional categories. Some of my favorite books don’t:
Mary Rakow’s novel-in-verse, THE MEMORY ROOM
Rebecca Solnit’s memoir (or, really, I don’t even know what to call it), A FIELD GUIDE TO GETTING LOST
Maggie Nelson’s BLUETS, a book-length lyric essay built gorgeously around the color blue
Abigail Thomas’ fractured-yet-entirely-whole memoir, SAFEKEEPING
Mary Robison’s gut-punch, fractured novel, WHY DID I EVER?
And anything Mark Danielewski has ever published, ever.
I don’t discriminate based on structure—a book either grabs me or it doesn’t. I say I don’t understand poetry, but Mary Doty and Nick Flynn write poetic memoir that makes me into a liar every time. Would I have bought ANOTHER BULLSHIT NIGHT IN SUCK CITY if it had been marketed as a prose poem? Probably not unless someone recommended it to me, and that would have been tragic. But I digress.
It all veers dangerously close to the shit I shouldn’t be worried about as a writer, I guess. My broken record belief that writing and publishing are two very different things and the publishing end is none of my business while I’m writing must prevail. Although there are people—talented writers—who would argue that point, I’m sure. There are also people who like Miracle Whip.
I don’t know.
Writers' Reel: Lorrie Moore Asks Herself Some Questions
Writers' Reel is a weekly video feature. The very funny Lorrie Moore requires little introduction. Just watch.
My Mother's Daughter
One of the reasons I have such a love of words is because of my parents. Yesterday was Mother’s Day and even though my mother isn’t here anymore, I always think of her gifts to me on this day especially. My mother was extremely well-spoken and intelligent. I used to be in awe of her diverse vocabulary and her ability to state her case so precisely and emphatically whenever challenged. When I was old enough to read the titles on her bookshelves, I was overwhelmed by the range of subjects, the titles that I didn’t understand, like Absalom, Absalom. As I got older and became enamored with literature myself, I went back to that shelf time and time again.
One of the books that I treasured, and still have to this day, is The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Whenever I turn to this book, I read a poem I haven’t read before or an old one in a new way. I owe this to my mother, a reader who so passionately loved literature in all its manifestations. She didn’t force me to read, but allowed me to discover reading on my own, surrounded by the books that affected her and which were available for me to explore in my own time, in my own space. I would mention to her that I thought so-and-so, an author I had discovered on her bookshelf, was so good, and she would respond with the same enthusiasm like she had just discovered that author herself.
It was this freedom that made me feel comfortable in the world of words. I didn’t feel judged or that it was required, but that literature was there to be what I needed it to be and only if I wanted it to be. As my words try to find their way onto someone’s bookshelf, possibly even a mother’s bookshelf, I thank my mother for her love of literature and poetry. Before I write, I will often read poetry to help me with rhythm and imagery. Many times, this will lead me to think of my mother and wonder what she would have thought of the poem. This poem is for my memory and my gratitude of my mother:
Remorse For Intemperate Speech
I RANTED to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rule
My fanatic heart.
I sought my betters: though in each
Fine manners, liberal speech,
Turn hatred into sport,
Nothing said or done can reach
My fanatic heart,
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart.
William Butler Yeats
Participant Interview: Carl Peel
Mark Program: Can you give us a small synopsis of the project you have been working on?
Carl Peel: I’m working on a novel titled "Lions & Ghosts" about a Los Angeles visual artist, Leo Dallafoscia, who has cultivated a detached artist’s life and finds his world rocked by the discovery that his wife is having an affair. In dealing with that he ends up dealing with other issues, like his estrangement from family members, and discovers that engaging with other people, rather than ducking from confrontations as he’s always done, strengthens his relationships and makes him a better artist to boot.
MP: What attracted you to the Mark Program? Why did you apply when you did?
CP: That the program was run through PEN Center USA, which I knew to be a fantastic, supportive, and helpful organization, and that it addressed the whole of a novel manuscript, made me want to apply. I was interested in it when the first cycle was announced, but didn’t feel I had a complete draft yet, that I’d need another six months or so. When the next eligible round came, I had a draft, and knew I could use some help on it. So I applied.
MP: What was the Mid-Project Review like? Do you find it helpful as a writer to have to answer for your work?
CP: It gives you a reality check of where you’re at with the manuscript, and provides guidelines for moving forward. It also teaches you how to talk about your manuscript, how to capture someone’s attention if they know nothing about you and your project; in short, how to sell your project. That’s something that doesn’t come naturally to many writers.
MP: What has been the most thought-provoking question that you've been asked in the Mark Program?
CP: “Why are you protecting your protagonist?” This question brought up so many gray-shaded aspects of craft and personality, of autobiography vs. wildly making stuff up, and how absolutely essential conflict is to making a story.
MP: What has been your biggest challenge in the Mark so far?
CP: Getting my protagonist into realistic, stakes-raising conflict. I’d always thought I had my protagonist in conflict, but I really hadn’t. He was always able to negotiate his way out of real conflict and float along to the next scene. The result was that people didn’t know who he was because he wasn’t being tested against an opposing force. The stakes of his decisions weren’t raised from scene to scene, things just sort of happened. Ugh.
MP: Can you share a writing tip?
CP: One thing that has really helped me was having the Mark instructor and the other participants point out qualifiers, words I was including, like “almost,” “kind of,” “a bit,” etc. as in “…it was almost gross.” Those words undercut the conflict. Once I took out the qualifiers in my prose, the story started revealing itself. This is much like diagramming a sentence like we did so much in elementary school. If you take a sentence like “Jim delicately punched the ball in the direction of his friend,” and break it down to just Noun/Verb/Object it becomes “Jim punched the ball.” That’s much more active and vivid, and leads to what happened next. Doing that’s helpful when you’re feeling lost in your prose.
MP: Who should apply to the Mark Program?
CP: Any Emerging Voices fellows with a complete draft of a manuscript ready to revise, willing to up the intensity of their writing life, and work harder than they thought they could to make what they’ve written as good as it can be.
Bookmark This: The Faith of a Writer by Joyce Carol Oates
In The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art, Joyce Carol Oates discusses the subjects most important to the narrative craft, touching on topics such as inspiration, memory, self-criticism, and "the unique power of the unconscious." On a more personal note, she speaks of childhood inspirations, offers advice to young writers, and discusses the wildly varying states of mind of a writer at work.
Browse inside the book at the publisher's website.
Joyce Carol Oates will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at PEN Center USA's 22nd Annual Literary Awards Festival this October.
My 2012 Reading List (A Work in Progress)
Books I’ve loved so far this year:
The Descendants, by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Girlchild, by Tupelo Hassman
I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl, by Kelle Groom
The Book of Drugs: A Memoir, by Mike Doughty
Contents May Have Shifted, by Pam Houston
Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson
Girls in White Dresses, by Jennifer Close
Heft, by Liz Moore
In Zanesville, by Jo Ann Beard
Imaginary Girls, by Nova Ren Suma
Lift, by Rebecca O’Connor
The Rules of Inheritance, by Claire Bidwell Smith
Threats, by Amelia Gray
Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal, by Jeanette Winterson
We the Animals, by Justin Torres
Wild, by Cheryl Strayed
You Must Go and Win, by Alina Simone
Your Voice in My Head, by Emma Forrest
Diamond Dogs, by Alan Watt
The Mao Game, by Joshua Miller
Blueprints for Building Better Girls, by Elissa Schappell
What I’m reading next (that I already own):
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson
Naked, Drunk and Writing, by Adair Lara
Legs Get Led Astray, by Chloe Caldwell
The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson
Where You Lived, by Tod Goldberg
Descanso for My Father, by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
And after that:
What to Look for in Winter, by Candia McWilliam
The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D., by Nichole Bernier
Riding Fury Home, by Chana Wilson
Cool for You, by Eileen Myles
The Guardians, by Sarah Manguso
Writers' Reel: Maurice Sendak
Writers' Reel is a weekly video feature. Today, we're honoring Maurice Sendak, the great American author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, among many other books treasured by children and adults alike. Below, enjoy this video featuring the late author in his home.
Please Don't Go!
One more workshop left before the final review, otherwise known as Judgment Day. As this event hovers on the horizon, I am pushing to finish this draft of the novel in the next two and half weeks. I want this draft to be as close as I can get to a workable version of a final draft. I want to fix as many things as I can before the final review so I can take full advantage. Considering how much there is to “fix,” this means consuming copious amounts of coffee and skipping sleep so they actually have to grab the draft out of my hand for the final review.
This means that as I close in on the last mile of this literary marathon, I have to prepare to let it go. I know other writers have talked about books being their children and I definitely feel that I am entering the beginning stages of Empty Nest Syndrome (from here on out referred to as EPS). My creativity is the house, the domicile, that shelters my novel. I am going to have to let this novel go. As much as I want to finish, to bring it to an end, to send it out on its own, to purge it from my system, the idea of not having it occupy my mind and leaving my house of creativity is, well, devastating. I can honestly admit that I am experiencing the symptoms of EPS:
- Depression
- Loss of purpose
- Worry, stress, or anxiety over the welfare of the child (otherwise known as the novel)
- Feelings of rejection
I have raised this novel to be the best novel I think it can be. I don’t know how it will do out there, but I hope it will make others happy. I wish I had more wisdom to give other parents of novels, but I don’t. The best you can do as a novel parent is aim to always be the best version of yourself and hope that your novel reflects all those lessons you’ve learned. But once it’s gone, I can’t control what happens to it, in it, anymore. So here I am with, yes, feelings of depression, because after I send this novel off, I won’t have any purpose to write, I will worry over how it will fare, and I will wonder why it left me.
As graduation ceremonies are being planned all over the country, there are parents who are dreading the silence and freedom of the empty domicile. I feel you, I really do. In the meantime, I am preparing my offspring for the world at large, hoping that it succeeds. As I look back on the early drafts, I am amazed at how far it's come. For now, I will mourn its leaving while cleaning out my house, and make room for a new novel.
The Reading Part
One of the components of the Mark Program that doesn’t get talked about much, but that I especially like, is directed reading. The first thing I did at the start of the program was read instructor Alan Watt’s book Diamond Dogs and advisor Samantha Dunn’s Failing Paris - not on assignment, but because how could I not? Both are great and very instructive examples of how to develop character amidst a compelling, breakneck plot – a combo that makes both of them one-sitting reads.
The directed reading for me came courtesy of Ms. Dunn, who divined, through my manuscript, my affinity for Richard Ford, and pointed out some similarities and differences (mainly made up of deficiencies in my own work) between our writing and sensibilities. So she suggested I go back and read (or reread) The Sportswriter and Independence Day.
I couldn’t believe how close in some ways my manuscript was to The Sportswriter. It was like I was mimicking the book. This spooked me. I don’t want to rip someone else off. Luckily they’re very different, too, and Richard Ford has me beat by a mile in the writing department. But Samantha assured me that subconscious mimicry is unavoidable and okay. I should study the book more. Learn from it. How does he get away with the things he does in the book? How does he weave the central heartbreak of the book, the death of his son, which underlies everything, into the narrative so that it’s central but not overwhelming?
I was also tasked with reading Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool. It’s another book I’m enjoying immensely. This one I hadn’t read. Samantha wanted me to read it, to learn how he uses the setting, a dying town and the landscape of upstate New York, as a character in the story. Aside from that, it’s also teaching me how much fun it can be to put a character into scrapes. It reminds me of Sam Lipsyte’s Homeland in that way. They’re both funny and have central characters who are complete messes. They’re fun. This is a way into tackling one of the more difficult problems I’ve been having with my manuscript: getting my character into real, story-driving, stakes-escalating conflict: make torturing my character fun!
I’m finding it’s one thing to read and it’s another thing to try to “read like a writer,” and glean bits of craft that you can apply to your work. But nothing quite compares to having teachers, who have read your whole manuscript and observed its strengths and weaknesses, suggest specific books that may help you.
Plus, when you’re this deep into a revision, and you’re reading things that can speak directly to your manuscript, you make connections you might not make if you were just reading books independently of your writing process. Now “reading like a writer” isn’t just a phrase. It’s something I’m learning to do.
If you’re not in the Mark Program, you can still get a friend who knows your work to recommend books for you. But you do this already, right?
Post Script: Mark participant Monica Carter used to work at Skylight Books. When I met her at the beginning of the Mark Program, her name rang a bell. She mentioned Skylight, and I asked her, “Did you write a staff recommendation for a little book called The Waitress Was New? It’s a book by a French writer, Dominique Fabre, that I picked up years ago on that recommendation and just adored. Turns out it was Monica who recommended it. I love when people turn me on to great books, so I know Monica will always be my friend. She was before I even met her, when she got me to pick up The Waitress Was New.
Bookmark This: Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer
The trick to writing, Prose writes, is reading—carefully, deliberately and slowly. While this might seem like a no-brainer, Prose (Blue Angel; A Changed Man) masterfully meditates on how quality reading informs great writing, which will warm the cold, jaded hearts of even the most frustrated, unappreciated and unpublished writers. (Publisher's Weekly)
Chapter One: Close Reading
Prose addresses the question of whether writing can be taught. She suggests that although writing workshops can be helpful, the best way to learn to write is to read. By reading closely, Prose studied word choice and sentence construction, which helped her solve difficult obstacles in her own writing.
Chapter Two: Words
Prose encourages the reader to slow down and read every word. She reminds the reader that words are the "raw material out of which literature is crafted." She challenges the reader to pause often and ask, "What is the writer trying to convey with this word?"
Chapter Three: Sentences
Prose asserts that "the well made sentence transcends time and genre." She believes the writer who is concerned with what constitutes a well-constructed sentence is on the right path. Prose mentions the importance of mastering grammar and also the use of long sentences, short sentences, and rhythm in prose.
Chapter Four: Paragraphs
Prose insists that paragraph structure is just as important as sentence construction. She states that the writer who reads widely will discover there are no general rules for building a well-constructed paragraph, but "only individual examples to help point [the writer] in a direction in which [the writer] might want to go."
Chapter Five: Narration
When determining point-of-view, Prose says audience is an important factor. She gives examples from literature of first-person and third person, and even the rare second person perspective.
Chapter Six: Character
Using examples from the works of Heinrich von Kleist and Jane Austen, Prose discusses how writers can develop characterization. She mentions that Kleist, in his "The Marquise of O—" ignores physical description of the characters, but instead "tells us just as much as we need to know about his characters, then releases them into the narrative that doesn't stop spinning until the last sentence . . ." Excerpts from other pieces of literature are used to show how action, dialogue and even physical description can help develop characterization.
Chapter Seven: Dialogue
Prose begins this chapter by dispelling the advice that writers should clean up dialogue so that it sounds less caustic than actual speech. She believes this popular idea can be taken too far and that dialogue should reveal not only the surface but the many motivations and emotions of the characters underneath the words.
Chapter Eight: Details
Using examples from literature, Prose explains how one or two important details can leave a more memorable impression on the reader than a barrage of description.
Chapter Nine: Gestures
Prose argues that gestures performed by fictional characters should not be "physical clichés" but illuminations that move the narrative.
Chapter Ten: Learning from Chekhov
As a fan of Chekhov, Prose demonstrates how his texts successfully break the "rules" of fiction writing, even contradicting a lesson she had given her own students. According to Prose, Chekhov teaches the writer to write without judgement and warned against being the "judge of one's characters and their conversations but rather the unbiased observer."
Chapter Eleven: Reading for Courage
Prose discusses the fears writers may have: revealing too much of themselves in their writing; resisting the pressures that writers must write a certain way; determining whether or not the act of writing is worth it when one considers the state of the world. She concludes her book by stating that the writer may fear creating "weeds" instead of "roses." Continuing the metaphor, she says reading is a way for the writer to see how other gardeners grow their roses.
Chapter summaries by Libby Flores, Program Manager for Emerging Voices and The Mark.
PEN Center USA
P.O. Box 6037, Beverly Hills, CA 90212
phone: (323) 424-4939 | fax: (323) 424-4944 | pen@penusa.org | 
Twitter | 
Facebook | 
YouTube |