Another Kind of 99

Well now. That 99th Page Blog Hop was a lot of fun. It was interesting to see all those pages. Daunting to see how GOOD they all were. No wonder it's so hard to find an agent and publisher.

It was also rather more exhausting than I expected. 41 comments in one day, whew!

Thanks to Alicia, Erinn, Holly, Pam, and Quita.for coming up with this cool idea.

In honor of all those 99th pages, I thought I'd post another 99-related work, the 1984 one-hit-wonder 99 Luftballoons by Nena. This is the English version.

Enjoy!

The 99th Page

My 99th Page is sort of a turning point. Zorro is in a bar, discovering that rather than imparting "cool" to his girlfriend's daughter, Dawn, he has lost it altogether. Unfortunately, the page starts off with (ugh!) back story. But what can ya do, eh?

Here goes:

After the glory that was Hate you (Gonna Eat Cheese), Willy moved to London and started a solo career. He could have been Elvis great, Morrison great, if he had held off a little longer on the dying part. But as fate would have it, Willy put out his first solo hit and bit the big one all in the same week.

Zorro slurped his third—or maybe fourth—beer in memory of his friend. Willy hadn’t even died of an overdose or in a plane crash or any of the legendary ways. Instead, he got hit by a car in a London suburb. Whenever he thought about the accident, Zorro imagined the picture on the Beatles’ Abbey Road, Willy in the crosswalk behind the Fab Four, creamed by the green Fiat of fate. Even now, he couldn’t bear to look at that album cover… or make of car, for that matter.

If Willy, generous, talented Willy who had been the heart and soul of The MeeMees, the engine behind the musical end of the enterprise, hadn’t been kept back for some higher purpose, who was Zorro to think he actually had?

“Hey,” Ed said, moseying down the bar to collect the latest empty. How about this: Captain Monterey Jack. That’s the ticket, right? Sort of a Billy Joel thing?”

Zorro cringed. There was nothing he could do for Dawn. He thought of those evil little preteens on the library steps. They didn’t see cool when they looked at him. They saw old, has-been, loser. Even with the shades and hair. He was exactly what he’d been before Willy had found him all those years ago. And his songs—all those ridiculous, half-finished songs—could just stay that way.

What did Roger Weitz know of cool?

Tomorrow is the 99th Page Blog Hop!

Are you hopping yet? I just looked over my 99th page and I have no idea if it makes sense going in cold. There are 98 pages ahead of it, so perhaps this is okay....?

Anyway, still polishing over here.

If you want to join the hop, there's still time.

Check out this info from the lovely folks over at Slice of the Blog Pie:

Sorry for the horrible graphic. Please send a better one.

That's right, tomorrow I'm co-hosting a blogfest with Erinn, Holly, Pam, and Quita. You can read the initial post here. If you didn't bother to click, the gist is to post page 99 of one of your writing projects and then visit everyone else who signed up. (As of 8.30 AM Thursday, we have 19 people*.)

Several people have asked what the rules are for tomorrow's blogfest. When visiting everyone else's page, you should focus and answer the following three questions:

1. Would you turn to page 100?
2. Why or why not?
3. Based on what you read, how likely would you buy the book?

So simple. So fun.

Please remember, when critting to be polite. Don't write anything you wouldn't say to the person's face. You know us writer types are a sensitive bunch.

See you tomorrow!

1st Paragraph of Doom

There's this terrific 1st paragraph contest going on at Nathan Bransford's blog, hundreds of 1st paragraphs posted one after another in the comments. It is interesting and eye opening to read them.

I entered the contest, but because Family, Genius Species' 1st paragraph lacks the pizazz I was hoping for, I put in the novel formerly known as Idylwilde. It was my first completed project and I am rediscovering it in the wake of my current bummed-out-and-editing state of mind. ...Not expecting much from the contest, just getting my feet wet.

Anyway, the 1st paragraph thing got me thinking about the all-out importance of that first small clump of words. Yes, it's an opportunity to wow a potential reader, to "hook" a reader (How obnoxious is all that sales/fishing talk anyway?) At the very least, you want it to set a tone, let readers know they are in competent hands and can go ahead and settle in.

I once took a weekend seminar with the wonderful Lisa Borders. We examined several published 1st paragraphs, The Lovely Bones, some others I can't recall, and it was clear-- I mean CLEAR--from the get go. Those paragraphs told us exactly the sort of book to come, the conflict that would follow, the tone. Try this with a novel on your shelf. It works!

Your 1st paragraph doesn't do this? That's okay really. It's not likely to be your actual first paragraph. You'll rewrite and rewrite your beginning paring away the back story until you finally reach that nub that just totally needs telling. And there it will be: your first paragraph. I trust in this process as a matter of faith folks, hard to tell if I have gotten to that aforementioned nub but I'm hoping...

Here's the first paragraph of Family, Genius, Species abstracted by Wordle:

Crazy Bad and Yet Oddly Catchy

This song leached into the very ether in 1980. A bizarro one-hit wonder that topped the charts in 15 countries. (Yes, really. It did.)

Joe Dolce's subsequent singles, including "Pizza Pizza" and "You Toucha My Car I Breaka You Face" didn't chart.

If Dolce can rest his career on lampooning his Italian grandparents, it's possible that my fictional character, Roger "Zorro" Weitz might stake his on songs about cheese.

Dolce is still performing. Hopefully, he's branched out a bit.

The Upside of Failure

Sorry I've been away so long. No excuses, just a road trip holiday (from which I am still recovering) and a slight rejection induced funk (From which I am also still recovering).

Damn query process. I knew it wouldn't be easy. I totally did. Yet somehow I'd wandered into some happy lalaland where, I believed, things would come easier just because.

Big surprise. They didn't.

This is okay though. I have a direction for my revision now. And if I could find a little time to write, I might even get started on it.

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades:

And yes, Timbuk 3 was indeed a one-hit wonder from those crazy 80's.

Taking the Yellow Crocs on the Road

Pretty soon, we'll be packing up for our annual Pilgrimage to Pinellas County (Florida, that is).

The first time we did this particular drive, our adolescent was less than two months old. THAT trip involved several nights' walking the colicky babe around roadside motels hoping we weren't keeping the whole place up.

There were two-baby trips (imagine a toddle with a stomach flu and a looooong fruitless Christmas morning search for a tube of Balmex), three-baby trips with endless Raffi sing-alongs, blizzards in New jersey, and buckets of toys, logy 2 AM passes through Washington DC and even a Christmas eve in which we broke down on the side of the road in Jacksonville.

I guess you could say miserable-yet-oddly wonderful road trips are now a holiday tradition with us. It just wouldn't be Christmas if I wasn't waking up in a Cracker Barrel parking lot after an all-night drive, shuttling the kids through the chachkas and into the bathroom to pee and brush their teeth and arguing over how many hot chocolate refills might make up for their hellish night in the car.

Anyways.... I'll try to update my query tally when I have more to say. So far.... silence.

Oh, and a holiday gift: one very nice rejection that pinpointed the thing I most worry about in my manuscript. (The start of another hellish holiday tradition, perhaps?)

Alicia over at Slice of the Blog Pie had a great post about the writing-towards-publication journey. It cheered me up, anyway. Check it out!

One Hit Weekend: Somebody's Knockin'

Terri Gibbs

This was one of those big 80's country crossovers.

Terri Gibbs was blind from birth. She had several country and Christian hits, but nothing as spectacular as "Somebody's Knockin'"

If you were around in the 80's, admit it, you sort of liked this one.

Random Book Review: "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" by Steig Larsson

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

I'm always a little wary of tremendously popular books.

Perhaps this is because the hype often snowballs way beyond what any ordinary novel could deliver. I never was one for peer pressure, spent my high school years railing against the popular kids with their banal yet popular tastes. So it came as no surprise that "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" disappointed me.

Don't get me wrong, I was thoroughly engrossed in the mystery of Harriet Vanger's disappearance. I page-turned with the best of them. I liked the characters, especially the girl with the dragon tattoo, who is fresh and interesting and very real.

But by the time I finished GWTDT, I felt like I'd involved myself in an overly long, Swedish version of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit". Exactly like that. The novel has enough tawdriness and sex crimes to fill a whole season of SVU and the financial wheelings and dealings (the other big plot point) are rather dry and uninteresting.

Mostly, I guess I felt manipulated by this book, and a bit like I did in high school when everybody and his brother thought Journey was the best thing going.

Another One Hit Weekend!

What ridiculously catchy, totally inane, avian-themed hit stormed both the British and American airwaves in 1970 and 1971?

Why, "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" of course!

I was four when the Kisoons, a brother and sister team, made it big with "Chirpy". I believe it was the first pop song I ever liked. Being the kind of song ONLY a four year old could like, it quickly faded. But there are TONS of versions out there.

I always thought this song was about a "little baby boy" abandoned by his parents. But it turns out the Kissoons are singing about a bird, or, a "boid" anyway.

There are no videos of the Kissoons performing "Chirpy". Just this kind of boring photo montage:

But here's Lolly Stott, the song's composer. One of the comments on YouTube said that Stott looks like "Robert DeNiro's hippie brother" and it is SOOOO true. The video is all around interesting, in a Candid Camera outtake sort of way: a random group of people standing around singing about some baby bird and clapping all out of sync at the prompting some random looking guy on a street corner.

The Scottish Band "Middle of of the Road" also had a hit with "Chirpy". Although band leader Ken Andrews had this to say about the song: "We were as disgusted with the thought of recording it as most people were at the thought of buying it. But at the end of the day, we liked it."

If ya just can't get enough, here's Middle of the Road's rendition:

Just Keep Swimming

No news to report on the queries and manuscripts out there in the agent ether, but lately I've been thinking about the oft-shared advice to start something new while querying.

The new project is supposed to help me keep focused or less crazy or something. I have tried to do this. Really, I have. But there are a few problems with the "just keep swimming" approach:

1. There are three different books I've considered starting. Which do I start on? I know from experience that, like dating, it's hard to predict which is THE one from a few brief hours over coffee. So I've been bouncing around between the three totally radically absolutely different potential novels but haven't fallen head over heels for any of them yet.

2. I am totally preoccupied with the query process. At any given time, it's taking up about 35% of my attention. (That is when it's not taking up 100% of it)

3. I am sort of driven to return to the safety-net of revision, any revision. I have even considered returning for the umpteenth time to my first novel and reworking the plot (again!)

So, my question, fellow writers, is how do you keep sane during the query process?

If starting on something new is the answer-- how do you move past the old-shoe comfort of the novel you've finished?

Credit

One Hit Weekend!

Gary Numan: Cars

1980. Synthesizers, eyeliner and brooding. I used to think this song was put out by "The Cars" but no, It's one-hit wonder Gary Numan.

In this awesomely bad video, Gary appears in a pyramid, a tambourine, and a red plastic jumpsuit

but not in his CAR.

Go figure.

A Big Ol' Zipline to Query Hell

Every year, I get the opportunity to engage in some staff and student "team building" at work.

I love this sort of stuff: low ropes elements, in which we have to work as a team to get all members across imaginary crocodile pits and over six-foot walls, high ropes elements that involve balancing on tree branches and leaping into thin air...

Well, I don't like that part of it so much. You could say that I have a more than healthy fear of heights... and also that I'm not athletic enough to pull myself up a swinging rope ladder contraption without looking totally ridiculous.

(credit)

But I have to set a good example for the students and so I do my best, wheezing however many feet upward and as far above the ground as I can manage before I lose my nerve. Most of the time it's a good experience all around.

But several years ago, I got myself in a little too deep, er, high.

It all started with one of our soon-to-be-graduates. He'd struggled through three previous team-building days and, seriously afraid of heights, hadn't made it to the pinnacle of the high ropes course: the dreaded ZIPLINE. This particular zipline required you to climb about 60 feet up a tree by clinging to giant staples in its trunk, stand on a teeny tiny ledge high above the ground and step off into a nothing that lasted 300 feet or so (Probably not the exact measurements here...suffice to say it was high, long and scary)

I truly believe that facing one's fears is one of the most worthwhile and life-affirming things a person can do, especially when done in relative safely. The ropes course thing has been a life-changer for many struggling students and with all good intentions, I promised this student that if he did the zip line, I would too.

THAT's how I ended up clinging to the tippy top of a tall tree in a helmet and rock climbing harness, whimpering something like "I'm the mother of three children! I can't do this!" in front of the entire school, students staff everyone.

I knew what was coming, knew I'd hate that stepping-off-the-edge-feeling-like-you-are-going-to-die moment and that probably, afterwards, it would all be okay. But the stepping off part loomed like you can't believe. I finally womaned up and did it. And really it wasn't so bad.

Fun? Eh, not so much. But definitely worthwhile.

Why the big long story about ropes courses, you ask?

Because I got one of those , ominous self-addressed-stamped form letter rejections today and looking at that sealed envelope, I experienced the same clinging to the top of the tree dread as I did during my zipline experience. I had gotten myself into this, gone and stepped off that teeny platform into a long, terrible (well, not soooo terrible) slide. The all consuming query and wait, hope and dashed-hope thing I (now) remember so well.

As with the zipline, I will learn something, face what I didn't know I could and, maybe, end up hanging 60 feet in the air from a crotch-hugging harness while the "team" finds a ladder and gets me the hell out of here.

At any rate, thanks for being the "team" part of this team-building activity. I really do appreciate all of your kind words.

Here's the updated Query Tally:

Queries sent-- 5

Fulls Requested-- 2

Fulls Rejected-- 0

Partials Requested--0

Form Rejections--2

Updated Query Tally

Queries sent-- 5

Fulls Requested-- 2

Partials Requested--0

Rejections--0

I'm an optimist. I choose to believe that no news (especially with the holidays and whatnot) is good news.....

Thankful

Its been a sort of funny year, 2010. Lots of stark raving good and some pretty serious lousy too. Our family tradition is to make "Thankfulness pictures" to share before dinner, but this year they seemed too... much. We needed a new tradition, one that would sum it all up without the obligation to gush. (Gushing, by the way, is fully appropriate at Thanksgiving. I can do it. I love doing it. But for extended family, gushing just didn't cut it this year)

And so, the Thankfulness Pinata was born. We stuffed it with anonymous notes of thanks. And then bashed it with a baseball bat.
The kids thought this was a lot more fun than obligatory art. And the grown-ups too. And when the bag finally cracked open, all our THANKS spilled out onto the damp fall dirt and the kids rushed them as if they were candy.

All fun aside, here are some things I am truly thankful for:

My husband, the calm in my storm and the true heart of this crazy lifelong enterprise.

The kids, each so much who he/she is it makes me cry sometimes

The extended family and friends that bless our days

Work. Hard, meaningful, often joyous work.

My other work, writing. I am thankful I've been able to carve out the space for my inner space.

The everyday comfort of our hilltown home

Dogs, sheep, chickens etc etc

The luck and hardships that led me here to all of this



Happy (slightly belated) Thanksgiving!

Lightning

Newsweek has an interesting article about Mark Twain, an author I never gave much credit to when I was yawning my way through Huck Finn back in 10th grade, but one I think I ought to revisit now.

Here's what he had to say about word choice:

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

I just love that.

Thanks to Edittorent for mentioning the Twain article.

I Did Something Today!

I mean really did something.

I sent out my first full and two queries. The process was a long one; I revised the full manuscript then agonized about my overwritten beginning until my eyes bled. Then I scooted down to the ending, returned to the beginning (more bleeding eyes) and finally, once all perspective had been lost, I took a deep breath, wrote an official-looking "the End" and sent the darn thing out.

All in all I cut about 6,000 words. Family, Genius, Species is now a svelte 86,010 words. Woohoo!... or Whew! anyway.

I plan to send snail mail copies to the other two agents who were near-misses the last time around.

I have hurried up. I am waiting.

They say the best thing to do during this tension-filled wait-and-see-and-send phase is to start on the next thing ("They" being sensible non-emotive people, highly competent people) and yes, I have been thinking through some new ideas...

But really, what else can I think of now that the gibbon is out in the world?

Credit

Here's my infant tally:

Queries sent-- 3

Fulls requested-- 1 (This from the conference I attended)

Rejections-- 0 (Well, the search is a few hours old)

Nick Lowe: Cruel to Be Kind

Yes, this is a one-hit-wonder. But Nick Lowe IS actually sort of cool. Anyway, one of my chapter titles is taken from this song, so I thought I'd post it.

Odd video, eh? It baffles me.

But the hair, the hair is classic.

Your Novel's Soundtrack?

This may sound sort of funny, but there's a soundtrack that goes with my novel.

I don't mean that I expect there to be a soundtrack for the (not even imaginary) movie or sold along with the book. No big dreams here, world. I just want to write the best durn book I can. Rather, I find myself sort of obsessed with particular songs, songs that connect in one way or another to "Family Genius Species"... or at least to my idea of it.

This happened with my last novel too, but that one was almost totally country alternative, Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams, etc.

Some of the tracks on my Family, Genius, Species playlist are obvious-- One hit wonders abound. Most of the ones I've posted here, in fact. "Brandi" by Looking Glass, "Magnet and Steel" by Walter Egan, "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians. But then there's "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones (Which is actually a good song) and most perplexing and persistent of all.... "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse.

I love "Missed the Boat" although it has nothing at all to do with the 70's or one-hit-wonders or anything directly related to my novel, it captures a certain something, a mood and Zorro-esque outlook that is totally spot-on. I am not ashamed to admit that I have listened to this track (the whole album in fact) hundreds of times while driving to work mulling over plot twists and characters.

Does your novel have a soundtrack?

Random Book Review: Atonement by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan's Atonement is Literary Fiction (Capital L, Capital F). Serious, ambitious, about something waaaayy beyond entertainment.

But is it any good?

The first third of the book reminded me of all the the reasons lit fic is an endangered species in the publishing jungle. McEwan starts us off with a little girl writing a play. The details about the play and family and the house drag on and on and I couldn't figure what was important in the endless-seeming decription. Don't get me wrong, the writing is beautiful. McEwan is a master at grounding abstractions with such precision you want to go "Oh... aha! Of course!"

There is a passage when the girl, Briony, is sitting at a window looking at her hand and considering the moment of volition between her thought of moving it and the actual muscle movement. After quite a bit of abstract and beautiful prose, she likens this to the act of writing itself.

This sort of thing fits the worst stereotype of lit fic. If not actual navel-gazing, it is indeed hand-gazing ala Wittgenstein (Yes, my husband is a philosopher).

The first section of the novel moves on and on like this (I started to get that snarky "Okay already" attitude when several pages were devoted to the fall of sunlight in a room) but stick with it. All those seemingly excessive and incidental details have significance. By the end of the first section, Briony's cousin has been assaulted and Briony's mistakenly accused her older sister's lover, Robbie, of the deed. He is arrested and sentenced to prison.

The plot, as they say, has thickened.

The second section follows Robbie after his release from a three year prison term. His future much diminished, he is a member of the British infantry retreating to Dunkirk. This section, also beautifully written, moves at a totally different pace. It is a war story, more or less, and totally engrossing.

Then we are again with Briony. Now an adult, she realizes that her false testimony (the result of her youth and imagination) sent an innocent man to prison. She enters nursing school, seeking a way to atone for her sin. She has sent a novella about the day she accused Robbie to a magazine. The manuscript, as the reader comes to understand, is more or less the first section of Atonement (The long drawn out one with all the details). The critique she receives from the magazine is that the manuscript lacks narrative drive and is heavy on the navel-gazing (!) So clever! The reader is left hoping Briony will have a chance to atone, that Robbie and older sister Cecelia will be reunited, all standard happy ending fare.

The last section is a surprise (Spoiler alert!) Briony is now in her 80's, a well-known writer. We discover that Atonement is the novel Briony wrote in response to the critical moment in her life and that much of it-- the whole section about Robbie in the war-- was invented by Briony. She invents a happy ending as well. (I am not going to go into much detail here, in case you choose to read atonement). But, Man! It's a pretty amazing ending, especially when she also hints at a less-happy truer ending and we are devastated at the thought.

Also, this last section plants us right back at the play and the house and what it means to be a writer.

This is all to say that Atonement is exquisitely-- exquisitely!-- plotted, beautifully written, about big subjects near and dear to any writer's heart... and totally engaging once you get past the first section.

Thanks, Mr. McEwan. My faith in the power of literature is restored.