Have Writer Will Travel: Does Wanderlust Inspire Your Writing?
From the desk of Daniel Ford: I just got back from London/Dublin and was thinking about something the last couple days in my jet lagged soaked brain. Does travel inspire you to write? I didn't do a whole lot of writing while abroad, but I did have a bunch of ideas I'm eager to test out.
Sean Tuohy: Nope, not really. If anything traveling just gives me settings for future stories. Whenever I travel, and I pass an interesting building or a plaza, I always take a metal picture and file it away. Maybe seeing something or learning some bit of local history will set off a spark but the urge to write isn't there. I like to write in a comfortable setting, some place I am familiar with. The only time I like to travel and write is if I am going somewhere I know well, like Florida or Ibiza.
Daniel Ford: Yeah, I think Ibiza would be high on everyone's writing setting list.
Sean: True, but for me it’s the fact that I am really comfortable at my uncle's house. If I went to Ibiza and went to a hotel to write I don't think I would be comfortable. The house has a great energy and the views from the living room and bedroom are amazing so those mixed together are great.
Daniel: Right, exactly. I can't write in a hotel unless it's super old or charming. There's something too sterile about them. And you're absolutely right on atmosphere. It has to be some place that I can set my coffee down, where I've set it down hundreds of times before, and litter the table or desk with papers (and probably pastries).
Sean: Pastries always help writing. Oddly enough, I had this thought this weekend regarding hotels while I was in a hotel with Rachel. We had a nice corner room with a nice view. If I could drag a table up to the window I would totally write. Because the room was so simple and the view was of a city that I know and love I thought I could write. But would I really? I don't know. Maybe when I sit down it wouldn't be a fit.
Daniel: Let’s ask the rest of the crew!
Gary Almeter: I definitely think it does. Not so much because the Grand Canyon, Shakespeare's birthplace, the ocean, or the Pacific sunset are inspiring (at least not to me though surely to some) but because of the anonymity that comes with traveling. Both the traveler and those he or she sees are doing whatever you think they might be. Why are they hugging at the airport? Where did they come from? What is that person doing here? You tend to make up stories as you see all this. I think cities are inspiring. You see all the people going about their ordinary days while you are vacationing. Where are they going? The sense of alienation also fosters a sense that there is something sketchy going on every corner. Hotels foster this too inherently—like you can’t help but think of all the malfeasance that happened between and amongst the prior inhabitants of that room.
We met a couple on our honeymoon—we didn't exchange addresses or anything—and I always wonder what they are doing now.
Dave Pezza: In my limited experience, it definitely does but not right away. In fact, not close. For me it takes years for those adventures to manifest into something thoughtful and poignant.
Lindsey Wojcik:
"Is the wine complimentary?"
"Wine?"
"Yes."
The wine was placed next to the first meal I've had on an airplane. The menu that night was cheese pasta or chicken and rice—I chose the former—with a salad that only consisted of some pieces of iceberg lettuce and half a tomato, a cheese wedge with crackers, a roll with butter, pretzels, and a caramel brownie.
I devoured the pasta, washing it down with the sweet white between bites. Next, I conquered that cheese wedge, which actually turned out to be a nice spread. I couldn't muster up the appetite for the dried, wilting lettuce even though an olive oil and vinegar dressing would have done the trick—it lost all nutrient value at "iceberg."
I leave the unopened salad and roll on the tray, anticipating when the woman with the wine will return.
"Anything else to drink?"
"Can you top me off?"
"Sure."
I hold the cup into the aisle as she pours. She wheels away, and I start to lose myself in a book.
"Life is not a paragraph, death is no parenthesis."
Page seven, and I'm hooked. I give myself until 10:00 p.m. to keep reading, hoping I'm not disturbing the stranger besides me.
I typed that into my iPhone Notes as my plane to Barcelona, Spain, flew over the Atlantic Ocean last month. I wanted to capture moments of my first trip abroad while I was actually experiencing it, but the notes ended as soon as I landed. While I did not write much after that, being a solo traveler in another country, where I barely spoke the language, proved to be an inspiring experience.
I navigated myself somewhat successfully around a new country without the crutch of a trusted GPS-enabled iPhone, made connections with people from lands other than Spain, and became immersed in learning, seeing, smelling, hearing, and feeling the pulse of Barcelona—albeit, with limited time, the culture immersion happened atop a double-decker bus. But I did it all alone. The experience proved to myself that I could do anything and erased the fears writers often face when putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It made me write without pause, professionally, and re-ignited my desire to write for myself.
Experiencing anything new is always cause for self-examination, and I think travel does that best, which is why it can be so inspiring for many writers.
The Boneyard Archives
The Boneyard: When Do You Give Up On A Bad Book or Movie?
From the desks of Sean Tuohy and Daniel Ford: At what point in reading a book or watching a movie do you know it's bad? At the beginning? In the middle? The end? How many books or movies have you dropped in the middle and never returned to? How bad does it need to be to walk away?
Rachel Tyner: I used to never stop reading a book or watching a movie, even if I didn't like it, because I had something against leaving it "unfinished."
Now, I'm getting older, and ain't nobody got time for that.
There are so many books and movies out there, so if I don't like something, I'm done with it. I try and give it three chances. Pick it up and read, get bored. Try again a few days later (or weeks, months, etc.). Try again one more time. Recently, this happened with Ender's Game. It seemed like I would love it "on paper" (haha, get it?), but it was seriously a terrible book.
I think you know pretty soon into a movie too. Remember "That Awkward Moment?" Terrible within the first five minutes. When something you are watching or reading is making your life less interesting (or even less fun, if that's the movie/book you are reading), what's the point?
Daniel Ford: I remember walking out of the theater during "That Awkward Moment" with you, Sean, and Steph. It was that moment one of the female characters' father dies and Zac Efron has to have a powwow with his boys to decide whether he wants to go or not because he doesn't want to be considered the girl's boyfriend. That movie still owes me money.
I tried to get into Ender's Game a bunch of times as well. Couldn't do it. Dune, same thing. I used to read much more nonfiction than I do now, and I'd bounce around from book to book if I got to a slower section or if my interests pulled me in another direction, but it's tough for me to put down a book for good.
I mentioned to Sean that I read a book recently that was awful, just awful. It had a good, strong opening, and then became 12 novels in one and none of them were good. And I hate read the rest. I complained to everyone I know. Must of the reactions were, "Well, just stop reading it." But by reading the whole thing I got a great lesson on failure (not that I needed one), and how learn how not to write dialogue.
That being said, you're right about time. It's one thing if all you're doing all day is sitting on the beach reading shitty paperbacks, but all of us have to work for a living. Why torture yourself when something isn't good? Better to go write something great than read something terrible!
Matt DiVenere: I have had the absolute worst luck with movies lately. It's basically a curse at this point. Here's the order of the last few movies I've watched that were offensively bad:
- “The Drop”
- “Hot Pursuit”
- “Focus”
- “Pitch Perfect 2”
I know that I should take the blame for some of these, but yikes. If I were the creators of “The Drop,” knowing that it's James Gandolfini's last movie, I would have burnt every single copy of that mess and sent the remains up into space rather than have that movie be in his IMDB profile.
The only reason why I watched the whole movie was to be able to fully hate them and thoroughly discuss my hate for them with anyone who asks.
Also, you know a movie is bad right away. The dialogue, the acting, and the soundtrack. Those are my three strikes.
Gary Almeter: I spent 2006 reading Theodore Dresier's An American Tragedy. It took an entire year and I hated every minute of it but just thought it was something I should have read. Never again. Now, if something doesn't grab me by page three or four I put it down and it is dead to me.
I walked out of "The Flintstones" starring John Goodman and Elizabeth Perkins.
Daniel: I have fond memories of going to see "The Flintstones" with my family. It was one of the rare times in those days that my father had a Saturday morning off. I'm convinced he still regrets taking us to the movies that day.
I'm also more selective now that my time is so divided. I won't necessarily pick up a book that I'm on the fence about if I get in another book that I know I'll probably love. The one time I was swayed by some fall lists and picked up something I originally dismissed, I got burned with a crappy read.
Lisa Carroll: I feel slightly ashamed to admit that I've tried to read The Hobbit about a dozen times since 2001 when "The Lord of the Rings" movie came out (because I will not break my rule about seeing a movie before I've read the book) and I just can't get past the damn dwarf party. Needless to say I have yet to see any of the films.
However, I do teach the "three strikes and you're out" rule to my kids. I tell them, "Give a book three chapters because sometimes the author takes a little longer with the exposition and if you get through three chapters and he/she hasn't captured you, put it down." I general stick with that rule myself. Except when I have to read a book for school.
The hard part about being a middle school librarian is when I have to read all 20 Nutmeg nominees and then book talk them and convince the kids that I love them all. That's where my degree in theater really pays off.
To add to the discussion, comment below, weigh in on our Facebook page, or tweet us @WritersBone.
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‘Hills Like Almond Milk’
Photo courtesy of Manel on Flickr
Editor’s Note: If you haven’t read Ernest Hemingway’s brilliant “Hills Like White Elephants,” well, what the fuck? Read it! Do it now! Okay, good, welcome back. Now you can read Alex Tzelnic satire without feeling like a heel because you blew off English class back in the day trying to impress someone who had already put in the friend zone. Enjoy!—Daniel Ford
By Alex Tzelnic
The hills across the valley were white. Not like, completely, perfectly white, like a sheet of printer paper. But like, kind of milky, though not quite two percent milk. Maybe more like almond milk. The hills were like almond milk.
The train station was between two railways. The railways were what the trains traveled on. The station was in the middle of them. It was very bright. Sunglasses were definitely an asset. The man had on a pair. So did the girl. They took them off as they parted the bead curtain and entered the train station bar. The beads kept the flies out. The beads were terrible at their job. It was hot and the flies buzzed and the man and the girl sat at a table. The express from Barcelona would come in thirty minutes. It stopped here, it picked up passengers, and then it continued on, like basically every other train that has ever existed.
“Let’s get a drink,” said the girl. She put her sunglasses on the table.
“It’s hot,” said the man.
“Let’s drink beer.”
“Dos cervezas,” said the man through the beads. “That’s ‘two beers’ in Spanish, “ he whispered to the girl.
“No shit. I took seven years of Spanish. Middle school through high school.”
“Right,” said the man.
The woman brought two glasses of beer. She put the glasses down. They were filled with the beer. The girl looked off at the hills.
“The hills look like almond milk,” she said.
“I’ve never had almond milk,” said the man.
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
“I might have,” said the man. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything. I just haven’t needed to drink it because I haven’t declared myself allergic to everything, like everyone else these days. What’s so great about being allergic to everything anyway?”
The girl looked at the curtain. Another fly buzzed through the beads and into the bar.
“They’ve painted something on it,” she said.
“Yes. It’s called an advertisement,” said the man. “People create them so other people will buy their pointless shit. Like almond milk.”
“What does it say?”
“It says, ‘Licorice’ in Spanish.”
“Could we try it?”
“Spanish licorice?”
The man called to the woman behind the counter for licorice. She brought the licorice.
“It tastes like licorice,” the girl said, and put the Spanish licorice down.
“That’s the way with everything,”
“Yes,” said the girl. “Everything tastes of licorice.” She stared at the stick of licorice in her hand. “You know, licorice is one of those words that when you say it over and over, it sounds like gibberish. Licorice. Gibberish is one of those words too, I guess. Gibberish. Licorice.”
“Oh, cut it out.”
“You started it,” said the girl. “I was being amused. I was having a fine time.”
“Well, let’s try and have a fine time.”
“All right. I was trying. I said the mountains look like almond milk. Wasn’t that bright?”
“Uh, yeah. That was ‘bright’,” said the man, air-quoting the word “bright” to imply that her statement was actually not bright at all.
The girl looked at the hills across the valley.
“They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really look like almond milk. I just meant the coloring of the hills in this light was like the color of almond milk.”
“No, I get it,” said the man. “I know what an analogy is.”
They drank the beer. The beer was in the glasses. The glasses were on the table. The table was in the station. The station was in Spain.
“It’s really an awful simple operation, babe,” said the man.
The girl looked at the ground the table legs rested on. The ground was also in Spain. One hundred percent Spanish ground.
“I know you wouldn’t mind it, babe. It’s really not anything. It’s all perfectly natural.”
“Then what will we do afterward?”
“We’ll be fine afterward. Afterward will be great!”
“What makes you think so?”
“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.”
The girl swatted at a fly. A Spanish fly. She wondered if a Spanish fly and an American fly could communicate, could understand one another’s buzzes.
“And you think then we’ll be all right and happy.”
“I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.”
“So have I. And afterward they were all so ‘happy’,” said the girl, air-quoting the word happy to imply that actually they weren’t happy at all.
“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”
“And you really want to?”
“Hell yeah.”
“And if I do it you’ll be happy and you’ll love me?”
“I love you now. You know I love you.”
“I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like almond milk, and you’ll like it.”
“You know how I feel about almond milk. But yeah, basically.”
“If I do it you won’t ever worry?”
“I won’t. Because it’s perfectly simple.”
“Yeah I know,” said the girl. “You’ve mentioned that like three times.”
The girl stood up. She drained her beer glass and put it back down. She walked toward the bead curtain and peaked outside. She saw the river through the trees through the curtain, which she was peaking through, hoping not to get a Spanish fly in the eye.
“And we could have all this,” she said.
“What did you say? You’re talking out of the curtain.”
“I said we could have everything.”
“I still can’t hear you.”
“We can have everything.”
“I’m getting nothing. Just muffled sounds.”
“We can have the whole world.”
“Still nothing.”
“We can go everywhere.”
“What?”
“It’s ours.”
“Sure babe.”
The girl sat down at the table and then looked back at the licorice advertisement on the swaying beads.
“You’ve got to realize,” he said, “that I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to. I just think all natural breasts implants would look fantastic on you.”
“Wait, what?” asked the girl.
“That’s what we were talking about, right? Breast implants?”
“Would you do something for me right now?”
“I’d do anything for you.”
“Would you please please please please please please stop talking?”
“What’s the problem?”
“I’m pregnant you jackass. I wasn’t talking about implants. I was talking about getting an abortion.”
The man gulped. This was a major revelation. “Oh boy,” he said.
The woman came out from behind the bar. “The train comes in five minutes,” she said.
“The train comes in five minutes,” he told the girl.
“I know how to speak elementary fucking Spanish,” she said.
The man drained his beer. “I’d better take the bags over to the other side of the station.”
He picked up the bags and carried them around to the other side of the tracks. He considered his options. He could just start running, and hide in the almond milky hills. He could fling himself in front of the train when it arrived. Or he could suck it up, like a hard-boiled character from a Hemingway story, and be a man about it. The downgrade from a boob job conversation that he thought was going rather well to an abortion conversation was immense, a tremendously tough pill to swallow, but, he thought, pregnancy will temporarily increase the girl’s breast size, so it’s almost like getting a boob job. He returned to the table.
“Do you feel better?” he asked.
“Are you kidding me? My boyfriend is a moron who thinks I have a flat chest and didn’t even know I was pregnant.”
The man thought for a moment. “That has to be like, one of the top five miscommunications of all time. Like, in the history of human life on Earth. It’s almost kind of funny when you think about it.”
The girl thought about it. It wasn’t funny.
They looked at the hills.
“You know, now that you mention it,” the man said, “if I squint just so, the hills do look kind of like almond milk.”
The girl laughed a little.
“Do you feel better?”
“I feel fine,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.”
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April Showers: How Our Favorite Authors Water Their Creativity
Photo by Stephanie Schaefer
By Daniel Ford
We’ve been spoiled the last couple of months at Writer’s Bone with the amount of insightful advice we’ve received from our favorite authors.
I needed an extra jolt of inspiration on this rainy, cold afternoon in the Northeast, so I collected all of the tips, suggestions, and inspiration offered by the authors we’ve interviewed recently.
Feel free to add your own advice in the comments section or tweet us @WritersBone.
Paula Hawkins, Author of The Girl on the Train
Photo credit: Kate Neil
Perseverance is all, and whenever you’re feeling disheartened, read On Writing by Stephen King. He knows of what he speaks, and he’s really funny, too.
You can also check out our interview with the author on BJ’s Wholesale Club's website.
Anthony Breznican, Author of Brutal Youth
Don’t be afraid of sucking. There will be plenty of time for that fretting later. Get your first draft done, and don’t look back until you type “the end.” Make it as good as you can, of course, and repair and adjust as needed along the way, but don’t despair over it. Once you get a first draft finished, you have something to fix. Until then, you have nothing.
Dimitry Elias Léger, Author of God Loves Haiti
Photo Credit: Jason Liu
Write like you’re part of a continuum of novelists. Know the history and highlights of your genre and your settings inside and out. Novelists should be like painters, building and riffing on traditions that go back centuries. Also read a lot of poetry, and poetic prose, since you are what you read. And for god’s sake, have a sense of humor.
Anne Leigh Parrish, author of What is Found, What Is Lost
Keep at it until it starts coming more easily; be open to feedback but know when the feedback is useful and when it’s not; focus on exactly what you want the reader to take away from your story (or novel); learn to switch sides of the table when you’re editing–become the reader, in other words; try not to get too hung up on how the marketplace is treating you–this is more for writers with a book out in the world; and, lastly, always stay true to yourself as a writer, how you define that.
You can read Anne's short story "Smoke" in our original fiction collection.
Springs Toledo, Author of The Gods of War
Develop your craft and find your own style. Read books that are not sports-related. Read The New Yorker. If you turn a phrase or offer an insight that seems familiar, consider the risk of plagiarism and Google it before claiming it. Avoid clichés. Don’t cross the line between poignant and maudlin. Don’t expect to make a living doing it. Whether you write for an audience of two million or two, respect them and your name enough to offer your best. Respect every athlete, especially fighters, because what they do is exceedingly dangerous and difficult and chances are excellent that you couldn’t do it.
David Joy, Author of Where All Light Tends to Go
Photo credit: Alan Rhew
Persistence. That’s it. That’s the difference between people who make it and people who don’t. I wrote for a very, very long time before I ever got to anything close to something publishable. Some of the earliest writing I had was on notebook paper and I kept it in shoeboxes, and my mother called one day to see what I wanted to do with it. There was probably a thousand pages and I told her to take all of it out into the yard and set it on fire in the burn barrel. A lot of people can’t understand that, but it was the fact that I knew the writing wasn’t any good. It was important. I had to get it out of me. But once it was out, there was no other use for it. I’m probably well into 2,000 pages now and I’m still not anything close to what I would consider good. Whereas that might seem futile to some, it’s that futility that makes it so beautiful. It’s knowing that I’ll do this the rest of my life and never get it just right that makes it worthwhile. You know, Faulkner said if the artist were ever able to get it perfect, “nothing would remain but to cut his throat, jump off the other side of that pinnacle of perfection into suicide,” and I think that’s true. There just wouldn’t be anything else to do with your life.
Tania James, Author of The Tusk That Did the Damage
I have a handful of reader friends whose advice I rely on heavily, even when it’s tough love time. I think it’s important to find those writerly mates who have your back, as you have theirs.
Chuck Grossart, Author of The Gemini Effect
Simple. Write/edit. Write/edit some more. Then, write/edit again. And, keep in mind that you’re writing can always be better. It’s definitely a learning process, and it never ends.
I think a lot of first-time writers believe what they’ve written is really, really good when in reality, it just might be really, really bad. With The Gemini Effect, I learned a ton while I went through the developmental and copy edit process with my editor at Amazon’s 47North, Jason Kirk. I have a post on my blog that describes in detail how Jason and I worked together to take my self-published novel The Mengele Effect—which had just won a nation-wide contest, but still needed some hefty tweaking—and transform it into what it was striving to become; The Gemini Effect.
Two other ways I improved my writing skills were to join a local writers’ group (The Nebraska Writers Workshop), and to try my hand at writing flash fiction.
Joining a writers group was really eye-opening; I was exposed to a number of different genes and skill levels, and found it very rewarding. The most important thing about joining a writers group is to be thick-skinned—be able to accept criticism, and use it to improve your skills. I’ll touch on that again a little later.
Writing flash fiction paid quite a few dividends. While perusing the titles at Smashwords.com, I ran across a short, flash fiction horror story. I read it, enjoyed it, and did a little research. Flash fiction—stories with word counts anywhere between 300 and 1,000 words—seemed like a perfect way for me to put pen (fingers) to paper (keyboard) and give birth to some of the ideas bouncing around inside my misshapen noggin. They wanted out, so I obliged. My initial venture into flash fiction was titled Ripple. I wrote it on a Saturday afternoon, and published it on Smashwords the next day. For me, the magic of crafting short stories began a few hours later, when Ripple received its first review. Two little words. One was "definitely," the other, "disturbing." With that, I knew I'd hit the exact mark I was aiming for. I highly recommend new writers try writing some flash fiction, as it teaches tight structure, tight plots, and helps a writer learn how to cut all the unnecessary chaff to keep it within a certain word count.
Also, like I stated earlier, learn to have a thick skin. Be willing to accept constructive criticism, and shrug-off the vitriolic criticism that every writer eventually receives. Is this an easy thing to do? No. Not. At. All. Like everything else, it’s a learning process. To paraphrase Isaac Asimov, there are two types of writers: Those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. The first time you receive a bad review, it may feel as if you’ve just shown your newborn baby to a stranger—that baby is the most beautiful, precious thing you’ve ever seen—and the stranger says, “Wow, that is one ugly baby! How dare you bring such a horrid creature into my world!” Then, after the stranger vomits a few times (on your shoes), a crowd gathers, they chase you back to your castle with torches and pitchforks, and everything goes up in flames, especially your confidence as a writer.
One thing to remember is that a review is a message from a reader to other readers—it’s not directed at you. Some authors I know never look at reviews, good or bad. But, if you do, don’t take it personally. Even though someone just called your precious baby ugly, don’t ever let it kill your desire to write, and don’t ever respond. Let me say that again: No matter how badly you want to, don’t respond. Once your story is out in the big bad reviewer world, it has to stand on its own two feet. It’ll get praised, and it’ll get bullied, and you have to stand back and let it happen.
If you do get a nasty one, and it’s bugging you, keep this quote from Teddy Roosevelt nearby (it helps):
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Quan Barry, Author of She Weeps Each Time You’re Born
Read, read, read, and read broadly. I was just talking about this with the poet Derek Mong. Basically we were agreeing that sometimes young writers just read first books in their genres. This can get to be stultifying. Yes, it's good to know what first books look like and how they're constructed, but if that's all you read, your work may end up sounding like everyone else's and one day it may also read as dated.
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5 Gems I Unearthed While Packing Up My Books
Essential reading material
By Daniel Ford
Since I’m moving for the umpteenth time at the end of this month, I had to once again organize and pack up all of my books.
I quickly discovered that I have way more books than I do articles of clothing. Sadly, the majority of my literary collection is also more stylish and up-to-date.
As always, I unearthed several gems that deserve a more prominent place on my future bookshelf. I’ve only completed one night’s worth of packing, so I’m sure I’ll find much more. However, in the meantime, enjoy these five that you might want to consider adding to your collection.
The Anchor Atlas of World History Volume I
The first volume of The Atlas of World History by Hermann Kinder and Werner Hilgemann is endlessly fascinating. This is essential reading for any map nut. The maps detailing the Roman Empire’s rise and fall are worth much more than the $1.99 you’ll spend on a paperback edition.
One of my favorite lines is when Nero becomes emperor. “Nero’s early years were happy ones for Rome.” Things got a little toasty after that.
Why Sinatra Matters
Pete Hamill brilliantly sums up why Frank Sinatra was such a force in popular culture. It also reminds me of the story my grandmother used to tell me when I was growing up. She said she was a manager in an office in New York City and one of the employees told her she needed a day off to go see Frank Sinatra in concert. My grandmother said she couldn’t give her the whole day. “Fine, I’ll just quit,” the woman said, according to my grandmother. She got the day off. “She was dead serious,” my grandmother would tell me. “She was seeing Frank whether she had a job the next day or not.”
Here’s one of my favorite passages from the book:
“To begin with, the hands of the clock had passed twelve, and he was in a large city, specifically the hard, wounded metropolis of New York. For decades now, Sinatra had defined the glamour of the urban night. It was both a time and a place; to inhabit the night, to be one of its restless creatures, was a small act of defiance, a shared declaration of freedom, a refusal to play by all these conventional rules that insisted on men and women rising at seven in the morning, leaving for work at eight, and falling exhausted into bed at ten o’clock that night. In his music, Sinatra gave voice to all those who believed that the most intense living begins at midnight: show people, bartenders, and sporting women; gamblers, detectives, and gangsters; small winners and big losers; artists and newspapermen. If you loved someone who did not love you back, you could always walk into a saloon, put your money on the bar, and listen to Sinatra.”
A Farewell to Arms
If you don’t have Ernest Hemingway on your bookshelf, I don’t want to know you. If you ever question whether or not you’ve written something good, pick up and read anything he wrote and compare. You haven’t. Keep writing until it’s great. It’ll never be Hemingway great, but at least you’ll be striving for perfection and not a cash advance.
There’s no way I can choose a favorite line. Just read it all.
Debate on the Constitution
You don’t have to be a lawyer to appreciate the debate our Founding Fathers engaged in while forming our current state of government. These were impassioned men to be sure, but they debated ideas and not sound clips. Issues were important, not semantics like whose flag pin is bigger. Disagreement is essential to democracy, but so is compromise and creating solutions. Ben Franklin didn’t necessarily agree with the document that came out of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, but agreed to endorse it. He also expressed “a Wish, that every Member of the Convention, who may still have objections to it, would with me on this Occasion doubt a little of his own Infallibility, and make manifest our Unanimity, put his Name to this Instrument.”
That’s a hell of a leap of faith he was asking for. More than 220 years later, we’re still trying to figure out whether or not we have it right.
The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
This was given to me by a former colleague on my 25th birthday. I consult it daily.
“When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”—from The Prince and the Pauper
Bonus
The first time someone referred to me as an author. Not bad.
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The Boneyard: The E-Book Debate Continues
What, you thought we weren’t going to let the rest of the Writer’s Bone crew respond to Dave and Matt’s debate on e-books? Do you know how much we love writing and reading our own prose? Come on, get your shit together, it’s Thursday already! Look for Dave and Matt’s rebuttals later this afternoon.
Sean Tuohy: Let's get this out of the way: You love books. I love them. Daniel loves them. Most people love books. They are great. How many early memories do you have involving reading a book and learning about the world? A lot I hope.
So, why the fuck do you care what form they come in? They are books. Printed or e-book, it does not matter what form they come in as long as you can read them and enjoy them. The fact that we can sit down and read a story and learn something or enjoy ourselves is amazing. How great are our lives were we have access to tons of information in the form of words? We have a power to slip to the world of storytelling and live there.
Just the idea that your brain is able to look at lines of random words and form them together inside of your head and that gives you knowledge is jaw dropping. There are people who live in this country who never get to enjoy what we get to enjoy. The idea of cracking opening a book or looking at an e-book reader is terrifying to some because they don't know how to read. Yes, this being the United States, a superpower, and people still don't know how to read.
Instead of bitching about how e-books are awful or how the printed book are no longer needed, how about we spend more time spreading the good word about books. Read to a group of kids, give books out to strangers, or sit with some blind old people and read to them. We have a fantastic ability to love reading, something that is slowly dying away in our world. Please, let’s use the gift we have and share it with others.
Lindsey Wojcik: I do not currently own an e-reader, however I wouldn't be opposed to consuming content on one. I do enjoy packing up a physical book and taking it along with me to the park, beach, or in my bag while I ride the train to work. There's something about the smell of the pages—new or old—that draws me to read from good, old fashioned, printed books. I also get pleasure out of breaking in a new book by folding pages over, breaking in the binding, and marking my spot with a bookmark—which is usually an old photo or ticket stub from some event I attended that brings back warm memories every time I open the book. Could I do that with an e-reader? I'm not sure, but like I said, I'm not opposed finding out.
Daniel Ford: My brothers and I gave my mother a Kindle for her birthday a couple years ago. You'd think we had given her a slab of gold. She was always a reader, but now she could download free Kindle novels to her hearts content. She's embracing technology at a younger age (if I had written anything else, she would have murdered me) and its added something to her experience. Her Kindle was also a comfort to her when she was visiting my sick uncle in the hospital. The argument that convenience isn't a good enough reason for e-books to exist is a flawed one because ask someone whose life is defined by inconveniences. There were times my mother didn’t have time to go home and grab a few books before heading to the hospital. And she was spending enough time there that she was finishing them at a fast clip. She could just throw her Kindle in her bag and it was one less thing she had to think about. A small (book) light in the storm is better than none at all.
The amount I read print books and e-books has increased exponentially because of my Kindle. I not only read a lot more, but I read a wider variety of content. Before the Kindle, I had to be selective when buying books because, well, I decided to be a struggling writer for a living. Now it's cheaper (and sometimes free) for me to expand my horizons. Also, reading is considered cool again. Is it a shame an e-reader had to be the one to bring about that? Of course. But I’m glad it did.
Finally, Amazon has given voices to writers we may have never heard of before (like me eventually). Some might be good, but legit authors have embraced the e-market such as Bob Mayer and David Morell. Andrew Klavan said on the podcast we're experiencing a revolution in reading and writing. He's right. And revolutions are meant to repeal us forward, not keep us in neutral.
That being said, there is nothing classier, sexier, and more majestic than a full bookcase showing off the books you've read (or that you have yet to read). Plus, when you move, your friends and family need something to do, right? Complaining about moving books is a national institution, so who am I to go against that kind of tradition?
Hassel Velasco: I do agree that too many people are turning away from actual books, which is a sad fact. But it's also fact that most e-readers and their stores make books cheaper and more accessible. More and more people are turning to e-readers to avoid the hassle of driving to a library or book store, not to mention how easy it is becoming to share these books. I may be part of the problem. I just shared The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to my 11-year-old sister who lives 3,000 miles away so now she can comfortably read it on her iPad.
All in all, I do have a great solution to this issue. The same way DVDs and Blu-rays now come with digital downloads, why not make paper books that have digital downloads? I don't know, just a thought.
Be sure to check out:
The Boneyard: Why Being A Good Reader Will Make You A Good Writer
The Boneyard features the best of the Writer’s Bone crew's daily email chain. Yes, we broadened the definition of “best” to make this happen.
What the lobby will look like at Writer's Bone's future office.
Daniel Ford: Here's the problem I've had recently. I can't read one thing at a time. I blame beign in grad school and having to read a bunch of stuff all the time. I'll get hooked on something and then flutter back to something else. I finally finished a bunch of stuff I had been reading for most of 2013, but now the pattern has started again. I mentioned I was reading to Sean at one point I was reading Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (which I just finished!), but really, I’m also reading:
- Johnny Carson, Henry Bushkin
- The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
- Inferno, Max Hastings
- Up in the Old Hotel, Joseph Mitchell
- On Writing, Stephen King
Plus, I have a stack of books that I've been trying not to crack yet, including:
- Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson), Robert Caro
- Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Scott Anderson
- Coolidge, Amity Shlaes
- The Guns at Last Light, The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (The Liberation Trilogy), Rick Atkinson
Okay, fine, I also have a ton of books on my Kindle that are in various states of being read. How often do you read and what is your reading process like?
Sean Tuohy: Mother lover, I read every day. I have to read something or I feel like a junkie who hasn't gotten his fix for the day. I read on the bus going to work in the morning, on the bus going home, and then I try to fit in between half an hour to an hour of reading time before passing out. But I can’t read one book at a time. At the moment, I am reading three books and I have more on the list.
Rachel Tyner: I am always in the middle of multiple books. Right now it is Cuckoo's Calling, The Boss of You (about owning your own business), and a “Charmed” comic book Sean got me (don't tell anyone). I also began and abandoned some books too, which I do intend to go back to, including A Clash of Kings, The Birth of Venus, The Hunt for Red October, Primary Colors, among others.
Wow, this is making me depressed.
My problem with reading is that it is not an activity that you can multitask. I am in the car for three hours a day, and if I want to survive I can't exactly read while in traffic. I usually get home and want to clean, and so I can put on Netflix (or the latest Writer's Bone podcast!) and be productive.
It is such a leisurely, wonderful activity, reading, but I find that I only really sit down to read when I have nothing else I feel like I need to do or comes above it on my priorities. I definitely will make it a goal going forward to read more every day. In 2014, it is my goal to finish all of the books on the list above. No excuses!
Daniel: Okay, fine, I’ll admit it. I’m also reading The Unnamed, a book by Joshua Farris about a guy who can’t stop walking, Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary, Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, and Craig Johnson’sThe Cold Dish.
I’m sucked in to pretty much every one. I have a serious problem.
But you know what? The more I read, the more I want to write. And the more I write, the more I feel like a writer. The more I feel like a writer, the less scotch I have to consume.
How does reading affect your writing? And what is it about Elmore Leonard that makes his prose so irresistible to the point you abandon all other reads and devour each morsel of hardboiled goodness (sorry, I’m sucked into Rum Punch at the moment)?
Dave Pezza: I am a large proponent of studying literature. I don't mean that in the contemporary liberal arts sense of study. Like anything else, you and learn your craft, and then you apply what you have learned. Writing, I feel, is the same way. You read as much as you can and absorb as much as you can. For me, writing and reading have always gone hand in hand. When I am reading a lot and reading more difficult authors or books is most definitely comes out in my writing. Dialogue, diction, syntax, they all naturally draw from your influences. That is how Ernest Hemingway changed American prose. Everyone began to read Hemingway, he became an institution, and more writers naturally absorbed the style.
As far as Leonard is concerned, he is one of the few authors who managed to successfully walk the tightrope between literature and entertainment. He is easy to read, mostly. His themes are rather pulpy. At face value, Leonard should be a dime novel author, but his simplicity isn't derived from lack of skill or thematic development. Leonard writes the American spirit well, the individual well. His characters, for the most part, are simple people, and I mean that in no offensive way. They're motivations and emotions are easily grasped or empathized with or judged. That's why he is easy to devour, he gives you the best of both words. A little crime, a few shootouts, but you still walk away with more than when you started page one.
Daniel: Sean and I talk about libraries in the video that we posted earlier this morning. Our staff consists of some of the younger members of the Millennial generation (you bastards), so do any of you have any memories of going to the library? What are your best and worst experiences related to the library?
Also, Here’s something I just read in Rum Punch that ties into our conversation:
“He said, ‘You name it. We’re living in the arms capital of America, South Florida. You can buy an assault rifle here in less time than it takes to get a library card.’”
Stephanie Schaefer: I loved going to the library. I remember when it was your birthday as a kid you got to "donate" a book to my school library (aka your parents paid for it and you got to put your name in it). Since I have a summer birthday, I donated a book before the end of school. All I remember is that it had ducks wearing rain boots on the cover.
And my town library used to host teddy bear picnics...badass.
Matt DiVenere: Ohhhh, the library. Let's see. In elementary school, my mom signed me up for the reading club that they had. I was able to borrow two books a week for the entire summer, and every time I read a book, I got a prize. I also got a star sticker next to my name on the bulletin board (of course this was the real reason why I was reading, to brag about how many stars I had.). I'm pretty sure I just gave away some of those prizes to my uncle for my cousins to enjoy.
My worst experience would be going to my high school "library" where we spent two hours learning the Dewey decimal system in order to get our books. Clearly, everyone in class already knew it, but it was mandatory to go to this workshop. In high school, the library was either a place to catch up on some sleep between periods or a quick route from one side of the building to the other without having to go all the way around and past all of the teachers. It's two hours that I will never get back in all of my life.
Sadly, I wouldn't go back to a library again until I had to cover an event that happened at a town library in Vermont. It was a local historian group discussing plans for an upcoming parade. That's the last time I've ever been in a library.
Dave: Libraries are paramount of successful democratic culture. The state pays for and operates a free facility dedicated to learning and self-empowerment. Amazing, even in 2014. I had a very close relationship with the Cranston Public Library in Cranston, R.I. as a youngster. I would frequent it on a regular basis, borrowing books and VHS movies, and was even part of a young reader's group there. This early relationship is most likely the reason for my fascination with the mysterious Dewey decimal system and the physical joy I feel when I step into a library or a book store; the sheer amount of knowledge contained in those locations awe me.
Amount a year ago I was coaching volleyball at my old high school and realized I have never been inside the Warwick Public Library, a place I had driven by countless times over the years. At the time I was also interested in writing a pseudo-fictional account of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment's involvement in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and I was scouring Rhode Island libraries for sources. I hadn't used my card in so long that I needed to renew. Admittedly, I don't use the library often. I tend to buy my books now. I like my bookcases in my home with my books, and I like to annotate when I read. It is most likely that we will lose libraries soon, which is a marker of the failure of democracy. I wish there was a way to signify their importance in the digital age, but I can't for the life of me think of a reason why. Could you imagine the Boston library empty of all that knowledge, like a cobra without its venom?
Also, without libraries, my hot, redheaded librarian fantasy also fades away into the realm of impossible. I'll be a very sad man/boy the day that happens. Hopefully it never will.
Sean: That Leonard statement is very true.
Look, when I say South Florida has comic-like crimes I'm not kidding. It’s kind of like the land of misfit toys down there…if all the toys were doing lines of cocaine and buying M4 rifles.
It takes about two to four weeks to get your concealed weapons permit in Florida and that's mostly waiting time. You have to do a four-hour gun safety course, sign some paperwork, and then get finger printed and photographed. You mail this off—along with a $117 check—and in return you get an ID back with your picture and the right to carry a gun.
"Concealed" is a broad word in Florida. I could take my pistol, put it in a zip lock fanny pack, go to a restaurant, and then put the gun holding pack on the table while eating. I have seen that happen before! The man came in with his family, set the pack on the table, and downed chicken wings while watching the FSU game. He freely admitted to having the gun in the pack. This was all within the law.
I decided to get my permit when I was 21. I had a friend who gave me the card for a man named "Chuck" and said his course was only $50, which was $25 less than most places. Yes, my gun safety class was done on the cheap. I showed up at a private gun range and was welcomed in to a nicely outfitted trailer by a man in his fifties with grey hair and a big smile. He stuck out his hand, which I took in to mine and discovered he did not have a thumb. No thumb! Just a stump of what was left on his hand. Mind you in his other hand was a freshly opened can of beer. Chuck it turns out was a Vietnam vet who had been an ex this and ex that. He was an all-around nice guy and a guy who knew his guns.
I know what you are thinking. He got his thumb taken off in ‘Nam, right? Yeah, that didn't happen. Turns out it gotten taken off at the gun range years after ‘Nam. I don't know the details of what happened. Now, I am sitting down at a table with a thumb-less gun safety teacher who is drinking his third beer in less than an hour and the other student who was a woman in her fifties, too much make up, talked about her cats a lot, wore a t-shirt from the musical “Cats,” and was getting a gun permit because her ex beat her up and she wanted to shoot him.
I am going to skip over the part where the teacher pulled out a .45 from a briefcase randomly, the part where the woman showed pictures of her black and blue body post-beating, and the part where the teacher and the woman start hitting on one another. Now, remember when I said the course was four hours? This class was 89 minutes long. He skipped over everything, told some stories, and then gave me some paper saying, "This guy can carry gun safely." I left that trailer very...worried.
Well, after this whole permit-getting adventure, I decided to do the next big step in South Florida gun world and go to a gun show! A gun show looks like a comic book show. People dress up in weird outfits, the tables are filled with useless junk, and the one black guy at the show seems out of place. While waiting in line—yes, there was a long line to enter the gun show—the couple in front of me struck me as odd. Not because they were a good looking couple that was really well dressed, but because the man had a Carbine rifle slung over his back and the woman had a lovely Glock clipped to her belt.
Once I got inside, I spent a couple of hours strolling around looking at every kind of weapon; hand guns, shot guns, assault rifles, World War II weapons, swards, knifes, and ninja stars. I was with a friend who was slightly older than me and he told me I could buy a hand gun. I told him I couldn’t because I did not have a permit yet. He shrugged and said, "I have my permit. I can buy the gun right now and then we go to the parking lot and I sign the paper work over to you and you give me the money."
I asked if that was against the law. He smiled and replied, "Nope."
Yeah, that whole statement had some issues. Let's start with this: No background checks. In Florida, at this time at least, you could go to a gun show and buy a gun without the seller doing a background check as long as you had your permit. That seems like a huge flaw in the system. Second, if I was a felon who needed a gun badly I could pay some fool with a permit to buy the gun for me! Another huge flaw in the system. I decided not to buy a gun that day. Mostly because at one point a man in his seventies yanked a Glock .40 pistol from between his legs and asked if I wanted to buy it.
Florida is insane. I lived there for 10 years. Is it as bad as the 1980's during the cocaine wars? No, it's much better now, but that doesn't mean that crazy left.
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