Long Live Bookstores!

You’ve probably heard that bookstores are on the verge of going the way of the dodo. Someday we’ll be telling our grandkids about them. You see, there were these places that had shelves filled with books. And the books were made out of paper… The other day I was at a thrift shop with my kids. They simply could not get over the existence of typewriters. How do those keys work exactly? And what’s with the ribbon? Also they were enamored by the dialing phones. So, wait, you have to stick your finger in the hole and drag it all the way around? Geez. That would suck if your phone number had a bunch of 9s and 0s.

My husband and I felt like dinosaurs.

Yes, it’s true, children, bookstores used to be all the rage. And the bigger the store the better. When I lived in Memphis in the early ’90’s there were three warehoused-sized bookstores within a two-mile radius. That doesn’t count the local bookstore the chains were copying, the one I worked at when I was in grad school, Davis Kidd. (Now it’s called Booksellers at Laurelwood.) The first time I walked into that place I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The. Biggest. Bookstore. I. Had. Ever. Seen. 100,000 books. Comfy chairs. Cool artsy posters on the wall. It was The place to hang out.

All the workers were hip and brilliant and quirky, each one an expert in his or her area, so the history alcove was manned by a PhD student in history. And the math section was shelved by a math genius. The religion and philosophy guy gave me a tour on my first day of work. He waved his arm at the bibles then walked me around the alcove. Religious texts, world religions, philosophy, new age, satanic beliefs. “The bible thumpers end up back to back with the atheists,” he pointed out with a smirk. “And over here are the books on ESP. Funny, no one ever asks where this section is…” I cracked up and he stared at me like I was a flake. I was working on my MFA in poetry at the time so I was kind of a flake. Come to think of it, maybe I still am.

The section I was in charge of was romance. Since I only worked part-time, it was a good genre for me. Not much upkeep except making sure the rows of bodice rippers stayed in alphabetical order. The other clerks knew I hated romance novels and took every opportunity to mock me and my charges. One time the accomplished literary fiction guy led a customer my way. “She wants a recommendation, Jody,” he said, “from your romance section. I told her you were a total fan.”

I ignored that and asked the customer in my most polite, salesperson tone: “Would you like a book about a beautiful woman and a man who’s really handsome but kind of mean to her and they have all sorts of issues and then they realize they really love each other?”

“Oh, yes!” said the woman. “That sounds like a good one.”

With all the smart-aleck clerks looking on, I waved my hand at the entire romance section. “There it is,” I said. They probably should’ve fired me for that. In addition to being kind of flaky, I was snarky back then too.

Davis Kidd had an information desk in the middle of the store. We got the strangest questions at that desk:

“What’s a good place to eat Mexican food?”

“Um, I don’t know. But I’ll show you our selection of Mexican cookbooks.”

Or “Where can I buy white gloves?”

“Um.” I tried to show the customer the fashion and style books but she waved me off. No, she didn’t want a book about gloves, she wanted to know where to buy actual white gloves.

“Ma’am,” I said, “I have no idea. Maybe Macys?”

She glared at me then pointed at the sign over the desk. “That says information,” she said.

“Information for the store,” I told her. “Not information about life in general.”

I probably should’ve gotten fired for that too.

We weren’t allowed to read while we were on the clock. I guess that goes without saying. But sometimes I snuck away and hid in an alcove and read anyway. The fiction guy usually caught me but he was always nice about it. I bought tons of books the couple of years I worked at Davis Kidd. Many of them line the shelves in our house today, all alphabetized, of course, and by genre, just like in the store. My family used to tease me about that, but hey! It makes it easier to find what you’re looking for.

I don’t want bookstores to go away. I heard the author Ann Patchett talking on NPR a few weeks ago about Parnassus, the bookstore she just opened in Nashville. The big question was why she was taking such a risk—opening a bookstore, in this economy, when people aren’t even sure that books are going to be around much longer. Ann said while it’s true that the big bookstore model might not work anymore, she’s betting that there is still a market for smaller ones. Maybe things had gone a little over the top with cafés and selling non-book stuff like candles and expensive pens and designer purses.

She’s probably right. And I hope she’s right about her new bookstore. Because shouldn’t there still be a place where people who love to read can browse alongside other people who love to read? Where you can ask for information about whatever thoughts pop into your head? And where an old woman picking out a new bible has to brush past a biker flipping through a copy of The Anarchists Cookbook?

Red Riding Hood, Tattoos, and Other Gifts of Charity

Saturday my family volunteered to help out at a Christmas party for underprivileged kids. It was a nice party. Holiday songs played. A Santa sat up on the stage so kids could sit on him. There was food and crafts and games. My daughter and I decorated kids with tattoos. Turns out this was kind of stressful. Some of the tattoos didn’t latch on properly. Only half the candy cane stuck. Or one of the elf arms got lopped off. The kids didn’t typically like a wet, cold sponge pressed on the back of their hands. Or on their cheeks. Or for one kid, smack dab in the middle of his forehead, which ended up sparking a momentary trend in snowman tattoo placement.

My husband and I had gone out to buy gifts the week before. His company sponsored the party, and his office had contributed donations, but it was up to us to purchase the items on the wish list. The little girl we’d drawn wished for a coat and gloves. Also a “doll baby.” That’s the way she wrote it, and I don’t know why but it killed me, that wording. We weren’t allowed to spend too much money (to make things fair, the organizers said) so there were elements of resourcefulness and planning involved. How could we afford to get the coat AND the doll baby without going over the limit? We managed, though, and I was hoping to watch the little girl open the presents, but we didn’t get to stay for the gift opening. It was just as well. I think the organizers wanted the gifts to seem like they’d come from Santa. Instead of from well-meaning, over-blessed, seasonal do-gooders.

What kids want to have it pointed out to them that they’re needy? I remember going to the bank with my mother when I was seven years old. In the lobby there was a display of what seemed like hundreds of dolls. Each one was dressed up in a different outfit. A lacy ball gown. A hula skirt. Flowery nightshirt and bathrobe. It took a long inspection for me to realize it was the same doll wearing different clothes. I stared at them longingly while my mother went about her banking business then I asked her if I could have one and she told me they were for the needy. I’m not sure I understood what that meant except that I couldn’t have a doll. And I didn’t understand it later when that Christmas, I DID get one of the dolls, the one dressed like Little Red Riding Hood. That was the year my father died and my mother was instantly a young single mother with three kids under the age of seven. Maybe she hadn’t realized we were needy either.

I was having flashbacks of Red Riding Hood when I was carefully pressing tattoos on little kids’ cheeks and they would flounce off to grin at themselves in the mirror and I would pray the tattoo wouldn’t peel off while their parents smiled wearily and didn't look me in the eye.

A few weeks ago I read the book Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. It’s a true story about a guy named Paul Farmer, a Harvard doctor who volunteers most of his time at a clinic he started in Haiti.

The book is alternately depressing and inspiring. It’s depressing because there is so much need in the world, and these needy people are ordinary people just like any other people who for the most part are forgotten and ignored and suffering and sometimes dying because no one is helping them. And it’s inspiring because Paul Farmer, one ordinary but clearly brilliant and caring man, is doing everything he can to save them. And then it’s depressing again because you read this book, or at least I did, thinking what the heck is wrong with me, sitting around worrying about inane meaningless stuff like stupid book deals when there are real people right now out there in the world starving and sick and in pain?

And what did I do with this realization? I took a few hours to shop for a coat and stick snowflake tattoos on kids’ faces. Not sure how much of a difference that made in the ultimate scheme of life. Or who knows. I really liked my Red Riding Hood doll. It was clear to me when I opened it the Christmas I was seven that it was the best doll from the bank lobby display. I don’t know who donated it, who sewed the darling jumper and cape and hood. It was a small thing but it meant something to me, a needy little girl who didn’t know she was needy.

On Black Holes and Alleged Book Deals

I don’t understand Quantum Mechanics. Lately my son’s been giving the family mini lessons at the dinner table but the bits and pieces that I manage to grasp fall away shortly after the meal is eaten. My mind is a sieve for stuff like science and math. Blame this on a history of scary and/or uninspiring nuns and a dash of an inferiority complex back when I was in high school (cough cough) over twenty years ago.

My son patiently and excitedly explains his latest insights in what I assume is a perfectly understandable manner. But what I hear sounds like this: “particles…light….Einstein said….so force will…something something….a dead cat…” Then he gives up and directs the rest of the conversation to his father.

But every once in a while a concept seeps in. I hate to say this, because it will make me seem very self-centered, but it’s usually a concept that relates to, well, ME. So here’s the background info—and if you’ve been following this blog even sporadically, you can probably guess what I’m about to say next—I’m waiting but pretending I’m not waiting for news about a potential book deal. This WAITING is slowly driving me mad. Every day I wake up not thinking about it while actually thinking about it. I go about my morning viscerally shoving it out of my mind and mentally patting myself on the back about my cheery upbeat attitude as I make breakfast and pack lunches. Then it’s down to my cave of an office to fire up the stuttering/near broken lap top to further not think about it. I do this by writing another blog. And doodling around in my journal. I make up projects. Writing exercises. And rereading snippets of inspirational writing books. Why don’t I just start another novel? But Christmas is only a few weeks away! There’s no point! These are just a few of my fun mental battles.

Then it’s time for yoga and further not thinking about It That Shall Not Be Named. Maybe it will happen today is the thought that burbles up during my mediation. Which I quickly tamp down until it’s time for lunch! And more writing in the office. But I’m out of my pajamas now, so I’ve got that going for me. I know, I’ll enter a writing contest. I’ll write a poem. No. I must get the heck out of the house. I simply can’t sit one more second in front of my computer blinking at my empty email box.

I haul myself to the library. To the post office. To the grocery store. My metaphorical hands are pressed against my ears. I’m not thinking about it. I’m not thinking about it. Because if I DO think about it, what I think is: it’s not going to happen today. And there isn’t much of a leap to get to the next step: It’s not going to happen ever.

But at this point you may be thinking: Wait. Wasn’t she talking about Quantum Mechanics?

Don’t worry. I didn’t forget. So it has something to do with black holes. Apparently, (and forgive me if I get any of this wrong; it’s really really likely that I will.) if you are heading toward a black hole, you will, at a certain point, cross the black hole threshold and fall into it. BUT if someone is watching you fall into a black hole, he won’t ever see you cross over. From his vantage point, you just keep getting closer and closer. Forever. There was more to my son’s explanation and now that I think about it, this may not have anything to do with Quantum Mechanics. I had stopped taking information in and was simply picturing myself slipping closer and closer to a black hole. But the black hole in my mind was the %&#*%^ book deal.

It seems that there is an actual scientific reason why time has slowed down and collapsed in on itself and I am seemingly no closer to reaching my goals than I have ever been.

Whew. So that’s a relief.

Why I Won't Write a Bad Review

Someone asked me the other day if I LOVE every book I read. They noticed that all of the book reviews I do are so gushingly positive. Yes, that’s true. But what I haven’t been mentioning is that for every book I blog about, there are a good four or five others that I don’t review. I read a lot of books. And sadly, most of what I read isn’t that great. These unreviewed books seem to fall into two categories, each kind of depressing to me as an aspiring writer.

1. Simply bad. These are the ones that I question how in the world they ever got published. They’re over-written and/or poorly written. The characters are stereotypical, cardboard cutouts. The plots are plots I’ve seen before. Predictable. Boring. The English major in me has an extremely hard time closing a book without finishing it. But this year I have done that several times, ignoring the accompanying twinges of guilt.

2. Decent but “meh.” Somehow these books depress me even more than the badly written ones. There’s nothing wrong with them. They just lack something. Heart, maybe. I heard an editor talk about this once at a conference. She said she could work with an author who had issues with plot or characterization or even grammatical problems. But if the “heart” wasn’t in the book, there was nothing she could do to save it. Heart is one of those elements that’s hard to explain, but you know it when you feel it. A character’s voice that immediately resonates with you. Maybe the story meanders or nothing much happens but somehow you want to keep reading anyway. Finish a book like that and it’s still tugging at you. Meh books disappear the second you put them down. I feel sad about those books. Somebody worked on them. Somebody loved them. And yet my only reaction in the end is: Yeah. Whatever.

I used to review books for a regional magazine. The editor made it clear that my job was to promote authors from that region. This meant no bad reviews. If I truly didn’t like the book, he said, I could simply write up a summary of it. That was fine with me. Until I came to a book that was so terrible I could barely plow through it. I don’t want to get into a big discussion here about self-published books, but this one took the stereotypical self-published prize. I read the whole damn thing out of some sense of obligation. (The magazine didn’t pay me for writing reviews. The payment was a copy of the book.) I tried to write up a summary. I really did. But every sentence veered into snarky territory and then I started worrying about my name being on top of that review. What if someone bought the book because of me? I just couldn’t go through with it.

When the owner of the children’s bookstore Cover to Cover asked me to review advanced copies of young adult books for her, remembering that previous experience, I made the deal that I would send her a short review of every book she gave me but only blog about the ones I really liked. I have nothing against literary critics. I appreciate their analyses of books—both the positive and negative. You’re not going to get better if you don’t have someone pointing out areas of weakness or plot holes or whatever. But being a writer, I understand what goes into creating a book, and I’m not going to spend my time or energy crafting a negative response to someone’s precious manuscript, no matter how crappy I think it is.

So for whatever it’s worth, if I review a book on this site, you can rest assured that it’s pretty darned good. (just my opinion, of course) I’m not getting paid. I don’t know any of the writers. And I have no reason to plug them. Except that something about the book stood out to me and I hope it might appeal to you as well.

Addicted to Revenge

It’s Wednesday and this fall that means one thing: the latest installment of my guilty, TV-watching pleasure—ABC’s new soap-opera-y, over-the-top drama Revenge comes on.

I love this show and I’m only a little embarrassed to say so. Yes, I’ll admit there is a part of me that likes looking at attractive people cavorting around the beaches and mansions and yachts of the Hamptons. And I enjoy the ridiculous plot twists and over-acting and shocking hook-ups. My teen daughter and I pop a bowl of popcorn and curl up on the couch together, excitedly gasping during commercials and trying to pull the other members of the family in. (Typically, husband is at the computer, but he occasionally looks up when there’s a climactic shift in the music to ask what the heck is going on. Or son ambles in with his nightly bowl of cereal to make a derogatory remark about inane TV shows. My daughter and I roll our eyes. This show is GOOD, we insist.)

In case you haven’t tuned in, I will say here that it is not too late to jump on board. You can watch the earlier episodes online and catch right up with us. And now I will attempt to analyze the appeal. Because I am a writer who prides myself on having some taste in entertainment offerings. And because watching this show is a kind of assignment for me. You see, all of the necessary aspects of a story are present in Revenge, and watching it religiously can therefore improve my own story-telling abilities. (If I keep telling myself this, I might eventually believe it.)

It starts, I think, with a proper hook. The minute we meet the main character Emily Thorne (spoiler alert—this is not her real name) we are introduced to her quest. Emily’s father was framed in a spectacular way by his wealthy and powerful friends for a terrible crime he did not commit. And now Emily is out to seek revenge on every last one of them. She’s got a photo of the smiling, smug group and each episode she takes one down in a satisfying way and marks an X across his face.

So that’s fun.

The first episode began at the end, in a kind of flash-forward. A man is (possibly) shot on the beach during a Labor Day/engagement party. It’s Emily’s fiancé and we watch her react to the news and then we rewind back to the beginning of the summer when Emily is just moving into the Hamptons and setting her diabolical revenge plan into motion. I love this framework for a story because it gives the sense that the writers know where the plot is going. I’ve gotten sucked into complicated programs before (ahem, Lost) and the build up of sub plots and introductions of characters, etc., works up to a certain point in grabbing the audience’s attention. But eventually there has to be a pay off equal to or greater than the building up section. It’s nice if the writers have some idea how they’re going to tie everything together. Otherwise you have the sneaking suspicion they’re making it up as they go. Not a great tactic, by the way, for any kind of story creation.

No story, no matter how cleverly plotted, can last long without interesting characters. True, the ones in Revenge are exaggerations (I hope) of reality, but these people are much more complex than you realize at first. Take “Emily.” We are rooting for her to destroy her father’s enemies, but there are many times when she seems to go too far. And we don’t know her true feelings about anyone, including the clueless boyfriend/fiancé Daniel. The main antagonist in this drama is Daniel’s mother, Victoria Grayson. You really really want to hate this woman, but somehow in every episode there’s a little glimmer of humanity glinting behind her smirky smile. It’s like that with all the characters. One week we applaud Emily’s destruction of former supermodel, Lydia. But a few weeks later that poor woman is thrown out of a window and somehow survives. It’s hard not to feel sorry for her when Victoria keeps her bedridden and drugged in a back bedroom.

The writers could’ve rested on their laurels with the cool premise and complicated characters, but each week they up the ante, introducing more potential enemies for Emily and flashing intriguing pieces of the past at us. Victoria was having an affair with Emily’s father. Da da dum! And Emily’s reform school roommate, the one she switched identities with, is back, after murdering the Grayson’s evil security guard. Da da dum! And Daniel’s best buddy from Harvard is really a sociopathic lying hustler. Da da dum!!!

Each show is more brilliant and funny and ridiculous than the last. And I for one will be eagerly watching it all unfold tonight. (Pen in hand. To further conduct my story-building research. Not.)

Not Just Sitting Around Eating Bon-Bons

One of the best things I ever got out of attending a writing workshop was a new friend. It was July 2008 at the amazingly inspirational and life-changing Children’s Writing Conference at Chautauqua and I was pretty much at a crossroads in my writing life. Did I want to keep writing for children? was one of the many questions I had going into it. That conference is on the expensive side and it was hard to justify spending money like that on myself, specifically on a hobby that didn’t seem to be going anywhere in the career sense.

I clicked with a lot of people that week, some just dipping a toe into the writing pool and others already treading water on the deep end. I was searching for a person somewhere in the middle, maybe one who was ready to pull off the floaties and dunk her head under. I found her waiting in line at a porta-potty. Donna was an aspiring picture book writer, and she had a couple of novels under her belt too and they sounded interesting to me. We had a few things in common. Kids sort of the same age. (But she has four!) We’d both been English teachers, and we were spending our child-raising years as uber-PTA volunteers. We nervously exchanged manuscripts that day.

I say nervously because there is always this element of fear when you first look at someone’s writing (and know she is evaluating yours too). The biggest worry is that you won’t like it and how will you tell her without hurting her feelings? Ideally, you’d both be at a similar level and looking for the same kind feedback. Up to this point I'd never found someone like that, so I wasn’t holding my breath.

But, whew. What Donna wrote was pretty darned good and apparently she thought my stuff was worthwhile too. After the conference we started emailing each other and this correspondence quickly turned into a twice daily check-in. Every morning we email each other our goals for the day and every afternoon we write what we call our "accountability." At the end of the year I scrolled through all those emails and found that they were a record of Donna's and my writing journey and our friendship. There are our goals, of course, but also snippets of daily life, books we’ve read and errands we’ve run. Stuff we make for dinner. Funny and/or annoying things are kids and hubbies do.

Once Donna wrote that a friend of hers wondered what she did all day at home. The implication was that Donna must be sitting around eating bon-bons. She certainly wasn’t out working. Or cleaning her house. That accusation became a joke to us. Yes, we were sitting around eating bon-bons all day. That’s what writers do. For a Christmas present that year I compiled all of our emails and had them printed and bound on one of those self-published book sites. I titled the book Sitting Around Eating Bon-Bons and even used a picture of bon-bons for the cover art.

Now it’s an annual tradition, that correspondence book. I’m editing Book Three this week and it’s inspiring to see how far Donna and I have come since we met. I can’t count how many times we’ve talked each other out of quitting. And when one of us has any kind of success, the other feels it just as much, if not more so. Writing can be such a lonely activity. Also frustrating and exciting and heartbreaking and amazing. It’s a million times better when you have another person to share the journey with. All I can say is thank goodness Donna and I had the same inclination to head for the porta-potty when we did.

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part (or not)

I wasn’t going to write about this, the potential book deal, PBD for short, that’s been pulsing in the back of my mind for weeks now, flaring up here and there during quiet moments or simmering on the back burner when I’ve been distracted by out-of-town visitors. But there are no distractions now. The visitors have departed. The carcass of leftover turkey has been picked clean. Yesterday I threw out the remaining plop of congealed stuffing because no one in my family could bear to look at it anymore. Today hubby is at work, and children are at school, and I am back in my office/guest room and there is nothing much to do but THINK about the PBD while at the same time trying NOT to THINK about it.

I wasn’t going to write about this because I have the niggling, superstitious feeling that writing about a possible dream-come-true may jinx, curse, doom (insert you negative verb here) the whole thing and I will be left looking like a fool/hopeless dreamer/naïve beginner. It seems silly to talk about something that hasn’t happened and possibly won’t happen. Don’t count your chickens, etc. So I was going to wait and not discuss it and then if/when IT happened, I could just burst out with the good news and cry happy tears on my keyboard and say thankyouverymuch to my supporters, yadda yadda ya.

But I started this blog because I wanted to create a picture of what life is like for an unpublished, persevering writer. I envisioned a person like the Me of fifteen years ago reading it, a person just starting on the journey and not knowing what she is getting into. And I think that person should know what it feels like at this point, when there is a PBD glimmering just ahead.

It feels like you're a nervous, pessimistic wreck.

I’ve heard stories from people, writers who came soooo close and then watched their chances slip away. I can imagine what this feels like. I was putzing around the grocery store the other day and I had a vivid flash of myself getting the call, but it wasn’t the one where your agent tells you there’s an offer on your book, it was the call where she says they changed their minds. Actually, this would probably happen in an email now that I think about it. Which is why I dread opening mine lately. In the supermarket I let the whole vision unfold. My few minutes of frustrated tears. My day or two shuffling around the house wearily wondering if I should just quit for good. The well-meaning reactions of family and friends. (They’re comforting yet also sort of like, yeah, that sucks, but did you really think this was going to happen to you?) And then I saw myself plunked out in my office opening up a new file and starting another book. Because that’s what I do in the face of rejection. I write. This whole vision flashed at me in the grocery store aisles and I went through the entire gamut of emotions and came to the check-out feeling completely fine. It hit me that I know exactly how I’d react because rejection and failure have happened to me before. Been there. Done that. I keep writing anyway.

But success. Now that is something I have no real experience with.

Seemingly pointless digression: Last year my son got cut from the lacrosse team at his school. It was a very discouraging experience for him, to put it mildly. He’d worked hard, attended grueling practices, done all of the things the coach suggested to get better. The way they tell the kids if they made the team or not is they have all of them come to the gym and then the coaches call each kid in one by one to have a little talk. It seems excruciating to me, that wait out there in the gym, the guys all looking at each other and wondering who’s in and who’s not. But my son told me the moment the coach called his name wasn’t too bad. It was the moment when he still had a chance to be on the team, so there was this feeling of expectation and possibility and hope and he could see himself in the uniform and running out onto the field in front of the cheering fans.

He got cut. But that moment right before he found out was the closest he was going to be to being on the team so he let his dream in and he basked in it.

I have no idea what’s going to happen with the book deal, but at this moment I think I’ll bask in its potential glory. And I promise from now on I’ll share every gory and/or delicious detail with you.