by Lynne | Jan 22, 2013 | Uncategorized
Writing and Art. Are Both Subjective?
After visiting an art museum recently, I began to wonder about the similarities between art and writing. Fine art, as in a painting, can be considered subjective in terms of good vs. bad. What’s pleasing for one individual is not necessarily for another. You might adore Renoir, I might love Kandinsky. Artists and art critics, however, do have their own standards about good art. These revolve around color, texture, line, impasto and chiaroscuro (shadows and light) among other qualities. But in general, most people would agree that art is subjective. (I might fail to see how a large canvas simply painted red is art, but if you like it, well . . .)
History proves this subjectivity. In the 1930s and 40s, the Nazis not only murdered people, they exterminated art, artifacts, and literature. Hitler and his comrades (Goering, in particular) decided which pieces of art were good and which were bad. To them, the old masters, artists that portrayed life as it really was, like Rembrandt, were worthy. The modernists, impressionists and post-impressionists were entartete kunst – degenerate and despicable, destined for flames. (It is worth noting that in 1937, an exhibition titled Entartete Kunst opened in Munich. The exhibition was designed to ridicule creative works by such artists as Picasso, because it insulted German womanhood. Ironically, it turned out to be one of the most popular museum exhibitions ever displayed, with queues out the door from opening to closing, every day. )
Beyond art, the Nazis attacked literature. Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, and Theodore Dreiser, considered socialists and “corrupting foreign influences,” were among the authors whose books were burned. In the eyes of Hitler, it was the social impacts of the writing that condemned them to the fire.
So, what about prose? Is it subjective like art? Are there standards for quality writing? What are those standards, then, and who determines them? Perhaps, it is merely the telling of a powerful story in a compelling manner. But what about proper grammar and spelling, sentence structure, dialogue, description, and character development?
It’s also no doubt a function of the time period in which they are written. How does Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” hold up to Anne Rice’s “Interview With a Vampire” today? Is one objectively “better” than the other? Then there are classics like “Ulysses” by James Joyce where grammar, sentence structure, et al, are lost in a stream of consciousness. Can this prose be likened to a painting by, say, Salvador Dali, where you have to work to comprehend it?
Bottom line: Is writing simply subjective? Can books, like art, be judged good or bad . . . based on the eye of the beholder?
What do you think?
by Lynne | Jan 15, 2013 | Uncategorized
Let’s Be Practical
The house was dark. It was raining outside, chilly inside. I had no appointments, no particular place to be for a rare afternoon. I didn’t feel like writing (my book, that is.) I didn’t feel like Facebooking or Twittering or LinkedIn-ing.
So I curled up on the couch with what I hoped would be a good book.
“The Emperor of All Maladies,” is a beautifully written non-fiction tome on cancer. 550 plus pages. Pulitzer prize winner. I bought it in an expensive paperback version because it has a series of picture plates inside, which are easier to examine than in an e-book. I also bought it because I had a gift certificate from my in-laws to Barnes and Noble. And I bought it because, well, Pulitzers should be read in traditional book style.
So on this dark, dreary day, I propped myself up on my soft leather couch with this amazing book. (It really is wonderful!) But I had to get up and readjust the lights in the room because there was no Nook glowlight in this edition, and I had to find a cushion to lean the book on because cancer is so heavy – physically and figuratively. Honestly, did you ever try reading a large book on your lap in dim light with old eyes?
After an hour or so, my eyes and my arms got tired, so I switched to a light (inexpensive indie) mystery I had started on my Nook. Ahh, the glowlight made it a delight to read and it was so light in my hands, I wound up dropping it a few times. But then I forgot who one of the characters was and wanted to go back to the first chapter to check. Hmm. Not as easy as flipping the pages. When I finally returned to my current page, I got a signal that the battery was low. Ach.
Which book version is more practical? That’s up to you to decide.
For me, it’s time for a nap while my Nook re-charges.
by Lynne | Jan 8, 2013 | Uncategorized
Visualize Your Scenes
Years ago I saw a terrific IMAX film called To The Limit. In it was a scene I never forgot. A champion downhill skier was sitting on top of a mountain, skis and poles by her side. Her eyes were closed and she was moving her arms and upper body as if she were skiing downhill. She was picturing the course with its turns and moguls as she traveled down the mountain in her mind. She was teaching her brain to prepare for those bumps and curves by visualizing the course over and over. Something similar to muscle memory ie: when you play an instrument and your fingers seem to move on their own, almost apart from your brain.
This visualization technique is crucial in writing. Close your eyes. Picture the scene you’re about to compose. Perhaps it’s a cop getting ready to interview a suspect. From Val McDermid’s The Torment of Others, visualize Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan:
“Carol stared through the two-way mirror at the man in the interview room. Ronald Edmund Alexander looked nothing like the popular image of a paedophile. He wasn’t shifty or sweaty. He wasn’t dirty or sleazy. He looked exactly like a middle manager who lived in the suburbs with a wife and two children. There was no dirty raincoat, just an off-the-peg suit, an unassuming charcoal grey. Pale blue shirt, burgundy tie with a thin grey stripe. Neat haircut, no vain attempt to hide the way he was thinning on top.”
Picture the room and a man seated there through the glass. Visualize the suspect, very possibly a child molester, and feel Carol’s frustration at his very ordinariness, the exact antithesis of what she expects a monster to look like. Could she be wrong? Are we being misled by his description?
Follow Harry Bosch in Michael Connelly’s Reversal, when he makes a trip to Fryman Canyon Park, an unexpected natural enclave above the madness of LA:
“Fryman was a rugged, inclined park with steep trails and flat-surface parking and observation area on top and just off Mulholland. Bosch had been there before on cases and was familiar with its expanse. He pulled to a stop with his car pointing north and the view of the San Fernando Valley spread before him. The air was pretty clear and the vista stretched all the way across the valley to the San Gabriel Mountains. The brutal week of storms that had ended January had cleared the skies out and the smog was only now climbing back into the valley’s bowl.”
Harry has been here before and is familiar with the area, its quirky smog patterns and unpredictable weather. Now, so are you.
Visualization is more than “description.” It’s about engaging the senses (see an earlier blog I wrote about this) to get a visceral feel for the scene. Picture a brown leather couch sitting atop a Persian rug in front of a teak coffee table. Now give the couch history – every crack in the leather represents a different house it has lived in or a different person who curled up on its soft hide. It was loved, it was beaten, it was ruined. Even a couch can have personality. What does it say about its owners?
Visualize a woman. She’s not just a blond in a blue dress, wearing high heels and red lipstick. She’s a woman, teetering outside a motel room, black roots showing through the teased mass, blue dress torn at her hem, lipstick smeared like a clown. Picture her. There. . . there she is. You can see her clearly. You know her.
Write your scenes as if they were movies. Let us see what’s happening through your words.
You’re the director.
Direct.
by Lynne | Dec 31, 2012 | Uncategorized
The First Five Words
In 2000, Literary Agent, Noah Lukeman wrote The First Five Pages. In this thin little gem on writing, he said that if the first five pages didn’t hold the reader, it was bye bye book.
I believe that even before you get to the first five pages, you must be grabbed by the title. When I browse a bookstore (the ones that are still are business) or surf online for a new book, the title is what captures my attention. (The book cover design is also important, but I’ll leave that for another blog.)
Let’s peruse the market to see what I mean. Some book titles say it loud and clear and leave you with no doubt what the book is about. David McCullough is a good one for non-fiction: 1776, John Adams, The Johnstown Flood, Truman. No question about what the subject of each book is. Even novels can be pretty straight forward – the title hints at the story, although often more subtly. Interview With a Vampire is just that. The Affair, Hostage, even The Patriot gives you a hint about the novel’s plot.
Some books on writing use clever titles to attract you, but you still know what kind of advice they’re going to offer. Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, and i never metaphor i didn’t like by Dr. Mardy Grothe both use humor and a play on words to get their subjects across.
Humorous titles are a great gimmick to attract people to your book, but only if the book lives up to the humor. For those Catholic readers, this may resonate: Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? by John Powers. I’m not even going to touch that one. How about this: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James Loewen. Lies about anything always pique the imagination.
Here are a few titles that caught my attention while I was researching my books. The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell: Sex in the Civil War by Thomas P. Lowry, M.D. Another universal topic of fascination – sex.
When I was researching my book on the Salem witch trials, I ran across this one and laughed out loud. Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England by Bruce Daniels. Kind of an oxymoron. Still, I bought it and the book was incredibly interesting and helpful. Had the title been just the second part without “Puritans at Play,” I’m not sure I would have noticed it.
There are the titles that use seductive, albeit overused, words like “code,” “enigma,” “paradigm,” “dilemma” to proclaim a mystery or a conspiracy is hiding between the jacket covers. Think The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.
Other techniques. Robert Bloch’s Psycho hits you in the face with images of a mad man or woman, while Baldacci’s Absolute Power makes you think – who has the power, why, how, what does he do with it? As you read, the title becomes clearer and clearer until, whack, it too, hits you in the face.
Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City is a beautiful play on words. Black against white, good against evil. In Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, she captures the spirit of one man, a World War II hero, in one powerful word.
My first book, The Triangle Murders began its life as Tenement. When my critique group suggested I come up with something a little more mystery-genre rather than literary since the story is about murder, arson, and foul play. So, I went with a simple “murders” using the name of the factory that formed the backdrop, The Triangle.
When I worked on my Civil War mystery, myriad plot elements fought for the title: different time periods, history, forensics, photography- both civil war and digital, massive conspiracies, and so on. It took a while, but Time Exposure was the result.
My next book, due out in the spring, was originally titled Provenance and posed a challenge. It’s about the Nazi confiscation of art and a missing Van Gogh painting (in actuality still missing.) I thought Provenance was perfect, until it dawned on me that not everyone would be familiar with the word. They might think it was a city in Rhode Island or the end of Cape Cod. Good grief. Plus the word might conjure up “art” but not necessarily mystery or murder. So I changed the title to Deadly Provenance. Will it work?
You tell me.
by Lynne | Dec 23, 2012 | Uncategorized
War and Peace in One Day
When it started, World War I was predicted to last only a few weeks. (The same was true of the Civil War, by the way.) Instead, by December of 1914, WWI had already claimed nearly a million lives. In fact, over fifteen million died in a war that dragged on for four miserable years.
But a remarkable thing happened on December 24, 1914. The front fell silent except for the singing of Silent Night. A truce! There are many examples of truces during wars, but none as famous as this one. The Christmas Truce of 1914.
In the Ypres region of Belgium on Christmas Eve, guns stopped, leaving a deathly silence across the fields. Then suddenly the British watched in astonishment as Germans began to set tiny trees along their trench lines. Soon a familiar tune with unfamiliar words carried across No Man’s Land, the battered and desolate space between the enemies. Silent Night. Stille Nacht.
Soon the British were singing along with the Germans. Soldiers on both sides crawled out of their trenches to meet in the middle and greet their enemy. They exchanged cigarettes and souvenirs. Perhaps a drink or two. And they collected their dead and wounded, carrying them back to their respective sides.
Peace for the day. Only one day because the next day they were back killing each other. Is there something wrong with this picture?
The story of the Christmas Truce came to my attention after reading the non-fiction, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, by Adam Hochschild, an amazing story of WWI. I highly recommend. http://www.amazon.com/End-All-Wars-Rebellion-1914-1918/dp/B008PIC0T8/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356046840&sr=1-1&keywords=to+end+all+wars
I’ll leave you with this thought. If Christmas can bring together mortal enemies for a day, why not for a week, a month, a year or longer? Or forever?
I hope you click on the youtubes below. They will make you sad and happy but most of all hopeful. Wishing you a happy holiday and a prosperous and healthy New Year.
Belleau Wood: Christmas Truce by Garth Brooks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuD-hwDa8YQ
Christmas Truce 1914, Music with captions to tell the story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsCpLMPI7IY
Behind the Christmas Story: The Christmas Truce http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgLcvjA8NDk
Christmas Truce of 1914. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p05E_ohaQGk
by Lynne | Dec 16, 2012 | Uncategorized
Reflecting on Tragedy
Following my blog last week “Learning From Our Mistakes . . . or Not,” and the grim tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, it appears, once again, that we never learn from history. As I reflect on this latest tragedy, sorting through profound emotions, I yearn to see how this incident fits into the history of such events. Perhaps following the trail of this madness will give me a foundation for understanding our society from a new, albeit, dark point of view, with the small hope that what I learn will make me a better writer.
This doesn’t mean I’m going to include a tragedy like this in my books, however, observing people’s actions and reactions to this sort of horror makes for pure character building.
I did a quick fact check on the historical angle and here’s what I learned from sources like the Washington Post.
Besides the December 14 massacre in Newtown, here are similar tragic events in history:
Dec. 11, 2012: Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, opens fire in a shopping mall in suburban Portland, Ore., shooting numerous rounds from a semiautomatic rifle, ultimately killing two people and seriously injuring another.
July 20, 2012: Twelve people are killed when a gunman enters an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, releases a canister of gas and then opens fire during opening night of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.” James Holmes, a 24-year-old former graduate student at the University of Colorado, has been charged in the deaths.
Jan. 8, 2011: A gunman kills six people and wounds 13 others, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in a shooting spree outside a grocery store in Tucson, Ariz. Doctors say Jared Lee Loughner, who has been charged in the deaths, suffers from schizophrenia.
April 3, 2009: A 41-year-old man opened fire at an immigrant community center in Binghamton, N.Y., killing 11 immigrants and two workers. Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant and a former student at the center, killed himself as police rushed to the scene.
March 10, 2009: Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people — including his mother, four other relatives, and the wife and child of a local sheriff’s deputy — across two rural Alabama counties. He then killed himself.
April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, 23, kills 32 people and himself on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va.
April 20, 1999: Students Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves in the school’s library.
Oct. 16, 1991: A deadly shooting rampage took place in Killeen, Texas, as George Hennard opened fire at a Luby’s Cafeteria, killing 23 people before taking his own life. 20 others were wounded in the attack.
Aug. 20, 1986: Pat Sherrill, 44, a postal worker who was about to be fired, shoots 14 people at a post office in Edmond, Okla. He then kills himself.
July 12, 1976: Edward Charles Allaway, a custodian in the library of California State University, Fullerton, fatally shot seven fellow employees and wounded two others.
July 18, 1984: James Oliver Huberty, an out-of-work security guard, kills 21 people in a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, Calif. A police sharpshooter kills Huberty.
Aug. 1, 1966: Charles Whitman opened fire from the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin, killing 16 people and wounding 31.
This isn’t by any means a complete list but if you look at the dates, there are six significant rampages in a 30-odd year period between 1966 and 1999 and seven (including Newtown) in a recent five-year period between 2007 and 2012. What does this mean? Are mass shootings escalating? Is it related to the downturn in the economy, job loss, home loss? Are the shooters older, younger, mentally ill? If anyone knows of a book or article that can answer these questions, please let me know.
Here’s what I did find out:
1. Shooting rampages are not rare in the U.S. Since 1982 there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country. In most cases, the killers have obtained their weapons legally. This blows my mind!
2. Eleven of the 20 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the U.S.
3. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the U.S., five have happened from 2007 to present.
4. The South is the most violent region in the U.S.
5. Gun ownership in the U.S. is declining overall.
6. According to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, more guns mean more homicide.
7. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence. Dig deeper: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/
8. Shootings don’t tend to substantially affect views on gun control: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/
I also took a look at the U.S. Constitution and the Second Amendment, The Right to Bear Arms, which says “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Do you suppose our forefathers had AR-15’s or 9mm Sig Sauers in mind in 1791? I’d be happy to give gang members muskets instead of Glocks. Might work for a drive-by shooting, but muskets wouldn’t make a good mass-killing instrument. Way to slow to load and fire. Exactly.
Does this amendment need to be interpreted with modern weaponry in mind? According to #8 above, that’s not going to happen.
I’ll leave you with another conundrum. The following link will take you to a very powerful article posted by a fellow FB writer, which argues that it’s not gun control we should tackle but mental illness. Read it and weep.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother-mental-illness-conversation_n_2311009.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
In the end, all I can do is reflect . . . and reflect . . . and reflect.
