For One More Day by Mitch Albom

Albom has certainly carved out a niche for himself. What do you call this genre? An inspirational/self-help/supernatural novel? Even the format is unique, always a small hardback with dust jacket, more like a book of poetry than a novel. And they are always short - it can't be much more than 40k words. He has filled a niche that is popular too - people love these little books - I know the ladies in my book club do.

I know I got choked up. I'm not so proud I can't admit to a little bit of emotion while reading this. It's about a man who gets to relive one more day with his dead mother, and learns something that helps him improve his life and the lives of others. Inspirational, self-help, and supernatural!

Is it maudlin, sappy, corny, and overly sentimental? Yes, it's those things too, at least to me. But that's OK too, there's a place for that in fiction as well. So grab a copy and indulge yourself.

Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

Another great Dickens' novel of biblical proportions. Even the pages of this edition have a scriptural feel to them - thin and vellum-like, with the added benefit of the original illustrations.

And the novel is everything that I have come to expect of Dickens. Plenty of memorable characters and scenes and a plot full of unexpectedly and unbelievable coincidences. You just have to suspend your modern cynicism and go with it - when you do, it's incredibly satisfying. Every character, no matter how insignificant, gets their just desserts at the end.

This is also the novel where Dickens turns his satirical eye on the United States, since two of the characters immigrate in quest of their fortune, and are horribly disappointed. In the appendix, there is actually a postscript where Dickens attempts to make amends.

So heft a copy of this 800 page tome and give it a read - you won't be disappointed.

Summer and Fall Plans

I've been in a slump since the great AWC pitch session. Depressed and unwilling to write or work on my novels. The only thing I have done is write a few poems. Yes, the agent pitch was disappointing. I came away with nothing. In both cases the agent got the wrong idea about my work and I couldn't alter their perception in the short time that I had. I felt like an incompetent poseur.

How to recover? My first idea was to let both novels rest and concentrate on short fiction - both short stories and poems. I sent out some more short stories, at least. But I didn't work on them or write any new ones. All I really did was dash off a few poems.

What should I be doing?

• I have a class coming up, a week long vacation/class at the Campbell Folk School. That's the first week of July. Surely this will kick me back into gear.
• There's a one day seminar with Brian Corrigan later in July with the AWC. Although I don't agree with everything that he says, I'm very impressed in him as a teacher. He has a lot of energy. It would be a good idea to attend this as well.
• The South Carolina Writer's Workshop is October 24-26. Should I go back this year and try another humiliating agent pitch? At least I was successful there last year - the agent actually requested my entire novel to read, although she later turned me down.

Option #1 - concentrate on short fiction until the folk school class, then concentrate on the novels in preparation for the SCWW.

Option #2 - Skip the SCWW this year and write a new novel in the fall. This would mean I would have two novels in the drawer (actually five novels in the drawer, but I don't count the first three.)

Option #3 - Do nothing. Give up, gain weight, watch TV, vegetate.

I don't guess I'll do option #3. That's not my style. It doesn't make me happy to do nothing. So I guess, for now, it will be option #1. I don't want to put these two novels in the drawer, since I am, usually, proud of them.

So the plan is to concentrate on the short fiction and poetry until the folk school. The short story "Broken Keys" will be the project for the folk school.

Only one problem with this strategy. Most of the literary journals are not accepting submissions in the summer, but that shouldn;t stop me from working on the short stories.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

A different perspective on the end of the story of Odysseus, told from the viewpoint of Penelope, his wife, who waited twenty years for him to go off to the Trojan War and come back. Atwood examines the death of the twelve maidens, killed by Odysseus and Telemachus after they kill the suitors. The twelve forgotten maidens, who are glossed over by Homer.

The maidens appear in the book as the chorus, as in the chorus from a Greek play. They comment on the action in various poetic and prose poems. Very imaginative and clever.

I wasn't very involved in the rest of the book though. Penelope's story seems a little distant. Not my favorite Atwood - she's written some excellent and impressive books, but still, it is clever and humorous, and worth a read.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Poetry by Nikki Moustaki

I was pleasantly surprised by how good this book is. It's comprehensive, entertaining, and makes writing poetry approachable. It's fun and thought-provoking without being pedantic - just what poetry, and a book about writing poetry, should be.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

A vision of a bio-tech apocalypse. Crake plays god, Oryx is the earth-mother, and poor Snowman is witness to it all. Like "Cat's Eye", Atwood writes most of this novel in flashback, an interesting technique. There are some big ideas here, and a fertile imagination. Much of it reads like today's headlines. Highly recommended.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Atwood can do it all: poetry, literary fiction, speculative fiction, and this novel, which is historical fiction. She picked the complex and confused story of a murderess in mid nineteenth century Canada. She kept the facts, so having a story that is conflicting and complex makes her novel that much more rich. And she does a great job with it - I can't imagine how much research she had to do to write this novel. What I like best is that the final decision about Grace is left up to the reader. Highly recommended.

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

This novel could be subtitled "The Secret Life of Girls." Atwood states the work is about how girlhood traumas continue into adult life. My question is, how did she remember so much from her childhood? Or did she observe children while writing this? She also stated this novel had the most autobiographical elements of all her novels. It does share some common details with "Surfacing", one of her earliest novels: the girl that spends her summers in the North woods, that has difficulty relating to other girls during the school year.

The novel is excellent, and very convincing. Highly recommended.

Agent Pitch at Atlanta Writer's Club

Why do I put myself through these things? Hours of waiting and preparation for five minutes of uncomfortable face time with a literary agent. I got rejected twice, for both novels. Here are the things that I did wrong:

For the first agent, we were allowed to submit twenty pages in advance. As soon as I sat down in front of him, he complained about the fact that I did not include a summary or synopsis. Well, I had followed the guidelines exactly, which limited us to a log line, a short bio, and the twenty pages - no mention of a summary. As a result, the agent had an incorrect idea of my novel. Next time (if I am ever masochistic enough to do this again) I will include a summary regardless of what the guidelines say. This is actually the second time this has happened to me. At the SCWW pitch, I stuck to the rules and included a one-page summary only to be told by the agent that she wished I had written a longer summary! But this agent was very nice, very helpful with his comments, based on the incomplete information that he had.

The second agent was a cold pitch, and I talked about my first novel. I described it as young adult, because a previous agent (who read the whole novel and rejected it) had advised me to pitch it that way instead of how I perceived it - literary fiction. Well, this agent fixated on my choice of genre and informed me my novel was not young adult, but probably literary fiction, exactly the opposite. I did not have time to explain my predicament to her. So I should have stuck to what I thought was right from the beginning.

Needless to say, it was not a good day for me. I decided not to think about it for a day, which didn't work of course - I spent a sleepless night. But the more time that passes the more I am able to assess the two disastrous pitches and learn something.

I realize I do not pitch well, especially a cold pitch. Reducing my novels to just a few words is difficult, and I always seem to pick the wrong ones - I think I am too easily swayed by what other people tell me, what I hear in round-table discussions, what I read in articles and books. I know my first novel is about loss, and yet I pitched it as a coming of age story. I know my second novel is about love, and yet the agent got the idea it was about caring for an aging parent

I think the best advice I can give myself is to avoid cold pitches. If I get another chance to submit pages then I can at least impress them, and I have never failed to get compliments on my writing. Stick to what I know is correct about my own novels, and try not to be swayed by what other people tell me.

Valentines by Ted Kooser

For years Kooser carried on a Valentine's day tradition. He mailed a short poem on a postcard to women that he knew, an annual event that grew over the years. This book is a compilation of those valentine cards.

Far from maudlin or sentimental, the topics are varied and always interesting. Highly recommended.

The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser

I love Kooser's poetry - it's so clear and understandable, as well as meaningful to me. So when I saw this book on a recommended list at poets.org I rushed out and bought it. Just like his poetry, his advice about writing poetry is clear and understandable.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

An excellent work of speculative fiction by an author who has demonstrated her skill in many genres, including poetry. This is a dystopia, or a utopia gone horribly wrong. The portrait of a misogynistic society where women are property, treated as mere wombs and the source of original sin. Picture radical Islam mixed with Old Testament Jewish law as interpreted by power-hungry pseudo-Christians that form a theocracy and you have the general idea.

The narrator is a "handmaid", as in the handmaid of Rachel. When Rachel could not bear Jacob a child, she offered her handmaid to her husband and then raised the resulting child as her own. Atwood takes these ideas to their extremes, imaging a plausible, if twisted society. Couple that with her excellent writing skills and you have an excellent novel that touches the reader in a number of ways.

SPOILER WARNING

As a writer myself, the ending is interesting. I suspected, having read other Atwood novels, that the ending would not be straightforward. Some readers might want revenge, violence, an end to the horrors of the society, a catharsis or healing of some kind, but none of these things happen. It's an ambiguous ending, in which we do not know if the handmaid is rescued or not. We suspect that she is, but can't be sure. There is certainly no revenge, no payback, and no interruption in the society. After the narration ends, there is an epilogue, in the form of a transcript from a scholarly conference that occurs a century or so after the events in the novel, in which a speaker discusses the discovery and authenticity of the narration we have just finished reading. Once again there are no hard facts presented, just the impression that the narrator escaped to record her story - but there are no details supplied about the fate of the society.

Not sure how I feel about the epilogue. Was it really needed? I'm fine with the ending of the narration, as ambiguous as it is, and I guess Atwood felt that something else was needed to help the reader resolve the story. Maybe that in itself is an admission that the ending of the narration is not satisfying by itself.

I highly recommend this novel - it's thought provoking and well written.

Negotiating With the Dead - A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood

An interesting book on writing that will really get you thinking. It's not a writing manual, and not a prescription for success or failure. Atwood doesn't answer any questions, but she poses plenty - and they are real head scratchers. This is education at its best, forcing the student to think for themselves.

And it's so impressive to see how many poets and writers Atwood quotes. She provides the reader with plenty of examples to illustrate her questions.