Well, This is Embarrassing
June 23, 2010
A case study in book etiquette:
So there I am, walking out of the library, and I run into an old friend. That’s nice, you say. It would be, if not for the fact that I had, under my arm, a copy of this friend’s latest travel memoir. And here’s where many of you might wonder: What is the problem?
People unaware of how publishing works may not realize it, but being caught this way is not a good thing—because the question on the mind of the author of said memoir will certainly be: Why didn’t she buy my book?
Possible answers are that even though I have plans to buy it, I saw the book on the library shelf and couldn’t resist it, or that I have already bought it and this copy is for my sick mother-in-law. On this occasion, I chose the former, and my writer friend pretended to believe me.
Only slightly less embarrassing is being caught by the remainder table—a.k.a. Bargain Bin—of your favorite bookstore, with a book authored by your old friend (perhaps now it would be more appropriate to say “ex-friend”). Yes, it’s true that in this situation you are intending to actually buy the book, but the fact is, this book was once $30 and is currently selling for $1.95 because the publisher dumped it. And this is something that you and your writer-friend don’t want to acknowledge. And how’re the kids? you ask her, chastising yourself because you should have bought the damn book when it was selling for full price, so that your now-ex-friend could collect the royalties on it. (Just so you know, she likely isn’t making a dime off that $1.95.)
I do buy books written by my closest friends, unless those books are ones I know I’ll never read. (I’m not interested in underwater hockey. I’m just not.)
Here’s the thing. If you know a lot of writers, you have a lot of books to buy, but being a writer yourself—especially one like me who earns income mainly from magazine articles and teaching—you don’t have much discretionary income. And what you have, you might prefer to spend on the latest novel by Margaret Atwood, whom you have never met.
Other than book-shopping/library borrowing early on Sunday when none of my friends, ex- or current, are likely to be awake, I don’t really have a tactful solution to this problem. Do you?
A few years ago, I took a screenwriting course, wrote a short script and went to a gathering of film industry types to network and learn more about the biz. When I stood up to introduce myself in a restaurant of about fifty people, I began with, to paraphrase slightly: “Hi, my name is Sharleen X, but I’ve been writing under Sharleen Y—also, I sometimes use Sharleen Z—so you see I have what I like to call severe byline issues, ha, ha…” Later, a young actress came up to me and shared that she, too, had a problem with her legal name and was debating two new versions of it and soon the actress and I were surrounded by several others similarly afflicted. My public confession of difficulties around deciding what to call myself had struck a chord—and not for the first time.
You’d be amazed how many writers starting out—or, as in my case, writers who’ve published a fair amount of work in one field but are starting all over again in another—are all in a dither about their names. The novel takes you years of work to squeeze out and then you devote a whole lot of new mental energy wondering Who Wrote This? Perhaps way back when, this decision could be put off until the lucky day an agent or editor helped you decide on your pen name, but now, when people are building identities online, you have to choose the name you want to be known by as soon as you buy your domain name.
I’ve used a couple of different bylines over the years. Long story short, the domain for the name I was born with was already taken, and that person also happens to be a writer, so this gave me a good excuse to use an older version of my family name—a name I actually happen to like better. But it’s not my legal name, and is not the name most people know me by. At least my various bylines/domains over the years have all started with the same letter—J.
Which is why in my Twitter handle and newest email addresses, I’m simply Sharleen J.
(BTW, this post was inspired by a post by Jane Friedman on her own blog.)
If anyone has thoughts/solutions/misery to share on this topic, please comment!
AWP 2010 Denver (Abridged) (Rather Drastically)
April 15, 2010
I’ve been back in “the real world” (a.k.a. my home office) for a few days but I’m still reeling from the experience of AWP 2010. Over three days of panel discussions that ran from 9:00 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., with no breaks between sessions other than 15 minutes to pee, get a good seat for the next panel or find a coffee (your choice), I got more intellectual and creative stimulation than I normally get in six months. I loved it. I am both rejuvenated and exhausted. There is far too much in my notebook to share in one post, but I thought I’d list here the most important points I took away from the keynote speech by author Michael Chabon:
• Similes span the distance between “me” and “you” (or, to put it another way, between a writer and a reader);
• Ideas are the easiest part of a writer’s job—it’s sticking with an idea after it’s lost its lustre that’s the hard part;
• A great novel can change the way you see the world (his list of great novels includes Love in the Time of Cholera, Age of Innocence, and Lolita);
• He gets most of his inspiration from reading other people’s books;
• He describes beginning a novel as a slow, careful progression, like that of a person feeling his way into a cave;
• Novelists deal in secrets and betrayals, and it is the novelist’s obligation to dish up these gossipy details and show readers the lies that betray deeper truths;
• His main and lasting ambition is to make art he can sell for money.
And there you have it.
(PS- The link to AWP 2010.)
Procrastination: It’s Not Just For Writing
April 1, 2010
Most writers procrastinate. I certainly do—that’s how I know I’m a real writer. (Well, that’s one reason.) And because I procrastinate when it comes to writing, it makes sense to apply this same rule to writers conferences I attend.
In a couple days, I’m heading off to Denver, Colo., for AWP 2010. This is the annual conference for The Association of Writers and Writing Programs. As the name implies, it has a more academic focus than most. The usual conference prep rules still apply, though. My usual procrastination also applies.
Here’s what I should do, as well as what I’m likely to do, in the waning hours before I depart:
• Go over the schedule ahead of time and plan to be at the workshops/seminars you’re most interested in early;
• And I will do this—it’s my number one prep detail—but I’ve also learned to note which sessions occur in time slots home to a second workshop I’m interested in. The note will remind me to sit near an exit. If the session turns out to be not quite what I expected, I don’t want to be sitting in the middle of the front row. Because if I can’t slink out extremely quietly, I stick it out. (And surreptitiously re-read the description of the one I wished I’d gone to.)
• Read at least one book by each of the authors whose readings or talks you want to attend;
• Seriously? This conference is BIG. Not sure about the number of authors I’ll be listening to, but it’ll be more than I can count on my fingers and toes. I’ve only read the work of a couple of them (authors, not toes), so I’ll be relying on Google and Amazon to research authors I haven’t yet read.
• Have a one-sentence pitch prepared for your novel, book proposal or whatever it is you want to sell, and practice it before you go;
• I’ll be preparing this 35,000 feet above Idaho, and pitching it to whatever poor schmuck is sitting beside me (sorry, buddy, in this instance, sitting near an exit won’t save you).
• Have business cards with you at all times;
• Uh,oh. Mine are way out of date (old phone number, deleted web page) and now I have half a business day to get some. Looks like I’ll be handing out those print-’em-up yourself cards…at least I have new cartridges in the printer.
• Attend workshops out of your usual range of interest or comfort zone;
• This is a good idea and, personally, I’d love to learn more about performance poetry—except I don’t write poetry and never will. I just want to know to wear all black under a spotlight and look cool.
The hours continue to wind down (I spent almost a whole one writing this post) so I have to remind myself of the most memorable aspect of the last AWP conference I went to (Vancouver, 2005): It was the people I met between sessions—in the hall, at book tables, over glasses of warm white wine in Reception Rooms.
I am so looking forward to this!
Here’s a link to the conference site, if you’re interested: AWP 2010
Olympic Field Day
February 22, 2010
I spend the bulk of my days in a little room with a computer, a phone and a loaded bookshelf and I don’t mind the isolation—in a lot of ways, I thrive in it—but I figure if you want a field day, make it a good one.
So, I went to Vancouver. So did a gazillion other people from Vancouver Island. The ferry was so full of foot passengers (most of us knew better than to take a car) that a lot of people had to sit on the floor while the disembodied voice of a female ferry employee kept reminding patrons of the cafeteria to eat up and move out and let some hungry others in. The bus from Tsawwassen to Richmond was standing room only for the majority, and the line-up to get onto the recently-completed Canada Line was, oh, about a thousand or so. That was from just a few buses, and more were on the horizon. But I went to soak up Olympic atmosphere, and line-ups are part of it.
I got downtown about noon, grabbed a dark roast from Starbucks and sat outside the chain-link fence to observe the Olympic flame. If one wanted, one could line up to mount a platform with an unobstructed view of said flame; the wait was approximately 45 minutes, and the line was growing fast. I wandered away in the direction of Robson Street.
I meandered, people-watching. And what a lot of people there were to watch. Everyone looked happy. Volunteers were happy to provide information. Cops directing traffic looked happy. The screams of the people zip-lining over Robson Square sounded happy, in a rather extreme way. I took pictures of the crowds for my husband (who hates crowds and had refused to join me on this adventure), chatted with a few people and caught snippets of conversations in several different languages. Hundreds of people were waving little Canada flags or wearing big ones as capes. A couple of guys were hanging on a giant one:
- Go Canada Go
Near the end of my day, I went to a brew pub and sat at the bar nursing a Lions Gate Lager as I admired a glorious view of Burrard Inlet and the North Shore Mountains. Then I walked a couple blocks west to join the queue for the Canada Line. It was, as I expected, a queue of Olympic proportions. But no one was complaining. Instead, we marveled at the sheer number of us, and how long our line was becoming, and how happy we were when it moved, which it did, surprisingly fast.
I leave you with a picture of sun-drenched crowds in Robson Square, taken from the third floor of—where else would I go to escape for a few moments?—a bookstore:
Friday Fun Video – Funny but True
February 5, 2010
On Fridays, I tend to waste more time than usual on Internet diversions. And today, my son sent me a video on “How to Report the News” because he thinks it’s hilarious. I can’t say I find it hilarious; it’s funny, but also eerily, sadly true. If you were winding down after a long week with a glass of wine and weren’t paying complete attention, you could easily think this clip was the real news. Watch it yourself. (Note to self: must watch more by this Brit Charlie Brooker.)
The pleasures of reading Alain de Botton
November 23, 2009
I’ve gone through several books by Alain de Botton over the past few years. I read The Architecture of Happiness on the strength of its beginning, which includes a passage on the inner workings of his own house, a house that, left on its own after the occupants have left, rearranges itself after the night by “clearing its pipes and cracking its joints”. Nice. On the whole, though, I was glad I took that book out of the library instead of buying it. Ditto How Proust Can Change Your Life. (The Consolations of Philosophy is still on my to-read list—in my defence, I have a very long to-read list.) I do have on my bookshelf The Art of Travel and Status Anxiety, and still occasionally refer to them. Right now I’m halfway through The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, and I have to say I think this is de Botton’s best so far.
De Botton’s talent is to bring to our attention what seems ordinary, mundane, plain and even ridiculous and, in allowing a reader to see it deeply and thoughtfully through his eyes, bestow it some dignity. He displays this talent beautifully in Work.
Consider what he does in the first chapter, “Cargo Ship Spotting,” with a group of five men standing in the rain at the end of a pier: He likens their study of the progress of the cargo ship Grande Nigeria to that of ornithologists observing a Phylloscopus trochilus, he compares their concentration to that of a small child discovering a piece of chewing gum on a crowded sidewalk. The men’s dedication to their study, he argues, is deeper than that of many museum attendees who go through the motions of admiring a centuries-old nude but really are rather impatient for the cafeteria at the end of the hall.
These men, who may not be well-read or aware of 14th century Florentine art, are alive to some of the most astonishing aspects of our time: “They know what it is about our world that would detain a Martian or a child.”
That’s what de Botton knows. He also knows how to put it in language you want to savour. That’s his gift.
De Botton also introduces us to the world of an artist who paints for love, since money largely eludes him. This painter, de Botton says, knows what his art is for: “To help us to notice what we have already seen.” And the same can be said for de Botton’s work.
I live on the “wet coast” of British Columbia, and from the end of the sidewalk to my house, I have a narrow view of the ocean a block and a half away. Cargo ships, coming to or from Vancouver or Seattle, frequently pass through those waters, and I rarely pay them much attention. At least I haven’t in the past; I expect I’ll look at the next one I see in a different way.
Why start a blog?
November 9, 2009
Good question. Blogs take time to maintain and (unless you’re some kind of celebrity) they don’t earn you any money. But they give you a chance to sound off about what you care about, and hopefully connect with like-minded souls. I care about writing, reading and publishing. If you do, too, welcome. Please drop by and leave a comment to any post that grabs you.
