Monday's Muse - A Creatively Inspiring Weekend, Part 1: David Sedaris

I’m feeling creatively rejuvenated and inspired after a great weekend of literary and musical events: David Sedaris at Poughkeepsie’s Bardavon 1869 Opera House on Friday night (April 5th), and An Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer at Bard College’s Richard B. Fisher Center on Saturday night (April 6th). So now I have not just one but three amazing artists to add to my creative muses.

I’ve been a fan of David Sedaris’ humorous essays and stories since I first read his “SantaLand Diaries” essay in the mid-‘90s – his funny account of working as a Christmas Elf in Macy’s cracked me up so much, and I could really relate to his cynical view of the retail holiday season, especially after years of working in retail.

David Sedaris has written several books, been featured on NPR, and has done many book tour appearances, including a 2008 event at the Bardavon. Barnes & Noble had sold his books at the theatre for that appearance, but I hadn’t been able to work that event. So I was glad to have been part of the bookselling team at Friday’s event – we sold books and audio books from his backlist, and took pre-orders for his newest essay collection, Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, that’s being released on April 23^rd.

After the audience was seated, my fellow booksellers and I got to watch David Sedaris’ reading from the back of theatre balcony. I was so glad for the opportunity to finally see him perform.

He read from his new book, and also from some new material that he’d written – he was so freakin' funny, telling twisted family tales and giving outrageous observations with a deadpan delivery, like the diary entry he read about an airport worker recognizing him that turned into a raunchy Willie Nelson joke!

He frequently mines his family for his writing – one memorable story involved his father bugging him incessantly to get a colonoscopy, until he finally went through it, with his sister Lisa as moral support. Afterwards, he felt so blissful from the anesthesia (Propofol, like Michael Jackson used) that he wondered why he didn’t get a colonoscopy sooner. As soon as he got home, his father called to check up on his test results. Sedaris said that he told him that they found something, and it might be cancer – just to hear his father’s reaction! (Definitely a twisted family tale!) After his reading, he answered questions from the audience, and someone asked if he really said that to his father, and Sedaris said yes – that his family has that kind of sense of humor. Another family would never find humor in that type of situation, but the Sedaris family does, and that’s one reason why he’s on the stage now.

David Sedaris told the audience that it was his father’s 90^th birthday that night, and asked everyone to help him with something – he borrowed a cell phone from an audience member and called his father, leaving him a voice message saying that he was at the Bardavon in Poughkeepsie and that he had a message for him – he held the phone out and all of us in the audience yelled “Happy Birthday, Lou!” It was so cool that he included us in his birthday greeting to his father.

Afterward, David Sedaris signed books for audience members, and spent time having conversations with every one of us. He is known for being accessible and accommodating to his fans, and will sign for hours to make sure that he meets and speaks to everyone. When it was my turn to ask him to sign my CD of his “Live at Carnegie Hall” performance, he told me I have great hair, and signed, “To Linda – Great Hair – David Sedaris.” That was so awesome! I told him that I was one of his booksellers for the event, and that I was so glad to finally be able to see his reading, and he shook my hand. He asked where the store was, and said that he’s doing a bookstore tour soon, where he can spend even more time with the readers.

I love the humor of David Sedaris’ books, but his generosity to his readers makes me an even bigger fan of his – for life. And it reinforces my vow that if (when) I have a book published and am ever fortunate enough to do book signings, I’ll make sure to take my time with every reader, acknowledging them and letting them know how much I appreciate them. Because it’s a great thing for a writer to create a book, but it’s the readers who truly bring that book to life.

(posted on Monday, April 8, 2013 3:00am)

Sunday on SCBWI - Shop Talk, Saturday March 30, 2013

It was really good to see such a great turnout for last Saturday’s Shop Talk meeting of our Hudson Valley SCBWI group. Especially since it was a holiday weekend, and Kim Sabatini and I had anticipated that people would be having relatives over, doing holiday activities with their kids, or other similar plans. Thanks to all who made it, and for those who couldn’t, here’s a recap of Kim’s talk on revision.

 Kim was an ideal person to speak on the topic – she spent three-and-a-half years writing and revising her YA novel Touching the Surface before it was sold to Simon Pulse and published in October 2012. She also recently sent out her already-revised manuscript of her second novel, The Opposite of Gravity, to her agent, and is awaiting feedback so she can revise it some more. Here’s her blog post about her time spent in the “revision fort” - http://kimberlysabatini.com/blog/2013/03/back-in-the-revision-fort/

She brought in several drafts of Touching the Surface, as it went through the editorial process with her publisher, for an interesting show-and-tell: each revised draft had editorial notes and comments for yet more revision on every single page. All those notes might seem a bit daunting, but Kim said she valued the revision process because it helped Touching the Surface become the book it was meant to be.

William Faulkner famously said, “In writing, you must kill all your darlings,” and Kim agreed with his wise advice. Sometimes we really love a certain aspect of our work – a turn of phrase; a scene; a plot point; or even a character – and want to stick with it, even if it’s not really right for our project. But she said we shouldn’t get wedded to our work – we should have an open mind to change. If something doesn’t really fit, and it seems like we’re working too hard to keep it, then maybe it really doesn’t belong.

She’s had experience with this in her revision work – one major change in her rewrite for Touching the Surface didn’t exactly involve killing, but instead aging one of her main characters: four-year-old Oliver, who became a 16-year-old due to editorial advice that teen readers can better relate to characters close to their own age. It was a challenge, but ultimately, it made Touching the Surface an even better book. I told Kim that I felt the original spirit of the story stayed intact, throughout all of her revisions from the first draft to her final book. And I think that’s important – you can kill your darlings, but keep your book’s fundamental energy.

Kim brought several books on revision that she recommended – Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Brown and Dave King (2004, William Morrow); Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go by Les Edgerton (2007, Writer’s Digest Books); and the workbook Novel Metamorphosis: Uncommon Ways to Revise by Darcy Pattison. She shared in detail two that were particularly helpful in her own revision process: Writing It Right: How Successful Children’s Authors Perfect and Sell Their Stories by Sandy Asher (2009, Writer’s Institute Publications) and The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman (1999, Simon & Schuster).

Sandy Asher (http://usawrites4kids.drury.edu/authors/asher/) is the author of numerous books and plays for children and young adults, and did a workshop at one of the Pocono conferences that Kim attended.  Her writing guide (available online at http://www.writingitright.net/bm449/wir_2.htm ) gives detailed examples of several authors’ revisions of their books, from picture books to chapter books to middle-grade and YA novels, using the actual manuscripts so the reader can follow the process from first draft to published book. And she shows how the authors were challenged to answer nine essential questions that editors ask when considering a manuscript, such as “Whose story is it?”, “What does the main character want?” and “What stands in the way?”

I really liked how Sandy Asher showed the steps of the revision process with the authors’ manuscript drafts. It’s rare to see authors’ early attempts at writing their books, and even when how-to-write books use writing examples, they are usually from published works. I think that seeing these embryonic drafts can help to demystify the development of a book as it goes through revision.

Noah Lukeman (www.noahlukeman.com) is the president of Lukeman Literary Management Ltd, and has also been an editor for several major publishers, so he’s got a lot of experience and knowledge of the publishing industry. Kim said The First Five Pages is extremely helpful with beginnings. I have the book too, and I agree.

Those of us who attended last spring’s SCBWI First Page Event know very well how crucial the beginning of a story is – it’s so important to capture the attention of an agent or editor right away because they always receive so many manuscripts and usually just look over the first several pages of each one before moving on to the next. The purpose of a well-written, intriguing beginning is to make them want to keep reading.

Kim shared some of Lukeman’s straightforward, practical advice on sound, vocabulary and style – just some of the topics he covers.

The sound and rhythm of a story is important, especially with dialogue. Use dialogue as a tool to build the characters and world of your book. He suggests listening to others talking and then mimic it in writing. Read your dialogue passages out loud, to make sure they sound natural. And don’t worry about repeating the word “said” – it disappears in the reading. Also, cut out everyday small talk like, “Hi – how are you?” Dialogue should move the story forward, but shouldn’t be used to convey backstory – that sounds forced.

Avoid cliched metaphors and similes, like “raining cats and dogs.” Instead, use specific words that are clear to the reader. Also, cut out any words that aren’t essential to the story. And be careful of using repetitive words and phrases, like the word “ran” in an action story. Read the passage out loud to catch these recurrences. Or use the word-processing program’s “find” and “replace” tools to seek out and correct over-used words.

Lukeman also says to remember that books are as much about what readers bring to them as what is actually written. Different readers may interpret a book in many different ways, and readers may also have different conclusions depending on when they’ve read the book. He used Moby Dick as an example – it may have a different meaning to a twenty-year-old reader than to the same reader at age seventy.

Everyone has different writing habits and methods for revision. Kim said that Lauren Oliver (author of the Delerium series) wrote her first novel, Before I Fall, on her Blackberry while on the NYC subway and e-mailed the chapters to herself so she could revise them later at home. Laurie Halse Anderson (author of Speak and many other acclaimed YA novels) writes “fast and dirty first drafts” (as Kim described them) – she’ll start with a loose story arc, and then adds in layers of character and plot development with each draft. My own writing style is a lot like Kim’s – she said she needs to write with detail from the start, and will ponder character traits, plot arcs, and music playlists for her story before writing a full draft. I can relate – I spend a lot of time mulling over my book projects in my head, especially when I’m at work and can only sneak a jotted note in my pocket journal from time to time. Then when I’m finally able to have some time at the computer, I try my best to write as much of what’s on my mind as I can. I’m in the habit of writing a chapter and then revising it before moving on to the next. And I know that’s one thing that’s kept me from completing my novel projects. Kim encourages everyone to finish a first draft before going into the revision phase, so there’s a complete manuscript to work with.

Since the meeting, I found and ordered a copy of Writing it Right from barnesandnoble.com – I’m really looking forward to getting the book and seeing how I can learn more about revision from it. I also pulled The First Five Pages from my shelves and am re-reading it, so I can learn to strengthen the beginnings of my current projects. That should be very helpful in preparing the first chapter of my teen novel for our Target Audience Feedback Shop Talk in June!