“IF YOU COULD MEET ANYONE FROM HISTORY…”

 

There’s a well-known trope/parlor game/interview question that asks which long-dead persons you’d like to meet, have dinner with, interview, etc.

 

It’s fun to think about, and the answer supposedly reveals something pertinent about us.

 

About a month ago, someone put this question to me and I realized my older answers didn’t hold for me anymore. My old answers were Shakespeare (did he really author what is attributed to him?), Jesus (what was the historic flesh-and-blood person really like?), and Abraham (Is he in fact one actual person, or a myth?).

 

But I realized that Shakespeare would almost certainly be a disappointment. The works are far greater than the author, as is almost always the case. Jesus of Nazareth is also far greater as spiritual residues present to this day. As to Abraham, I would likely not like him at all and he not like me. Anyone who would sacrifice his beloved son Isaac and lie to his boy while climbing to the place of the intended killing (all to prove his complete obedience to G-d) is the sort of fanatic I avoid like the plague today.

 

Then, they came to me like figures emerging out of a thick fog. The people I would most like to meet and spend a day with, the people I would like to get to know and be known by, are my father’s mother and father. They perished in the Holocaust and the Nazis wouldn’t allow my father, still a boy himself, to keep even the locket he wore with his mother’s photograph.

 

What I know of them are the memories of a boy. When I asked my late father to describe them physically, he gave such a vague description that I couldn’t conjure their faces. Years later, when my father returned for a visit to Poland and found a neighbor he remembered from his childhood still living in the old building, the neighbor angrily snapped at him saying, “What Jews? There were never any Jews here.” He had hoped someone had photos of his family, but instead found complete erasure.  

 

If you believe in the afterlife, you might be telling me that I will meet my grandparents some day. You might be telling me that they are watching over me right now. I won’t argue. It’s a mystery, as far as I’m concerned.

 

But today I would choose to meet them while I’m still part of this world of action, because I sense it would inform the rest of my time here in a meaningful way.

AH-HA! MOMENTS

 

One of the powerful tools in storytelling is the Ah-Ha! Moment.

 

It’s a character recognizing their fault, or not their fault, and how to carry on doing better.

 

These are powerful moments in real life, also. For reflective people, these recognitions are numerous, and not nearly as dramatic. But in the context of story, they are crescendos that lead to the stories’ climax resolutions.

 

Just this morning, a stranger who had parked their car in front of our driveway (blocking my ability to use my car) said I was “impatient” when I asked him to move. I did what I always do, covering up my frustration with a smile and asking how long it would be before he would, you know, pretty please, free our driveway. He said, “not long,” and I walked away.

 

But I was seething. Underneath my practiced non-confrontational smile, I thought--- The nerve of him. Not for blocking my driveway, but for calling me “impatient.”

 

But even before he did move on, twenty minutes later, I realized he was right. I was impatient. I didn’t need to use my car right then, I could wait. If I had an appointment to get to, I’d explain, and he (probably, hopefully) would have moved. Going to the store this morning was not an urgent matter, and I was simply being impatient.

 

This complete stranger called it. If patience is virtue, (and I believe it is) I need to work on it.

 

This tiny lightbulb moment got me thinking about my fictional characters, and their moments of illumination.

Let there be light~

HAPPY TO BE READ

 

Back to answering another from Karen Jones’s blog post list:

Are you excited about the idea of people reading your work…?

I have always had “people” reading my writing, whether they were my teachers or family members or friends. I know what Karen means, though. She means people I never met and likely never will-- except as readers.

 

My first published essay was in eighth grade. It was, as we used to say, a “heady experience.” Many years later, I began blogging. The few strangers who responded to my early posts quickly became on-line acquaintances.

 

But the first review I got to my published novel, The Voice of Thunder, brought people who were strangers to this day. This, like my eighth-grade essay, was “heady”. I imagine that multi-published writers who have wide readership have a more nonchalant feelings for the experience of complete strangers reading what they wrote. We humans adjust to most things that are not common and then become a new normal for us.

 

Few in the human family, which numbers in the many billions, become so-called famous. But for the famous (“celebrities,” how I dislike the word) it is just what is. Fame itself feels undesirable an existence to me. For the famous who don’t crash and burn, it is just the way it is.

 

So, the answer to the question is two-pronged: I find a reaction to my writing from a total stranger to quicken my heartbeats, but only for a bit, and then I adjust and it is how it is, part of the package of writing for publication.

 

Excitement is an ephemeral thing. It happens, and then it’s gone.

HOPE and CHANGE

 Every New Year's Eve we celebrate what I can only call "Hope and Change." It's not the year that passed, counting blessings but also awfulness, but what we hope is the door to change.

If the definition of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a form of looniness, then New Year's Eve celebrations are forms of madness.

Call me crazy, but without hope I really would go mad.

Happy New Year!

Happy HANUKKAH and a Very Merry CHRISTMAS

 I have no issue with those who insist that only "Happy Holidays" is the way to greet people whose observances are unknown to the greeter. 

But I have more affinity with those who are less sensitive, and (like me) appreciate the majority including the various minorities in their greetings.  We are Hanukkah people, but if you wish me a Merry Christmas, brothers and sisters-- I'm happy to be joyous with you in your merriment.

I choose not to feel conquered, excluded, or imposed on. Your happiness is a blessing, and I am only glad to share it.

And in years such as this one, we get to dance together, because as happens every few years, the calendars decided your holidays and ours overlap.

SECURING YOUR FILES

 

Having had complete loss of my desktop(s) not once, not twice, but (gulp) thrice in a period of a year, the matter of preserving one’s work is not a theoretical one.

 

Yup, 2022 was a doozy for my shouldn’t-have-trusted computer(s) and two years later, in August of 2024, I once again experienced the joy of having to transition, as my oldy (they all were) desktop needed to be replaced because Windows 10 support ends October 2025. Happily, for now, we crossed that bridge. 👍

 

I learned a few things in the process. Best thing was to (finally) succumb and pay for cloud storage. The thing is, I am not sure I know how to retrieve my digital contents from the cloud. If you do, let me know. But it feels better to have it.

 

I also learned that my habit of saving all my documents onto flash drive(s) saved me from total loss. More than one flash drive, because I have had these die without warning in the past. I've also had two hard drives that backed up and died. Best thing about this sort of saving (flash drives) is that I do know how to retrieve and upload when the need comes, and as I said, it came and came and came.

 

In the pre-historic days when I first began using a computer, I printed everything that mattered in order to have hard copies. Flash drives weren’t invented yet and didn’t become ubiquitous until later. I had files saved to a CD, which was somewhat more cumbersome.

 

The hard paper copies are great for proofreading, but if the digital work meanders to the great nowhere ether forest or evaporated by a bug, it means typing and typing and more typing from the printed pages. It isn’t an elegant solution. But in those ancient times I just didn’t trust the ephemeral nature of words on a screen. I only believed the reality of something I could hold.  I still feel this way about books I am reading, by the way.

 

But digital files need a digital back door storage.

 

What do you do? I’d love to know.

SYMBOLS and SIGNS

 

We grasp reality through stories. But before we have sentences that make paragraphs, we have symbols.

 

I quote the first part of my favorite sentence from another writer’s post, “Life speaks to us through symbols….” Lisa Tener’s whole post is worth reading.

 

Unlike the notion that using symbols makes a story literary, I contend it makes any story better. It makes a story good.

 

Think of weaving consistent symbols into your storytelling. Now make their appearance organic, and you have better stories.

 

Thoughts as I finished draft number two of my current WIP. 😔

 

Can you guess what my current woven symbol is? Don't try too hard. My Beta readers are yet to comment on it. My hope is that it's seamless, and they so won't.

HOW DO YOU LIKE* CRITICISM?

 

*What’s not to like?

 

Someone asked me yesterday how I feel about being criticized.

Simple: I don’t like it, but I’m not against it. 😰

 

The question came in the passive construction, deliberately obscuring the action’s source. This forced a vague answer.

 

Because (and this is key) it depends on WHO is doing the criticizing.

 

After the initial sting, I think I usually can tell if this person is coming from a helpful place, and let me tell you— it matters. A lot.

 

When suggestions for improvement come from a loving unselfish place, they are golden. Don’t get me wrong. No Pollyanna, I. It never feels good in the immediate aftermath. Never.

 

But some time after, as soon as a few hours, these offerings are gifts.

 

One thing that distinguishes the loving criticisms are if they are something one can change. This is pivotal.

 

If words point to unchangeable things, they are not well meant. Forget about 'em as soon as you can. Toss ’em to the wastepaper basket at the edge of the universe. Go on, act it out. Print those words, crumble the paper, and give it your best basketball throw into the garbage.

 

But the actionable ones coming from someone who is a fan/friend/faithful family— count these as fabulous. Because your “F” today is a chance at an A+ tomorrow.

A STATE of THANKFULNESS

 

Thanksgiving week, and all across the continent folks are discussing recipes, menus, and the now-ubiquitous “here come the holiday blues.”

 

American Thanksgiving centers around a single meal because the story attached to the national ethos involves a single holiday feast.

 

Whether true or (most likely) half-true, a tradition that follows most Americans contains memories of these family get-togethers.  I remember my mother telling me about the Thanksgivings of her childhood when I, her Israeli daughter, had no notion what it was about, nor the image of Indians sitting together with Pilgrims in the seventeenth century. I only knew the nostalgia in her eyes for a country she had left to go and help build the Jewish state. But we always remain the children we were, years later and miles away.

 

Holiday meals are fine. But I have come to focus on the matter of the underlaying theme. Thankfulness is not for one day a year. It’s a good habit for every day.

 

I now end each day, just after turning off the lights, with at least three things I am thankful for that happened that day.  Not general things, but specific ones. Some days are particularly challenging, and I count things that could have happened but (thankfully) didn’t. Most days (again, thankfully) it’s easy, because life’s gifts are more abundant than my normal state acknowledges.  

 

This routine has a way of strengthening itself. It’s a good habit to develop. I’m thankful to the person who suggested it. I no longer remember who it was but Thank You.

ROBERT FROST and ME

 

When I asked writing friends where they go to clear their heads of cluttered mental debris and recharge, I heard “the beach” more times than anywhere else.

 

For me, the beach holds little solace. Sure, it’s lovely at sunset. Otherwise, it’s like a party: too well lit, too exposed, too rah-rah and whoosh-whoosh of waves, bikinis, and volleyballs.

 

A walk on the beach is also hard on the feet & leg muscles. Afterwards, I need a rest from that rest.

 

I’m with Robert Frost, who declared the woods his recharge station. Especially the dark and deep ones. The sounds of a redwood forest, dripping dew, singing invisible birds who also shelter there, and the gentle deep colors gratis of the low light are my place of remembering that life is a gift.

And speaking of woods, nothing compares to the California Redwoods. On a hike there, we paid homage to one tree who has his own name. Methuselah is named after the biblical character who lived to be nine-hundred and sixty-nine years. (Genesis 527) The old redwood tree named after him is almost two thousand years old.

Methuselah Tree^ (Redwood)

Woodside, California

 

Beaches are transitory. The redwoods stand and watch the sands wash away. I’ll take the less travelled road. 

 

The Yesterdays of THIS SIDE OF TOMORROW

 

Other than my own, there are few traditionally published books whose inception and labor pains I have witnessed.

 

Today, a spectacular birthday to one of these few is a cause for celebration.

 

The author, Tina Cho, is a critique group colleague of many years. Neither of us had been published when we started working together to improve our storytelling, and, since then, she has risen to the top of the kidlit writers’ profession. Many published picture books later, her debut novel is being released *today*-- and a great day it is.

 

Re-named This Side of Tomorrow, it began as a non-fiction picture book text about the two Koreas, one filled with light and the other enveloped by darkness, seen from an omniscient point of view.  Our critique group offered feedback, and all of us thought it would make a worthy picture book.

 

Editors’ feedback suggested re-writing it as a human story with survival of escaping from the dark Korea on the north to the light Korea on the south. Our critique group saw that manuscript as well.

 

A new editorial suggestion said it needed to be a story for older readers, a middle grade novel. Tina wondered if she could write a middle grade novel at all, having polished her skills on shorter stories. She decided it was too important a story not to try. Tina and her family were living in South Korea at the time, and she went on to research and interview and learn from people who had made this harrowing journey.

 

Many months later, she had the story. I was privileged to read that first or second draft and offer feedback. I had published a middle grade that also had a historic and political backdrop, so Tina thought I might be helpful. I don’t know if I was, but reading that excellent draft, I became committed to following this story’s journey to publication.

 

First, Tina entered it into a competition, and it won a prize from a good publisher and an offer to publish. It was not a generous offer, but it already surpassed thousands of never-to-be published middle grade novels languishing in writers’ computer files. Tina thought hard as to whether to accept the offer. You know, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

 

She also pursued agent representation, and, once she got an agent’s offer and accepted it, her new agent thought they could do better.

 

And better they did, but not before her agent suggested re-writing the story as a novel-in-verse and later, as a graphic novel, and a lyrical one at that. I saw sections of that draft as well.

 

At every incarnation, it struck me that a very good story was becoming a great and greater one.

 

Once acquired, the search for an illustrator artist began. The publisher found a wonderful match for Tina’s words in Deb JJ Lee. The long process of putting images to the words began.

 

And beginning today, you can see and read it for yourself.

🔆{You can read the starred Kirkus review in this link}🔆

WHO DO YOU WRITE FOR?

 

You may be right to take the title of this post two ways. The first is asking about the imaginary audience for one’s words and stories. The second is a ballsy/HUTZPA, more a challenge than a question, as in— who you imagine is even reading what you write. 😝

 

I will ignore the second, because it’s rude and also fruitless. Whether it is two, twenty, two thousand or twenty thousand, when writing-- we just can’t know. It isn’t helpful to creative motivation.

 

But the first is relevant.

 

When I was twelve, I began writing a diary. Diaries, so many say, are for oneself only. Mine wasn’t. I addressed all entries to one specific person who was unlikely to ever read them, but I needed to see this person in my mind when I wrote.

 

Later, in my teens, I always had a person in mind when I wrote a story. But the person changed from story to story.

 

When I began writing in earnest in my late thirties, I visualized no one. It became clear to me that the person I wrote for was my younger self, the one at the intended audience’s age.

 

I still write my novels for eleven-year-old me, and my picture books-- for six-year-old me.

 

No matter what a writer will tell you, there is someone in their mind when they write. Otherwise, it is a soulless mechanical exercise using how-to formulas. Yes, we’ve all encountered those when giving feedback and even, rarely, in published works.

 

Like prayer, real writing is addressing someone. This post is for you. 🙌

The TENSION of TENSE Choice

 

I adore first person present tense.

Present tense takes me, as a reader, right in. I’m here, and here we go together, all the way until the story’s end.

 

When it comes to writing picture books for the very young, it also feels like natural language. Toddlers use present tense even when speaking of past or future events.

 

Here’s the kicker: what to do when a picture book is about something that is no more? Think, the past. Think, HISTORY.

Like the Milkman, or corsets, or rotary phones.

 

There are writers who can do it. I’m still struggling.  

DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?

 

It’s a tough question.

 

As a feeling, it forms our orientation every day. One day this way, and the next, that-a-way.

 

But the role of pure luck in life and history is a persnickety matter. Storytellers avoid it, because one can not make sense of lucky coincidences.

 

Historians, who are also storytellers when it comes right down to it, also avoid it for the most part. Their jobs and whole professional discipline would evaporate if luck is deemed central to events.

 

Philosophers and theologians have argued about the place of coincidence. The understanding of creation hinges on the notion that a thinker/great designer is behind it, or a chain of gazillion coincidences just had a lucky streak.

 

Some, like me, have come to understand that coincidences are few, but they do exist and do play a part in all journeys.  But how to tell this in stories, and in what proportion to place luck in a story?

 

Now, that is the question.

REAL REALITY, REALLY?

 

Friends of mine, living in Israel, told me their GPS has stopped working.

 

“It keeps insisting we are in Beirut,” they said.

 

They called their phone carrier and also the makers of the app, who gave them the runaround and finally admitted the IDF has been scrambling navigation in order to foil the GPS-guided missiles coming from the northern border.

 

Before they got the real answer, I suggested different possibilities, including an IDF action, as to why their phone set them in a neighborhood in Lebanon’s capital. My last suggestion, tongue in cheek, was inspired. “Perhaps,” I said, “you are in fact in Beirut and you’re the only ones who don’t realize it?”

 

This would make a good novel, I think.

 

This got me thinking about the real-life couple who followed GPS blindly, which led them to fall into a hole in the ground. Another family took Google Maps voice navigation straight into a dead-end desert road.

 

All of these would make good stories and should be developed further into tales of digital worlds replacing our flesh and blood eyes and ears experiences.

 

And speaking of the rare but real flaws of digital navigation, our schools have stopped teaching a new generation how to use printed paper maps. For all the real-time information they lack, they remain an important tool. For that matter, learning to orient with the stars should also be part of basic education. Just sayin’.

 

Because you never know when the next time the digital masters will decide to re-set our reality.

 

Oh, wait. They are doing it in many ways already.

Is the Writer’s VOICE the Same Regardless of Format?

 

Going back to Karen Jones’ questions for writers (see here)— I find this one intriguing.

 

If writerly voice = the personality of the narration, then something of the voice is the same even in different formats. It’s the same person who’s writing the picture book texts or the novels.

 

But somethings are different, because of the constrains that formats impose. This is why we often hear that an author had finally “found her voice” when author switched formats. I remember another writer in my picture book critique group who, after reading my first middle grade book, sent me a glowing email saying that I had “the perfect middle grade voice.” It was a new one she hadn’t “heard” from me.

 

But what I find differentiates voice even from the same writer (in this case, me) is writing in a different language. Languages have personalities, and even speaking them (real voice) I sound somewhat different. It’s been a long time since I wrote fiction in Hebrew, so I may confuse personal life chapters with writing voice. But even my letters in Hebrew and English have distinct personalities.  Not to compare, Vladimir Nabokov testified to same.

 

Personally, I like to stretch and have my feet in more than one format. From the world of commerce, this isn’t the ideal strategy. Marketers like to have artists as “brands,” and thus box us in. But for my own need to keep toned, this stretching is good for creative dancing.

“PAST IS PROLOGUE”

 

Editors, I’m told, don’t like prologues.

 

A story needs to start in the present. Prologue forces us readers to scroll back before we’re allowed to knock on the door. “Just let me in, blast the past,” the exasperated editor is saying, taking on the readers’ cause.

 

Books of yore had no such impatience. We live and read in a rushing age.

 

How do you feel about prologues?

 

My personal view is that short prologues pique my interest, similar to the back cover teasers meant to sell the story. Long ones, if well written, captivate. But then it’s a letdown when they end and it feels like I must now shift gears to a new, (as in the now) story. If I make the adjustment, I’m glad for the prologue. If I lose the thread right then, it’s a fail.

 

The current writerly wisdom is to sprinkle back story in bits throughout the narrative of the “now.”

 

That’s fine. But it isn’t the only way to make sense of the present.

 

"What's past is prologue" is a quotation of William Shakespeare from his play The Tempest. In contemporary use, the phrase stands for the idea that history sets the context for the present.

 

Prologues have a legitimate place in literature.*

*I used the Palatino Linotype font in this post on purpose. Old and relevant.

WRITTEN BY AI

 

On my previous agent quest, one of the agents I queried had this question on her submission form:

Was the manuscript, in whole or in part, written by AI?

Really? Really.

 

Mind you, this agent was looking for fiction. Technical writing (think brochures, manuals, and business reports) are now largely assisted by AI and its predecessors, the writing programs like Grammarly, Scrivener, and even Microsoft Word. I use Word to catch typos as I type, and heaven help me, many still escape this smart program.

 

But writing novels is a different process, and it seems AI has joined the ranks of those of us (humans) who venture to tell stories.

 

If you write with the goal to “get published,” (harking back here to my last post) I suppose you may test AI to see if it can churn something that would pass for genre literature. These are formulaic by definition, and machines can do formulas.

 

If, like me and most writers I know, you write to explore and discover meaning and understanding, then AI has no place in your process.

 

AI? FGDAI ! (=Forget about it)

 

As to the agent who asked, I replied, “Heavens, no.” Maybe my mention of the divine realm made her decline my submission swiftly. Probably not. But the very fact of her asking got me regretting the submission as soon as I pressed Send.

 

Really.

October 24, 2024, edited to add: 

I've now been made aware of the hullabaloo surrounding the organization National November Writing Month ("NaNoWriMo") and its tacit endorsement of AI in generating content in fiction, couched as "we neither condemn nor endorse."  I've never participated in NaNoWriMo and have no interest in group word-counting marathons, so I was not aware of this. I better understand the agents who ask about the use of AI.

I write as a form of meditation where I'm accountable to myself only, so neither this group nor the 12x12 picture book writing challenge group, both of which charge writers to belong, hold the slightest interest for me. Speaking for myself, it's not why I write.

What Counts as “BEING PUBLISHED”?

 

Going back to Karen Jones Gowens’ list of questions for writers,  (see here) I will address my personal take on the matter of whether self-publishing (in addition to traditional publishing) also counts as “being published.”

 

Whether labeled “co-op,” “subsidy,” or the dreaded “vanity,” self-publishing in its many forms amounts to the writer paying to be published. Regardless of how much of the preliminary work the writer does themselves (are you also a designer? An illustrator? A specialist in art cover?), there is an expense to putting out the product, and the writer bears this expense.

 

I respect the effort and the quality of the best self-published books. They are “published,” in the basic sense of being made publicly available.

 

But your work isn’t “being published” if you are the active force (as in paying and designing) to make the work public. To “be published” is in passive tense for a reason. This means others have taken the work and brought it to market on their dime.

 

To me, “being published” means traditional publishing paid you. Ideally, with advance and royalties, or even just royalties. [I’ve had one of each.] If you are the publisher of your own work, it takes nothing from the work itself as such. But you (i.e., your work) haven’t been published.

 

Just my take, one of many, and I’m claiming no right or wrong in my understanding.

A MYSTERY, INSIDE AN ENIGMA

 

“A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”

That which is so dense and secretive as to be totally indecipherable or impossible to foretell. It is from a line used by Winston Churchill to describe the intentions and interests of Russia in 1939

 

I was thinking about what makes an enigmatic character. Think Inspector Dalgleish from the P.D. James novels, or Clarisse from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Charismatic and lovable, but what drives them is only hinted at, never neatly solved.

 

These are my favorite kind of characters and my favorite sort of stories, where everything isn’t neatly wrapped in a bow.

 

Standing in awe of the mystery is what I consider contemplation prayer to be. It is how I understand notions of the divine. It is also what makes for the most powerful art.

 

The headwinds, when writing for young readers in particular, are the how-to conventions of the publishing professionals who insist on clarity of motives and neat endings that resolve all questions.

 

Maybe this is why I keep The Little Prince front of mind. He asked a lot of questions and, while a few answers float in here and there, the little guy himself remained an enigma.

 

This little prince is testament that even stories for all ages can feature riddles wrapped in mystery inside an enigma.

SEEKING STRUCTURE

 

Structure is the first aspect of building a story. It’s also how we frame coherent thoughts.

This post speaks of how crucial it is for writers, specifically of memoirs.

Books like SAVE THE CAT in all its variations give not only rough, but very detailed story beats.

If you’ve read the original, written specifically for screenwriters, you will never see most movies the same way. You’ll recognize these story beats, or turns, clicking in like clockwork.

At least for me, all genre stories begin to read the same.

The mini surprises lie in the specifics, but never in the rising or receding action/tension. The cat gets saved with numbing predictability.

Good story structure is a safety net. But please don’t be a slave to it.

Who am I saying this to?

The storyteller, of course. The storyteller in me.