WHO IS THE READER?

When my father lectured university age students, he told me that in his mind he would focus on one student as he talked. This made it possible to impart what general thoughts and wisdom he had while keeping the thread personal.

Keeping a personal narrative is essential to have it be a compelling and emotionally evocative voice. Fiction writers know this is vital to good storytelling.

Who is the reader? I realized long ago that, for me writing for younger readers, the reader is who I was back then at the intended reader’s age.

Only it isn’t really. I see through a lens of my understanding of now. Obviously, this is not the real young me of then, but who I have come to think I was.

Confusing?

The attempt to reach a reader is always an act of faith. You can’t hold it in your hands and verify the path with your eyes. Faith, augmented with hope, is the engine that drives the telling of a fiction story to a fictional reader.

The goal is one—

Saying “hello there,” and hoping to connect with you.

Why REALITY is All the Rage

When James Frey couldn’t sell his excellent story (A Million Little Pieces) as fiction, he presented it as nonfiction and it sold with an explosive marketing campaign. What followed was Oprah’s endorsement and NYT bestselling status until...

A website called The Smoking Gun exposed it as fictional, after all.

Every story has some of the writer’s reality in it. But if you label it non-fiction, you should stick very closely to documentable events. Where you take liberties, such as name changes to protect people or omissions for the sake of expediency, you must acknowledge this right off the bat.

Even when reading fiction, the reader wants it to be real. We secretly think that though the writer states this is a work of fiction, it’s *likely, mostly, basically, please-be* a true story.

This is why the how-to books admonish not to start a story with a dream sequence or a flashback. A reader invests in what is happening, only to find out it was just a dream or something that happened long before the main narrative. Na-ah. Not nice. Don’t do it to them.

Readers want that “happening now” feel, an exclamatory phrase CNN uses with abandon. It is much easier to sell a story if the storyteller prefaces it with BASED ON A TRUE STORY.

Long ago, the sight of an old Victorian house in an adjacent town inspired me to imagine a ghost story that could have occurred in it. Actually, I based the story on something a friend told me did happen to the family that lived there.

The next time I walked by with my kids, (then five and eight years old) I told them the story. Don’t be alarmed, it was a kid-friendly version. They were riveted.

{Full disclosure: photo is not that very house^ but one very similar looking J}

Then the question came. “This I a true story. Right, Mom?”

The way they phrased the question begged me to lie. But they were my kids, not some nameless unseen readers. I told the truth.

“Well, no. I made it up. But the house inspired it.”

The instant deflation of their spirits testified to how much it mattered.

There are ways to sort of get around this.
Think of the lines that precede the first chapter of The Da Vinci Code. It’s a list of two little-known things that are factual, investing the reader in what is a work of fiction.
The Movie (and made for TV series) Fargo begins with “this is a true story,” but phrased in an enigmatic way that works as a disclaimer, too.

Because if we are to follow a narrative we need to believe it. At the very least, we need to have our incredulous nature suspended for the duration.

Nothing Wasted

When a job application does not result in an offer, when an audition did not yield a part, or when a story failed to find a publisher, many sum up the time and effort as a failure.

Here’s my take, which is also a sort of moto for me:

Nothing wasted if I learned from it.

I have written middle grade novels that have not sold. (Yet. Let’s be positive.) But in the process of research for each my world got richer, fuller, and the purse of riches is still with me and continues to grow.

The only writing failures in my eyes are the stories that came with little inner motivation, such as attempting something that was fashionable, or repeating a variation of a story and setting I have plowed and fully mined before. Those taught me nothing. (Unless I count the “don’t do this again,” so maybe they are not complete failures, either.)

Striving and learning are the most worthwhile of all. Prizes may be the frosting, but striving is the cake.

Eat cake, folks!

Favorite Old Rosh Hashanah Posts, Again

My favorite Jewish New Year story is one I already posted two years ago on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. I suppose that just as we repeat the ritual of dipping apples in honey, saying the same annual blessings and making the same honey cake in more or less the same way, I feel it is not wholly inappropriate to post part of it here, again. (The complete version is in the link under the first sentence^.)

My mother was a permanent guest at our home every Friday and holiday.

In 2001, friends of my father and stepmother were visiting the bay area from Israel.

I didn’t know them well, and when they called, I asked them to come for Rosh Hashanah dinner. I figured that they could use a taste of home.

My mother was a Kugel fan. If you haven’t heard of kugel, let’s just say that it is a casserole of cooked-anything-at-all mixed with beaten eggs and seasonings. I had promised her a round kugel for Rosh Hashanah. Round, like all New Year dishes that symbolize the closing of circles.

I didn't make kugel often, so I set out to make the best. I had a mother to honor, Israeli guests, and an urgent need to respond to the disaster that had just struck our nation-- with the perennial Jewish celebration motto: They tried to kill us, we survived, LET’S EAT!

My mother dreamed of potato-kugel. So I grated and seasoned and mixed and mashed, pouring the mixture into a greased round dish and into a 375 degree oven. 
Then it occurred to me- the last time I made carrot-kugel, DH mentioned not once, but twice, how much he liked it. So I grated and mixed and added the cinnamon and brown sugar and to another round dish it went, also into the same oven.

DD came in and asked what I was making.

 “Kugel, for the New Year,” I said.

“Yum. I love noodle-kugel,” she said. Oops. I wasn’t thinking of her favorite. So I boiled egg noodles and mixed in the eggs, apple sauce and the raisins, and into the oven in yet another round baking dish went kugel number three.

It crossed my mind that having something green for the New Year was sort of mandatory. Think harvest, re-growth, life. Zucchini-kugel would have to serve that role. More grating, beating, mixing, pouring. The oven was almost at full capacity.

DS came in. With the resolute expression six-year-olds are so good at, he informed me that he doesn’t eat any of these kugels. In desperation I made the only kind I knew he would: chocolate-kugel. Not very traditional, but it was round and it was going to be irresistible. Think dark-chocolate not too sweet soufflé, only this one stabilized with matzo meal so it doesn’t collapse.

 By then I was ready to collapse. 

Our guests arrived right after my mother. Introductions were made, and they complimented our table. I lit the holiday candles, and DD blessed the round challah. DS said the blessing over the fruit of the vine, (ours-wine, his and DD’s grape juice) and we said SHE-HEH-CHEH-YANU, the prayer of gratefulness for having arrived to this day. It had never meant more.

I opened the oven door and brought out the first. 
“Wow, kugel!” our guests exclaimed.

I went back and brought the second. 
“How nice, a kugel!” the wife said.

I was feeling positively giddy when I brought the third. 
“Ah, kugel,” I heard. It sounded a bit like a sigh.

Not done, I came in with the fourth. 
“Another kugel?” said the husband.

I felt positively sheepish bringing in kugel number five. But it was chocolate; the only one DS would eat.

I suspect our guests from Israel thought they really had landed in Oz.

All right, folks— Let’s eat!

Social Media Faux-pas

I will assume that anyone commenting on a followed blog, or a Facebook page, or a tweet, means well. Almost all do. And let me tell you, sending thoughts out there and not getting comments is a very lonely thing. So they are not only welcome but wanted and appreciated.

But there are the well-meaning ones that manage to be remarkably unhelpful. Remarkable because they mean well. I’m not referring to the few that do not mean well, the trolls, or the ones coming out of folks who just got bad news and think misery loves company is a social commandment.

I have been the unlucky recipient of two of the examples below. But most come from others, friends and acquaintances, who either shared their pain with me or I was there to witness it. Even as they said nothing in retort, it was painfully obvious this was a backhanded compliment.

Examples:

“You never age!”

“You’re a miracle of preservation”

“How do you manage to stay so young looking?”

Nice, but what they really say, and in a public forum, (like commenting on new Facebook profile picture) is that you are in fact old. Thanks.

“Nice haircut. When will you grow your hair back?”

“I love what you did with your hair. I’ll send you my stylist’s number. You’ll love her.”

“Looks great. Is it Nice and Easy?”

Lovely, but what they really say is that your hair has suffered a misfortune in incompetent hands.

“I loved, just loved, your other book. When will you write another one like that one?”

“I got your book a year ago!” (No other comment. Yup, that’s it.)

“Your book is good for people interested in the subject.”

Sounds positive, but what they are really saying is they can’t recommend it, and need to post a public warning to that effect.

And then there are these doozies. If you’ve ever been in the vicinity of such utterances, you could feel the silent hissing:

“You look wonderful! Are you pregnant?” (Never a good idea to say this, especially to a man.)

“We’ve got to have you over. Maybe next May when our garden is blooming.” (Said in early June.)

“It’s nice that you write for children. Have you thought of writing a book for real people?”

This last one is one of only two that I actually received myself, and from my father. Ouch. Not telling which of the others was also given to me.

Okay, good people. Let’s not do any of that. 

(Another) HAPPY (Jewish) NEW-YEAR

According to the Jewish calendar, we just entered year 5776.

That, according to tradition, is counting back to the creation of the world.

Certainly, not the world as the geologists count it, or the world as the Christians count it from the birth of Christ, or the world as the Muslims count it from Muhammad’s emigration from Mecca to Medina, or the Hindu count from the start of the Kali Yuga, which, incidentally, is startlingly close to the Jewish start.

It’s the world as we count it, and it’s old enough for me.

It’s also the time when all who are not diabetic are invited to slop-up inordinate amounts of honey, drizzled over everything.

Whether this is your count or not, come and have some anyway.

Honey cake recipe: (Easy and full proof)

Turn oven to 350 Fahrenheit (or 175 Celsius). Spray non-stick for baking on two 9”by 5” by 3”, that's inches, (standard) loaf pans.

Mix—

2 cups honey

1 cup strong coffee (decaf is fine. It’s for flavor), brewed and cooled

2 TBS. Brandy

4 eggs, beaten

½ cup oil

Add—

½ cup brown sugar

Sift together—

3 and ½ cups flour

1 TBS. baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

3 TBS. spices (Cinnamon, ginger, cloves, allspice)

Add the dry sifted mixture to the liquid and mix well. Bake loaves for 50 minutes to an hour.

*Here comes the crucial part— wrap cooled loaves in foil and do not eat until at least three days have passed. This is a difference between an ok spice cake to a great Jewish Honey Cake. And you've got a spare loaf to give as a gift!*