When I told a friend that I was leaving today for Italy, she said, “Oh, good for you! And thank goodness I don’t have to go. I hate traveling!” This immediately made me think about The Accidental Tourist.
I loved that book, and the movie. The protagonist was—is?—a man whose job is writing travel guides for people who don’t really want to leave home. Such people read about distant places rather than going there—not that there’s anything wrong with that! But personally, I find it incomprehensible. And it’s my belief that most people are with me on this.
Among reading travelers, there are two distinct but overlapping categories: those who read before they go in order to be prepared, and those who read after they return as a way of consolidating and enriching their memories. Regardless of your style, let me mention a few good travel reads.
Of course I think first of Italy. There’s something for everyone. La Bella Figura is light and humorous. It relies on lots of stereotypes, and is a bit brittle (IMHO) but entertaining nonetheless. I especially enjoy in-depth views of places written by ex-pats who are excellent writers. I also put The City of Florence by R.W.B. Lewis and My Venice by Donna Leon into this category. Both are well-written, rich in detail, and quirky in perspective, taking the reader beyond the usual tourist paths.
Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island does a similar service for Great Britain.
Not all tourism must happen abroad. A two-week float-and-paddle rafting trip down the Colorado River remains one of my greatest trips ever. And having read John McPhee, a trip to Alaska remains one of my (as yet) unfulfilled dreams.
My advice: wherever you’re going, wherever you’ve been, wherever you want to go—if only in the comfort of your recliner!—read about it!
I’m going to Italy! (Yes, lucky me!) And unlike getting into the car for a day trip, I’m thinking of this as travel. That led me to think about how people travel, where, and why, and the myriad of ways travel exposes the traveler.
How people travel
Consider a character who chooses to drive cross-country rather than fly. Why? Flight phobia or sight-seeing? What about the woman who rides horseback from coast to coast, alone? The man who walked from Rockaway Beach in NY to Rockaway Beach in OR? What’s the difference between a bicycle tripper and a motorcycle tripper? Who chooses a bus tour vs. an ocean cruise?
Even within a mode, consider the differences between someone chauffeur-driven and someone driving a Toyota Corolla. What about someone flying first class vs. a tourist on a plane?
Why travel?
I won’t go into depth, but I’ll mention some possibilities: work, pleasure, a family gathering, attendance at a wedding or funeral or coronation…
Where?
Exotic or mundane? City or rural? A safe pace or one edged with danger of some sort? Revisiting a place or seeking something new? A place steeped in history or a modern resort setting?
If you stop here, you will certainly have a much richer character than you would had he or she stayed put. You can have established interests, skills, socio-economic class, work status, maybe something on family status…
But taking it farther is an even greater opportunity. Don’t hesitate to go for personal and quirky! There are issues of style to consider in revealing your characters.
Peg Bracken mentioned a friend in one of her books who traveled with her own martinis: the bottom of her suitcase was lined with individual martinis in vacuum-sealed bags, prepared by her own hand.
What people feel is essential reveals a lot. Consider the woman who travels with ten books, the woman who packed thirteen pairs of shoes. What if it’s the same woman?
I know a woman who prepared for a two-week trip to Europe by planning what she would wear, in what combinations, every day she was gone in order to avoid repeating an outfit. Everything was laid out in the spare room a week before departure. I also know a couple who packed for four months in Singapore at midnight before their morning departure, in two small carry-ons and one big hard-sided suitcase.
Some people pack everything they can think of that they might possibly want or need, from Scotch Tape to crochet hooks, night lights to batteries, and fifteen OTC drugs. Others pack their toothbrushes and razors, and don’t even stress over remembering those—the philosophy being “I can borrow or buy anything I need when I get there.”
Is your traveler relaxed or drinking to relax? Tolerant of the crying infant or calling the flight attendant every thirty minutes?
BOTTOM LINE: If it’s relevant to your story, bring travel into your character’s life! Even anticipating travel can reveal character traits that just lose their punch when told. And BTW: you can get a mini-version of this by revealing what’s in a woman’s purse/handbag/shoulder bag or a man’s pockets.
Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature created by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week, they provide a prompt for bloggers. Today’s prompt is “Top Ten ALL TIME Favorite Books Of X Genre.”
Yes, great non-fiction is a broad topic. Everything falls in there, from memoir to cookbooks to investigative reporting! I loved West With the Night, The Glass Castle, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
[Photo credit: rebeccaskloot.com]
But I’m not going to deal with that sort of non-fiction. I don’t know how to classify my sub-genre, so I’ll just put the exemplars out there!
Mary Roach makes science reader-friendly. She writes about everything from sex research (Bonk) to human cadavers (Stiff). Without Roach, I’d never have stopped to wonder how crash dummies are calibrated—etc., etc., etc. Pick up any of her books.
Charles Panati is a master of what I call “grouped trivia.” His titles say it all. Choose any one and you’ll get what you expect—except that you’ll likely enjoy it more! I consider Panati’s books reference works—for, as you may know, I often write weird stories (cf. Different Drummer: a collection of off-beat fiction).
In the same category, I treasure The Best, Worst, and Most Unusual. How else would I know that in Hong Kong, cricket fighting (although illegal) is very popular, inspires heavy betting, and has much in common with cockfighting. Or that if you eat bananas, your skin will exude an odor that attracts mosquitoes?
I’m also a fan of Bill Bryson. I became hooked on Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way. His tracing of language evolution actually made me more tolerant of “prioritize” as a replacement for “set priorities”—though I still don’t like it!
Last but far from least, I recommend John McPhee. The first book I read was Coming Into The Country, which left me with a dream of traveling to Alaska—a dream as yet unfulfilled, but hope springs eternal. This man can make anything interesting. As a result of his writing, even I know how Bill Bradley was able to make baskets while facing the opposite end of the court: you just have to have a sense of where you are.
I recommend these non-fiction books and authors to readers for pleasure and to writers for enlightenment!
We all know about Point of View. It’s the narrator’s position in relation to the story being told.
With the objective POV, the writer tells the story entirely with action and dialogue. S/he never discloses anything about thoughts or feelings, leaving it for the reader to infer these from the dialogue and action.
In my experience, writers more often choose to get inside the head and heart of one or more characters.
The closest POV is when the narrator is “I.” I struggled to speak around the lump in my throat. My heart thundered painfully in my chest. I planned the meal carefully, including all of Dad’s favorite dishes.
A step more distant is the third person POV—he, she, or it felt, thought, planned, reacted…
And then there are stories with multiple POVs—not that there’s anything wrong with that! But it is risky. Authors who do it well clearly lead the reader from one head to the next. One good exemplar is Diana Gabaldon. When she’s writing from Claire’s POV, it is first person. Everyone else is third person, and these shifts are typically by chapter.
The danger is changing POV within scenes. For example, a couple argues intensely and the writer tells the reader what each is thinking and feeling. Why is this a problem?
The challenge is to be consistent when two POV characters are in the same scene. It’s incredibly easy to accidentally give the non-POV character fleeting thoughts or feelings.
Head-hopping is jumping from one POV to another quickly, with no warning to the reader. It makes the story feel choppy and can be confusing.
Doing it right means signaling the changes to the reader by chapter breaks or the ubiquitous *** that signals something is changing. The writer sticks with any given POV for the duration of the chapter or scene.
And one last consideration: Readers typically identify with the POV character—whether “I” or a third person “s/he.” With multiple points of view, the reader may have difficulty deciding who to root for. And the more POVs included, the greater the difficulty.
Bottom line: handling multiple POVs effectively is a challenge, and avoid head-hopping, always!
Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature created by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week, they provide a prompt for bloggers. Today’s prompt is TV-themed.
We tend to think of TV as something totally separate from literature. Not so! If you’ve enjoyed any of the following on TV, consider reading the books they are based on.
Whoever said, “Getting there is half the fun” wasn’t a writer. For the written word, getting from point A to point B (writing transportation) can be deadly.
Driving holds three potholes for writers.
One is the temptation to “make it real” by including (boring and unnecessary) details about a route driven. Does anyone really care that your character took Three Chopt to Gaskins and merged onto I-64 west, exited onto I-295 to pick up I-95? Ditto with such details as taking Horsepen to Boulevard, taking a right onto Malvern, and a left on Cary St. Local readers might think, “Yeah, s/he knows the territory.” But if these specific turns and streets aren’t central to the plot, find a more dynamic way to establish your credibility!
The other pitfall is to have fallen in love with the Pacific Coast Highway, the Blueridge Parkway, the winding roads through Colorado mountains, or some other scenic road and putting one’s character in a car along the way, rhapsodizing at the beauty.
And then there is the typical road trip. We’ve all been there. People cut you off. Road construction slows you down. But unless the trucker who seems to be jockeying you off the road is going to turn up later, don’t mention it!
Planes are equally tempting.
If your character is flying from Dulles to Frankfurt, you might again be tempted to make it real by describing the drink spilled in his/her lap, the noise, the fatigue. But unless the obnoxious seatmate or the mother with the cute baby will show up later in the plot, don’t mention them. Unless something plot-related happens en route, skip the travel! Put your character on the plan in Dulles (never mind the frustrations of security screening) and get him/her off in Frankfurt, fatigued if it’s relevant.
The same is true of any mode of transportation.
Unless you are writing a travelogue, something like “Walking from Rockaway Beach, NY to Rockaway Beach, Oregon, and all my interesting experiences along the way,” launch your character on their way and skip to the arrival. Anything else just slows the plot line and risks losing the reader.
Bottom line: Unless something or someone important to the plot is encountered along the way, when it comes to writing transportation, don’t!
One of the basic characteristics of anthologies is that the works included are relatively short. They are good for days when focusing for a long time may not be feasible, or when one wants a literary bite before bedtime.
By definition, because anthologies include works by different authors, they include different voices, styles, and maybe genres. If you don’t like one story, move on to the next.
When anthologies draw from previously published sources, the work has already been vetted for quality more than once. Indeed, many anthologies are published annually with titles like The Best X Short Stories of (Year).
Anthologies can be selected by format. Most recent anthologies are available both as physical books and ebooks.
Anthologies are often broad in scope.
100 Great Short Stories by Dover Publications
Great Short Short Stories, edited by Paul Negri
The World’s Greatest Short Stories, edited by James Daley
120 Great Short Stories, by Oldiees Publishing
Doubletakes: Pairs of Contemporary Short Stories, edited by T. C. Boyle et al.
40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology, edited by Beverly Lawn
Some anthologies are mission driven. A couple of examples of these would be Drumvoices Revue (where my short story “Aunt Fan’s Private Journey” appeared), which celebrates diversity, and the Chrysalis Reader series, which describes itself as “original essays, poetry, and short stories illuminating the world of spirit.” One volume included my story “Solid Line.”
Sometimes they are focused by geographic region.
The Best American Short Stories, published annually by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Great American Short Stories, edited by Wallace and Mary Stegner
The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
100 Years of The Best American Short Stories, edited by Lorrie Moore and Heidi Pitlor
The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Oxford University Press
Come join the Sisters in Crime mystery writers for an exciting event!
Meet the authors (including me!) of Virginia is for Mysteries: Volume II, an anthology of mysteries by the Sisters in Crime writers’ group. The event will take place on Saturday, September 10 from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm.
Although some people write to put food on the table, more write to feed their souls.
According to an article by Alison Flood of The Guardian, a 2014 survey revealed that 54% of “traditionally-published” authors and nearly 80% of self-published authors earn less than $1,000 a year. In this same survey, only a minority of respondents listed making money as “extremely important”—around 20% of self-published writers and 25% of traditionally-published authors.Overall, Flood concluded, “Most authors write because they want to share something with the world or gain recognition of some sort.” Clearly, most writers aren’t in it to put food on the table.
The joys of writing to feed one’s soul can be summarized in the word freedom.
Free to write on your own schedule.
Free from worry about sales covering the advance.
Free to write in any genre, not just the one(s) that sell best.
Free to ignore industry guidelines/standards for works of a certain genre, such as page length, structure, and language.
Free to switch genres or to write in many genres.
Free to write a series with a different protagonist.
Free to write anything and everything under one name.
Many big-name authors (i.e., those who make a lot of money writing) find themselves limited in the previous three freedoms. The reading public wouldn’t let Arthur Conan Doyle kill off Sherlock Holmes. Many authors write under more than one name. Search online under “famous authors who use multiple pen names” and go from there. Some authors do so to reinvent themselves—e.g.Stephen King/ Richard Bachman, J.K. Rowling/Robert Galbraith. Some use different names for different genres—e.g., Jenna Peterson writes historicals but uses the name Jesse Michaels for erotic romance. Other multiple-name authors include Dean Koontz, Richard Matheson, Joyce Carol Oates, Agatha Christie, C.S. Lewis, and Isaac Asimov. There are more.
Diana Gabaldon started off writing to feed her soul—in my opinion! She says that she wrote Outlander for practice, to learn the craft, with no intention of showing it to anyone. Not only did she write an impossibly long book (by industry standards) but she mixed romance, adventure, history, time-travel, and magical elements.
You can also read over seventy comments on this piece online. She starts with a discussion of how writers’ brains work and moves on to the limitations of genres.
When you write to feed your soul, the only real requirement is that you write.
I took a couple of philosophy courses in college, and trust me, they didn’t have titles anything like these books! But for your reading pleasure, here are a variety of possibilities:
The Beatles and Philosophy: Popular Culture and Philosophy, edited by Michael & Steven Baur
Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy: The Footprints of a Gigantic Mind, edited by Josef Steiff
Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside,edited by C. Lewis & P. Smithka [Photo credit: Amazon]
Star Trek and Philosophy: The Wrath of Kant, edited by J.T.Eberl & K.S. Decker
The Grateful Dead and Philosophy: Tetting High Minded About Love and Haight, edited by Steven Gimbel
Pink Floyd and Philosophy: Careful that Axiom, Eugene!, edited by George A. Reisch
The first and last titles say it all! The various volumes focus on issues of life, love, society, politics, spirituality, personal identity, art, ethics, conflict, community, cosmos, truth, American identity, justice, human fulfillment, meaning-of-life, obesity, animal rights, political correctness, religious tolerance, homophobia, moral responsibility, social justice, patriotism, romantic love, artistic creativity, and class oppression. Here’s a chance to explore the more serious underpinning of popular culture that, possibly, account for the popularity. Check these books out online; there’s something for every reader here!
