A Networking Story (with Parentheticals)

What a month it's shaping up to be. Six of my reviews will appear in four publications, plus there are six more that could appear this month, plus a super-fun listicle I can't wait for you to read. I've attracted a lot of wonderful books to myself in the recent past, even if some of them are very long. The past week has not been especially productive, but I think I was burned out. I read 21 books in June. That number includes a couple of 40-page chapbooks and a couple poetry books, but still. That's a lot.

In another week I'm going on vacation and I'm taking both work books and fun books with me. I decided my trip-out plane book will be The Grip of It, which I really should've read last winter when duncan recommended it, but now it's finally on my coffee table. Can't wait.

Today I want to tell you a story. I constructed it with fictional names and titles to make it clear, but still anonymous.

Need She Be Thirsty?

Disclaimer: I am going to talk about contemporary novels I did not like in this post. I'm genuinely sorry to call out living writers this way, especially writers who are not rich and famous and bulletproof.

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If you so much as dip your toe in the vast pool of Writerly Advice, chances are that certain items will stick to your skin. Famed writers have had their advice distilled into short lists that appear over and over again on inspirational websites and in books. Not all of them are useful for all writers; Henry Miller's enables bad habits that keep me from writing, Neil Gaiman's is lovely but unhelpful for the stage I'm at now, Elmore Leonard's is as pleasurable and katana-sharp as his prose but a little too specific and definite for my taste (though #10 is one of the greatest pieces of advice ever).

The list that has settled into being a good guide for me is Kurt Vonnegut's. I'm pretty sure I've quoted this list here before, but I can't remember when, so perhaps it'll be new to you.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things - reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them - in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that.

My writing became a lot tighter when I started obeying rules #4 and 5, more satisfying with rule #6, and more focused and confident with #7. #8 and I don't agree yet, but maybe I'll grow into it.

Today I want to talk about #3. Something occurred to me while I was running yesterday morning about rule #3.