Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
Tuesdays with Story
June 1, 2016

Who’s up next . . .

June 7: Lisa McDougal (chapter 1 rewrite, Tebow Family Secret), Pat Edwards (???), Eva May (chapter 4, Duoda), Amber Boudreau (chapter 2, The Dragoneer), Kashmira Sheth (YA novel, chapters 18-19, Journey to Swaraj), John Schneller (???), Nora O’Reilly (synopsis, Bill McCormick’s Bliss), and Bob Kralapp (short story, part 2, “Wings”).

June 14:

June 21: Mike Austin (chapter 4, Before I Leave), Millie Mader (poem), Hannah Marshall (poems), Amit Trivedi (chapter, novel), Judith McNeil (short story, part 2, “Just Visiting”), Nora O’Reilly (chapters 1-7 for background, chapter 8 for critiquing, Bill McCormick’s Bliss), and Jerry Peterson (???).

Fifth Tuesday . . .

A dozen writers and guests gathered at the Goodman Community Center last evening for good food, good fellowship, and good Fifth Tuesday challenge stories, the event hosted by our second-and-fourth group. Look for those stories to be posted to our Yahoo group later in the week.

Now’s the time to block out the date on your calendar for our next Fifth Tuesday. That’s August 30. First-and-third will host.

What authors do you read and what do you read for?

Wisconsin novelist Jane Hamilton was asked that question by Book Browse dot Com. Her answer is instructive:

When I was a teenager, I read books not to figure out how people fell in love, but to figure out how, once they were in love, they came together.

I read Jane Eyre and Emma and Sons and Lovers. The coming together part, I could see, was as complicated as I’d feared.

I read heaps of contemporary trashy novels with good girls and bad girls, bad boys and good boys – books which seemed to be more helpful, although the predictable happiness in the end always seemed a little suspect.

Other topics that interested me were privation and suffering – The Dairy of Anne Frank – and the big emptiness of life itself – the Herman Hesse phase coupled with all of J.D. Salinger. I also wanted from a book instructions about living in the world especially if you felt you were alone. The Diaries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh were lovely company.

Now, in middle age, I still read for some of the same reasons, but for others, too. Beyond instructions for living, I read to marvel at a strong or lyrical or surprising sentence.

A great sentence is rarer than we think. Lorrie Moore is always stunning in her ability to yoke two or three unlikely things in one graceful and often hilarious sentence.

Carol Shields and Kevin Canty and Carol Anshaw and Michael Cunningham, to name just a few, also have the ability to surprise and amuse and induce awe. How do they do it?

I love reading along and having to pause, to reread, to read out loud, to marvel at the writer’s craft. To ask that question again and again – how on earth did they do it?

In middle age, I read for a writer’s wisdom, his invention, his grace, his penetrating gaze, his fluid sentences, his sense of humor. In old age, as the book lives on, I suspect it will be the same.

On writing cliffhangers

From New York Times bestseller Joe Hill, author of The Fireman. Hill is Stephen King’s son. “If you don’t have something like that [a cliffhanger] at the end of the chapter, where people feel excitement to go on, there’s a horrible danger that they’ll put the book down and turn on YouTube. I mean, have you ever looked at YouTube? All the cat videos and funny mashups and stuff? It’s a tough world out there! You have to fight. You have to put the gas pedal down on the first page, and keep it there, or you’ll lose them.”

Them . . . your readers.