Literature Is Not Dead

I saw a sneak preview of 500 days of Summer last night. It was pretty good. I enjoyed it. But also, I could have written it.

I basically have written parts of it. You could cut and paste whole paragraphs of Flying Wingman or my other twenty-something themed writing into 500 days, because that’s what 500 days is, a perfect depiction of modern twenty-something love life. Everything was disturbingly familiar: the characters, the settings (the office, the bar, someone else’s wedding), the problems.

Which was the downside. It was painful and predictable, like watching Hollywood actors replay your least favorite breakup. Which is why though I’ve often thought about writing a novel about an epic love’s rise and fall, I never have. I can’t bring myself to dwell at such length in past failed relationships.

I live in the future, and in the near future, that means here.

Just recently people in the neighborhood have stopped telling me the juiciest gossip. As a blogger, that’s mad respect! Along with the free beer a brewery had decided to send me, this was a clear sign that I had made it.

Then my editors announced that Metromix was being dismantled. The Tribune company overlords (who own Metromix, the Sun, and B) had spoken. Nevermind that Metromix has the largest, most up-to-date database on restaurants in the city; the Baltimore Sun’s not-as-awesome and already anemic entertainment section is taking over and I am out of a job.

I was doing my part, was I not? I was turning in the twice weekly funniness and interest. (A few more Booze and Old Bay posts coming before the apocalypse. Do not miss them!) I was hitting the new Baltimore spots and commenting sagely on them. I was paying for the Baltimore Sun even though the thing kept getting slimmer and they kept charging more and most of the comics in it are dumb as shit. I was even spending lots of clicks on Metromix myself, and clicks are like internet money. Ten page views make a click, and fifty click’s will buy you a link. The new currency.

But apparently that was not enough! The Tribune overlords needed more bang for their over-leveraged buck! Maybe they should just sell Wrigley Field like they were trying to and give me my job back.

I was pretty miffed before by the fake-money makers that caused this whole recession (I mean, it ain’t the common man’s fault for not knowing how to use credit, right? Right), particularly since they got boats and stuff. Now their not-operating-the-economy-like-the-masterminds-they-said-they-were has gotten personal. I got half a mind to find them on their boats and make them give me money.

But first: Anyone want to give me a job writing about Baltimore? I write like a shark eats fish.

You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance. — Ray Bradbury

In addition to pitching to agents I want to pitch to the many independent book publishers that I know are out there. Unfortunately, I can’t find a way to search for them online. Litmatch.net is my go-to for agent database searches. Anyone know a website that does the same for publishing houses?

You need to know a lot of weird things to write fiction. Every writer has a dictionary, thesaurus, and various grammar and usage guides on their reference shelf, but the well stocked fiction writer’s shelf should also include some of these:

Multiple-language dictionaries. I have Spanish/English, Russian/English and Latin/English. Useful whenever verisimilitude in an international character is required. (A Latin dictionary is also useful for inscriptions, etymology, and the invention of words)

High School texts (or college 101 level texts). In depth knowledge of biology, geometry, or physics is often easier to find texts like these than on Wikiwhatever. I have physics, paleontology, and astronomy. College 101 texts offer a perfect mix between amount of information and accessibility. I also have a criminology text (borrowed and never returned from a friend who took criminology), which is quite useful. I’ve just purchased Essential Clinical Anatomy, by Agur and Moore, for use when writing doctor characters or crime scenes.

Books on psychology. Abnormal psych, like criminology, is useful for background. There’s almost nothing more common in fiction then crime and deranged people. I also have Existential Psychotherapy, (by Yalom, I think, although that’s on loan so I can’t check). Psych books can help in the building of characters, and I find existential psychotherapy particularly useful in this regard, as it focuses on the conditions all humans face.

Descriptive, illustrated books on construction and auto mechanics. I have various. Easily found at used book stores. These do not need to be up to date, as even old manuals will help you differentiate eaves and flashing, or a drive belt and an engine block.

Illustrated guides to plants and animals. Essential for detailed descriptions of nature, and a weakness of my collection, as I only have one book on wildflowers (of the Midwest, no less, where absolutely none of my stories are set).

Have I mentioned before that no one writes stories with endings anymore? I’m pretty sure I have. If I gave my posts more descriptive, less ridiculous names I might be able to refer you back to that previous mention, but I don’t, so I can’t.

No one writes stories with endings anymore. I’ve been reading a few literary journals the last few days. The writing in literary journals is almost always beautiful, the characters usually fascinating, the descriptions precise and the plot… not.

Not there. With a few exceptions, most of the stories leave me asking “and then?”

A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. BME. Each of the things that happens between the B, the M, and the E are causally related. In real life this isn’t how it works, but that is why people read fiction. Real life is boring and makes no sense and goes on too long and when it’s over you’re usually no smarter than before. Stories fix that. That’s what telling stories is all about.

You all know the narrative arc. It looks kinda like this:

(I stole this from here) (Click here for a really cool, complex one that I don’t really understand)

The beginning is on the left, the end is on the right, you get it.

Now, my theory of how good stories work, and this is reason #1 why I find it so difficult to write good stories, is that the narrative arc is sort of like the arc an arrow flies. Ruling out wind like we all did in physics class, the arrow’s ending place is predictable from the very first seconds of its launch. That is, the ending of a story is intimately, necessarily, inextricably related to the very first sentence. They simply can’t be different.

Finding the words that match this closely and the middle that matches the rest of the arc is damn hard. But good stories all have that causal (not casual), intricate relationship between the B, M and E.

Modern writing has gotten away from this. Writing programs don’t teach plot, so that’s the main culprit. Literary people must think they’re above BME, for some reason, which is ridiculous codswallop. The other reason, reason #2 why I find writing good stories so hard, is that the modern short story is really short. Really short. It’s hard to do anything in 2000 words.

But O’henry wrote short stories that were real stories, and so could we, if we only tried. And it’s to the past that I have to turn for examples, which is reason #3 that I have trouble writing good stories: I read so few of them these days.

But that’s just another reason to write. Someone has to do it.

Submitting your first novel to agents and publishers is like walking to the front door with your first born child in your hands. Outside the door are ravenous wolves, howling for fresh meat. “Well,” you think, “wolves need to eat too,” and out you toss your child.

The upside is that one in twenty of those wolves will take your child and raise it and you will be the proud father of a super human/wolf warrior.

A couple leads in the writing world (I’ll announce good news when I’ve got solid evidence, and not sooner) have got me thinking. Am I ready? I’ve spent all my time trying to get to a place where I make a living off the written word.

What happens when I actually get there? Do I have new goals, a next step, a master plan?

Nope.

Totally unprepared to succeed.

Part of me worries “What if they buy this novel and then I find out I’m out of ideas and I never write another novel again, ever!” But that’s the kind of imaginative paranoia that’s an unfortunate side effect of nourishing your creativity.

In reality I’ve got more ideas than I have time to write them. And somewhere in the back of my head are the beginnings of further schemes and plots. I’m sure I’ll find something to say at the podium when I do win that Pulitzer.

As a birthday present to my partner in crime Lindsay, I came up with the idea of writing a post for her so she could take the day off. My post will be up on her blog shortly. She liked the idea so much she wrote a post for me, which I have copied below:

The following is a transcription from a speech given at the Whiting Writers’ Awards. A full copy of the awards ceremony can be obtained by sending $139.95 via PayPal to TheNewGlitterati.blogspot.com.

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, visionaries of the written word, and appreciators of literature from all walks of life. It it my very great pleasure to be accepting the Whiting Award for an emerging writer in fiction on behalf of my late friend, Michael Cook. His absence here this evening is certainly a notable one, and his absence in all of our lives has been a profound sorrow.

I’d first like to take a moment to thank Mike’s family for coming to this event and to remind his youngest brother that I am still not interested in dating him.

Perhaps none of us will know, or should know, the events that occurred on the eve of Mike’s 28th birthday. Suffice it to say, it was certainly not general knowledge that he was, in fact, the leader of a motorcycle gang in Baltimore. A gang responsible for some of the greatest civilian superhero work done in this area, which included the secret raising of over $1.4 million to restore the beach volleyball court in the Inner Harbor as well as a sincere and radical effort to revamp and revitalize the downtrodden area of East Baltimore Street known as “The Block.” Although all of the public service works were done with a veil of anonymity, since his passing it has become public information that his motorcycle gang spearheaded these and other such revitalization projects.

Unfortunately, it was due to this very gang that Mike’s demise on his last day as a 27-year-old occurred. No one could have known that one rogue member of the motorcycle gang, the Lara Croft look-alike, was desperately in love with Mike and bitterly jealous of all the other women who constantly surrounded him. Although he had previously rebuffed her advances, Ms. Croft spent the last year of her life believing that she could win him over and, in the end, shot him as he was attempting to rescue a kitten from a tree branch on the night before his 28th birthday. Although Mike’s death was certainly and unbelievably tragic, it did win him a position in the famed “27 Club” and also a very lucrative posthumous publication deal, the proceeds of which went to keeping the motorcycle gang alive and also to supporting the lifestyle of one of his greatest friends: myself.

His life’s work, the “Wingman” series, is a searing vision of the concurrent hypermasculinization and supreme neo-feminist dialogue that so often goes unexplored and unmentioned in today’s society. Because the work was left in its entirety, it was published without any edits at all which is considered a feat of unprecedented artistry. Although critics have chastized his work as being “too visionary” and “intellectually riddled with loft that cannot be broken down by the average man,” it is clear that there was no more deserving an individual of the Whiting Award than Mike Cook. His “Wingman” series has sold over 145 million copies, the storyline purchased by Dreamworks, and a pilot for a sitcom as well as a prototype for an action figure currently in the works. Additionally, Mike’s family would like to announce the unveiling of their line of commemorative shot glasses, symbolic of the twelve espresso martini shots it is rumored he had consumed on the night of his death.

Although we are endlessly saddened that Mike could not be here tonight, it is my very great honor to accept this award on his behalf, and also to remind all of you to tune in for the season premiere of my own new sitcom, “Glitterati,” this Thursday at 9pm immediately following “The Office.” Mike lived a very full and astounding 27 years, leaving behind his beloved family, his motorcycle, and possibly a child or two that he may never have known about, but whom will undoubtedly attempt to stake a claim on the new Cook Family Fortune.

Thank you all so much for coming this evening, and let us all take a moment to remember Mike Cook, Futurescribe and former motorcycle gang leader and award-winning author. His memory will live on for all of us.

My parents raised me pretty well when it came to handling money, which is good since we don’t learn anything about it in school. Let’s consider this, for a moment: 60% of our economy is based on the consumer, our entire country runs on the capitalist system, a system that is concerned with nothing but money, and we don’t teach ANYTHING about money to kids in high school.

Brilliant.

So I’m gonna plug a magazine you should check out if you are, like me, not very well educated about money. My roommate gets the Economist, and that’s great if you have all week to read and took a couple economics courses AND remember what you learned. I get a magazine called Brass, which I get because I’ve written a few pieces for them.

Brass’s mission is to educate young people about their money. “Young today, rich tomorrow” is their slogan.  As such, some of the advice and articles is a little simple and common sense. It’s a super light read. Even the long articles are just three or four pages. But Brass explains basic economic concepts in a palatable format. The current issue had a nice piece explaining inflation and deflation. Now I know what demand-pull and cost-push actually mean for when I pick up that Economist and read it.

Also, there was a very well written, funny article on the extravagent, diamond studded gifts rich people give each other, including what could possibly be the best thing ever: for $60,000 dollars you can have a replica of yourself built out of Legos. They never told me about that in school either.