Whomping Up the Creative Machine

Before his book got pulled from the stores, Jonah Lehrer had some interesting things to say about Creativity in Imagine: How Creativity Works. (Turned out Lehrer had gotten a little too creative himself and made up a Bob Dylan quote or two, which is too bad because Lehrer has great things to say even through his own mouth, without bothering to put words in other people's mouths. And now I hear they've yanked another favorite of mine, his How We Decide. Crumb.)

In my Goodreads book review, I boiled down the creativity jumpstarts to the following list:

1. Move to a big city where you are compelled to mingle constantly with people you know and don't know;

2. Talk about your problems and blocks and puzzlers with people outside your field;

3. Do some drugs;

4. Practice letting yourself be uncensored;

5. Expose your ideas to criticism and integrate possible solutions;

6. Fail a lot, in order to find success.

How am I, as a writer, doing, according to this checklist?

1. Move to a big city where you are compelled to mingle constantly with people you know and don't know. Bellevue, Washington, has a population of nearly 125,000, but I don't by any means "mingle constantly with people I know and don't know." At least this Saturday I'll be speaking at the Seattle University Search for Meaning Book Festival on "Prayer and Prejudice: the Validity of Faith in Jane Austen," so I'll be forced to mingle with the four perfect strangers who come to my talk, plus the tech guy who'll be advancing my PowerPoint slides. PARTIAL FAIL.

2. Talk about your problems and blocks and puzzlers with people outside your field. I don't think any non-writer wants to hear about my writer's block. In fact, I doubt many writers want to hear about it. Hence my confessional blog posts. FAIL.

3. Do some drugs. Do ibuprofen and a few cough drops count? FAIL.

4. Practice letting yourself be uncensored. That would be called my daily life, though I am having to rein in some snarky comments as my oldest becomes more and more of a teenager. PARTIAL SUCCESS.

5. Expose your ideas to criticism and integrate possible solutions. Anyone who's put anything out there for public comment practices #5. I've gotten some glowing, encouraging responses to my writing and some vicious critiques. I suppose one possible solution is to quit writing, but another is for the dislikers to avoid my books in future. PARTIAL SUCCESS.

6. Fail a lot, in order to find success. One reader (also a writer) told me, "I can't wait to read the book I know you can write." Uh...I think the ones I already put out are going to be kinda par for the course. But if they were failures in her book, I aim to keep trying. PARTIAL SUCCESS.

But Mr. Lehrer's advice aside, I'm happy to report the creative juices are dribbling out again, thanks to two other factors.

1. A reader scheduled a book club for Mourning Becomes Cassandra. I'd spoken at her church's MOPS group last year, and she actually took the time to find my book and read! Hurray! Such a motivator. And,

2. Some accounts I follow on Twitter introduced me to the Pulp-O-Mizer, a fabulous free website that can suck down all kinds of creative time. Check out the pulp fiction cover I made for MBC! I think I love it even more than the original, so of course I had to buy a mug and notebook...

Awesome, am I right?

Not only did I make three pulp fiction book covers (MBC, The Littlest Doubts, and my Work-in-Progress), but making the cover for my WIP made me want to get cracking on it again. I started Chapter 9 today, and I think I've written 3000 words in the past week. Not overly shabby! It could be the freedom to tell myself, as with the classics of pulp fiction, "I write to entertain."

John, Anne, Jane, and Michael

Hearty thanks to Marianne and her book club for hosting me and Everliving last night. Loved the questions, the conversation, and the "turtle fondue" of chocolate, caramel and pecans!

For those of you always on the lookout for new book club best practices, Marianne's group copies discussion questions (from the book or online), cuts them out, puts them in a bowl, and has everyone draw one. Kinda fun! But even funner was the meeting they had for Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, where everyone was assigned a character to dress up as. Brilliant idea, and one I'll suggest to my own book club when we meet tonight. We are tackling Watership Down soon, after all, and what better revenge for me to take than to make everyone dress up as talking rabbits?

Of course, my favorite discussion question, as I've mentioned before, is to have the readers "cast" the book. Marianne's group gets points for originality because they picked John Corbett (thank you, IMDB) for Ben

Hmm...I can picture it.

and Anne Hathaway for Daphne.

Especially perfect for a musical version of EVERLIVING

 Lovely! I'll have to check out this John Corbett, but I do think Anne Hathaway would be every bit as haunting a Daphne as another frequent choice, Emily Blunt.

It was great to revisit Everliving for another reason because I've been buried in Jane Austen lately, prepping for a "Jane Austen book club" a friend and I auctioned off for Eastside Academy and also my upcoming side session for the Seattle University Search for Meaning Book Festival. Check out my Jane slide:

Exciting stuff. Had to figure out how to flip Jane's pic in Microsoft Paint because I wanted her facing inward to the presentation like she actually wanted to be there.

And finally I promised you a Michael. One of the gals at the book club last night was married to a band promoter who had done stints working in a record store and playing in a band. Perfect segue to Mr. Chabon's new novel Telegraph Avenue, which he'll be talking about at the Search for Meaning keynote.

Do hope you can join us on Saturday, March 9! I've got an early bird session at 9:00-9:45, which I much prefer to the slot I had last time, post keynote, after everyone has heard the Big Star and headed off to find lunch. They do require you print tickets at home, and big Michael is supposedly already "Sold Out," but they encourage us to come anyhow, given the high proportion of flake-hood in our culture. Hope to see you!

Blessed Are the Meek Authors

For they shall occasionally be blessed in the shadow the great. At least, I think that's how that verse goes.

Last night I got to hang out with Roxanne's awesome book club as they discussed my Everliving. Nice little ghost story for an October meeting. My thirteen-year-old asked, "But what if they didn't like the book? They can't say that if you're there." I told her that I would come late, so everyone would have plenty of time to vent, and leave early if it looked like they still had more to say. Roxanne assured me, however, this consideration wouldn't be necessary because they were a pretty honest group. And right off the bat, dear Linda proved her right by saying she didn't like the book! The problem was, to my relief, a generic consideration. Linda was not a paranormal fan. Fair enough.

But besides beverages, yummy food, and lively discussion, it was a thrill to be there because their group had been meeting for 11+ years! They had originally been formed at random by Park Place Books, and they had gelled and powered on all this time. Roxanne handed me a list of 130 books that they had read since their inception (!!!) which bowled me over for three reasons:

1. That is just way too organized. My own book club, which has been meeting in some form for probably nine years, just recently started a Goodreads group site, and we have been wracking our brains with limited success to remember every book.
   
2. Some books get read by just about everyone. Seriously. Those fortunate authors who make the must-read book-club lists are sitting pretty. The Help? Check. Cutting for Stone? Check. Life of Pi? Check. To Kill a Mockingbird? Check. The Glass Castle? Check. Check check check. I'd say Roxanne's list had at least a 30% overlap with my book club's.
   
3. Piddly little me made their list! How awesome is that? There I sit, just as legitimately on that list as Jonathan Franzen, Edith Wharton, and Cormac McCarthy. And I only got Linda's thumbs-down, not the unanimous drubbing given Drinking Coffee Elsewhere. Score.

Roxanne's list also gave me some great books to add to my own to-read pile and some to avoid. Thanks, ladies and one gentleman.

Worrying about piddly authors following him around

Speaking of crouching in the gigantic shadows cast by famous authors, Seattle U invited me to do a session at their 2013 Search for Meaning Book Festival, where the keynote speaker is...drumroll, please...Michael Chabon! Yikes almighty! Michael "Yiddish Policeman's Union" Chabon. Michael "Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" Chabon. That means, when I'm not delivering my modest talk on Jane Austen and The Beresfords to ten people in a side room, and when I'm not pinned to the book-signing table next to a bestselling author, I can stalk him!


I accepted the invitation to be an author-stalker with hesitation, having struggled some in the past at the book festival, but I think we would all agree that lessons in humility are valuable, if unpleasant. Bring it on.

So put Saturday, March 3, on your calendar. You'll hear more from me (like what my session will actually be about). And as we get closer, I'll be sure to do another begging post.

The Bear is First

They even have one on tap called Delirium Tremens!

Hearty thanks to Ace and her book club for reading Everliving this month! It was my first book club visit at a restaurant (of sorts), Redmond's Malt and Vine. I'm not much of a beer drinker, so I couldn't do the hundreds of offerings justice, but I enjoyed a hard cider and the company.

The liquor lubricated the already-sharp mental instincts of the group (I mean that in all sincerity), and we had a great discussion about whether or not Daphne the ghost showed any "development," whether or not Gladys was "faking it," why Carson Keller did what he did at the end, and why little Noah saw what he saw. It turns out one of the women's had a tree-canopy-studying botanist for a sister, and a father who had been a psychiatrist at Napa State Hospital! Should have dedicated this book to Lisa, clearly.

One of the funniest moments was when they asked me about my up-and-coming book. When I told them the title was The Beresfords, Laura asked, "The Bear is First?" Ha ha! Maybe, if all else fails, I could market The Bear is First as a Berenstain Bears fan-fiction, or a memorial tribute to Jan Berenstain, who recently passed away.

Speaking of The Beresfords, I just signed off on the front cover (!). The ball in rolling. Look for launch parties in late April or early May, and shoot me a message if you'd like to host a party and get your copy free!

Six Dumas Learnings

Mt. Dumas kicking our dumasses

You could blame the snowstorm for our record-low book club turnout on Tuesday, or you could blame Dumas. I stood atop Book Club Everest as the lone member who got through the full, unabridged The Three Musketeers, and most folks didn't make it, even with Sherpas like abridged editions (150 pages, in one case!) and books on tape hauling their behinds toward the summit. (Full disclosure: some of those readers did manage to get through Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo some time back, while I wimped out with a 250-page Bantam edition that was decades old.)

Even with five in attendance, however, Dumas proved educational. Consider these learnings:

1. If it can't be said in 400 pages, does it really need to be said? Granted, I read Musketeers on Kindle, so I only had 13,000+ "locations" to go by, but I crossed that with a Goodreads edition number of 600 pages to get a vague idea where I was on the mountain. I'm getting older and am realizing I may never read another 1000-page book. Because, really, truly, none of this could be left out? We all agreed the lackeys in Musketeers were a giant snore-fest and should be given the red pen. Ditto Aramis' theological disputations. I used to be rabidly anti-abridgements, but I'm coming around.

2. The man is funny. Maybe it comes of being named "Dumas," which, fortunately for Alexandre, didn't provoke all the playground jokes it would have had he gone to school in England. Somehow I don't remember snickering my way through Edmond Dantes' incarceration in the Chateau D'If, but Musketeers had me laughing out loud at least once every thousand locations--excuse me--every 55 pages. 

3. The villain(ess) steals the show. Whenever things were in danger of growing dull, Milady livened it right up. In fact, I can't believe, in the give-a-secondary-character-his-own-novel trend, no one has yet tackled Milady! Yeesh, we've heard about Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Mr. March, Huck Finn's alcoholic father, the first Mrs. Rochester, and every Austen character, however peripheral (too many to link to), but no Milady? If this post doesn't prompt anyone, I may have to try it myself someday.

4. 17th-century French oaths could hardly have relieved anyone's frustration because they're ludicrous. Especially in ALL CAPS as my free Kindle edition had them. They did make for funny emails, though, within our book club. PARDIEU! PESTE! MORBLEU! SANG DIEU!

5. 17th-century Paris was approximately three square blocks. Honestly, the sheer number of times D'Artagnan ran into people or saw people passing by made me draw this conclusion. If I had to draw a map, I'd put the Louvre at the center, M. de Treville's a block away, and each musketeer's lodgings somewhere in between. Mid-block, say. ("Rochefort again! PESTE! I must kill that man!")

6. The best movie adaptation has yet to be made. After a brief discussion of mainly the first 60% of the book (which most had made it through), the five of us settled down to watch the 1973 Michael York-Richard Chamberlain version on Netflix Instant Play. This one garnered 3.5 stars, compared to the most recent adapation that was panned as too-CGI slick. All I can say is, bring on the CGI-slickness, s'il vous plait. In the 1973 version, everyone looked hideously overweight in their costumes, and the sword fights were sweaty, lumbering businesses that smacked of Mixed Martial Arts combats. Whose heart sinks when a sword fight breaks out? Ours did, watching this movie, because we knew we were in for another five minutes of clumsy heaving around, bludgeoning each other until everyone was red in the face and shiny. SANG DIEU!

In a nutshell, we gave the book an average ranking of 6.5-7.0. Most preferred The Count of Monte Cristo. And if you can find an abridged version that comes in around 400 pages, go for it.