How Lawrence Block Saved My Ass
A writer friend of mine and I were talking recently about her present writing project and, being interested in her project and wanting to help her out, I offered to read a sample chapter for her. She said yes,with a big smile and we were off and running. Before I left though I turned to her and asked, “Okay. What do you want me to do?”
“What do you mean,” she said, still smiling but straining a little.
“You can ask me for what you need when I read it and I want to make sure I help you out so… what do you need me to do, in addition to reading it?”
She looked at me for a long moment, then , smile disappearing, said, “I don’t know. I mean…what do you mean? I never thought about that.”
“I can critique , look for strengths, look for weakness, line edit, read and give overall impressions, look at narrative structure or character, read and tell you I love it, read and tell you to send it out immediately – does that help? I want to help but I want to help you the way you need help.”
The smile appeared again. “I never thought about it that way. Let me think what I need and I”ll let you know when I send the manuscript to you.”
“Excellent. I’m excited to read it.”
This was not the first time I”ve come up against this. In a writer’s group I was in once we allowed each other to ask for what we wanted in a critique – since critique means different things to different people. One new writer auditioning for the group said to me, “But what good is it if you don’t get feedback that tells you what needs to be improved?”
I said, “Sometimes you need just to hear yourself read a piece out loud or get an audience reaction (facial, verbal, energy, laughter, snickers). It all comes back to what you need. Not everybody needs a knife taken to their work.” He didn’t like this and decided not to be a part of the group – probably for the best.
A couple of years later I was working on a memoir of my time working at Gay Men’s Health Crisis doing HIV/AIDS work and it was very painful stuff to put down on paper. At a writer’s retreat I decided to read some of it out loud to the other writers. I asked for what I wanted before I read. I was used to doing this by then so I did. I just wanted to hear what it sounded like. It was too personal to be critiqued yet and I said so. When I was finished reading, one writer raised her hand to comment and when I called on her she started to take it apart. I stopped her in the middle of her fourth or fifth sentence and said, “I don’t want a critique. I’ll take a question about the material – ” and she interrupted me. “But you need to hear -” and that’s when Lawrence Block saved me. He said (yes, he was one of the writer’s at the retreat – the Lawrence Block of Matthew Scudder, best seller, fame), “Didn’t you hear what Joe said? He said he just wanted to read it out loud.”
There was scattered applause, like softly popping incendiaries. Then I took my seat back in the group and another writer took the reader’s chair.
Thank you, Larry.
Ask for what you need. You’re allowed.
Of Black Shirts and Steve Jobs’ Sneakers
I’m a bit down today. Every time I turn on an electronic device Steve Jobs stares back at me from the Apple Website. His image is in black and white but his effect is one of bright color and explosive genius.
How can a man as talented and creative as he was be gone? It is such a simple question and answer – because he is.
I have been an Apple fan since the first Macintosh. I wrote my first book on it. The book wasn’t very good but the computer was amazing. I was using a Smith Corona electric typewriter just moments before and then all of a sudden on that small black and white screen everything changed.
I have had an Apple ever since – over twenty years – though as my eyesight has gotten worse I really appreciate the much larger iMac screen that I write this on. I had the first Apple laptop. I bought an iPod. I bought an iPhone. I bought an iPad. Even if I didn’t buy the first iteration because I didn’t have the money I have always gotten my money’s worth and then some. My day job work is on a PC but my writing has for twenty plus years been on a Mac. I feel like there is a neurochemical link between the two of us.
I look at the picture of Steve Jobs and realize how important this man with the glasses and short hair and black shirt and sneakers has been to my creative writing life. One has grown with the other. This year my debut novel is published and Steve Jobs has died. I never met him but I live with his legacy. I will miss those talks he gave to introduce the next Apple big thing. I will miss thinking that something coming out of Apple would always be another big, life changing, thing.
Cue the Music and Coldplay
Check out my guest post on Lady Reader’s Bookstuff blog for Amy Della Rossa. It’s all about the music in the words and the music in my head… or in your head.
Here’s the link: Lady Reader’s Bookstuff
Capabilities Wear a Cape
Here is the first of six questions I received at the CW Post LIU reading last week. It’s still strange to me why one year ago nobody would ask me these questions and now I seem to have grown in my knowledge of the publishing world so much that I now both be asked and feel like I can answer. As my wife and son would say, now I am a somebody. Somebody or nobody, here’s my answer to the first question.
Why didn’t I get an English degree? Why did I get a business degree?
I have asked myself this same question many times. I think I would have been happier in school if I had gotten an English degree or a degree in creative writing. It’s a strange thing to say but it’s the truth. I did not like getting a business degree. Two years of business school was more than enough. My honors electives and some good teachers helped me to make the best of my last two years.
I know I thought of getting a degree in English in high school but when I talked to my parents about it, my father, always practical, said, “If you get a degree in English the only thing you’ll be able to do is teach English and there are no jobs out there for English teachers. If you get a business degree you can do anything.”
So it ends up he was both right and wrong at the same time. He meant well and I was not strong enough to disagree.
When I got out of school I got a job in a small medical publisher doing customer service work. I worked next to a bunch of people like me only they had degrees in English and Philosophy and History – degrees they mostly enjoyed getting. I’ve worked many places in a variety of types of jobs since then and my degree has helped in each of them because of its practical nature. Yet, I wish some days I had gone the other route. Perhaps my path to publication would have been faster? Or maybe it was slow because I had lessons to learn about writing and simply needed time to learn them.
It comes down to two things.
One was that I was not confident enough in myself at the age of 17 to be able to say, “I want to get a degree in English because I want to write.” My father would say, “But you can’t make a living writing so make sure you have a degree to get a day job.” By the time I developed enough confidence to say, “But creative writing is what I want to do and I need training in it,” two years had already passed. By then, I figured it was best to just finish the program I’d started. So I used what I had available to me, as Lefty from my novel Open Wounds would say, “I used what I found in the trenches.” With the help of the honors program I used my elective classes to take writing workshops and business classes focused on the publishing industry so all was not lost. I graduated with more credits than I needed but I was out in four years and wrote on my own during the whole time.
The second thing is that I didn’t know enough about life, what I could and could not do, what I could challenge my parents over and what I couldn’t. That was something my brother did very well, but I did not. So using black and white thinking typical of a young adult with a still developing pre-frontal cortex and an executive suite that was just not there yet – I did what I was capable of doing. I went to business school and developed my belief in myself as a writer by writing. I can neither blame myself for my inabilities nor my parents for suggesting what they thought would be best for me.
The moral of the story? Work with what you can and what you are capable of – don’t regret what you didn’t have or were not capable of. And of course, no matter what – if you want to write, write.
From My Mamma’s Kitchen – Talk Radio Interview
I’ll be interviewed tomorrow by Johnny Tan – Tuesday morning 9/20/11 from 11-12noon ET on FMMK Talk Radio on his weekly radio show From My Mamma’s Kitchen. It’s the whole hour and it will be archived on his site afterwards so if you have a chance check in and listen.
Here’s the link for the show:
What will I be talking about? His opening question to all his guests is, “Tell me about yourself from birth to now.” Gulp! How long do we have? Seriously, it’s going to be fun. And he takes questions from the audience so feel free to call in and ask away.
Lunievicz 