A Gate at the Stairs

I spent the better part of yesterday wallowing in the early stages of a cold (thanks, germy airplane) and continuing to work all that tryptophan out of my system (thanks, turkey and wine). A Gate at the Stairs kept me company--or, I should say, kept me rapt. The voice in Lorrie Moore's acclaimed novel was hypnotizingly good--smart, funny, lyrical, profound. When I finished the book, I promptly started mourning that Tassie (the narrator and protagonist) was out of my life. Until I reread it.

From Goodreads:

Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction Chosen as a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star, Financial Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Real Simple

Twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the daughter of a gentleman farmer, has come to a university town as a student. When she takes a job as a part-time nanny for a mysterious and glamorous family, she finds herself drawn deeper into their world and forever changed. Told through the eyes of this memorable narrator, A Gate at the Stairs is a piercing novel of race, class, love, and war in America.

The fictional town of Troy is (not so) loosely based on Madison, WI--my beloved hometown. I always find reading about a place you know so intimately (and feel so passionately about, as I do about Madison) can be dangerously distracting. But Moore really nailed her descriptions, not just of the physical place but of the people in it. 

I had some issues with the plot, which at times felt too broad and not entirely believable. (I won't get into detail to avoid giving away plot points best discovered while reading.) I also couldn't really place where narrator-Tassie was in time--her commentary at times suggested a cynicism at odds with the of-the-action-Tassie. But more than anything, that discrepancy made me curious, not frustrated.

This sums it up:

"Moore cannot write a bad sentence, cannot create poor characters, cannot tell flat, ho-hum stories. When she's good, she's very, very good; when she's bad, she's good."

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

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I'm Thankful for: The Writing/Reading Edition

--All of the amazing books I've read this year.

--All of the amazing people who wrote those books, and the people in the publishing industry who made it possible for me to read them. (This sounds mushy and sycophantic, but I mean it.)

--The wonderful people who've read and reread and re-reread my writing and offered support, encouragement, and truly great (and honest) critiques.

--The people in the fabulous writing community I've been able to meet through blogging and Twitter, who add camaraderie to a fairly solitary pursuit (and who are always teaching me stuff I didn't even know I needed to know).

--My fantastic and supportive agent, Suzie Townsend, who works so hard!

Have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving, and see you all next week!

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You are not like Milli Vanilli.

How many of you writers have found yourself thinking any of the following:

• I only got an agent/got published/won an award because of luck, or because I wrote the right thing at the right time.
• So what if I wrote that book, now I have to write another. And it has to be better.
• I can't believe nobody has picked up on the typos in Chapter 7 or that terrible passage I didn't cut in Chapter 19. Eventually, someone will and then they'll all see what a hack I am.
• I didn't deserve to get so much praise for that book/attract the attention of some agents/get published. What I do isn't half as good as writers X, Y, and Z. It's not even a thimbleful as good.
• If [insert your favorite writer here] had written what I wrote, maybe then it would be decent.
• I'm not a *real* writer.

Persistent self-doubting thoughts might be fleeting bouts of insecurity, or they might be a sign that you're suffering from impostor syndrome. Which is a real thing:

Do You Have the Imposter Syndrome?
Imposter Syndrome--Feeling Like a Fraud
[Note: Apparently "impostor" and "imposter" are both accepted spellings? Merriam-Webster was a little confusing on this one.]
I should know. One of the speakers at my grad-school orientation gave lecture about the dangers of the impostor syndrome in academia. Sitting in the audience, after a couple of stress-filled days in which my internal mantra was What the hell am I doing here?!?!, I had an impostor-syndrome epiphany: You mean I'm not the only person who feels this way? Who thinks that eventually everyone else in my department will figure out that I'm the village idiot who slipped through the admissions cracks? Apparently, I was not.

It's easy to slip into impostor thought patterns as a writer. It's easy to overlook the laudable and successful things you've done (no matter what stage of the publishing process you're at) and write them off as flukes, luck, frauds. If you ever receive a compliment for your writing and your response begins with but/actually/no, I really just/or some other modifier instead of "Why, thank you. That's so wonderful to hear"--congrats, you're acting like someone who thinks s/he is an impostor.

Being humble is good. Being realistic is good. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is good. Being open to criticism that makes you grow and evolve and improve is good. Thinking that you are an impostor is bad. It's not productive, just stressful.
 If you write, you are a writer. If you've experienced success, you most likely deserved it. Ignore impostor-y thoughts and focus instead on enjoying the writing process, which always involves occasional mistakes, usually followed by growth and improvement.

Girl you know it's true: you are not like Milli Vanilli.

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Will Grayson, Will Grayson

I LOVE THIS BOOK!

Shameful confession: I got an ARC for this way back last winter, but other books in my TBR queue kept budging it. Despite the fact that it's set in my old stomping ground, Evanston/Chicago, and is a collaborative novel, which I think is really cool. Finally, I pulled it off the shelf to read last weekend.

This is a book that manages to incorporate love, sexuality, depression, Schrodinger's cats, music, existentialism, musicals, IMing, weltschmerz, and friendship. It's written by two different authors with two distinct narrative voices but it feels seamless. It's a love story about romantic love but more importantly platonic, BFF love. It's heartbreaking at times but more often joyous. And seriously funny. I want to describe it with words like soaring and ebullient and hilarious and cool and supersmart. Please go read it if you haven't already.

Jacket copy for Will Grayson, Will Grayson:

One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical.
Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both them legions of faithful fans.

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RTW: I did something crazy

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway. This week's topic is: What is something totally crazy you've done?

Well, I'm not going to write about the time in college when I* wrestled my roommate in a baby pool filled with red Jell-O in order to Save the Arts. Sorry, I have to protect the names of the innocent.

*Yes, I have so much social anxiety that I have to write scripts to leave a voice message, yet I somehow was okay with rolling around in a tank top and Umbros, covered in a gelatin dessert, in front of a bunch of inebriated Wildcats. I can't explain this either.

Anyway, moving along. My sister and I thought a great present for my mom's birthday last year would be a surprise visit from me, so I booked a ticket. Then we started talking about how to do the big reveal. I suggested showing up at her favorite coffee shop. Beth (my sister) suggested surprising her in the woods by our house. Our whole family loves hiking and animal-watching there, and my mom particularly loves counting the wild turkeys on her early morning walks.

"Wouldn't it be funny if I was like, 'Hey! Look at the turkey!' And I was pointing to you?" my sister said.
"Ha ha, yeah. I could run around gobbling," I said. "I should get one of those turkey hats people wear for Thanksgiving 5Ks."
"Dude, you should get a turkey costume."
"I totally should! I would so wear that!"
"I could make you one."

And she did. My sister sewed a turkey costume out of felt, and when she picked me up at O'Hare airport very early on the day of the surprise, I took the wheel so she could finish stitching on the drive up to Wisconsin. We drove straight into the woods, where I got out and changed into my costume. She headed off to our parents' house while I sat on a boulder with a copy of US that someone left on the plane. It says a lot about Madison, WI, that none of the hikers who came by in the half hour I sat there thought it was weird that I was dressed like a turkey and reading a tabloid while sitting on a rock in the middle of a field.

I did some calisthenics to stay warm (US did a bad job of holding my interest) and finally I heard my family coming down the road. I waddled into my squat turkey pose and waited for them to notice me. Which, of course, they didn't at first. So I had no choice but to jump up and start leaping and gobbling. Hilarity ensued. Um, how cool is it that my parents found it hilarious and not troubling that their adult child was running around the woods in a turkey costume? Pretty effing cool.

Photographic evidence. See? Truth is stranger than fiction.

I have done many crazy and weird things in my life, but I think this one might be my favorite.

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A Freelance Education

I finished writing a freelance article this past weekend, and it got me thinking about all of the interesting, helpful, and random stuff I've learned from freelance projects. (Most of the ones I've written are on health, fitness, and business topics.) That's why I love writing them--you always end up learning something new.

Here are 10 random facts I've learned this year from freelancing:

1. Avoid eating protein or fat immediately before exercise--both leave the stomach slowly, which may cause upset.
2.  An estimated seventeen percent of children and teens in the U.S. are obese.
3. Optimal eye contact while speaking to someone is to look directly at him/her for brief intervals. Staring directly for long intervals is confrontational; not looking directly at someone seems like avoidance.
4. Some airlines (e.g. Southwest) will offer unlimited name changes on group-travel tickets.
5. It is much easier to prevent an anxiety attack than to calm down in the middle of one.
6. Best time/place for a staff retreat? Resorts during their off-peak months, when their rates are significantly cheaper and they're less crowded.
7. The best question for an employer to start a job interview with? "Tell me about yourself." What an employee has to say, free-form, about him-/herself is often the most telling part of the interview.
8. Volunteering is really good for your health--just two hours a week can reduce depression and heart disease, and increase longevity.
9. Dehydration is a big problem not just in hot summer months, but in winter. Breathing in cold, dry air causes your body to lose water. Drinking warm liquids is preferable to drinking cold ones to stay hydrated.
10. Mat herpes--such a thing exists. Called herpes gladitorum, it's a nasty skin infection common among athletes who engage in skin-to-skin contact (it can also be found on gym and judo mats). Hand sanitizer, anyone? (This is by far my favorite, and the grossest, fact.)

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If you feel like Lyle, Lyle Crocodile . . .

Growing up, if my sister or I felt jealous about something, our parents would say that we were being "Lyleish." They were referring to one of my favorite picture-book characters, Lyle the Crocodile, who got famously "green" in LYLE AND THE BIRTHDAY PARTY.

Newsflash: It's pretty easy to feel Lyleish sometimes (or maybe a lot) in the competitive publishing biz.

This stupendous video on envy from Victoria Schwab/Wednesday at the (awesome) YA Rebels does an excellent job at telling you why you shouldn't get Lyleish, or if you are already, why you should just letitgo. Watch it:

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RTW: Favorite Literary Cliches

Road Trip Wednesday is hosted by YA Highway. This week's topic is: What's your favorite literary cliché?

Hi, my name is Rebecca and I am addicted to clichés. 

It's true, I use them way to much in my everyday speech and sometimes in my writing, although I catch most of them. Most.

I can break down some clichés I love into categories:

Cliché story element:
Mean girls. Particularly mean girls who get their comeuppance, ideally at the hand of a non-mean protagonist. Maybe I'm working through some old issues here, but I will never get sick of reading about a well-written mean girl (the biatchier the better) and her downfall.

Cliché phrase: 

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. I don't remember when I first read Robert Herrick's poem "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time" but I do know that I have been repeating that line whenever the situation calls for it for a very, very long time.

Cliché figurative language: 

Hands down (is that a cliché? Probably): butterflies in the stomach (this phrase is contractually obligated to appear in anything that I write)

Runners up: Not the sharpest knife in the drawer; sweat like a pig; and monkeys might fly out of my butt (I think we can thank Wayne's World for that?)

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Freedom

New York magazine does this thing called "The Undulating Curve of Shifting Expectations."

I kept thinking about the Curve while I was reading Freedom because the way I felt about the book was constantly shifting and undulating. Before I sound too much like a bipolar reader--Freedom is almost 600 pages long and uses various narrative voices and has a tendency to drop the reader into a totally different place and time when a new section starts. So maybe it's understandable that I loved the first 100 pages, absolutely hated and struggled through a 150-page section of the middle, and loved the book again by the final 100.

This is one of those books that I keep rolling over in my brain after I finished reading it, returning to certain sections with new insights into the characters and finding new threads that excite me while I've moved onto a new read. That's basically my measure for a really, really well-written book--not just if it holds my interest while I'm reading but if it holds it after I'm done. Freedom did. There's still a lot I didn't like about it (along with all that I did, like the masterful characterization and Franzen's mind-boggling and enviable talent for observing and representing human behavior), but I can't stop thinking about both the good and the not-so-good.

Final tangential note: Reading this in hardcover and therefore lugging it onto the subway every day made me want a eReader SO BADLY.

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Clearing something up

As you might have noticed from the disclaimer at the bottom of this blog, one of the two subjects I consider myself somewhat of an expert in is: the Doughnut*. This is the one thing that Homer Simpson and I have in common.

Being a self-proclaimed expert in said deliciousness, I do make a point to celebrate National Doughnut Day, which is celebrated on the first Friday in June (mark your calendars!). So I was disturbed to see the Interwebs buzzing about "National Donut Day" today. Whaaaa?

Emily Elisabeth's blog cleared it up for me: November 5 is actually Doughnut Appreciation Day, and people are just getting it confused with the real day. Phew. And, sweet--because now there are at least two days each year dedicated to celebrating fried dough. So yeah. Celebrate away, people!

*Both doughnut and donut are accepted spellings, although doughnut was the original. Because, you know, they're made of dough. (Thanks, Online Etymology Dictionary. Although how cool is "olykoeks"? I'm bringing olykoeks back.)

Happy Friday, everyone!

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A Never NaNo'ed Writer on What she Loves About NaNo

I've never done NaNoWriMo. I've been aware of it, had lots of friends do it, and wanted to try it myself--but the writing stars have never exactly aligned so that I could participate.

Which leads right into why I love NaNo. (Can I even call it that if I haven't done it? Maybe non-participants like me should stick to NaNoWriMo.) It is an excuse killer. Big time.

So far I've watched friends' and colleagues' word counts climb on Twitter, read their blog posts on their NaNoWriMo projects (writing 50K in a month and blogging? Holy crap!), seen Write-Ins covered in the news. And I know for a fact that all of these lovely people are as busy as I am. But they are still getting the writing done. 

As inspiring as it is to see so many people excited about writing, it's even more inspiring to see so many people make the time to write. I really try to write 1,000 words per day, and if I miss a day I make it up the next. But NaNoWriMo helps show me that sometimes, I might not need to/have to miss a day in the first place. When you set your mind to it, you can always find the time to write.

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Happy Election Day!

I may have voted in NY today, but I'm still part Chicagoan, so: Vote Early and Vote Often. (Kidding, unless you take often to mean every election. Definitely do that.)

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Things Not to Do

Warning: Do not try to start any major dietary changes, such as giving up desserts* at the same time as starting a new round of revisions.

Especially do not do this on the day after Halloween.**

Trust me on this one.



*Temporarily! I'm not a masochist.
**Yeah, I ODed on Halloween candy over the weekend. 

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