Monthly Archives: June 2008

"Careful, or You’ll Wind Up in My Novel." (But Probably Not).

Posted on June 10, 2008 | Comments Off

From the mailbag:

“So, when are you going to try your hand at fiction?”

Thanks for asking. I hate absolute answers to almost anything, so I’ll qualify my response to this particular question by saying, “Probably never.”

Actually, that’s not entirely true (see what I said about absolutes?). The truth is, I tried my hand at fiction years ago, and found out I stunk at it. My problem is similar to Clifford Anderson’s in Ira Levin’s play Deathtrap: dialogue is a snap for me, but I have a hard time with plot. And since there’s no Sidney Bruhl around to serve as my master plotter, I’m better off sticking with non-fiction, which, for the most part, already has the basics plotted out for me in advance.

In fact, it’s the ability to plot that I admire most in fiction writers — that ability to find a story in a casual remark or a twinkling bit of junk embedded in a hillside. I have a good friend, a fiction writer and filmmaker, who practically bleeds plots, scribbling them in notebooks near his bed, hoping he can get them down on paper fast enough. He’s one of those people who’s great at asking “What if? . . .” or “Wouldn’t it be cool if? . . .” and taking it from there. I wish I was that way.

I’ve heard some non-fictionalists say that, all things being equal — meaning, I guess, that if they could write both fiction and non-fiction equally as well — they would always choose to write non-fiction because (wait for it!) . . . “real life is so much more interesting.”

Bleagh.

Apart from being an annoying sound bite, I don’t buy the explanation. First of all, I think it’s a backhanded way of setting up non-fiction as somehow superior to or “purer” than fiction, a conceit I find patently elitist and flat out dumb. Second, I always think that anyone who falls back on that kind of a pseudo-intellectual defense is doing so because they’re worried that admitting they can’t plot, or write fiction, is like admitting they can’t operate a knife and fork — as if they’re lacking some basic life skill.

That’s nonsense — fiction and non-fiction are very different creatures. The ability to write one well and not the other is hardly a sign of some intellectual or creative failing. But rather than say “I can’t,” they say, “I can, but I choose not to.”

I can’t — but if I could, I would. Good fiction is fun. It’s fun to read, and while writing is always work, I’m sure a craftily plotted piece of fiction is also fun to write. If I could do it, I wouldn’t deprive myself of such a pleasure in the name of a snooty retort.

But I can’t do it. I’m not a Plotter; I’m more of a Good Explainer. For now, then, I’m sticking with that.

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Posted in fiction, master plotters

Tagged From the mailbag, writing

Institutional Memories: Prelude

Posted on June 9, 2008 | 2 comments

My First Real Job After College (apart from the comic shoppe gig, I mean, which was Fun and Kept Me In Comics but wasn’t really a Proper Career) was working as a Legislative Correspondent for U.S. Senator Pete V. Domenici.

I walked into Domenici’s office in the Senate Dirksen Office Building (it’s the one that was built in the 1950s, and has all the charm of an old high school) on Tuesday, March 20, 1990. My job as a legislative correspondent — a fancy term for “letter writer” that looks really, really great on your very first ever business card, embossed with a gold U.S. Senate seal — entailed drafting the guts of letters responding to New Mexicans who had written to the Senator about public lands, veterans affairs, or government pensions.

I didn’t get to handle any of the hot ticket items, like abortion or gun control or Social Security, or any of the stuff that makes the front page; my busiest and most high-profile issue, at least for a while, was probably over whether the Mexican Spotted Owl should be designated as endangered. But I was officially in The Game now — and from my small but still front row seat I had the chance to see how the Congress worked, and I was learning a lot about the issues, the legislative process, politics, and, even more fascinating, the members of Congress themselves.

Like many young people who come to DC — and I was 22 when I started working in Domenici’s office — I had taken the job “just for a while.” Lots of people come to work in Congressional offices to get a bit of experience in government and the legislative process before going off to law school, but I was one of those odd ducks who had zero interest in becoming an attorney, mainly because I just didn’t have the passion for it. (My interest in the law was derived from, and limited mainly to, detective novels and Batman comics.) In fact, I’m almost embarassed to admit that I really had no plan whatsoever. My intent was simply to do the best I could in my little job, learn as much as I could about government and the legislative process, and then see where I could go from there.

And then I got lucky. Domenici was re-elected to his fourth term in November 1990, and a number of senior staffers jumped to other jobs, leaving open several nice Legislative Assistant positions — the meat-and-potatoes jobs, where you become the expert on a particular issue or issues, and directly advise your Senator or Congressman. Making things even more interesting, there was a new Legislative Director coming in — the person who directs legislative policy, and who serves as the main conduit between the Senator and the legislative staff — who essentially had the opportunity to make her own staff.

To her immense credit, she promoted me and several other of my snot-nosed twentysomething coworkers into those plum legislative assistant positions — an incredibly lucky break that I’m still grateful for to this day (some people kick around in Congressional offices for years without getting one of those legislative assistant positions). There was a shuffling of issues and responsibilities, and I became the lead staffer for labor, welfare reform, job training, civil rights, education, and the arts — all issues I cared for deeply.

But something else also happened. During my year as a legislative correspondent, I had developed a reputation as a wordsmith, mainly through my ability to craft responses to what we called The Headscratchers — those letters you really had no idea what to do with. There was the fellow, for example, who wanted the Senator to alert Geraldo Rivera because he had been duped and drugged (allegedly!) by his much younger girlfriend. Or the guy who sent photos of his naked, flabby body with red Sharpie arrows pointing to the portions of his anatomy where aliens had implanted microchips. That sort of thing. I was pulled aside by the new Legislative Director who informed me that in addition to my legislative duties, I would now be responsible for drafting a number of the Senator’s higher profile floor statements, articles, and speeches.

Suddenly, my “just for a while” job had become a career.

Still to come: St. Pete

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Posted in Institutional Memories, Pete V. Domenici

Tagged Institutional Memories

Institutional Memories

Posted on June 5, 2008 | 2 comments

The short version of my resume — the one that appears on my book jacket, and which people usually read when introducing me at events — mentions that I served as a speechwriter for two U.S. Senators. Just that little nugget of information — and the words “U.S. Senators” — invariably leads to questions about life on Capitol Hill, my impressions of the Congress and the two members I’ve worked for, peeks behind the curtain at how the legislative process really works, even who I think Washington Irving might vote for in the upcoming elections.

I get the impression that people sometimes think they’re imposing or trying to uncover some Matter of National Security when they ask me whether Congressmen really read their mail, but the truth is, I love answering those kinds of questions. But it took me a bit to realize something: to those of us who live and work in the Washington, DC, area, things like politics, the legislative process, and the Capitol Building are such a part of our everyday lives that we often fail to remember how strange or magical or weird they may seem to everyone else. Even if you don’t work in government in this area, you still walk past the White House while on your way to get coffee, your daily newspaper is still The Washington Post, and you still have to shove past camera-laden tourists on the Metro, none of whom seem to get the whole stand-on-the-right, walk-on-the-left thing. To us, it’s our neighborhood; to the rest of the world, it’s a movie or postcard. Just as I was dazzled by New York City — I’m in awe of the people that actually live and work there, with a romantic perception of the place that, I’m sure, doesn’t reflect reality — so, too, are people fascinated by Washington, DC, and Capitol Hill.

From time to time, then — since people seem always to be asking, and since I seem to be always looking for Regular Features for this blog — I’ll share with you some of my stories, memories, and impressions of my Decade on Capitol Hill. And if you’ve got questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. It’s all part of the public service we like to perform here on this little corner of Literary Conceits.

Stay tuned.

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Posted in Washington DC

Tagged Institutional Memories

Mark Twain Needs You!

Posted on June 3, 2008 | Comments Off

As a Self-Appointed Official Cheerleader for 19th Century Authors and Their Homes, it’s my duty to inform you that the Mark Twain House and Museum — Twain’s really wonderful and quirky home in Hartford, Connecticut — has fallen on hard times and is in danger of being shut down.

Twain lost possession of the house during his lifetime, when his own writing failed to produce adequate revenue to make ends meet. Wanna help make sure it doesn’t fall on hard times again? Go here and make a donation. You’ll be glad you did.

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Posted in charity, houses, mark twain

Icons

Posted on June 3, 2008 | 2 comments

Judy Blume and Neil Gaiman, at this year’s Book Expo America.

No, I wasn’t there — but you can read all about it on Neil Gaiman’s wonderful journal at www.neilgaiman.com, where he also has a somewhat blurry pic of him with another supercool icon, Berke Breathed. Go read it. Right now.

And if you’re not a regular reader of Neil Gaiman’s journal . . . for shame, doc, for shame. Read it. Know it. Live it.

Photo courtesy of neilgaiman.com.

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Posted in book expo, judy blume, Neil Gaiman

First Books: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926)

Posted on June 2, 2008 | 1 comment

I discovered Agatha Christie relatively late in my game: my sophomore year in high school. By that time, my science fiction and fantasy phase was sputtering out — Stephen R. Donaldson’s too-long Chronicles of Thomas Covenant was pretty much the last straw for me — and I turned almost on a whim to mysteries.

I started with a few Sherlock Homes novels, but while I respected Doyle as the innovator, Holmes himself quickly annoyed me. He always seemed to have these conveniently wacky expertises, most of which we as readers never knew about until they were suddenly needed to solve the case, at which point we learned Holmes had written the definitive treatise on earlobe shapes or candle wax or mustaches or whatever. Watson may have been left by Jove!-ing about what a genius Holmes was, but it never seemed fair to me.

Agatha Christie was different. While she generally used the same Holmes-Watson dynamic to tell her Hercule Poirot stories, Poirot’s sidekick, Captain Hastings, always had the same information that Poirot, and readers, needed to solve the mystery. Hastings, of course, never did, and with one exception (The Patriotic Murders), neither did I.

Which brings me to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It wasn’t the first Agatha Christie book I ever read (that would be The ABC Murders), but it was the First Book That Ever Left Me With My Mouth Hanging Open in Amazement — and started my love affair with Agatha Christie novels.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) brings Hercule Poirot to a small English village following not just one death, but two: the first is the wealthy widow Ferrars, who is rumored to have killed her first husband, is likely being blackmailed, and is thought to be a suicide victim . . . until Ferrar’s secret lover, the equally wealthy widower Roger Ackroyd, is also found dead. Nearly everyone stands to gain from the deaths, and Poirot — this time sidekicked by Dr. Sheppard — unravels an unexpected motive with an equally surprising killer.

This is the book — only her seventh — that made Agatha Christie famous, and which very nearly got her kicked out of the British mystery writers’ Detection Club on charges that she had violated the rules of fair play. Only the dissenting vote of Dorothy L. Sayers (who allegedly said “Fair! And fooled you!”) kept Christie in the organization.

Remarkably, for a book that’s now more than eighty years old, mystery readers have done their part to keep the ending a surprise (consider it The Sixth Sense of mystery novels), but not everyone has been so accommodating. Years ago, TIME magazine casually gave away the ending, and Christie fans never let them hear the end of it.

If you’ve never read it, go find it, read it, and marvel at the expertise of a master storyteller at her craft. But if you tell me you figured out who the killer was, I won’t believe you. And if you continue to insist that you did, I’ll punch you on the arm. Hard. Because you didn’t.