Confessions of a Plot Reader

So... For all my literary aspirations, mostly snobish choice in books and criticism of modern prose, I confess: I am The Empress and I am a plot reader.

I am such a plot reader that, yes, I occasionally do enjoy literary 'candy.' In fact, as much as it shames me to confess this (can I do it? CAN I...?) Well... I actually enjoyed the clunky prose and predictable outcome of The Da Vinci Code... I also felt totally ashamed for having liked it when the book was so incredibly put down by serious readers, literary critics and writers all over -- from my then book club, to literary circles/blogs/articles on the internet and in other media. So, I've been struggling with this for a while... If I liked 'that atrocious book', does than make me a mindless moron fit to read nothing but cotton candy?

Well... Not necessarily... I mean, I enjoy literary fiction as much as the next very snobbish reader, but the point remains, like in my previous post: who cares how incredibly well-written a book is, how miraculous its prose, how beautiful its imagery, if it has no plot or if the language, use of allegory/metaphor/whatever is just so high-level, so rich that nobody cares to read it because it doesn't really tell a story or the story is depressing, or only 3% of the population even gets what said story is even about?

And, in any case, it's not like I ever thought The Da Vinci Code was a masterpiece of modern literature or anything, but I did think it was engaging enough and a fast read... 'Decent' (yes, decent) airplane literature and nothing more. And I can totally understand how, regardless of its faulty prose, overabundance of cliches and other gazillion literary faults, it made it to the top of the best-seller list for god knows how many weeks in a row. It simply rehashed AND successfully marketed a contentious theory that's been out there forever. Let's face it, even in this day and age, and in the Western world, anything that challenges age-old religious dogmas/beliefs, is automatically interesting to a huge percentage of the population -- hell, that's the reason why I went out and bought the book. Dan Brown merely figured out how to profit from one of said challenges on traditional beliefs. Then he added a dash of this and a dash of that, and tossed everything like a great big nonsensical salad of secret societies and imagined church conspiracies. I'm amazed he didn't throw in the Masons, too, or the International Order of Oddfellows or the Sunshine Sisters (or did he? I can't remember... So memorable the cotton candy lit was...), or imply that somehow McDonald's and Coca-Cola were profiting from said church conspiracies, too (again I ask: did he?) So, he took from here and there to create the theme, tossed in a couple of cardboard characters and form mystery settings, chases, 'twists', and voila: you have a genre piece.

That's right: A genre piece. A light, fluffy, cotton candy genre piece. Not literary or even general fiction, where the writing itself is generally expected to be better. A genre piece. And the point remains that, no matter how much everyone has torn it to pieces, they finished the book. If it were that atrocious, wouldn't they just simply stop reading?

I liked it because it did what I figured it would do: it entertained me. It was a breeze to skim past the repetitive or cliched language and focus on the immediate, on the fact that I was being entertained... much like watching a blockbuster movie: you pretty much resign yourself to the fact that it's going to be bad and/or full of cliches and... well... either enjoy the ride or get out of the movie theatre... If you go see a good art flick, instead, then enjoy, deconstruct, analyze to your heart's content... It's the same with books: people who want to enjoy a smart, stimulating read will pick up something by Carol Shields or Alice Munro or Anne-Marie MacDonald... You don't go and pick up something as media-hyped as Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code and then whine about how lousy the writing was, how predictable the plot! Let's face it: media hype is for the masses -- the same masses that watch American Idol and other reality tv crap and demand more of the same. The same masses that just want to be entertained. And while I draw the line at reality tv, and mostly read 'intelligent' fiction, I do enjoy the odd immediate satisfaction book (namely the two examples above)... who cares if the prose/plot could be better? Sure as hell, Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling don't give a flying f*&k. They're set for life, and no matter how badly their work is criticised, they won't have to worry about money or work ever again. I'm pretty sure that's got to give them some comfort if they still bother to read negative criticisims of their ouvre.

Wasps and Politicians

They're pretty much the same, that's all I've got to say -- that's all I can say, without revealing too much.

Suffice it to say that yesterday I had a brief run in with both species and it only reminded me of two things:

1)I hate them both
2)They're not that different from each other

Funny how things worked out, too: that morning I was terrorized by two (2!!) wasps INSIDE my boyfriend's house. I'm terrified of the damn things, as laughable as it may seem to many (mind you, I'm allergic even to mosquito bites, so that renders my terror of bigger stingers at least a degree less pathetic than initially presumed). Well, now I strongly suspect there might be a wasps' nest somewhere in that house, as these two were the fifth and sixth we've killed inside since the winter. Anyway, there I was, carefully making my escape after killing one of the evil buzzers with a can of Raid, and my literary, fanciful, allegoric mind, was thinking... "hmmm... if ants and bees simbolize work, mosquitoes, annoyance, and large flies, death, I wonder what wasps simbolize?"

On I went with my day, hearing paranoid buzzing wherever I went -- well, only for about half an hour... Then I forgot all about it... Until...

In the late afternoon, I had a DISGUSTING meeting with a politician and his staff. It just reminded me (as if I needed a reminder!) how much utter contempt I hold these people in, and why. Underhanded, self-important little dweeb. For obvious reasons, I can't go into detail. Suffice it to say that one of my meeting peers was left all shaky and as disgusted as I was, and that I was automatically reminded of my wasp experience in the morning... And it just all seemed to fit so perfectly!

I so need to find a different job! One that doesn't require for me to even peripherally deal with these Wasp-People. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done in this town...

But, hey, maybe I'll get a request for a partial and then a full and then I'll have super-star literary agent who'll get me a killer deal with a big house, and my book will sell like hot cakes, and I'll be free to do what I really love, without having to worry about money or dealing with politicians ever again!

Gotta keep up the positive thinking here.

Harry Potter and the Great Mystery of Publishing

So... Now I've read all 7 Harry Potter books and seen all 5 movies... Plus, I decided to go back and re-read the entire series, now that I know the -- shall we say, punchline and see how/if everything fits together now... All this, as I begin the horrible, soul-crushing process of trying to procure a literary agent for my own work. In fact I got my very first form rejection yesterday... Yay me! I'm officially an author in seek of representation -- my novel is no longer just clogging up my hard drive.

But I digress...

My point is, on this second read-through of the amazingly overhyped adventures of the boy wizard, I'm noticing more things... I mean, I own the damn books, so I obviously enjoyed reading them, thought they were a cute little story that had a bunch of universal themes/morals without being preachy. They're great little books (not so little, lately), no one is disputing that. I also think they're fairly well-written, without any pretention at being what they're not, and I am enjoying my second read-through... BUT, now that I'm paying more attention to the detail of craft and language, the truth is the Harry Potter books are peppered with cliches and the prose is at times a bit on the clunky side (sometimes, more than just a bit). I'm not saying they're badly written -- they're not... I'm just saying they're not stellar, either. And yet, look at what's become of them:

Breaking sales records world-wide, making more money that a book's ever made before and, basically, creating an unbelievable hype.

So, again I ask: how the hell did J.K. Rowling get away with this?

A first-time author with no writing credits. A single mum on welfare. Somehow she got an agent and somehow that agent sold her book to what at the time was a small publishing house (I wonder where they both are now -- Bloomsbury Publishing and Christopher Little Literary Agency... I mean, aside from sitting next to their indoor pools, enjoying the millions they've made on Rowling's series...) And, the word count for the first book was apparently HUGE for books for the wee folk.

So, again I ask: how did this happen?

Luck? Talent? Perseverance? A case of reaching the right people at the right time?

I truly think it must have been pretty much the latter... And that's all any aspiring author can really hope for. Agents keep saying in blogs, interviews, articles and their agencies' websites, that they're looking for 'stellar writing' and for 'certain' things in the first sample pages sent with a query -- such as action, the introduction of the main character and not a hell of a lot of backstory, for example... Then you go to the closest bookstore and start reading the first pages of the latest best-sellers (by both debut and established authors), and what do you find? Backstory. Main character not introduced until Chapter Two. Exposition. Over-writing. All of the above.

Of course, this is not always the case, but there is a lot out there that starts out like that.

Take Kostova's The Historian, from my previous post: the first page of the book (NOT her prologue), is a lot of exposition and backstory. No scenes, no action, no real sense of setting. And yet, an agent (statistically, likely more than one) asked for a partial (and then a full and then offered representation, but that's not the point I want to make today).

Now, there's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: the first couple of pages introduce the Dursleys, who are not even real nemeses of Harry's. In fact, we do not even hear about Harry until page 4 (and that's a very incidental mention) and we don't see the little guy until the next chapter.

Still, at least one agent asked to see the partial and then the full.

So, once more with feeling: how the hell did this happen?

Answer: The right person just happened to see Rowling's query at the right time. That's all. Hell, if he'd seen her query on another day, when he was perhaps in a different mood or had more to do, his answer might have been different altogether (i.e. a 'sadly, this is not right for us' form response) Perhaps she would've found another agent. Perhaps not, and these days we wouldn't be experiencing the greatest literary marketing phenomenon of all time.

I'm not going to delve into another rant about the great marketing machine behind Harry Potter... That is what it is: a cutesy little book, a cool idea and fair (NOT stellar) writing pushed to superstar status by genius PR.

Today's rant is about the first steps. The first queries, the first pages, the first form rejections, the first requests for partials and then fulls...

Everyone on the shelves today -- from J.K. Rowling, to Dan Brown, to Norah Roberts, to Arthur Golden and Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje (sp???), had to start out somewhere. And, let's face it, of all of the above, only Ondaatje has veritably STELLAR writing... no one understands what the hell he's writing about, but he has beautiful use of language and high metaphor. Of course, this means that he doesn't sell as much as Dan Brown and Norah Roberts, who's language use is geared pretty much to the lowest common denominator, but that, again, belongs in a different rant...

The point is all these people had to query different agents and swallow rejection letters until someone had a good day and 'got them'.

It's a subjective business and there's no way around that. One agent's great find will be buried in another's slush pile. That same agent who said no today (maybe because she's looking for southern fiction right now), might say yes to the same project several months later, when she's in fact more actively looking for chick-lit or whatever.

As for me, I plan to keep querying until the right agent 'gets me' and is as excited about my book as I am. I know it's a good read. I know there's a market niche for it. And I know the setting, theme and characters all have traits that set this apart from other works in the genre. So I guess it's just a matter of time, heartbreak and patience. And perseverance.

And I'm going to keep every rejection letter and email I get, so that when my novel is an international best-seller, I can send signed copies of it to every agent that rejects me now, enclosing a copy of my original query and their form responses to it -- not in a mean way... Just as a gentle reminder that every day, because they're so overworked and overstressed, they might be missing out on something good.

What makes a great book?

At a glance, this is a dumb question: what makes a great book, if it's not great writing, an engaging plot and believable, complex/rich characters? Well, while I'm sure all that helps, it's evidently not enough to get published... I mean, have you noticed how much crap there is out there, lining the walls of bookshops around the world? Sure, there is also a lot of good stuff out there, no question, but the fact remains that just because a book is published, it doesn't mean it's good.

A few weeks ago I picked up The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I had just read that it was quite long (over 200,000 words) and that Kostova had had a $2 million advance -- both things quite unique for a debut novel by a completely unknown author with zero external awards/publication credits to her name (sure, she won some little internal award from her MFA program, but whooptee-freakin-do... who hasn't?) Anyway, I was intrigued and I bought the book, thinking, 'hey, if an agent didn't shrink away from a 200,000+ word opus by an Great Unknown, maybe the book was THAT good'... So I just HAD to read the damn thing...

Well, I just finished it last week, and, no... It's definitely NOT the greatest thing ever written. I wouldn't even qualify it as a 'brilliant' book by far -- and I've been reading all my life (literally -- I learned early and haven't stopped since). Don't get me wrong: it's an engaging read, and some of the language in it is quite nice and everything, but overall, I found the book repetitive and predictable and the climax was, well... anti-climatic at best... Most importantly, I found the characters to be little more than props in the service of the 'quest' theme... They're not people with layers and complexities and whatnot... They're all very plasticky, puppety... Wooden. And although I'm normally a big fan of the correspondence narrative (i.e. stories told in letters), Kostova milks this way too much, to the point that the technique loses credibility completely. Ditto for the story-within-a-story-within-a-story-within-a-story-within-a-story schtik. I mean, I can suspend my disbelief once to accept that a character would write a bunch of letters that he/she knows will never be sent... But this is repeated not only twice, but over and over and over again by three or four different characters... Not only does the technique lose any potential impact, but the characters start bleeding into each other, further losing their already tenuous 'personalities'.

Still, this unremarkable debut novel by an unknown author not only got accepted by an agent and a publisher despite its length... It sold for a $2 million advance... How did this happen? Sure, the theme is marketable enough, but... is THAT enough? What happened to rich, complex characters? To a compelling, intricate plot? To prose so beautiful you could cry? (In all fairness, though, there IS some nice language here and there throughout the novel)

In other words, I'm confused. I bought the book to figure out what made it so special... And I just ended up with more questions than before.

I guess all an aspiring author can do is sweat bullets in hopes of writing a great query and hope like hell that it will be read by the right person at the right time. Art is, after all, subjective; and market trends are that -- trends...

Feeling surreal (or surreal feeling?)

So... I've modelled for art classes twice in the last year -- as a dancer, not as a nude. Not that there's anything wrong with modelling nude... I just couldn't do it myself. I'd get too self-conscious.

But dancing, wearing a bunch of different costumes as if for performance, playing with shawls and fans and flowers for my hair... That, I can do. It's still the strangest thing, though... The extremely slow-motion moves, the holding of certain [not always comfortable] poses... and the small horde of artists armed with digital cameras, snapping a couple dozen shots per minute from all possible angles... Shots of me. Thousands and thousands of shots of ME! Of ME, who until recently would run for cover at the sight of a camera pointed in my direction! And now I'm happy to do these little sessions, because they're so much fun, so surreal... such a far cry away from my life as I currently know it. And, in a way, they feel so much more RIGHT. Like writing or going to poetry readings and gallery openings -- my life as I used to know it before an incredibly boring and monotonous full-time job became a necessity...

Modelling is very odd. In a way, I'm only a prop, an object... But when I see the pictures chosen to paint from, and especially when I see the actual paintings... Well, suddenly I'm not an object anymore. Suddenly I'm animated and alive -- the pose of my arms, the movement of my skirt, the energy in my hands. Suddenly, I see myself -- not through my own eyes, but through the photographers' And then, most importantly, I see myself like they see me, with whatever intention or story they thought to portray as they painted.

Yesterday, when out of curiosity I went back to the art studio to check out the final results of said modelling session, the workshop leader asked me of one of the paintings: "What would you write about that painting?"

I was a bit stumped. Not because I had no clue, but because, all of a sudden, an ocean of clues, of ideas, of thought unexpectedly washed over me. From words to describe the light, or the use of colour, to the hundreds of possible stories behind that particular pose, those particular flowers in my hair, the earrings I picked, the necklace I had forgotten I was wearing the day of the modelling session... And what if it wasn't me, but someone else? Someone else's pose, someone else's flowers, earrings, necklace...? All of a sudden, I had a character -- rudimentary, sure, but still, it only took seven little words to prompt its birth in my mind...

Now I have a CD with over 300 pictures of me (the selected 'few' from the session, which I hear resulted in over 4000 images snapped by six or seven people). I've gone through them all and... well, some of them have 'story' written all over them... We'll see what I make of them. If nothing else, it might be a cool exercise.

I mean, I know writing from/about/inspired by a painting is far from being a new idea, but I personally have never used this tool to jog my creativity... And since said creativity lately seems to be in good need of a jog (current employment is killing the poor thing), well, I'll take what I can...

Why TV sucks

I don't watch TV.

Not much of it anyway, although my current rent includes full cable.

Every now and then, though, I do turn on the tube and it usually takes me less than 10 minutes (sometimes less than 5) to think to myself, "Ooooh. THAT'S why I don't watch tv!"

Why?

Because left, right and centre we have trash: from 'reality' tv about powertrips, mudslinging, catfights and/or stripper wannabees, to absolutely inane, brainless sitcoms without a single original thought, idea or joke; to soapy 'dramas' with plots as overdone as twice-heated canned refried beans.

Then, something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes along. A goofier name for a show there couldn't have been, yet even a TV-hating militant like me had to admit the concept was original, the characters were alive, and, most importantly, the cliches were kept to a minimum and the writing pretty much bordered on brilliant.

Funny thing: I never saw the show while it ran in real time. Then, some time in 2003 or 2004, I finally heeded the recommendations of three different PhD-holding friends of mine and caught the re-runs on the Canadian Space Channel (they happened to air when I got home from work)... I was almost-instantly hooked. So much so, that I bought the boxset with all 7 seasons and have enjoyed them all.

I naturally turned to the series's spin-off, Angel, and enjoyed its fresh dialogue and vibrant, 'real' characters (as in, with real flaws and real assets), although I missed the presence of a strong female lead.

Why were these shows cancelled, while imagination-less trash like American Idol and Survivor and America's Next Top Model increasingly take on the spotlight? It's beyond me.

And now, after a couple of years of consistently avoiding TV, a few months ago I happened upon Veronica Mars, Smallville and Supernatural, and I managed to avoid turning the TV off during all three.

Smallville and Supernatural both have their moments, although the one is nothing but the retelling of an old, old, OLD story, and the other is only a male Buffy wannabe... Come to think of it, they BOTH are... I mean, the only difference between the towns of Smallville and Sunnydale is that one gets periodically hit by meteor showers that leave behind 'meteor freaks', and the other is on a hellmouth that happens to attract demons and other, well... freaks... (And how about that episode when Clark Kent is attacked by an unseen force that makes him hallucinate he's a deluded patient in a psych ward? That was a total, absolutely SHAMELESS rip-off from the Buffy season 6 episode 'Normal Again'... ) But I digress...

My point is that, without question, the best-constructed, most cleverly-written, most ORIGINAL of all three shows is -- or should I say, 'was'? -- Veronica Mars. Not only that: it also portrays very real, very human characters who are still growing as people, making human mistakes and learning from them, and... it has a kick-ass, brave, no-nonsense female lead that challenges the establishment.

So I start watching this show, thinking to myself that maybe all this time I've been too hard on the TV industry, that there's hope yet for it... Then, without warning, I tune in one Tuesday night and, instead of a clever neo-noir little show portraying a strong, intelligent female rolemodel, I find a piece of absolute GARBAGE called Pussycat Dolls something-or-other! I don't need to watch more than ONE minute of this absolute trash to realize it is just another bunch of faeces -- another 'reality' show intent on perpetuating the objectification of women by showing a bunch of pseudo-prostitutes in S&M-like outfits badmouthing each other while they 'compete' to see which one of them can better hold the attention of over-sexed, male tv producers and equally oversexed, equally male audiences.

My hope not yet dead, I tuned in again Tuesday after Tuesday, only to turn the damn TV off in disappointment again and again... Until last night, when I pleasantly happened upon the two-hour 'season finale' of Veronica Mars. I was thrilled, really followed the plot and was left looking forward to the next season come September...

Then I happened to look the series up on the internet today and... what do I find? The clever little neo-noir with the strong female lead is being cancelled!!!!! Instead, the network is plugging all primetime slots with absolute crap of the same calibre as the Pussycat Dolls garbage! Sure, Smallville and Supernatural are still on, but... again: they may have their moments, but in truth they're just retelling old plots... And where are the female leads??? They have disappeared. Instead, young girls are once again left with nothing to look up to, but a future of perennial body-image issues, dieting and excercising, becoming bulimic or annorexic.... And depressed because they'll never, no matter what they do, look like the next pussycat whore, or whatever.

The message the next generation of girls is getting: you're nothing but a toy, so dress scantily, starve yourself and act like one.

Brains? Who needs them? Right? Veronica Mars had them and her show got cancelled; Buffy Summers had them and her show got cancelled... More? I'm told Gilmore Girls also got cancelled -- although I personally can't say much about this show because the one time I caught it, the dialogue seemed a bit on the contrived side for me... Still: strong female leads...

What is really depressing is to realize that these cancellations are pretty much in response to ratings, i.e. to what the MAJORITY of the public wants...

It's like the Roman circus... Why have culture and nurture your brain, when you can just sit down and watch people at each other's throats, either verbally, or literally? Why have story, originality, plot, characterization, acting, when you can have a bunch of regurgitated third or fourth hand excrement to fill in the voids your life wouldn't have if you didn't spend half of it in front of the tv in the first place? Why have talented actresses in strong leading roles when a bunch of pseudo strippers can parade and have catfights to give the male audiences a permanent hard-on?

After this, I don't think I'll be trying turning on my tv again in a very, very long time. At least now there are DVDs... Buffy, here I come again!

On blogging

Another gazillion years gone by, and no postings...

One of the reasons is that the whole concept of keeping a blog is still a bit beyond my grasp. Sure, it's what all the cool kids are doing these days, and for what I've seen, these blog things range from personal rants, to journal entries, to 'dear diary' type entries, to actually focused, purposeful scribblings on a variety of subjects.

Me? I guess I've tried all of the above and not one of said blog styles has quite done it for me just yet. Part of the problem is that I'm still trying to understand the concept of blogging... The point of it all... So we desperately want to get our thoughts out there? Are we so pathetic (note the use of the word 'we') that we have to grasp at whatever little chance we have to be heard, to at least in our minds step out from the crowd of the nameless and have our say in a global (if virtual) stage? Do we really think what we have to say is so important it just has to be shared with the world?

Well, unless there something in it for the world, chances are, the world's not going to give a damn. It's too busy writing its own blog, indulging in its own fantasy that what it writes will be of any consequence to some stranger here or there.

The truth is NOBODY CARES. If you're writing about indoor gardening, only indoor gardening enthusiasts will care about your blog; if you claim to be a literary agent, only frustrated, newbie writers will read your blog -- even if you are in fact a map maker who knows zip about publishing, but just happens to sound like you do know your stuff. If you're writing about your life... Maybe your mum will care -- perhaps your best friend, or your shrink... And then you can just email them, or talk to them directly... why bother posting it on the internet?

My theory? (And please note how, here I am, ranting about blogs in a blog)

There's too many of us. Too much anonymity. We all think we're special and unique and deserve to be heard... We all think we have something to say and -- worse-- that people should listen!

The internet should be a tool. If you have a business, or want to post your portfolio, or share pictures and stories with faraway loved ones, cool. But now we've allowed this fantastic global tool to become a vehicle of self-indulgence (writes she in that self-indulgent blog of hers which, she knows, is just as bad as anyone else's)

We've got to get a grip! And I personally make myself (MYSELF, not anyone who happens upon this little webspot) the vow that I will stop writing about my shitty job and my PMSy relationship paranoias. I'll try from now on to focus on one or two topics (say, flamenco, diversity, writing/reading) and cut the shit.

Call it my personal April resolution.