Today a friend of mine called me to say she’d looked up my book LEGACY on Simon & Schuster’s website (It’s finally going to be released in December of this year– publishers take an age to move books these days) and there were two “readers’ reviews” about the book. Weird, but I guess S&S sent bound galleys to some designated readers. Anyway, my friend told me that the reviewers (known only by their first names, “Barbara” and “John”) gave me four stars out of five.

So of course I flipped out. Why didn’t I get FIVE stars? And then came the downward spiral: If it’s not a five-star book, then maybe it will vanish, and take me with it. Maybe I’m out of sync with what’s selling these days. Maybe S&S won’t want to give me a series. Maybe I’m just kidding myself, even though I’ve written 30 published novels, including three bestsellers and received lots of awards, not to mention rave reviews. Maybe I’m not tough enough to compete. Maybe I should have written something along the lines of The Hunger Games instead of a funny, multifaceted novel with a lot of subplots. Maybe, maybe, maybe . . .

That’s when I understood about writers losing their nerve. When you’re just starting out, you don’t know anything about the business of publishing, so all you do is write. Usually you write badly, so you keep writing until you get better. That’s actually the secret, although you don’t know that at the time. But anyway, you publish a book, a few books, you speak at a few writers’ conferences, you get some interviews in print, and suddenly you’re not just writing anymore. You’re PLANNING. You’re WORRYING. You’re TRYING. And then you start second guessing yourself. Should I be J.K.Rowling? Cassandra Clare? Suzanne Collins?

Then before you know it, you’ve forgotten who you are. And when that happens, you lose your nerve.

So okay, I get it. However many stars Barbara and John give me, I’m not tap dancing for them. Every book is a first novel, in a way. They’re all filled with everything the writer is. Laugh at me, and it hurts. But it doesn’t stop me. I lie naked on the table every time. I give Barbara and John and anyone else permission to look at me and snigger, puke, point, jeer, or walk away. And I keep writing.

Besides, four stars out of five ain’t bad.

But as someone who is accustomed to working in a vacuum, experiences adequate support for my work, and is acquainted with a number of people involved in the publishing field in one capacity or other, I never felt much of a draw toward these word klatches… and many drawbacks. For one — and I’m basing all my observations either on the experiences of people who belong to (and love) their groups, or on my own limited first-hand experiences, which I’ll get to later — these groups tend to become “clubs”, with an unchanging core membership and a suspicious eye toward newcomers. The problem with these groups is that writing tends to become secondary to talking. Sometimes the meetings turn into therapy sessions, with members discussing their personal problems. Sometimes the atmosphere is just so comfortable that the members might as well be having an extended lunch. Either way, the problem is keeping the writing at the forefront.

The other problem is productivity. Invariably, meetings will include two sorts of members: attention-seekers, who want the group to focus all its time on them, and those who never produce anything. The attention-seekers (who are generally attention-seekers in any milieu) might not even bring in new work to be analyzed, but will offer up old poetry, college essays… anything to command the attention of the group. The non-producers might be willing (or even eager) to criticize the work of others, but never expose themselves to scrutiny. The worse offender, of course, is the non-producer who takes up the group’s time anyway, by talking about anything that will bring attention to himself.

Maeve Binchy, in her book on writing, saw as a pitfall the possibility that members might be too polite to one another. That was certainly not my experience when I sat in on three sessions of a local writers’ group. I thought that a group of like-minded individuals would be a pleasant way to work my way through the book I’m writing, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. They were like vicious dogs! Talk about a rude awakening… In retrospect (now that I’m as far away from those people as I can get), I think that the group was insular and “closed”, despite its claims to be an “open” group, and that I was regarded as an interloper. That, or else I just happened onto a particularly vile bunch of individuals.

The one thing I came away with, however, was a solid sense of what “constructive criticism” ought to be. It is this: “If you do __, it will make your story better because it will_____.” If you can put your comments into this form, they will most likely be more useful than things like, “I don’t know, I just think it ought to be better.”

Incidentally, the one professional I know who attends a writers’ group is Mary Higgins Clark, who has been a member of her group for several decades, since before she was published.She likes her group, and good for her. As for myself, I think I’d rather work out my problems alone.

And they make me hate them.

Why? Because they are perfect. They bear no relation to me, the reader. They are better than I am, in a way that sets my teeth on edge. I don’t want to emulate them, because I can’t. I can’t match their robotic perfection, their effortless sex appeal, their innate success at life. All I want to do is to murder them in some extremely undignified and messy way. Or set fire to the books in which they play out their phony lives.

The disconnect here is that one person — well, three people — loved these characters: their authors. All three of these (again, unpublished) writers –plus a few thousand others, if my guess is right– went to the immense trouble of crafting entire novels around characters who are guaranteed to turn off anyone who reads about them.

Again, why? Why create characters that readers detest? Because that’s who the author wants to be. And perhaps thinks he is, in his oh-so carefully camouflaged heart of hearts. Bond, James Bond, c’est moi.

Wait a minute, I hear these authors saying. What about James Bond, a truly perfect character who does work, literarily speaking? Here is a man who sunbathes in order to harden his skin, without thought as to how a tan will enhance his already devastating attractiveness. Who, even in the presence of evil genius, always maintains the upper hand. Men fear him, women want him. And yet readers don’t hate him. Far from it: An entire generation fell under Ian Fleming’s spell as he trotted out his dashing alter ego again and again in a series of plot-driven fantasies in which action was of paramount importance, followed by accurate research, simple but effective structure, and a certain macho wit. The personalities of the characters in these books, including Bond himself, are of virtually no importance: Fleming might as well have given Bond and, say, Goldfinger names like “Good Guy” and “Bad Guy”. He declined to explore anything about the inner life of an intelligence operative ; he just told a good story expertly peppered with authentic details and excellent plotting. That is what genre writing is all about. And make no mistake: Genre writing can be masterful.

But the three seemingly interminable tomes I encountered this week were not genre stories. They were attempts at mainstream fiction. Their protagonists were supposed to be characters that readers could identify with, although that wasn’t what happened. The problem was that the authors sacrificed reader-identifiability for personal ego gratification.

Nobody wants to participate in a fantasy in which he or she is not the main character. In the Bond novels, the reader gets to be the main character, much like the animated figures in a video game. The “hero” is a cipher, a vehicle built for the chase, into  which we are invited to insert  ourselves. But in order to have a thinking, feeling character whose take on life resonates with our own, the protagonist must have warts — that is, fears, worries.. something to lose. He must make choices. He must, even if he is an outcast, be aware of the fabric of society.

The only way to achieve this sort of three-dimensional character is for you, the writer, to explore yourself, your real self, your own warts, foibles, insecurities, your points of petty desperation, your secret darknesses. You must be willing to reveal the depth of who you really are. To bare your soul, as it were, and more: I think of writing — particularly the terrifying act of showing my work to others — as lying naked on a table and inviting the general public to look me over and laugh at my deformities.

This isn’t easy. I believe, in fact, that it’s one of the main reasons why a lot of people with writing ability don’t  write. It’s just so damned personal. How much easier it is to create the person we want to be, the person we would like the world to perceive as our true selves.

Easy, yes. Honest, no. Greeting your reading public in a tuxedo will interest no one for long. You have to be naked in order to show them what they look like naked. When you do, something will pass between you, a current forevermore connecting you, the author, to me, the reader, that resonates with authenticity. Then will we both have  experienced  something of the truth.

This is how literature influences social norms. During times of war, writers tend to write of war as a noble, if unhappy, undertaking, while the attitude of peacetime novelists toward war is quite different. Yet both of these points  of view manage to find “meaning” — by which I refer to the intellectual justification for whatever course of action is portrayed in the novel — and those “meanings” differ with respect to the social conventions prevalent at the time when the story is written.

Thus a story about ancient Rome would necessarily be tempered by our 21st century views about things like slavery, war, law, and the place of women. We do not understand stories from the 18th century in which heroic white men hunt and kill Native Americans as if they were wild beasts. Indeed, we do not understand stories in which wild beasts, let alone men, are regarded in this manner. And because the social conventions of our age are so different from the age in which those stories were witten, their meaning to us is lost. This is in itself proof that literature, like all forms of art, is not really eternal, as we may have hoped, but subject to the Zeitgeist of the age in which we live.

The secret to writing “enduring” fiction, then (if anything created by human beings can be called enduring), is to look beyond popular conventions to true emotional discovery. But more about emotional truth later. For now, just be aware that what is hip is not always what is true, and what is popular, while virtually essential to having your popular fiction published,  is not always what is meaningful. Sad but true.

Anyway, I’m not writing a critique of LIFE OF PI. But I have to mention it beause the book brings up an interesting notion: that story is the backbone of reality, and not the other way round. In other words, reality, as we perceive it and relate it to others, has within it a certain amount of built-in fiction.

I should note that Yan Martel, the author of LIFE OF PI, does not put forth this argument. Instead, he offers, in the final chapters of the book, an alternative to the story he has been telling throughout the length of this novel. It is an alternative that is more believable than the original narrative, but less satisfying, less identifiable to the reader. One could almost dare to wish to hope that one might experience firsthand a little of Story #1, the original, novel-length story. No one, not ever, would trade places for a nanosecond with the narrator of Story #2 (the more believable version). Even the fictional character to whom the narrator relates both stories eventually choses Story #1. Why? Because it is more palatable, more identifiable, more entertaining, more hopeful.

Thus do we craft our stories, both on paper and in our lives: We seek to establish meaning and purpose to seemingly random events, and so subtly change this fact, that reaction, this sequence, that time frame. We become — that is to say, we, as writers, must become — like those Pollyannas everyone knows who say that “Everything happens for a reason”.

The truth is, things only happen for a reason if you — the writer, the narrator, the relator of the story — create that reason and then insert the events that prove it.

This is what separates fiction from reality: Fictional events are crafted with an eventual purpose for those events in mind. The volcano erupts because it will teach someone (the protagonist) a lesson, or bring two characters together in a love bond, or provide an obstacle for a character to overcome. Fictional events never occur in a vacuum, for the sole reason that such randomness would be useless in the context of a story. In a novel, everything that happens has meaning. We can do this with our lives, too, as did Victor Frankl (see previous blog), or not. But there is no such choice with a novel.

Is this, then, the artist’s search for meaning, or mere artifice? Either way, it is essential to creating a believable and compelling novel.

More about the role of Story later.

Frankl’s masterpiece is really no more than an essay, surprisingly easy to read, describing his experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II. I bought the book some time ago, but was afraid to read it because I thought it would be… well, depressing. What a surprise it was to find that, instead of cataloging the horrors that befell him (which would certainly have been justifiable) and ending with a brief cautionary note about the evils of mankind, Frankl chose to focus on the almost incredible tenacity and resilience of the human spirit amid the nightmarish circumstances of a Nazi concentration camp.

Between the lines, it becomes clear that Frankl’s own spirit was extraordinary, not because he was more pious or enlightened than the inmates who succumbed to hopelessness and despair, but because he was willing to accept the horrible turn of fate that had come to him as a learning experience. A psychiatrist, Frankl casts his trained eye on the other members of the weird environment where he has been taken against his will — the SS guards, the “trustee” prisoners (many of whom were more sadistic to the inmates than the Nazi soldiers), the shocked new arrivals, the suicides, the apathetic souls who had lost any desire to live, the embittered survivors who, in their desperate efforts to survive, had sacrificed their own humanity — and instinctively thinks, “How can I use these observations in the service of my life’s work?”

My point here is that writers — at least writers who take their work seriously — must use their experiences the way Frankl used his, to deepen their understanding of themselves and the world. You are not what you eat: You are whatever you have made of the things that have happened to you.If the only impression life has left you with is a vague and bitter taste of failure, then you have not looked deeply enough into your suffering.You do not need to be happy to find meaning in your life. But that meaning is present nonetheless, and your task as a writer is to uncover and clarify that meaning for others. This is not some altruistic task designed to make you feel better about yourself. It is, rather, the ultimate purpose of the writer. We (writers) exist in order to find meaning in life. There is no other reason for us to do what we do.

So I admonish you: Do not give in to the easy nothingness of depression. You were meant to walk beyond it, to find the clean air in that place beyond, and to show those who follow you how to fly.

Set aside one hour a day and write during that hour. That sounds easier than it is, so here are some other rules to follow: That hour must be at the same time every day. During that hour, write nothing except the project you want to get back to. Do not think during that hour. It may be tempting to do so, because your inertia will create storms of sudden pseudo-creativity in your mind. You must not pay attention to these, as they are meant to distract you. The inspiration for a fabulous new recipe. The solution to your perennial babysitting problem. The answer to your financial woes. Do not listen; they are not real.

What is real will be the one thing that seems unreal: the dreck that you are writing. What I’m saying, to spell it out, is to write really fast, without giving any thought at all to what you’re writing except that it’s connected with your project. Now, this will be a lot easier if you know beforehand what you want to write about. If it’s a novel, you would do well to have at least a vague idea of what you want to happen. It doesn’t matter, though, if it’s not crystal clear to you. That, believe it or not, will come out in your writing.

Prepare to throw a lot of what you’re doing in this hour away. In fact, your first few days may seem completely worthless. Just tell yourself that what you’re writing isn’t as worthless as the nothing you’ve been writing prior to this experiment. What will happen is that slowly something will evolve from the words you’re putting on the page. And it will be something of value.

I know, it sounds astonishing, miraculous, impossible. But it works. You must do this for 28 days, the length of time it takes to form a habit, although you will probably find your way back to your book long before your month is up. But you do want to form the habit. Otherwise, as soon as your inspiration leaves, you’ll stop writing again.

Other rules: Write in longhand. That connects your mind to your heart.I know that sounds woo-woo, but I speak from experience. I compose at the computer most of the time. I’m doing it now. But when I have something sensitive to write, something difficult or subtle, or if I don’t know exactly how to get to where I’m going from where I am, I write in longhand. In a safe place. (If you don’t know what I mean by a safe place, you don’t need one.) Once you’re out of the woods, go back to the  keyboard.

Also, write whatever comes into your mind, but keep focused. Resist the temptation to write about your mother, spouse, child, or arch-nemesis — these are the subjects for therapy, not publication. Believe me, I know. My ten-year hiatus was spent mostly ruminating about broken relationships. What a waste.

Most importantly, don’t judge your work. Don’t even consider it to be work. Just call it scribbling. Block happens when the author forgets that he is god. He feels, at times, that he’s not good enough to be god. That’s he’s not good enough to be anything. But he — you — is the only creator your book has. You are not playing god. You ARE, and it is necessary to your work that you are. So forget trying to be good enough to publish. Just concentrate on bringing your book to life by finishing it. It does deserve to be finished, doesn’t it?

If, after 28 consecutive days of writing, you still don’t know what you’re doing — or if you can’t make it to 28 days — then man up and admit that you’re not yet ready to work on something so difficult, and give yourself a break. But if you’re serious about your craft, and you are ready to bring forth your creation, this technique will help.

By the way, I’m writing again, and even swimming again. Crisis over. I do follow my own advice.

Spammers, eat shit.

Now, ahem. Oh, yes, death. A funny thing happened to me yesterday. I almost drowned. Okay, that’s kind of dramatic. I got a charlie horse in my leg while swimming in an indoor pool. I’m sure I wouldn’t have drowned. There were plenty of people around at the time, including a lifeguard and a thoughtful woman who leaped past the lap ropes to hold my head above water while I struggled — well, flailed and panicked, if we’re going to be literal about it — with the lump of cement that had suddenly grown inside my calf. But I wasn’t capable of such rational thought at the moment,  having convinced myself that Death was a tentacled thing lurking in the water beneath me.

After the lifeguard — a girl, and I do mean GIRL (she looked as if she’d just come from Kiddie Gym & Swim) managed to haul me  out of the water, a friendly woman walked me to the hot tub, where a kindly gentleman showed me how to pull my toes backward in case it happens again (Tears spring to my eyes at the very thought). And then everything went back to normal. People stopped staring. I stopped shaking, took a long shower, went home…

And I couldn’t write anything.

Now, I NEVER get writer’s block. I don’t even believe in it. I always advocate writing through any psychological pickle, from worrying about money to being embroiled in a bad romance. But this time, I just couldn’t follow my own advice. It wasn’t that I kept thinking about drowning. I was just on High Alert, as if I were walking along the edge of a razorblade with screeching metallic noise all around me.

After a couple of fruitless hours at my computer, I went to bed to write in longhand. This almost always works. But it didn’t. I ended up reading two novels, moving furniture, going grocery shopping, and watching TV until midnight. It was the first day I’d missed in a couple of years.

I still haven’t picked it up. That’s why I’m writing this instead. Oh, I’m sure I will, and I’ll tell you about it, but the whole situation has made me think about how fragile the thread that holds us to our creativity is. Any disturbance — the kids are sick, your parents are aging, your spouse is acting like an a-hole — and that delicate lifeline quivers. And when something big happens, something like trauma, serious illness, or grief, that gossamer thread can snap in an instant and leave you unanchored in the void.

I’m sure that my embarrassing little scene yesterday was a quiver, not a snap. But it reminded me that my thread had snapped, once, some time ago. After my divorce, I didn’t write for ten years. well, I wrote, but nothing productive, no novels. This and that, and a hundred journals trying to get myself to understand how my life had gone so wrong.

I’ve regretted that ten-year hiatus more than anything, especially since it occurred just as my career was headed for what I thought would be Big Things. I’d had three bestsellers, a huge movie sale, an article on the front page of Variety, and a multi-book contract. And then I quit writing. I can’t blame anyone but myself — if you don’t write,  you can’t call yourself a writer. But I was a rocket soaring into space, and then, because of my self-indulgent despair, I sent myself crashing into the desert.

So anyway, my experience yesterday has given me a modicum of understanding about why writers sometimes don’t write. Maybe it’s not always a lack of discipline, or having nothing to say, or being unskilled, or not being able to face the fact that one is a failure. I’ve been that harsh on others who’ve come to me saying that they’re writers who can’t write. And far, far harsher on myself.

I’m thinking now that maybe my cruelty was unwarranted. Because it’s possible that sometimes things just happen. Sometimes you get the elevator, and sometimes you get the shaft. Does a bear shit in the woods? Sometimes. At other times, it shits on you. And when it does, sometimes we can’t write. Sometimes all we can do is quake and cry and hope that someday we’ll get another  chance.

So I’m going to try to be a little kinder to all of us, including myself. Life is long enough to accommodate a few mistakes. We don’t have to win the race, or swim it perfectly. We just have to keep our heads above water. And if we need help even doing that, well, that’s okay, too. I’ll bend your toes if you’ll bend mine.

Embarrassing as it is to admit, I was a FictionWriting major in college. Which means I ought to have learned all about technique before I ever made it to the real world, right? Absolutely wrong. I don’t recall hearing much except that you shouldn’t start a sentence with “There” or write in fragments, or plagiarize. What you should do, I was told, is to explore your Inner Rage.

Maybe that’s no longer true. I went to school during the Basket Weaving Is As Valuable As Mathematics-era, which I guess would bring out anyone’s inner rage. What I’m saying is that I think it’s dumb to “teach” content, when we all have zillions of stories to tell, and enough inner rage to bring a fleet of Titan rockets to lift-off, and not teach things like How to Write a Realistic Conversation (it’s nothing like a REAL conversation, which is full of idiocies and empty courtesies), or How to Deliver Backstory, or How Point Of View Affects Plot Development. These are the things I would teach if I were teaching, because they’re the tools we use every day, whether we feel rage or bliss or untrammeled horniness.

Probably the most important tool, though, is knowing how to write without inspiration. I think that many a would-be writer has set down his pen in despair for lack of this one very valuable piece of information. Briefly, it is this: Whether you write in the heat of inspiration or plod along in your left brain, constantly correcting and tweaking, THE RESULT IS THE SAME. I’m serious. Inspiration just enables you to write faster and have more fun; it doesn’t ensure a better end product. I was amazed when I first realized this, amazed and thrilled, because it means that when you are empty, when your mind is as electrifying as cold farina, when you know nothing about your subject, when you’d rather be scrubbing the bathroom floor with a toothbrush than writing, you can still write well. It may take longer, and you’ll almost certainly have to rewrite at least some of your work, but you won’t be writing stuff you have to throw out.

So have faith. You CAN do it,. It WILL get done. Beauties aren’t always born beautiful. If you don’t believe me, look at your own baby pictures. And then write about them.