The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: another update

After I posted my last update on The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, I read further. A few pages into it, something huge happened. If you've read it, you know what I am referring to. If you haven't, I can't bear to spoil it for you. Instead of making me go hmmm, it made me go WHOA!

As I sat in my bed, teetering from this new development in the story, I was reminded of a book I read many years ago. I think it was by Faye Kellerman. Throughout the book, the question was whether a woman was a werewolf. The woman herself didn't think so, and neither did I. I was eagerly waiting for the end of the book to reveal how all the evidence that pointed to the woman being a werewolf can be explained. But I was totally mistaken. She was a werewolf.

Somehow I had taken the book to be contemporary and reality-based, i.e. no ghosts or werewolves or space pirates or monkeys that talk. When at the end, I discovered that was not the case, I felt let down.

I am not saying that The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a deceptive book, and I had known, before I picked up the book, that it was a retelling of Hamlet, but after 200+ pages that describe the world as we know it in such vivid details, a world in which a dog bite hurts, storm winds rattle windows and break barn roofs, and Mr. Coffee makes coffee, after 200+ pages of no clue or suggestion that the huge thing is even possible, I find its insertion into the story jolting, to say the least.

(I'll take a breath now after that long sentence.)

Shouldn't the premise of a book be clear from the beginning? Shouldn't unusual possibilities be at least hinted at? Or is the whole first half of the book a set up, to lull readers so that the surprise is more intense? Am I going to stop reading just because I feel as if new rules have just been introduced to a game after it's gone on? Not a chance. I'm too invested in the story, in Edgar and his dogs, and I really do love the way the author uses language.

Will keep you posted.

Free Download

Donald Maass is offering his book, The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success, as a free download. You may want to check it out.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: an update

I am in the middle of the book and still enjoying it tremendously. Here are a couple of passages that spoke to me.

This first one describes grief:

Just when normal life felt almost possible--when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness...some small thing would go awry and the veil of optimism was torn away, the barren world revealed. They learned, somehow, to wait those times out. There was no cure, no answer, no reparation.

This next one is, believe it or not, about dog-breeding; it is part of a letter from a self-proclaimed "factory-man"--one who seeks to create what is reliable--to a fellow dog-breeder whom he calls an "artist":

The artist does not know what he wants, but looks for good paints, good brushes, and good canvas. He trusts that talent will produce a desirable result. Sadly, for most people, it does not....No one can say if you are that person, who given good paints, good brushes and a fine canvas, can produce something better than a factory man...for a simple factory man like me, an effort must be abandoned once its hopelessness is exposed. Only the artist perseveres in such circumstance.

This is the reason I read: to connect and to understand, and to have my experiences explained much more elegantly than I can and to find that I am not alone in my pursuits, my take of the world, my conclusions about what I must do.

If you haven't read this book, I highly recommend it.

The power of kid-movies

The rest of the family came out from the movie theater with smiles on their faces. Each child recounted their favorite funny moments in the movie. I came out feeling depressed. Which movie? Wall-E. Sure it's a sweet movie with lovable characters, but the preaching is a bit much for me and the attempt to provide an upbeat ending, after much of the movie is spent in one depressing locale then another, is too little, too late, and too Pollyanna even for an animated kids' movie.

Anyone else wants a chance at the soapbox before I store it away?

Poetry Friday

For today's Poetry Friday, I offer a poem by David Ignatow. He writes about everyday things in a direct manner, which I really appreciate. This is for all you book lovers and writers all there.

Against the evidence
by David Ignatow

The following passage comes in the middle:

All my life
I've held books in my hands
like children, carefully turning
their pages and straightening out
their creases. I use books
almost apologetically. I believe
I often think their thoughts for them.
Reading, I never know where theirs leave off
and mine begin.

Read the poem here.

Then head on over to Two Writing Teachers for the Roundup.

Author interview: Todd Mitchell

Today I bring you an interview with the third finalist in the Young Adult category of the Colorado Book Awards. You can also read the interviews with the other two finalists, Teresa Funke and Laura Resau.

Todd Mitchell is the author of the fantasy novel, The Traitor King (Scholastic Press, 2007) His next YA novel is coming out with Candlewick Press in 2010 but he can't figure out what to title this one. He's also published several short stories, essays, and poems in journals and magazines. He earned his M.F.A in Fiction from Colorado State University and his B.A from Oberlin College. Currently, he teaches creative writing at Colorado State University. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with his wife, dog, and daughter (whose middle name is Story). P. S. If you have any title suggestions for his upcoming book (about a high school sophomore who likes a lot) please email them to him (click on contact me at his website.)

I know your secret to writing so convincingly: you are really a teenager pretending to be an adult. You're not? Then how do you do it?

I think everyone is a teenager at heart. Some people just like to dress up in suits and pretend they're more adult. As for myself, I try to avoid pretending.


Which makes you want to procrastinate more: starting a new scene of revising draft? (And if you never procrastinate, please, please, please share your secret.)

Facing the blank page is always the hardest for me. Anytime I need to start a new scene, I get an overwhelming urge to play hacky sack, or mow the lawn or something. THe only tip I have is to put a few words down. ANy words. Once something is there, things get easier.


In your writing, what is the relationship between putting down the initial idea and revising?

I see putting down the initial ideas as capturing a vision or mood. But it's only in revision that the vision becomes real. Or to use another analogy--putting down the initial idea is like gathering a handful of clay to work with. But it's in revision that I actually shape that clay into something I want other people to see. I often spend three times as long rewrigin and revising something as I do writing the first draft.


Which scenario comes closest to yours: (a) you wake up at dawn, sit at your keyboard with your coffee and work for a couple of hours before the rest of the family gets up; (a) you put away the dinner dishes, tuck the kids into bed, start a load of laundry and start writing; (c) you have 10 minutes between your office hour and your next class/you sit in the pickup lane of your child’s school and scribble down a few sentences?

I write in the morning, because it's too easy to let other things crowd out writing. Th only way I can get writing done is to make it a priority, and do it before everything else. Unfortunately, this often means I forget to pay bills, and my house is trashed, and the dinners I make are pretty lame.


Do you have a community you turn to for support, encouragement, critiques, and celebration in your writing life?

My wife reads everything I write. She's a pretty tough critic, but she's the one I'm always writing for. I also trade manuscripts with some writer friends (some of them are up for the Colorado Book Award this year too!) It's important to have a few good, critical readers who can keep you from getting locked in your head.


Did you ask young readers to read you book before you published it? What was the most interesting response you’ve received?

Nope. My wife is pretty immature, though. I think we have that in common.


If you weren’t a children’s book writer, what would you do?

I'd be Vice-President. (Todd's debating tonight!)


What will you do for your two fellow authors if you win: (a) bring them homemade apple pies, (b) offer to watch their child/children for a weekend, (c) provide them with unlimited signed copies of your book?

If I win, I'll gladly bake them corn bread. That's about as far as my baking skills go.

Cybils nominations open

Nominations are open for the 2008 Cybils award. Nominate your favorite children's books published between Jan 1 and Oct. 15 2008 in nine different categories. The panelists consist of teachers, librarians, authors and other people passionate about children's lit and who blog about it.

Here are the 2007 winners.

The process

Since stepping in as the choir accompanist at my church, I've been offered another accompanist job: at a local charter school with a strong music program. The first concert is presented by 7th and 8th graders and their selections are musically advanced and require some practice on my part.

In the process of learning yet more new music, I've been reminded just how messy the process can be. All the unpredictable mistakes, the funny things that happen when my eye-hand co-ordination gets wacky, and the passages that suddenly don't work when I play them at different speeds. Over the years, I've accepted these as part and parcel of playing the piano. I get frustrated occasionally, but never to the point where I start losing faith. I need to transfer the same attitude to my writing, and not become discouraged when my writing refuses to gel or fit the vision I have for it. I need to remember that it's a process, a journey, in which mistakes and unexpected happenings should be embraced and learned from.

Writing is kinda like life that way. (Okay, obvious and cliche, but I need to hear it every once in a while.)