Long Distance Book Club

“Yes, Pat,” you’re saying to yourself.  “Where have you been?  For crying out loud, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, and you haven’t posted a thing since New Years!”

Well, it’s like that scene in the movie, Adaptation, where Nicolas Cage plays real life screen writer, Charlie Kauffmann, who’s trying to write a screenplay of The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean.  Except, he’s having a hard time.  He can’t seem to get into it, or figure out how to make it into a story.  He has serious writer’s block.

So there he is in his bare bones apartment.  The lights are dim, and all he has is a typewriter – yes, a typewriter – perched on an upended orange crate and a folding card table chair.  He sits down, stares at the typewriter for a long second, raises his fingers over the keyboard.

“Wait,” he says, his fingers falling into his lap.  “Should I get some coffee before I start?  Or a bagel?  I haven’t eaten all day.  Maybe I should just wait until after lunch.  I always write better when I have a full stomach.”

(Excuse me for just a minute.  The kettle is whistling, and you know I can’t write without tea at my side.  Should I have English Breakfast Tea or Irish Breakfast Tea?  Do you really think there’s any difference?  Honestly, I can’t tell the difference.)

Now, where was I?  Oh, yes, I was going to tell you all the really good reasons I haven’t posted anything in such a long time. Uh . . .

It’s not my fault.  I mean, I do work on my novel – some.  Besides, I work a full time job.  And there’s the housekeeping and the cooking and the shopping.  I’m very high maintenance, you know

No?

All right, how about, I’m President of the Homeowners Association, and I lead the Knit Night charity group at the library? 

I belong to a book club?

I help little old ladies across the street?

Okay.  Okay.  Here’s the truth.  It’s all the fault of Pawn Stars

The New Year is a time for looking forward and setting goals.  So in the months ahead, I hope not simply to make progress on what I’m writing but to continue learning from what I’m reading.

For example, for the last several weeks I’ve been reading mysteries, which isn’t my usual fare.  However, I found a ton of hardbacks at the Dollar Tree and couldn’t resist (The truth is, I’ll buy almost any hardback book for a dollar.Well, not Nicolas Sparks or Robert James Waller, but almost any.)

However, having read several now, (some by best selling authors) I’m stuck by how much better most of them would be if they followed a simple rule my friend, Pete Hendricks, taught me.

I first met Pete ten years or so ago at a writing workshop in Atlantic Beach.  I was a student, and he was an instructor.  One morning we were sitting on a bench enjoying the sunshine and talking about writing when he leaned forward and said:  “The difference between a good novel and a great novel is the last two percent.”

What he meant was something that seems quite elemental,  my dear Watson, but which is all too often overlooked, especially in novels intended for light reading.  It’s the details.  If the hero’s eyes are blue in the beginning of the novel, they better be blue in the end.  If you don’t need that adverb, lose it.  And if it’s perfectly obvious who’s talking, forget the tag line.

It was great advice, and reading those Dollar Tree novels reminded me of how easy it is to be lazy and how important it is to get to 100% in your writing.

Most of what I read in 2009 (both fiction and non-fiction) was good, but the only one which truly deserved four out of four stars was Robert Olen Butler’s The Deep Green Sea.  Set in 1980′s Saigon, it is a small, spare book (one, he told me when we met at a literary luncheon in February last year, that is often overlooked.) Yet, the delicacy of it makes the story even more devastating.  It is, I think Pete would agree, one hundred percent.

So make it a New Year’s resolution to go to your local independent bookseller (Quail Ridge in Raleigh, The Regulator in Durham, or the brand new Fly Leaf Books in Chapel Hill) and ask them to order it for you.  You’ll learn a lot about writing, but you’ll learn even more about the human spirit.

Happy New Year

Pat