The flashback is dead. It’s at least on life support. Readers don’t want excursions into the past, complete with scenes and dialogue, to learn about a character. As writers of fiction, we’ve got to stick to the storyline.

I guess this is pretty sound advice. Flashbacks handled poorly just interrupt the narrative train and slow things down. But I have to say that handled well, I think they can be magical, blurring the line between past and present and showing how one leads into the other. Check out Dennis McFarland’s novel, The Music Room, one of my favorites. It’s chockfull of flashbacks, and they’re as memorable as the storyline, if not more so.

But flashbacks do present myriad structural challenges, and that’s why I’m keeping away from them in my new project. A workshop teacher once told me that flashbacks are evidence that the writer isn’t able to “bring the past into the story in a natural, seamless way.”  This isn’t always the case, of course, but I think it’s probably dead-on in many instances.

A novel’s structure, this teacher said, includes scenes and summaries, with the latter serving as passages between scenes. Summaries are a way of telling events. They can be used to bring information from the past into the story. But they are NOT flashbacks. Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction has more to say on summaries. Check it out, if any of this is resonating with you.

–Karen

Oh, the humanity. We haven’t seen this kind of drama at our house since the potty training weeks. Or maybe the newborn, sleep-deprived weeks. Or maybe ever.

Why am I telling you my woes? Not sure. Maybe I’m just tired. And broke! And addled. Writing about it takes me outside the here and now, gives me distance to breathe and to see it all from a new perspective. So here are the events that unfolded of late in our little world.

Saturday: Discover lice on my daughter. Lice! First encounter with these critters. Frantic call to pediatrician, several trips to drug store and many, many loads of laundry ensue.

Sunday morning: Water pours from garage ceiling. Trusty Plumber is called, who traces it to leak in kitchen that’s been dripping for, well, years.

Sunday night: Just as we’re heading to bed, water pours from kitchen ceiling.

Monday morning: Trusty Plumber returns and fixes upstairs toilet leak (yuck). We now owe Trusty Plumber small fortune.

Monday night: Dog begins vomiting uncontrollably. Vet consulted. Dog returns home with instructions to stay away from the good rugs and eat boiled chicken and rice.

Tuesday: Dog appears near death. Returns to vet who admits him to hospital, takes x-rays, runs blood work, and keeps him on IV-fluids all night and all next day.

Wednesday: Dog diagnosed with acute pancreatitis. Sent home with four different medications and total bill that would get me halfway through that European vacation I’ve been dreaming of.

Thursday: Lice still hanging on. Panic prevails.

Friday: Lice spread to other family members. Panic turns to hysteria and, at last, professional is consulted. (Yes, they have such things.) Lice Lady combs all family members, entertains us with stories of professional nitpicking, and leaves us with magic comb, runny mousse, peppermint spray, and bill that would get us through the rest of Europe.

Saturday: Cage housing two parakeets gets much-needed cleaning, when we discover one bird can’t use his claw. Emergency-weekend, exotic-animal-vet consulted. Bird determined to have either terminal tumor or broken leg, which could be treated with x-rays, cast, calcium supplements, pain meds, and many follow-up visits—to the tune of what would get us home from Europe in style. Bird is very regretfully put to rest—for a much smaller fortune.

Skip forward to today, where things have settled to the point that we can laugh about some of it. (A tiny, little bit of it.) And now I can write it all up, give it a sideways spin, skew it toward the hopeful, maybe even the humorous, and move on. How else could I write what sounds like a casual and unintentionally heartless account of losing my little bird? (His name was Gatsby, by the way—Daisy died two years ago. I loved him. I miss him. And his buddy seems sad in the big, empty cage without him.)

But hey, maybe a character I’m writing about will live through these things now. Maybe she’ll decide to become a Lice Lady. Or fall in love with the Trusty Plumber or the (apparently very wealthy) exotic animal vet.

Maybe not. In any case, it’s important to keep perspective. It’s only money, right? Only bugs, only dog mess, and brown, rancid water and dry rot.

This week reminded me of what one of my professors used to say: “Disaster can strike on any street corner.” And certainly the last week or so has been stained in a much larger sense with real disasters. Ricin in the mail, explosions in Texas, and of course, bombs and the shelter-in-place manhunt in Boston. Our lovely guest blogger, Adrienne Kerman, was at the marathon, and then locked inside her home in Brookline for days afterward. We’re so grateful for her and her family’s safekeeping during this time. Our hearts go out to all of Boston. And to West Texas. And to all the others involved in such horrors.

So I’ll comb, and mop, and clean. And write. And be thankful it was the week it was, and not the week that could have been.

Stay safe, people. Write well. Check your kids’ hair.

–Cathy

Has anyone submitted a proposal to an agent or editor who asks to see just five pages of a project before deciding whether to read the rest? It really makes you think about beginnings. What makes those crucial first pages (hell, first sentences today) work? Ask this question and you’ll get different answers: They must grab the reader and never let go. They must cast a spell, drawing the reader into a spellbinding fresh vision of the world. They must demonstrate a dazzlingly original and captivating voice.

Yeah.

I knew a guy in college, a fiction writer, who took this sort of advice to heart. The opening line of his first novel: “F*** you,” she screamed. No, I’m not kidding. This guy went on to become an English professor and to publish fiction, though perhaps not that first novel. It makes me laugh now, but I tip my hat to him. He was just trying to figure it out and taking his best stab. Isn’t that what we’re all doing?

There was a time—and I guess I’m dating myself here—when a story could start slowly and softly, when readers would tolerate a gentle build-up in narrative tension. Now it seems people want to be shot out of a canon when they read fiction. In this age of instant messaging and 24/7 connectivity, non-stop action is the rule, unless you’ve already got a bestseller to your name, in which case you’re given more credit for knowing what you’re doing.

Beginnings are critical. They always have been. But at a time when a little more emphasis is placed on them—thanks to the ever-shrinking national attention span—beginnings matter more than ever. I’ve pasted twenty, timeless first lines here that most folks agree work pretty well.  Take a look, enjoy, and follow the link to read the rest.

–Karen

100 Best First Lines of Novels

The editors of American Book Review selected what they consider the most memorable first lines of novels. The titles on the list span centuries and genres and include classics and contemporary novels that are certain to become classics. Use this list to test your literary knowledge.

	Quote	Author	Title	Year
1.	Call me Ishmael.	Herman Melville	Moby-Dick	1851
2.	It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.	Jane Austen	Pride and Prejudice	1813
3.	A screaming comes across the sky.	Thomas Pynchon	Gravity’s Rainbow	1973
4.	Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.	Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Gregory Rabassa)	One Hundred Years of Solitude	1967
5.	Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.	Vladimir Nabokov	Lolita	1955
6.	Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.	Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett)	Anna Karenina	1877
7.	riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.	James Joyce	Finnegans Wake	1939
8.	It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.	George Orwell	1984	1949
9.	It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.	Charles Dickens	A Tale of Two Cities	1859
10.	I am an invisible man.	Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man	1952
11.	The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard.	Nathanael West	Miss Lonelyhearts	1933
12.	You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.	Mark Twain	Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	1885
13.	Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.	Franz Kafka (trans. Breon Mitchell)	The Trial	1925
14.	You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.	Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver)	If on a winter’s night a traveler	1979
15.	The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.	Samuel Beckett	Murphy	1938
16.	If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.	J. D. Salinger	The Catcher in the Rye	1951
17.	Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.	James Joyce	A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man	1916
18.	This is the saddest story I have ever heard.	Ford Madox Ford	The Good Soldier	1915
19.	I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me.	Laurence Sterne	Tristram Shandy	1759–1767
20.	Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.	Charles Dickens	David Copperfield	1850

Read more: Best First Lines of Novels | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0934311.html#ixzz2Qeu86DYL

 

Here’s a concept I’ve thinking about a lot lately: Narrative Vehicle. As in, a protagonist’s main goal or objective, the quest that keeps the story moving forward. The character may not know his/her goal at the beginning. The narrative arc may follow this dawning realization. But the writer has to know it.

Three months into the Write Despite challenge, I’ve found it’s helpful to articulate narrative concepts this way. It clears out some of the mental clutter and helps me focus. It also helps me select details and scenes that drive the vehicle forward and to not waste time on detours and diversions—no matter how clever they are.

Here’s a primer for anyone else out there who likes reminders.

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/fiction/elements.asp?e=1

Write well!

–Karen

When the life you lead, trying to be a person one can trust, trying to be present—really present as in LISTENING to what is said to you, not as an ersatz social scientist-novelist looking for material but as an involved friend and confidant or even mentor—when all that eats into your time alone to work, just VISIT it a little, each day, let it know you’re there, with friendly intentions (with the wish to release it and let it be its best self apart from you, even far from you), and then go on, being who you must be in the world. Trust that it will wait for you, even if it begins standing in your mind with one hand on its hip and one shoe restlessly tapping. It will wait. It will be there. Because it isn’t finally only about stubbornness or faith alone. It is also, deeply beyond the usual sense of the word, a matter of trust.
–Richard Bausch

This is a quote from mentor, friend, and much loved professor, author Richard Bausch, whose inspiring, exquisite guiding principles for writing are not to be missed. He’s been kind enough to allow us to reprint some here. And this one couldn’t be more relevant to what we’re doing.

Visit it a little, each day. That’s it. No more, no less required to be able to call yourself working.

We’re now three months into this challenge. I wondered, when I started, if I’d be changed by now. If I’d feel a restlessness, an urgency to write each day. Or to write more, or better, or if the words would come more easily, or eloquently, or melodically.

What’s actually happened is that writing has become a sort of phantom that lingers at the edges and waits for me to notice it. This is different from before, where it was sleeping undisturbed until I woke it every now and again.

I remember to write, and to think about writing, to plan, to research, to examine words and images, to stick my toe into the waters of creating, just a little.

Each day.

I visit it. And, whenever possible, sit and stay for a while. It’s a matter of trust. And we’ll continue to honor it the best we can.

How’s it going for all of you, however many months in?

–Cathy

If you’re agent-hunting or trying to sell a novel these days, you may have stumbled across this term: The Sweet Spot. It’s marketing speak for the niche where “literary fiction” intersects with “commercial fiction.” I translate this as good, serious writing that will also have broad appeal and potentially better sales.

At least that’s what I think. The challenge is that the Sweet Spot can be pretty damn elusive. What one agent/reader/publisher deems “sweet,” another calls “sour.” Of course writing for any niche has drawbacks. Why, I wonder, do so many editors believe that so-called “women’s fiction” must feature only female protagonists? Last time I checked, women like getting inside a man’s head, too.

The old advice from my writing professors (and a couple of really savvy high school teachers) comes back to me when I encounter the sub-genre/niche confusion of the marketplace. Write the story that you want to tell. Tell the story that feels urgent and true.  All the conventions are up for grabs in the service of telling a good story. Speak from the heart, engage the brain, and you won’t go wrong.  Oh, and good luck.

–Karen

 

Okay, this was just plain fun. And kinda hard. And a lot of work.

And fun!

Thanks to a couple of lovely bloggers for nominating us for the Liebster Award.  Here’s how it works:

1. Thank the Liebster Blog presenter who nominated you and link back to their blog.  Thanks to Leanne Dyck’s  The Sweater Curse and to Gratitude Equation! 

2. Post 11 facts about yourself, answer the 11 questions you were asked and create 11 questions for your nominees.  See below.

3. Nominate 11 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed and leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been chosen.  See below.

4. Display the Liebster Award logo.  See above.

Here we go!

At age 8, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Cathy: An actress.

Karen: A veterinarian.

Are you what you wanted to be at age 8?

Cathy: No.

Karen: No. 

Favorite piece of art in your home–describe, please!

Cathy: An oil painting by my uncle, painted of my grandfather. He is fishing the banks of the Narrows Reservoir in Giles County, Virginia. You see him from the back, hands in the pockets of a rumpled old coat, can of bait beside him. Every rock and pebble at his feet is rendered in intricate reds and browns, and the rushing current of the blue-green water can give you chills.

Karen: Metallic artwork of flock of sandpipers—it’s a wall-hanging.

Who or what encouraged you to start blogging?

Cathy: Karen!

Karen: Cathy!

What is the best meal you’ve ever cooked?

Cathy: I make a mean chicken piccata that even my kiddos will eat.

Karen: Chicken Francaise in white wine sauce. It’s great every time.

If someone came up to you tomorrow and said, “Here’s a plane ticket to wherever you want to go for the next month,” where would you go?

Cathy: Paris. (But if I get to be there a whole month, can’t I travel all over Europe, please?)

Karen: Ireland.

What is the best poem you’ve ever read?

Cathy: So hard! I’ll just pick my favorite, which has always been T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

Karen: The Wellspring Collection by Sharon Olds

When was the last time you stepped outside your comfort zone, and how did you do so?

Cathy: January 1, when we began doing Write Despite. Everything about it has been a step outside my zone, from forcing myself to write each day to helping create an online platform, to navigating and developing a deep love for Twitter. And it’s been awesome.

Karen: Ballroom dance class at our church. I just relaxed and had a blast.

If you had to live without coffee or wine, which would it be?

Cathy: Coffee!

Karen: Wine.

What is your favorite article of clothing you own, and why?

Cathy: Ugh. I hate my clothes. But a good pair of jeans (mid-rise, boot cut, please) is a pleasure. Because jeans make me human.

Karen: Green cable-knit turtleneck sweater. It’s warm and comforting and looks great.

How do you relieve stress?

Cathy: Wine. (See #9 above.)

Karen: Yoga or exercise at the gym.

11 Random Facts About Karen:

1. I talk to myself…way too much.

2. Bad table manners drive me crazy. No one wants to hear you gulp.

3. I’d rather take a walk in the woods than do almost anything else.

4. I love crows—the bigger and more disruptive the better. I find them endlessly entertaining.

5. I had a crush on Al Gore in the ‘90s.

6. I have a fear of heights.

7. I watch very little TV. I don’t even have the premium cable channels.

8. I love regional fiction set in New England.

9. I love the cello.

10. I’ve been accused of having the sense of humor of an eight-year-old boy. It’s kind of true.

11. I think Morrissey’s version of “Moon River” totally beats Andy Williams’ take.

11 Random Facts About Cathy:

1. I am inexplicably obsessed with Paul Simon. (The singer, not the dead politician.)

2. Also Sweet Frog frozen yogurt—Dulce de Leche, hello?

3. I hate overhead lights. But…

4. I hate rooms without overhead lights. (Hey, when you have to find something, you need them.)

5. I re-read The Great Gatsby nearly every summer.

6. My best friend has been my best friend since the day my parents brought me home from the hospital. (Thank God.)

7. At age 13, I mercilessly begged my parents to sell my bed and put a hammock in my room instead. They refused. (Thank God.)

8. I freeze nearly all the time, and can’t wait to retire to Florida where I can lie in the sun until I burst into flames.

9. I once owned a dog that could ring the doorbell, and a parakeet that could fake sneeze just like my mother.

10. I’m the only person I know who can’t stand The Big Bang Theory. But…

11. I host True Blood parties every Sunday night at my house in the summer. (Drink of choice? Dirty martinis—and no, not bloody marys.)

 Questions for others:

1. What’s your favorite horror movie?

2. How much sleep do you get at night?

3. What’s the best thing about being you?

4. What’s the hardest thing about blogging?

5. What’s the best meal you ever had?

6. What’s your biggest regret?

7. What or who is the love of your life?

8. What are you most proud of?

9. How much time do you spend on Facebook every week?

10. Favorite Saturday Night Live cast member?

11. Pet peeve?

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