The Perfect Opening Line -- Lost

The other night while out on the deck I had a sudden inspiration and a great opening line flashed into my head.

It was something like, "Everyone makes mistakes," or "Everyone has regrets," or "Everyone wishes he could have a do-over."

But it was none of those.

It was perfect.

It encapsulated the entire theme of the book in a single sentence.

Whatever it was.

The next day, I couldn't remember it. Only pale, lifeless imitations. What was I trying to say? What was the theme I had in mind?

I'll never know. No one will ever know.

It's gone like a bunny down a rabbit hole. Like a dandelion puff in a strong breeze. Like cold beer on a hot day.

Gone forever.

Damn, I should have written it down. I told myself to write it down.

It was perfect.

How sad is that?

My Plot Idea Stolen!

I was planning on writing a post today about interesting -- to me -- words like "outtake" and "takeout," "killjoy" and "buzzkill," which switch verb positions and so forth, and then I discovered this: Christian Nation, a novel that supposes Christian fundamentalists get their way and officially turn this into a "Christian nation."

Now, before I get myself in trouble, I'm not really saying the author, Frederic C. Rich, stole my idea -- he most assuredly did not -- only that I've been thinking about such a book for a few years, exploring what would happen if a constitutional amendment were passed declaring the U.S. a Christian nation, with attendant unforeseen consequences. In Christian Nation the country goes fundamentalist when John McCain dies and Sarah Palin becomes president; the way I conceived my novel, the catalyst would have been al Qaida nuking Chicago, leading to a sudden rush of us-against-them feeling that culminates in the adoption of the 28th Amendment.

I didn't go forward with it for a number of reasons, among which the most important were my general sloth, laziness and lassitude; and I was afraid it would take a lot of work to do it well. Also, it has been done before in some ways, notably by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaids Tale. Still, I was actually readying myself to put pen to paper. I bought a notebook and everything. I imagined the opening scene of protagonist Moire Something-or-other clacking down the marble-floored hallways at the Department of Faith and Justice on her way to a hearing on whether her client's medical outlook met the threshold to obtain an abortion. (She was going to try a novel and groundbreaking claim that since the law banning all abortions permitted an exception in case the mother's life was in danger, and since all pregnancies carry a small risk of death, that all she had to show was that her client was pregnant to gain permission for a therapeutic abortion.) I wasn't really sure where it was going to go after that -- hence the need for the notebook, to make notes! -- but the general premise would have been that the constitutional amendment would have allowed just about anything to be characterized as "Christian" or not, and that you should be careful what you wish for.

So, congratulations to Mr. Rich, I guess.

And back to the drawing board notebook for me.

Why Are There No Great Writers Anymore?

The first two-thirds of the 20th century produced a corps of great writers who defined their generation (Hemingway, Fitzgerald), exposed the social ills of America (Lewis, Steinbeck), broke new stylistic ground (Mailer, Capote, Heller, Pynchon, Wolfe) or produced a corpus of work that influenced the intelligentsia (Roth).



When there was Life,
there was greatness.

Since then, not so much. A few years ago, a couple of friends and I tried and failed to think of a Baby Boomer writer who might fit in the august company of great writers and could think of none. It's not just enough to be a good writer, but one who makes a noticeable impact on society or the art. The closest I could come was to name Tim O'Brien (Going After Cacciato, The Things They Carried) but even he doesn't carry the weight of a Hemingway or Wolfe.

Nor can I think of a GenXer or Millenial who would make the grade.

Perhaps it's television, the death of The Saturday Evening Post, the atomization of the media markets in general. Perhaps it's the short attention spans of our modern species. It's rather sad: can you even imagine there being an Algonquin Round Table these days?

Maybe you disagree. Make your case.

The American Author, RIP

In more good news on the don't-try-to-make-a-living-from-writing front, author Scott Thurow laments the "slow death" by a thousand cuts of the American author in the New York Times. The usual suspects -- the Internet and the erosion of intellectual property protections in general, further consolidation in the book business, as well as Amazon's attempt to corner the market on everything -- are in play. Also, U.S. authors have fewer rights than European ones, just dumping more crap on the sludge pile that is the financial black hole in which all but a few bestselling authors find themselves.

(If there's an award for mixed metaphors, I'm entering the above sentence in the contest.)

I confess I pretty much agree with Thurow; the picture looks pretty bleak out there to me. Perhaps you feel differently.

Anyone see any glimmers of hope on the horizon?

First Drafts: Get Off Yer Duff

We all have this problem. OK, most of us have this problem. Certainly I have this problem: getting that first draft done.

Edan Lepucki takes a look at how other writers get it done in this post at The Millions.

How do you knock out the first draft? And what comes after?

Catch-22: Great Lit, Lousy Novel?

I've been re-reading Catch-22 for the past few weeks, and it got me to thinking about all those "rules" that aspiring novelists should follow. If you read agent blogs, writer blogs, etc., you know what I'm talking about: show don't tell, make the first five pages count, no prologues, ad inf, as if novel writing can be reduced to a formula.

I'm thinking about all of this because Catch-22, a mega-bestseller and one of the most influential books of postwar American literature, breaks a lot of those and other novel rules. There's an awful lot of telling and not so much showing. There's no real plot in the sense of an arc of action, just a series of vignettes in which the plot, such as it is, is re-told, sometimes in more, sometimes in less detail.

Yet there's no question that Catch-22 is an exceptional piece of literature. So is it a lousy novel even so? I'm having a hard time deciding. Just as I'm having a hard time getting through it -- it's taking me forever. I'm now pretty sure that I didn't finish it when I last read it, in high school. Despite the fact that it's awfully funny.

So what makes a great novel, after all? Do you have to be an authentic genius like Joseph Heller to break all those rules that are out there? Should I even care, given my lesser talents, and just stick to the rules as I flesh out my new book?

(If you're interested in Heller, by the way, you might skim through Yossarian Slept Here, the memoir by Erica Heller, his daughter. It disappoints in many respects, since it reveals so little about what made Heller tick. What's clear is that he was supremely self-confident -- he said he would write the most important novel about World War II, and arguably did -- and that he was both an indifferent dad and surprisingly cheap for a guy who sold millions of books. But insights into where that humor and genius came from -- not so much.)

Congrats to Kristen Lippert-Martin!

Heartiest of congratulations to Kristin Lippert-Martin -- KLM to those in the know -- on the sale of her YA thriller Tabula Rasa  -- "The Rice Table," to those of us in the know -- which is set to hit the shelves in 2014.

How she can be writing thrillers while cracking jokes -- she's hysterical; you gotta follow her on the Twitters and read her blog -- all while womanhandling four munchkin child units is beyond me. She's a miracle worker.

Congrats KLM! Don't forget us little people.