Genre of Fiction

The word genre has different meanings, even in the literary world. There's the broadness of it, meaning there are three genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry. Then there is the more detailed definition for each category. This post is all about the genres of fiction.

Let's start with literary fiction. Literary fiction is the fiction that ends up in high school classrooms and college lit classes thirty years from now. Character comes before plot always. Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne are classic examples. Lorrie Moore, Charles Baxter, and Ron Carlson are modern day examples.

-A subgenre of this, that I feel necessary to elaborate on is Experimental Fiction. Although some could consider this a separate genre, I'm throwing it in here. This is the fiction that breaks some or all of the rules of traditional fiction. Vladimir Nabokov and James Joyce are classic examples of this. Mark Danielewski is a modern example.

Commercial/Mainstream Fiction is fiction that has no category. The goal is to entertain and nothing more, usually. Plot comes before character. Chuck Palahniuk's early novels and Denis Johnson are good examples of this category. So is Jodi Piccoult, although I've never read anything by her.

Now for those genres which have more rigid definitions:

Horror: fiction which is designed to scare/frighten/generally creep out the reader. Everyone knows Stephen King, and there are Peter Straub, Dean Koontz, Richard Matheson, and Bram Stoker.

-Subgenre to note! Dark Fiction is very similar to horror, but dark fiction does not necessarily intend to scare the reader (though it often ends up doing that). It deals with the macabre just as much, and shows (appropriately enough) the dark side of humanity.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy: these two are always grouped together, for good reasons. Both deal with what doesn't exist in this world. The difference lies in why it doesn't exist. Fantasy is about is impossible no matter how far technology advances (magic, for example). Sci-Fi deals with what isn't possible now, but could be in the future. Sometimes, Sci-Fi will also use current or soon to be current technology and its implications. Asimov, Heinlein, and Clark are the biggest examples of Sci-fi. Tolkein and Rowling are the biggest examples of fantasy.

Thriller: These are the real page turners. Think Dan Brown and John Grisham. There are many subgenres for this. Character is always secondary, sometimes tertiary to the plot. Time constraints are good, death is better, and a possible terrorist attack is best. These will always be criticized the most by literary critics, because the author doesn't care about making it art, he cares about giving the reader a fun time. Many of these become movies.

Crime/Mystery: as plot oriented as a thriller, but with a different style and focus. Almost always they start with a murder. The goal then is to figure out who the murderer is. Sherlock Holmes is one of the biggest characters in the origins of mysteries, but it has progressed much from then, with new technologies, forensics, and all sorts of things.

Romance/Erotic: These are NOT love stories. I would throw love stories under commercial fiction (Nicholas Sparks' books). Romance novels and Erotic fiction is about the passion and love scenes thrown in there. In a way, it's porn in book form, which means guys refuse to read it. Love stories, in contrast, focus on the love part and not the sex part, the scandalous part, or anything similar. A love story wants you to cry at some point, it wants you to feel attached to the characters.

So what's the point of listing and describing many of the genres of fiction? It's always good to know where you fit, because that's what you'll be using when you look for an agent and a publisher. Although the lines can cross (Danielewski is both Horror and Experimental), it's good to know which category is primary, and which is secondary. I stick to literary (and recently experimental) and dark fiction. So I know not to send a novel query to an agent who specializes in Thrillers. They won't want it. Nor will a literary agent want anything to do with a science fiction novel.

Also, I'm not trying to get you to define yourself by one of these categories. That would be wrong. Instead, if you write a novel one day, write it first, then decide on which category fits it best. If you see it breaking into other categories, that means you can find an agent who specializes in both and hopefully end up with a better deal with a publisher. If you have a horror novel that's experimental, then send to an agent who does both, and they'll hook you up better than an agent who only does horror or one who only does experimental. But write first, think of genre second. Always.

Finishing a First Draft

I'm so excited right now! I just finished the first draft of a short story that has taken me a week and a half to write. It should only be three or four more weeks of revisions before I can pleased with it. But what I have right now is full of promise.

I've decided to move into more of an experimental genre of literary writing. Mostly this means that I'm breaking rules for a specific effect, and the normal chronological narrative doesn't hold true. And man does it not hold true! It's a second person point-of-view story in a chronology that Quentin Tarantino would be proud of. It's my first completed story in the second person (which means that the central character is referred to as You). Most stories/novels are 1st person (I, me) or 3rd person (he/she, him/her). 2nd person was a new challenge because it requires the author to force the reader into a situation, but readers might jump out of the narrative when they see the "you" which could confuse them. You have to keep the reader in the story, as that central character. I chose it for that reason: I wanted to force my reader in the story and not let them come out. 2nd person was the only way to do this.

Like always, I'll let the story sit anywhere from a few days to a week before I reread it. I have ideas in my head, but it's always good to let a story sit. That way, I read it more as a reader and less like the person who wrote it. I'll be able to see what stands out, what works, and what just seems awkward.

Did I mention I'm really excited?

The Secrets of Mariko

by Elisabeth Bumiller

Another nonfiction book among the masses of novels I normally read. It's also a book I had to read for my Japanese Civilization class. As the tag line on the book says, it's "A year in the life of a Japanese woman and her family." The author basically held interviews and watched the family do their thing for an entire year then wrote a book about it. The good part of this book was that Bumiller didn't stop the interviews at just family members. She went to other people in the neighborhood, celebrities, politicians, and even a high ranking person in the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia (who have much more power than any American mafia). These parts were the most fascinating. I learned about how the political system truly works, not how they say it does. There was the complex and completely absurd education system, and how generally it seems Japanese are fine with giving up personal happiness if they feel it will benefit the group. They are an interesting people.

I didn't like the writing style of the author at all, and this greatly hurt the book. She's really a journalist, and her style shows it. If you don't like reading the short articles in the newspaper, you will want to kill yourself after reading 300 pages of that style. She explains people and things even though she has already done so (like Mr. Tanazaki, the unofficial mayor of Ichomachi, or how she has to explain what karaoke is. Twice!). For that, I really couldn't stand the book. And I was constantly angry at the Japanese, because they want to be happy, but refuse to change their lives to become happy! As interesting as parts were, the book was slow paced and I wanted to burn on multiple occasions.

2 stars (it gets 2 for the small amount of info I cared about).

Next: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

The Writing Environment

It's extremely important to know what kind of writing environment works for you. Whatever other writers might use to get the creative juices flowing might not work for you. If you need the commotion of people, a small coffee shop or café will work. JK Rowling wrote the entire Harry Potter series at the same café in her hometown. For others, reclusiveness is key. Stephen King keeps himself in his office until he gets the amount of words he wants down on his computer screen. Now of course you could think, "These people know what to do! I should follow in their example!" Don't do it! They've realized what it takes to write, and you do, too.

For me, I need to be sitting at a desk (I float between two homes in Columbus and my dorm room in Cincinnati), with a window nearby for the necessary creative daydreams (but not in front of me, that would cause too much distraction), my computer screen, a comfortable chair, and some nice electronic music playing. The noises are just as important as the set-up. If you like working in silence and you have a big family, don't work in the dining room. If you love the sound of music blaring (Stephen King and I both do), make sure you have a radio or use iTunes or Windows Media Player on your computer. Every time you sit to write, the first priority should be to immerse yourself in the writing environment. For me, I love the sounds of electronic music: synth, bass, and natural vocals with computer tampering (it sounds paradoxical, but it isn't). I can't have any of the other genres I like listening to. It just doesn't work for me. Figure out your personal writing environment. It will be very beneficial.

The End of NaNoWriMo (for me)

It's not the end of the month. There's still over a week left, and so the only way to say this is "I'm a quitter." I'm not finishing my novel (which is at ~23,000 words, and so at about page 80). But I have reasons for doing so, which I'm giving to you:

1. Forcing a person to sit down and write 1667 words a day constricts creativity. Since there is this huge deadline in such a short amount of time, I'm required to push out words faster than I can think of them. To the NaNoWriMo people this means that your work will be about quantity not quality. What this means to me is: "I'm not even allowed to think about my novel, I just have to write frantically and hope a story happens." I've determined that the way I write best is in sporadic chunks: a couple hundred words here, a maybe a thousand there if I'm really feeling the muse. Mostly, though, I find if I sit down and write a few hundred good words in an hour then I have accomplished something. I don't feel accomplished writing 2000 words that have no meaning to me.

2. There comes time in a person's life when he should write a novel. This is not that time for me. I'm in the midst of college, trying to hold onto life financially and mentally, and so I need to make smaller, more manageable goals. I'm pushing myself to focus on the short story now. In fact, one of the characters in the novel has turned himself into a short story. By asking myself to write a short story in two weeks is a much more attainable goal, especially when I have books to read, papers to write, and tests to study for.

3. There is a great deal to learn as a writer before attempting the novel. Maybe for some authors (Dan Brown perhaps) there was never that period of learning, but like my example author, that can be the quality of the writing suffers. There is structure to every novel (and a lack of structure is just as important as structure), a building of events, a creation of a cast, and I need to learn about this before writing a novel. What I know how to write is a short story (although how well I write them is something different). I plan in the future to read novels as a writer would: figuring out how the author made the book and why what (s)he did worked or didn't work. Does this zap creativity? No, if anything it will show me what works, and what rules I can break to create a whole new reading experience.

Maybe these aren't good reasons for quitting. A person could easily tell me, "These are just excuses so you don't have to push yourself." Well, person, to you they might be excuses, but to me, it's a matter of priorities, and I can always write a novel later, when I feel comfortable writing one, and using my own timeframe.

Misery

by Stephen King

This book was creepy. He never scares me, but boy is he creepy. It's also a short one, which is good, because his long books can sometimes be tedious to read and get boring every once in awhile, but this wasn't. It was a constant ride through creepiness, and he perpetuated my belief that living in Maine and Colorado is a bad idea.

Update:

I was rushed when I first posted this, so now I'm going to go into a little bit more detail (and give the next book on the list). So Misery was everything that I said in the last post, and it's everything I talk about in other Stephen King books I've read, but this one is different from Lisey's Story and The Green Mile. The first thing is that this book is about the interactions of basically two characters: Paul Sheldon and Annie Wilkes. There are other Stephen King books with this many, or fewer, main characters, but I haven't read them. It was very interesting because King captured more of each character so that the reader fully understood everything. By the end of the book, I was able to predict what could happen just by the descriptions of how the character was acting, and while that could make a book bad, this only made me love the book even more.

I do have to say that King did make the villain (Annie Wilkes) very 2-dimensional in a cheap 3-dimensional way. She was your stereotypical crazy person, and he failed to show that these people (in Annie's case it appeared to be Psychotic Bipolar 1 Disorder) do have relatively normal states, which were completely absent from the book form. She was either manic or depressed, but rarely was Annie in Annie's state, and his history of her made it seem like she had been rocketing back and forth for years like this, which would completely drain her or make her commit suicide. So I do feel that King, in an attempt to make the story more frightening, denied a character her humanity.

In terms of entertainment: 4 stars. In terms of quality of writing: 3 stars.

Next is a non-fictional book called The Secrets of Mariko about a journalist living with a Japanese family for a year.

13,000 words in NaNoWriMo

I'm ahead of schedule by almost a day, and I am very proud of what I'm writing, despite that it's only a first draft, and this post is mostly about why I am happy with it.

First, I feel like I know my characters which has never been a problem with my short stories, but always an issue with my novels. For one character, I threw in bits and pieces of myself, and for the protagonist I made sure he was really pushing for a theme that is appearing in my novel. For the first time in an attempt at a novel, I care about my characters and hope the best happens, but I know that might not happen (I've read that all good stories kill off at least one character we care about).

The story is also moving in a way I have never seen myself go before. It means I've grown as a writer since this time last year. Last year, I wrote my novel in chunks of scenes, only bringing in the parts I thought people would want to read, and the rest was boring trash. This year I've decided to include the boring trash, because I've realized that you can't have scenes unless the characters get to them, and last year characters were magically appearing where they needed to be and there were random jumps in time, leaving the whole novel scattered. It was very bad, but this year I'm writing about the character showing up at the doorstep to his girlfriend's apartment, and I show the drunken father walking in with a prostitute instead of getting right to the action, because action is overwhelming if that's all there is. You need some time to cool down or else the reader will feel like their caught in a vortex and put the book down and need a tylenol for the headache you've given them.

NaNoWriMo is Underway! And a new book...

I've started NaNoWriMo, and am actually keeping up! I have 7171 words right now (A little under 43,000 to go!) and am happy enough with what I've got to keep moving forward. Hopefully, I'll be able to stay at the minimum pace for the whole month. Ideally, I'd like to be ahead of the game for most of the month in case something happens. If you aren't doing NaNoWriMo, well sucks to be you, because it's a whole lot of fun despite the stress it causes.

The other business is Atonement, which I put aside for now. I might come back to it eventually, just like I might come back to a few other books I've stopped reading. Now I'm reading yet another Stephen King classic: Misery, and boy is it creepy! His books never scare me, but they always creep me out. I'll have more about it when I finish it.

That Awful Writer's Block

It has hit me, and I have under a week to make it go away. It's coupled with my fickle mind which is constantly telling me that the novel idea I have is bad, so have this new idea. I want it to shut-up so I can continue the project I have going, but at the same time this inability to write at all is making me think again about switching.

Have you ever had an idea about what to write just to have it blow up in your face? Sometimes this happens to me, and I try to just take it in a new direction, but eventually I take it in four or five directions and nothing seems to be working anymore, and the whole project gets scrapped. A good example is last year's NaNoWriMo. Around November 15 I decided that I was taking my novel the wrong way (bear in mind that's half of the month and 25k words wasted) so I started over from scratch. I hate the novel I ended up writing, but I wrote the full 50k before the end of the month. This year I told myself I wouldn't do it, but it seems like that is what is going to happen. It might be planning. Stephen King doesn't plan out any of his novels. He comes up with what he calls the "seed" and goes wherever that takes him. I think I might just do that this year, and scrap whatever outlining and planning I've done.

I think the important thing is that I get the novel written. I really want to have a novel done by the time I'm 21. Yeah, I have written the one novel, but I want a novel I'm proud of, that I want to revise and edit and show to agents and friends and hopefully get published. If you say it's impossible, Bret Easton Ellis is the obvious example of you being wrong, along with the author of Eragon. Ellis had his first novel, Less Than Zero, published when he was 21, and the author of Eragon got his when he was only 15. It can happen, and I hope to be one of them.

Writing Software

No I don't mean Microsoft Word, of AppleWorks, which are both word processors. I'm talking about software designed for an author, and what it might mean to use it.

There are many programs out there designed to help the writer with his project, whether it be a novel, short story, play, screenplay, or anything else you can think of. They range from the complex which guide you every step of the way from character developing to the structure of each chapter. Others are simpler and are more of an elaborate organizer. Recently, I've stumbled upon Scrivener, a Mac only writing application. I plan on using it for my novel because of some of the features it has. You can easily separate chapters into their own document without having to create a bunch of files you have to sort through. When you look at your word count it will show you the total word count of every chapter combined, the word count of the chapter you have opened, and how many pages it would be if it were a paperback book. It also has a place for research, which would be useful.

No this isn't an advertisement. There are a lot of things I think of when I think of using writing software. What does this make me as a writer? Do the bestselling authors use software like this? Or do only amateurs use software? I'm sure Stephen King doesn't use writing software. He got his start on typewriters, but I sometimes think of myself as just another person who wants to write a novel if I use this, and if I'm jinxing myself into never getting published. It's a bunch of superstitious worry, but superstitious worry can sway outcomes. So if you want to use software, go for it, but I'm going to see if I get stuck in an amateur mindset and end up being less of a writer because of it.

Oh and Atonement sucks, but I plan on finishing it. I'm only thirty pages in, but it's hard to read quickly.

NaNoWriMo is swiftly approaching!

November 1 is almost here! There's only a week and a few days left, before NaNoWriMo begins and I am doing it this year. If you don't know what this is, I'll explain. NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, is a competition that occurs in November every year to see who can write a complete novel in one month's time (you get 30 days). "Novel" is defined as any large length piece of fiction of at least 50,000 words. They don't really care what you do with it as long as you get the 50k, and you don't write a single word until 12:00 am November 1. The prize? The satisfaction that you completed a novel. And CreateSpace (an Amazon company) lets you get yourself a free copy of your book in paperback form. Who's preventing you from cheating? No one, but why would you do it if not for yourself?

If you look a few posts back, you'll see one about prompts, and how I took that, and that's going to be my novel this year. I started writing it, got about 30 pages (book pages, not printed pages) into it and decided I was doing it all wrong. Part of it was that I read a book on Schizophrenia and realized I was writing the disorder all wrong. Part of it was that it wasn't going the way I had originally envisioned, which brings me to the main point of this:

Outlining and Planning:

NaNoWriMo allows you to plan and outline your novel as much as you want beforehand, as long as no work is made on the actual manuscript. So I have been planning and outlining, and writing down a plot synopsis. I never do this, and I'm a little worried of what might happen. I'm trying to be as vague as possible, because on the one hand I want to know where my novel is going, but on the other hand I still want to have limitless options. An outline can be restricting, giving an exact way to do the novel, but if a character suddenly says "No" to what I want him to do, can I listen to him? The answer is yes, because someone else didn't write my outline. I did, so if a character tells me he doesn't want to do something (and they do that a lot) and I can scratch it off the outline and pretend it never existed. But at least I know what's happening in a general sense. If you want to write a novel, you should probably do some outlining, but a short story probably doesn't need anything like that.

And Join NaNoWriMo!

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn Saks

For anyone who thinks they have a rough life, this book will make you think differently. Saks has written the most powerful book I have ever read, and it happens to be a memoir of her life with one of the most debilitating mental illnesses in existence: schizophrenia.

She doesn't step around anything in her life. When she goes into psychosis, you are right there with her, hearing what she says, knowing what she's thinking, and all of the outrageous behaviors. She gets hospitalized multiple times for it, and to read some of it makes you scared. I know in parts I was scared that something bad was going to happen to her. The most amazing part of it all is that she is able to be functioning. It's an inspirational story, and it's one that will make you think twice about mental illness. If you have a stigma about them, I suggest reading this book, because you'll understand it from their point of view. It's an illness like diabetes or nonterminal cancer. It's there, it might come back, but it's manageable.

This was also the first memoir I've ever read. I had to read it for my Abnormal Psychology class. I didn't think I would like a memoir. It is very different from an autobiography, which is what I thought it would be like. Instead of providing facts and going over everything, Saks sticks to only the parts of her life that relate to her illness. She includes dialogue and conflict, like a novel, and it felt like I was reading a novel. I'm considering to read other memoirs now, maybe Running with Scissors. It's an interesting genre, one I would try if I had an exciting life.

5 stars

Next: Atonement by Ian McEwan

The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

I finished this book over a week ago, but forgot to put a write-up about it. Ah! It was a hilarious book. I'm not going to go too in depth about it, but it was extremely funny. The plot was just as confusing, though, and that's where this book suffered. Characters were added near the end of the book and I had no idea who they were or why they were there until I was at the climactic scene. It would have been better if he had cut about half the characters in it. That and with every plot twist, there would be a conversation the narrator doesn't describe to leave you hanging, but really it only pissed me off. Funny, though. Very funny.

3 stars (only because of how funny it was)

Next: The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn Saks.

Too Much of a Good Thing

It's natural for us to get excited about something new. Like a new writing project. Currently, I'm really excited about this novel idea that's turning out a lot better than I thought it would. I'm constantly thinking about what's happening, who are these people I've created, and wondering if everything will turn out okay, and all I want to do is write. If I let myself, I could be doing 5000+ words a day, but so far I've been limiting myself to under 1500, or less than a chapter. Why?

It's simple really. I've been through enough failed projects to understand what goes wrong. It's the idea of learning how to do something by completely understanding how not to do it. I've learned a few things about writing a novel by knowing what prevents me from getting to the end, and I've learned a few things from the one (unpublishable) novel I do have. The first is that it has to be on a scale you can manage. There's no sense writing a ten protagonist epic like Stephen King's It was as a first novel. I don't have the experience to handle that amount of story, so I have to make it simpler. Second, it can't be too simple, and for exactly the same reason. I tried a one character focused novel, and I crashed and burned because I don't have the skill and experience to take on such a unique and challenging story. A good first novel has two or three central characters with a few minor characters thrown in, which is what I'm working with.

Third, and where the title of this post comes from, you can't rush a story. Writing 3000 words is roughly the equivalent of writing 10 paperback pages, which could take you anywhere from 10-30 minutes to read depending on speed. It should take longer than that to write those, and if it's not, then you aren't thinking about what you're writing. Simply, you're writing like you would read, and that tends to drop out things. Also, that over-excitement wears off. If you have 20,000 words you wrote one week (which I've done in less before), that's roughly 70 pages. What happens is you've exhausted yourself with the story, and you become sick of it, wanting to do something else. That was a waste of a week. So limit to 1500 words, I usually fall under that, 2000 max. Don't get absorbed, but let it work itself out and plan instead of write, you'll thank yourself.

How to Write; How to Read

A lot of people do the reading part, and some people (hopefully a view of you out there) want to write or are writing. But have you ever thought about what you were doing when you did it?

This comes from English class today, where we discussed "Writing Rituals," which are exactly what they sound like. I determined that I must have music playing while I write, or I just can't seem to do it. I also realized that it can only be three types of music, two are specific bands/singers and the third is a genre. I can only listen to Enya, The Killers, or Classical music. I have no idea why that is, but if I listen to something else, I can't get in the mood to write, and that's what a writing ritual does. It gets you in that mood to write. So when you sit down to write, think about what it will take to get you focused on the page and not on the e-mail, the TV, or that good book you're reading.

Which brings us to the next part: How do you read? When I read, I need to be comfortable, so I don't get distracted by a sore back or by a leg that's falling asleep. For this the music changes. If there is music at all (which I don't need to read) it can't have lyrics whatsoever. I'm limited to classical music. That's the physical part, but now there's a mental part of reading, too. One blog I read talked about how we might look at a book like we do in a literature class, and I immediately thought, "Um...what?" I have never read a book thinking about the themes, why the setting is in the winter and not the summer. Basically, I don't analyze the book. Instead I take it half like a writer would and half like any reader would, and I think this is a good way to read. The writer half is looking at how the chapters and scenes are set up, why the author chose to have organize it, the different structures he used, and the metaphors. The reader half reads it because it's a great form of entertainment and I want to know what happens next. You can't get caught up in analyzing the book, because you'll remove all the fun from reading. As a writer, you can't read for pure entertainment because you should always be trying to learn how a good book is made. So compromise!

Follow up on Yesterday

Yesterday I discussed writing prompts (look below if you don't believe me) and said which one I had (basically write lyrics based on the third song you listen to) and what song (something by The Weepies). That was a major fail. Which probably makes everything I said about prompts worthless. But wait, there's more! We are, by nature, a creative species, and so I don't see why I can't be creative and alter the prompt. Yes, you can do this. It's not like using adverbs (every time you use an adverb, Dickens kills a kitten). For me, the song that came up started a story. I got 500 words into it and realized that I had a story going, but a few things were wrong with it. (1) I had no expertise in how the story was unfolding (a complex mafia conspiracy which would involve a lot of police procedural stuff), (2) it was turning into a novel/novella length piece (you can tell early on if you'll be able to make something a short story or if it will have to be longer), and (3) the writing was flat, something I wouldn't enjoy reading. So I stopped and asked myself, "How can I fix this?" The obvious answer came today: Find a new song!

The new song that came up was "Spaceman" by The Killers, a great synth-rock band from Vegas. If you haven't heard them, I suggest doing it. They are my favorite rock band of all time and I own two of their albums along with parts of their other two. There are only a handful of their songs I don't enjoy.

Now that the advertisement is out of the way, I'll tell you how I altered this prompt: I started over (so a new three songs) with conditions. To count as one of the three the song had to be (1) non-classical, (2) in English (I have many foreign songs), (3) by an actual artist (I have many remixes by random people out there with too much free time), and (4) meaningful lyrics. This way I would have something to work with.

So when you're getting inspiration, don't think that you have to be true to the original, because that would eliminate creativity, and we don't want that. Also, for this prompt, if you so choose to use it, don't think you have to write a story based around the lyrics. It can be based on a single line, a verse, just the chorus, or a random image that appears in your head while listening to it. That last one is what happened with me, and so if you read the story, you would not be able to tell me that it was based on a song.

The Joy of Prompts

I said I would be deviating from the strictly reviewing idea of this blog now that I was back into it, and this is the first post like that.

Since I want to be a writer, I need to write just about every day. Sometimes, though, I have no ideas and have no open projects going (like now). So what do I do? Some authors simply start writing. I once read about a writer who started writing about the wall in front of him, and it turned into one of his novels! I can't remember the name of the author, but geez... I don't think I could write about a wall.

Sometimes I can just start writing (though usually something sparks it, and I'm not reduced to writing about walls), but when the inspiration is really out of me, but I want to write, I turn to the internet and writing prompts. There are many websites out there that are happy to give you prompts to jump-start your next writing project. A lot of times, these projects for me go nowhere, other times I create great stories that I enjoyed writing.

Today is one of those writing prompt days, and I got it from the site Toasted-Cheese, who make a writing prompt for each day of the year. I'm going to see if this one creates anything special: "Put your music player on shuffle and write based on lyrics of the third song."

You could give it a try, and see what happens. Even if you aren't a writer, it might be fun to take a break from that crazy life so many people live and write a quick story, you'll find it more exciting than reading a book. The song I get to work with is "Can't Go Back Now" by The Weepies.

About a Boy

By Nick Hornby

This is the first British book I've read since I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone back in the fourth grade. I have to say that this book beats anything J.K. Rowling could write, but I hate Harry Potter and all of his wizard friends, too. I don't know why that is, just that it is. I got bored halfway through The Chamber of Secrets and decided that the series was too boring to move on and I didn't care about any of the characters.

Not true with Hornby's fictional people. I worried so much about Marcus, the boy this novel is about. He has a very dysfunctional family, and the other central character Will has a dysfunctional pseudo-family when he gets sucked into Marcus' life. This wasn't a novel of plot, like Rowling's books, it was a coming-of-age novel about a boy who doesn't fit in at all. How he changes kept me moving to see just what kind of kid he would be by the end of the novel. If you read it, too, you'll be sucked into how everything in our childhood somehow manages to create the person we become. There was just one problem with Hornby's style. It felt as though we were spending too much time in the character's heads. It's fine to get in there every once in awhile, but entire pages of a 3rd person narrative shouldn't be in the 1st person. That and his excessive use of "OK." I'm not British, but it seems they use it for just about everything according to Hornby, and it bothered me.

4 stars.

Next (which I promise won't be as soon as this one was): The Gun Seller by House, I mean, Hugh Laurie (yes, the Hugh Laurie. Turns out he also writes novels).

Getting Back Into This

I forgot I had this blog, not that anyone had been reading it (although I hope there might have been one person out there). I discovered it today, when I was looking at starting up another blog which I have to do for an English Composition class (yay!). That one is something about literacy, I think. But now I'm going to get back to reviewing the books I'm reading. It might also have some new elements, like bits about me writing my own stuff (since I do want to be a writer).

Anyway, the last book I read was Lisey's Story by Stephen King. Before I started it I thought it was pronounced Lie-zee, but in the first paragraph, King is very smart to say that it is short for Lisa and pronounced to rhyme with Cici (I think that's what he used). But that's not about the book at all.

The book is about a woman trying to move on two years after the death of her husband, who was an award winning writer. As the inside jacket says, they were intimate, sometimes to a frightening point. And it's true! This novel I can safely say is not one of Stephen King's horror novels. Like The Green Mile it wasn't about scaring the reader, but it still had King's fantastical elements (a place called Boo'ya Moon in this book).

Once again I was impressed with King. He is a master storyteller and he has shown why he is my favorite author. It's long, of course, but everything is curcial in it, compared to some of his other long books (I hated It because it had so many worthless parts that could have been eliminated). His descriptions, images, and settings are still vivid in my mind. I can see all the characters, and I can see Boo'ya Moon. I wish I knew how he did it.

4.5 stars!

The next book will be About a Boy by Nick Hornby, a British author I have never heard of.

Change in Plans:

Not that I don't want to write a review for Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, but I won't be doing one for this strange and rather disturbing book (but only in certain places). Because of school and all of its stressful things (two papers and a final exam), I will not have the time to read the last 100 pages or so of the book. The ending is very important, so I will not be a good judge of it. I will say, however, that if I had the time to finish, I would, because what I have read is perfectly crafted and Nabokov is an excellent writer. His only fault was that the 200 pages I did read lacked plot, and well this book dragged too much on a certain feeling the narrator had, which I could have dealt with better had their been more of a conflict. That is all.

I don't know what the next book will be, either The Green Mile by Stephen King or A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. 

Erasure

by Percival Everett

This has to be the strangest book I've reviewed thus far. It is also the only novel I know of that has a novel inside it. That's right, the narrator/main character writes a novel, which the reader gets to read in its entirety. Does this mean I really have to do two reviews? One of Erasure and another on My Pafology (the novel inside, which later becomes Fuck)? I'm not sure the proper approach, but no, I'm not going to do two.

This novel, simply put, is about a man, Thelonius "Monk" Ellison who is a novelist and struggling with the concept that people don't think he's black enough. He's also trying to deal with the demise of his family as his mother slowly succumbs to the horrors of Alzheimer's, his sister is murdered, and his brother accepts his homosexuality. Basically, Monk has a life that is being thrown around like crazy, not to mention a the book Wes Lives in da Ghetto by Juanita Mae Jenkins is taking America by storm.

I loved this novel because Percival Everett attacked something not many people have the guts to do: Race and identity. Monk is black, but he hates that people see him as black, he lashes out society. Everett is also very experimental is narrative structure, throwing us for a loop with flashbacks, novels, short stories, lectures, and a curriculum vitae. When you get to the end (which just stops, mind you, no closure whatsoever), you are stunned and shocked at what you just read.

It is also not until the very end of the book that you realize what this novel means. You think back over how Monk got to the ending and the only word you can think of is "clever." When I set this book down, I paused for a second with it in my lap. A light bulb went off in my head and I realized there is not a better title Everett could have thought of. What's being erased in this book will shock you, and so will the attacks on the society you've lived in. You must read this book.

6 stars (and yes, the scale only goes to 5).

Next: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'm going to start by saying that I have not seen the movie. With that said, I would like to say the movie is better. A paradox, you might think, but this short story (and thank God it was only a short story) was just plain awful. Fitzgerald, I'm sure, is an excellent writer, but I have nothing of his to compare this to.

Basically, Ben Button is born at age 70 and slowly gets younger. That is the entire story. There is no plot, no conflict, nothing to get over except that he is older so when he is 18 he can't go to college but when he's 50 he can (because 18 made him look 52, so 50 made him look 20). It's a clever idea, based on a conversation Fitzgerald had with Mark Twain, but he didn't turn it into a story, but rather a quick shot at a person's life, and for that the story failed. I have nothing more to say, because there is nothing to say for a story that had nothing in it.

A single star

The Feast of Love

by Charles Baxter

This novel, if you can call it a novel, was odd. It starts with the author himself (Charles Baxter) awaking from a nightmare and going on a walk. He runs into Bradley, his friend, and Bradly, Bradley's dog. From here on out the book is a series of narratives about many different people who all know each other in some way.

The part I loved best about the book is the same thing I hated: the voices. I loved most of the voices, and you will too if you read this book. Baxter has an amazing ability to give every narrator a distinct voice. You forget that the novel has no plot, none at all, because you're captivated by the way some of these people talk. My favorite was Chloé (pronounced Clo-AY not CLO-ee), followed closely by the other women in the book.

I didn't like, however, Bradley (the man, not the dog) or Harry. They were dull, too metaphorical, and clearly Baxter trying not to give in to the sense of commercial fiction that the other voices gave. If he had altered them to be more like the way people talk, and less like the way a literary narrator speaks, then I would have loved this book even more. Anything and everything wrong lies in those two voices. Their story-lines were not dull, no that's not the problem, the problem lies in Bradley's incessant whining, and Harry's overzealous love of Kierkekaard. Remove those, Charlie Baxter (as he refers to himself) and you've got yourself a perfect book.

Now I want to watch the movie, which stars Morgan Freeman doubling up as Harry and Charlie. It came out a couple years ago, but read the book first, because I've been told the movie makes everyone "pretty," and well, Chloé and her boyfriend Oscar are far from "pretty."

4.5 stars!

Up Next: Erasure by Percival Everett

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?

By Lorrie Moore

I went in biased to this novel: I am a fan of Lorrie Moore. I've read a couple of her short stories and found those to be wonderfully hilarious. When I opened this book, I thought it would be like that, but it wasn't.

This is the story of Benoîte-Marie "Berie" Carr, a middle aged woman who is visiting Paris with her husband Daniel. Well it's kind of about that. It's also about Silsby "Sils" Chaucée, Berie's childhood friend. The book starts with "In Paris we eat brains every night," and it works from there until the narrator, Berie, has decided to remember her past, and what was. Berie and Sils work at an amusement park, and as the back of the book says, everything is good until Sils gets pregnant.

I'll start with my disappointments in this book. Lorrie Moore has a style of writing that can be too lofty at points. As much as love her jokes and witty remarks, she can also drag something from a sentence into a whole paragraph, sometimes more, and she has no reason to. It adds length to this very short novel, and without it will might only be a novella, but a novella would have worked.

With that said: I found this book to be silly where it needed to be, and sad when it needed to be. She had a way of making you sad, but at the same time you were smiling. Everything that happened happened because of Sils, and it always fell on Berie, but at the same time, they had a wonderful last summer together until Berie got caught. This book was the lost memory of childhood, the ability to do almost anything they wanted without really worrying about what adulthood was going to be like. Berie was reminiscing about the lost teenage years and wonders, "What happened?" If you like stories that can throw you around, you should really get a hold of this novel. Lorrie Moore has shown herself as one of the top contemporary writers.

4.5 stars

Next novel: The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter

"Vast Hell"

by Guillermo Martínez
translated by Alberto Manguel

This is the first story from one of the major literary journals of the US, The New Yorker. Of course, they print a lot of their fiction online, which is the only place I get my fiction. They also only publish the most high quality stuff, supposedly, which was why I was disappointed when I read this story.

It's the story of a small town, a boy, and a French Woman they all suspect to be having an affair with the boy. No names are given. When the boy and French Woman disappear, the town suspects murder, but no. What really got to me about this story was the ending. So much develops and everything is well written until the end, which happens in only a couple sentences that left me wanting. I had many questions about what was going on, but this might be because I don't come from Argentina, where this takes place and was written.

Read the online material at The New Yorker. Their humor section is best, but you should give this story a shot, maybe I was wrong, and it all makes sense.

2 stars.

"Existentialism at the God Rodeo"

by Diana Goble

I picked this story only because of the name. It amused me, because how does one combine existentialism and a rodeo? Combining Exi. with God is easy, but a rodeo? Or a God Rodeo? This story is about a woman with a cheating husband, a son (who is exactly like her husband), and a daughter (who is the only one in her immediate family that she truly loves). It takes place in a day, starting with the morning vomit of blood, which turns into a fetal position on the floor of the bathroom.

The narration (I find it odd that most of what I do is first person) is depressing, but it fits the mood of the piece, and although it is a depressing story, you're not dragged through one sad thing after another because of Goble's dark humor that appears every once in awhile to break the sadness. Without that, I wouldn't have been abl to get to the end of the story. By the end of the story, I empathized with the narrator, and I was worried about her daughter, Annie. It was vague, but it wasn't, and it worked well in this short story.

Read it for yourself at Toasted Cheese

4 stars (I only read stories I like, is that a problem? Books are a different story, no pun intended)

"The Last Fairy Tale"

by Lynette Mejía

"The Last Fairy Tale" gives exactly what the title gives, but in a strange way. You won't find witches who want to eat German children, or a princess who has fallen into a deep slumber by an evil step-mother or queen. Instead, Mejía presents this fairy tale with an old woman giving a story about herself and the royal conflict she gets involved between two fairy princes.

The language in this story is magical in its own way, and as I read I felt I was reading a fairy tale, but I got more from it than a normal one. The images, and the plot are well developed, as well as the old woman. However, the fairies which played an important role weren't as developed as I had hoped. I was craving to understand the dynamic of a royal fairy household, but it was never given. The ending, though predictable, was a good finish to the story.

I would love to read more of Mejía's work, and The Absent Willow Review made a good decision.
You can read the story for yourself here.

3.5 stars

"Fiery Objects"

by Ethel Rohan

This is a flash fiction piece (under 1000 words) at The Dirty Napkin, an online literary magazine, and I hope the editors and author don't mind me writing about it.

Rohan takes a simple planetarium, and turns it into a metaphor that makes you think about things a little differently. At least it did for me. By the end I realized how things continue, and what we see in people, the scars, the lives, are really bringing out the past.

The only complaint I have is that I almost got the feeling the narrator was jumping off the balcony, which would create a sad ending, but I'm not sure. Maybe she doesn't, maybe she does. Read it yourself:

"Fiery Objects" by Ethel Rohan

A note: The Dirty Napkin is full of wonderful stories, not just this one. I've read a few there that have been excellent reads. If you like this one, and some of the other free ones online, you might consider subscribing, not to be advertising, but I feel I should take the time to talk about the site that's giving me stories.

4.5 stars

The Start and Jesus' Son

I'm starting up this blog, because I had to read a book for a class, and the Professor said it was a good book. It was not a great book, so I'm going to pass on my knowledge of this books to others. Every few weeks (when I finish book), I'll put up a review, that goes in depth about the book. It won't be something like "I hated this book, because Denis Johnson is stupid."

In between books I'll talk about short stories that are somewhere on the web out there, because people say the short story is dying, and I don't want it to. The short stories will be from well known magazines (like the New Yorker) to ones that might not even have a print version.

Jesus' Son
by Denis Johnson

This book is extremely strange, and goes into a subject that not many authors are willing to deal with: drug addiction. The main character and narrator is Fuckhead, a man in what seems like his early twenties who has a problem with drugs and alcohol. The collection of short stories tell random events in his life that don't make much sense alone, though they were all published in big name Lit Mags before appearing in this collection.

The problem with this book lies in the fact that all of the stories are plotless. Denis Johnson is a great writer, but the lack of plot was not kind. The reader is left confused at the end of many of the stories, simply because (s)he was not sure what (s)he just read. In the worst story in the collection, "Out on Bail," the narrator jumps around between years without much of an explanation for the reader. This could be taken as a literary effect to show that the narrator was lost in time, but it only left me confused. To add to the confusion of this story, one of the characters, Jack Hotel, dies at the end, yet appears in the next story "Dundun." As I read the book I kept asking, "Where in his life am I?"

Getting past this odd form of experimental literature, I also couldn't like the main character, whose only name we get is F*ckhead. He seemed pretty much like a worthless person, who didn't care about life. He does drugs, he hates to work, because it "messes with his high," and I'm supposed to care that he's trying to change at the end? His change though, isn't something to congratulate F*ckhead on. His passions at the end of the book include having sex with cripples but not wanting to build an actual relationship, and becoming a voyeur for a Mennonite woman who lives by the busstop.

It was nice to see that the character joined AA and NA by the end of the book, but he didn't seem to care about going there. From his actions (his new addiction with Mennonites), I get more of the feeling that he's just pushing his addiction to something else, so he can get past the drugs/alcohol. It's like a smoker, trying to quit, but ends up gaining forty pounds because they started eating to feel the nicotine void. Will F*ckhead every become "normal" in the sense of a useful member of society? Denis Johnson leaves it ambiguous yet hopeful, but I don't think so.

2 stars.

Next Novel: Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore