Advice from Agatha Christie

Be a tradesman

I’m reading Agatha Christie’s autobiography. Now, let’s not kid ourselves. The Dame has got some game.

Dame Agatha Christie is the best selling novelist of all time. She is the most translated individual author, and her works are the third most published books. Whatever criticisms may be leveled at her literary skills–deserved or not–we’d have to agree she knew something about building a career as a writer.

There’s a fascinating passage in the autobiography about the necessity for a writer to take “account of the market for his wares.”

If you were a carpenter, it would be no good making a chair, the seat of which was five feet up from the floor. It wouldn’t be what anyone wanted to sit on. It is no good saying that you think the chair looks handsome that way.

She goes on to say,

It’s no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius–some people are, but very few. No, one is a tradesman–a tradesman in a good honest trade. You must learn the technical skills, and then, within that trade, you can apply your own creative ideas; but you must submit to the discipline of form.

So, what is the point of me quoting this?

Take a couple of Tuesday Tips from Dame Agatha.

I’m about to embark on another round of play submissions. So, I’m going to read the guidelines carefully and adhere to the rules for each submission. My chair–or play–can be as handsome as you please, but if it doesn’t fit the rules, why bother to submit? And if it doesn’t fit any rules. . . well, I suppose a miracle might happen. But, it’s probably going to involve self-producing or self-publishing. If you want to market your work, you have to know the market.

The other tip — “It’s no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius.” I thought of this recently when a friend reported on a play reading that was less than wonderful but for which the writer and director wanted to hear no criticism. It seems to me that Aaron Sorkin (another writer who knows something about building a career) had it right when he had a character say, “If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”

A whole lot of praise and approval is nice for the ego. Constructive criticism and a mind open enough to hear it is better for the play.

The Gammage Cup

The other Muggles

Once upon a time, there was a children’s book that resonated with adults. It was full of humor, adventure and whimsy, and the author’s imagination concealed some profound truths about humanity.

It was not by J. K. Rowling.

The Gammage Cup by Carolyn Kendal was published in 1959. It won awards: a Newbery Honor book and an ALA Notable Children’s Book. It’s about being yourself and following your heart and how those in charge could be totally wrong and how doing things just because they’ve always been done that way can get you into a whole lot of trouble.

Mostly, it’s a lot of fun.

With heroes called Minnipins, how could you go wrong?

Add in some misfit Minnipins–Gummy, Mingy, Walter the Earl, Curly Green and the aforementioned Muggles–banished from Slipper on the Water because of a refusal to paint their doors a proper Minnipin green (among other things), and an inability to conform to the standards of behavior laid down by the ruling class of Periods (so-called because Fooley the Balloonist had a list of abbreviations among his things when he crash-landed years ago, and his descendants have been named things like Ltd. and Co. ever since) as well as a contest among Minnipin villages for possession of the Gammage Cup just at the point when the Minnipins’ mythical enemies, the Mushrooms, reappear, and you have a gentle, very clever fable that entertains as well as enlightens.

This book, although well-loved by those who know of it, was never a blockbuster, as far as I can tell. It’s still in print, though, and available from Amazon if your local library doesn’t have a copy.

Check it out. I think you’ll like it!

The Sound of Silence

…isn’t really so silent

This morning, I happened to wake up around 5 am. Unable to get back to sleep, for some reason, I got up to do my morning pages and read for a little while. (I’m reading 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. This fact has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this post.)

Just as I was about to fall asleep again–because the new revelations, while actually quite fascinating, are not spell-binding (okay, so it has a little to do with the rest of this post)–I heard a heron.

Have you ever heard a heron?

It sounds like the worst violin lesson ever. (I should know. Once upon a time, I took violin lessons.) It sounds like Harpo Marx’s horn. It sounds like–well, not unlike–a donkey braying.

I thought to myself, This is the silence I moved 1000 miles to get. This caw. These croaks. These cicada songs and squirrel chirrings.

And then I thought to myself, It’s a miracle.

Because this is exactly the silence I moved 1000 miles to get. Even the distant traffic, the occasional shotgun blasts, the boat motors, pump motors, a/c motors–all of those are infinitely preferable to the shell shock of living beneath an undisciplined toddler.

The difference is I was awake by the time I heard the heron honk. It wouldn’t have startled me out of a sound sleep with a bang, a thud and the earthquake rattle of the walls. The battle fatigue of those days has abated.

I can wake up when I set my alarm clock. I can write this blog post in peace. I can anticipate an owl’s hoot or a heron’s honk instead of strain to block out the shake, rattle and roll.

I shouldn’t have had to move 1000 miles to get a few minutes of silence, but the miracle is –it worked.

Hope for Humanity – Pt. 2

Small steps, big changes.

I follow Shaun Usher’s blog, Letters of Note, where a fascinating letter is posted every day. Sometimes, the letter was written by someone famous. Sometimes, it is by someone for whom this posting of the letter is all the fame he or she will ever get. (The former slave writing to his master is one such.)

The hope for humanity to which I am referring does not lie in these letters.

It lies in Shaun. Or, Mr. Usher, I should say. (I am, by the skin of my teeth, of a generation that was taught a certain formality toward people one does not know, in spite of uneasy, although often delighted, co-existence with a less stately present. And don’t get me started wondering why I’ve somehow begun identifying myself as “of a generation.” I think it may be the beginning of the end!)

At any rate, I have a little extra hope for humanity today because Mr. Usher, last Wednesday, wrote a letter of his own to all his readers. In it, he noted that he had concluded that too few of the letters on his website were written by women. He had decided to “redress the balance” and was asking for recommendations. (He has since noted that he’s been inundated with letters as a result, so please don’t rush off and send him more. Yet. Let’s wait until he asks.)

This, to me, is a remarkable occurrence.

I’m a member of 50/50 in 2020 and the Women’s Initiative. I was involved in the mid-80’s with the Women’s Project. These are all organizations that seek to draw attention to an enormous inequality in the theatre industry in terms of opportunities for women. One of the biggest hurdles they all face is in having the current lack of gender parity even recognized. Data is difficult to gather, often ignored or explained away by factors having little to do with gender. As a result, more than half the world’s stories remain untold.

To have someone announce that he has come to the conclusion that he is only telling part of the story and intends to change that is, as I said, a remarkable occurrence.

It’s especially amazing if he came to that realization all on his own without nudging of wife, sister, mother, girlfriend, etc.

Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. And I don’t suppose it really matters. He has the power to take some action, and he’s taking it.

The two days immediately following this announcement and request featured wonderful letters by Clementine Churchill and the incomparable Katharine Hepburn. (There’s even a film clip of Hepburn reading her letter to Spencer Tracy.)

I look forward to all the days to come. In the meantime, here’s a letter:

Dear Mr. Usher,

Thank you!

Elaine

Not of much note–but definitely sincere!

Discover the world.

“The public library is one of the great strongholds of democracy. Who doesn’t love a library? It is a place you can go in any town and discover the world.”*

My grandmother was a librarian.

She didn’t have a degree in Library Science, and at the end of her career, those who did had been hired and placed in supervisory positions over her. The final days of her working life (at the age of 89, by the way) were spent entering new acquisitions and affixing the cards to them in the back room of the headquarters branch of the county library system for which she was the earliest employee. Along the way, she had run a library on a Naval base, opened the first library in Clay County, FL, shelved countless books, traveled miles of country road in a bookmobile, shushed I don’t know how many children, and provided me with most of the books that are in my personal library today.

She didn’t have a degree or, in the end, the official title, but my grandmother was a librarian.

Today’s Friday Find is devoted to something about which I suspect she never knew, even though it began nearly 20 years before her death, but of which I know–know–she would have heartily approved.

Project Gutenberg.

Not much of a find, you say, since it’s been around since 1971?

Okay. But how many of you have really looked at it? How many of you have really thought about what it means?

For those of you who haven’t heard of Project Gutenberg, it’s a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works–i.e., books. As of July 2012, there were over 40,000 items in its collection with about fifty new eBooks being added every week. (More history here.)

All of the works are available on the Project Gutenberg website for reading and/or download, usually in multiple formats. Most are in English, although they do have some works in other languages. They are all, also, all free to users in the United States where their copyrights have expired. International users should check the laws of their own country before downloading.

The project is named after Johannes Gutenberg, who invented movable type and launched a revolution in 1439 by making knowledge and learning available to the masses.

That’s what a library does, and the heritage that Project Gutenberg, as the next logical extension of the library system, carries forward.

It’s been said, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Show him how to catch a fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

I say: Give people a library and you not only show them how to catch fish but how to clean it, cook it, sell it, paint a picture of it, mount it, raise it and do seventy million other things having nothing to do with fish!

A library should be the last funding cut in a free society.

Meanwhile. . .Project Gutenberg! Discover the world.

* Pat MacEnulty

Gate crashing

“No fate but what we make for ourselves.”*

Thanks to the Internet and to technology, we are getting closer and closer to those words being true. Where once upon a time it was extremely difficult to get your work–by which I mean, for the most part, your art–out where people could see it, it is becoming easier and easier. The gatekeepers have less power. If you are willing to take the chance and invest a little sweat equity, you can bypass them.

It’s not always a good idea. Perceptions change more slowly than technology, and the seal of approval provided by being selected by a reputable publishing house or signed by an A-list agent still has value. I’m not advocating “going rogue” entirely.

What I am saying is that the delivery channels are not as narrowly held as they once were. If you think you have something to offer, there are ways to offer it without waiting for the over-worked and over-solicited gatekeeper to realize its value and pluck you out of obscurity.

I’ve been considering self-publishing for some time, and this Monday’s Miracle is that I have made some significant progress in that direction. Like the builders of the Six Million Dollar Man, I “have the technology.”

And I’m a little closer to making it work now that I’ve figured out how to turn a standard word processed bit of writing into something that can be delivered in the formats used by the all the major eReaders.

If you want to to the same, you can check out Calibre–a terrific free software for eBook management. It’s not all I’m going to need. There are some limitations to its conversion processes, but I’ve solved one of the major difficulties. I’ll be talking about that tomorrow in Tuesday’s Tips.

Meanwhile, this is a big step forward in what is shaping up to be a major project. The goal is to take much of my writing and make it available for purchase and download at the bookstore on this website. Instead of spending my energy trying to attract the attention of literary managers, agents and publishers’ assistants, I can spend it on making the work as good as I can and making it available as quickly as I can.

There are many, many hurdles to overcome before I get there–but getting past the gatekeeper isn’t going to be one of them!

* James Cameron, Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Blank page, blank mind

“White…a blank page or canvas…so many possibilities.”*

I’ve been thinking about writer’s block. I saw an interview with Fran Lebowitz in which I learned that after publishing two collections of essays, the last one in 1981, she has had writer’s block ever since.

1981.

32 years ago.

That’s a long time.

Not quite as long as Harper Lee who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960–but, let’s face it–if you wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, why wouldn’t you have writer’s block? For one thing, if you wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, why would you ever need to write anything else? And for another, why wouldn’t you be terrified that nothing else you wrote would ever measure up? (To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book in the whole world. Can you tell?)

Ms. Lebowitz, asked about why she wasn’t writing, said “I don’t know. If I knew, I’d be writing.” She went on, however, to say, “Writing is work” and described herself as lazy.

Writing is work.

That’s certainly one reason I’m not writing when I’m not writing.

Let’s set aside the question of how Ms. Lebowitz has been making a living since 1981. Does she really get paid a sufficient wage to go on talk shows and be witty? She is witty as hell but really? Where can I get that gig? (For that matter, where can I get that wit?)

Writing is work.

It doesn’t seem like work to a person digging ditches, I suspect, but it is work.

The thing is. . .what makes it such hard work? That’s what I’m trying to understand. (The theory being that, like Ms. Lebowitz, if I knew why I’m not writing, I’d be writing. In reality, of course, if I can spend enough time thinking about why I’m not writing, I don’t have to actually write. See? A perfect system.)

One thing that makes it hard is thinking up something to write.

People speak of the “terror of the blank page,” and I used to think they were terrified at having to fill up that page. Now, I don’t think it’s fear of the volume of words needed to fill the page. I think it’s the fear that you won’t think of the first word.

It turns out, for me, that writing isn’t so hard. (It’s not easy–and I usually want to take a nap when I’m done–but it’s not like digging ditches). Coming up with something to get me started, however, is the killer.

That blank page has so many possibilities. Is it really the case that, with a universe from which to draw inspiration, I can’t think of one thing to put down on paper? Or is it that choosing one closes off all the others?

If the latter, writing this blog is certainly one antidote. Clearly, writing about one thing today leaves me with all the universe still available tomorrow.

It also leaves me with a host of tomorrows to continue to explore whatever I chose today. And this topic seems interesting. To me, at least. I think I’ll stick a pin in it for now and come back to it in some future post.

Meanwhile, let’s just put something down on that blank page.

* Stephen Sondheim, Sunday in the Park with George

What’s in a name?*

A character by any other name. . .

Naming characters is one of those things that makes me crazy.

If you’ve had children–and if you haven’t, you can just imagine–you know the hours of consideration, the lists and lists of names that go into finding just the right name for this new little person.

Now, multiply that by–I don’t know–some horribly large number, and you have a little bit of an idea of a writer’s naming burden.

The average number of children per household in the U.S., according to the 2010 census, is 0.94. That’s not even a whole person!

You really can’t write a book or a play without a whole person. Okay, you could write The Wind in the Willows or Freddy the Detective or one of those other children’s books filled with talking animals–but once an animal begins to talk, it has to have a name, so you’re back where you started.

If you’re going to write, you’re going to be naming people all the time. All the time.

Seriously, every time you turn around, you are going to be adding people to your play or your story, and most of them will need names. Minor characters can be “the waitress” or “the bus driver,” I suppose, and if you want your writing to appear really symbolic, I guess you could name them with capital letters. “The Waitress.” “The Bus Driver.” Usually, however, these people you just made up will need to have names, and unlike Dr. Seuss or George Foreman, you probably don’t want them all running around your pages with the same name.

There are all kinds of theories about naming babies, and I’m sure there are as many about naming characters.

The only real tip I have to offer this Tuesday is a couple of websites where you can find the online equivalent of a baby book.

http://www.babynames.com/

and my personal favorite, the random name generator:

http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

You can find other online resources here.

Happy naming!

* Shakespeare again. Romeo & Juliet, remember? From yesterday? Act 2, sc 2

Leveraging the technology…

…to multiply your chances

Sometimes we don’t put our work out there because we don’t want to cope with the rejection.

There are two things I’ve learned about that.

One is that if you don’t submit, the answer is definitely “no.”

The second is that it’s easier to take a rejection letter if you know you have other submissions in play. This theatre, publisher, art gallery, gate-keeper-of-choice turned you down. One or more of the others might say, “Yes!” That thought makes it easier to keep submitting when the rejection comes and is the best reason I know to have multiple submissions going at any one time.

Anything that makes it easier to submit is a very good thing.

So, today, I’m thankful for the growing number of theatres that accept electronic submissions.

I know a lot of playwrights who have been wary of sending out digital copies of their work. Maybe some of them still are.

The concern is that a Word document or a PDF is so easily copied. And so easily edited. Some are worried about losing control of their work, and some are worried about outright plagiarism.

All of that could happen, of course.

But let’s be realistic.

With the availability of scanners, what’s to stop determined plagiarists from loosening the little brads of your report cover, taking your script out of it, and digitizing it themselves? Yes, it’s harder. But not that much harder.

You’re not really protecting your work by sticking to hard copy. You’re killing a few more trees, making the submission much more expensive to you (report cover, paper, ink, envelope, postage), and making it more difficult and time-consuming to get it out the door.

Contrast that with what happens when the theatre allows an electronic submission.

You collect your digital files: the script, the bio, the production history, and whatever else this particular theatre wants. (You should have all of this sitting in a folder on your hard drive, ready to go. If not, why not? Don’t have any way to create a PDF? Try CutePDF, a good free solution.)

You make any adjustments necessary to fit the submission guidelines. (Maybe they want a blind copy or a longer or shorter synopsis than the one you usually use.)

You address and compose your email, attach your document, and click “Send.” (If your email program allows it, request a Return Receipt so you know the transmission is received.)

You’re done! It’s a half-hour, at the most, instead of the other way’s half- to two-day process.

And the poor literary manager at the other end can read scripts on her eReader instead of lugging them home in back-breaking bundles.

There’s no contest.

More of my stuff gets out to more places because a lot of the friction has been removed from the process.

When I first began submitting electronically, I was a bit hesitant. Now, I love it when they offer that option.

Choices — aaaagh!

‘Life is in the minding.‘

Saturdays and Sundays in this blog don’t have a theme. They are wide open.

Any subject.

Any subject at all.

Consequently, with the universe from which to choose, it is sometimes hard to think of anything to write.

Why is that?

I’m not sure, but today I think it has something to do with some lines that have always resonated with me from Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love.

Will you be a poet, or a scholar?
I don’t mind.
Oh, it helps to mind. Life is in the minding.

There is something about choices. It’s great to have them, but they can be overwhelming.

Have you ever walked into a library or a bookstore and left without any books? Or a video rental store and gone home to watch reruns of Law & Order?

Maybe it’s just me, but I enter such establishments with anticipation. I’m going to find something great to read or watch. And I wander up and down the aisles looking at everything that is on offer on the shelves. Picking up this movie, flipping through those pages. Do I feel like watching a comedy or a thriller? Do I want to read Jane Austen or Maya Angelou? And as I ponder these choices I begin to hyperventilate.

Figuratively speaking.

I mean, I don’t have to breathe into a paper bag or anything.

I just find myself thinking sometimes, when I have a lot of choices, “oh, just forget it!” and walking out without anything.

It’s not an option when you have a blog post to write.

Or…I guess it could be. We could declare Silent Saturdays. Seems like a cop-out, though, doesn’t it?

I was reading something somewhere (I have got to start taking writing things down! The old memory is not what it used to be) about practicing making choices. The idea was that you should never say “I don’t care” or “It doesn’t matter.” Even if you really don’t care which restaurant you’re going patronize tonight, you should make a choice. Voice a preference.

Art is all about making choices. We better get used to it.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Writing