A GLUT OF STORIES

As you may know, I am a writer, and for many years I tried to make a living writing novels. Came close, but no cigar. Oh, well.

My theory was that if you wrote well enough, and put out engaging and meaningful stories, you might have a chance.

But now I see a society overwhelmed with stories, a popular culture that has a glut of narrative.

Today, the LA Times has a section called "The Envelope" which is full of stories and ads about TV dramas. Lordy, there are a million of them, or so it seems. I counted ads for 24 dramatic TV series. And that doesn't count the 300-400 movies that come out every year, plus thousands of novels and nonfiction books. Some 180,000 books are published in the USA annually, according to some estimates.

How does a writer compete in this environment? It's like prescribing drugs to a society that is already over-medicated.

Here, folks, is yet another story. Why should anyone care? Because mine has more depth and better writing? Do people honestly give a big hairy rat's derriere?

I wonder. I used to believe that if you wrote well enough, you could float the pages out the window, and they would find an audience.

Ha! It is a lot more complicated than that. It involves agents and editors and corporate conglomerates. Most of what is published, at least in fiction, seems less than stellar. How do you compete against bestselling literary junk food?

I don't know, but I will keep at it--because this is what I seem wired to do, and this is what I want to do--and we shall see what happens.

My philosophy has always been simple: Go after what you want in life. If you don't, you know you aren't going to get it. If you do, at least you have a fighting chance.

Wish me luck. I will surely need it. Big time.

Meanwhile, I have to say I do love it. Win or lose.

- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

NEW YOUNG WRITERS: YARGH!

I can't believe it. I've spent my life--I'm 73--trying to master my craft as a poet, writer and novelist, and these young people come along and they are not even playing the same game.

Their rules are different, if they have any, and so are their sensibilities.

Take a look at Amelia Gray, soon to have a new novel out by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in March: http://vimeo.com/19614728

Here are three quotes from "Threats" (these are apparently notes from a wife who is leaving her husband):

"I am testing for structural weakness in your skull.... I will hold my finger half an inch away from your left eye until the end of days.... I will lock you in a room that looks very much like your own until it begins to fill with water...."

I can't believe it. This seems to be performance writing. I don't get the appeal. On that video, people are laughing and cheering, like this is great stuff, as if this is enlightening, as if it expresses their own feelings. But the writing seems shallow and superficial and tossed-off, without thought or craft or any intention at deeper meaning.

I can't believe professional editors at a major publishing house are spending time and money on this writing and putting their reputation behind it. Amazing.

It reminds me of “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer, a novel that I hated. It has now become a big-time movie. Here are my notes, from when I first tried to read it:

Extremely erudite and incredibly clever, at first, then too clever for its own good. I loved it for 18 pages, then the meta-fictional elements started to turn me off. Oh, it is so, so, so damn clever. A brilliant 10-year-old who speaks French and turns everything into an intellectual game tries to deal with his grief. The series of pages with just a phrase on each one breaks the “fourth-wall” illusion that is necessary to fiction. The photo of the doorknob is so tedious, boring, and banal.

Yes, this novel is clever, in a way, but it’s so pleased with its own cleverness that it becomes boring and stupid. Sorry, Mr. Foer, wrong number. I lasted about 75 pages. It got to be a chore to read, not a pleasure, which is what fiction is all about. I’m not the right reader for this kind of book. You need a left-brain person who is tickled to be in on the joke. I get it, but I don’t care.

Where does this leave old writers like myself? I have no clue. Maybe the world is just moving on. I am reminded of a scene in a movie, "No Country For Old Men":

"You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you..."

It isn't all waiting on me, that's for sure.

-- Roger

SEEKING THRILLS

Lately, I've been working on several writing projects at once: a novel, a short story, a screenplay, a stage play, a memoir, and a humorous self-help book for men.

Does that seem like too much? Or not enough?

I have found, in my lifelong pursuit of the writing muse, that I have to find the energy in whatever I am doing.

For me, I like to go back and forth between two writing projects on any given day. Or among three. Usually two is enough. One gets too boring. I find more energy, more excitement with two.

I don't know why that is. Maybe it's my early reporter training, when you'd often have six or seven stories working at once and as many as 17 on your active list. You'd have one source on the phone, and another would call you back.

I found that fast pace exciting.

Anyway, it doesn't matter why. What matters is the energy. The drive, the oomph, the quickening of the heart, that marvelous intensity you get where you're on the edge of something new. When you are about to get the big story.

It must be like chasing a jaguar through the jungle with a spear. Metaphorically, of course.

I think it's the same impulse that drives climbers to go after the highest peak or the most difficult rock face. We are attracted to the toughest competition, not the easiest.

As I read somewhere, the human mind is hard-wired to seek novelty and challenge. Something new and something difficult.

If it was easy, anyone could do it, right?

Where's the fun in that?

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

POLITICAL STORY

Today I am working on my first political story, started when I was more active with MoveOn.org.

It is about one of those self-appointed, supposedly patriotic Minuteman who is "guarding" the U.S. border, when he finds a lovely Latina who is lost and being stalked by a mountain lion.

He follows her, and soon the mountain lion is stalking him.

You can probably guess what happens next. Or maybe not.

When I finish it, I plan to send it to a magazine.

Wish me luck.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

'LAUNDROMAT'

Recently, I have re-read a play that I wrote 20 years ago or so: "Laundromat."

I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. I love some parts of it. I laughed out loud about 50 times.

But it doesn't seem to have a through-line, a central thread or spine that holds it together. It's just a situation, and the story problem doesn't seem to lead to drama.

It's about Margo, a young woman who gets kicked out of the house by her mother and needs a place to stay. She takes her laundry to the laundromat and puts the clothes in a washing machine and goes to a bar next door, where she meets two college boys who want to seduce her.

She also meets an older woman, Elaine, who wants to run her life. So there is the central conflict. Then Rex, a biker, comes in and sweeps her away. Thus the conflict shifts.

Everyone wants Margo.

So far, so good. But what does Margo want, besides a place to crash? And what do I care about? Is this story about anything? Where is the character arc? What does Margo learn? How does her life change?

It is Margo's story, but Elaine is the only interesting character.

I was going to publish it on the Web, on Blogspot, and offer it for production, but I don't like the overall story.

So I'm thinking about it. To rewrite or not to rewrite, that is the question. I'm deep into my novel and keep getting distracted by shorter, easier projects.

Mmmm. More TK.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

WRESTLING THE GORILLA

I've been having a lot of trouble getting my yah-yahs up to wrestle with my novel, a big hairy gorilla that runs through the jungle and turns and fights me with all its strength.

It makes me tired just thinking about it. 

Today, I was reading a bit of memoir by Robert Towne about writing his famous movie "Chinatown."

He said it drove him nuts. He retreated to Catalina Island to write most of it. The isolation helped him focus on it and wrestle with it every day.

I was glad to hear it was a beast to write. Made me feel better.

I realized that part of my problem is that I want it to be easy. I don't want to wrestle the 800-lb gorilla.

I want it to be easy like a short story, like "Casualty of War," which won the Random House short fiction award in 1999. That story took me about 20 minutes to write and I was smart enough not to change hardly any of it.

(Here is a link:)
http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/contest/0999/sstory1.html

But novel writing is different. Takes me nine or ten months working all day every day to get a first draft and eight or ten years to do the rewrites. Of course I do much line-by-line revising. I should probably follow Borges's advice:

“Perhaps in order to write a really great book, you must be rather unaware of the fact. You can slave away at it and change every adjective to some other adjective, but perhaps you can write better if you leave the mistakes.” – Jorge Luis Borges 

Of course being a compulsive rewriter and endless futzer, that is hard for me to do.

Anyway, the important thing for me now is to realize that I cannot expect it to be easy. It is going to be hard. As someone once said, "If it was easy, anybody could do it." And as someone else once said, "Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm."

And courage. You have to have courage to tackle something as big and hairy as this.

Wish me luck. And energy. And perseverance. And guts. And willingness. You have to be willing.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

'THIS KIND OF BOOK'

Years ago, I belonged to a writer's group in Orange County, CA, and they were a good bunch. Lots of serious and successful writers. One of them was making a million dollars a book, and that was 20 years ago.

But every time I would criticize the chapter or scene we were discussing, it seemed, someone would say, "Yes, but that's what you have to do for this kind of book."

I got so sick of hearing that. I wanted to hear what you had to do to write a good book, not "this kind of book," which usually meant a mystery.

To me, that is what's wrong with publishing. Too many people writing "this kind of book."

It used to be, someone estimated, there were about 200 mystery writers across the country writing basically the same book over and over.

The L.A. Times Book Review published an article, some years ago, about mysteries. They are so formulaic. On Page 65, the hero gets hit on the head and knocked unconscious. On Page 95, there's a sex scene. One Page 200, the bad guy is revealed. You get the idea.

To me, that isn't writing, it's filling in the blanks. It's a paint-by-numbers kit. No, thanks, either as reader or writer.

I think a writer should always be after some kind of truth, and reading it should be fun, exciting, and aesthetic. I want to learn something about myself, have some insight into human nature, learn something about the world, enjoy good writing, and have a good time doing it.

Is that too much to ask?

If you can't do that, don't do it at all. I don't want to read your stuff. That's my opinion. For what it's worth. I'll just stick to Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

A LITTLE MURDER, PLEASE

I don't know how much danger we need in life. I think a certain amount of risk keeps our blood pumping. I knew a cop one time who said when he arrests people, "I don't like 'em to go too easy."

I get the point. I used to race motorcycles off-road and cars on the street, and for years I rode mountain bikes. I especially liked the tricky downhill stuff where there were rocks and cactuses and you really didn't want to fall.

On the other hand, I didn't like riding next to a 200-foot dropoff over a lake. A little risk was fun, but a big risk was not.

We need a certain degree of risk in fiction, too. For women, I think, they mostly want emotional risk. Will Martha fall in love with Sam, even though Sam is married to her best friend Jill? For men, we need physical risk to keep our yah-yahs up. Will the cop stop the man who killed his partner before he kills again?

For the writer, the question in fiction is how much risk and when. You don't want it to be too outrageous. Fiction has to be more believable than life, as Borges says (in a book called "Borges On Writing").  

In the novel I'm writing now, my main character is going up against a very scary guy, the scariest character I've ever invented. So just being in the same room with the guy is a risk. The trick is playing it out in the scenes so the reader feels it.

This scary guy, I suppose, represents an aspect of myself. I think all the characters we create are aspects of ourselves. We like to see them play out their anger, their obsessions, their madness, to "murder and create," as T.S. Eliot said.

We just don't want them to murder us, unless it's on the page.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

WRITING: RAISING THE STAKES

I think I've said this before: Writing is a series of problems that you try to solve the best way you can.

Hemingway said you never really master the craft of writing. You are always up against new problems.

My current perceived problem, which may or may not be the real problem, is keeping track of what is at stake and constantly raising the stakes, so the story builds.

In many of my favorite stories, the main character gets himself or herself into trouble trying to do the right thing. As he or she struggles to get out of trouble, they get in deeper and deeper.

An example might be a man in a rowboat who goes to rescue a pretty girl from sharks in the water. He gets there, but she is so scared she turns the boat over trying to get in.

Dum-dee-dum-dum. More danger, for them both. This is a story hook, a melodramatic example, but you get the idea.

Anyway, I felt bad writing so much about Che Guevara and thought I'd do a post on my novel, which is going well. I'm on Page 183 of "The Prince of Newport," and I'm pretty happy with it. But I haven't gotten to the hard part yet. I'm not sure what to do with a character named Isabella. Hmm.

Another problem I've had is deciding how much to show of the main character's inner thoughts. My favorite writers do a seamless job of presenting both the external and internal world at the same time. It isn't easy.  

Anyway, back to work. Next, Chapter 12, where I bring in a new character, Derek. 

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

BALLS IN THE AIR

The hardest problem in writing a novel is to keep everything going at once, to keep all the balls in the air that are vital to the story.

You have to keep the flow going, the constant waking dream, as Ron Sukenick used to call it; to keep the imaginary world consistent; to keep up the tension, through unpredictable conflict; to develop the characters as you go along; to raise the stakes, for each character, page by page and scene by scene; and to make the story build, so it gets better, chapter by chapter.

All this, and you have to write well, too.

James Joyce solved this set of hairy problems partly through vertical or associative writing, so that the reader could dive into a deep river of allusions and associations while swimming forward with the plot. Not an easy task. I think he's the only writer to have ever done it so well.

Popular novelists, like John Grisham, solve this complex problem by simplifying it, by narrowing their focus, mostly to the plot, and having a fairly shallow narrative that is easier to control.

If you are more ambitious, you have to keep all these balls in the air. You have to juggle and sing and dance while riding a bicycle. Often, you feel like you're blindfolded, as well.

Well, if it was easy, anyone could do it.

Anyway, back to work. More later.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

HEART AND SOUL

Now that I am apparently over my computer virus, I can once again focus on the novel I am writing. It got screwed up, but I think it's OK now.

Since I've been back at the actual writing again, yesterday and today, I think I've found the center of the story, the theme or premise, which is its heart and soul.

This premise has to do with a core belief of mine, and I don't want to say what that is, for this novel. I want to work it out in the book first, and I'm only on Page 115.

I always think a story has to have a premise, in Lajos Egri's terms, and the premise should be something you truly believe. You have to prove it in the book, and that is easier to do and more meaningful if you really believe it. (This is different from Hollywood, seems to me. And different from most pop fiction.)

To explain how the premise works, let me use an earlier novel, "The Disappearance of Maggie Collins." The premise was, The perversion of love brings destruction and death.

The main character was a killer who became a monster because of his demented mother who abused him. It was her way of expressing "love." So when he grew up, he expressed "love" by kidnapping a woman and holding her captive in a kind of home-made dungeon.

This all seems pretty routine now, but 20 years ago, when I started the book, it didn't.

Anything supporting or developing the premise went into the book and anything that didn't went out. This method became a good way to organize the writing and keep it on track.

Anyway, I think I have found the center of the new book I am writing now. Of course, this new one is different from the old one, but the center seems to be working, holding the story together and keeping it on track.

We'll see how well it works. I've only got 500 or 600 pages to go.

As always, wish me luck. If it was easy, anybody could do it.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

A WRITER'S DREAM

When I first decided to become a writer, I was about 20 years old. That would be about 52 years ago now. A long time in a way, and a short time in another way.

My friend Bob Jacka introduced me to good books, mostly published by New Directions. I read "Crackup" by F. Scott Fitzgerald and stuff by Henry Miller and Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud, and more.

I was in college and I got a lot of encouragement from my creative writing teachers. I had an artist friend, Jim Davis, who spent a lot of time in Mexico and met some artists and writers there who published their work in The Plumed Horn, a literary magazine published by Margaret Randall and her then-husband, Sergio Mondragon.

I sent in some poems, and, lo and behold, they got published. Voila! I had found my passion. I became an artist, of sorts.

Over the years I got a degree in literature and sent out poems and short prose pieces, and they mostly got published. I went to graduate school and got an MFA and worked for Poetry In The Schools, an NEA program, and I met a lot of poets and writers. Great people.

It seemed I had found my milieu, my place in the world. Before I graduated college, I had pictured a dusty office, with a frosted-glass door panel that had my name on it and the word "Poet" underneath.

After being a newspaper reporter and traveling some and getting to know the world a little bit, and going to graduate school and writing avant garde fiction, I decided I wanted to make a living as a novelist.

Aye, there's the rub. Sometime in the mid-70s I started studying and trying to write popular fiction. My old teacher, Oakley Hall, didn't like that.

But I persevered. Spent about 20 years hard at it. Wrote drafts of three big novels. One was about some guys who stole a top-secret experimental fighter plane and tried to ransom it back to the government. Years later, a similar novel was published and a movie made. So I guess that was a good idea.

Then, in 1996, I finally worked my way up the food chain of agents. I had spent 10 years working on a novel called "The Disappearance of Maggie Collins," about cops, hookers and a serial killer in NYC.

Trouble was, an obscure ad guy named James Patterson had come along and created a new sub-genre of pop fiction about serial killers. He owned that market.

I had the vague notion that was going on, but I decided to persevere, bull-headed as I am. I was rep'd by a new young agent at the best agency in the biz. He sent out seven copies of my novel. The next day, the head of one of the other publishing houses called him and said, Why didn't you send us this novel?

He said, Well, you've seen an earlier version from another agent. She said, well, since you re being honest with us, we'll be honest with you. We have already pirated a copy and we are reading it now.

Ultimately, 13 publishing houses--all the big ones--read it. I got a lot of praise for the writing. One editor said, "I read every word over the weekend, and I never do that." Another editor said, "This is the best written thriller I've every read, and I've read 700 of them." 

One publishing house said, "We won't go as high as $500,000. But we like this writer, and we'd like to grow this writer."

Three editors at that house had to say yes. Two said yes--the acquisitions editor and the head of the house--but one said no. The paperback rights editor said he didn't think it was a "big-launch book." The two who said yes were women, and the one who said no was a man. I thought that was significant.

All of the other 12 publishing houses said there were too many serial killer novels in the pipeline. Hollywood said the same thing. James Patterson had not only captured the market, he had spawned about two hundred imitators. Success in this business draws a lot of flies.

My number one publishing house said they'd like to bid against somebody else. If anybody else bids, they would bid, too, they said. I told my agent that's like saying to your girlfriend, Honey, I don't really want to marry you, but if any other guy asks you to marry him, I will ask you, too.

No one else bid, so number one house didn't, either. And the deal fell through. No bid, no offer, no contract, no deal. No dream.

Let that be a lesson to you. If you're going to write schlock, study the market and love the schlock. Know the rules. Hew to the form, as one agent had told me years before.

But if you're going to write real novels, for Christ's sake write real novels. Write the kind of novel you want to read. In my case, that means a literary novel with crime elements, a type of novel that is rare.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

WRITING KEEPS ME SANE

I was thinking over the weekend, I don't know what my life would be like if I wasn't a writer. I would go crazy.

I don't understand how "normal" people do it. What do they do all day?

For me, I have to have this huge project going on, with new problems and new challenges coming up all the time. It is like building an airplane from scratch in your backyard. It's easy to build one, but not easy to build one that flies.

So many things have to come together at the same time for a novel to work. You have to have a main character or group of characters in motion, involved in something that is vitally important to them. They have to be trying to accomplish something and take a series of increasingly serious emotional and physical risks to get it done.

The whole thing has to engage the audience and keep them engaged. You have to make a series of decisions before you start: point of view, attitude, tone, story problem, premise, setting, time frame, the list seems endless.

And then you have to "sing like you don't need the money" as one old song goes.

If I didn't have that to do, every day, I think I'd go bananas. Life would be so boring. I'd have to find a job where I could travel all the time and have constant adventures. Otherwise, you'd have to lock me up, for my own protection.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

NOVEL TROUBLE

Novels always give you trouble. Right now, I'm about 90 pages into the current rewrite, and it doesn't seem suspenseful enough or mysterious enough.

For suspense, you need to have dramatic questions that drive the story. For a sense of mystery, you need to have important things that need explaining.

I'm feeling like I don't have enough of either one, so I'm introducing a new character who is going to go up against the scariest character I've ever invented and see what happens to him. He's just a college kid, too. Poor guy.

I think of Hamlet, who comes home to find his father dead and his uncle married to his mother. He suspects his uncle killed his father. Dum-dee-dum-dum.

Raymond Chandler said that when he had trouble, he would just bring in a new character with a gun in his hand. This may be just the opposite. A gun implies power, and this kid has little of that.

Wish me luck. And him, too.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle