"Mine Own Library"*

This week I will be presenting a workshop, So You Wanna Be a Writer?, at the Kenilworth Library here in New Jersey. I am thrilled to be doing this for a number of reasons. First, I love libraries and librarians, and Kenilworth's librarian, Dale Spindel, is awesome. Dale was the second person (after my mom) to read the nowhere-near-ready-for-public-consumption first draft of my first novel a couple of years ago. She's brought wonderful programs to the library, including The Bard on the Boulevard, which stages Shakespeare plays in the summer. She's managed to snare amazing writers to do workshops and signings, including Jonathan Saffran Foer and Tom Perrotta (who attended my high school!). Dale is also a regular blogger at  Hey,There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room. Beyond that, however, I will always be grateful to the Kenilworth Library. I grew up in Kenilworth, and spent many a summer day browsing the stacks in that place, when it was maybe a third of the size of its current structure. (The white drain pipe marks the approximate end of the original building.) It was the treasures in my little library--Carolyn Keene and Booth Tarkington, Mary Stewart and Daphne DuMaurier, just to name a few--that first fired up my writer's imagination. Quite simply, my story started there, and I'm always happy to go back. P. S. Support your local public library. Fight to keep it open. And thank a librarian near you. photo courtesy of library website *Wm. Shakespeare: "Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me from mine own library. . ." The Tempest

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Romance Meets Mystery, or There's Nothing Like the Dame

  When I am deep in a project, I generally don’t read too much women’s fiction. I worry about the unconscious influences of voice or tone, and I dread coming across a plotline that may be similar to mine. So last summer while I worked on the first draft of my current novel, I tended to curl up in my big chair with mysteries, specifically Agatha Christie's works—there is nothing like the Dame on a rainy summer night.

 But as I worked on my story, it occurred to me that Christie’s formidable skills are a model for all writers, even those of us writing romantic fiction. Herewith are the lessons I have gleaned from Dame Agatha:  --Mystery. No, I’m not writing one, but I’m planting small ones in my story, including a few red herrings. There are no bodies littering my tale, but there are characters whose motivations are not clear, a couple who may or may not come together (perhaps not so mysterious after all, but I will keep ‘em guessing for a bit) and a hero with a secret.  --History. Just about every one of Christie’s murders has its roots in what happened before the action of the novel begins. It’s the characters’ histories that move them “towards zero,” or the defining moment that kicks the story into gear. My heroine has some baggage from her first marriage, and lots of residual anger. She’s got sibling issues with her younger sister that always threaten to bubble to the surface, and longstanding attachments to her grandpa and her beloved dog that get in the way of relationships with men (though her bad temper has something to do with that as well.) As I flesh out characters, I ask myself what has brought them to this particular place, so that I can move them “towards zero” in believable ways.  --Economy. Can Christie describe a London alleyway with the poetry of P. D. James? No. Does she have the literary brilliance of Dorothy Sayers? Probably not. But she is an unqualified master of pacing; few writers move a story the way she does, and the reader is helplessly carried along on the swift and twisty currents of her plot. Characters are sketched quickly but skillfully, and back story is woven seamlessly into the action without slowing it down. For writers of commercial fiction, particularly in this market, it’s all about page turning. And who knows? Maybe I'll even try my hand at a real mystery one of these days.

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But I Won't Be One of 'Em. . .

Hath Not Thy Rose a Thorn?*

 You might say that Kate, the main character in my current novel, is a "thorny" woman. She's angry, impatient, and quick to take offense, and at first, maybe a little hard to like. Her thorns keep people from getting too close to her, which is how she likes it. Because she's been hurt, she protects herself by throwing out some pretty sharp barbs. In the course of the story, she grows and changes; in fact, she blooms. She remains a strong woman, but a much less angry one. (And not completely thorn-free--that's what makes her interesting!) I struggled with developing the character of Kate, because conventional wisdom says a main character has to be likable for readers to engage with her. The choice of pronoun here is deliberate. I suspect most readers, male and female alike, have a much easier time accepting an angry guy as a hero than an angry woman as a heroine. Our cultural expectations run deep and run strong, and that's a hard tide to fight against. We love our cold Mr. Darcys and our mean Mr. Rochesters because we know that underneath they are basically good men with loving hearts. As readers, we give these characters a chance--sometimes for hundreds of pages--before they justify themselves in the eyes of readers. We watch their characters unfold and reveal themselves worthy, not only of our time, but of the heroines they love. We appreciate their sweetness because of, not in spite of, their thorny natures. (By the way, did it occur to anyone else that Mr. Rochester's home is actually called Thornfield? Gotta love serendipity.) As readers, we embrace male characters who are--dare I say it?--prick-ly. And what's good for the hero ought to be good for the heroine as well.

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*Wm. Shakespeare

If It's June in New Jersey. . .

There will be rhododendrons. I am always amazed at what a dead-looking bush manages to produce each spring.

Will the Real Will Shakespeare. . .

please stand up? (Please stand up.)

Having just finished Stacy Schiff's astonishing biography of Cleopatra, it occurs to me that we know much more about an ancient queen who lived 2000 years ago than we do about the much-closer-in-history William Shakespeare. It's easy to parrot the myths and half-truths: he was gay or bisexual; he had a mistress (or mister) in London; he played the role of Hamlet's ghost on stage; he was caught poaching on a wealthy man's estate; he didn't actually write the plays. Just for the record, I'm a staunch Stratfordian--I believe he certainly did write the plays--but I won't be touching that discussion with a ten-foot jousting pole.

But I am fascinated by our contemporary re-imaginings of a man who is, apart from his words, practically unknowable. In Kathryn Johnson's The Gentleman Poet, the author imagines Shakespeare as a passenger on a ship that sets sail for Virginia but ends up shipwrecked in Bermuda--thereby providing the inspiration for The Tempest.

                                                                                                  

Johnson's Shakespeare is a cagey personality with possibly Catholic sympathies in a Protestant realm. He's prickly, temperamental, and highly sensitive to criticism about his work, but reveals a sentimental streak towards the young protagonist, Elizabeth. And while a fascinating character, he isn't quite the Will I imagine.

On the other end of the spectrum is Shakespeare's film persona as portrayed by Joseph Fiennes in Shakespeare in Love. Fiennes' Will is young, ardent, and passionate; both lover and artist, he's a soulful Renaissance hottie who ends up playing his own creation, Romeo, on the stage of the Globe.

And while I love this movie to no end, I have a hard time believing in Fiennes' Will. I'd like to, but I suspect the real Shakespeare poured nearly all of his passion into his work, and was a cooler, shrewder, and much more pragmatic figure than the one Fiennes gives us.

Come September, we'll see yet another interpretation of the Bard in Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, a movie that sets the authorship question against the backdrop of Elizabethan political intrigue. The movie posits Edward de Vere as the "true" author of the works, with Shakespeare providing a handy cover identity.

Let me just say that this movie goes against everything I believe about my literary hero. But I still can't wait to see it.

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The Duchess of Dork

I established my dorkdom at a young age. The summer I was ten, I spent every day reading. Every day. While my sister and best friend whizzed by on their bikes to find adventure, I sat in a lawn chair out in front of my house with my nose buried in my latest book. Carolyn Keene provided enough adventure for me, thank you very much. One day a neighbor walked over and in hushed tones asked my mother if I was sick. "No," my mom said, "that's just Rosemary."

I found out the hard way that not everyone embraced dorkitude with quite the same fervor as I, guys in particular. I distinctly remember sitting around one day in high school with a group of girls and guys, one of whom was my crush at the time. We were sharing our future dreams, and I started rhapsodizing about living on a windswept coast in New England, in a big white house just like the one in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. I described a quaint little town with a big library full of dusty old books. When I stopped for breath, I noticed my crush looking at me with a blank face. "That's your idea of fun?" he said. Clearly, there was no future for us. As a brand new teacher, one of the first things I did when I got my paycheck was to become a member of my local PBS station, and proudly sported my Channel Thirteen totebag each morning as I walked in the door. One day a male co-worker pointed to it, saying, "You know what that bag says? That bag says I don't want to get laid any time soon. " Ouch.

Further evidence of Dork-O-Rama:

 On a trip to London back in the 80s, I made my husband rent a car so he could drive me to Chawton so I could tour Jane Austen's house. Before it was cool, I might add. Did I mention it was our honeymoon? One of a multitde of reasons I know I married the Right Guy.

I have a collection of Great Women in Literature magnets. The Masterpiece Theatre music gives me goosebumps. I read Middlemarch every year. I have a Will Shakespeare action figure. (Complete with First Folio!) A Room of One's Own makes me cry. And there can never be enough costume dramas for me. If it's got corsets and great coats, I'm there.

 Those of you who rule dorkdoms of your own know what exactly what I'm talking about. Sadly, there are those who never will. But I don't have time to think about them right now--there's a lawn chair outside with my name on it.

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The Accidental Gardener

I wouldn't say I have a brown thumb, but it's definitely a sickly yellow. In general, I neglect house plants to the point of death, and my husband coaxes them back to miraculous life. (And I dearly hope this is not a metaphor for our parenting.) I periodically plant fall bulbs, only to find them sprouting somewhere the squirrels thought more aesthetically pleasing. I buy perennials from catalogs or the local garden center, put them in and pray they return the following season. When they do, I am invariably surprised:

However, this does not mean that in spring I am not surrounded by colorful and healthy bloom. They just happen to have been planted by someone else. The beautiful purple flowers pictured at the top of this post hang over my back fence, where I enjoy them as much as if they were planted on my side.

Lining my driveway are four dogwoods currently in full bloom, courtesy of Darling Husband. Despite the width of my driveway, I did manage to tear some smaller branches from one of the trees one day as I was backing out. (Sorry, honey.)

And today, my beloved spouse presented me with this for Mother's Day:

His faith his touching, is it not?

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Southern Exposure

                                                                                           My college roommate was from south Jersey, a foreign and exotic land where people call sub sandwiches "hoagies," pronounce "coffee" as CAH-FEE (when everyone knows it's CAW-FEE), make obscure references to "Pineys," and root for the Phillies. When they refer to "the city," they mean Philadelphia. (We say "the city" and we mean the real one.) Though we spent a lot of time making fun of each other's accents, we had two important things in common--classic films (see previous post) and a love of the Jersey shore. In the summers I sometimes visited with her and her family in Stone Harbor, my first experience with the south Jersey beaches. Quieter, less crowded, and without the carnival atmosphere of some of the places I was used to, I came to appreciate towns like Avalon, Margate, Ocean City, and of course, Cape May, which will get a well-deserved post of its own. So if your idea of the Jersey Shore comes from a certain reality television show, you need to take a long drive down Parkway South, where the exit numbers are lower, the sand is whiter, and the people are really friendly. Even if they don't tawk like we do.

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Here to Stay: An American in Paris

On Saturday night I watched An American in Paris and two days later I'm still hearing Gershwin's jazz riffs in my head, still listening to the swelling strains of "Our Love is Here to Stay," and still wondering how Gene Kelly manages to make ankle-length pants, white socks and black shoes terribly, terribly sexy.

 I'm not generally a fan of the Techicolor era of movie musicals--I'm a diehard Astaire/Rogers gal--but I'm a sucker for this film. Kelly's character, Jerry Mulligan, is an ex-GI turned starving artist on the streets of Paris after WWII. Leslie Caron is Lise, a lovely shop girl with a secret. On first glance, the two don't seem to be much of a match. Until of course, they dance together.   While the film is best known for its wordless 17 minute ballet sequence at the end, for me it will always be defined by one number: the courtship dance to "Our Love is Here to Stay." Kelly is attempting to woo the resistant Caron, who leans shyly against a wall. But once the violins start, Kelly pulls her into a gentle embrace, and the two begin a balletic exchange that is at once sinuous and chaste. And while Caron is a delicate and nuanced dancer, it's Kelly who blows you away. Fleet-footed, graceful, athletic, and undeniably masculine. No matter how many grand jetes he executes, you never for a moment forget he's a guy. (Dance training tends to build muscle in rather interesting ways.)  I hadn't seen this movie in years before Saturday night, and as this dance began I actually let out an audible sigh. Just for a second, I felt as though I were dancing along the banks of the Seine. And it occurred to me that a good dance is a lot like a well-written love scene, with two people who dance around each other before they finally connect in the most satisfying of ways. A scene that builds to certain heights and then quietly falls. A scene that pulls the reader into a world she wishes she could inhabit, even if it's only for a couple of hours.

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