Learning from the Masters: 101

Here I begin a series of blogs that I have been thinking about for a long time.   As I have confessed in these precincts in the past, I regularly reread the classics.  Often I find an author from the past, in the midst of telling his story will address the reader directly and talk about what he is doing and why.  The last one I have come across who got away with such shenanigans was John Fowles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  But that was nearly fifty years ago.  One cannot get away with that sort of the thing in the 21^st Century.  But these musings can be very instructive and consoling to the modern writer.  Readers will also find them amusing, I think, because they open a peephole into the way writers think.  Today I offer a preface to Arnold Bennett’s Old Wives’ Tale.  It doesn’t exactly fit my bill because it was an addendum, not part of the novel’s original text, but it sure speaks to me about what it meant to be a novelist a hundred years ago, and how similar it is to today—when it comes to inspiration and when it comes to pleasing one’s publisher and one’s readers.    

PREFACE

In the autumn of 1903 I used to dine frequently in a restaurant in the Rue de Clichy, Paris. Here were, among others, two waitresses that attracted my attention. One was a beautiful, pale young girl, to whom I never spoke, for she was employed far away from the table which I affected. The other, a stout, middle-aged managing Breton woman, had sole command over my table and me, and gradually she began to assume such a maternal tone towards me that I saw I should be compelled to leave that restaurant. If I was absent for a couple of nights running she would reproach me sharply: "What! you are unfaithful to me?" Once, when I complained about some French beans, she informed me roundly that French beans were a subject which I did not understand. I then decided to be eternally unfaithful to her, and I abandoned the restaurant. A few nights before the final parting an old woman came into the restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the thoughtless. She was burdened with a lot of small parcels, which she kept dropping. She chose one seat; and then, not liking it, chose another; and then another. In a few moments she had the whole restaurant laughing at her. That my middle-aged Breton should laugh was indifferent to me, but I was pained to see a coarse grimace of giggling on the pale face of the beautiful young waitress to whom I had never spoken.

I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel out of the history of a woman such as she." Every stout, ageing woman is not grotesque—far from it!—but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth in her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos.

It was at this instant that I was visited by the idea of writing the book which ultimately became "The Old Wives' Tale." Of course I felt that the woman who caused the ignoble mirth in the restaurant would not serve me as a type of heroine. For she was much too old and obviously unsympathetic. It is an absolute rule that the principal character of a novel must not be unsympathetic, and the whole modern tendency of realistic fiction is against oddness in a prominent figure. I knew that I must choose the sort of woman who would pass unnoticed in a crowd.

I put the idea aside for a long time, but it was never very distant from me….I was already, in 1903, planning a novel ("Leonora") of which the heroine was aged forty, and had daughters old enough to be in love. The reviewers, by the way, were staggered by my hardihood in offering a woman of forty as a subject of serious interest to the public…. I have been accused of every fault except a lack of self-confidence, and in a few weeks I settled a further point, namely, that my book…must be the life-history of two women instead of only one. Hence, "The Old Wives' Tale" has two heroines….I was intimidated by the audacity of my project, but I had sworn to carry it out. For several years I looked it squarely in the face at intervals, and then walked away to write novels of smaller scope, of which I produced five or six. But I could not dally forever, and in the autumn of 1907 I actually began to write it, in a village near Fontainebleau, where I rented half a house from a retired railway servant. I calculated that it would be 200,000 words long (which it exactly proved to be), and I had a vague notion that no novel of such dimensions (except Richardson's) had ever been written before. So I counted the words in several famous Victorian novels, and discovered to my relief that the famous Victorian novels average 400,000 words apiece. I wrote the first part of the novel in six weeks. It was fairly easy to me, because, in the seventies, in the first decade of my life, I had lived in the actual draper's shop of the Baines's, and knew it as only a child could know it. Then I went to London on a visit. I tried to continue the book in a London hotel, but London was too distracting, and I put the thing away, and during January and February of 1908, I wrote "Buried Alive," which was published immediately, and was received with majestic indifference by the English public, an indifference which has persisted to this day.

I then returned to the Fontainebleau region and gave "The Old Wives' Tale" no rest till I finished it at the end of July, 1908. It was published in the autumn of the same year, and for six weeks afterward the English public steadily confirmed an opinion expressed by a certain person in whose judgment I had confidence, to the effect that the work was honest but dull, and that when it was not dull it had a regrettable tendency to facetiousness. My publishers, though brave fellows, were somewhat disheartened; however, the reception of the book gradually became less and less frigid.

With regard to the French portion of the story, it was not until I had written the first part that I saw from a study of my chronological basis that the Siege of Paris might be brought into the tale. The idea was seductive; but I hated, and still hate, the awful business of research; and I only knew the Paris of the Twentieth Century. Now I was aware that my railway servant and his wife had been living in Paris at the time of the war. I said to the old man, "By the way, you went through the Siege of Paris, didn't you?" He turned to his old wife and said, uncertainly, "The Siege of Paris? Yes, we did, didn't we?" The Siege of Paris had been only one incident among many in their lives. Of course, they remembered it well, though not vividly, and I gained much information from them. But the most useful thing which I gained from them was the perception, startling at first, that ordinary people went on living very ordinary lives in Paris during the siege, and that to the vast mass of the population the siege was not the dramatic, spectacular, thrilling, ecstatic affair that is described in history. Encouraged by this perception, I decided to include the siege in my scheme. I read Sarcey's diary of the siege aloud to my wife, and I looked at the pictures in Jules Claretie's popular work on the siege and the commune, and I glanced at the printed collection of official documents, and there my research ended.

It has been asserted that unless I had actually been present at a public execution, I could not have written the chapter in which Sophia was at the Auxerre solemnity. I have not been present at a public execution, as the whole of my information about public executions was derived from a series of articles on them which I read in the Paris Matin. Mr. Frank Harris, discussing my book in "Vanity Fair," said it was clear that I had not seen an execution, (or words to that effect), and he proceeded to give his own description of an execution. It was a brief but terribly convincing bit of writing, quite characteristic and quite worthy of the author of "Montes the Matador" and of a man who has been almost everywhere and seen almost everything. I comprehended how far short I had fallen of the truth! I wrote to Mr. Frank Harris, regretting that his description had not been printed before I wrote mine, as I should assuredly have utilized it, and, of course, I admitted that I had never witnessed an execution. He simply replied: "Neither have I." This detail is worth preserving, for it is a reproof to that large body of readers, who, when a novelist has really carried conviction to them, assert off hand: "O, that must be autobiography!"

ARNOLD BENNETT

I have taken out a few sentences, but this is pretty much the whole preface.  I laughed out loud when I read “Neither have I.”  I hope you find it as amusing as I did.

Annamaria

Earl Staggs Loves His Two Perfect Jobs

Writer Friends…

It's impossible to say why we like one writer more than others. Or prefer one style of writing more than the rest.

Kinda like when we're drawn to one person in a crowd.

The big guy who sat beside me at an MWA Board meeting and told me about how he just had to put down his cat. Then became my friend for life.

The quiet woman in Lewis Frumkes' Writing Center at Marymount Manhattan, now, many years later, my first reader.

The generous winner of 32 Emmys and many top writing awards - one of the most generous souls on the planet!

I don't recall when or how I first noticed our guest for today - it may have been on a blog, or a mention by a kind friend. Or reading his novel about a former FBI profiler. Or his high-octane thriller about Tall Chambers.

When you read his simple but deep words here today, I think you'll fall under the spell of one of the nicest guys on our planet too.

Please welcome—again—Earl Staggs…

T. J. Straw

---

I’ve heard it said that if you’re doing something you enjoy, it’s not work. I’ll attest to that because I have two jobs I dearly love.

Bear with me a minute while I tell you how it came about.

I’ve worked since I was fifteen. That’s how old you had to be to get a work permit for an after-school job in Baltimore. My first job was in a men’s secondhand clothing store. My chores were simple: restack pants on the right tables and return jackets and suits to their racks after browsers finished with them, and sweep floors. The owner even paid me extra to meet his daughter after night school and walk her home through the tough neighborhood. I made enough to buy cigarettes, clothes with an employee’s discount and Clearasil for occasional acne breakouts.

Later, while still in high school, I had similar jobs in a five and ten, a women’s clothing store (where I did not buy any clothes), and an Army surplus store. That kept me busy and out of major trouble until I graduated and went in a new direction: office work.

I worked for a couple years in a building contractor’s office followed by a long stint in several departments of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. At the B&O, I crawled up the ladder to Office Manager and met a beautiful coworker named Carol.

Eventually, Carol and I married, and I left the confines of inside office work for outside sales, first in business forms, then insurance, along with jobs in a large bank and a national trade association. I even spent time as an independent business consultant.

During that time, Carol and I concentrated heavily on our most important job, which was raising two beautiful daughters and spoiling four beautiful grandchildren.

You may be wondering why I’m telling you all that boring personal history. Simple. I wanted to impress you with the fact that I’ve held a number of jobs. Some I liked and some I stayed with only because I needed a pay check.

And then it was time to retire. I thought it was time to take life easy. Maybe take up golf or gardening. Little did I know that, before long, I would have two new jobs, both of which I dearly loved. Besides that, I didn’t like golf or gardening.

I decided to try something I’d always wanted to do… well, ever since my high school English teacher said I had a natural talent for writing. I decided to try my hand at writing fiction.

I call writing a job because it involves hard work. Ask any writer.

To begin, I signed up for a writing class at the community college. The class happened to be about writing short mystery stories. It was a natural fit since mystery had always been my favorite genre for reading and for movies and TV shows. By the end of the class, I had written a short story called “The Missing Sniper” involving a psychic private eye and, of course, a murder. It took a while to get it published in a magazine. (Actually, it appeared in two magazines simultaneously, but how that happened is a whole ’nuther long story.)

The response to the story was so positive and encouraging, I wrote a mystery novel featuring the same protagonist and called it MEMORY OF A MURDER. Over the next few years, more of my short stories found publication as well as another novel titled JUSTIFIED ACTION, which I called a Mystery/Thriller. I also published a collection of my stories called, of all things, SHORT STORIES OF EARL STAGGS.

I love my writing job. I love the part where I stare at a blank screen and accept the challenge of sprinkling a lot of words all over it in such a way that a good story is told. Someone once said it’s 10% writing and 90% rewriting. I believe that. Rewriting is taking what seemed like a good idea but turned into a hodge podge of words in need of rearrangement, replacement, and refinement. It can take hours, days or longer.

Finally, the right words are in the right place, the story works, and it was worth all the hard work. Validation that you’ve met the challenge comes when someone agrees to publish it. That’s the part I love best.

After that happens a few times, you can say you’re a writer. You may not say it aloud and you may not say it to anyone else. It may only be a silent feeling somewhere inside. But, for sure, you’re a writer, Once you reach that point, you will always be a writer because you can’t not write. The challenge is irresistible.

Earl the Writer

I was only a year into retirement and struggling to become a writer, however, when I realized something. Writing is a solitary, inside job. When I left inside jobs to be a salesman, I found I enjoyed being out and about in the big old world and spending time with other members of the human race. It also dawned on me that if you don’t have to get up in the morning, go somewhere and do something, you can get old. I didn’t want to get old. There was too much I still wanted to do.

So, I decided to get another job. I didn’t want a full-time job because that would cut into my writing time. I wanted something part-time, not hard or too demanding, but a job that got me out of the house and gave me access and interaction with other people. Maybe I could stand in the doorway of Walmart and say, “Welcome to Walmart. Do you want a cart?” That was one avenue I considered in my search.

Then, purely by chance, I came up with the perfect second job. I found in my yard a flier from the local school district. They were hiring school bus drivers. I’d never considered anything like that, but I was curious and called them. I went for an appointment and was hired the same day.

Driving a school bus would entail working a couple hours in the morning to get the kids to school and a couple in the afternoon to get them home again. In between, there would be about six hours of free time. Time I could spend writing. Perfect!

It took a while to get started. You have to study a manual about the size of the Dallas phone directory and take a test to get a Commercial Drivers License. Then you have to actually learn how to drive a bus. You have to get used to operating a vehicle as big as three cars with a dashboard having as many buttons and switches as a small airplane. You not only have to drive and use all those buttons and switches, but you have to keep an eye on fifty kids behind you. If they’re not sitting down or are making too much noise, you have to remind them they must remain seated while the bus is in motion and to use their inside voice. Five minutes later, you have to remind them again. Kids will be kids, you know.

In spite of that, once I started, I loved it. It helps that I like kids. Most of them.

My kids range from kindergarten to eighth grade and while spending time with them in the morning and again in the afternoon, I get to know them. Occasionally, some will misbehave. I even have fun with the discipline. Once I told them, “If you don’t behave, I’ll have to kill you. I don’t mind going back to jail. Some of my best friends are there.” They know I’m a kidder and they laughed, but they got the message. I enjoy seeing them every day and watching them grow. The kindergartners and first graders are the most lovable. I get plenty of smiles and hugs from them.

I also get to know their parents and teachers. Oddly enough, in conversation with them, the fact that I’m a writer always seems to pop out. Once a salesman, always a salesman, I suppose. Many of the teachers and parents have bought my books and frequently ask when the next one will come out.

Earl the Bus Driver

Now that you’ve read all the way to here, you know how I came to have my two jobs. You’re now invited to visit my website at http://earlwstaggs.wordpress.com where you can:

Read Chapter One of MEMORY OF A MURDER
Read Chapter One of JUSTIFIED ACTION
Read THE DAY I ALMOST BECAME A GREAT WRITER which some say is the funniest short story I’ve ever written
Read WHITE HATS AND HAPPY TRAILS about the day I spent with a boyhood idol, Roy Rogers.
and more.

I know some people with jobs they love, but I don’t know anyone with two of them. I think I’m a lucky guy to have two that go together like Holmes and Watson, Castle and Beckett, peanut butter and jelly.

What do you think?

© 2015 Earl Staggs

You're Done. Now the Work Starts

Photo Credit: Jim Nedelka

This is the way I’d always envisioned the writer’s life. 

And you get to live it . . .    
for about one month after your book’s published. You get to chat about your book with mystery readers on guest blogs, talk about it on library panels with famous writers, and show up at bookstores where people have come to see you, listen to you read, ask you questions about your book, and laugh at your jokes (your friends in the audience will even laugh at the ones they’ve heard too many times before).

Then you have to get back to writing.

After the interruptions in my routine, pleasant as they have been, it’s been hard to settle back in fully. 

Among writers, we have a word for this: procrastination.

Wallace Stroby, Mistina Bates and I laughing at something Dennis Tafoya said at a

library panel in Chatham NJ. At the unseen end of the table, also laughing, is Dave White, Derringer Award-winning author of the Jackson Donne series. Sorry, Dave, but I chose this particular shot because it's a great picture of me.

Photo Credit: Rob Daniher

But I’ve been thinking a lot about writing. And about some of the questions I’ve been asked in the last month from new writers trying to sell their first books.

If you're not a writer, let me quickly explain the process. When you’re trying to get a book published, you generally need an agent. So you send a pitch letter, making your book sound as scrumptious as possible. If your pitch letter sparks interest, you’re asked to submit sample chapters. This part of an author’s life is known as Pure Hell. You will generally be rejected. And the rejection letters won’t necessarily help you figure out what might be wrong with the book. “Love the villain; the story’s not quite there yet.” “Terrific tale; villain needs some work.”

And once you’ve been rejected by an agent, that door is generally closed for that particular book.

Soooooo... If you’re a new writer, and you’re thinking about sending out that just-finished first book, here are a few random thoughts for your consideration from a woman whose first book took more than 10 years to "finish": 

1.  Your book isn’t finished, not unless you’re on draft 240. So, let’s move on to #2.

2. Write the best book you can. Okay, okay, I can hear you go, “Well, duh.” But sometimes, new writers are under the impression that “a lot of books out there just aren’t that good.” This is dangerous thought. You’ll convince yourself that doing less than your best will be enough. It isn’t.

3. Kill off your extras — before they kill your plot. Don’t make the reader keep track of too many characters, and I say this as a recovering characteraholic. Ah, the sweet lure of just one more new voice in the story. But before you know it, you’ve got 20 characters, all necessary to the plot. And don’t introduce more than 3 at the same time. Even Rex Stout couldn’t pull that off — see The League of Frightened Men, Chapter 5. So, how do you keep yourself in line?

4. Put your characters in a line-up. Keep a detailed file. Don’t wing this; write it down. You might think you'll recall all the details about them because they’re so precious to you. But you won’t. List them, describe them, and include the descriptions you used in the book so you can remove repetitions later on. (This will also help you if your book turns into a series. You never have to scramble to recall how you described a continuing character in previous books.) Set down their motives, opportunities, and their contribution to the mystery. You’ll have a clearer picture of which characters can be combined, and which suspects aren't necessary and can be bumped off (the page). 

5. Don’t try to play journalist. Think long and hard before adding a plot element or character that would require quoting portions of news articles. Even excellent writers have terrible trouble pulling off writing like a journalist. 

6. Sing out, Louise. Read your chapters out loud. And read them like you’re telling an intriguing story, not reciting the Gettysburg Address in fifth grade. You’ll discover where the momentum breaks down, where your interest flags. You’ll find places where the rhythm is off. If your heroine is sweeping diva-style across a room, the prose flow will be much different than if she’s crawling through a pitch-black house, looking for a way out before the killer finds her. Read in the voices of your characters — even if you don’t perform them very well. Nobody has to hear you reading. But don't assume that just because you watch Downton Abbey you can write a British character. Vet dialog with people who actually come from the place whose syntax you’re trying to mimic.

7. Write the best book you can. Sometimes, we have to be reminded. 

Thank you, Michael Connelly, for making that so clear to me in the very first writing symposium I ever attended. In the end, it’s about the writing.

I think I’ll get back to that now.

At Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, being introduced by manager Ian Kern.
Photo Credit: Mariann Moery

REMINDER: At Goodreads, there's still time to register to win a signed copy of NO BROKEN HEARTS: Enter to Win a Copy. Goodreads uses an algorithm to select the winners, on October 31, which takes the selection pressure off the writer. 

My Dinner With Joseph Heller

It was the year Joseph Heller agreed to come and be the literary lion at the Trenton State College Writers’ Conference, sometime in the late eighties. The school is now called The College of New Jersey. Jean Hollander, director of the conference, contacted me at the last minute to come and run a workshop, because another writer had bailed. I was working at Applied Data Research at the time; I remember that because I still had an office and my office still had a door.

I took a personal day in the middle of the week to go to the conference. A free lunch for the writers running workshops was part of the deal. By the time my workshop was over there was only one other person in the writers’ free lunchroom, a gorgeous-looking woman with a profusion of dark curly hair and the sort of gypsy vibe to her clothes that we so admired in the eighties. I was dressed in tweeds, making believe I was enough of a professorial authority figure to run a workshop. As I hastily munched my free sandwich, this woman stretched her arms out in front of her, yawned elaborately, and said, “If I were home right now I would be taking a nap.”

A nap! Who the hell took naps in the eighties? I was working my butt off at the software factory, keeping house for a husband and small child, and rising every morning at 4:30 to get in a couple of hours of writing. “How do you get to take naps?” I said. “If I weren’t here, I’d be slaving at the office.”

She said, “I’ve never worked a day in my life.” Except for a writing class she taught at some college in Pennsylvania, she said, and for that she only had to show up once a week. Well, the scales fell from my eyes. This was what life was like for real writers. (I later discovered she was regularly published in the Atlantic Monthly.) For the rest of the day I hung out with this glorious woman, fascinated to see what real writers did.

The first thing she did was to bum a cigarette from two gay poets out in the hall, interrupting an intensely soulful discussion they were having about their work. She was trying to stop smoking, she said, and so hadn’t brought any cigarettes with her. The second thing she did was to peruse the conference program closely enough to spot the fact that the English department was taking Joseph Heller and maybe a couple of other writers out to dinner before his speech that evening. “We should go,” she said. “We’re writers.” She pulled me into Jean Hollander’s office and told her we wanted to go to the dinner. Other people were there, so Ms. Hollander was unable to give us the brush-off gracefully, although she probably wanted to.

Anyway, we were in. When we got to the restaurant, one of those dark places on the outskirts of Trenton where the food is divinely Italian and one’s fellow diners might be mobsters, my new friend grabbed us seats directly across from Joseph Heller. The faculty of the English department, some of them hard of hearing, were forced to sit at the ends of the long, narrow table while we writers kept up a witty conversation in the middle. “You should write humor, Kate,” Joseph Heller said at one point. We said I did. He told us stories of the joys of being a famous writer, how his publisher had bought him two servings of oysters at a restaurant in London when he was touring, how he had gone out to the market next day and had seen what they cost, how he had gloated.

When dinner was over the faculty members streamed out into the rainy parking lot to go get the car. My gypsy friend and I began to follow them, but at the door, Joseph Heller put his arms around both of our shoulders. “Wait,” he said. “We are the famous writers. Wait here and they will bring the car to us.”

We waited, and they came. Next day, back at the software house, I put up a little hand-lettered sign on my office door: “Kiss my ass. I’m a famous writer."

© 2014 Kate Gallison

Posting About Nothing

I'm at a loss for something to write about today.

Can't write about politics, because I have taken a sacred oath not to. Anyway I have no views on politics right now, other than, "Eeuch." That won't fill a column.

Can't write about family stuff because I just don't write about family stuff. If I did, I would tell you that Harold and I drove to a charming beach house in Harvey Cedars last Sunday to celebrate the fiftieth birthday of my eldest son. Outside, the surf was crashing and the sea grass newly planted on the dunes was waving in the breeze. My daughter-in-law put on a wonderful spread, baked ziti, roasted sausage and peppers, crispy rolls. One of my granddaughters brought two of the most deliciously decadent cakes I've ever tasted. I saw relatives I hadn't seen in years. I met family connections I hadn't ever met. There was a baby running around. Everyone seemed prosperous and healthy. It was great.

One of my son's half-brothers made me a very pretty speech about how thankful he was that we—his adoptive mother and I, as well as the adoptive mothers of the other twenty or so half-siblings—had given them homes when their birth mothers couldn't take care of them, and I treasure his remarks. I've always seen myself as something of a failure where my adopted boys are concerned. I'll take all the compliments I can get.

If it were a novel there would have been undercurrents at the party, perhaps simmering feuds that might have led to hurt feelings or outbursts of violence. Fortunately for all of us it was real life. Which I hardly ever write about.

And so I have nothing to write about today, nor am I starting to write my memoirs. In fact, I'm not writing much of anything these days. What I'm about to do is go down to Rojo's and have a coffee with Harold. Maybe I'll write about Lambertville later on. Or murders. Something.

© 2014 Kate Gallison

On The Road Again

I met Jenny last year at the Book House, Albany's great independent bookstore when she was promoting her first novel, Cover of Snow, in the company of a bunch of mystery authors doing the same. I had no inkling that when she left the store, she, her husband and two children were getting in their SUV and heading West on her self-plotted and self-financed National Book Tour. On this April 26th, Jenny was back at the Book House solo to read from her second suspense thriller, Ruin Falls, now a member of Sisters In Crime/Upstate Chapter, having relocated with her family from New Jersey to Phoenicia, NY. Afterward, they all piled into their SUV again and headed out for Seattle on the Milchman National Book Tour, with her publisher Random House's blessings.

Robert Knightly

---

Last year when my debut novel came out, my husband and I did the only logical thing. We rented out our house, traded in two cars for an SUV that could handle Denver in February, and withdrew the kids from first and third grades in order to car-school them.

OK, maybe it wasn’t all that logical.

But when you finally get published, after a thirteen year journey/struggle/battle, and you know that the only thing harder than breaking in is building a lasting career as an author, then you might just figure that you have to give this thing your all.

And given a certain amount of flexibility—i.e., your husband works in IT and is the most supportive guy in the world, and your children are still young enough to find it cool to spend 24/7 with their parents—you might also figure that grassroots efforts have helped launch businesses for ages, and why not get out there, introducing yourself and your work, one bookstore, one library, one reader at a time?

There was an event I did in Goshen, Indiana when exactly one person showed up. And he didn’t buy a copy of my book—something that always makes me upset for the bookseller who is going to all the trouble of hosting an event. But it turned out okay. The attendee bought a novel by a different author, which I recommended. And he told me that he wasn’t buying my book because he’d already read it, which was what led him to drive three hours to meet me in Goshen.

That evening became what I call a moment of the heart.

Did it make economical cents to drive to Goshen? Of course not. But it made a different kind of sense. The kind that says we write books because we want to connect with people. Getting to meet them face-to-face is a privilege and an honor.

Of course we also meet people in other ways these days. Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn have expanded my world in ways I couldn’t have envisioned. Especially not back when I began trying to get published…and there wasn’t any such thing as Facebook.

It was queries on cotton resume paper and ream boxes for mailing manuscripts. Last month I gave a talk at a college and when I used the phrase ream box I was met with blank faces.

I’ve aged out of something, I guess. But I also wonder if a new age might be coming.

An awareness that we all hurry too fast and try to do too much at one time. There’s slow food now, and maybe there should be slow reading. Slow book tours anyway. Something is lost when we cease investing in the moment and the development of relationships. Lost in our connections, and maybe lost in our writing, too.

I don’t want to be too blithe about any of this. There are only so many hours in a day, and writers are tasked with doing so much now that it can be impossible to keep up. Not everyone—not anyone really—can take seven months out of their lives to try to start a career.

But you don’t have to. In fact, I think seven days of this approach can add a dimension to your career, and even your life.

The first question I am usually asked when I speak about “the world’s longest book tour” is whether it was worth it. I answer that it depends on what worth it means. Judging a book tour by book sales makes little sense. By the time you’ve paid for gas, accommodations in some cases, and a bite to eat, you’d be hard-pressed to sell enough books to recoup expenses.

I could point again to the moment of the heart, but there’s another more tangible gain, which I call the ripple effect. What if I meet a bookseller who continues to hand-sell my books for months after I am there? What if there’s an attendee who doesn’t read what I write, but has a friend who does? Or one who’s a columnist for a major newspaper? What if a book club shows up just for fun? All of these things and more happened while I was out on the road.

As writers we are casting the stones of our stories into a massive sea. The more ripples we can get started, the bigger our chances for success.

My debut novel landed on multiple regional bestseller lists, and exceeded publisher expectations in other ways. When my second novel came out, my publisher decided to set up the first leg of the tour. That’s right—I’m now doing it all over again.

This time a fellow author decided to come along for the first 1000 miles of the ride, in the backseat with the kids sleeping against her. If Bob Knightly is kind enough to have me back to the blog, I will describe just what that was like.

Is all of this worth it? Please continue to follow along. Let me know what you think.

Jenny Milchman

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Jenny Milchman is a suspense novelist from New York State. Her debut novel, Cover of Snow, published by Ballantine in 2013, was chosen as an Indie Next and Target Emerging Authors Pick, won the Mary Higgins Clark award and has been nominated for a Barry. Her second novel, Ruin Falls, came out in April.

The Ghosts of Those Around Me

Many of you know that I have incredible honor and privilege of calling myself a writer in residence at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street.

The room I work in—the Allen Room—is reserved for writers with book contracts.  I spend three or four days a week there.  I have a bookshelf of my own where get to keep the books I need from the library’s extensive collection.  On each visit, I can take any empty cubicle and spread out my research, open my laptop, and go to long ago and far away in my imagination.  It’s heaven.

It’s also a bit intimidating.  For one thing, some writers I MUCH admire, who write absolutely splendid books, are frequently in that same room.   I often wonder what I am doing in there with them.

Right inside the door as one enters is a bookshelf as tall as I, filled with volumes that were written in that room.  The one I am most aware of on those shelves is Lily Tuck’s The News from Paraguay.  I had already begun to research Invisible Country, my story set in the same time and place, when her book won the National Book Award for fiction.    Clearly, Lily Tuck and I studied the same source material.

What a daunting notion!

But I stay, and work, trying my best to tell a really good story.

If I were to run home, there are awesome ghosts all around where I live.  Here are some of the works produced below 14^th Street, beginning with our hero EAP:

113 ½  Carmine Street: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe

147 West 4^th Street: Ten Days that Shook the Word by John Reed

Grove and Bedford: Alice’s Let’s Eat by Calvin Trillin

Charles Lane: Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Washinton Mews: Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

12 W. 10^th Street: Etiquette by Emily Post

13 East 8^th Street: Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

East 2^nd Street & Avenue A: Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg

Horatio and Washington Streets: Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz

West 12^th Street and Sixth Avenue: In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak

21 Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain

5 Bank Street: My Antonia by Willa Cather

For twenty-five years, I lived on the last block of Waverly Place just before it ends at Bank Street.  Right at the end of my block stood the former home of Willa Cather.  I came and went, frequently aware of who had lived there, picturing her with pen and paper and her imagination taking herself back to the prairie.

How can I keep going, with all these impressive ghosts around me?

Actually, I cannot stop, no matter how intimidated I am.  Being a storyteller is a calling, a vocation.  It grabs some of us, and we have to do it, no matter what.  Even if we cannot do it as well as we would like, or very well at all, even if our gifts don’t measure up to our hopes and expectations of ourselves, we must keep trying.  Writing stories is not what we do.  It’s who we are.

Annamaria Alfieri