Yay, Jilli!

Seriously -- sometimes I forget and just assume that most people I know would have books out.

I was talking to this woman in a bar who was telling me she just wrote a book, and I was asking her questions about her agent, her word count and stuff like that, and she was like, "Are you a writer, too? How do you know all this?"

Seriously -- sometimes I forget and just assume that most people I know would have books out. Congrats, Jilli!

Hmmm, maybe I should bribe my housemate to have Buffista books somehow come up more often in Amazon searches...

Congratulations Jilli!!

I like when the author withholds information in a realistic way; that is, there's no reason for the characters to explain to the reader so they don't engage in awkward exposition.

P-C, I love you. And I'm going to tell you why and then we can pause to Laugh at Barb and how incredibly silly she is.

The manuscript I'm working on right now? Lots of withholding. There are some very, very key parts of the character's past that affect actions she's taken throughout the course of the story thus far, but the reader doesn't know what happened, specifically in her past, to make her behave this way.

The few people who've read it have even gone, "Buzzah? Barb? WTF??" and I'm all like "in time, my darlings. In time, all will be revealed."

And it will be-- in bits and pieces, as it happens in real life. And yes, it's been a deliberate choice-- it had to be. The story's written in First Person POV, so for the bits of exposition to happen, there has to be a reason-- a real reason-- for it to happen, beyond "I'm going to sit here and think Deep Thoughts of My Past for You, Dear Reader."

But it wasn't until P-C phrased it just that way, that the proverbial light bulb went off above my head.

Good God, I really should be taken out back and smacked upside the head. But instead, I offer myself up to be laughed at-- goodness knows I'm laughing at myself.

"I'm going to sit here and think Deep Thoughts of My Past for You, Dear Reader."

Exactly! I mean, have you read Sharp Objects? I think you should. Because it sounds like it does just what you want to do. It's a first-person POV, and the main character is very damaged, but she doesn't sit there and spill out all the details about how she is and what her past was like. You just pick up on it gradually, and it's really unsettling that way. Because you go into a book with a blank slate, making your assumptions of a character based on what you read, and then there's one line that totally throws you off because you don't know exactly what it means, so you just file it away until you get another line that seems to confirm that, yeah, that one line DID mean what you thought it meant, and it's fun.

I am all about mystery teases to keep me reading. Sometimes, it's not just about wanting to know what's GOING to happen, but what HAPPENED. Hell, that's how this story works, really.

Well, that narrative in that was done super, super well, in the way that it took on the tone of stream-of-consciousness, what have I done, no, I know exactly what I've done.

When the man had asked her why she wanted a handgun, she had answered, "Protection." From fading away into the background, from becoming absorbed by a life that refused to begin. She had been set apart already; now, she would set herself apart.

That.

That was the line where you defined EVERYTHING. Absolutely perfect.

Thanks. It was one of those lines that just happened when I played with the words. Oh, English. You have built-in profundity!

"Oh my God, after twenty years of being the most rational Bolshevik woman in Moscow, this goblin has driven me crazy!...He made her forget she was a Communist." from Sashenka, shortlisted for 2008's Bad Sex Writing prize.

My new tag line. I've been looking for a new one; thanks Tom!

Oh, I am always so torn between which Bad Sex contestant is the worst. But the Russians for the gold!

Gah! I have half a dozen new-to-me books sitting on a table, taunting me. I got them for the trip, so I shouldn't read them now. But they're right there. Waiting. And it's a gray, cold, day that would be perfect for slounging about, reading.

Pick one, Calli! Reading while traveling lacks that perfect, happy immersion into another world, I have found, so pick the one that you think that will happen with! And enjoy! Wrap up in something soft, drink/eat something yummy and enjoy!

Why deny a simple pleasure?

GO TEAM READING HEDONISM!

Oh, and then? Choose a favorite book, a comfort read, something that will take your senses back to the place and time you read it, and buy a used copy to take on the trip.

I read Woman on the Edge of Time at the lake one summer. It was a mind-expanding book for me, and I've reread it more than once. Each time I'm reading about future worlds, and I feel surrounded again by the green-gold gloom of sunlight through the trees, the whisper of leaves in the light wind, the creak of the hammock, the rise and fall murmur as boats tootle past, the slap of wake against the shoreline, and the quabbling of the kids as they paddle in the shallows. That book is forever intertwined with where I was when I first read it.

If you have books that are anchored in place and time like that for you, and you enjoyed the book, choose one of those to replace the new one you read today. You may need a brief comforting anchor when you're far away in unfamiliar surroundings.

I often choose a book to reread and then realize it wasn't the book but the memory I wanted to savor. Works, either way.