Most Debut Novelists Would Die For This -- Maybe

There are many, many novels written and not much space in The New York Times to review them. A debut novelist would just about die to get in there.

So how, one wonders, does a woman named Emily Fridlund get her first book, "History of Wolves," reviewed twice in the NYT over the course of three days -- and lengthy reviews at that, each with a picture of the author?  Do the journalists who write the daily paper talk to those who put out the Sunday edition? It appears not.

Hopefully, Ms Fridlund takes the view that anything said about her and her book is good publicity as long as the names are spelled correctly because the two reviews are not exactly in agreement.

On Thursday, Jan. 5, Jennifer Senior found "History of Wolves" disappointing. Fridlund withholds critical information from readers, leading them to believe they will be rewarded with something dramatic.  "Those thunderheads massing on the horizon let loose only a weak drizzle."

She also finds part of the story "disorienting" and "strained." 

In conclusion, Senior quotes the book's main protagonist, Linda, as saying: "It's not what you think but what you do that matters."  Fridlund, she says, "might have taken this to heart in a slightly different way. All the ideas in the world can't make a great novel. It's what you do with them that matters."

If Ms Fridlund was left a little downhearted by that assessment, the second review, by Megan, Hustad,  which appeared in the Jan. 8 Sunday book review section, turned out better.

She called the book "an artful story of sexual awakening and identity formation" that eventually turns more stomach-churning.

The overall result, Hustad said, "is a novel of ideas that reads like smart pulp, a page-turner of craft and calibration."

Well, which is it?  One could consult other reviewers, of course, but many (such as other authors) are too conflicted to be particularly objective. Or just take the plunge and maybe write one's own review.

Story Lines for Teenage Fiction

Are you interested in writing fiction for or about teenagers? If so, you might want to take a look at an article in the Jan. 15 New York Times  entitled "Social Media Rules, Created by Kids."

Nominally, it's all about what kids should and shouldn't post online and how parents might help them avoid mistakes, but it also contains material suggestive of story lines.

"Middle school can be an especially complicated time for girls. They are experimenting with social identity, even as their always-on digital world intensifies the scrutiny. Many want to be seen as pretty (even sexy, in some ways), but also as innocent and as 'nice.' This is an impossible balancing act," the article says.

How might that play out in fiction?

It's OK, one girl told the article's author, to post a photo of yourself in a bikini if you are depicted with other family members, but not alone. Be careful about posting photos of vacations in fancy locations. You might offend friends whose families can't afford them.

If you don't want to spend time with someone, don't claim you have too much homework. Just say you have other plans because a photo of you posted by someone else of you with that person could appear shortly.

Since a recent Pew Research Center survey found that about 24% of teenagers are online "almost constantly," behavioral risks loom large. And so, one might argue, do story possibilities.

Why would a young girl post a problematic photo?

"In a study published last summer, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that the pleasure centers in teenagers’ brains respond to the reward of getting 'likes' on Instagram exactly as they do to thoughts of sex or money," the NYT article said.

"I knew I shouldn't have done it,  but I just couldn't stop," she wailed.

Conventional Publishing: In This Case, a Two-Year Process

In my previous post, I provided a link to an interview in which an author told how he had self-published a photo-intensive book on the 1970s Punk music era by means of a surprisingly successful Kickstarter campaign.  He went that way because commercial publishers wanted things done their way -- not his way.

Today I am providing a link to a different interview in which an author of a novel about teenagers describes her ultimately successful experience dealing with "Big Book" -- the conventional publishing industry.

A Book Self-Published With a Kickstarter Campaign

"The Ramones were not a bunch of dumb people making dumb songs, they thought about how to make dumb songs."

Ah -- the Punk era, last referenced here in my previous post.

The quote is from an illuminating interview of successful self-published author David Godlis by The Brooklyn Rail, a monthly on arts, politics and culture. Godlis' book, "History is Made at Night," is built around a series of photographs illuminating the 1970s punk scene.

After frustrating interactions with conventional publishers, who couldn't decide if it was a book about art or about music and didn't want to deal with something that didn't fit into one of their pre-determined categories, Godlis finally launched a Kickstarter campaign with the aim of raising $30,000.

At the end of a 40-day effort, he ended up with about $110,000 and 850 pre-sales of his book, which is currently priced at $40 a copy. Getting the book into conventional bookstores is another matter, however, since bookstores, even those that are independent, are closely tied in to the marketing apparatus of "Big Book" as one might call the mainline publishers.

Godlis' explanation of how this all happened is well worth reading.

Writing About the Use of Drugs

Why write about drug use in a blog about fiction -- other than the fact that drugs figure in many stories and not always in a convincing fashion? Many authors seem have characters taking drugs because transgressive behavior appeals to readers looking for vicarious thrills or an escape from ordinary, presumably boring life.

But at the same time it is a serious real-life issue, particularly at present with the opioid crisis. Today, The New York Times ran a feature story about what seems to be an growing epidemic in largely white middle class America --among the folks who used to be thought of as the bedrock of U.S. society.

The Challenges of Writing About Sex

As we all know well, sex sells and that as much as anything else is probably why it looms as large as it does in a lot of fiction.

But how exactly to write about it, or even more difficult, how to depict it, is a challenge for writers.

Early last year, Literary Hub, staged a single-elimination style tournament for "literary sex writing."  Such prose, I observed at the time, evidently stands in sharp contrast to ordinary old sex writing and as such, may be considered a high-minded, as opposed to a prurient, activity.

Writing in the Internet Age: Quantify Yor Skills

Want to get a job as a writer in the Internet Age?

Katherine Power

Here's what one potential employer, Katherine Power, chief executive of Clique Media Group, a media and marketing agency, wants to see:

"I look for people who can quantify their value, who can really think like an entrepreneur and put a value around their skill set and growth. So if you look at a resume of someone who was a lifestyle writer for XYZ publication, I like to see that they wrote 16 pieces of content per week resulting in X percent growth in page views over three months," she told The New York Times in a "Business Day" interview.

There you have it: ever-increasing page views -- a metric that would leave me, well, unemployable!