Cats Are the Solution to Writer’s Block (Well, Sort Of)

My Name is Pambu

M. Paul Emanuel, a professor of Literature and director of the school play in Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, advises Lucy Snowe, about to take the stage, to “not look at the crowd, nor [to] think of it… Imagine yourself in the garret, acting to the rats.”*

It’s funny that M. Paul/Brontë addresses one fear (performing in public) by referencing another fear (rats), unless people weren’t as afraid of rodents in the more rural mid-19^th Century as they are now (maybe the connection to disease wasn’t as obvious, despite the Black Plague; the “miasma” theory of infection was still commonplace then). I happen to be terribly afraid of rodents, and so would much prefer performing in a public venue to spending any amount of time in the company of rats. I don’t even want to think about rats, not even domesticated ones.

Nevertheless, M. Paul has a point, and while it probably doesn’t work for everyone, many adhere to versions of this advice when trying to overcome performance anxiety. From the stage, the audience largely vanishes in the dark seating area anyway.

Could M. Paul’s advice, sans rats, also work for those wrestling with writer’s block?

To the extent that perfectionism lies at the heart of both stage fright and writer’s block, the advice is likely useful. Perfectionism results in the paralyzing fear that our work is flawed, whether it’s a vocal performance, the opening statement of a trial, or a piece of creative writing. We’re afraid that our best efforts won’t please our audience: the ticket holders, the jurors/judge, or the readers. It makes us clam up on stage, fumble over our words, or doom our manuscripts to a state of perpetual tweaking. (See my previous post, Perfectionism and Publishing).

These fears can debilitate us even in the earliest stages of our work because we get too far ahead of ourselves. We imagine the reception (or lack thereof) of our work when we should be focusing on plot and character development.

So, for those of us too concerned about the audience, it makes sense to take a step back and think of the earlier stages of a draft as akin to a diary, meant for our eyes only. Some people like to share early drafts with critique partners and writer’s groups, scene by scene, and I’m sure there are benefits to this method. For me, though, the anxiety would be too much. The time for sharing is later. Words flow more easily when the only ones familiar with my newest projects are my cats; they can’t read, but they’re far more useful with the rodents than I am.

*The Villette-along continues; check out the discussion on Twitter (#villettealong) and the Vol. I Wrap-Ups:

Covered in Flour

Too Fond

I’m Nangi, Pambu’s Sister

When Our Literary Heroes Become Victims

A few weeks ago, Harper Lee, the reclusive author of To Kill a Mockingbird, made headlines by filing a lawsuit in New York against her agent, Samuel L. Pinkus, and his affiliates.

Lee alleges that Pinkus, the son-in-law of her former agent Eugene Winick, took advantage of her age and poor health, including the residual effects of having suffered a stroke, her poor eyesight, and her impaired hearing, to dupe her into signing over the rights to her novel. He paid her royalties of some amount (it’s unclear how those royalties compared to what she should have received) and reassigned the copyright back to her in 2012, but Lee alleges in this lawsuit that Pinkus breached his fiduciary duties (by self-dealing, failing to be truthful, and failing to ‘work’ the copyright to maximize royalties) and manipulated her into assigning away the copyright as part of a complicated scheme to avoid paying back Winick’s agency for commissions he diverted while Winick was ill.

From the complaint, filed on May 3, 2013, it’s unclear whether or not Lee has suffered an economic harm (she might have received all of the income she was entitled to receive), but it makes sense that she would sue to clarify the status of her copyright and for a full accounting of those royalties.

Interestingly, the complaint alleges, among other alleged breaches of fiduciary duty, that Pinkus failed to “work the copyright,” including by “not respond[ing] to offers by HarperCollins to discuss the licensing of e-book rights.” Back in October, when I wrote about Lee’s 2006 letter to Oprah decrying the use of “cold metal” to read books, I noted how To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t available as an e-book. It’s fascinating to learn that Lee might not have been the one to stand in the way of digital access to her work.

Overall, the complaint is a difficult set of allegations to untangle. I am interested in literary lawsuits, such as the Faulkner estate’s frivolous attempt to dismantle copyright law’s fair use doctrine, but I struggle to articulate my reaction to Lee’s allegations.

I read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time as a kid, and the novel inspired me to go to law school. Many in my profession can genuinely say the same, even though most abandon their dreams of vindicating the rights of the oppressed in favor of the ample pay that comes with maintaining and expanding the hegemony of corporations.*

It’s sad to think someone may have preyed upon one of our literary heroes, but in the end this looks less like a scheme unique to authors and more like yet another case of a duplicitous person in a position of trust manipulating an elder with medical problems for their own gain (allegedly). Unfortunately, elder financial abuse is common, and it’s always a sad situation, whether the victim is a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist duped out of her copyright and royalties or a factory worker swindled out of her savings.

*It’s hard to resist when we graduate with so much debt.

Our Shrinking World

As a Jane Eyre fan, I’m not sure what took me so long to read Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853). Beth at Too Fond encouraged me to finally crack it open (or rather, download it/turn it on) by hosting a Villette read-along this month, and Jaclyn at Covered in Flour and others have joined in the fun. It’s a transnational book club — a group of readers from various countries reading the same book at the same time — all from the comfort of our own homes.

It’s a small world, isn’t it?

In Villette, which I’m only 15% of the way through, Brontë hints at the shrinking world even in Lucy Snowe’s (the main character’s) lifetime: “Fifty miles were then a day’s journey (for I speak of a time gone by…).” (Chapter V). I can only assume Snowe/Brontë is referring to trains. Steam locomotives revolutionized travel, but for destinations away from the line, fifty miles probably remained a day’s journey, unless it was “good road,” which according to Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy, made fifty miles “little more than half a day’s journey… a very easy distance.”

Can you imagine what Snowe/Brontë (or Darcy/Jane Austen) would have thought about cars and airplanes? Or the Internet? Would it have changed Brontë’s or Austen’s novels if these authors had lived in a time when sweethearts could text each other “hey miss u” the moment they felt lonely, rather than spending weeks agonizing over the lack of news?

Brontë’s Snowe is a provincial young woman who visits London and likes its “spirit,” causing her to wonder, “Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets, and forever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?” (Chapter VI).

These days, with modern transportation and the World Wide Web, there isn’t much of a risk of “forever abandon[ing] [our] faculties to the eating rust of obscurity” by choosing to stay in smaller towns — not that my hometown, Philly, is a hamlet, except by London, New York, or Beijing standards. With virtual offices, blogs, and even transnational book clubs, we have the flexibility to live wherever we want yet stay even more connected than any prior generation.

Boys Should Read Fancy Nancy

Earlier this week, author Maureen Johnson tweeted, “I do wish I had a dime for every email I get that says, ‘Please put a non-girly cover on your book so I can read it. – signed, A Guy.” She then challenged her twitter followers to “Redesign book covers by Literary Dudes,” telling them to “Imagine [the books] have been reclassified as by and for women.”

The results put bouquets of flowers and heart-shaped hands on the covers of books written by male authors and changed several of the authors’ names to ones commonly associated with women (i.e., Jonathan became Jane Franzen).

This challenge highlights the problem of gender-based marketing in books. The publishing industry, however, only reflects and reinforces the real source of the problem: consumers. We are the ones who accept that a bouquet of flowers is feminine and therefore tied to Jane, not Jonathan. We are the ones who assign a value to it.

Do we ever stop to wonder what’s so feminine about a bouquet of flowers? For the record, despite his Y chromosome, my husband enjoys cut flowers more than I do.

Even if flowers were somehow feminine, why would a guy avoid such an image on a cover? Why would he perceive a book with such a cover to be unworthy of his attention?

The problem starts at home, reinforced by the books we read to our children. Many parents perceive children’s books as being either “for boys” or “for girls,” which is particularly problematic because the books we read as children help shape who we become as adults.

The answer, however, isn’t to remove pink from the illustrations of so-called “girly” books. Fancy Nancy, a precocious child with a love of vocabulary and all things fancy, shouldn’t become “Alphabet and Action Adam” to encourage boys to read it. Rather, boys should read Fancy Nancy just the way she is, frills and all. Pink is for everyone (I think Pinkalicious said that).

My five-year-old twin daughters, Maram and Samira, enjoy Fancy Nancy as much as Batman. In preschool, Maram’s male peers call her “one of the boys” because she plays superheroes with them. She accepts it as a compliment, and I wonder whether any of the boys would think it’s a compliment to be called “one of the girls.” As far as I know, few boys participate in the games commonly associated with girls — perhaps they need to read more Fancy Nancy.

If boys had better access to Fancy Nancy and similar books at home, maybe they wouldn’t grow up to avoid books with flowers or young women on the cover. Maybe they wouldn’t grow up with the perception that anything associated with women is of lower quality. Maybe they would grow up to respect women more.

Unfortunately, it boils down to adults: We can’t expect parents to read books with flowers on the cover to their sons if they won’t even read those books themselves.

Putting Superpowers to Good Use

What makes a person extraordinary?

In the 1960s, John McPhee set out to assess what made Bill Bradley an exceptional basketball player, first on Princeton’s team, which is the focus of McPhee’s A Sense of Where You Are, and then on the New York Knicks with a prestigious stint as an Olympian and as a Rhodes Scholar in between. Bradley’s excellence at the sport went beyond the obvious factors like height and jumping ability — he was tall, but not the tallest player on his college team, and his “ability to get high off the floor” was “among the worst of the Olympic candidates” — and yet he became the highest per-game scorer in Princeton’s history, and he was later inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

You’ll have to read McPhee’s book to get the full explanation, but Bradley’s excellence boiled down to hard work, skill, and a “remarkable natural gift.” Essentially, he had eyes on the back of his head.

With these talents, Bill Bradley was an outstanding athlete, who excelled academically and went on to serve the public as a member of the U.S. Senate, representing New Jersey from 1979 to 1997. He was also a candidate in the Presidential primaries in 2000.

Most of us will never lead such a high profile life, but that doesn’t mean ordinary folks aren’t extraordinary in many ways. Many people I meet have at least one skill or talent that sets them apart from everyone else, whether it’s their kindness or their ability to listen, to navigate social systems, or to use their knowledge to improve other people’s lives. Those who use their skills to help others are superheroes without the capes and, obviously, without all of the powers we traditionally ascribe to fictional heroes.

Of fictional heroes, it’s interesting that my daughters’ favorite is Batman,* who doesn’t possess a superpower. In the words of my husband, who knows more about the superhero scene than I do: “That’s what makes him unique. He’s cunning and resilient,” and I would add a caveat about his wealth, which enables him to have all the gadgets and gear that endear him to children.  Whatever his attributes or resources, he uses them to fight crime, a public good, even if his vigilante methods leave something to be desired in terms of Due Process.

Mighty Maram!

It’s tough for children to understand that justice means more than simply catching the “bad guy,” and I’m not going to ruin their imaginary games with a detailed account of constitutional principles, or of how even the most skilled detectives and prosecutors can be mistaken about a person’s guilt. I’ll let their hero worship continue unchecked, except to teach them that, whatever a person’s skills happen to be, what really matters in the end is what she does with it.

*The real reason for their love of Batman is that they idolize their Aunty Na, who happens to be a Batman aficionado.

Should We Save Bookstores from the Internet?

I have fond childhood memories of running down the aisles of our local bookstore, pulling titles from the shelves, and begging my parents to buy several for me. I had an impressive collection of books in my old room, with everything from Where the Sidewalk Ends to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Just as Encyclopedia Britannica has stopped producing its content in print, opting instead to publish online editions, book sellers have also had to contend with the Internet. As it turns out, those that continued to focus too heavily on bricks and mortar stores have garnered the attention of bankruptcy lawyers, not customers.

I lament the loss of jobs in this tough economy, but otherwise, I don’t particularly care that large chain bookstores haven’t been able to survive the onslaught of online shopping.

Apparently, though, there are some (maybe many) who decry the closing of large corporations like Borders. For example, a few weeks ago, best-selling author James Patterson placed an advertisement in the New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly, asking the government to intervene to save our books, bookstores,** and libraries from the Internet. He asks, “If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature?” It sounds like an advertising ploy for his own books (considering that he’s unlikely to get reviews in the New York Times Book Review), but I’ll take his argument seriously.

First, let me say that I doubt our books are in trouble. People are reading more books thanks to the Internet, and maybe it’s not so bad that publishing is in a period of transition. Big publishing houses are equally capable of producing disposable entertainment as they are great works of literature. We might get better books if small presses that cater to particular audiences replace publishing houses, and then devote their resources towards finding and promoting great niche books instead of pushing the next bland bestseller.

Second, putting nostalgia aside, what’s so great about bookstores?** Once I graduated from picture books to contemporary fiction, I’ve almost never walked into a chain bookstore and thought, “This is a great selection of interesting books.” With limited space on the shelves, it’s usually nothing but the bestsellers and the handful of books the publishers are trying to make into bestsellers, the same stuff you can find anywhere.

I never discovered anything new or unique in a Borders. These days, I discover new and interesting books online. I purchase and read more books (mostly digital, but some traditional) now that I no longer have to travel to find a book and now that I’m not limited to the same bestseller stacked fifty high in a cardboard stand.

To be fair, Patterson does have one valid point: libraries are worth saving at government expense, though not because libraries will help “save literature,” but because libraries help people by building a sense of community, by tailoring selections to individual and local interests, and by making reading an experience everyone can afford.

So, yes, let’s fund our libraries, but please keep our tax dollars out of the corporate pockets of chain bookstores. If bookstores are unable to adapt to the changing marketplace, then they deserve to go the way of the milk man.  We’ve still got milk, despite the transition to a different delivery system, just like we’ll still have books.

*The image at the top is the milk chute at my house. The second image should be self-explanatory.

**In a salon.com interview about this ad (linked above), Patterson specifically mentioned Borders, suggesting that he cares that these large corporate chains are closing. He also mentions an independent bookstore in a positive light, and I agree with him there. Independent books, unlike the large corporate chains, provide a personal environment and often introduce readers to lesser known works.

Housekeeping

One mom, squinting to make up for her refusal to wear contacts, wondered, “Is that a panic button?”

Another added, presumably joking, “I hope the whole house won’t explode if one of the kids presses it!”

“Nope,” I replied, thinking nothing could be worse than what the thirty children were already doing to my house in celebration of my twins’ fifth birthday.  “It’s just a central vacuum cleaner port with a red ball stuck in it,” the handy work of one of my daughters a couple of years ago.

The central vacuum cleaner died long before we moved in, and I’ve often wondered how it would compare to the cumbersome portable we use to pick up the remnants of cheerios, animal crackers, and cheddar bunnies.

I hate vacuuming, and luckily, my husband does most of it. Other chores are mine.

This weekend, though, the house is tidy (considering how many kids live here!) and lunch and dinner are planned. So, I’ve got some time to do a little housekeeping on this blog (and visit other blogs):

1. Fixing dead links, thanks to the short lifespan of some of the blogs and other websites I’ve referenced here.
2. Claiming my blog on Bloglovin.com (let’s see if this works): Follow my blog with Bloglovin. What are you using instead of Google Reader?
3. Replying to comments. I appreciate the discussions on this blog, and I apologize for disappearing for a few days. It’s been a very busy week offline.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!