The Split Nibs

Book Club Bingo was created by Nib Nicole, and inspired by her 15-year old Book Club, Well Fed Head. Digital download includes 9 Bingo cards to print out for your group. These will inspire and engage! Perfect icebreakers for new and seasoned groups. Topics include some of the following: * You did not finish the book. * Wine is on the menu. * Author is still living. * Someone in the group is a librarian.

A coworker sent me this podcast, and what a delight. Definite SNL ‘Delicious Dish’ vibes but totally unironic in its mundane soothing tempo. I share this because 

a) Haven’t shared anything in a good, long while. Woof. 

b) Writers + Insomnia = BFFE 

A Reader's Plea...

June 2, 2018

I'd like to pause here betwixt coffee and breakfast to make a short complaint about a certain flavor of "Women's Fiction."  My opinion on this might be flavored by the fact that I woke up before four, and settled in to finish another novel which just left me...cold.  As the bathtub filled, I set my ancient Kindle down slowly, side-stepping the urge to drop it like a stone.  At that moment, I couldn't articulate precisely what bothered me about this novel, about this TYPE of novel.  Now, after an hour or two has passed, I feel I can.  Here's the short list of things that suck about this time of "contemporary" city-based women's fiction.

A lack of authentic empathy:  Even best friend characters who have known each other for _________ number of years, do not believably "know" or "like" one another.  The author devotes too much time and text showing how both characters coolly regard and evaluate one another.  The dialog is stilted.  It's like a long uncomfortable conversation you might overhear at an Au Bon Pain, one that makes you stuff the rest of your bagel in your mouth just so you can get out of there.

Third Person Omniscient POV:  Okay, people.  It's hard enough to like these characters.  Don't give us another half-mile of distance by telling us what is pinging around in the heads of these not very interesting or relatable people.  For God's sake, show a little tenderness.

A cool look at relationships and love:  Yeah.  We get it.  These characters are in their thirties.  They've SEEN SO MUCH.  They're not quite happy in their jobs as Celebrity Chefs or Publishing Professionals, or Independently Rich Owners of Brownstones.  They've developed slow-forming calluses all over their hearts and souls, calcified by years of Starbucks and blueberry smoothies, and they are numb to the possibilities of new friendships, new relationships.  They study every possible candidate with an eye primed for flaws, already prepared to reject them so that they might return to their tiny well-decorated apartments to regard themselves (with detachment) in the bathroom mirror, noting (in the third person) that their skin is losing its youthful elasticity.  

Not enough lovemaking:  Why is it, authors, that when describing sex in this type of novel, your immediate instinct is to lean hard toward the F-word?  Are we to understand that your word choice is daring?  Are the characters so numb to any kind of touch that the act itself must be as cold and impersonal as they are themselves?   It's not that I'm opposed to cursing or the use of colorful language in adult books - it's just that that particular word is not colorful.  It's without emotion.  It's flat.  It's also usually used with a reference as to where IT occurred, like on the living room floor, in the shower, against the tiny bar that separates the living room from the kitchenette.   Come on.  I know sex is hard to write, but you HAVE to learn to do a better job.

Bittersweet, in-the-middle-of-the-action endings:  Don't end your stupid book with a character dropping a pencil, or pushing her child on a swing set, or staring mildly at a designer throw pillow.  It's damn disconcerting to the reader that somehow managed to trudge all the way through your book to be left feeling nothing at the very end of it.  For real.  Leave us with something.  Give us a little hope, a final thought, something to take away with us.  We deserve that much.

Tapioca Dance Mover & Shaker, Laura June Topolosky

Inspired by full-time writer and mother Laura, and her new book “Now My Heart is Full”. Click for full interview!

I had a dream that I was sitting in the front row of a George Saunders talk at the St. Louis County Library. He was so close to me -- or, rather, I was so close to him, for surely in this scenario I am the satellite and he the significant gravitational object against which I orient myself, not vice versa! -- that I would’ve been able to see the stubble growing on his chin had I remembered to bring my microfiber cloth to clean my glasses, which I unfortunately hadn’t. [Link: My New Glasses Press Against My Greasy Forehead and Need Constant Wiping Off.pdf ]  In case you haven’t already guessed, this was no dream! This was real life! Living in the middlest, westernmost part of the Midwest, it’s rare for a well-known author to break the standard NY-Chicago-Portland-LA-Austin tour circuit and come to us. The 3.5 hour drive to St. Louis was well worth another chance to see The George (as I literally call him Him).

Saunders’ presentation was almost completely about the craft of writing and was loaded with tips and tricks for being a famous, Saundersesque author (”Just Add Talent!”). Sitting front and center, I was a little self conscious about taking notes for some reason (I guess I felt like I had to maintain steady, intense eye contact or he’d assume I was just like all the other talentless hacks in the room, having to rely on pen and paper instead of merely absorbing his words into my superior brain??), so please note that this advice is filtered through the unreliable memory of an extreme fan.

TIPS FOR BEING A FAMOUS WRITER ACCORDING TO GEORGE SAUNDERS [paraphrased]

Better to be king of your own shit hill than groveler on someone else’s mountain. I’ve listened to tons of interviews with George, and he is fond of his shit hill vs. mountain metaphor. It was still really cool hearing it come from his actual mouth IRL, and I still laughed at the appropriate places. The gist of it is this: as a young writer, he tried emulating Hemingway, and it wasn’t working for him because only Hemingway is Hemingway. After a few failed projects, rife with terse, Hemingwayesque sentences, he realized he was at his best when he was being himself, pursuing and nurturing his own style, building his own shit hill, as it were, taking inspiration from but not mimicking his heroes. It meant climbing down from the towering, verdant range of Mt. St. Hemingway and relocating to teensy Saunders Hill (labeled with a sign that looked like it was written by the Chik-fil-a cows), but it was honest, and the reader can smell dishonesty from a hundred miles away. [Note to self: must stop baldly mimicking George Saunders.]

Story doesn’t have to do everything, but it has to do SOMETHING. Like most people, I have a chorus of rude/critical voices in my head. The loudest one is fond of shouting “Sit down, moron, you’ve got nothing to say!” This always cows me because...damn it, it’s true! I mean, I have stories I want to tell, but they seem like small, frivolous stories -- nothing that would advance humanity, and isn’t that what writing is supposed to do? Nope, says Saunders. A story doesn’t have to say heady things about environmentalism or human rights or what-have-you to be meaningful to the reader. It doesn’t have to be rife with intricate symbolism, it doesn’t have to be a coded map for our times, it doesn’t have to respond to the gravest political issues or tackle a previously unsolved philosophical quandary. It does have to do something, though. Something has to take place. I.e. it should avoid being a 5,000 word description of a character staring wistfully at themselves in the mirror or of a plastic grocery bag being whipped around in a Midwest thunderstorm (both scenarios I may or may not have explored in my earlier writings). I mean, you still have an obligation to offer your poor reader something of use, after all, even if it’s just momentary escape. A small story can still entertain, and entertainment in dark times is nothing to sneeze at.

Here’s an entry about that time I spilled a cup of coffee on my baby.