Year: 2016
Oops, I lied again. I promised we’d get into the Seven Principles of using your real life in fiction. But again I’m gonna jump forward to a critical corollary: Don’t be afraid to fictionalize. I used to be. I thought if I made stuff up, that would be lying. Being untrue to real life. I would read Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway and think, “See, they’re telling the truth! Everything they’re writing is real! That’s why it works! That’s what I’ve gotta do!” Of course they were fictionalizing. They were exaggerating. They were heightening reality. The trick…
Read More[Continuing our new Mon-Wed-Fri series, “Using Your Real Life in Fiction” … ] I said last week that we would go through the seven principles of using your real life in fiction. But on second thought, we’d better skip to Principle #7 and study it first. It’s by far the most important. Detach yourself from the character that is “you.” The first three novels I wrote (all unpublished and unpublishable) were excruciatingly autobiographical. I was the central character. Everything was about me. But what made them unbearable to read was that the real-life me, the writer, was…
Read MoreToday we start a multi-part series on using your real life in fiction. The example I’m going to use is my own newest novel, The Knowledge. We’ll bounce back and forth from story principles in the abstract to how these concepts were applied in The Knowledge. I’m gonna put up a new post every Mon-Wed-Fri, just for this series. Hopefully we’ll run through Christmas. If you have any questions, please feel free to write them in to the Comments section below. I’ll answer them as best I can. Ready? Let’s start with what was honest-to-God, real-life true in The Knowledge:…
Read MoreToday my newest novel, The Knowledge, goes on sale. (Yeah, that’s me in the photo, taken in the same era in which The Knowledge is set.) You can order The Knowledge right here in a premium “French flap” trade paperback edition not available anywhere else. Also in eBook or an eBook-plus-paperback bundle. There’s a special Holiday Bonus available too. The Knowledge is my (real-life) writer’s coming-of-age story. I’m the protagonist. The internal story is all true. The Knowledge takes place in New York City in 1974, when I was driving a cab and struggling to get my first novel published.…
Read MoreOne of my favorite passages from books about the artist’s life is this one from Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: I begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 A.M., put on my workout clothes, my leg warmers, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each…
Read MoreThis is the third in my series about Love Story. If you’d like to catch up, here is the first one and here is the second one. When you come right down to it, life breaks down into just two states of being.
Read MoreI was thinking about Marco Rubio. I’m writing this a few days before the election, so I don’t know if he won his Senate race or not, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that he did. I’ll bet Marco and his family are breathing a major sigh of relief. A Senate term runs six years. The Rubios are now set up till 2023. No worries about fading from the public scene. No shiling for work in the private sector. Marco now, and for the next six years, possesses a position of high status and influence, a guaranteed income,…
Read More(Though this post first ran March 2, 2012, I find I’m still saying the same thing to authors today. What have you done for yourself lately? ~Callie) Dear Author, What have you done for yourself lately? You’ve written a book? Not enough. You’ve had it accepted and printed by a publisher? Not enough. You met with your publisher and came up with a marketing plan. Not enough. What have you done to ensure your book reaches all the people you know will love it? What have you done for yourself lately? You want radio. You want TV. You want print.…
Read MoreI wouldn’t blame anyone who read last week’s post if they thought, “Man, that’s a bit airy-fairy, ain’t it?” Lemme answer by getting even more airy-fairy. Consider this artist’s body of work: Goodbye, Columbus Portnoy’s Complaint My Life as a Man The Professor of Desire The Ghost Writer Zuckerman Unbound The Counterlife Sabbath’s Theater American Pastoral The Human Stain The Plot Against America Indignation The Humbling Clearly there’s a theme here. Without doubt Philip Roth is dealing with a unified, ongoing issue. He’s examining this theme from every angle, playing games with it, turning it inside-out and…
Read MoreThe first thing we need to define before we get too deep into the mechanics of the conventions and obligatory scenes of the Love Story is to clearly understand what kind of love we’re talking about. There’s the love between mother and child. There’s the love between brother and brother. There’s the love between friends. There’s the love of country. There’s the love between business colleagues. There’s the love of Apple computer products. There’s the love of pizza. None of the above is our concern.
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