The Story of Your Life

DROWNING INSTINCT is set to come out on March 1 in the UK, and as part of the launch, I've been asked to do a couple of blogs, etc.  You know, it's the whole marketing thing, and I'm fine with that, really.  I'm thrilled that the good folks at Quercus UK have chosen to put my work out there.

Right around the same time, THE SIN-EATER'S CONFESSION also makes its official U.S. debut, although it's already available through Lernerbooks, Amazon, B&N, etc., and I'll likely write an entry or two about it as well.

Both these launches got me thinking, not only about the books but blogging, in general, and my blogging, in particular.  I mean, seriously, come on: why blog?  Really.  There are a gazillion blogs out there, ten trillion of which--a trillion's less than a gazillion, right?--are devoted to writing, the writing life, publishing, marketing, blah, blah.  Some are by writers who know so much more than I do, and yes, I'll say it right now: if Stephen King chose to blog, which he doesn't, I'd be reading what he has to say.  I might even print out and eat the paper.  But when you consider the people I think of as, like, these writing GODS . . . you have to look in the mirror and say--bear with me: as a shrink, I can safely say that I see a shrink on a daily basis--"Ilsa, sweetheart, just WTF can you possibly add to that conversation?"

And you know what that shrink has the GALL to reply?

Nothing.  That's what she says: Ilsa, honey, you got nothing more important to say than any other writer, so shut your pie-hole.

I know: I have a very nasty shrink.  If I could afford it, I'd fire the old bat.

But, really, I'm completely serious here.  All I can offer is what has worked for me.  You know?  It's not magic; it's hard work; it's the screw-your-butt-to-the-chair work ethic that got me through med school and then writing and now to the point of dithering about blogs.  Whether it works for anyone else . . . who knows?  I think the principle's a little like the old joke about the cabbie and Carnegie Hall:

Passenger: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
Cabbie: "Practice, practice, practice."

And that's it, the sum total of my knowledge about writing.  Practice.  Read a lot.  Write some more.  Then do it again.  And again.  And again.

So . . . blogging is stupid, right?  What goes on in my addled brain . . . who gives a rat's ass, am I right?  If my blog falls in the forest, does it make a sound?  Is anyone out there to hear what amounts to a mosquito's fart in a tornado?

To be fair, I'm also kind of a private person.  Blame all those years of training, when it was hammered into me that how and what I felt/feel is best left unsaid.  A therapy session isn't about me.  Oh, it's true that I used what I felt.  Any therapist worth her salt does that.  But the idea of a shrink sharing personal stuff . . . you do it very rarely and only if that might help the patient.  (And even then, a therapist in the grip of what happens in the space between her and a patient--that good old countertransference--you'd be surprised what some therapists can justify.)  The best therapists are welcoming but disciplined, and know when to keep their mouths shut.

So, I don't know who cares about what I have to say in a blog; I really don't.  What I can say is this: I seriously doubt that anything I've ever written ABOUT writing can even come close to moving a reader as much as WHAT I've written in a novel.  

Which brings me around to DROWNING INSTINCT, a book I've not blogged much about because, to be frank, I know the characters, in the very broadest sense, all too well.  I used to sit with them.  I watched them try to destroy themselves.  I watched them drown, quietly, all the time--and these are stories, confidences, secrets, dreams, and confessions that I, as a shrink, will not talk all that much about.  I just can't.

I'm not being melodramatic here, either.  Writing about those who suffer--even if none of my characters is a real person-person--isn't a joke.  I don't do it for kicks.  I tell stories, and whenever I do write about pain and suffering and sacrifice and triumph, whether it's for DROWNING INSTINCT or the ASHES trilogy or THE SIN-EATER'S CONFESSION or the forthcoming WHITE SPACE . . . here's what I'll tell all those people who think that these things don't happen; that people don't behave like this; that no one, no one, could be that stupid/self-destructive/gullible/bone-headed/blind; that shit like this can't happen: get real.  

Honestly.  

Get.  Real.

Now, I receive a lot of fan mail.  (And I love it, guys, really; keep those emails and tweets and all that coming; it lets me know that all those hours hunched over a hot keyboard have been worth it.)  I know I don't get a ten trillionth as much as Suzanne Collins or Maggie Stiefvater or Cassandra Clare or the gazillion more talented, better-selling authors out there.  I know that; I'm okay with it.  My needs are small.  All I care about is a) getting my work out there and b) yeah, okay, hearing that people have enjoyed a book. 

(And, yes, yes, uncle: I would like to be a New York Times bestseller; shoot me, already.  There.  Happy?)

The most touching are those emails I get from fans who've read a book that describes their lives, and DROWNING has provoked quite a few.  I've heard from some very sad and lonely people; I've heard from some very brave souls; I've heard from folks who tell me that I've written the book about their lives.

I take this all very seriously, too, and probably would even if I weren't a shrink.  But I am, and I really have to work, very hard, not to become a shrink when I reply (and I reply to each and every email).  As much as I want to help, I know that it's better for me not to.  Yes, there are all these ethical reasons to refrain--it would be flat-out wrong for me to engage in therapy, however well-intentioned--but I also know that it is far easier to confide in someone when there's no blowback or repercussions (hello, can you spell t-h-e-r-a-p-i-s-t?).  It is easy to fall into the fantasy--the trap, really--of believing you are saving someone when, in fact, you have become merely a bit player in a movie being directed by someone else, mouthing lines written by a script-writer you've never met.

But I hope that I am always open; I trust that I am always welcoming.  If blogging and a web presence have accomplished anything, they give those who find themselves in my books a way of telling me so.  When they do--when I get those emails--trust me, the urge to ease your pain and suffering is very strong.  

So, no, I have nothing new or novel to say about writing.  I have nothing amazing to say in a blog that's worth a millisecond of your time.  I don't claim that my books are all that fabulous either.

But--if you read one of my books and find yourself in the pages and wonder how it is that I know what you're going through, that I understand; that I won't give you any bullshit about how it'll all get better because, sometimes, we know--and we do, don't we?--that it doesn't unless you make some really tough, hard choices; are willing to take a risk, go outside your comfort zone and get help and really change . . .

I know.  I understand.  

And one more thing: I will not forget the picture you posted of your arm after you'd gotten done hacking at yourself, and for which you referenced DROWNING.  I get that, for you, this book was the story of your life.  

Now, listen to what I'm saying.  Read this into the story of your life.

Please, don't do that again.  You really are more valuable than you allow yourself to believe and know.  Really.

Yes, you.  I'm talking to you.

 

Cover Love--and DROWNING INSTINCT Winner!

I've got covers on the brain.

Right now, we're pondering SHADOWS covers. I've seen the artist's conception for the ASHES paperback. My Spanish publisher sent me their version for ASHES; my Bulgarian editor was also in touch just recently. In fact, a couple days ago, my splendid agent, Jennifer Laughran, tweeted a picture of the Hungarian cover. Apparently, it kind of freaked her out because she saw only that face, in very low light.



Anyway, that got me thinking about covers, in general. I am the first to admit that I have my own ideas about what an ideal cover should be: neither boring nor derivative and a story in its own right. The cover should give the reader a hint about what's in those pages. But a cover should also be eye-catching. (Note that I didn't say "appealing;" some very gruesome covers are incredibly powerful.) A cover can also be a truly splendid work of art as in this Scribner stunner for Stephen King's UNDER THE DOME.



I am so in awe, you can not imagine. And, of course, this being Stephen King, the UK paperback gave you a choice of six different covers, five of which focused on a particular character. Seven, if you count the signed limited edition.







Covers come in all flavors. Some are stock images jumbled together. Some could serve as an image for just about any book. (Be honest: how many covers have you seen which show two kids, in silhouette, running across a horizon line/field/hill, etc.? Yeah, I thought so. A ton.) Others are quite unique; they could never be used for or represent any other book.

Now, I remember a few months ago hearing an author badmouth her publisher--in a public forum, mind you (a real no-no, if you ask me)--for picking stupid covers, never including her, and on and on. I kind of wanted to say something mildly snarky like, Do you know how many people would kill to have their books published at all, you idiot? But my mother raised me to be very polite. So when it came my turn to comment, I told the truth: my publishers have ALWAYS asked for my input on a cover. ALWAYS. For them--and me--it's a collaborative process just as important as any edit. I remember the back and forth for DROWNING INSTINCT, which just came out at the beginning of the month. My goodness, I think we must've gone through at least ten or twelve ideas, and those were only the ones I saw. What I find really interesting is that the cover which made the cut . . . I wasn't that wild about it at first. I guess this was because I was still in ASHES-mode, where we were trying to get away from a character-driven cover. So this one for DI . . . I worried. But you know what? Everyone else who saw it loved it--and now that I've had a chance to step back, I agree. This is the perfect cover.



Which only goes to show what I know about cover design.

And that got me thinking about the various incarnations and regional variations for ASHES.

The original cover--which I again came to like quite a bit--was very character-driven.



Me? My initial response? Uh-oh, now everyone will think it's a zombie book. Anyone who's read the book knows that's, well, not quite accurate. What I worried about was that the cover might be promising something the story itself wouldn't deliver. (And, boy, did that creepy fish-belly eye get to me.) Not that there isn't plenty of mayhem and gore and enough chowing down for the most voracious carnivore . . . but the vision being presented wasn't quite right. My editor and I went back and forth a couple times; my agent--much savvier about these things than I--weighed in; and bless his soul, my editor sent various versions incorporating some of our suggestions. In the end, though, they went with the image for that BEA ARC.

If you've been paying attention, of course, you know by now: that particular image didn't truly make the final cut. Rethinking the cover design was a stroke of genius on my editor's part because he understood: the ASHES story is much bigger and broader than a single girl. We all wanted the cover to reach its intended audience, too, not just girls but boys and young men for whom a great adventure cuts across gender.

So, finally, they came up with this.



My first response? UGH. But not ugh, how horrible: ugh, how creepy. This cover has it all: the EMP pulse that destroys the world; that really ill-defined, mysterious and MONSTROUS face which could be anyone and anybody (sort of the point of the book; not all the monsters are brain-zapped, after all). So I thought they really nailed it.

But, you know, everyone has their own taste--and so do different countries. I know of at least one website which ran three covers, not only the final US version, but the UK



and the German.




Really different, huh? I was surprised, but I also came to appreciate that every publisher knows his/her country and audience, how to reach out to them, make them want to pick up a book. Not surprisingly, folks from the respective countries liked their version better than another's. Bulgaria chose to go with the US version:



Spain's cover is different again--and wouldn't you know, I've misplaced the darned thing. I mean it. The email has vanished; I'm just so pissed! (I know, I know; I'll eventually track it down SOMEHOW and post.) But I do remember that the cover was a very intense, deep orange-red with two silhouettes: the taller girl is clearly Alex, and the little kid with pigtails (and a teddy bear) is Ellie.

As I said, right now, we're in the middle of working on the cover for SHADOWS which comes out later this year. I can't tell you anything--much less show you--but while it is different from the final US ASHES cover, it is somewhat similar to what's being planned for the paperback version of ASHES. So perhaps the idea is to go for a certain common "feel," I don't know.

But I am curious: what are your ideas about covers? What goes into making a "good" book cover anyway? Should they be actual works of art (as, for example, the Whelan covers for King's THE DARK TOWER series)? Are book covers art? [My vote: only the really good ones ;-) ] Should covers tell a story the way, say, this one does for King's 11/22/63? (Three guesses who I think tells a pretty great story.)




And do you have cover stories--good and bad--of your own? Bring 'em on.

***

Before I forget, the winner of the DROWNING INSTINCT giveaway is Melanie Goodman! Having already read the book--and given it a lovely review--Melanie said she's giving it to her mom for a read first. To both, enjoy! To all those who entered, thanks. And for the many, many overseas fans who would have LIKED to enter . . . stay tuned. I feel a Goodreads giveaway in our future :-)

We Creatures of Habit

Otto Dix once said, "All art is exorcism." In his case, he was grappling with the demons that took up residence in his brain after World War I



but he could have been talking about any struggle to make meaning, and let me tell you why.

Right now, I'm on this major mission after meaning. I know because I've been having a TON of examination dreams. You know the kind: where you wander into an exam and realize you haven't studied all semester? Where that calculus might as well be Swahili? I've had a couple of house dreams, too, and just last night/early this morning, I jerked awake from a real doozy about a patient--no one I recognized--for whom I apparently kept no record, no notes, did no exams, etc. It was, when you get right down to it, the perfect nightmare: me as a study in--and the very picture of--incompetence. To my credit, just before I woke, I was rearranging my office, moving things into the light, giving my animals--ANIMALS?!--space, digging through old records and beginning to right some of what I'd been doing wrong.

Now, being a shrink and having done some training in psychoanalysis--all those years of staring at acoustical tile, financing my analyst's vacations and free-associating about, well, things better be good for something--I tend to pay attention to my dreams and more so than, say, a deck of tarot cards or a horoscope because dreams are internally generated and chockful of symbols both peculiar to me and somewhat universal. (For example, house dreams are, by and large, commentaries on the dreamer herself. All those messy rooms, dilapidated furnishings...) I know myself well enough to understand that my dreams reflect what I'm worried about. In this case, I'm in the throes of beginning a new novel which is . . . well, let's just say it's kind of different and my self-doubt's a little high. Okay, okay, you win: it's off the charts. Yet I sense some daylight here. In the dream, I did at least understand my mistakes and was working to correct them. In fact, I woke thinking that I really had to declutter my desk, move the printer, take a bunch of books back to the library . . . And these are all signs I recognize. I breathe a little easier when I've cleared the decks, tidied things up, given myself some space. My dream's telling me that, too: although the jury's still out on what those animals mean, my brain's saying, among other things, that I need to give myself both a new space (the book) and SOME space (to cut myself a bit of a break; the sun's gonna come up tomorrow, betcha bottom dollar, there's tomorrow, yada, yada, yada).




Which brings me to writers and their quirks, habits, rituals and superstitions--and, no, they're not all the same beast, IMHO, although they may come to be loaded with the same emotional valence. For example, my paying attention to a dream is not, I think, the same thing as the ritual I follow pretty much every morning: up by first light (and frequently before), brew that pot of coffee, answer some email and read a bit of news (all standing up, by the way, and in the kitchen where I can look out and see the sun rise and which birds are coming to the feeder). But by 7:30 a.m.--8, at the latest--I better be writing-writing, or I start to get this crawl-out-of-my-skin feeling. I become very uneasy. Not starting work by a certain time feels like . . . bad luck.

I'm not alone here. Nearly all writers have habits, rituals, etc. There are famous examples. Ernest Hemingway had a lucky rabbit's foot he used so long it was nothing but sinew and bone by the end. (But contrary to the mythology, Hemingway didn't ALWAYS write while standing:



although he supposedly claimed that "Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up."






This is something that Philip Roth seems to have taken to heart (walking a half mile for every page he finishes while standing). On the other hand, Mark Twain liked his bed




and, if you can believe him,Truman Capote wrote lying down (so the movies--while fabulous--have that wrong):

INTERVIEWER
What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?

CAPOTE
I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don't use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.

The Paris Review, Issue 16, 1957

On the other hand, Capote enjoyed being a celeb and, for his time, was a master of the outrageous.



Dickens arranged the items on his writing desk just so--dueling bronze toads, a bronze dog thief with pups stuffed in his pockets, and a green porcelain tea cup filled with fresh flowers, among other things. (Dickens seems to have had a touch of OCD, too, needing to touch things a certain number of times, but that's another story.) Legend has it that Carson McCullers always wore a lucky sweater when she wrote, which one can only hope she washed.

I could go on, but you get my point and these are only the tip of the iceberg. Do a search and you'll find stories--some of which are probably true--about the habits, superstitions and rituals of writers as various as Stephen King, Anthony Trollope, Franz Kafka, Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Freud . . . the list goes on and on.

Now, is it so amazing that writers have rituals or habits or superstitions? No, and like I said, I don't think they're all the same beast. I believe that a habit can BECOME a ritual and that ritual can become loaded with all sorts of (largely personal) significance, like that coffee mug you just have to use every day or your special pen, or--my personal favorite--a piece of jewelry that symbolizes your current project. (I've had the devil of a time finding one for my current WIP. I sense what I'm looking for/groping toward. Just haven't found the piece that speaks to me quite yet...)

But people are pattern-machines. Our brains are wired to make associations and find meaning in randomness; to generate order out of chaos; to take an ill-defined stimulus and attempt to give or fit it into a story. The behavior's got a fancy name--pareidolia--but it's the basis of dream analysis, you get right down to it. After all, your brain only has a certain set number of images and memories culled from everyday experience. Depending on what's going on, your dreaming mind, that enormously complex, meaning-generating machine, will cycle through and cobble together images it knows will get your attention. Or, to take all the woo-woo out of it, a dream is nothing more than your brain's attempt to associate what you've gone through that particular day with prior experience. Think of a dream as analogous to a computer trying to find the right--or similar--folder in which to insert a specific file, and you catch my drift.

If you think about it a second, this kind of pattern-seeking is to our evolutionary advantage. Nice to predict when that saber-toothed tiger might be on the prowl, for example, and it helps if you understand that the thing with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth contained within something vaguely circular is the face of a person, not a coconut. It is why people inevitably see faces in random dots or, as here, in the rocks and hollows of a crater on Mars




which "really" looks like this under different light at a different angle and with different resolution:




It's why our brain sees a woman's body clinging to this tree,





searches for faces in clouds:




or, depending on your point of view and circumstance, the Devil:





And, by extension, this explains why people structure highly-evolved, codified rituals and rules into things called mythologies and religions--because we are all, each and every one of us, seeking to establish meaning out of chaos. People are hard-wired to seek patterns in randomness. We even know where, in the brain, it happens (the ventral fusiform gyrus, to be precise). So we can't help ourselves. We are the creatures who develop habits in order to survive. It's just the way we are.

By extension, if you think about this for a second, you can readily understand why people like artists and writers develop rituals and habits, need to have things just so, or attach meanings to what are at first random acts later strung together to become an indispensable part of their routine: because we are trying, mightily, to give shape to the jumble of images and emotions that are stories and put them down in recognizable form.

Or put it this way: when I was in practice, I thought of my job as one of helping patients find the words to tell their stories. Well, we writers are no different. Our job is to fish all those words out of our minds and string them together on a page, in a certain order. We struggle with this all the time, and it's exactly why young writers are always looking to more established writers for those magical tricks: lucky charms, quirky habits. Writers create order out of the chaos of their minds, not an easy task by any stretch.

So is it weird or odd or crazy for writers to be superstitious beasts, or adhere to certain habits and patterns, or have their lucky talismans? Not at all. This kind of neuroplasticity leads us to develop associations: ah-ha, I was playing Van Halen when I had that great idea; or I used this typewriter to write my first successful novel and now I'm going to write every novel on this same typewriter(Cormac McCarthy); or hey, I was eating an apple under L'Arc de Triomphe when I figured out how to get my character from A to B (Alexandre Dumas). Or--in my case--I must start writing by a certain time every day or I get very, very uneasy. I must write a certain number of pages (and do, unless there's an earthquake), or I get uneasy. (Worse, the writing loses its vitality and the characters start to die in my head . . . but that's another post for another day.) In the end, I am uneasy because I am breaking with habit, and I have developed a habit because what I'm trying to do is make sense of disorder and chaos.

In the end, there is no right answer about which ritual to follow, what habit will lead to success. If you think that doing a three card reading from a tarot deck is an important way to start your day, have at it. If you want to write in the buff, that's fine, too (Cheever wrote in his boxers), but do pull the blinds and make sure the heat's on. Whatever you choose, remember this: if you expect to be a writer, you must write. How you get into that groove--how you pull together the chaos in your mind--is entirely up to you.

No magic involved.

****

On a completely different note, my new YA novel, DROWNING INSTINCT, has its book birthday on Feb. 1. YAY!






To celebrate, I'll be giving away a signed hardcover. The giveaway is open to residents of the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia, and will start at midnight (EST) 2/01/12 and end Wednesday night, 2/08/12, at 11:59 p.m. (EST). Be sure to stop by my blog beginning at midnight (EST) 2/01/12, and check out the Rafflecopter entry form for your chance to win.