The Quest for Writing Privacy

It is getting increasingly harder to isolate yourself for sustained writing which is writing a novel. I have no phone or Internet connection in my office but the day to day life of kids and work and logistics chases me like the long the tail of a kite. It is just harder and harder to disconnect. I use earplugs and a laptop with the Internet connection turned off. My one office is outside the home (Hemingway house) but a lot of times I just go up to the office over my garage. There is no entrance from the house and no phone. I sit down and close the blinds and put in my ear plugs and you would think that is enough. It isn't.

The UPS truck pulls up. Ding dong.  Hmmm...I wonder what that is? No matter back to the writing. Intense. Amazing. My neighbor rolls past with her trashcan then stops and talks with another neighbor. Incredibly I can hear them. I redouble my effort. Now I am really going. Very good. In the zone. Thump thump thump. I hear the steps like an executioner, the door opens and my wife faces a man in agony....WHAT? I need that phone number I asked you about earlier? NOW the man in obvious pain screams. Yes.

I get the number and the steps recede. Now...where was I. Yes.Yes. Moving again. Moving along. DO YOU WANT TO UPDATE YOUR MCAFEE VIRUS CONTROL? What? Where the hell did that come from I have no connection, some  cyber bomb built in by the software gurus...I know even if somebody goes off line we will hawk our product. I respond. NO! And the spy ware slips under the screen like a mole. Now...where was I. Oh yes....yes...yes...I am in the zone....yes...flowing again...perfection.

Dad?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

A Great Recession Story

Saw my neighbor and some friends hurriedly throwing wood into a pickup truck. I hadn't seen him since he divorced his wife and we all speculated that Ron might have just left the house. They couldn't sell of course and so they squatted like two Indians waiting for the next one to blink. Rons business had gone down the tubes when municipalities quit paying their bills and his wife didn't want him sopping up all of her money trying to save it. So they divorced and remained in the same house.

But one day two squads pulled up and we  never saw Ron again. He was just gone. We speculated that maybe he was still in the house but Ann only kept a few lights on and Ron used to light up the house like Christmas. So we figured the police meant Ron had been kicked out and we forgot all about it until I saw him out there by his woodpile with three women and two men. They moved like lightning throwing the cord wood into the back of Ron's white pickup. I used to help Ron cut that wood. It was sort of a fall ritual.

They finished throwing the wood in the truck and sure enough a squad pulls up. I see Ron talking to the cop, gesturing to his wood and the cop shaking his head. Finally Ron left and then the cops left. I stared at where the wood used to be. Ron loved chopping that wood. It was a ritual and now it was just gone. We would all be gone eventually. Ron was just the first.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Why publishers won't buy your book

Mmmmm....this is a tough one. Why wont publishers buy your book. Well, let's break down publishers into it's component parts. We are not talking about Max Perkins. We are talking about someone, probably a twenty something someone or a thirty something someone who quite possibly is female and is working in an office in Manhattan with books flying at her all day long like leaves in a ferocious autumn wind. The books literally rain down and these are books from agents but the slush pile detritus is put into the mix as well. Now put that person in the year 2012

Publishing is on  it's proverbial ass. Mainstream publishing where the brick and mortar press cranks up like an old dinosaur still rules, but there is that comet rolling though space and the temperature is falling. Books still dominate and a publisher can put an author on the map, but at a million kindles a week, the times are a changing.  Let us be clear. This has everything to do with why your book is getting rejected and it has nothing to do with your book getting rejected.  Your book is getting rejected for reasons that mystify and convolute, creating more smoke than fire. Well...so what are they?

Not right for our list. Not right for us. Not right for the genre. Not right. Hmmm. Ok. Don't care for the characters. Could not get into their head. Don't like the voice. Don't reallly see a spot for this book. Too much action. Not enough action. Not enough character development. Too much dialogue. Not enough dialogue. Too Slow. Too long. Too short. Episodic. Been done. No one would care about your characters. Already have a novel like this. No brand. No platform. Just....NO!

Believe me I have heard it all. But here is thing. Do not take it personally. There are so many variables pressing down on this decision that you will hear maybe 1/8th of the truth and that is that they just dont know if they can sell it. And you know what, that is true. No one is sure what sells and what doesn't and throw in the Kindle factor and now you are off to the races. So really, it all comes down to what you think of your work and if you believe in yourself.

Listen to the advice, listen to the criticism, make the changes, don't make the changes, submit it again, write another book. Move on, but never take it personally. It's just business. 

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...one word, just one word...plastics

Political Correctness in Novels

I was reading Chad Harbach's novel The Art of Fielding and cruising along and then I just stopped. I had tripped over a word and at first I thought it was a typo, something that slipped through the proof reader if there is such a person anymore. But then I realized the word was intentional and that the novel had fallen victim to the dictates of political correctness. The word I had known for many years and seen millions of times in other novels and is still used in current vernacular. So why then had the editors of Harbach's novel deferred to some silly twenty first century that someone was being offended?

Now this word does not easily slip off the tongue. The novelist must always write by ear and that means if it sounds right then it is right. African American is clunky in prose. It just stops the flow because of it's amped up meaning. This is not the word Harbach bowed to by the way. But this is the first of the clunky words that  novelists have to deal with. I have written several novels about the South where I used black or blacks to describe some of the characters. And of course in speaking I had to use the famed Nword as well. But to have put African American in the prose would have violated the connotation of the word I chose.

Now Harbachs word wasn't even that loaded. If you had to rate it for political correctness it was down on the scale at about a five out of ten. So what was this word. Are you ready? Freshpersons. Right. Freshpersons for freshmen. So obviously the group that would be offended by freshmen is women. But the word freshpersons was so jarring it stopped the fictional dream cold. We all know freshmen describes men and women, but the long reach of political correctness demanded this silly exercise in semantics.

So I started thinking about the pressure of political correctness in novels. We all heard about the washing out of Huckleberry Finn with the removal of the Nword. This kind of tinkering or mindfulness of present day sensibilities is not the purview of the novelist. He or she is not writing for the current day but for all time and to have the hand of political correctness intrude on the pallate of the artist violates the vision for the work. It is a bit like opening a door to bright sunlight while watching a movie. You really don't want that reality in your story.

But everyone has to deal with the times they live in and Chad might have written this way anyway. So maybe it is just me. Maybe freshmen is anachronistic and not really the wore anymore to describe the first year of college. Maybe freshpersons is the twenty first century word now. Freshpersons. Sounds like something you could eat. Or throw away.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man
"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning


"The funniest serious novel since Richard Russo's Straight Man, rich with the epic levity of John Irving and salted with the perversion of Updike." Chicago Sun Times