Lynn Raye Harris

Tired of James Frey yet? Me too. But this from Nan Talese cannot go unnoticed.

“When the manuscript of A Million Little Pieces was received by us at Doubleday, it was received as nonfiction, as a memoir,” said Ms. Talese by phone. “Throughout the whole process of publication, it had always been a memoir, and for the first year and a half it was on sale, it was always a memoir with no disputation. It was never once discussed as fiction by me or anyone in my office.”

[...]

If Mr. Frey came to Ms. Talese today with the same manuscript, she said she’d publish it the same way, most likely with a disclaimer in the front. (In any case, she said that the book would never have worked as a novel, in part because the author himself is the only real character in it.) She added that if Mr. Frey had confessed prior to publication to the fabrications revealed by the Smoking Gun last week, she would have excised them from the book. A transgression had been committed, Ms. Talese acknowledged, but the person responsible was Mr. Frey. “I don’t think it is ever a good idea to purposely distort the truth,” she said.

If you want to read the whole article, it’s here. I’m gonna bet, however, that she wouldn’t have bought the book at all if she’d known significant events were made up.

This morning, a friend sent me a link for a website called theNextBigWriter. For $39.95 a year, or $4.95 a month, you can join this community of other writers and get your work reviewed. Whoever wins the novel competition gets $5000. There are poetry and short story competitions too. With those, I believe you get a contract. The contract just happens to be, so far as I can tell, with theNextBigWriter.com. They’ll publish your story on their website, there is a contract, and you do get paid .03 per word. They even have StarReviewers, and I admit that seeing Pulitzer-nominated beside the name of one of those people is a nice thing. But not everyone gets star-reviewed. You only get that if your fellow writers/reviewers choose your work as the best in your category. Not sure if you automatically get the review, or if the website owners then pick who gets reviewed.

I am NOT saying this is a scam. Please don’t pepper me with emails suggesting I am. What I AM saying is that I don’t think writers need to pay to be a member of a community. There are plenty of free writing communities online. There are contests that get your work in front of acquiring editors and agents (and there’s also the old fashioned way of submitting and waiting for rejection/acceptance, though you aren’t likely to get comments on what was wrong if you get rejected). Just be aware, before you join something like this, what your options are. If you think you can get value from this site, by all means, go for it. Forty bucks a year isn’t a lot, I suppose, and maybe you’ll be the one to win the $5000. For me, though, I’ll keep writing and submitting the old way. It’s worked for all the writers I know, so why mess with the formula?

Oh, and if you’d like to see a sample of the writing that’s on this board (so you know where your fellow critique partners are in the process), you’ll have to join first. [Correction: you may join as a reviewer, which is free; you can then read stories and see if you'd like to join as a writer (writers pay)] That alone raises my personal big red flag. That’s just me though. You may not mind. Let me know how it works out.

And just in case you haven’t heard enough about James Frey and his million little lies, Michiko Kakutani has an article in the NYT book section:

It is not, however, just a case about truth-in-labeling or the misrepresentations of one author: after all, there have been plenty of charges about phony or inflated memoirs in the past, most notably about Lillian Hellman’s 1973 book “Pentimento.” It is a case about how much value contemporary culture places on the very idea of truth. Indeed, Mr. Frey’s contention that having 5 percent or so of his book in dispute was “comfortably within the realm of what’s appropriate for a memoir” and the troubling insistence of his publishers and his cheerleader Oprah Winfrey that it really didn’t matter if he’d taken liberties with the facts of his story underscore the waning importance people these days attach to objectivity and veracity.

We live in a relativistic culture where television “reality shows” are staged or stage-managed, where spin sessions and spin doctors are an accepted part of politics, where academics argue that history depends on who is writing the history, where an aide to President Bush, dismissing reporters who live in the “reality-based community,” can assert that “we’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” Phrases like “virtual reality” and “creative nonfiction” have become part of our language. Hype and hyperbole are an accepted part of marketing and public relations. And reinvention and repositioning are regarded as useful career moves in the worlds of entertainment and politics. The conspiracy-minded, fact-warping movies of Oliver Stone are regarded by those who don’t know better as genuine history, as are the most sensationalistic of television docudramas.

Most disturbing of all, however, is that Oprah has now chosen Elie Wiesel’s Night for her book club. Oprah says that Wiesel’s book “should be required reading for all humanity.” Yes, absolutely. But does it cheapen Mr. Wiesel and his experience to follow serial liar Frey? Already, the NYT reports that Mr. Wiesel has been asked if his book is true.

Mr. Wiesel said he had not read Mr. Frey’s book and could not comment on the controversy. He acknowledged that some people and institutions, including on occasion The New York Times, have referred to “Night” as a novel, “mainly because of its literary style.”

“But it is not a novel at all,” he said. “I know the difference,” he added, noting that “Night” is the first of his 47 books, several of which are novels. “I make a distinction between what I lived through and what I imagined others to have lived through.”

Now how come James Frey and Oprah don’t seem to know the difference?

The Elvis Tree. It was in an Elvis movie, not Blue Hawaii, but another one. Cool, huh? 

Do you write to music? Or do you prefer silence? Does it matter how the music is played? (Huh?) No, really. I can’t listen to any music with words when writing. Unless I’m wearing headphones. Somehow, the words being right in my ears makes them fade to background. If they’re on speakers, I focus on the words. Weird, huh?

So I’m listening to my MP3 player the other night and I’m working on a chapter. The words are in the background, just doing their thing. Then Journey comes on and I had this aha moment: this book is a Journey book! So now I’ve got Mike compiling all our Journey music so I can listen while writing. The last book was a Bon Jovi book. The medieval I wrote was a classical book (lots of Mozart, Beethoven, and Ravel’s Bolero for some reason). That might have had something to do with the fact I hadn’t yet figured out the headphone thing and was only listening to music without words.

So what kind of book are you writing?

—I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.~ Peter De Vries

I don’t think of myself as a literary snob. Hell, I write romance novels, the red-headed bastard stepchild of the novel writing world (don’t get me started on why romance novels are not all trash, or on why I believe they are given that label in the first place, etc, and often by people who’ve never read one or who did read one and it was, unfortunately, deserving of the name).

I enjoy and appreciate popular fiction. I don’t think all literature is grand, but since I am in pursuit of an advanced degree in the field, I have read many works of classic fiction, often more than once. That’s why this article makes me giggle.

In the tradition of best book lists everywhere, writer Matthew Baldwin compiles his own list . . .from the Amazon.com review section, where some folks seem to not, uh, appreciate the classics. Some favorites:

The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Author: J.D. Salinger. “So many other good books…don’t waste your time on this one. J.D. Salinger went into hiding because he was embarrassed.” [Yeah, what was up with that kid anyway? Why was he disconnected with the world around him and how come he just couldn't get it together? No danger of that happening now that we have Prozac, so toss this trash!]

Lord of the Flies (1955), Author: William Golding. “I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!! It is incredibly boring and disgusting. I was very much disturbed when I found young children killing each other. I think that anyone with a conscience would agree with me.” [Um, I think that was the point. You are supposed to be disgusted. And horrified. And it's supposed to tell you something about humankind. But it ain't no Survivor!]

Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Author: Virginia Woolf. “The only good thing to say about this “literary” drivel is that the person responsible, Virginia Woolf, has been dead for quite some time now. Let us pray to God she stays that way.” [Well thank God! My thesis is on VW, includes this book, and I've been searching for something to say about it. My search is over. Can someone please get me the citation information?]

To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Author: Harper Lee. “I don’t see why this book is so fabulous. I would give it a zero. I find no point in writing a book about segregation, there’s no way of making it into an enjoyable book. And yes I am totally against segregation.” [Because of course we no longer have segregation and people of all races/nations/creeds get along perfectly. No need to learn about the unfairness and injustice done to people by folks who think they are superior. Natually, no one thinks they are superior anymore. We know we're all equal.]

Found via Hoosier Musings on the Road to Emmaus.

A friend was recently bemoaning her fate as a writer. She received a rejection and was positive this meant she should line the bird cage with her manuscript, turn the computer over to her kids, and learn to grow exotic flowers instead of beating her head against the brick wall of publishing for even another second.

Fear not, sayeth I. For behold, I bring you Ursula K. Lequin’s rejection letter:

Ursula K. Le Guin writes extremely well, but I’m sorry to have to say that on the basis of that one highly distinguishing quality alone I cannot make you an offer for the novel. The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable. The whole is so dry and airless, so lacking in pace, that whatever drama and excitement the novel might have had is entirely dissipated by what does seem, a great deal of the time, to be extraneous material. My thanks nonetheless for having thought of us. The manuscript of The Left Hand of Darkness is returned herewith.

Ursula survived. So can you. Write on, fellow scribblers, write on! (And remind me, when I start to wallow, that I posted this.)

You got anything more interesting than Consumer Reports? 

Ran across these extremely helpful Microsoft Word tips by romance author Monica Burns. Monica instructs you how to create a macro for repetitive words. I did this yesterday and it wasn’t hard. The macro then searches for a word you specify and highlights its usage. It can be quite sobering to scroll through a document and see such passive words as saw, heard and felt highlighted again and again. There’s also a macro to reverse the highlights, so be sure to install that one too.

Monica also has instructions for making your own ARC (advanced reading copy). Very helpful. She provides instructions for .doc, .rtf, and .pdf formats.

I found the macros easy to do and I got it right the first time. Give it a try!

I can’t believe I haven’t posted since Monday. I meant to, but somehow got sidetracked. First, there was the SASE brouhaha between Miss Snark and Joe Konrath (search for SASE in both blogs since there was more than one post). Then there was the whole James Frey thing, which really just pisses me off. He LIED. Why all the dissembling about what memoirs mean and what’s really lying anyway and oh it’s mostly true and blah blah blah when the book says non-fiction on the spine? Non-fiction means to me that what is contained within these pages is as close to the truth as it can be (taking into consideration that memories are inherently faulty). Oprah touted this book as a lifesaving heartwarming true story of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps.

But saying you spent three months in jail where you bonded with an illiterate murderer and helped him appreciate Tolstoy when you really only spent 5 hours in lockup (and never even got near a murderer or Tolstoy) is WRONG. And Oprah defending him on Larry King disappoints me more than I can say. She says the controverys is “much ado about nothing” when she ought to be saying, Hey, I’m as disappointed as you are. I was moved by the book, but I wish I’d known what was true and what wasn’t before I recommended it to others.

The almighty dollar rules, however. And I’m not saying I’m so naive that I don’t realize the American public gets fed lies on a daily basis and keeps asking for more. Reality shows aren’t all that real after all. They’re scripted. Doesn’t stop people from wanting them. We like the drama of seeing people under pressure. We also like underdog stories. We want to see Everyman (or woman) triumph. We want to hoist them on our backs and parade them around the forum huzzahing the whole way, because if they can do it, anyone can do it. We reward them with our admiration and our dollars. The incentive for mischief in pursuit of that reward is inherent, especially as our need for the triumphant Everyman erodes our necessity for proof positive.

Glad I write fiction. But maybe I should consider a memoir. I did spend an afternoon in jail once. Of course, it was a tour and I was about 14, but I’m sure I can beef that part up a bit. I had a boyfriend that got arrested once. Does that count?