Thank you, George, for mentioning my Substack. All are welcome! We're having fun over there, so please join in.
I remember the first time George mentioned having fun while writing. I'd just completed a short story and I said so in one of these Story Club threads and George replied, "Fun, right?" And I was like...."Um.. I think so?" And ever since then, I've thought about the notion that writing ought to be fun. I'd never thought of it that way before. The idea of writing with abandon and just having fun while doing it--No fear. No voices. No big deal. Just writing. It changed things for me, those two little words: Fun, right? Thank you, George, as ever, for this seemingly simple yet altogether profound advice.
I realize i want to say something to today's Questioner in response to this part of their query:
"As someone who is planning to undertake a draft with multiple points of view I’m feeling out of my depth in a way that is both daunting and exciting."
From those words, it seems that perhaps you haven't yet launched this project. So of course, you feel out of your depth! Who wouldn't? My take (not that you asked--sorry...) is that when you dive in and start writing, only then will you know what you've gotten yourself into. And only then will you truly know how many points of view are necessary to the story you want to tell. And only then will you know if the story belongs mainly to one character or not. You may find--a year from now, let's' say--that this multiple points of view idea that you had at first just isn't working. OR, you may find you need MORE points of view. Who knows? The sky's the limit! What i'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter what George did or did not do to write that masterpiece of his. (God, what a book!) Your book will be your book. And it will be written the way YOU have to write it. Daunting, yes. But fantastic that the idea is exciting to you. Let us all know what happens once you get going! We are rooting for you around here.
I had a wonderful teacher for my Post MFA term who consistently told me to "just have fun making a mess on the page." I need to remind myself of this advice constantly. Some of my most enjoyable writing experiences have been email missives to my beloved, lifelong writer friends on the west coast. There's no judgment or expectation, I just let go and have a blast, and fun, funny stuff comes out. Thank you George, and Mary G. for reminding me to have fun—it's so easy for me to forget and get in my own way when I sit down to write a story.
If you don't mind my saying, Mary, 'I have this tendency to hold my breath' could be a really really good line in a story. I straight away thought, 'that person has just become more alive for me.' Something about the action itself but also the self-awareness make it compelling.
I read a Grace Paley story recently, and it had the phrase 'she never could call a spade a spade'
I think I misread it first time, and I thought the woman was saying it about herself, and I loved that idea. You hear people proclaim 'Oh I just say it how it is' or 'People don't like it but I always call it how I see it' and you think to yourself oh how tiresome, and how unlikely to be so.
But, the converse, where someone might show such insight into their own flawed self and say, 'I never call a spade a spade', how exciting that seemed.
Indeed, thank you for compiling, Mary! One thing I always find is that I spend almost as much time seeing which books my library has, then sorting through and wandering around gathering them as I do reading. Maybe that's half the process but having this list to sort through and choose from will be fun, right?
Sifting; slowly; letting settle; so satisfying; starting in on the salient selection; the one that's caught your eye and, you sense, may both shake some of your ideas up and stir your emotion.
Lovely thing, being able to spend a little time in those luxuriant word forests whose woods we go into every time we step across the threshold of a local library or bookshop.
For me, It has to be fun, or why would I spend so much time doing something that I so far have not been paid for? (at one time I got paid to write music reviews, and that was not as much fun) Sure, at times it's a struggle, but when the words are flowing and one loses half a day in them, and looks up at the clock and realizes how late it is....
'Madness' seem to have been on the same 'fun' wavelength when they knitted the lyrics, wove the music and orchestrated the video storyboarding of their hit 'House of Fun' . . . https://youtu.be/GJ2X9SANsME . . . no idea quite what tripped, triggered and travelled me back in time in my Whovian TARDIS . . . but 'Oh, What a Lovely Flight of the Imagination!' . . . and what ascendant larks of possibility launching off into "Welcome to The Story Club of Fun . . ." suddenly conjures brightly out of nowhere?
Thanks for the signposting Troy. I'll look to find it.
I thought the way, if I am recalling rather than imagining, Madness literally lit-up Buckingham Palace on the evening n which QE2's last or three Jubilee's was celebrated with panoramic CGI projections to the tune of 'our house is a very very fine house' was , let's say, electrifyingly memorable.
Oh, that's fantastic, and I didn't know that. I got into them around the age of 12 or 13 thanks to my oldest sister. This was around 1983/4! They weren't nearly as popular in the States as in England (and certainly not in Georgia where we grew up), so, you know, we were kind of edgy. I was very happy to see them still going and putting out an album 40 years later. Here's a YouTube link to one of the new songs and video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkfxpJzWaOk
Did you know that Suggs is quiet the personality about town here in the UK. Rather like some of the characters - so poetically well sketched by T S Eliot in his still as fresh as they day they were first published by Faber & Faber 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' - he's, in my estimation, long been a celebrity who doesn't so much eschew as rise, rather regally, above tat and tack alley of mere celebrity.
Here's a link to more on Suggs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggs which, if it is simply telling what you already know, don't hesitate to treat as, to borrow and tweak an English cliche 'coals wrongly routed to Newcastle'.
I've caught up with the trailer of Madness latest and find it marvellous to find Suggs back with full hands on the metaphorical tiller!
"HAVE FUN." That’s the best advice, sometimes the most difficult!
Hey, George and Story Clubbers, the other day I listed to a podcast called Ten Percent Happier. Bill Hader was the guest, and he chatted about anxiety (a real buzzkill, don’t I know it). Anyway, he dropped George’s name not once, but three times! What a blast to be besties with Bill Hader/ George Saunders. Anyway, if you have anxiety like I do, give it a listen. It’s Episode 706, it’s free, and about an hour.
Sea, "Have fun"--that's it exactly! As soon as I stop having fun, which for me means not so much ha-ha-ha fun as it is being truly engrossed, that's when I stop. That's the first indication that something's wrong. And that I need to quit while I'm ahead. If I'm engrossed, engaged, having fun, that's my indicator that I'm on the right track. Now, the train that track is on might end up at the wrong station, but so what--wasn't the journey fun!
I just signed up for Mary G's substack as a paid subscriber. We need to support each other and not let our friends give themselves away...nothin' wrong with a little cash in the pocket.....
I had so much anxiety I had to stop watching after something happened to Fonzie's girlfriend. (Trying not to spoil the show for anyone by talking in code.) I might try to pick it up again, though.
Me, too. I only watched Barry in the first place for Fonzie, seriously underrated as an actor IMO (though the original Fonzie as a character seemed one-dimensional and Winkler's recent memoir struck me as surprisingly rather thin). But Winkler made the most of the part as Gene! Just enough self-aggrandizement to be hilarious without being over the top. As for assassination as entertainment, that left me pretty cold, so I just kept skipping ahead to the Winkler parts, then finally gave it up altogether when that bald guy went from evil to farcical with too much screen time. I wish Winkler would get another gig! Years and years ago he was Scrouge in a film adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" that in itself wasn't great but he was outstanding. And there was "Heroes", another so-so, this one with Sally Fields where he plays to perfection a troubled Vietnam veteran looking to reclaim his life on a cross-country bus trip. Wish he'd get bigger/better parts.
All working actors have performed in mediocre or downright bad scripts. That's on the writer and producer (for choosing without true artistic vision). An actor can learn as much from being in a bad show/movie as in a good one. Winkler's career is amazing, he could've been completely typecast after that long running show, but he broke out. Anyway, even Robert DeNiro has been in bad shows and movies. All the greats have. This should inspire writers to keep the actor in mind, make the characters multi-dimensional, give the actor something to dig into. I felt sorry for the actors playing the female roles in some of last year's films, it seems hard to some writers not to diminish the female characters. That's why I like Story Club, George seems mindful of choosing stories that have depth. Anyway, I married a working actor. I majored in theater and know many actors. It really comes down to who gets their project produced.
Yes to the diminished female characters in at least some films. "Nyad" stands out to me, especially Jodi Foster's supporting role. That script struck me as so skimpy, yet there she was giving an excellent performance anyway. But then I think of all the female roles in "Julia" where they all shined, especially Judith Light as Blanche Knopf. Yes, I guess it comes down, as you say, to who gets their project produced, another way of saying crap shoot.
I thought Annette Benning and Jodi Foster were incredible in that film! I guess Ms. Nyad was quite a talker/self-promoter but it was played with love and respect.
Thank you! Sea Shepherd as in saving whales? I attended a stranding as part of Project Jonah here on the shore in Aotearoa New Zealand last year. The whale came in, the sun set and rose, the Māori welcomed and farewelled her and we honoured that great life, the coming and going, the arc of return.
I loved Barry, though that last season was a lot to handle. Every time I think of NoHo Hank, I crack up. The very idea of a character called NoHo Hank... oh, my god, it's just SO FUNNY.
Oh thanks! I always find it remarkable how many people that struggle with anxiety are actors and comedians. But they always say they lose their anxious feelings as soon as they go on stage.
I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with Mary's new compilation. Your recommendations have been my introduction to the contemporary short story (I was an art major). After I moved and got rid of so many books, I wasn’t going to buy any more, so I am trying out online libraries. Thank you, George, for supplying us with pdfs of the stories we read.
Ever since you first mentioned it, having fun has become my mantra. You made me realize that I have always loved fiddling with sentences and paragraphs, rearranging them, cutting/pasting them, tweaking them... and I’m enjoying it more and more as I get older. I used to drive my PhD students mad fiddling with their sentences, hoping that they would catch the bug. Some of them did. Now, if there were a SC in French I would point them here.
Last but not least, I’d like to add to your plug for Mary G’s substack – not only is it a lot of fun but it also complements SC perfectly. She posts her prompts on Monday. She’s given us three so far: a six-word story, a seven-sentence story and a one-sentence story. Looking forward to tomorrow's. Thank you, Mary.
1.How do you keep your characters straight with so many to juggle? How do you avoid the error if saying someone is blond in page 25 and bald in page 142?
2. How do you research characters with very different backgrounds than you? For imstanc3, I am a white middle class, 77-year-old male with a 50+year background as a print journalist. If I were to write a novel, I would want to include Black, Asian, and possibly other male & female characters with interesting and very different backgrounds from myself. How do I make those people real and not just white males in blackface?
Bert - for question #1 - copy editors! I know a few good ones if you're interested. But if anything happens to that blond character of significance, then by page 142 they may have lost all their hair or torn it out themselves. :)
For question #2 - talk to people! Appropriation is a thing. Very difficult to fake making characters different from one's self, of course.
#1. I keep a running list of characters and their traits in a separate doc so I can refer back when needed--sort of a character outline. Sometimes they change of course as characters evolve.
I struggle with #2 as well. I currently have a draft of a novel that includes POVs of five teenage boys. One of the characters is Japanese and is inspired by someone who partly inspired the book, and another character is Black while I am white. I decided I had to write my book this way because I started it third-person and then tried first person from the more-or-less main character, but the story only truly became alive and FUN when I started writing from the various perspectives which now really create the "meaning" of the novel. However, I think in publishing there's a current distaste for writing across race. As a gay man, I understand when it feels like a book or movie gets it wrong, and obviously there are plenty of cases that are clearly exploitive. I don't think my book is, but of course I would think that. I love the five characters who speak in this book! But I also realize there are reasons for this pushback. But also find it sad and pointedly not FUN to feel there's a need to stay in a demographic lane. Curious if anyone has thoughts.
George, thanks for parting the curtain, to some extent, and letting us see part of the process you undertook in writing your novel. As always, it's very helpul. It leads me to a question that I hope will be helpful for many of us.
Hemingway famously said, "The first draft of anything is shit." And other authors have confirmed that, encouraging us to just get the story down, then worry about craft later during the revision process. However, I've also read quite a few authors who say things such as, "I'm happy if I write 500 words a day" or "If I write 8 pages a week, I'm ecstatic." Either they're writing with their eyes closed, or their daily word count represents some mighty refined shit.
Why is it taking them so long to write that first draft if the bar is low and they're supposed to be postponing the revision process?
I don't think there is a "supposed to." I know I need to have more fun on the page and embrace the "shitty first draft" more, let go more, but I'm also a writer who absolutely loves the part where you go back and fix the shitty stuff, so I do that as I go along. It gets me into flow. I've been told not to do that, but I can't do it any other way. So even if I come up with only 1000 words in a day, and I'm into it, and it excites me to go back to the work the next day, that's a successful day for me.
I know people who write polished 1000-2000 words a day, and those who write 2000 words of "draft copy" a day. Whatever it is, first time around, it's still draft. Revision happens, or must.
There is also a difference between writing and typing. It's easy to type 2000 words a day, a bit harder to write 2000 words a day with any kind of coherence. If I'm not mistaken, Stephen King talks about editing the previous day's work and calling it done, and then forging ahead with his 2000 words a day. So the entire day isn't merely writing. And of course, he and his editors have a hand at the whole thing once it's completed.
First maybe there's not actually so much difference between the process each of the authors of these 'often quoted quotes' are describing? Perhaps more a result of semantic variations in the way that writers describe the way they the get a fiction from its initial start to its finished state?
Second it has struck me, powerfully and often, as we've been genially rolling along reading and reflecting and sometimes offering comment here in Story Club is that there is no-one way to work the writing process to get through to the finished fictive product. George seems to taken as many routes to the reach the last full stop (i.e. period?) of each of his published fictions as the number of stories he has achieved publication of?
Thank you, questioner, and thank you, George. Today’s post is thrilling and exciting, especially George’s principle that such notions as a central character’s journey are “a subset of a greater thing - the story responding both to itself and to the reader’s constantly arising expectations.” (And also of needing only “enough backstory to make the current moment make sense.”)
The works of Sigrid Nunez, which I am now engrossed in and enchanted by, illustrate this notion of what a “story” can be. I am deep into reading and rereading The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and The Vulnerables, which are not traditional novels, but blends of memoir and fiction—digressive and essay-istic, spare yet chock-a-block with characters and their moments, anecdotes, philosophical ponderings, jokes, asides, stream-of-consciousness narration, history, current events, questions. Shades of Virginia Woolf and making a “novel” novel indeed. In each of these I have happily let go of expectations and followed the narrator wherever she takes me.
Nancy, I love her work, too! I'm near-ish P&P & so remember that reading. Christmas isn't quite over for me yet & I'm hoping that I'll get The Vulnerables, one among my long list. I think you & I must be on the same wavelength--we've often agreed on matters literary. Cheers!
Fantastic list. Enough to keep me busy forever. Could I mention Raymond Carver. Poems and short stories. He might have been on the list and I buzzed through too fast. Wonderful of you to take the time to put it together. Thank you.
You are, consistently, one of my absolute favorite writing sages in a world full of dollar store “experts” screaming their answers to questions no one asked them.
Office Hours makes me feel a little more sane and hopeful every time, and I thank you for that. 🤍
Ah. This explains why the short fiction I most recommend and read multiple times and will read again was your 'Mother's Day'. The spin on the point of view, from one woman who I utterly comprehended to another who I resisted at first and then also comprehended was intoxicatingly great. The way these perspectives gave me insight into the man - their focus, is something I have returned to so many times. And the children, they were there too, begging for my attention.
I learned something about life on a deeper plane. Two truths. Three even. And more. Your pivot gave me permission to experiment with different fully focused points of view. The tragic, the comedic, the strange dance of life is that no one person is fully right all the time and we are connected in this dance and we can learn from each other.
So I learn way of pivoting and turning. Just when I think I understand another perspective challenges my perspective.
This is a technique I sued with my own novel The Seasonwife released in Aotearoa New Zealand last year which has been well reviewed and which is dancing along happily. I toyed with one pov but it wasn't enough. I knew it could be dangerous to take on an indigenous perspective but how could I inspire empathy if I did not visit a character? Fortunately I had a mentor who was indigenous and who supported me in this approach. And I had worked alongside Māori for a long time. But it wasn't an easy decision and I did not take it lightly. It was the only way I could avoid invisibilising people who have been invisiblised, it seemed to me. And I have received great support from Māori who tell me that this young woman is their ancestor.
I had four perspectives in my novel. Two main perspectives. Another only briefly but an important passage. And a fourth with a significant tilt.
I was warned that multiple pov's would risk the book seeming like a theatre with characters entering and exiting a stage. But this was avoided I think by your emphasis that one character is showing something that cannot be revealed in any other way, whether it is interior or exterior and particularly interior.
In The Seasonwife my bad guy is stuck in a class system. He really isn't going to change but he doesn't see himself as a villain. I find this a lot with bad guys - real ones and otherwise, they believe themselves. And I needed to show his belief system.
I love the way my characters came out and revealed themselves. I love them for their courage.
I thought 'never again'. Next novel: one pov. Haha! Now I'm working on a trilogy 'No Graves For Ghosts' and the first novel 'The Maid and The Mesmerist' already has several povs. One main character but others who show other aspects of the story, not just her story but the greater story, the one happening then and now.
All history is a thread from the past to the present and to the future. And as a historical novelist I find certain characters - in this case based on their real life stories - tell different aspects pertinent to the thread of then and now and the future.
So thank you. I will continue to play with the different characters and I applaud you George for paving the way with not one path but many. When the path leads somewhere then even into a different life we can go there. I have learned to take the risk and venture away from one main view into others to shine a light on us all.
good to meet you at that winter's night launch of The Seasonwife. Reading the book inspired a journey of exploration into that part of our past when two races met and began to understand each other, to both good and bad ends. So far have read 'Kawai' by Monty Soutar, and a revelatory work Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori (F.E. Maning) and a while ago Fiona Kidman's The Captive Wife which I'll read again, along with a second reading of The Seasonwife. The Maning book is hilariously written by an eccentric adventurer and has vivid descriptions of the trade in heads (tattooing and killing slaves to supply demand) I'll email you with more on this later once I've read your book again. Great to hear of your trilogy, keep us posted. Been working, though not much, on one, a scifi romance myself.
It was great meeting you Iam and I'm glad The Seasonwife inspired you to journey into this area. Monty Soutar's work is brave and important - not an easy task writing about these early events.
Many Pākehā of the colonial period - including some of my own surveyor ancestors - wrote 'boys' own' sensational accounts of their travels which place themselves as the hero. Manning is a mixed bag. I know one of his Māori descendants who finds him so. Reading the colonial voices is rather like sifting through a bag of salt for hidden gems, and there are some gems, but these works tend to be entertaining, one-sided and not always entirely accurate. Anne Salmond, James Belich, Vincent O'Sullivan, Michael King and Jared Davidson are excellent historians who can take us into this history.
I find reading books cited by historians in bibliographies can lead to a deeper view. For instance in Belich's 'Making Peoples' I found a reference to another perspective on the whaler, Jack Guard - the focus of Kidman's book and my own short fiction 'A Perfect State of Nudity' published by Penguin in 1995. I went to the Taranaki museum to find the original - J.S Stronge's unpublished m/s in the Taranaki library claimed that Guard killed two Māori boys who wished to trade potatoes rather than provide them for nothing. I learned through wide reading that Jack Guard was a tough often cruel whaler whose racism is not difficult to find. I don't think characters like him need reconstructing to fit white modern sensitivities.
And this is another aspect of colonial fiction and non-fiction - the painting of white people - British and other Europeans - as culturally superior. Of course during this period they were war mongering, hanging people for minor crimes, and slavery was a trade defended across the Atlantic and around the globe.
The head and body parts trade was orchestrated by wealthy white merchants and rather like slavery, I think too much blame as been placed on indigenous participants in the trade. The victims have not had a voice and they deserve that.
Wealthy men and women at the top of the Empire bought heads for their 'curiosity cabinets'. There were exceptionists who were revolted by this at the time. It is a revolting trade.
I also think it is important as much as possible when writing historical fiction to not settle into our own voice but to find the authentic voice of characters. The whaling and early trading community was made up of men and women who were not well educated, who were working class. Their language was lively and creative.
As a lover of language for The Seasonwife I needed to find real earth-and-stew voices not an archaic version of my own. I found these voices living in the archives, crying out form the courts of Sydney. Women and men presented their cases with flashes of wit and grand theatre, they shouted and complained and did not back down. They sought freedom to live as they wished and many women opted to work in the prison factory or stocks than be placed with a woman who would discipline them morally.
The voice of the working class can also be found in Dickens though he failed the Irish. The Irish voice can be found in other spheres of literature and of course the gaelic, once banished, is now being revived.
Flick me an email and we can have a coffee when you are next up this way. In the meantime, happy reading and writing!
"So, the opening of a book makes a certain tension. The writer’s job (let’s say) is to know, or feel, the nature of that tension, and try to maintain it..."
I really liked this simple point. It sounds pretty obvious afterward, but that simple abstraction--a certain tension--really highlights how much flexibility you have as a writer to move forward with a given body of writing. It doesn't have to _be_ this or that. But whatever it is has to keep having this effect of working with the tension that's there. Thanks for sharing this insight.
Thanks for focusing on this point. It answers many questions about how to keep the reader engaged in a simple and real way. I love that George gets to the heart of the matter and doesn’t give “how to” answers that put the questioner in her head and takes her/us away from her heat/passion/inner guidance.
Thanks Mary for compiling the list and I'm looking forward to reading your substack too!
George, your note on 'just enough' backstory couldn't have come at a more pertinent moment for me, so thank you. I'm working on a short story that ballooned for a while veering towards the 10k-and-not-yet-finished mark, but earlier this week I realised it's because I was doing too many backstory detours. A quick (in between making the kids tea) editing sessions saw me prune a solid 3k words that were in the main backstory, and that was only the first half of what I've got. Hoping to go back in with the editorial gardening shears again tomorrow morning to bring this baby back to where she needs to be....
Oh, thanks so much, Rebecca! I'm having a lot of fun with it. So sweet of George to mention it--and thank god he did, because otherwise you (and others here) would have never found it.
Thank you, George, for mentioning my Substack. All are welcome! We're having fun over there, so please join in.
I remember the first time George mentioned having fun while writing. I'd just completed a short story and I said so in one of these Story Club threads and George replied, "Fun, right?" And I was like...."Um.. I think so?" And ever since then, I've thought about the notion that writing ought to be fun. I'd never thought of it that way before. The idea of writing with abandon and just having fun while doing it--No fear. No voices. No big deal. Just writing. It changed things for me, those two little words: Fun, right? Thank you, George, as ever, for this seemingly simple yet altogether profound advice.
I realize i want to say something to today's Questioner in response to this part of their query:
"As someone who is planning to undertake a draft with multiple points of view I’m feeling out of my depth in a way that is both daunting and exciting."
From those words, it seems that perhaps you haven't yet launched this project. So of course, you feel out of your depth! Who wouldn't? My take (not that you asked--sorry...) is that when you dive in and start writing, only then will you know what you've gotten yourself into. And only then will you truly know how many points of view are necessary to the story you want to tell. And only then will you know if the story belongs mainly to one character or not. You may find--a year from now, let's' say--that this multiple points of view idea that you had at first just isn't working. OR, you may find you need MORE points of view. Who knows? The sky's the limit! What i'm trying to say is that it doesn't matter what George did or did not do to write that masterpiece of his. (God, what a book!) Your book will be your book. And it will be written the way YOU have to write it. Daunting, yes. But fantastic that the idea is exciting to you. Let us all know what happens once you get going! We are rooting for you around here.
I had a wonderful teacher for my Post MFA term who consistently told me to "just have fun making a mess on the page." I need to remind myself of this advice constantly. Some of my most enjoyable writing experiences have been email missives to my beloved, lifelong writer friends on the west coast. There's no judgment or expectation, I just let go and have a blast, and fun, funny stuff comes out. Thank you George, and Mary G. for reminding me to have fun—it's so easy for me to forget and get in my own way when I sit down to write a story.
It seems so basic, and yet so easy to forget. Kind of like the way I have to remind myself to breathe because i have this tendency to hold my breath.
If you don't mind my saying, Mary, 'I have this tendency to hold my breath' could be a really really good line in a story. I straight away thought, 'that person has just become more alive for me.' Something about the action itself but also the self-awareness make it compelling.
Thanks, Niall! And you've given me an idea for another prompt--maybe asking people to write a story that begins with "I have this tendency to....."
Ooh nice! That'll be a lot of fun.
I read a Grace Paley story recently, and it had the phrase 'she never could call a spade a spade'
I think I misread it first time, and I thought the woman was saying it about herself, and I loved that idea. You hear people proclaim 'Oh I just say it how it is' or 'People don't like it but I always call it how I see it' and you think to yourself oh how tiresome, and how unlikely to be so.
But, the converse, where someone might show such insight into their own flawed self and say, 'I never call a spade a spade', how exciting that seemed.
Wow, I've had that same experience.
Me too! Especially in meditation when I'm trying to focus on my breathing.
Happens to me mostly when I’m drifting off to sleep. Not always, but when it does, it startles me awake.
that sounds a bit scary. Not sleep apnea, is it? i stop breathing when i'm concentrating on something. Especially on my computer.
My sister who teaches pilates has to remind us regularly to breathe!
Indeed, thank you for compiling, Mary! One thing I always find is that I spend almost as much time seeing which books my library has, then sorting through and wandering around gathering them as I do reading. Maybe that's half the process but having this list to sort through and choose from will be fun, right?
Sifting; slowly; letting settle; so satisfying; starting in on the salient selection; the one that's caught your eye and, you sense, may both shake some of your ideas up and stir your emotion.
Lovely thing, being able to spend a little time in those luxuriant word forests whose woods we go into every time we step across the threshold of a local library or bookshop.
Oh, yes, I can totally relate to this. And now i've got the Libby App, where you can spend forever scrolling through the "available now" books...
For me, It has to be fun, or why would I spend so much time doing something that I so far have not been paid for? (at one time I got paid to write music reviews, and that was not as much fun) Sure, at times it's a struggle, but when the words are flowing and one loses half a day in them, and looks up at the clock and realizes how late it is....
Thank you for the Book List, Mary! xo
'Madness' seem to have been on the same 'fun' wavelength when they knitted the lyrics, wove the music and orchestrated the video storyboarding of their hit 'House of Fun' . . . https://youtu.be/GJ2X9SANsME . . . no idea quite what tripped, triggered and travelled me back in time in my Whovian TARDIS . . . but 'Oh, What a Lovely Flight of the Imagination!' . . . and what ascendant larks of possibility launching off into "Welcome to The Story Club of Fun . . ." suddenly conjures brightly out of nowhere?
Such a great band. Their new album is worth a listen.
Thanks for the signposting Troy. I'll look to find it.
I thought the way, if I am recalling rather than imagining, Madness literally lit-up Buckingham Palace on the evening n which QE2's last or three Jubilee's was celebrated with panoramic CGI projections to the tune of 'our house is a very very fine house' was , let's say, electrifyingly memorable.
Oh, that's fantastic, and I didn't know that. I got into them around the age of 12 or 13 thanks to my oldest sister. This was around 1983/4! They weren't nearly as popular in the States as in England (and certainly not in Georgia where we grew up), so, you know, we were kind of edgy. I was very happy to see them still going and putting out an album 40 years later. Here's a YouTube link to one of the new songs and video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkfxpJzWaOk
Did you know that Suggs is quiet the personality about town here in the UK. Rather like some of the characters - so poetically well sketched by T S Eliot in his still as fresh as they day they were first published by Faber & Faber 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' - he's, in my estimation, long been a celebrity who doesn't so much eschew as rise, rather regally, above tat and tack alley of mere celebrity.
Here's a link to more on Suggs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggs which, if it is simply telling what you already know, don't hesitate to treat as, to borrow and tweak an English cliche 'coals wrongly routed to Newcastle'.
I've caught up with the trailer of Madness latest and find it marvellous to find Suggs back with full hands on the metaphorical tiller!
I was routed to an excellent destination. Thank you, sir!
Thank you Mary!
Heya Anne, I'll mail you regarding 'Throwing Tarts.'
This has been one of my big takeaways from George as well!
"HAVE FUN." That’s the best advice, sometimes the most difficult!
Hey, George and Story Clubbers, the other day I listed to a podcast called Ten Percent Happier. Bill Hader was the guest, and he chatted about anxiety (a real buzzkill, don’t I know it). Anyway, he dropped George’s name not once, but three times! What a blast to be besties with Bill Hader/ George Saunders. Anyway, if you have anxiety like I do, give it a listen. It’s Episode 706, it’s free, and about an hour.
Yes, Bill is a wonderful friend and we are brothers in anxiety. :)
Sea, "Have fun"--that's it exactly! As soon as I stop having fun, which for me means not so much ha-ha-ha fun as it is being truly engrossed, that's when I stop. That's the first indication that something's wrong. And that I need to quit while I'm ahead. If I'm engrossed, engaged, having fun, that's my indicator that I'm on the right track. Now, the train that track is on might end up at the wrong station, but so what--wasn't the journey fun!
Nicely put. I like this advice.
Also, yes, thank you, Mary G. You are a true gift with purchase.
No purchase required! xo
Well I pay George/ Substack and get you for free, plus your cool free Substack.
I just signed up for Mary G's substack as a paid subscriber. We need to support each other and not let our friends give themselves away...nothin' wrong with a little cash in the pocket.....
Bill Hader? That is cool. I love his show Barry.
I had so much anxiety I had to stop watching after something happened to Fonzie's girlfriend. (Trying not to spoil the show for anyone by talking in code.) I might try to pick it up again, though.
Me, too. I only watched Barry in the first place for Fonzie, seriously underrated as an actor IMO (though the original Fonzie as a character seemed one-dimensional and Winkler's recent memoir struck me as surprisingly rather thin). But Winkler made the most of the part as Gene! Just enough self-aggrandizement to be hilarious without being over the top. As for assassination as entertainment, that left me pretty cold, so I just kept skipping ahead to the Winkler parts, then finally gave it up altogether when that bald guy went from evil to farcical with too much screen time. I wish Winkler would get another gig! Years and years ago he was Scrouge in a film adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" that in itself wasn't great but he was outstanding. And there was "Heroes", another so-so, this one with Sally Fields where he plays to perfection a troubled Vietnam veteran looking to reclaim his life on a cross-country bus trip. Wish he'd get bigger/better parts.
All working actors have performed in mediocre or downright bad scripts. That's on the writer and producer (for choosing without true artistic vision). An actor can learn as much from being in a bad show/movie as in a good one. Winkler's career is amazing, he could've been completely typecast after that long running show, but he broke out. Anyway, even Robert DeNiro has been in bad shows and movies. All the greats have. This should inspire writers to keep the actor in mind, make the characters multi-dimensional, give the actor something to dig into. I felt sorry for the actors playing the female roles in some of last year's films, it seems hard to some writers not to diminish the female characters. That's why I like Story Club, George seems mindful of choosing stories that have depth. Anyway, I married a working actor. I majored in theater and know many actors. It really comes down to who gets their project produced.
Yes to the diminished female characters in at least some films. "Nyad" stands out to me, especially Jodi Foster's supporting role. That script struck me as so skimpy, yet there she was giving an excellent performance anyway. But then I think of all the female roles in "Julia" where they all shined, especially Judith Light as Blanche Knopf. Yes, I guess it comes down, as you say, to who gets their project produced, another way of saying crap shoot.
I thought Annette Benning and Jodi Foster were incredible in that film! I guess Ms. Nyad was quite a talker/self-promoter but it was played with love and respect.
Hader definitely has a dark sense of humor. I have friends I would not recommend it to because of the violence.
That show was incredible. But yeah, parts are tough.
Here’s the link https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ten-percent-happier-with-dan-harris/id1087147821?i=1000639227912
Thank you! Sea Shepherd as in saving whales? I attended a stranding as part of Project Jonah here on the shore in Aotearoa New Zealand last year. The whale came in, the sun set and rose, the Māori welcomed and farewelled her and we honoured that great life, the coming and going, the arc of return.
Hahahaha! No, another Story Clubber gave me the name "Sea." Blame Ian.
I will! Good on you Ian. Nice name! Haha!
Correction: Iam with an M.
Oh Iam. Ok ditto for me too.
Thanks for this!
I loved Barry, though that last season was a lot to handle. Every time I think of NoHo Hank, I crack up. The very idea of a character called NoHo Hank... oh, my god, it's just SO FUNNY.
Sounds like one for me
It's a good conversation, because the host and the guest have had anxiety attacks, so they both have knowledge about managing the beast.
Yeah I’m trying to find it but ‘Bill Hader’ doesn’t show any results in the list of episodes. I’ll get there.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ten-percent-happier-with-dan-harris/id1087147821?i=1000639227912
Oh thanks! I always find it remarkable how many people that struggle with anxiety are actors and comedians. But they always say they lose their anxious feelings as soon as they go on stage.
Loved Barry - what a trip! We just finished Parks and Rec and are onto Brooklyn Nine-Nine now, season 2, when the Chief comes alive! Brilliant.
Documentary Now! The best send up of the past few years!
Pandemic saviors.
I live in Portland, and though I don't dislike Fred Armisen like a lot of people here...
Seems to me Marvin Gay could of written Lincoln in the Bardo too, as he was always asking what's going on^^
I also jammed seven points of view into a short story recently and it was so wild and fun. And also a couple of monkeys to make it a total of nine.
Yay, you! The more monkeys the better!
Throw a thousand of them together - maybe you get Shakespeare. Or Sh-AI-kespeare.
2024 went by pretty fast.
Fixed it: twelve months, restored to us, to make the best of. :)
Right. The thing is for a nanosecond there I did wonder where the year went.
Time. What a concept.
It really did.
I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with Mary's new compilation. Your recommendations have been my introduction to the contemporary short story (I was an art major). After I moved and got rid of so many books, I wasn’t going to buy any more, so I am trying out online libraries. Thank you, George, for supplying us with pdfs of the stories we read.
Ever since you first mentioned it, having fun has become my mantra. You made me realize that I have always loved fiddling with sentences and paragraphs, rearranging them, cutting/pasting them, tweaking them... and I’m enjoying it more and more as I get older. I used to drive my PhD students mad fiddling with their sentences, hoping that they would catch the bug. Some of them did. Now, if there were a SC in French I would point them here.
Last but not least, I’d like to add to your plug for Mary G’s substack – not only is it a lot of fun but it also complements SC perfectly. She posts her prompts on Monday. She’s given us three so far: a six-word story, a seven-sentence story and a one-sentence story. Looking forward to tomorrow's. Thank you, Mary.
Karen! Thanks so much!
Wow, what an impressive list, thanks Mary!!!!
So many good ones are on there, like Torrey Peeters and Ben Lerner, Hilary Mantel, and then: so many writers I still have to discover!!!
And a great question, too!
I have two questions:
1.How do you keep your characters straight with so many to juggle? How do you avoid the error if saying someone is blond in page 25 and bald in page 142?
2. How do you research characters with very different backgrounds than you? For imstanc3, I am a white middle class, 77-year-old male with a 50+year background as a print journalist. If I were to write a novel, I would want to include Black, Asian, and possibly other male & female characters with interesting and very different backgrounds from myself. How do I make those people real and not just white males in blackface?
Bert - for question #1 - copy editors! I know a few good ones if you're interested. But if anything happens to that blond character of significance, then by page 142 they may have lost all their hair or torn it out themselves. :)
For question #2 - talk to people! Appropriation is a thing. Very difficult to fake making characters different from one's self, of course.
I'm with Rob here - great questions, Bert.
Two great questions you're posing Bert. Maybe two of next writing challenges you'll be working on yourself?
#1. I keep a running list of characters and their traits in a separate doc so I can refer back when needed--sort of a character outline. Sometimes they change of course as characters evolve.
I struggle with #2 as well. I currently have a draft of a novel that includes POVs of five teenage boys. One of the characters is Japanese and is inspired by someone who partly inspired the book, and another character is Black while I am white. I decided I had to write my book this way because I started it third-person and then tried first person from the more-or-less main character, but the story only truly became alive and FUN when I started writing from the various perspectives which now really create the "meaning" of the novel. However, I think in publishing there's a current distaste for writing across race. As a gay man, I understand when it feels like a book or movie gets it wrong, and obviously there are plenty of cases that are clearly exploitive. I don't think my book is, but of course I would think that. I love the five characters who speak in this book! But I also realize there are reasons for this pushback. But also find it sad and pointedly not FUN to feel there's a need to stay in a demographic lane. Curious if anyone has thoughts.
George, thanks for parting the curtain, to some extent, and letting us see part of the process you undertook in writing your novel. As always, it's very helpul. It leads me to a question that I hope will be helpful for many of us.
Hemingway famously said, "The first draft of anything is shit." And other authors have confirmed that, encouraging us to just get the story down, then worry about craft later during the revision process. However, I've also read quite a few authors who say things such as, "I'm happy if I write 500 words a day" or "If I write 8 pages a week, I'm ecstatic." Either they're writing with their eyes closed, or their daily word count represents some mighty refined shit.
Why is it taking them so long to write that first draft if the bar is low and they're supposed to be postponing the revision process?
Thanks!
I don't think there is a "supposed to." I know I need to have more fun on the page and embrace the "shitty first draft" more, let go more, but I'm also a writer who absolutely loves the part where you go back and fix the shitty stuff, so I do that as I go along. It gets me into flow. I've been told not to do that, but I can't do it any other way. So even if I come up with only 1000 words in a day, and I'm into it, and it excites me to go back to the work the next day, that's a successful day for me.
Totally agree.
I know people who write polished 1000-2000 words a day, and those who write 2000 words of "draft copy" a day. Whatever it is, first time around, it's still draft. Revision happens, or must.
There is also a difference between writing and typing. It's easy to type 2000 words a day, a bit harder to write 2000 words a day with any kind of coherence. If I'm not mistaken, Stephen King talks about editing the previous day's work and calling it done, and then forging ahead with his 2000 words a day. So the entire day isn't merely writing. And of course, he and his editors have a hand at the whole thing once it's completed.
Two thoughts Charles:
First maybe there's not actually so much difference between the process each of the authors of these 'often quoted quotes' are describing? Perhaps more a result of semantic variations in the way that writers describe the way they the get a fiction from its initial start to its finished state?
Second it has struck me, powerfully and often, as we've been genially rolling along reading and reflecting and sometimes offering comment here in Story Club is that there is no-one way to work the writing process to get through to the finished fictive product. George seems to taken as many routes to the reach the last full stop (i.e. period?) of each of his published fictions as the number of stories he has achieved publication of?
Thank you, questioner, and thank you, George. Today’s post is thrilling and exciting, especially George’s principle that such notions as a central character’s journey are “a subset of a greater thing - the story responding both to itself and to the reader’s constantly arising expectations.” (And also of needing only “enough backstory to make the current moment make sense.”)
The works of Sigrid Nunez, which I am now engrossed in and enchanted by, illustrate this notion of what a “story” can be. I am deep into reading and rereading The Friend, What Are You Going Through, and The Vulnerables, which are not traditional novels, but blends of memoir and fiction—digressive and essay-istic, spare yet chock-a-block with characters and their moments, anecdotes, philosophical ponderings, jokes, asides, stream-of-consciousness narration, history, current events, questions. Shades of Virginia Woolf and making a “novel” novel indeed. In each of these I have happily let go of expectations and followed the narrator wherever she takes me.
Nunez is a graceful and deliberate writer; she makes wonderful sentences. I recommend this video from her appearance four years ago at Politics and Prose Bookstore, in which she reads from and discusses The Friend: https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=Sigrid+Nunez&type=E211US105G91558#id=4&vid=1858facd62401d0c0dfca8c8bf8757f3&action=click
I loved The Friend so much. And the other one about living with the acquaintance who is dying.
Nancy, I love her work, too! I'm near-ish P&P & so remember that reading. Christmas isn't quite over for me yet & I'm hoping that I'll get The Vulnerables, one among my long list. I think you & I must be on the same wavelength--we've often agreed on matters literary. Cheers!
Fantastic list. Enough to keep me busy forever. Could I mention Raymond Carver. Poems and short stories. He might have been on the list and I buzzed through too fast. Wonderful of you to take the time to put it together. Thank you.
No Raymond Carver on the list! But yes, he certainly belongs there.
You are, consistently, one of my absolute favorite writing sages in a world full of dollar store “experts” screaming their answers to questions no one asked them.
Office Hours makes me feel a little more sane and hopeful every time, and I thank you for that. 🤍
Ah. This explains why the short fiction I most recommend and read multiple times and will read again was your 'Mother's Day'. The spin on the point of view, from one woman who I utterly comprehended to another who I resisted at first and then also comprehended was intoxicatingly great. The way these perspectives gave me insight into the man - their focus, is something I have returned to so many times. And the children, they were there too, begging for my attention.
I learned something about life on a deeper plane. Two truths. Three even. And more. Your pivot gave me permission to experiment with different fully focused points of view. The tragic, the comedic, the strange dance of life is that no one person is fully right all the time and we are connected in this dance and we can learn from each other.
So I learn way of pivoting and turning. Just when I think I understand another perspective challenges my perspective.
This is a technique I sued with my own novel The Seasonwife released in Aotearoa New Zealand last year which has been well reviewed and which is dancing along happily. I toyed with one pov but it wasn't enough. I knew it could be dangerous to take on an indigenous perspective but how could I inspire empathy if I did not visit a character? Fortunately I had a mentor who was indigenous and who supported me in this approach. And I had worked alongside Māori for a long time. But it wasn't an easy decision and I did not take it lightly. It was the only way I could avoid invisibilising people who have been invisiblised, it seemed to me. And I have received great support from Māori who tell me that this young woman is their ancestor.
I had four perspectives in my novel. Two main perspectives. Another only briefly but an important passage. And a fourth with a significant tilt.
I was warned that multiple pov's would risk the book seeming like a theatre with characters entering and exiting a stage. But this was avoided I think by your emphasis that one character is showing something that cannot be revealed in any other way, whether it is interior or exterior and particularly interior.
In The Seasonwife my bad guy is stuck in a class system. He really isn't going to change but he doesn't see himself as a villain. I find this a lot with bad guys - real ones and otherwise, they believe themselves. And I needed to show his belief system.
I love the way my characters came out and revealed themselves. I love them for their courage.
I thought 'never again'. Next novel: one pov. Haha! Now I'm working on a trilogy 'No Graves For Ghosts' and the first novel 'The Maid and The Mesmerist' already has several povs. One main character but others who show other aspects of the story, not just her story but the greater story, the one happening then and now.
All history is a thread from the past to the present and to the future. And as a historical novelist I find certain characters - in this case based on their real life stories - tell different aspects pertinent to the thread of then and now and the future.
So thank you. I will continue to play with the different characters and I applaud you George for paving the way with not one path but many. When the path leads somewhere then even into a different life we can go there. I have learned to take the risk and venture away from one main view into others to shine a light on us all.
Heya Saige,
good to meet you at that winter's night launch of The Seasonwife. Reading the book inspired a journey of exploration into that part of our past when two races met and began to understand each other, to both good and bad ends. So far have read 'Kawai' by Monty Soutar, and a revelatory work Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha Maori (F.E. Maning) and a while ago Fiona Kidman's The Captive Wife which I'll read again, along with a second reading of The Seasonwife. The Maning book is hilariously written by an eccentric adventurer and has vivid descriptions of the trade in heads (tattooing and killing slaves to supply demand) I'll email you with more on this later once I've read your book again. Great to hear of your trilogy, keep us posted. Been working, though not much, on one, a scifi romance myself.
Arohanui,
William.
It was great meeting you Iam and I'm glad The Seasonwife inspired you to journey into this area. Monty Soutar's work is brave and important - not an easy task writing about these early events.
Many Pākehā of the colonial period - including some of my own surveyor ancestors - wrote 'boys' own' sensational accounts of their travels which place themselves as the hero. Manning is a mixed bag. I know one of his Māori descendants who finds him so. Reading the colonial voices is rather like sifting through a bag of salt for hidden gems, and there are some gems, but these works tend to be entertaining, one-sided and not always entirely accurate. Anne Salmond, James Belich, Vincent O'Sullivan, Michael King and Jared Davidson are excellent historians who can take us into this history.
I find reading books cited by historians in bibliographies can lead to a deeper view. For instance in Belich's 'Making Peoples' I found a reference to another perspective on the whaler, Jack Guard - the focus of Kidman's book and my own short fiction 'A Perfect State of Nudity' published by Penguin in 1995. I went to the Taranaki museum to find the original - J.S Stronge's unpublished m/s in the Taranaki library claimed that Guard killed two Māori boys who wished to trade potatoes rather than provide them for nothing. I learned through wide reading that Jack Guard was a tough often cruel whaler whose racism is not difficult to find. I don't think characters like him need reconstructing to fit white modern sensitivities.
And this is another aspect of colonial fiction and non-fiction - the painting of white people - British and other Europeans - as culturally superior. Of course during this period they were war mongering, hanging people for minor crimes, and slavery was a trade defended across the Atlantic and around the globe.
The head and body parts trade was orchestrated by wealthy white merchants and rather like slavery, I think too much blame as been placed on indigenous participants in the trade. The victims have not had a voice and they deserve that.
Wealthy men and women at the top of the Empire bought heads for their 'curiosity cabinets'. There were exceptionists who were revolted by this at the time. It is a revolting trade.
I also think it is important as much as possible when writing historical fiction to not settle into our own voice but to find the authentic voice of characters. The whaling and early trading community was made up of men and women who were not well educated, who were working class. Their language was lively and creative.
As a lover of language for The Seasonwife I needed to find real earth-and-stew voices not an archaic version of my own. I found these voices living in the archives, crying out form the courts of Sydney. Women and men presented their cases with flashes of wit and grand theatre, they shouted and complained and did not back down. They sought freedom to live as they wished and many women opted to work in the prison factory or stocks than be placed with a woman who would discipline them morally.
The voice of the working class can also be found in Dickens though he failed the Irish. The Irish voice can be found in other spheres of literature and of course the gaelic, once banished, is now being revived.
Flick me an email and we can have a coffee when you are next up this way. In the meantime, happy reading and writing!
Arohanui,
Saige
"So, the opening of a book makes a certain tension. The writer’s job (let’s say) is to know, or feel, the nature of that tension, and try to maintain it..."
I really liked this simple point. It sounds pretty obvious afterward, but that simple abstraction--a certain tension--really highlights how much flexibility you have as a writer to move forward with a given body of writing. It doesn't have to _be_ this or that. But whatever it is has to keep having this effect of working with the tension that's there. Thanks for sharing this insight.
Thanks for focusing on this point. It answers many questions about how to keep the reader engaged in a simple and real way. I love that George gets to the heart of the matter and doesn’t give “how to” answers that put the questioner in her head and takes her/us away from her heat/passion/inner guidance.
Thanks Mary for compiling the list and I'm looking forward to reading your substack too!
George, your note on 'just enough' backstory couldn't have come at a more pertinent moment for me, so thank you. I'm working on a short story that ballooned for a while veering towards the 10k-and-not-yet-finished mark, but earlier this week I realised it's because I was doing too many backstory detours. A quick (in between making the kids tea) editing sessions saw me prune a solid 3k words that were in the main backstory, and that was only the first half of what I've got. Hoping to go back in with the editorial gardening shears again tomorrow morning to bring this baby back to where she needs to be....
Looking forward to seeing you over there, Rebecca!
it's a brilliant thing you've started Mary!
Oh, thanks so much, Rebecca! I'm having a lot of fun with it. So sweet of George to mention it--and thank god he did, because otherwise you (and others here) would have never found it.
First one to read all the works on the New Book List for Story Club gets a free t-shirt? :)
How's about a free t for those who have read, already, the most from the list. 29 for me.