Wordcraft blog by Avi

Q&A: Language and Word Count

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As I continue to answer the questions I am most often asked, I’ve been given two more questions.

Question one: “Do you work to write the way the people spoke in the past?”

This is actually a complex question. The answer, simply put, is that it depends on the context of the book I am trying to write. Consider, I do write in English. But if I am writing an historical novel set in 14th Century England, (say Crispin) as contrasted with one set in 18th Century England (The End of the World and Beyond) or 19th Century England (The Traitor’s Gate) the historical English spoken will differ. There is very little 19th Century English we could not understand. 14th Century English would be, for the most part, gibberish. I don’t want to write in such a way that my readers will be discouraged from reading the book. Therefore, I try to use a few words from the time period to give some flavor—so to speak—as to how the language was used.

Question two: “Do you work with a daily word count quota in mind? Do you work on other projects simultaneously?”

I am an early riser, and as I sit before the computer, cup of coffee near to hand at 7 AM, I am trying to decide what I am going to accomplish that day. Rewrite chapter 5? Get on with the unwritten chapter 36? Go through the whole book, rewriting as I read? So no, no daily quota. But always there is a general deadline looming on the not-so-distant horizon. I do need to submit a book by then. I work constantly toward that goal. No surprise, some days I am more successful than others. Call it an annual quota.

As to simultaneous projects, the answer is yes. Thus when I submit the draft of the book I am currently trying to finish, there will be time (more or less) before I hear from my editor. During that time I will be working on another book. Thus, at this particular moment, I am trying to finish the first draft of book A, waiting for proofs of book B, working with an editor to finalize the book cover design for book C, researching the next project, Book D. In short, I am always working on something.

Q&A: How do you deal with criticism?

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gulls

It is the way of most art—a piece of writing, movie, painting, dance, etc., etc.—that it is generally created to be experienced by others, and in so doing exposes itself to both public praise and criticism. That is inherently part of the art-making process. Moreover, this critical response comes to the artist, for the most part, by people you don’t know, and will never know. It is impersonal. These critics have little or no knowledge of how you created your art, why you did so, how long or how hard you worked to create it. Perhaps that’s how it should be: the art is experienced by how it is received. It is simply (more or less) liked or not liked.

When I first began to publish, critical responses (favorable and unfavorable) came from professional critics in journals, magazines, and newspapers. Nowadays, because of the internet, criticism comes from everywhere. Moreover, it has become the nature of internet criticism, (not just in the world of art) that people feel free to say anything, from lavish praise to dismissive insult. It can be wildly supportive, or bluntly cruel. I’ve experienced both.

(I’ve sometimes wondered when I read a very caustic negative review [not necessarily for one of my books] how the reviewer would like his or her work being reviewed by a casual passerby.)

One of the things that people do not fully grasp is that art—in whatever form—is rarely created by just one person. Next time you go to a movie, hang around and watch the final credits—the listing of the many, many people who were engaged in the making of the film. It is not so different from the making of a book. A publisher once told me that she estimated that some forty people have a hand in each published book. But published books of fiction, unless there are fulsome acknowledgements, rarely list all the people involved.

Yet criticism of a book is almost wholly aimed at the presumptive sole author of the book.

The question posted here is how do I respond to that criticism? If it’s positive, one can smile, and think “That’s nice. Thank you.” Moreover, a positive review helps sell the book, and bluntly, that’s how I make my living.

Negative criticism is much harder to absorb. But what I have learned is if—in the public criticism—a fair number of folks say the same thing, it is probably accurate. This is to say, the best criticism allows you to learn and get better at your art. That’s hard to do, but ultimately, necessary. That means a negative response can be much more helpful than a purely positive critique.

But the insulting, or dismissive responses can be very painful for the artist.

Many years ago a book of mine was published in England. The book—meant to be funny—had a line that involved baseball. Since baseball is not played in England, the English editor changed that baseball line to one that referenced soccer. When that book was reviewed in England, a critic who did not like it, quoted that very line to indicate why he thought my book was weak. And when True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle was published, one reviewer indicated that “If writer and editor had worked harder it would have been a better book.”

So the essential answer to this question is that I have learned to live with what is made of my work. If I can learn from it, great. If it’s insulting, well, I don’t so much turn the other cheek, I turn another page.

Remembering Dick Jackson

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Richard Jackson

Richard Jackson

I was terribly saddened to learn of the death of Dick Jackson, a good friend and one of the great editors.

Over many years I worked with him on some twenty books, but I had to go back and look at my list, because there may have been more. I worked with him more than any other editor.

I confess, though I knew him for so many years, I won’t pretend to say I knew him well. He was an intensely private man. He had let it be known that he wished no funeral or memorial service—utterly typical of the man I knew—and did not know. If there had been such services, there would have been hundreds showing up.  Any list of the authors and illustrators with whom he worked would include a huge number of major artists who wrote many key books, books that changed the nature of children’s books. No editor’s books won more major awards than his. In the world of children’s literature Richard Jackson was a major figure. As editors go, he was the major figure.

Among his many skills was his ability to work with very different writers. I rather suspected the way he worked with me was not at all the way he worked—or was—with Paula Fox or Judy Blume, Brian Floca, or many others.  In fact, during the few times I was with him when he was with a group of his writers and illustrators, he looked positively uncomfortable, as if he much preferred to be with us individually. Chameleon-like, if you will, but creatively so.

When working on a book, I could call upon him, and though I knew he was working on many other projects, (never named) he would be instantly and wholly by with me, and the particular work.  We had a joke that we were matched very well insofar as he was dyslexic, and I was dysgraphic. He encouraged being bold, different, and radical.

When we worked on a book, and it was essentially done, he did not drop the book. Almost inevitably, perhaps two or three weeks later, I’d get a call. “I’ve been thinking,” was his preface, and he went on to point out something we had neglected to do, a gap, a small but vital point missed, a story beat dropped. He would be right, of course.  Dick Jackson was rarely wrong. And he was right there for the production process. Moreover, he keenly and actively supported his books when they were published. 

He was enormous fun to work with. So many of our editorial talks were punctuated with laughter, and rich creativity. To talk out a problem, a difficulty, was to find creative ways to solve the problem. I loved working with him. And while I know he would be embarrassed to have it expressed, I loved the man. And I have absolutely no doubt that in that emotion, I stand in a large crowd.

Q&A: Have you any advice for would-be writers?

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circular stack of books

  1. Read. Read. Read. The more you read the better writer you can become. When you are setting out to become a writer it’s more important to read than it is to write.  Reading is the best teacher of writing. My own mantra is: Writers don’t write writing, they write reading. And remember, when you write you are writing for readers. Having a journal, keeping a diary, is fine, but when you write the way I do (novels, short stories, and essays) you are writing for other people. You want them to understand, laugh, cry, feel tense, and so forth.
  2. Nobody, nobody, nobody, writes anything very well the first time. One and done won’t work. Real writing is rewriting. I just sent in a new book to a reader for criticism, but I think I’ve already rewritten the book eighty or so times. It took the most part of a year. But when I get the critique I will surely rewrite some more.
  3. If you write something once and you think it’s good, you are in trouble. Because it is not done. If you write something and you think “this is not so good,” that’s great because you can make it better.
  4. Write what you like to read. If you like science fiction, write that. If you hate mysteries, don’t write them. Writing what you like to read sharpens your self-criticism.
  5. Try not to talk about what you are writing. Don’t explain your writing. If it is not on the page, then the reader cannot get it.
  6. The easiest way to sense the quality of your own work is to read it aloud to someone. Do so with a pencil in hand. You’ll be amazed thatyou will notice how many parts of your work can be improved.
  7. And again, read, read, read!

Sailing

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LightSail 2

an image of LightSail 2 from The Planetary Society’s website

Sixty years ago. It was some time about 1961 and I was a student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. At the time, I was working on my master’s degree in the Speech Department, wherein was housed the Theatre Department, for it was theatre I was interested in, working at trying to become a playwright. At some point that year I would enter the student playwright contest. I had entered the year before, with no success, but that year I wrote a one-act play called A Little Rebellion. It won the contest. The play was staged and published in the student literary magazine … my first publication.

As was common, I lived in an off-campus house with a bunch of guys. I don’t remember their names, but it was all amiable. I have no idea how we got together but a few of the fellows were graduate students in physics. All told, there were maybe five of us, each with our room, the kitchen used in common, likewise the living room.

The living room was open space, and roommates congregated there for the endless talk about every topic in the world, talk being the primary currency of student life. Into that living room, came the friends of room mates, and the talk bubbled on.

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

One evening, when I walked into the living room, two of the physics guys were there. They had brought a friend, a fellow graduate student. “Avi,” they said by way of introduction, “this is Carl Sagan.”

(At the time, he was a student at the University of California, so I have no idea why he was in Madison. I suppose my room mates were friends of his.)

I sat down and listened. They were talking astrophysics, something I knew nothing about—other than science fiction. The one doing most of the talking was Sagan. He was engaging, indeed, charismatic, and he was holding forth about space travel. It was, to say the least, fascinating. I never forgot one astonishing idea he put forth:

The way to travel in space was to build space sailing ships, whose gigantic sails would catch the force emitted by the sun.

New York, July 31, 2019. CNN About 450 miles above Earth, a small satellite is drifting deeper into the cosmos — powered not by rocket fuel, thrusters or other contraptions. This satellite, called LightSail 2, is sailing on a sunbeam.

The prototype spacecraft is the work of the Planetary Society, an international nonprofit headed by famed science communicator Bill Nye. Its mission was declared a success on Wednesday, marking the culmination of a years-long effort to prove a satellite can surf through space using sunlight as an endless fuel supply.

It only took sixty years.

Q&A: From the Mail Bag

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Lately, in this blog, I have been providing answers to the questions I am most often asked about my books and writing. I’ve also invited readers to ask new questions.

Here are two recently posed questions.

Crispin: Cross of Lead“Will the 4th book in the Crispin series ever be published?”

I rarely have a full sense of how the plots of my novels work out until a have a complete first draft.  The Crispin books were an exception.  When I first thought of the book(s) I conceived of a four volume saga, not so much as a series, but a continuing story.  Very early (before I began to write) I had a sense of how each book worked.  In that sense I knew (and still do) what the fourth volume contained, where it went, and what would happen. Oddly enough (for me) I even knew the very last line of the whole story.

The reason that last volume was never fully written—it was begun—is complex, and is a publishing story which involves a lot of “he said,” and ”she said,” not necessarily worthy enough to replicate here—even if I could.  That said, I’ve often thought of self-publishing that last volume, which would be the only way to bring it into existence. Perhaps it will be my swan song.  But don’t hold your breath.

Sometimes I Think I Hear My Name“Do you ever know what happened to ‘Tony’ who was the inspiration for your novel Sometimes I Think I Hear My Name? Do you and or your son still keep in contact with him? How did things work out with his parents? I think it would be interesting to know what happened to him.”

Not having any knowledge about “Tony,” or what happened to him, I went to my son who, during high school, was “Tony’s” friend. Not very surprisingly, my son has lost contact with the fellow, and has no real idea as to what became of him, only commenting that “’Tony’ had a chaotic life.” It must be said, however, that “Tony’s” situation (and persona) was merely the starting point for the novel I wrote.  What happened to the boy in the book is entirely invented. In fact, as I recall, the book had more to do with my mood at the time—the work was published in 1982. All this reminded me of an essay I read about the great writer (and literary teacher) Wallace Stegner. He is quoted as saying that “Reality waits to be civilized into fiction.”

Do keep these questions coming.

Q&A: Numbers and Favorites

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How many books have you published?

There have been seventy-two novels, both long and short, and that includes two books scheduled for next year.

There have been three collections of short stories and a fair number of short stories published individually in anthologies.

There have been a few pictures books.

There has been a published one-act play.

There are many paperback reprints, foreign language translations, essays, and introductions.

Of all these publications, do you have a favorite?

The short, easy answer is no. However, by way of self-motivation I try to tell myself that the book I am working on—whatever it might be–is my favorite. Alas, that is sometimes difficult.

While I do not have a favorite, I do think some books have been more successful than others. That is, I believe they achieved most of what I wanted. In that sense, I have particular fondness for such as the Poppy books, The Barn, Catch You Later Traitor, Wolf Rider, and True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Also, the collection of short stories, The Most Important Thing.

Regarding other people’s books, do you have some favorites?

The ones that come to mind are Treasure Island by Stevenson; The Wind in the Willows by Graham;  A Christmas Carol by Dickens; The Maltese Falcon by Hammett; The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway.

Q&A: “How long does it take you to write one of your books?”

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There are two extremes:  Bright Shadow took fourteen years to write from the time I began it until I had the published book in hand. S.O.R Losers was written in two days. The reason for both provides an answer to the question.

When I was in high school, I was on the soccer team, a team created by the school for boys who were not particularly athletic. There were twelve of us, only one of whom had ever played soccer before. I was not even on the starting team of eleven.

On the day of our first game, our goalie quit the team. Our coach, when he belatedly heard the news—just as we were heading for the field–looked around, pointed to me and said, “Avi, you’re the tallest. You’re playing goalie.”

Needless to say, we lost that game, and went on to lose every game (two seasons) we ever played.

Years later, my boys (who were soccer players) loved to hear how bad a player I was, and how bad my team was. That’s to say I rehearsed the story (with embellishments) a fair number of times. When I decided to write the story, it was all in my head, and life. It was exceedingly easy to write.

By way of contrast, Bright Shadow entered my thoughts, not as a story, but as a riddle.

When bright, it’s dark, when darkest, it’s gone. When gone for good, so are you. What am I?

I don’t know where this came from, or why, though I do like riddles. Perhaps I had recently learned that Anglo-Saxon culture considered riddles a form of literature. 

The point is, I liked the riddle. I then went on to try to create a story that fit it. That’s to say that the plot of the book was in itself a kind of riddle. It took a very long time to figure it out.

The point is that the two books were created by diametrically different methods: S.O.R. Losers came out of personal experience. Bright Shadow was an intellectual exercise.

My own sense is that creating books are best written by a mixture of both—experience and intellect—which in my case means it takes me about a year to write most of my novels. Sometimes a little more. Sometimes a little less. But to answer the question, How long does it take you to write one of your books?—a year is average.

Common Questions

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I’ve long lost count of how many classrooms I have visited, either in-person or via Skype. These days a majority of my visits are with Skype, which saves time and money for all concerned. Regardless, down the years it has always fascinated me that the core questions I’m asked are often the same. It doesn’t matter as to the geographic location, or the kind of school; public, religious or charter. Doesn’t matter if I am in the school or on the internet.

True, now and again an unusual question is asked. “What do you think of adjectives?” I was once asked. “Do you like weasels?” was another question. “Which fingers do you use most when you type on your computer?” “If you could be one of the characters from one of your books, which would it be?”

On the other hand perhaps the most common question asked of all authors is, “Where do you get your ideas?” “What’s your own favorite book?” is another. “Are you rich?” “Does your family help you write?” And inevitable, for me, “Where does that name ‘Avi,’ come from?”

In any case, I’m going to embark upon a series of blog posts that answer the questions I’m most usually asked. That said, if you, the reader, have a question you’d like me to answer, do let me know (in the comments), and somewhere down the road, I’ll try to provide an answer.

Let’s begin by answering that most standard of questions asked of me: Where do I get the name, “Avi?”

In fact, the name is used in a variety of cultures. It appears in Hindu culture, Icelandic, in the state of Israel, just to mention a few societies.

My name derives from a quirk. My full name is Edward Irving Wortis. The “Edward” and “Irving,” are traditional old English names, e.g. Edward the Confessor. My parents being anglophiles were no doubt comfortable with such names. In fact, Edward was chosen (I was told) because it uses the letter E, in recognition of the name of a (at the time) recently deceased Great Grandfather. “Irving” was my father’s brother’s name, who died suddenly when a young man. I never knew either of these namesakes.

But it was my twin sister, Emily, who, as we started to talk, called me something that sounded like “Avi.” There appears to be neither logic nor reason for this. And as often happens in families, one child’s name for a sibling becomes the norm. (My son Jack called his older brother—named Robert—Ra, and it stuck.)

I did see a letter that my paternal grandmother wrote when I was quite young, and she asked about “Ovie,” which is to say me. When the spelling A v i was settled upon, I have no idea.

As for the dropping of the last name from my books, my parents were very much opposed to my becoming a writer. That was not because they thought the writing profession was bad (as young people they both wanted to be writers) but because they thought my writing was bad.

So dropping my last name, and taking on my sister’s naming, was you might say, claiming my own identity.

So there it is, just: Avi.

“What is your writing process?”

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Over the past few weeks, in a number of venues, I have been asked: “What is your writing process?”

I’m happy to give an answer as long as it is understood that I have NO notion that what I do constitutes rules for writing. Grammar and spelling have rules (which can sometimes be ignored) but “How to Write a Novel” does not sit on my shelves. I truly believe that if whatever you do works for you, stick with it.

writing process

I once knew a writer who wrote his books paragraph by paragraph on index cards, then assembled them when he was done. I heard a famous writer explain that she never starts to write a book until she has the last line firmly in her mind. Natalie Babbitt once told me she had to work out the entire book in her mind, before she began to write. So it goes. Stick with what works for you. Change it only if it is not working. But I keep to my mantra: Writers don’t write writing. They write reading. It’s all about creating a reading experience.

I think I recall that it was said of the great Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo that he would look at a block of marble and see the figure inside. Then he would remove, as it were, the “excess” stone to set the figure free.

sculptor

Of course, I do not compare myself with Michelangelo, but my process is just the opposite. I begin with an idea, usually a character in a situation and only a general sense of the story I wish to tell. In my early days I worked from crude outlines. These days I have a general arc of the story in my head, but for the most part I invent as I go forward.

I write a first crude chapter. I rewrite that chapter many, many times, until I have a clear sense of person, voice, place, and the movement of the story. Usually, I am adding text.

BUT, even as I go forward, I rewrite what I have written. Moreover, I allow myself to make major changes if I feel they are productive. I also don’t talk to people about what I am writing, other than in the broadest terms: “I’m writing a book about gold rush California.” To do otherwise boxes me in. The freer I am, the more inventive I can be.

Thus the first draft takes the longest. Next, I rewrite the whole book any number of times, perhaps seventy to eighty times. When I sense that I have something whole and decent—whatever than means—I usually read the book (pen in hand) to my wife. Let me stress, read. (Writers don’t write writing. They write reading.) When I do so I hear the book, and make countless changes. Also, my wife is a sharp critic and is not shy about saying what she thinks.

Then I may ask a friend to read the book—making sure it is a cold reading. That is, I don’t tell the friend anything about the book. It’s just, “Please, read this and tell me your thoughts.”

There is more rewriting until I feel I am just pushing commas about. Then the manuscript goes to an editor. Since I have worked on it for at least a year, I also need to step away from the work. Starting something new helps provide distance.

Inevitably, working with an editor means more rewriting takes place, sometimes major changes. That is a whole other process.

But let me point out one crucial thing: Writing a novel begins by working alone. But at some point there are many people who have input.

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