Word Craft by Avi

Q&A: Numbers and Favorites

By Avi on September 10, 2019 0

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?”

By Avi on September 3, 2019 1

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

By Avi on August 27, 2019 4

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?”

By Avi on August 20, 2019 4

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.

Lee

By Avi on August 8, 2019 4

I won’t suggest I knew Lee Bennett Hopkins well. Nor was I engaged in his passion, poetry. But I did know him for a great many years and considered him a friend.

It would have been around 1971 when I first met Lee in an elevator in the Random House building. We were going down (probably heading for lunch) with our respective editors, his, if I recall rightly, was Janet Ross, my editor was Fabio Cohen.

What Lee and I shared most often over the next many years was his laughter, which was generous, and infectious. I have no idea what we laughed about, but it was the essence of our get-togethers that inevitably took place at conferences we were both attending. We would meet in the aisles, and he would quickly share some publishing gossip (which he loved) and then we would laugh. We would laugh about ourselves, publishing, and the world at large.

And almost as often he would pull someone forward, make an introduction and say, “you need to know ……….. She, or he, is a fine poet.”

His contribution to the world of poetry for kids was immense. The number of people he inspired, encouraged, and supported was legion. He was generous, he was important, and he will be missed.

But what I shall miss is the laughter.

Summer Blog Vacation

By Avi on July 27, 2019 1

Stay tuned for my next blog entry on Tuesday, August 20th. I hope your summer is going well. Have you had time to catch up on your reading?

Struggling: Redux

By Avi on July 23, 2019 0

[Photo credit: Adobe Stock]

This summer we are re-running my most-read blogs from the past year, in case you didn’t have an opportunity to read them the first time around. I’ve rewritten each one of these, so even if you’ve read them before, you may wish to read them again! Here is the tenth of those articles:

I am working on a new book—and I am struggling. Given the fact that I’ve published some eighty books, it may surprise some that I am having a hard time. Let me suggest why.

Every book is a new book, and the success of one, though presumably it gives confidence to write another, that is not necessarily so. A writer’s confidence is, at best, fragile. A nasty remark on Goodreads can kill a day’s work. Let past success give me patience for my current failure.
One of the pitfalls of a new book is my contract—if I have one. A contract will specify the total word count—say sixty thousand words. But there on my screen, the PC is always counting and it reads “2,465 words.” The psychological tendency, then, is to write more words than I need. That clogs up my writing, and makes it verbose. It feels as if I am writing badly. I am.
I agreed to write such and such a book, with such and such a plot, and I made a good pitch. But a pitch is not a book. There is many a slip between pitch and book.
Reminder: talk as little about my book as possible. It boxes me in. Silence is freedom. A talked book becomes an unwritten book.
Sometimes as I write, I see a possibility for a shift in the story. But I promised something else. Reminder to self: go with the shift, with what feels right. The one person I should talk to is my editor.
Reminder: Beware the book that is focused on place, rather than characters. Travel books are about places. Fiction is about characters.
Reminder: Professional writers get paid for their work, and I depend on that income to live. Get it done! reverberates in my head. The rent is due. That creates another kind of pressure, one that may be real but that doesn’t help my writing.
Reminder: Good writing is re-writing, endless re-writing. Patience is a key component of writing.
Reminder: Never deny your deepest instincts about your own work. But be open to those instincts.
Reminder: Read good writing by others. Good writing is generous. Other writers will show the way.
Reminder: Slowly (if not surely) it will get done.

“No Taxation
Without Representation” Redux

By Avi on July 16, 2019 0

In the Thirteen American colonies, ten years prior to the Revolution, there was what was known as the Stamp Act crisis, which, in Boston in particular, brought forth that iconic cry.

By representation it was meant there was no American seated in the British Parliament.

“The Repeal or the Funeral of Miss Ame. -Stamp”

“New Hampshire: Stamp Master in Effigy”

“But,” according to historian Brian Deming, “the idea never gained traction in Britain.” As one British critic at that time wrote: “Shall we live to see the spawn of our Transports occupy the highest seats in our Commonwealth? Degenerate Britons! How can ye entertain the humiliating thought!”

The key word here is “Transport.” It references the many thousands of transported felons who had been shipped to the colonies for forced labor by way of punishment in the 18th Century.

During the 18th Century, England became a center of great wealth and mass poverty. Crime against property became commonplace. In reaction, the British government enacted harsh laws to punish minor and major offenders—a collection of laws that collectively came to be known as “The Bloody Codes.” One major punishment was transportation, by which children, women, and men were sent to British American colonies and sold into forced labor.

At the time of the Revolution there was a colonial population of two million. Some fifty thousand were (or had been) these transported felons. (Hence the quote cited above.) It had become a business. It was 1619 when the first Africans were brought to America as slaves. There was a time when enslaved whites and blacks labored together.

This is the context in which my newly published The End of the World and Beyond takes place. In book one (of this two part series) The Unexpected Life of Oliver Cromwell Pitts, my eponymous hero becomes entangled in crime and British Law. The sequel tells the story of what happened to Oliver when he was is transported to Maryland and sold.

Booklist reviewed the book thus: “Though darker than its predecessor, this sequel is equally fine. The plotting is altogether laudable, the setting beautifully realized, and the characters highly empathetic. Especially good is the voice Avi has conjured for Oliver, just antique enough to evoke eighteenth century diction and syntax. One thing is certain: it may be the end of the world but there is no end to the pleasure Avi’s latest evokes.”

Slowly, Step by Step: Redux

By Avi on July 9, 2019 1

turtle

I am currently at work on a new novel—doesn’t matter what it is. Though essentially done, it has been sitting on my editor’s desk for a relatively long time while I wait for final revision notes. I don’t know why it has taken so long. I suppose it doesn’t matter. The point is the book is in a kind of Limbo.

But not quite. From time to time, to keep my mental connection to the text, I yank the whole manuscript onto my screen. Then I choose a number, any number. It might be my wife’s birthday. It might be expiration date on a can of beans. It might be the page number of the book I had been reading the night before—page 191. I go to that page of my manuscript. The point, is my choice is utterly random.

Then I review that page, and lo and behold, I see changes to make. A better word. A comma in or out. A small cut. Different phrasing. Whatever….

I choose another number, another page.

Now and again I’m appalled by what I discover: something totally out of character; confusing syntax; a plot contradiction.

Other times I’m delighted by what I find: a much better way for the character to express herself. A way to turn a dull line into a funny one.

Why is this happening? Because when I work on the text as a whole, I’m sometimes not seeing the parts.

Do it by bits and parts and I’m not, if you will, rushing along with the flow. I’m focused on every line. A good thing.

Of course, the sum total of small parts makes up the whole, and the book is much better for this kind of attention. That said, having done this before—for the same reasons—I have yet to have an editor come back to me and say, “I noticed that on page 67, line 6, you made a change for the better.” The little alterations become absorbed in the whole. Is the book better for these kinds of changes? Absolutely.

Why don’t I do this for every book?

Most often I don’t have the time. Consider the particular book I mentioned here in the beginning. When that editor does get back to me with notes—I bet it will happen—I’ll be given a quick deadline. “Please get this back to me in three weeks.” (Or less!)

So I’m glad for the delay.

But sometimes—for a variety of reasons—a book is rushed from start to finish. It is not necessarily a poorer work, but can well be. Or as John Heywood suggested in his 1546 book of proverbs, “Haste makes waste.”

I once wrote a book in such a quick fashion. Everyone worked hard on it. Too hard. Too quickly. Then, when the published book came into my hands, I looked it over. Nice cover. Blurbs read well. Printing format fine. I opened the book and read the first paragraph. That instant, I realized I had left out a line which would have made a big difference to the book.

One line!

But there it was in my hands, the published book.

Today’s moral: Slow can get you to quality faster.

Goodbye, Christopher Robin Redux

By Avi on July 2, 2019 3

I recently watched (on TV) Goodbye Christopher Robin, which tells the life story of the boy so key to Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne. According to the movie, Pooh is the “most loved children’s book of all time.”

The depicted story of the Christopher Robin’s life is a painful one. A.A. Milne, (Christopher’s father) played by Domhnall Gleeso, was a veteran of World War One, and suffered from PTSD syndrome, which caused him—a very successful West End playwright—to suffer debilitating war-induced flashbacks—to have a repressed emotional life—and a hard time being an engaged father.

Christopher’s mother (played by Margot Robbie) is depicted as selfish, exploitative of her son’s fame, and a snobbish upper-class lady.

The most consistent love in Christopher’s life comes from his Irish nanny (played by Kelly Macdonald)—who is dismissed when she objects to the way Christopher is mistreated.

The very young Christopher Robin is played, charmingly, by Will Tilston.

The movie suggests that the Pooh stories came to life when Christopher and his father enjoy a rare time alone together in rural England. Mother has left for London to enjoy the high life, while the nanny has gone away to take care of her dying mother. In other words, get rid of the women, and creativity happens.

But the essential story revealed here is the deep resentment Christopher felt as to how he was exploited, and cheated of parental love, so as to promote the Pooh books. As depicted, he spent much of his young adult life trying to get away from his literary persona.

What does the film tell us about Winnie-the-Pooh? Very little except to suggest how some of the book’s charming points came from some of the rare moments when father and son enjoyed time together,

Scene from Goodbye Christopher Robin [Fox Searchlight]

What does the film tell us about children’s literature, or the writing life? Nothing.

What does the film tell us about early 20th Century British parenting? That it was pretty pathetic.

At the end of the movie we are told (via subtitles) that Christopher refused to take a penny of the massive money engendered by Pooh, that he always remained in contact with his former nanny, and that he created and ran a bookstore.

I liked that part.

But it also suggests that a book—however dependent on the realities of an author’s life—that life has little to do with how readers receive it. When it comes to books, it’s not authors, but readers, who determine what the book will be.

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Q&A: Numbers and Favorites

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

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Common Questions

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“What is your writing process?”

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Lee

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Summer Blog Vacation

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Struggling: Redux

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“No Taxation
Without Representation” Redux

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Slowly, Step by Step: Redux

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Goodbye, Christopher Robin Redux

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