The 160 Girls Project
I’m going to start posting some stuff soon. I’ll tell you more about that later. In the grand scheme of things, what I’m going to start posting isn’t all that important. This right here though, this is. This is the story of how 160 girls in Kenya are fighting for their rights and changing the world in the process. They’re launching a class action lawsuit against their government for failing to enforce existing rape laws.
This is the website for The Equality Effect, where you can learn more.
Goodnight, Sweet Meggie
Loving a dog isn’t easy. You may think it is, but it isn’t. No matter how many hugs you give or treats you buy or walks you take there will come a time, late at night on one of your worst days, when you realize it wasn’t enough. It was never enough and it never could’ve been. No matter how good you gave, she deserved better.
It’s not your fault. And since I’m not actually talking about you, now am I, it’s not my fault either. Maybe if Meggie hadn’t been such a buttercup and she hadn’t been sweet and funny and hadn’t always done those little pants where it sounded like she was laughing I wouldn’t have to sit here and wish I would’ve found a way to love her just a little more. I should’ve stolen a second heart and sewed it in. Made a shrine to her in the living room where she could’ve seen it and looked at me like blond girl, you a foooool. But I didn’t. As realizations tend to do, this one came too late. It came after she started to shake in the backyard, and after I looked at my mom and nodded, and after I made the worst phone call of my life.
There are millions of people out there who know exactly what I’m going through and exactly how I feel and yet I want to tell you that they’re wrong, they don’t quite get it, because somehow, losing Meggie was worse. You don’t understand. She was just better. I know you were close to your dog too but we were closer. Funny thing about that is all those millions of people could read this paragraph and still understand exactly how I feel because that’s how they felt too. I don’t have anything to prove to anyone else. Just me. I’d like to one day know that I was worthy of my dog.
I’m going to let it go, though. There are too many good memories and I’d like to keep them all so there’s no room for guilt and regret. And anyway, the reason we’ll never feel like we loved our dogs enough is because dogs are just good. All they ever do is give. When we lose a person we remember the good, and we remember the bad, and everything in between that made them human. With a dog, half of that is missing. The bad things they did weren’t bad. Look back and they’re just funny. Dogs are about as close to perfect as it gets. Maybe we don’t measure up, but if all they are is pure and sweet and good, why would they expect us to?
All Meggie wanted out of life was to steal Big Ruth’s pig’s ear, eat an entire rotisserie chicken, and smush her head in goose sh-t at the park. Does that sound like a dog who would approve of anyone feeling bad that it was impossible to love her enough? That would be a foreign concept to Miss Meggie, and not only because her thoughts probably weren’t composed of English sentences. She was pretty hot stuff and she knew it. She had all the boyfriends, including, but not limited to, my sister’s boyfriend, my mom’s partner, every single one of my mom’s male friends, and the guy who came to install the digital cable box.
Even now I feel like this should be longer. Like there’s so much more to say because you don’t know Meggie yet, how could you? I could type forever. I won’t though. I knew her. I loved her. Still do. Always will. That’s enough.
(Meggie photo taken by my wonderful and wonderfully talented sister-in-law Jessica.)
I thought it would be pretty lame to put up a blog about how I never blog anymore so I just wrote it all in the headline instead
I might eulogize my dog tomorrow, though. Not today. Can’t today.
This is a very exciting time in my life.
Look at that, eh? Stock photography will never let me down. Anyway, I wish you could hear the boundless enthusiasm in my voice/fingertips as I type this. Things are going well for me right now, in terms of work, in terms of life, and in terms of actually going on vacation in 12 days. Not only that but I’ve got an idea for a movement, a MOVEMENT, PEOPLE. It’s called Buy a Real Book From a Real Store Saturday. I think the name of the movement kind of sums it up but I’m going to post a short, informative video on it sometime soon. Until then, start planning what real book you’re going to buy from a real store next Saturday because my ultimate goal is to have at least one other person do this with me. Shoot for the moon and hope gravity can’t take hold of you so you never come crashing back to reality where you still suck, or whatever that saying is. REJOICE.
That man in your life who will never let you down — JULY, JULY by Tim O’Brien
I’ve read many books since we last spoke. To be expected, I suppose, as it has been approximately four years. But though I’ve read book after book after book, I’ve been thoroughly underwhelmed by nearly every single one of them. You know how people say they devoured a book? Well I’ve devoured probably 12 or so in the last little while, and they were all dragonfruit. You know, thought they were going to be cool and then they were awful? Dragonfruit, man. It shouldn’t be allowed to call itself a dragonfruit! But anyway, with the books it’s definitely a case of ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ which is why I’m not going to name any of those books. It’s been a saddening experience, so to cure my novel woes I went back to the well that always dispenses the literary equivalent of London dry gin. Tim O’Brien.
Tim O’Brien is best known for his creative non-fiction about the Vietnam war. And rightfully so, because a book like THE THINGS THEY CARRIED should be required reading for all human beings (especially the stories surrounding the death of Kiowa in the sh*tfield), but JULY, JULY is a bit of a departure from O’Brien’s usual stylings and while I wouldn’t put it on the same pedestal as THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, I’d recommend them both in the same breath.
JULY, JULY is about a college reunion and has an ensemble cast featuring a Vietnam vet (yes, of course) as well as a draft-dodger, a breast cancer survivor, a woman with two husbands, and a lawyer who tells his secretary that he’s secretly a famous novelist and ends up being blackmailed into a miserable marriage with her whens she figures out that yeah, no, he isn’t a writer. The story flits back and forth between the reunion and the various characters’ histories and should be a notable novel for the manner in which it handles the flashbacks because I promise you, at no point will you find yourself saying “Gawwwwwd, not another flashbaaaaaack.” The flashback parts of the book were compelling enough to be published in the New Yorker as self-contained short stories, so you know I’m not just lying because I love Tim O’Brien.
Tim O’Brien is the most talented writer currently living. This is not opinion, it is fact. JULY, JULY is just about as light-hearted as the man gets so getting to read his words about a handful of characters who aren’t entirely doomed is something you should spend a weekend doing. Fun fact: JULY, JULY also contains my favorite sentence of all time: Humidity like bubblegum.
The key to being unreliable
Finally, something I’m an expert at. Actually, sadly, not really as I am of course talking about unreliable narrators. The only reason I haven’t written one million books with one million unreliable narrators is because the unreliable narrator is one of those things that if you’re going to do it, you have to do it RIGHT. Up until this point I haven’t felt as though I could. There’s a fine line between an unreliable narrator and an unreliable author.
For those who may not be in the know, an unreliable narrator is exactly what it sounds like. (You’re welcome!) It’s a narrator that readers can’t trust, usually because he or she is prone to lying, omitting important information, or being crazy. Note that the lying etc. happens in the NARRATIVE. The narrator must lie to you as the reader to qualify as an unreliable narrator. If the point of view character in your book is lying to the police and you know it, that’s not an unreliable narrator. It’s just your POV character having a good time. A few famous examples of unreliable narrators are Humbert Humbert of Vladimir Nabokov’s LOLITA, John Dowell of Ford Madox Ford’s THE GOOD SOLDIER, and Dr. James Sheppard in Agatha Christie’s THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD.
In sifting through a lot (read: A LOT a lot a lot a whole sh-tload) of information on unreliable narrators in preparation for writing one, I’ve found a few good rules to follow.
Have a really good reason for writing one. Don’t do it just because you think it could jazz up your book or, worse, because you’re in love with the idea of creating false suspense for your reader. Really examine your motives. Don’t unreliably narrate them to yourself! Make sure there is no way you can write this book to the best of your ability without employing an unreliable narrator.
Strongly consider a first-person point of view. I love third person, but an unreliable narrator in a third person POV runs the risk of muddying that line between unreliable narrator and unreliable author. Make your character do the lying and with-holding and all the other crazy stuff. Don’t let it look like it came from you. It can betray a certain trust that exists between the writer and the reader.
Don’t put too many eggs in the twist ending basket. A twist ending can be an awesome thing, but it has to be handled with care. You can’t make the reader feel like you yanked the rug out and bashed them over the head with it. If you don’t want the reader to know your narrator is unreliable until the climax, that’s fine, but you need to leave some clues. It can’t look like it came out of nowhere. Think of the movie The Sixth Sense. The reason that twist ending was ultimately so satisfying is because if you’d really been on the ball and paying attention, you would’ve been able to figure it out yourself. As the writer you need to let your readers feel like they could have solved it even if they (hopefully) didn’t.
Be aware that no matter what, you’re going to piss some people off. Make peace with that fact. No matter how carefully you handle it and how brilliantly it turns out, there are going to be some readers who feel misled by YOU, not your characters. I mentioned THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD up there as a famous example of an unreliable narrator. Agatha Christie herself considered that novel her masterpiece. But you know what? It enraged a lot of her loyal readers. Obviously she came to terms with that; I believe she even used the technique again in a later novel. Selling billions of books probably helped ease that pain. Hopefully, anyway. I don’t really have a Plan B.
In my defense, short stories take too long
Well, okay, maybe they don’t. However I’ve recently started a new novel and we’re in that new-relationship stage where everything is so exciting and I want to hold its hand and I don’t care if it wears sweatpants to take me to the movies because that’s obviously just a personality quirk and shows that it’s unafraid to be itself. So that’s what I’ve been working on while I watch football on Sundays, therefore: no short stories.
Instead, how about we all go read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and pretend we missed out on something of that caliber here today. Fear not, I will soon begin to hate my WIP the way I always seem to and I’ll be back short-storying in no time. Regular post tomorrow.
Also, is anyone else completely uninterested in the upcoming Super Bowl? I’m in it for the food at this point.
Start clutching your pearls…now.
I’m just going to say it. I like Dan Brown. I’ve only read two of his books, and you know without me telling you that those two books are THE DA VINCI CODE and ANGELS AND DEMONS, but I liked them. I would go so far as to say that I loved THE DA VINCI CODE. A lot of criticism gets thoughtlessly levied at Brown — he’s a bad writer! his characters are shallow! his plots are preposterous!
And to all that I say, so what?
First of all, people bag on Brown just to bag on him. See also: Stephenie Meyer, JK Rowling (to a lesser extent), and now, of course, Stieg Larsson.
Hmm. What do all of those authors have in common? I’ll just sit here and count to a billion (dollars) while you figure it out.
Hating what’s popular is nothing new. I expect a little better of adults, sure, but being staunchly counter-culture is deeply ingrained in a lot of people, apparently. Being counter-culture is such a huge thing that being counter-counter culture should actually be considered counter-culture these days. I admit to liking popular things, therefore I am in the minority and cooler than you. Agreed? Sure.
Secondly, the thing that Dan Brown has that supercedes every single snippet of criticism against him is story. He has STORY. “Oh that DA VINCI CODE novel was terrible, so poorly written, commercial fiction fluff, but I read it in a day.” Because the story is amazing. Ridiculous? Sure. Overblown? Yep. Awesome? You know it. You damn well know it.
Brown writes what I call movie fiction. As you’re reading his (crappy! can’t-believe-I-bought-this) novels you have a movie playing in your head. His books are all action, forward motion, and puzzles. I don’t ask for anything more from commercial fiction. (And I’m not dumping on commercial fiction because literary fiction, sorry mang, but I can’t stand you.)
When writers read we have a way of getting caught up in what isn’t there instead of just enjoying what is there. A good example of that is the wide criticism that Brown has no character development. “But why is Langdon so obsessed with symbols and puzzles? We don’t know if his mother hit him with an abacus or rubik’s cube when he was four so why should we care about this book?”
GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF.
Just because we have to kill ourselves to include character development yet avoid backstory and do a million other things that Dan Brown evidently doesn’t have to do doesn’t mean that he’s a bad writer. It means his books are good enough to go without. End of story. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to jump out of a helicopter using my windbreaker as a parachute and float gently to a place where Dan Brown and his ilk are respected. As they should be.