Speakeasy Tales: Takeaways From the Writer's Retreat in Paradise

The inaugural Speakeasy Writer's Retreat is history. I realize I risk sounding like a sycophant, but can't keep from raving about the wonderful group of writers and editors (and the venue -- what's not to love about the Stanford Sierra Conference Center near Lake Tahoe?) who made this weekend so wonderful.

Fallen Leaf Lake: The view from my window. ::sigh::

The faculty included editors chosen for their engaging personalities as much as for their impressive expertise in the world of children's publishing. They hung out with the writers attending, encouraging conversation and questions.

I learned a lot in the past few days. For what it's worth, here are some of my takeaways:

*  Even the publishing pros don't agree on exactly what constitutes the dividing line between Middle Grade and Young Adult. But they all agree that the writer shouldn't sweat over making the distinction. The writer's job is to write the best story possible, with the most authentic voice. Market definitions come later.

*  The jury is still out on whether New Adult merits its own genre.

*  Sometimes, showing an editor an unpolished work in rough form is the fastest way to get the most helpful advice.

*  Nothing compares to having an editor ask cogent, informed questions about one of your pet projects, especially when those questions are followed by, "That sounds great! I love those kinds of books." Yay, validation!

*  After forty-odd years on the planet, I am still powerless to exercise any form of self-control when faced with a buffet.

*  Several editors regularly reread favorite books to remind themselves of "what good writing is."

*  No one is more underpaid than authors, except maybe editors, a fact that doesn't keep either party from thoroughly enjoying their work.

*  Publishing is a difficult industry. It's not fair. It's not predictable. Success is often as reliant on luck as it is on talent.
*  Many editors admire writers for their bravery, their stick-to-itive-ness, and their perseverance. At no time during the entire retreat did I hear an editor talk about an author with anything but the greatest respect.

*  It IS possible to survive without cell phone reception.

*  In the same way that those who are married are not necessarily more loveable or loving than those who are single, writers with agents are not necessarily more talented than those who are still unagented. It's just a matter of persevering until a writer finds an agent and an editor who are a good match.

*  Never underestimate the value of taking some time away from your regularly scheduled life to interact with and support people who share your dreams.

A heartfelt thank-you to everyone involved in making this year's retreat a reality. I know I am not the only one who is leaving recharged and re-inspired!

"I Love Your Story Anyway!" -- Tales From the Unintended Audience

"I know I may not be the intended audience... and I love your story anyway!"

This tweet from accomplished improv musician Stan Stewart (@muz4now), a faithful reader of "Dear Alderone," got me thinking. Since September, I've been serializing "Dear Alderone" online. It's a middle-grade novel, which means that its target audience is tweens. It features two 14-year old female protagonists bonded by blood, separated by several decades,  connected by crisis.

I wrote a story I wanted to tell: a story that I would have liked reading when I was 14. But you know what? I'm not picky at all about who reads or -- perhaps more importantly -- who likes it.

The wonderful thing about words on a page (or screen) is that they are equal-opportunity communicators, readily conveying their information to anyone willing to decipher them.

Skippyjon stays!

I know what it's like to devour a book, getting caught up in the story, all the while cognizant of the fact that the author did not have me in mind while writing. I like Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series, though I have nothing in common with an uber-rich, genius boy intent on world domination. And I flat-out love Judy Schachner's Skippyjon Jones books -- so much so that I  was crushed when my cat-crazy 10 year old daughter announced that I could give them away because she was "too old" for them.

"Noooooo!" I wanted to yell as the books came off of my daughter's bookshelf--

...to be instantly rehomed in mine. Skippyjon stays.

Here's a little-known writer's secret:
Anyone who loves what I write is my intended audience.

Here's another one:
Nothing makes a writer's day like hearing from someone who appreciates a good story.

If you are a rabid reader of an author's work, it doesn't matter whether or not you are in the publisher's target market. Want to really make a writer's day? Some simple ways to spread the love:

*  Tweet 'em up. Whether or not the writer is on Twitter, compose a tweet personally recommending your favorite read to your followers. For the cherry on top, add the #amreading hashtag. 

*  Blog About It. If you have a blog, dedicate a post to a book, series, or writer you like. Google loves that kind of stuff almost as much as authors do.

*  Keep the Comments Coming. If the writer has a blog, drop a short comment stating how much you enjoyed a particular book / story / article. It's not that we're pathetic or emotionally needy. (Ok: Some of us are.) It's just that most writers get more than enough negative feedback. For some reason, the people who *don't* like what we do have no problem telling us. I mean: name one other business that names the vast majority of its missives "rejections." You have no idea what a supportive comment praising one's work can do to boost the creative muse.

*  Read. Review. Repeat. Reviews -- especially good reviews -- are like reserves of gold in a wildly fluctuating economy. If you really want to keep your favorite writers producing more stuff for you to read (instead of, say, trading in their mad typing skills for a hairnet and practicing their delivery of the catch phrase "would you like fries with that?") write a well-thought out, reasoned review and post it in appropriate online, visible places. Amazon is one such place, to be sure, but don't neglect other online booksellers who cater to people who might not want to enrich the all-powerful 'Zon.

*  Share and Enjoy. Like a book? Talk it up. Then lend it to a friend, so that person can help you spread the word. In fact, you could start a kickass trend by purchasing a physical copy of your favorite paperback, inscribing something like "I liked this book so much I wanted to share it with the world. Read it. Enjoy it. Then, when you're done, leave it in a public place for someone else to discover!" and leaving it behind in a coffeeshop, or a bus stop, or a train station, or a doctor's office, or... You get the picture. 

So here's to all the dedicated readers out there. It doesn't matter whether or not you are in the segment of the population to whom a book is marketed. It's not about the marketing; it's about the reading!  

Privacy Fencing

I don't know about you, but I find the "My Lowe's" commercials downright creepy. In this one, they know what color I've painted my living room -- and want me to think that's a good thing:

Here, they've gone into the bowels of my basement, noted, recorded, and stored what kind of air filters my furnace uses -- and act as if they deserve a cookie for keeping track of my stuff:

Lowe's isn't the only big business that makes me cringe. It's just that its commercials are so prevalent, and it's so in-your-face about invading my privacy and mining the data that is me that it seems less like a hardware store that serves me and more like a giant Borg box that wants me to be part of its collective consciousness.

And though I feel increasingly in the minority, I am not OK with this.

I fear that mine is the last generation to have any privacy whatsoever.

Accessing what's in our heads is big business. We've moved beyond deliberately sharing our personal information via social media sites. (Don't believe me? Believe the analysts who have concluded that because the under-20 crowd is eschewing Facebook, the tell-the-world-what-you're-thinking site that now wants to track your movements and know where you are at all times because you leave your phone with the app running at all times is passé.) With modern technology, the human interface is rapidly becoming superfluous.

Take, for instance, the brain-scanning headphones that save you the trouble of making your own personal play list. No -- these puppies, which feature their very own EEG sensor, will determine your mood based on your brain waves, and play an appropriate song to match. (No mention is made of what might happen should these bad boys fall into the wrong hands of someone who would then make them play Barry Manilow alternating with RATT until your EEG showed signs of psychopathy.)

We live in an age when our memories are not our own. Just ask neuroethicist S. Matthew Liao who is studying the ethical questions associated with, say, giving soldiers memory-erasing drugs which would, conceivably, eliminate PTSD. Doing so could also create a situation in which morality of any kind becomes as irrelevant to society as knowing how to cure deerskin. 

If we are capable of telling a human to do a thing, and then equally capable of erasing any knowledge of that action, what, exactly, have we become?

In a very real way, mankind may be one of the most endangered animals on the planet. Oh, sure, we're reproducing like crazy. But if the data crunchers have their way, we'll soon be relegated to nothing more than a lengthy series of numbers and preferences. Our data, not our DNA, defines us.

Right now, scientists are in the process of being able to visualize a person's dreams. See, here's the thing: my dreams are mine, dammit. They are not home movies that need to go viral and either provide entertainment or cause undue concern, based on the vagaries of my subconscious on any given night.

We teeter on the verge of Total Demystification. If we continue down this path, wonder, self-expression, and personal discovery may soon be relics from the past. Every thought we think -- from "I hate this television show" to "Yowza! I wonder what those abs feel like" will be mind-mapped, databased, and deconstructed before we've had time to react to it. In this brave, new world, will "individuality" and "privacy" become taboo?

"It's for your own good," we're told. One of the worst party lines is, "If you're not doing anything wrong, you won't care who knows about it. Only terrorists / serial killers / sex offenders / shoplifters / drug lords / paranoiacs / conspiracy theorists are worried about privacy." (This kind of statement lends itself to a brilliant leap of inductive reasoning. ::evil eye:: "Saaaayyy -- Maybe YOU're a terrorist / serial killer / etc.")

This stuff makes me shudder. Seriously. When did we become a population that embraced Big Brother? At some tipping point in recent memory, we went from being private citizens, each with his or her own thoughts, desires, and secrets, to being "privacy fences," willing to tell all to anyone who wanted to know.

I don't know about you (and frankly, I don't care what color you've painted your house), but the thought of my life being relegated to nothing more than a mass of data makes for very disturbing dreams. They're disturbing, but they're mine...

For now.

The Dog Ate My Homecoming

This is a true story. I swear. I know the people it happened to.

It has nothing to do with writing, but everything to do with how truth trumps fiction every time.

Plus, it makes me laugh.

::ahem::

A few years ago, my BFF's husband was stationed in Iraq with a guy whose wife, back home in Michigan, became good friends with my BFF.

When the other woman's husband was scheduled to come home on leave, she wanted to do something "special" for her man. So she decided to go to -- you know -- an "adult" store and get something to make his homecoming... memorable. She, however, wasn't the sort who frequents stores like that and didn't want to go by herself. (Incidentally, neither BFF nor I are Adult Store denizens either. In case you were wondering...)

Anyway --

BFF said she'd accompany the woman on her shopping trip, lending support, though perhaps not of the moral variety.

Once in the doors, the woman had great fun buying... stuff.

Condoms and flavored oils and edible underwear and... stuff.

She brought all her new purchases home and put them in a brown paper bag in her bedroom to keep them away from the prying eyes of her kid.

I ate what?!

...

Where her dog discovered it and thought the canine equivalent of: YAY! COOL NEW FLAVORS AND SMELLS I'VE NEVER SMELLED! 

And promptly ate *everything.*

Upon discovery of the doggy snacker, the woman called BFF freaking out, wondering if Mr. Dogness could be in any danger from what he ate because there was No. Way. In. Hell she was going to call the vet and tell him what the dog had ingested. 

I laughed so hard I hurt myself.

In Praise of the Unmediated, Unscripted Life

This weekend, one of my best friends and I attended a Bon Jovi concert, which was (of course) extravagantly fantastic.

On what do I base this pronouncement, you may ask? Consider:

It's one thing to be a hot 20-something band playing to a crowd of hot 20-something fans, getting them fired up, calling out, and caught up in the music. I mean, honestly -- when I was 20, I'd endanger my car speakers if a song played on the radio that I *sort of* liked.

It's another thing entirely to be a hot 50-year old (if only all men aged half so well...) headlining a band of your contemporaries (good LORD, Tico Torres turns 60 this year! Drumming does a body good!) playing to a crowd, many, if not most, of whom remember when MTV banned the music video for "Living in Sin" because it was too racy.

The original high school and college-aged fans have grown up. They now have kids of their own. Grandkids. Mortgages. Medical issues. Responsibilities. Bed times. It can take a Herculean effort to get them off the couch and out of the house. Imagine trying to get them out of their seats and on their feet for almost three hours!

Yet that's exactly what Jon and the band did. From eight o'clock till eleven, they had me and 20,000 of my closest friends standing, rocking along with them while they performed songs from the past 30 years right up through the present, from "Runaway" to "Amen." It was a testament to how the band, like a fine wine, has only improved with time.

It was also a study in How Times Have Changed and a rather sad testimony to how we have allowed technology to rob us of yet another Great Experience.

I, in center floor seats, saw this:

But, in a living example of what the University of Iowa's professor Brooks Landon terms "our increasingly mediated society," the vast majority of the concertgoers experienced the entire live event vicariously through the lens of a 4" screen. Most of the people around me saw something more like this:

We're trading experience for pixels, distancing ourselves from what we're trying to embrace. Perhaps even more distressing, in doing so, our attempt to capture something cripples our ability to live in the moment and fully experience it.

We aren't the only ones to pay the price when we choose to fill memory cards rather than our actual memories.  A friend with different musical tastes than I recently attended a Clint Black concert with her husband. Several times during the course of the event, Clint stopped the concert and kindly asked the audience members to put their cell phones on "airplane" mode, because the electronic feedback was killing his ears.

So it has come to this. We literally script our lives, preferring to upload them in bite-sized set pieces online in order to pander to the random viewer and furiously thumb-texting people who are not present, rather than commit to the moment and engage with those who share it.

Experiencing a live event through the screen of a phone is as satisfying as licking an ice-cream cone with a sock on your tongue.

Two hours and forty-five minutes into last night's concert, in the early notes of the final song, the phone battery of the woman standing next to me died. She was terribly upset, briefly grumbling to her friend (who continued recording), before putting her phone away and resigning herself to finishing out the night phone-free. Soon, however, she was singing and dancing along with the rest of us who were unencumbered by recording devices -- the first time all evening she connected with the band instead of with the gadget in her hand.

In 1989, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora distanced themselves from amplified, production-heavy sound and played an all-acoustic set for the MTV Video Music Awards. Six months later, MTV unveiled their award-winning "MTV Unplugged" show, which has remained popular ever since.

Why not do the same?

Unplug yourself. Turn your phone off. For a few blissful hours, take a technology sabbatical. Dare to not record a thing. Revel in your freedom from Facebook, Twitter, and texting. Cut the power cord.  Remind yourself that this moment -- THIS moment -- will never come again. Take a break from mediating, editing, and uploading. Stop scripting your life and just *live* it. Then, get ready to rock!

When Chickens Fly

Or: "Can You See the Chicken In This Picture?"

On several recent occasions, I've had the opportunity to get involved with people who, for one reason or another, didn't think very highly of their writing abilities.

Some were motivated to improve their writing. Others were more fatalistic about the merits of their words.

I believe that everyone has something to say. I enjoy working with writers of all skill levels, helping them to see beyond their (often self-imposed) limitations.

I wish every writer who bemoaned his or her ability could meet one of my chickens...



One day, with great fanfare and fluttering of wings, a hen flew up to the top of the laying house. A little while later, she set her sights higher and made it to the top of the chicken house.

She looked down on the lesser poultry beneath her, and contemplated re-joining them for some time. Then, she looked up.

The tree branch above her head must have looked inviting. It took some doing (and no small amount of cackling theatrics), but she finally made it.

Then, she headed even higher.

The first day she made her foray above the ground, she strutted back and forth for over an hour before flying back to the chicken run.

Now, chickens aren't known for their flying abilities. In the same vein, some people believe that getting their thoughts down on paper is an impossible dream. I disagree. I believe that if you can speak -- or even think coherently -- about a thing, you can write about it. Sometimes the best prescription for doing a thing is not knowing that it's beyond you.

Some might point out that my chicken never progressed from where she started. But that argument misses the point entirely. She chose to return. She came down from the tree in her own time, on her own terms. But she now knows that, if she wants to, she can fly.

Q & A With Los Angeles Review Fiction Editor Yi Shun Lai

Last July, I had the pleasure of introducing my readers to Yi Shun Lai (See "It's A Living: Q & A on Making Money as a Writer"). 

Yi Shun Lai (http://www.thegooddirt.org) has been a writer and editor for over 15 years. She's written or edited for The Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the J. Peterman catalog, and Audubon magazine, among others. She makes her living writing corporate copy and executing content strategy.

Yi Shun writes literary essays and short fiction and is the fiction editor for the Los Angeles Review. 

She is currently earning her MFA at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. She tweets as @GoodDirt.

I am grateful Yi Shun graciously agreed to return and answer a few questions demystifying the fiction editor's role.

Q:   What is the most common misconception about your role as a fiction editor?

A: That I live to reject people. Seriously. I like to read and acquire and publish fiction. That's why I'm here.


Q: What do you consider the best part of an editor's job?

A: Discovering new styles, new ways of expression, new and innovative ways of telling a story. (I don't necessarily mean that experimental fiction is my shtick. I mean that words have infinite possibilities.)


Q:  What's the toughest part of an editor's job?

A: Working with an author to revise a piece. Sometimes you get work that you want to accept, but that isn't quite right as-is. There's a huge amount of humility, and a little bit of embarrassment, involved in asking a writer to revise his or her work to fit your aesthetic. Fortunately, every writer I've worked with has been gracious and grateful for suggested changes. If we're suggesting changes, the intent is to make the work better.

Q:   What specific advice do you have for authors to improve their chances for getting their submissions accepted?

A: Please, please, read the fricken publication before you submit. When I was at the Atlantic as a fiction intern I got stories about foot fetishes. Three of them over my eight-week tenure. Okay, really???

And get someone else to look at the thing before you submit. Critique groups are incredible things. So are second readers. Use them.


Q:  If you could permanently eradicate one submission error you see all the time that most pushes your This Irks Me button, what would it be?

A:  Papyrus font. Seriously, folks: Times Roman or Courier. Don't be fancy-pants, m'kay? I can't read fancy-pants. Also, we usually have a few submissions that exceed our 4,000-word limit. Don't do this. It's in the guidelines for a reason.


Q:  In general, how far do you have to read in a submission before you realize you love it and want to acquire it?

A: All the way through. I once got to the penultimate paragraph of something, only to have it fall apart in the last paragraph. Horrors! The same is not true for deciding something's just not for us.


Q:  Why do you feel a writer should publish his or her work in periodicals like the Los Angeles Review?

A: Platform. Everyone says it, no one knows what it means. It means that when I google you, you pop up someplace. It means you have legitimacy, street cred, a background. It means you care enough to support the arts and contribute to them.

You publish in literary magazines because you think your work deserves to be seen. And when you publish, that means someone else thought your work deserved to be seen, too. That's pretty powerful stuff.

More practically, the stuff in literary magazines is good work that sometimes never gets seen anywhere else. That's why we're here.


Q:  You write as well as edit. What has being an editor taught you about your writing?

A: Mostly, that you learn from everything you read. That is, I learn from other writers. That could be something as broad as pushing the boundaries in story-telling, or it could mean something as specific as word choice.


Q:  What are some things you would like to see more of in your submissions in-box?

A: My submissions in-box is pretty great as it is. We have a really lovely mix of male and female submitters, and we have some great minority literature and viewpoints. But I'm always looking for LGBT and minority stories, and work that isn't young adult but that revisits that time in our lives. I'm a softie for the teen years, for some reason.


Q:  If people wish to submit fiction to the LAR, what is the best way to go about it?

A: Once you've familiarized yourself with our publication, go to our submissions page and follow the directions. I'm always looking forward to reading something amazing.