I’m over at Word-Whores, talking about when to ditch long-term plans and telling the story of how this happened.
Life, Death, and Long-Term Planning
//Tag: Amanda Fucking Palmer
//This Is Voice
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Santa Fe had a mass ascension of our own this morning, as the fog lifted out of the valley. Just gorgeous.
I had a very interesting experience recently regarding voice that I thought you all might be interested in.
Writers talk a lot about voice. There’s all kinds of debates and classes about it, thoughts and rules. Inevitably every convention – for readers or writers – will have a panel or workshop on the topic. Clearly it’s not an easy concept to define. Or rather, we all kind of know what it IS – just not how to explain it to someone else.
In general, voice is what readers will love about an author’s work, regardless of genre. We recognize it when we settle into a new release by a favorite writer, or into one of our comfort reads from her. We sink into that world and voice with a sense of delight and kinship. It’s kind of like love – we sense it, but can’t force or constrain it.
So, I’ve been watching old Taylor Swift documentaries and concerts. There are REASONS for this. She only came onto my radar with last year’s album 1989. Which I love, love, love. Before that I thought of her as a teeny-bopper Country & Western star and had never paid attention. Also, I’m not much for C&W music. I almost never hear it. David is even more definitive about it than I am. He hates the twang and, as soon as it comes on the radio, he switches stations.
Then Taylor crossed over into pop, produced this tremendous album – that I only listened to because so many of my writer/agent/editor friends loved it – and I fell in love, too. Imagine my surprise, then, when I recognized one of Taylor’s early C&W songs. It was one I’d improbably heard a few times and really enjoyed. It stuck with me, though I had no idea who sang – or wrote – the song. (That older song of hers was Our Song, for those interested.) But the lyrics, the cadence, the sensibility behind it, had all grabbed me – in the exact same way her songs in a different musical genre did years later.
This is voice.
Within the same couple of weeks, something else similar happened. I’ve mentioned more than once on this blog my mad love for Amanda Palmer. I think she’s a brilliant singer and songwriter also. And if you’re out there shaking your head about me liking both Taylor Swift and Amanda Palmer, then you’re not paying attention.
So, one day I wanted to send a friend a snippet of the lyrics to The Ship Song. As you do. She’d quoted Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing and that song was covered by Concrete Blonde on their Still in Hollywood album, back in 1994, along with The Ship Song. They have a similar feel, making them forever connected in my mind and that one of my favorite albums of all time. So I looked up the lyrics to The Ship Song, to be sure to get them right. Guess what? Amanda Palmer wrote that song. I never knew it and didn’t discover Amanda Palmer until she connected with favorite writer Neil Gaiman in 2009. I loved her work before I knew who she was, just like Taylor. And I love Neil Gaiman’s writing – and Neil and Amanda connected first as artists, then as lovers and spouses.
This is voice.
This is what makes us who we are, as human beings. The questions we ask, what we seek to answer, the stories we tell – these all come out of our deepest selves. More, I think we’re attracted on some profound level to those others who are in the same place, asking and answering about the same things. We connect with each other, as readers, as listeners, as writers and musicians.
This is voice.
Why Writers Shouldn’t Tell Readers How to Buy
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I took this picture in a roadside stand in Hatch, New Mexico on our way from Santa Fe to Tucson. My mom needed a new ristra – the name for these bundles of dried chile peppers – and I texted this to see if she liked this variation with the dried corn husk pieces. It ended up being such a cool image, I thought I’d use it here. One of the things I love about living in New Mexico is the variations on what have been traditional Christmas themes for me. I’ll try to keep posting local color holiday photos throughout the month.
Every once in a while, an author will succumb to the temptation to write a post about how readers can help their careers.
If you’ve been around the internet communities of readers and writers, you’ve seen them before. Or heard about them. The latter occurs because word tends to travel among people annoyed by such things. Which a lot of people are.
Now, let me go on record here as saying I’m a big believer in asking for help.
Every one of us needs help at some time or another and it’s usually a big mistake not to ask for it. Pride can get in the way, with people not wanting others to know their weaknesses and need for help. Many of us were also raised with the idea that asking for something from other people is akin to begging and not working for what you want.
Amanda Palmer addresses this idea beautifully in her Ted talk on The Art of Asking. If you haven’t listened to it, I highly recommend you do.
There’s a fine balance in the commerce among human beings between giving and receiving vs. selling and buying. The transactions are the same in essence, yes? In both cases, we exchange something, usually of value. The sticking point is whether we exchange something back again, to compensate the other. Arguably, there is always a “price” on a gift – whether it’s the expectation of gratitude, or later recompense or a trade of some other kind.
Only an anonymous gift is truly free of all strings.
But that’s a side argument because we’re talking about selling and buying. Between writers and readers, there is an expectation that readers will buy our books. (Yes, I’m leaving out fan fiction, free stories, etc. – for a person who earns their living as a writer, selling books is how it happens.) In that sense, we’ve already made the request. I might be standing on the street corner, with my cup full of matches and a stranger gives me a penny for one. Presumably that person wanted the match enough to pay a penny for it, but I asked first. I stood out there and made the proposition.
Just as I do with my stories.
Even with this website, I’m *already* asking. I’m saying, look at my books! Would you like to buy one?
And, miraculously, people do!
Though I’m far from being a freezing, starving little match girl, each time someone buys one of my books feels like a small miracle. It’s a profound experience for me, that people will pay to read my books. I’ve learned that even people who receive my books free in exchange for a review, then go buy it also – which means they give me twice as much as I asked for.
It’s not easy to explain, why the income from my stories feels so much more valuable to me than the monthly salary I receive from my day job. Certainly my day job income is still far greater, so logically I should value it more.
But I don’t.
Because the money people give me to read my stories feels more direct. Like we’ve exchanged a bit of our spirits, too.
Which is what I think Amanda Palmer is getting at – the back and forth.
My husband David, who left 25 years at a state job to become a Doctor of Oriental Medicine has noticed the same thing. The money he receives from patients – still nowhere near what he made at his previous job – feels far more precious to him.
It’s almost sacred.
This is why, I think, that it feels jarring for authors to write up instructions for how this special interaction should occur. Usually the writer in question is angling to get on the bestseller list, so he or she wants the readers to buy the books at specific times or from particular vendors.
To me, this is saying, “This sacred thing happening between us isn’t enough for me – I want you to do more.” It exceeds asking and moves into the realm of demanding.
Maybe that’s not fair.
But that’s why it’s off-putting to me. Often the writer will mention something like “friends and family ask how they can help me, so I’m posting this here.” What they’re saying is, “some people have offered to give me more, so I’m trying to recruit the same from everyone else by asking publicly.”
If your friends and family offer more help, absolutely take them up on it. That’s why they’re your friends and family. We already have multiple levels of giving and receiving with them. That’s why they offer. Have those conversations, within the realm of those personal relationships. I’ll go to lengths for my friends and family. That’s what people do.
Taking that out to the greater world, however? It smacks of greed.
Greed is what cheapens the sacred and makes it tawdry. That’s why it leaves a bad taste in our mouths.
Ask and ye shall receive.
Resist the urge to demand more than that.
On Living with the Results of Our Decisions
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The covers for the final two acts of Master of the Opera are in the wild! Head over to The Bookpushers to see both!
You all know I’m online a lot. Some might say TOO Much. I’m looking at you, Mom. And Anne Lamott. Between my laptop and my SmartPhone, I’m pretty much connected to the internet in some way during my waking hours. A major exception is when I’m at the gym. The other is when I sit down to read.
I need the internet to do both of my jobs. As a writer, I start my day by writing blog posts, answering business and reader emails, posting links to new covers, corresponding with my website designer over new info, etc. I interact with people on Goodreads, Facebook and Twitter. For my day job, I work for a company based out of Boston, interacting with colleagues and clients across all the timezones. That’s necessary connectedness, too.
But, in order to do the core work of both my jobs – writing or thinking through data – I have to step away from the distractions of the internet. When I write, I use Freedom to shut off access, to remove all temptation. When I switch over to the day job, though I might dip in and out of Facebook and Twitter, I mostly don’t look. The less I look, the more productive I am. I save things that take longer than a quick look – like Tumblr – for the evenings, when we’re watching a movie.
Yesterday, I was very productive, as I needed to be. I made excellent progress on developmental edits for The Mark of the Tala. I’m trying to finish those out this week, to stay on schedule with all the writing work. And I delivered the two items on my list for the day job that had to be done yesterday.
I finished my day job just in time to do an online chat with Night Owl Reviews for an hour, finishing up at 7pm.
It was a good day.
Settling into my armchair for the evening, I scrolled through Tumblr. As is my habit, I scrolled back to where I stopped looking the night before and worked forward.
And I saw it.
Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. HERE. In Santa Fe on September 29.
I clicked the clicky as fast as my fingers could fly.
DENIED.
They’d already sold out. The notice had gone up at some point yesterday and I had already missed the window.
You guys know how I feel about Neil and Amanda. I even dreamed about them coming to my house for dinner. I don’t identify as a fan for much, but I’m a total fangirl for them.
Clearly, I’m not fangirl enough, I thought, or I would have known about this sooner.
But then… I only have so much energy to spend. I had to make choices and I did. I have to live with all the results of my decisions.
I’ve always found it interesting that the word “decide” means “to cut away.” (Think of other words, like “excise” – to cut out.) Deciding on one course of action means that you cannot do another. Working from home for so many years means I’ve developed a fair amount of self-discipline. I decide to get my work done first, which means I’ve decided not to be a 24-7 Neil Gaiman/Amanda Palmer fangirl.
Thus, while I’m happy to reap the satisfaction of having completed my work, missing out on those tickets is as much a result of that decision.
And I wouldn’t sacrifice the one for the other, in the final analysis. I guess that means my decision was a good one.
Or, at least, I’d make the same decision again.
Which is the most important point.
Reflections on Losing Friends
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This is a photo from Amanda Palmer’s Tumblr, with the caption “books are home.”
When I saw it go by in my Tumblr feed last night, I thought that I glimpsed the distinctive spine of a book a friend wrote. To the point that I downloaded the photo and magnified to see. I had this idea that it would be Karol’s book and I would write the story about what it meant to see her book on that shelf.
Even though it wasn’t her book, I had a happy feeling, knowing that her book is out there still and people read it. I know this because they search the Internet for her and sometimes find that blog post and send me messages. I hadn’t intended that, when I wrote it, but now I kind of love that I have that lasting connection to her through that.
I’ve been reading this book, The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women’s True Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away, and it’s put me in a reflective mood. The essays are so varied, with different friendships and reasons that they didn’t last. One is about a friend who died, but also a friendship that formed around that death – and then faded away again. One “rule” that I’m extracting from all the stories is one I thought I knew already – it isn’t always about you.
In fact, it rarely is.
I think it’s human nature to believe the world revolves around us. Even though we learn as kids (ideally) that people lead lives when we’re not present, that revelation can be hard one. I remember when my stepkids were little. They would spend every-other weekend and one weekday night for dinner with us. Once they excitedly told us about a new restaurant in town (small town, so big news) and we said, yes, we’d eaten there. They insisted we hadn’t, because they hadn’t yet been. They couldn’t quite grasp that we did things when they weren’t around – as if we retired like companion androids to the closet, when not needed.
Eventually, we grow up and realize that other people have complex external and internal lives that have nothing to do with us. And yet, when a friend turns away, we automatically think it must be something we did. Or didn’t do. Most of the time, though, it’s really about them and what they need.
At any rate, it’s a very interesting book and has given me a lot of food for thought. It’s been lovely, too, to return to reading some nonfiction.
I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!
Finding Your Fiercely Out of Tune Voice
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We interrupt the regularly scheduled kitten photos to celebrate the fact that it rained yesterday! Such a blessing on our parched and tinder-dry land. We’re fractionally less flammable now and the birds are going crazy this morning. It’s like everything sprang to life overnight.
Quite a few years ago, an acquaintance of mine who sang and played guitar on the side, said that he just hated Norah Jones. “She sings flat,” he said, and went on about how bizarre it was that someone who sings flat could be successful. I went home and listened to her again. (And I just put her on now.) I love the sound of her voice. It’s distinctive, unique and moving.
I thought of this because Amanda Palmer responded to a tweet yesterday on the topic. A fan tweeted:
@sevocean I think the only person who can make off key sound good is @amandapalmer.
She retweeted and replied:
@amandapalmer patti smith. bob dylan. tom waits. polly styrene
I saw this and suggested Leonard Cohen.
She retweeted me (cuz I’m a speshul snowflake) with the hash tag #fiercelyoutoftune.
This led to a great discussion of all these singers who do sing out of tune. And, among the musicians, about how autotune has changed things, because pitch can be electronically defined now, instead of the performer tuning her instrument to her own ear. Then someone asked and she answered:
@amandapalmer actually, yes. there really is…. RT @TinaH37 is there a secret to singing out of tune perfectly?
@amandapalmer ability to embrace, bend and feel around (or call attention to) roughness in your own voice is a SKILL (see Jeff magnum, Kurt Cobain, et al)
I just love that.
What does this have to do with writing? Well, there’s been an ongoing discussion on the RWA PAN loop about the “Rules” of writing. A gal started the thread saying that her critique partner (unpublished, but an aspiring editor and writer) insisted on certain conventions. Things like never using adverbs. Never use the word “suddenly.” Never use filter phrases like “I realized” or “I wondered.” The consensus has arrived at the idea that when people are learning a craft, they cling to rules. They want to do everything exactly right, so they’ll succeed.
However, as evidenced by the #fiercelyoutoftune discussion, artistry is often found in transcending the rules. That’s where you find the unique take, that special touch that sends a shiver down your spine. This is something my acquaintance couldn’t understand about Norah Jones – she is successful because of the way she sings flat, in her own special, sultry way.
This is voice. For both the singer and the writer
Crushing on Neil and Amanda
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Use It or Lose It
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I’m starting to feel a bit done with winter and cold, so here’s a little slice of beach in the Dominican Republic for us to gaze at longingly.
Tell me again why we don’t all live in the Caribbean?
I know, I know – we couldn’t all fit on those little islands.
And we have these lives here, full of technology and working and Many Things To Do. Like email. Which is the topic of a little rant I’d like to share today. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’d like to stand up at the front of the room and say:
There is no excuse anymore for not being able to use your email.
There I said it. I know you’ve all been thinking it, too.
For a long time, the newfangled technology of the interwebs was optional. It started out as the province of antisocial geeks who lurked in dim little rooms lit only by computer monitors. Then the hip, young people starting using it, flinging superficial nonsense at each other across cyberspace. But I’d like to point out a glaring fact: we’ve had email, in one form or another, for over 20 years now.
It has become a standard method of communication for all businesses. Like it or not, email is as integral to our society, particularly our professional society, as cars and traffic are. Not knowing how to use your email is like not knowing what a red light means.
You can choose to be a Luddite, sure. Go find a lovely Caribbean island, hang on the beach, never look at the interwebs. It’s a deliberate choice. However, if you want to be online, email is the first, most basic skill to master.
I bring this up because the online chapter that I’m part of offers workshops. Online writing workshops of various types. People see them, sign up for them, and then inundate us with complaints that they’re not getting emails. This usually has to do with spam filters. Every email provider is different how they do it. But they all try to weed out the crap you don’t want from the sparkly stuff you do want. The spam filter is not a person, though, so the email user has to be intelligent enough to know what the spam rules are, and how to check to see that there’s no good sparkly stuff getting sent to trash.
Seriously, this is like knowing what side of the road to drive on. If you’re going to take your little car on the big internet highway, you have to know this stuff.
I know, I know – a lot of people are older and stars know it’s not easy to keep up with technology. At 44, I already feel a bit of sting here and there when I have to learn a new database or find the tool I need on yet another, more complex iteration of Word. My mother, however, who would kill me for revealing her age, can handle the internet technology. She is in no way a geek and never has been. She knows how to find her spam folder though.
So, I’m officially declaring that not knowing how to work your email is no longer an excuse. If you choose not to drive, fine. But, if you do, please take Driver’s Ed. Learn the traffic laws. Practice. Don’t go careening around the internet, crashing into other drivers and complaining that you don’t know how to drive.
*end of rant*
Meanwhile, I’d like to leave you with the song I’m currently hooked on. It’s kind of sad, but it speaks to something I think we all feel at one time or another. I find it very moving. It’s from Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under, an album I’ve been listening to all week.
The Price of (Non-) Fame
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I suppose we all know that the writers life is not glamorous.
Gone are the days of the glossy literati, if they were ever real. No Dorothy Parkers and Truman Capotes rule over social circles. If you want to be a rock star, well, you pretty much have to be a rock star.
Or a wealthy young woman with plenty of cash to spend on clothes and time to spend clubbing, but that’s neither here nor there.
We all also know the writers life is solitary, with long hours at our desks, in our heads, thinking about people who don’t really exist. And when our stories do go out in the world, they go without us. Maybe they have a little photograph of mom or dad, to show where they came from, but really, readers experience books without the authors. The author is incidental, in the end.
If any of us nurse ideas of being recognized, of red-carpet celebrity, we should give them up now.
Neil Gaiman, who is arguably closer to being a rock star than most authors, went to the Golden Globe ceremonies the other day, because he was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film for Coraline. Neil was accompanied by his fiancee, Amanda Palmer, who is actually a rock star.
(If you read this blog regularly, you know I’ve become recently attracted to this couple — don’t worry, I’m sure the crush will fade soon.)
The best part is, when Life.com posted the Red-Carpet photo of them, the caption said:
Musician Amanda Palmer (L) and guest arrive at NBC, Universal Pictures And Focus Features Golden Globes After Party held at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 17, 2010 in Beverly Hills, California.
I actually didn’t post this link right away, because I thought they’d fix it, given the chorus of corrections showering them. But no.
So it goes.
At least we’ll never worry about the paparazzi.
Fantasies and Delusions
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I was seized by a fantasy yesterday evening.
This happens to everyone, yes? That’s right, you’re reading or scanning Twitter or some such and this dream flies into your head of what might be.
Mine? That Neil Gaiman read my book and thought it was so great that I got to hang out with him and Amanda Palmer.
This is them on New Year’s Eve, from Amanda’s blog, from whence I obtained this great pic. I’ve been following Neil on Twitter and I feel like I like him so much. I started paying more attention to him around the time I wrote this post. He and Amanda have been publicly involved since midsummer. At one point, around this concert he tweeted something along the lines of “I’m making tea and Amanda is dancing in her scanties. we call this division of labor.”
I have a total crush on both of them.
I know, I know — it’s the false intimacy of the internet. In person they might be shallow and self-absorbed. Probably three days after I write this, we’ll hear some UK tabloid screaming that AFP has been dragged off to rehab and we’ll see a bedraggled Gaimain looking gaunt and haunted as he sorts out his finances.
But it was a bit of a revelation to me, because I’ve been sorting through why I want literary success so much. Forgive me for belaboring, since I suspect I’ve run through this particular soul-search on here before.
I count my blessings: I have a great life, a terrific loving relationship with a wonderful man; I have family and friends who love and support me; I have a career I enjoy, with fabulous colleagues and the best boss ever (and I’m not saying that just because I know she reads this) that pays me well enough for the man and I to have a lovely lifestyle; we have a gorgeous house in a beautiful place; I enjoy terrific health and I feel good about how I look. I want for nothing, really. I am happy. I see people struggling with dire health issues, with dysfunctional families, straining to make it economically and I count my blessings. I should be satisfied.
And yet, I’m not.
I have this wanting that claws at me. Sometimes it feels like it’s at the back of my throat, as if I’m longing to speak. Like spiders of yearning wiggling around in my chest.
I want that book contract.
It’s not validation as a writer that I need. I’ve got that with the essay collection, which makes me luckier than many writers. More money would be nice, but it’s not a huge consideration. Do I want fame, celebrity? I’ve never had much desire to be a rock star and I’m not hugely social, so I don’t think so.
I think I just want to get to hang with the cool kids. Maybe it always comes back to that.
Or maybe this is what it feels like when you’ve got the pyramid of needs handled. If I review my list of blessings, I’ve got the Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging and Esteem going. Now I should be all about the morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving….wait! This is the pinnacle? Acceptance of facts??? This is my reward for getting my shit together?
Hell, no wonder I just want to hang with Neil and Amanda!