Diana's Blog: Quirky Words and Book Reviews

August 30, 2008
One of the most fun writing tools is to take a situation that feels right and to ask "what if?" That's apparently what Jincy Willett did when she conceived of her novel THE WRITING CLASS.
It's about an aging overweight fearful female writer who was published to great acclaim at age 22 -- then, nothing! So she teaches these writing classes, quite reluctantly. There's a twist in the novel, when two of the thirteen in the class end up dead.
The point of the writing class is not unlike the mission of what we writers call Workshop -- where the members bring in the latest chapter of their book, read it aloud, and everyone else critiques it. Workshop is on Thursday nights. I love Thursday nights. When I first joined, it was on Monday nights. Then, I loved Monday nights.
By comparison, THE WRITING CLASS made me really crabby. I was looking forward to interesting characters, maybe a few writing tips, but the novel tried too hard to be clever and literary. I wanted to love those characters, and I didn't.
My mind wanders back to just before my first Workshop, about two and a half years ago. I promised in an earlier blog that I would tell this story.
It was a few weeks into January, and I was just driving around the SW Portland suburb where I live. It was a typically rainy day, but a light rain was falling, a mist. I could easily see through the windshield of my Mustang convertible, as I drove on a main road where I've driven thousands of times. My cell phone sang out its cheerful, nameless tune, and I picked up without looking.
"Hello, Diana. What are you up to these days?" It's Chuck Pahalniuk, whom I've interviewed a half-dozen times.
"I'm procrastinating writing my book." I have no idea why these words popped out of my mouth, but they did.
At that very instant, a white Lexus with gold lettering turns, pulling right into view, with the license plate even with my line of sight.
It says W-R-I-T-E.
I say, "Omigod!"
Chuck says, "What?!"
I tell Chuck of this seemingly random appearance of this Lexus and its license plate "WRITE."
Chuck says "Are you in a writing group?"
"No," I say.
"Well you are now -- we meet Monday nights."

I had never seen this car before -- nor have I seen it since. The synchronicity of that car with that plate at that moment -- that changed my life.
I love this magic!

Labels: book review, Chuck Palahniuk, Jincy Willett, synchronicity, THE WRITING CLASS, workshop, writing

August 7, 2008
Oh I am so proud of her!
Chelsea Cain's newest thriller -- SWEETHEART -- arrived today.
Chelsea and I met three years ago when I interviewed her about her parody of Nancy Drew, CONFESSIONS OF A TEEN SLEUTH. My studio, the size of a closet, not even a walk-in closet, was dark, and Chelsea never even slipped off her long wool coat for the interview. She spoke in a husky voice, she seemed to scrape her words until they were dry and drawled. Her sense of humor punctuated the conversation with an unexpected heat.
It wasn't until Chuck Palahniuk invited me into their writing group -- through an amazing set of coincidences, which I will reveal another day -- that I really got to know Chelsea.
Workshop, as they call it, was born many years earlier, the meeting days have flipped between Tuesday, Monday, and Thursday...and the participants have changed yearly, by virtue of circumstance. During this period of time at Workshop, when Chelsea was writing SWEETHEART, it was mostly just four of us. Chelsea, Chuck, Suzy Vitello, and me. I'd never written a book. Chuck was a veteran. Chelsea was to score a killer deal midday through my first year with Workshop. Suzy wrote prolifically, lyrically. I had a few dozen published author interviews and reviews, and non-fiction stories. No book. We met Monday nights. Mondays became my favorite day of the week. I don't remember ever missing a Monday.
Chuck challenged me as I wrote my memoir, pushed me to dig deep to excavate the truth at its most raw. Suzy pointed out my literary blunders and my tendency to skate between tenses. And, Chelsea gave me innumerable creative suggestions. One day, she was scribbling on my pages, after the storm of kind, incisive criticism had died down. We asked what she was up to. She had columns of words written down that related to my memoir. She poked her head up from the pages. "BOOKMARK," Chelsea said, "You should call your memoir BOOKMARK. It's about books and how they've made their mark on you." Ah Chelsea, absolutely perfect.
This trio of accomplished writers made me a better writer. They held me in their hearts. They pushed and they challenged and they shared their most astute observations in the clearest most clever ways, and we all laughed and sometimes cried together. The first BOOKMARK was a blend of self-help and memoir, and comments came back from publishers that they loved it but they wanted either self-help OR memoir. So, I revamped the first chapter, amping up the self-help while keeping the memoir quality. I read my pages aloud. Chelsea looked up, and in her fabulously frank way, she said "Write the freakin' memoir." I totally rewrote the manuscript, with Chuck and Chelsea and Suzy egging me one, insisting I go into the darkest places, with explicit detail. Where I went was brutal and bright, troubling, and at times enlightening. My agent is looking for a publisher for BOOKMARK now. But the best part was experiencing Workshop with Chelsea and Chuck and Suzy -- they made the last two years the best ever. Workshop has grown to nine writers, now meets on Thursdays, and is chattier and less intimate -- maybe my point of view has shifted because I'm writing fiction now -- a romantic ghost story set in an old radio station.
Go buy Chelsea's new book -- and, shhh, check out the acknowledgments in the end.
Thanks, Chelsea!

Labels: BookMark, books, Chelsea Cain, Chuck Palahniuk, memoir, Suzy Vitello, workshop