Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

I’ve decided to move the party online.

Between now and August 9th you are invited to send me a paragraph from a work in progress. I will choose a handful of grafs to critique on this blog using the hot new Paragraph Party method.

Here are the rules:

1. You are to send me one paragraph only

Please do not send me your entire novel and tell me to “pick whatever paragraph you think needs the most work.”

2. Please provide a little context

You don’t have to go nuts, but let me know if the graf from a short story, memoir, YA novel, etc. It would also help to know if it’s from the beginning, middle or end.

3. In sending me your paragraph you represent and warrant you are the author of said paragraph

Please do not try to trick me by sending in a paragraph written by E-R-N-E-S-T H-E-M-I-N-G-W-A-Y.

4. Do not bother me about the status of your paragraph

It’s August. I work in publishing. Keep your expectations low.

Send your paragraph to dennis <dot> cass <at> gmail <dot> com. Good luck and see you next week.

I’m not printing the reader question this time because the original e-mail I received was a mini-proposal, and the subsequent exchange is best left summarized. Here’s the gist:

I’m not a writer by trade, but I’m working on a book that will help advance a cause related to my primary career, which is education. I feel very passionately about a certain educational philosophy and would like to see it more widely implemented. In other words, I want to change the world. How do I go about writing and publishing such a book?

I am tempted to temper your expectations with a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

“Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions.”

But I will not do that, because there are things in this world that undoubtedly need changing, and I see no reason to discourage you. The question is how a book fits into those plans. On that score I offer the following thoughts:

Are you settling an existing argument or starting a new one?

Imagine it’s the 80s and you have a thoughtful, peaceful way of reducing global terrorism. In the United States you would’ve had a very hard time getting people interested in your book or your cause. Terrorism was something that happened somewhere else.

If, on the other hand, it’s the 80s and you have a thoughtful, peaceful way of ending the nuclear arms race, then you fit very comfortably into the existing cultural and intellectual framework.

In the first example, your challenge is to change the conversation entirely. In the second example, your challenge is to beat out the other people who already have turf claims to the conversation. These are two very different jobs. Act accordingly.

How close to the bone is your cause?

Perhaps the most famous world-changing book in the United States is Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (Google Books version here). You cannot read this book and not instinctively cry out for the Meat Inspection Act!

Funnily enough, Sinclair intended the book to explose the plight of the American factory worker, but his original vision was sidelined because tainted meat is more visceral than exploited people.

Education-related causes are tricky because they’re abstract. If you find out your kids are eating maggot-infested school lunch you’ll drop what you’re doing and call the principle. If you find out your kids are enrolled in a language arts program that one study finds is 15% less effective than most language arts programs, then you may do nothing at all.

I’m not saying that the inadequate language arts program isn’t important. It’s just that it doesn’t feel as important. One of your challenges is to figure out how to make your cause feel more immediate.

Does the book have to be a book?

Books are persuasive. But so are documentaries, websites, poster campaigns, etc. If your goal is to be an author whose books affect change, then there is only one path. If the book is simply the means, then the paths are many.

Final thought:

The book is a conversation point, a springboard, a start. But the book can’t do it alone. Books don’t fight your fight for you. You’ll need collaborators, supporters, allies, evangelists, etc.

Ultimately, it all comes down to you. There was a bit in The New Yorker recently about how every public park or national monument happens because one person becomes an enormous pain in the ass for that cause. If I were you, I’d concentrate on how you’re going to be that pain in the ass. If you get a book out of it, then so be it.

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

In the delightful and essential HOW FICTION WORKS, James Wood writes about the concept of “getting in.” (Wood is quoting someone else, but I lent out my copy so the real credit will have to wait.)

The idea is that not only must we draw our characters well, but also quickly.

Over the course of the story, a character may take us on the emotional/psychological/literary equivalent of climbing K2, but we can’t go anywhere with them without that first firm foothold.

I was thinking about this concept the other day while watching In a Lonely Place, a 1950 film noir drama directed by Nicolas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart. Check out how screenwriter Andrew Solt gets Bogart’s character in.

SCENE:

A warm night in Los Angeles. A convertible (driven by BOGART) stops at a light next another convertible (driven by a BIG LUG). In the passenger seat is a LOVELY BETTY.

LOVELY BETTY

Dick Steele! How are you?

BOGART

[Reaction shot as he draws a blank.]

LOVELY BETTY

Don’t you remember me?

BOGART

Sorry. I can’t say that I do.

LOVELY BETTY

Well, you wrote the last picture I did. At Columbia.

BOGART

Well, I make it a point to never see pictures I write.

BIG LUG

You! Stop bothering my wife.

BOGART

Oh . . . you shouldna done it, honey. No matter how much money that pig’s got.

BIG LUG

You pull over to the curb!

BOGART

What’s wrong with right here?!?

BOGART gets out of his car in the middle of the street ready to THROW DOWN, but the BIG LUG drives off.

Now isn’t that just lovely?

The “you wrote my last picture” bit is a tad clunky, but it’s immediately redeemed by the next line, which not only establishes Bogart as a self-hating screenwriter, but also a misanthropic self-hating screenwriter who has zero interest in playing the game. (He could have easily recovered with a lie or some Hollywood-style ass kissing.)

But the real treat is that final exchange. A lesser (or at least a modern) writer would have padded the scene. We’d have our post-modern tentativeness and our blustery one-liners. Instead we get a character who is so spoiling for a fight he can barely get his car in park.

All that in nine lines. In a novel you could get all that done in fewer than two pages.

My challenge to you:

Take a look at the key people in your current project. Are you getting them in fast enough? Are you getting them in hard enough?

Good luck.

A reader writes:

Longtime lurker, first-time writer. I was compelled to write based on a recent entry about how to start your writing career — I was intrigued by your advice, by the parameters you suggested for the hypothetical first project. I am a writer. I make my living as one (on staff, but not at a media company). I’ve long thought writing was a good fit for me, personality-wise. It afforded me the opportunity to explore and examine my varied interests. Over the past year or so, however, I’ve been concentrating on a particular area and am finding myself less drawn to the writing than to the area itself and the ideas it suggests to me. This isn’t necessarily a problem: My job affords me the opportunity to concentrate on this area. The problem is that as I try to strategize career-wise, I find that my strengths lie more in these ideas and less in my writing on them; I’m being recognized more for my thoughts, in other words, than for my writing. I feel in some sense that I’m taking on more of a curatorial position, building a body of work whose value lies in the sum of its pieces. I’ve thought lately that I could improve my brand by realizing those ideas in different ways: organizing a speaker’s series in my city, for example; I’m actually at the very, very, very early stages of a “book” project that I envision as a collection of images and an introductory essay — again, a work that I value for the ideas behind it and it being something nobody’s yet collected (or curated), and not something that will advance me as a writer (when I discuss this project with other writers, they’re very dismissive since, as I said, it’s not a “book” book).

I’m not quite sure what I’m asking for here, and I apologize if that’s frustrating. I guess I’m curious as to your thoughts on a path with no model in terms of form (writer, painter, filmmaker, etc.), but one guided by a defined yet intangible topic area. It seems a bit terrifying because there seems to be no firm goal to work toward — no novel or New Yorker staff position or Academy Award-winning film — other than gaining the opportunity to work in the ideas and issues and topics that interest me. And who knows how or if I could even monetize that. Am I naive to think a formless path is possible?

Your site is a real treasure. I appreciate your work on it.

Thank you the kind words and for de-lurking. I hope others like you follow suit.

As for taking the Formless Path, I don’t think you’re naive at all. When I’m with my writer friends all we talk about is the Formless Path. The Formless Path is killing us, and what’s extra infuriating is the fact that the Old Path (writer, painter, filmmaker, etc.) was ALREADY PRETTY F*CKING FORMLESS TO BEGIN WITH.

Frankly, I think the big decision facing every artist right now is not about the Nature of the Path, but what you expect to get out of the Path.

• Do you need to write/paint/make films for a living?
• Does the writing/painting/filmmaking need to be your identity?
• Does the product of your creativity need to make sense to other people (i.e. my friend Dennis writes books that teach kids about famous artists)?

Your writer friends are thinking critically not creatively. Your book project doesn’t sound like a book to them. What do they know? It’s all up for grabs and there isn’t a creative professional alive who can tell you what they’re going to be doing five years from now or if they’ll be making any money doing it.

So do your book. Do your speaker’s series. Get yourself out there and collaborate and meet people and experiment and play. If you’re any good it will make sense over time, even if you have idea what to make of now.

If only writing them were as easy as formatting them

Before I start blasting away with Facebook and Gmail, I wanted to give the good readers of DCWYTBMA the first shot at an exciting and innovative new class I’m teaching at The Loft.

It’s called Paragraph Party and it’s based on the simple premise that writing lives and dies at the paragraph level.

If you can make paragraphs that are energetic, shapely, informative, stylish, thoughtful, purposeful and true, then you’re going to have a wonderful career.

If you can’t make those kinds of paragraphs, then you’re going to have a much less wonderful career.

Solution: Paragraph Party!

This is not a mechanics class. We’re not going to be talk about topic sentences and supporting sentences and so forth. Instead we’re going to use the paragraph as a springboard for talking about all aspects of writing. And we’re going to do it using student work. And we’re going to do it live.

Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up for the class.

2. Before class you will send me a paragraph from one of your many delightful works in progress.

3. I will take all paragraphs and load them into a special Paragraph Projecting Device that I have commissioned expressly for this purpose.

4. On the day of the class I will project paragraphs onto the wall. Then we’ll break them down and build them back up until they’re perfect little gems of pure delight.

5. Jokes, asides, wisdom (and possibly snacks) included.

The first Paragraph Party is on Tuesday, August 4th. The cost is $40 for nonmembers, $36 for members. Space is limited, so if you’re interested sign up now. You will not be disappointed.

See you in school.

A reader writes:

My manuscript is over the limit on word count, but I think I can get it down close enough to acceptable levels that I am not really concerned.

I have two friends, however, who have written tomes. Yes, I hang out with overachievers. I’ve read one completely and bits of the historical. Both have had very positive comments from agents who are aware of the word count, but I wonder if the current climate is going to kill these books.

The delightful Moonrat recently covered this very topic. Her “is there a word cap count cap for a debut novel?” offers a peek into an editor’s point of view.

Agent Colleen Lindsay (who writes The Swivet blog) has walked similar ground, but she serves up a better word-count breakdown in her post “On word counts and novel length.“

I can’t offer much more on industry standards, but I can speak to what it might be like to go out into the world with a long, long, long, long, long, long book. Here’s what you’ll need:

1. Publication strategy that takes into account longness

You can’t pretend your book isn’t too long. People are going to notice. Which means publication strategy should take into account the size of your book.

If there are agents who are more likely to fight a long book’s battles, then that is an agent you will want to employ.

Getting a referral/endorsement from an established author will also help. See if you can get Toni Morrison to say, “I know this f*cker is 250,000 words long, but trust me on this one: it’s brilliant.” That just might do it.

Along those lines, it’s never too early to find ways of selling the book as a long book. (As the old computer science joke goes, “It’s not a bug; it’s a feature.”)

Is your book the final word on the subject? Is it the product of 25 years of research? Is it long because it’s experimental? Is it some kind of super epic? You’ll need something better than “just cuz.”

Finally, even if you land the deal at the desired size, the publisher may change their mind. Your editor might ask for big cuts, or ask you to split the book into two or three volumes. Be prepared for a fight.

2. Audience-building strategy that takes into account longness

All the struggles you encountered during the publication process will only be magnified once the book is out. There are people who simply won’t read long books. Period. There are even people who will resent you for writing long. (Who do you think you are, anyway? What century do you think it is?)

Are you planning on wooing those who would otherwise read your book if they weren’t turned off by the length? Or are you going to focus on a smaller core audience and hope to build the buzz that way? What’s the “elevator pitch” that makes its longness an enticement?

Your book’s longness will also come up again and again while you’re doing media. What’s your plan for handling interviews? Are you going to be coyly apologetic? Raffishly defensive? Unabashedly sassy?

Finally, if it’s not easy keeping any book afloat over its natural life, then a big book will be even more challenging. Once the energy of the hardcover release dissipates, then you have the long slog of getting your book into paperback, and then continuing to support it.

What is your plan for (sometimes literally) carrying this beast around with you for six, seven, eight, nine, ten years? What happens if the publisher decides not to go into paperback, the rights revert to you and you have to try re-selling the book to another house?

Are you prepared to fight your long book’s long-book battles twice?

3. Failure strategy that takes into account longness

Books fail for all kinds of reasons. Long books often fail because they’re TOO DAMN LONG and everyone (including the author) knows it.

If it’s absolutely unavoidable that your book is that long, then it might be easier to stomach the failure.

If your book is too long out of blindness or stubbornness, then you’re going to have a lifetime of “if only” conversations with yourself. Start practicing today.

Screengrab from the HBO documentary "Living Dolls"

While I understand the sentiment, I’ve always felt that the old writing saw “kill your darlings” suffered from being both overly macho (Ooh, you big bad killer you) and poorly timed (Why not help prevent me from making darlings in the first place?).

Now look at the picture above.

Don’t we all have a story tucked in a drawer somewhere that reads like this poor kid looks?

You’re the boss of your work. You can make it be anything you want it to be. You are in COMPLETE CONTROL.

But don’t be a pageant mom, okay?

A reader writes:

My name is NAME and I’m currently a junior at COLLEGE COLLEGE. My friend, NAME, who is in the same graduating class as me, referred me to your website. While I am a ACADEMIC MAJOR in a WORLD CITY right now, my true passion is writing poetry, and I’m trying to develop my skills in writing short stories. I am fairly certain that I want this hobby to become my career, but I don’t know where to even start! I will be the first person in my family to graduate with a 4-year degree, so I don’t have any relatives with applicable experience or knowledge. Do you have any advice on where to start?

I’ve been sitting on this question for months, and for our readers who are farther along in their writing careers I’m sure you understand why.

Where to start? Where to start? Is there a more impossible question to answer than WHERE TO START?

The advise that springs to mind is of the “just write” variety, advice that I will not give. “Just write” is dismissive and minimizing, like telling someone who’s clinically depressed that maybe they wouldn’t feel so crummy if they just lightened up and, you know, tried to have some fun and not worry so much all the time.

I couldn’t do that to you, NAME from COLLEGE COLLEGE. You say you have the desire. Very well. Now let’s put some shape to all that ambition. Let’s get you doing a web project.

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

Mark Twain

Another way of approaching Twain’s advice is to take the “complex overwhelming task” and shrink it—in its entirety—until it’s small enough to be manageable.

Becoming a writer is a simple matter of mastering ideas, emotion, insight, subtext, research, writing, rewriting, polishing, publishing, marketing, publicity and finding, building and maintaining audience. You’re going to do all of those things, but on a scale you can handle.

Here’s what you need to do:

Pick the project

That memoir about your experiences growing up as the daughter of a cruel pineapple magnate is not a project. That’s your life’s work. A project is something like Skull-A-Day or SMITH Magazine’s Six-Word Memoirs. You will pick a project that is finite, manageable and low stakes, something like 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt.

Do the project

You will write your 36 poems about strawberry-banana yogurt. Or, if you are acting as an editor/curator, you will collect your 36 poems about strawberry-banana yogurt. (Per Doug’s comment, you will also need to set a deadline.)

Produce the project

Your project has to be public, but you’re not going to wait for permission. You’re going to put up a website (36PASBY.com is available, btw). You’ll do this yourself, or you’ll gain the invaluable experience of collaborating with other people who have different skills than you have. Either way you’re going to make it look rad.

Support the project

You will do all the things that people with “real” books do. You will throw a launch party. You will start a Facebook group (even if you are over Facebook). You will pitch a story to your local newspaper. (Again, if you’re up to the task, then collaborate. Doesn’t everyone know an aspiring publicist?)

Put an end to the project

The point of this exercise is to be quick and light and effective. If 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt takes off, then that’s great. If it doesn’t, then you will have already built in a sunset provision. Let your project be what it’s meant to be. Then walk away.

Rest

Rest is important. Rest now.

Asses the project

How did it go? What went wrong? What went right? What was in your control? What was out of your control? Be honest with yourself, but also be kind. It’s just a project.

Learn from the project

This whole time you’ve been (lightly) learning about what you do well, what you struggle with, what you think you could improve, what you’re always going to be hopeless at. Now take a moment to write down the lessons learned.

Rest again

Did I not mention that rest is important? Please rest again.

Do another project

Take what you’ve learned from the first project and do another one. And another. And another. And another. With a little hard work and luck these projects will grow in scope and size and important.

Then one day you’ll wake up to find that your next project is that memoir about growing up the child of a cruel pineapple magnate. Project and life’s work have become interchangeable. Fortunately, the muscles and skills you developed doing your web projects apply quite nicely. You’ll also find that you’ve managed to collect some friends, readers and collaborators along the way.

Then the book comes out, and you go on the radio, and the interviewer asks you how you got started as a writer, and you’ll smile and tell her about 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt and that story will absolutely kill.

You win. The end.

Wonderful Q & A in the A.V. Club with Up director Pete Docter. I’ve long been a fan of Pixar’s mighty storytelling abilities, and this interview delivers sweet, juicy insights into their process. Dig this:

AVC: How late in the process do you continue tweaking the story? Is it set in stone before you start animating it?

PD: Ideally, it’s set in stone. But the truth is—and every film’s different—basically the way we work is, we divide the film up into sequences, roughly 30 of them. And the ones we feel are tent-poles, holding the whole thing up, those go in first, and we start animating those. Hopefully, everything else starts to come along. It’s weird—on almost every film I’ve worked on, the first sequence we storyboard ends up being the first sequence that goes into animation, and ends up being almost shot-for-shot the same. In Toy Story, it was the Army-man sequence, which Joe Ranft mostly boarded, of these guys sneaking out and rappelling down to spy on the birthday party. It was almost shot-for-shot the way he boarded it. Same with this one. We had Peter Sohn, this really great story artist who’s doing the short film that’s gonna be attached on this one—he boarded the sequence with Carl where the nurses pull up and knock on his door, and he says “Just give me a moment,” and then he floats his house off into the sky. We had these poetic images of him floating past stores and windows, and that is almost shot-for-shot. Other sequences, we reworked 40, 50 times, it’s crazy. But you do what you have to do to get it right.

This idea of the tent-pole is super right-on. I’d also like to add that you need to know what your tent-poles are supposed to accomplish. In the aforementioned Toy Story example, the Army-man scene establishes that these toys are resourceful and capable. Without it, then Woody leaving the safety of Andy’s room to rescue Buzz would feel like a stretch. But thanks to that scene, you’re prepared for these toys to do the impossible.

Tent-poles in plot- or action-driven stories are essential, but even literary pursuits have them. (For some reason, the unsettling Dick & Jane opening to Toni Morrison’s THE BLUEST EYE springs to mind.) Ignore them at your peril.

Some homework for the weekend if you’re interested:

1. Clear your mind of desire, expectation, and what you’ve done in the past.

2. Taking only the premise of your project (no peeking at the thing-in-progress itself) make a list of tent-poles, jotting down a few quick notes on what said TP is supposed to achieve.

3. Set aside for 14.5 hours.

4. Compare your TP list with what you’ve done so far. Where are there gaps to fill? Where are you overstaying your welcome?

5. Take a nap or eat a hot fudge sundae.

6. Get to work.

Final note:

The TP list is different from an outline. Outlining is great, but you can also outline yourself into a corner. (I’ve also found that outlines can start to justify themselves, even if they’re wrong.)

The TP list is free of chronology. It only cares about weight. In baking there are all kinds of substitutes for eggs, but chocolate is irreplaceable.

A reader writes:

I have the rights to 25 romance books hubby and I wrote back in the early 1980’s. Those books sold over 2 million copies. I have been advised that a smart promoter could package them as Classic Best Selling Romances and maybe sell the whole lot to Hallmark or a corporation as a promotional freebie, etc. What advice can you give me, please?

I like the way you’re thinking. The question for me is what will provide the occasion to bring them back.

Do the stories or characters have some kind of 80s retro appeal? Or are they “classic” in some other way? Do all 25 books perform at the same level? Or at certain titles more likely candidates for making a comeback?

My advice to you is first to use your curatorial powers to put parameters and constraints to this idea.

It’s one thing to approach someone with a crate of books, dump them on their desk and say, “Here. Use these.”

It’s quite another to approach someone with nine books, have criteria for why they’re the best, and then provide a rationale for what makes these books relevant today.

Finally, for all you romance novel haters I’d like to leave you with this:

Embrace . . . the stormy castle!