Tag: Jane Friedman

Three Books Read in February 2022

If you’ve been following my blog lately, you know February was not an easy month for me. Various events cut into my reading time, but today I’m writing about the books I read during that short month of 28 days. They represent three different genres. That’s appropriate because my reading interests are all over the place.

Violeta, by Isabel Allende

Violeta, by Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is becoming one of my favorite novelists. I listened to her latest novels, Violeta, on CD and thoroughly enjoyed it. I listened to the English translation of the Spanish original.

Violeta is written in the form of a letter to Violeta’s adult grandson and follows Violeta from her birth in 1920 during the Influenza Pandemic to the end of her life during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Born into a wealthy family, her father loses everything in the Great Depression which hits South America a little later than in the United States and Europe. The family loses their house and must move out into the hinterlands where they must adapt to life without luxuries such as electricity.

Woven into this story is a character who comes into Violeta’s life at an early age to serve as her English governess; however, it turns out the woman isn’t from England and isn’t at all what Violeta’s parents are expecting.

This is a delightful novel. Violeta would be a good Isabel Allende book for you to start with, if you’ve never read one of her novels. If you’ve read her other books, you know what a treat this one will be.

Our North Carolina Heritage, compiled by Charlotte Ivey Hastings, 1960

This book is well off the beaten path and one you probably can’t find. Just by happenstance, I purchased a copy dirt cheap at a public library used book sale several years ago. I added it to my to-be-read shelves and forgot about it.

I saw it on my bookshelf in February and decided to read it. It isn’t a history book that one can totally rely on for accuracy because it is a compilation of oral history stories. Many of them were written by junior high students.

However… (and that’s a huge HOWEVER), I found lots of little gems of North Carolina history in it that I’ve never seen or heard elsewhere. They are the bits of history that never made it into the history books but offer someone like me a jumping off point to do additional research.

One thing I was particularly glad to find was that the book gave information about a number of women and their bravery and contributions to the patriot cause in the American Revolution. Women have generally been omitted from the history books.

Here’s an example of something I don’t recall hearing or reading elsewhere: By the end of the 18th century, Jewish peddlers in North Carolina traded for eggs since they couldn’t easily come by Kosher meat.

The book reminds me of the series of local history books compiled in the 1960s by Mrs. Mabel Rumple Blume’s North Carolina history students at Harrisburg School in Harrisburg, NC. Every year for five or so years, Mrs. Blume’s students were sent out into the then rural Cabarrus County to interview the oldest residents to capture local history. The students won statewide first-place honors year after year for their books which covered general history, mail delivery and post offices, and grist mills. Much of that history would have been lost forever if not for Mrs. Blume and her students.

With that work in mind, I very much appreciated the contents of Our North Carolina Heritage. It made me sad that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Library system had made the decision several years ago to weed the book from its collection and sell it for pennies. Sometimes people are put in positions of decision-making who don’t appreciate the true value of what they have.

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield

This nonfiction book was recommended by Jane Friedman in her January 11, 2022 article, “To Everyone Who Wants Me to Read Their Writing and Tell Them What to Do.” Here’s the link: (To Everyone Who Wants Me to Read Their Writing and Tell Them What to Do | Jane Friedman Ms. Friedman has never steered me wrong, so I checked it out of the public library.

The book is divided into the following three parts: “Resistance ~ Defining the Enemy;” “Combating Resistance ~ Turning Pro;” and “Beyond Resistance ~ The Higher Realm.”

Part One explains that, “Resistance is the enemy within” when we attempt to do something worthwhile. Mr. Pressfield wrote that the rule of thumb for resistance is, “The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.” We fear that inner resistance, but once we “Master that fear… we conquer resistance.”

Mr. Pressfield wrote that resistance is often manifested in the form of procrastination, which can become a habit.

In Part Two, Mr. Pressfield wrote that an artist must stop thinking of himself as an amateur and start seeing himself as a professional. He wrote, “A professional does not take failure (or success) personally.”

He also wrote, “A professional recognizes her limitations. She gets an agent, she gets a lawyer, she gets an accountant. She knows she can only be a professional at one thing.”

In Part Three, Mr. Pressfield wrote that we just do it. We do it every day. It’s work, and we do it. He also cautions artists from thinking of themselves in a hierarchy. In other words, art of all types is not a competition.

Since my last blog post

Every day has brought horrifying images of the suffering and destruction in Ukraine.

I’m disappointed that I didn’t receive an acknowledgement for some research advice I sought for the writing of my novel, but I won’t let that slow me down any longer. That’s life.

I got back to work on a project that relates to my church. I started it 20 years ago and it’s been on the back burner now for 15 years. I’ve been inventorying my unfinished projects lately. It’s overwhelming. I need to complete some, even if doing so cuts into my writing and reading time.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading an interesting book about 1816 – known as “The Year Without a Summer.”

May the world continue to condemn Vladimir Putin for his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

Janet

How Listening to a Book and Reading a Book Differ

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

Until I read Jules Horne’s guest post on Jane Friedman’s March 25, 2019 blog,https://www.janefriedman.com/writing-for-audio-understanding-attunement/ ­­­­­ , I had not considered how a listener of an audio book approaches a book as opposed to how a reader of the printed word approaches a book.

Jules Horne teaches method writing. She has even written a book about writing books for the audio audience:  Writing for Audiobooks:  Audio-first for Flow and Impact. I haven’t read it but maybe I should. If you’re interested in finding out more about Ms. Horne and her books, her website is https://www.method-writing.com/. Most of her work appears to pertain more to nonfiction than to fiction writing, but her guest post on Jane Friedman’s website gave me some things to consider as I write fiction.

I’m fairly new to listening to audio books. It’s a matter of personal preference, and it stems from how I learn things. I’m a visual learner, as a rule. A few years ago, having to listen to a book being read was torture for me. I felt like someone was talking “at” me and they wouldn’t shut up. It got on my last nerve. This became an issue because my sister is my traveling companion. She loves audio books and I hated them. That’s not a good combination on a vacation.

Over the past six or eight months I’ve made an attitude adjustment. I’ve listened to several books and enjoyed the experience for the most part. I am hearing impaired, so it is helpful to me for there to be few erratic changes in volume. That goes for people talking to me, the decibel levels on the TV, and very much so if I’m listening to an audio book.

All that being said, that’s not what today’s blog post is about. It’s about something called attunement. The above-referenced blog post by Jules Horne brought two important things to my attention as I learn the fine points of writing:

(1)          If the hook of your story is in the first several words of your book, the audio book listener might miss it. It takes a few words for a book listener to attune their ears to the sound of the reader’s voice – the volume, the pitch, the accents, and the cadence. A writer doesn’t want the book listener to miss the hook; and

(2)          The same thing applies to the transition into the next scene and the next chapter. The listener, more than the printed word reader, needs a few words of transition to ease into a new scene or point-of-view.

A comparison Ms. Horne makes is that of someone verbally giving us the news. Words like, “meanwhile” or “in other news” alert the listener to a switching of gears, a change in the story. Someone listening to a novel needs similar cues that give their brains a moment to prepare to hear something new.  

The current opening line in the manuscript for the Southern historical novel I’m writing, The Doubloon, is

“Sarah McCorkle dropped her sewing basket at the sight of her husband lying face down between the stone hearth and his desk, sending thread, needles, and thimbles crashing and scattering on the wide planks of the pine floor.”

After reading Jules Horne’s thoughts about writing for audio, I need to rethink that sentence as well as the opening sentences for each of my chapters and scenes. There are a multitude of things a writer has to keep in mind when editing the first (otherwise known as the “rough”) draft. I plan to address some of them in my blog post next Monday.

Since my last blog post

I let my rough draft of The Doubloon rest for several days, and then I started working on the second draft. I changed the timing of an event mentioned on the first page, and that meant adjusting references to that event throughout the rest of the book. 

Getting this book published is going to be a long process, but please stay tuned.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m reading The Mother-in-Law, by Sally Hepworth and Stony the Road:  Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I’m listening to The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women compiled by NPR (National Public Radio.)

If you’re a writer, I hope you have quality writing time and your projects are moving right along.

Thank you for reading my blog. You could have spent the last few minutes doing something else, but you chose to read my blog.

Let’s continue the conversation

Do you prefer listening to audio books or reading the words yourself?

Do you prefer holding a book in your hands and turning a paper page or reading a book on an electronic device?

What do you think of the current “hook” in my novel? Do you think it would work as well if you were hearing it instead of reading it?

Janet