Breaking Up Isn’t Hard to Do

~ SarahLaPolla ~ 2 Comments

Remember when the biggest media story ever was the Tiger Woods sex scandal? I know, who can even remember back that far, right? It feels like weeks ago.

More recently, our (well, my) attention has been focused on NBC. Unlike the Tiger thing, I actually care about this one. I know I’m usually book gal, but truth be told, I can be just as passionate about television. I get invested in characters and plots the same way I would about those in a novel (hello, Lost anyone?) I’m also an avid follower of all things pop culture, oftentimes regardless of whether I even care (e.g. winners of American Idol and losers of Jersey Shore, despite never watching either show). So, I’ve been staying up until the A.M. fanatically changing the channel from one monologue to the next, seeing who can rip NBC apart in the most clever and biting way. As with most things, Letterman wins.

Now, NBC has always been my favorite network, which contributes to my particular interest in this saga. Growing up, we watched Days of our Lives, not All My Children. Tom Brokaw rather than Rather. Today instead of GMA. You get the picture. NBC also had the best shows, invented Must-See TV, and has that catchy little three-tone jingle.

But, things have taken a turn for NBC. Aside from this current debacle, they recently canceled Southland, which will no doubt gain even more critical acclaim and viewers now that it’s on cable, and has relied on The Office and 30 Rock to provide all of their comedy needs, even though both shows garner the same exact audience. (Where is NBC’s equivalent to Modern Family or Glee?) Perhaps they are trying to relive their glory days by returning Jay Leno to The Tonight Show, but what worked in the past clearly is not working for them anymore.

I agree with Conan that moving the time slot would be a disgrace to the historic show’s legacy, but mostly I just want to see it (and Conan) stay put because it’s the right thing to do. Conan put in his time while Jay Leno (who’s never been funny and has probably always been a dick) made The Tonight Show a bland, horribly unfunny mess. NBC rightfully broke up with Jay for someone younger and all-around better, but they got scared. Yes, Jay didn’t ignite the same passion he used to (well, did he ever?), but Conan is a fiery redhead who unleashed Triumph and the Masturbating Bear onto America… surely the over-50 crowd (that oh-so-coveted demographic) will be much more comfortable with Jay.

So much like the way Conan is getting dumped by NBC, I think it’s time for me to sever ties with the network. Despite our history, this is just not the same network I fell in love with. But, I do wonder why NBC won’t cut the cord with Leno. Does he secretly own the network? Does he have their children locked in the basement? None of it makes any sense.

While Conan is clearly being treated unfairly, he is still coming out the winner of this mess. Jay, through his actions, has most likely alienated the majority of any audience who’d follow him back to 11:30 and has made himself the most hated man in late night. I’d love to see Conan and Jimmy Kimmel (who is inexplicably on at midnight) work out an 11:30-1:30 deal on ABC. After all, there is no greater victory in a breakup than knowing you kept your cool under the pressure, moved on with some grace, and ended up with a better partner (and better network) than your ex.

Jane Austen Has Destroyed Us All

~ SarahLaPolla ~ Leave a comment
Since it comes free with my new nook, I’ve been re-reading Pride and Prejudice (pay no attention to that print version on my shelf). Now, before I explain the title of this post, let me just say that this book is easily one of the best written of all time. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to be different. It proves its timelessness in its prose and plot. Its characters remain complex and familiar and, let’s face it, perfectly constructed. Along with The Great Gatsby and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Pride and Prejudice would be put on my imaginary syllabus to my imaginary class called “This Is Everything a Novel Should Be!”

OK, now let’s trash it.

I first fell in love with Ms. Austen in college. I had never read her before, but through some turn of events, I ended up in a seminar devoted entirely to her. We read all six novels, some of her letters, and (get ready to swoon, ladies!) watched the Pride and Prejudice mini-series with Colin Firth. Before taking this class, I assumed that Jane Austen wrote the fluffy chick lit of her time. In fact, one might even say I had a prejudice against her for this reason.

But, even before her actual writing proved me wrong, I learned that Jane was a huge cynic when it came to love and hated being around children. Surprised and sympathetic, I respected her even more. In knowing her real-life feelings on marriage and children and “what’s expected,” I could see her winking at me from behind the pages when her characters inevitably got their “happy” ending.

Again, I say all of this about her with love and admiration. However, it wasn’t until reading Pride and Prejudice again that I realized the true extent of her cynicism. She is downright cruel in a way that I bet she didn’t even anticipate.

While I’m sure this has been pointed out before in the thesis papers of English and Film majors alike, Pride and Prejudice has been arguably the template for almost every piece of women’s fiction/chick lit novel and romantic comedy ever produced. Not all, but a lot of them. Man meets woman; woman hates man; man hates woman; both find each other attractive; both resist; they keep running into each other; sexual tension builds; man and woman get married.

By creating this formula, Jane Austen was inadvertently responsible for today’s stereotype (reality?) that women fall for jerks. In essence, she’s been ruining the lives of women for 200 years. Sure, it’s paid off in some ways. She is, after all, responsible for Sam and Diane’s banter on Cheers and the careers of Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, and Sandra Bullock. But she’s also responsible for Bridget Jones’ diary, for all of our diaries that lament over the man who just won’t change his ways. She’s why Carrie ends up with Big!
Even in my favorite Austen novel, Emma, Emma plays the role of the jerk who needs changing, while Mr. Knightly, oh perfect, love-of-my-life that he is, plays the role of the wise outsider, disdaining Emma’s superficiality while falling in love with her. Perhaps Jane was trying to explore the question, “Why do the hot, kinda bitchy girls always win?” But that’s a topic for the men to analyze. I’ll stick with women and our Darcy-complex.

As I’ve said before, sometimes people just suck. In reality, unless something particularly profound happens to them, these people rarely change, so why should we expect anything more in our books or films? I know, I know. Now, I’m sounding like the cynic. So I’ll clarify by admitting that I do see the value of the hope Jane’s formula provides and I believe that love sometimes can be that profound thing that happens to the aforementioned “jerks.” However, these constant, poorly executed remakes are making women appear dumb. I think this needs to stop. If reality reflects entertainment which reflects reality, then one of these things needs to change.

I’m left with two questions:

1) Why has this notion – that is, the notion that we will be the one to change him because deep down, he’s really just Mr. Darcy – been perpetuated for as long as it has?

2) Which came first – literature influencing our relationships, or our relationships influencing literature?

Maybe it’s both, but one thing is for sure – We can drop all the zombies we want into Jane’s work. We can even allow Anne Hathaway to make Jane fall in love on screen and let the malnourished Keira Knightley destroy everything holy about Lizzie Bennett. And no matter how many times we roll her over in her grave, she is clearly getting the last laugh.

Things I Learned Over Christmas Vacation

~ SarahLaPolla ~ 1 Comment
Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays. Due to New Year’s/life plans falling through, I ended up spending a whole extra week at my parent’s house in upstate New York. It was the longest amount of time I’ve spent there since the days of college breaks. Intensity. But now I’m back (!) and here are some bits of knowledge I’ve gained about myself and life in general:

When I’m away from New York for too long, I get twitchy: After the excitement and overall family craziness of Christmas wore off, it took me all of a day to begin pining for NYC. Parental home is all well and good; I just feel better when I’m in New York is all.

When I leave city limits of any kind, I get twitchy: My hometown is technically a city, albeit a very small one. However, compared to its surrounding towns, it might as well be Paris. I crossed the border exactly twice, once with me driving and once a friend drove, and both times I stared out the window with equal parts confusion, awe, and terror as the streetlights became fewer and farther between and bars that look like houses appeared more and more alongside the road. Call me a city wuss, but that much darkness and open space scares me.

More Human than Human by White Zombie is the greatest song of all time: The single best moment of my week, and possibly life, was driving by myself on the NYS Thruway blasting this song and singing along when I could. Now I know what Tom Cruise felt like when he did that ‘Free Fallin” scene in Jerry Maguire.

Craig Ferguson is funny: Has this always been the case? Was I blinded by Conan that whole time?

I don’t read when I’m away from home: I know; it’s a travesty, but apparently I need the ever-relaxing quiet of the New York City subway system to enjoy a good book.

Coffeehouses make everything better: On a lazy day off, I usually head to my local cafe, sit down with a book, and hang out for a few hours. Having to ask permission to use the car made this luxury a little harder to satisfy, but I managed to support my favorite local business and get some much-needed coffee breaks at the same time. For me, going to a coffeehouse isn’t so much about drinking a cup of coffee as it is a lifestyle choice essential to my mental survival. I’m not exactly sure how I became this way, but I will guess that the “favorite local business” I speak of was directly responsible.

The gift that keeps on giving is definitely a nook: Seriously.

Well, folks. I guess that’s about it. It’s good to be back. I’m excited for sharing some new stories, seeing more of YOUR work (that’s right, I’m talking to you, people who haven’t submitted yet!), and starting a new decade!

You’ve Got Mail

~ SarahLaPolla ~ 1 Comment

Last night, instead of being a functional human being, I watched You’ve Got Mail on cable and over-analyzed it. I’ve seen this post-Sleepless in Seattle gem several times and I usually think to myself how underrated it is. I haven’t seen it in a few years, so perhaps my newly acquired publishing world knowledge has clouded my judgment. But let me just say – what the hell is up with the ending?

But first, a digression. I think it’s funny (though so much in a ha-ha sense) that a movie about meeting people in a new, digital age is already completely dated. If you’re still using AOL, you should probably re-think your life decisions, and if you’re still going into chat rooms, then chances are they are not ones you’d want your spouse or children knowing about. Still, this outdated comment on technology is twenty times better than the slightly modernized take on internet dating, Must Love Dogs, which is just plain terrible.

Moving on.

Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are supposed to represent polar opposites. Big business gentrification vs. the local, independent underdog. However, the locally owned Meg gets her morning coffee at Starbucks while her typewriter-bound boyfriend chastises her for being dependent on modern technology. At the end of the movie [SPOILER ALERT], her beloved family-inherited, neighborhood favorite bookstore ends up closing. Barnes & Noble – er, I mean, “Fox Books” – wins again. But she finds love, so hey, everybody wins.

You see why I’m upset. Evil, impersonal chain stores still beat out the little guy and it’s a happy ending. Now, I know why Ms. Ephron did it and it actually does make sense. But, if this movie was made now, still using and promoting modern technology the way it does, I think Meg Ryan would have a fightin’ chance. That’s right, you heard me, cynical literary world of the late ’00s, I think the indie could win… or at least co-exist.

This is why I’m proposing (Nora Ephron, you out there?), You’ve Got Re-Tweeted, the inevitable sequel that is apparently only inevitable in my brain. Tom & Meg are still happily together, maybe even married, and are still fully embracing technology. Tom’s publishing diva ex now owns an e-book company and Meg’s anti-tech ex’s head has exploded. Meanwhile, Meg, who’s proven she’s fine with selling out (see Starbucks comment above), re-opens her Shop Around the Corner, cancels AOL, and uses her Twitter account/blog/Facebook fan page to gain more publicity for her store than that stupid Fox Books ever dreamed of. Independents win in the end! (Winning means “not technically losing,” right?)

If this gets made, I demand royalties. Or a chance to play the token sassy, brunette friend.

Editing Your Life

~ SarahLaPolla ~ Leave a comment
“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector.” – Ernest Hemingway

Since two of my favorite methods of relaxation are reorganizing my bookshelves and cleaning out my closet, it should come as no surprise that throwing away clutter fills me with a sense of accomplishment that, in turn, creates a very happy moment. I’m a “what’s next?” person, I think. In high school, all I could think about was graduating. And in the years since graduating from college, I’ve never once had a “if only I could go back for just one day” moment. (To the town of Ithaca, maybe, but not to college.)

So, this morning, after a weekend away from Google Reader, I saw 1000+ unread stories and I deleted, without reading, about 980 of them. This made me feel good about myself. I can’t explain why. But then I saw THIS pop up and immediately opened it. In case you have yet to click that link, I will just tell you that Boing Boing does, in fact, explain my elation over deletion. From the article: “The more I delete, the happier I am. It’s about learning to say no — learning to refuse things that aren’t contributing to my work or to my life.” Sums up my philosophy nicely, if I were to call my obsession with neatness and simplicity a “philosophy.”

Relating this to writing, since everything so often does, see the above quote by Hemingway. Now allow me to get slightly personal. In my final year and half in college, I became depressed over a very traumatic death in my family. I was fairly decent at hiding just how depressed I became because deep down I knew it was grief and not clinical depression, and grief eventually passes. Still. I took a writing seminar called Writing and Healing specifically to write about this event.

I’m not about to tell you a story where I was magically cured of my grief through the power of the written word, or anything like that. However, the class made me look at what I was going through in a different way – as a piece of literature. The same way we’d tell people in workshop, “This doesn’t really work here,” or “More of this, less of that,” my professor and peer group used the same workshop slogans on my pieces. In a way, they were telling me “If it doesn’t make for good writing, then stop worrying about it.” Pretty harsh lesson for someone going through a rough time as it is, but it helped. The actual writing I produced was still terribly emotional and unedited, but the idea of keeping only what matters, whether in writing or in life, stayed with me.

How do you edit your lives? Cleaning? Drastic hair cuts? Defriending on Facebook? (Which I LOVE on a whole other therapeutic level that can be saved for another day.) Think of Hemingway next time you sit down to write. What absolutely must be there, and what is just, simply put, shit?

The Secret Lives of Titles

~ SarahLaPolla ~ 1 Comment
Remember when it seemed every single title (fiction and nonfiction) in the bookstore claimed to be “The Secret Life of” something? Or when we were forced to hear about daughters of Gravediggers and Memory Keepers and Heretics and Calligraphers and so on and so on?

Working in publishing, I see a lot of similarities among titles just here at the office. Preparing our rights guides for the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, I noticed the children’s and YA titles usually told some kind of story involving The [noun or verb] Of The [noun]. Who decides on these trends anyway? What makes one type of title catch on over another?

In late summer/early fall of this year, it seemed magicians were staking their claim as the next cool title accessory with the release of The Magicians by Lev Grossman and The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. I admit that the word “magician” does make a book sound more appealing, but I’m still hoping this trend doesn’t catch on. Trends in general put me off because I am the type of person who will say something like, “If I see one more novel claiming to The [scandalous career or quirky subject matter] Diaries, I’ll scream!” Hence, I will not buy the book based on something resembling a principle.

What would you like to see become a trend? Or, what title do you think will start a trend, whether we like it or not? For 2010, I’m making the prediction that Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue will begin a Going [blank] craze for a while. It’s already spawned the parody, Going Rouge, and if 2008-2009 has taught us anything, it’s these two things: 1) Publishing houses will cling to anything in order to survive, and 2) Sarah Palin cannot be stopped.

Black Monday

~ SarahLaPolla ~ 3 Comments
Now that Thanksgiving is over, it is time to think about Christmas shopping. I know some blogs (like Moonrat’s) have already started their gift-giving guides, but I just couldn’t bring myself to think about such things pre-Thanksgiving. Obviously, the best gifts you can give someone are not those from fancy department stores or even those you make yourself out of the kindness of your hearts. They are BOOKS!

In case you are at a loss of what to buy, here are some suggestions by genre that I hope will help/influence:

Nonfiction: Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman. Klosterman is best known for his spot-on commentary on pop culture. Last year he ventured into fiction territory with Downtown Owl, but now he’s back with a new collection of essays that makes me very excited. If you like debating whether Barack Obama is the best spokesperson this country has ever seen, or how ABBA and AC/DC really aren’t all that different, then this book might make you excited too.

Literary Fiction: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. In true Hornby style, this book has musical obsessions, mid-life crises, and emotionally stunted characters. I admit I wasn’t a huge fan of Hornby’s past couple novels, but this book is definitely back in the same league as High Fidelity and About a Boy. I also want to give a shout out to Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead, which has been on my “I know I will love this!” list all year.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy: Wicked Game and Bad to the Bone by Jeri Smith-Ready (for your vampire needs, and for your VAMPIRE DEEJAY needs!) OK, I know. We’re all vamped out. But these vamps are not sparkly, nor do these books feature a mousy damsel just waiting for a purpose when suddenly a brooding, sexy vampire walks into her life. Smith-Ready’s heroine is a con artist who runs a radio station and her deejays are vampires who only play music that was popular when they “turned.” Let’s face it: vampires are, and always will be, awesome. And these books are a welcome change in the my-boyfriend-is-a-high-school-[insert something supernatural here] trend that won’t go away.

Mystery/Thriller: In the Woods and The Likeness by Tana French, and The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries (yes, more vampires) by Charlaine Harris. French and Harris write mysteries in that their books open with crimes and end with culprits. But what happens in between isn’t just a set of clues routinely found by some down-and-out cop or young, handsome detective. They create wonderfully complex and interesting characters, strong female leads, and plots that keep you hooked.

Children/YA: Lips Touch Three Times by Laini Taylor. This book for young teens features three fairy tale novellas, each dealing with the simultaneous excitement, pain, beauty, and consequences of a first kiss. For those less fantasy-inclined, Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur is heartbreakingly real. In it, eleven-year-old, Aubrey, copes with the deaths of her father and sister, and the absence of her mentally unstable mother, in this novel written in a series of letters.

Cookbook: The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones. This book was written for people like me who, when left to my own devices, think nothing of microwaving some popcorn or licking a spoon clean of peanut butter and calling it dinner. I love the title and its subtle empowerment for single people. It could also be a great gift for couples. What’s sexier than competing over who prepares their single serving first? Loser does the dishes.

Comics: OK, I’ll admit I’m not that into comics or graphic novels (I only support those written by or associated with Joss Whedon), so I may not be the best person to take gift suggestions from. However, one webcomic that I read daily is Dinosaur Comics, which to me is what greatness looks like. Lo and behold, its creator, Ryan North, put out a tangible “best of” collection, appropriately titled, The Best of Dinosaur Comics: 2003-2005 A.D. Amazon’s author bio simply reads: “Ryan North is awesome, all the time.” So true.

If I’ve missed any genres, it means I probably don’t read them enough to have real suggestions, and therefore don’t want to mislead you. However, Publisher’s Weekly has a pretty comprehensive list if you’re so inclined.

So Happy Shopping everyone! And remember – buying books says you love, but buying books from your local independent bookstore says you care.

See Any Good Books Lately?

~ SarahLaPolla ~ 2 Comments
So, apparently this movie Precious is out right now. It’s based on the book Push by Sapphire, and since it has gotten the Queen Oprah seal of approval, it was spared the fate of being labeled “the best indie movie you haven’t seen.” I know I should want to see this movie and the million people I know who have seen it/will see it will tell me, “Oh you must! It was so moving and powerful,” but basically I’d rather read the book.

Which brings me to my topic of the day: movie tie-in covers. I don’t know about you, but movie tie-in covers actually put me off from buying the books. I’ve been denying myself Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels because it seems the original paperback cover of Dead After Dark only exists in True Blood form now. It’s been over a year that I’ve been searching for the REAL cover, so I think I might just have to swallow my pride on this one. (Especially since there’s that boxed set out now that STILL, unfortunately, includes the True Blood cover…. arrrrgh!)

But I digress.

Other books-to-films coming soon to theaters near you are New Moon and The Road, both books of which have tie-ins (obviously). I can’t imagine a disheveled Viggo intriguing more people to buy The Road, but, as much as I hate to admit it, I can see the value in putting the public faces of Edward and Bella on the covers of the Twilight series. The non-tie-in covers seemed to do just fine without them, but now that Robert Pattinson has reached Beatlemania status among tweens with disposable income, why not sell a few more copies of books they already own? Still, I don’t remember seeing Daniel Radcliffe’s face on a certain YA fantasy series, and I think those books did OK.

What are your thoughts on tie-ins? Does anyone even care about them as much as I do? To me, they seem impure, or as another example of how people don’t actually read anymore and that they need Hollywood in order to get noticed.

I will admit to this though: I found a very old copy of Rosemary’s Baby at a flea market a couple years ago and it had the little “Now a Major Motion Picture” stamp on it and I thought it was cool. Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe I can stand Hollywood’s infiltration as long as no actors grace my books with their presence… and about forty years have passed.

Unlikeable Heroes… and Villains

~ SarahLaPolla ~ 2 Comments
This week I watched Glee (obviously) and was thoroughly entertained as always until something awful happened. Without getting into specifics in case it is still saved on your Tivo, I will just say this: THEY ARE TRYING TO HUMANIZE SUE SYLVESTER!
If you don’t watch Glee (sigh…), then all you need to know is this: Who was once the perfect villain is now developing a “softer” side which makes me want to scream. Whether in literature or on screen, sometimes people are just mean. Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter  novels, recently touched on this in Entertainment Weekly, saying “My Dexter pretends to be nice. [TV’s] Dexter is trying to become nice.” And it’s true – TV Dexter now has a family and a conscience – and for what? So people can relate to the serial killer main character? 

Now, I’m all for creating dimensions in your characters. In fact, they need complexity in order for a reader to remain interested in their story. However, if I may turn the conversation back to where it started, with television, let me say that some of the better shows on television right now (other than Glee) are Arrested Development (in our hearts!), The Office, House, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And they all feature unlikeable characters. We root for Michael Scott despite his insensitivity and cluelessness. We secretly want to be members of the Bluth family. We are Dr. House. 

This trend was perfected, and therefore started, by Seinfeld, whose characters were so selfish and trapped in their inabilities to show common decency, that they were imprisoned for it. And yet. We LOVE them. They are not characters who we want to date in real life, or even have as our close friends, but we love them.  

OK, so why do we love them? For me, it’s because in real life, in adulthood anyway, there is rarely “character development” in the day-to-day. If a tragedy befalls you or your circumstances change in ways that you have to keep up with, then it is natural to alter a piece of your personality (if not your whole being). That means that if you write a story in which your character must change by the end, then I’m sorry to tell you that that is what you must do. 

This is actually something the boyfriend and I have discussed recently. One of our favorite jokes at the moment is mocking the new Sandra Bullock movie, The Blind Side. Specifically, this dialogue:

Woman: “You’re changing that boy’s life.”
Sandra: “No, he’s changing mine.” 

Not all changes need to be that dramatic (and preferably not so poorly written). In life, changes take time and are not usually so declarative. Be subtle in your writing, but remember that if your story is more character-driven than it is plot-driven, chances are there won’t be any huge internal changes by the end anyway. In the way that a Jane Austen wedding scene makes one question the couple’s future happiness, characters like Nick Hornby’s ever-adolescent men “change” by reluctantly accepting society’s expectations.  

While keeping in mind that not everyone needs a Carrie Bradshaw “and suddenly I realized” moment, don’t be afraid to create some unlikeable characters either. Sometimes they can be the most interesting characters to read, whether protagonists or, for example, the walking embodiment of evil. Don’t feel obligated to “TV Dexter-ize them” unless you think it will better serve your narrative. Or, as the BF put it while we were discussing this, “If a character is a rapist, do we necessarily have to know why he’s a rapist?” 

An example of this that comes to mind is Push, the bully, in the Stanley Elkin short story, A Poetics for Bullies. He is by no means a rapist or murderer, but who’s to say he won’t grow up to be one? Push narrates, opening with: “I’m Push, the bully, and what I hate are new kids and sissies, dumb kids and smart, rich kids, poor kids, kids who wear glasses, talk funny, show off, patrol boys and wise guys, and kids who pass pencils and water the plants – and cripples, especially cripples.” 

Elkin gives us glimpses as to why and how Push is the way he is, but he never implies “and this is why you should feel bad for him.” He just is what he is, and not to ruin it, but he doesn’t exactly become a better person in the end. And yet. We care. And even if he doesn’t want us to, we end up loving him.

What Do You Know?

~ SarahLaPolla ~ 5 Comments
Aside from “show, don’t tell,” the most overused writing maxim is arguably, “write what you know.” As a former student of creative nonfiction, I took this advice quite literally. In fiction, however, those words can get a little tricky. I know fiction writers who worry that “writing what they know” might be considered cheating in some way. As if using characters, situations, or settings from one’s own life makes the act of “creating” somehow illegitimate. To them I say, pshaw! Some of the greatest novels of all-time came from authors who were just writing about aspects of their own lives. Salinger’s Upper West Side, Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age, Didion’s California… and on and on and on. 

I got to thinking about all of this while reading Twelve by wunderkind Nick McDonell. Since it is a scientific impossibility to mention this book without mentioning that he was seventeen when he wrote it, I must say that this then-child took the oldest rule in the book and turned it into brilliance (granted, I’m only halfway through). Of course, it helps that “what he knows” is the privileged, unsupervised world of rich Upper East Side teens, just as it must have helped Salinger, Fitzgerald, and basically everyone else to use this maxim to their advantages that their worlds were far more glamorous, interesting, or devastating than our own.

Most authors aren’t so transparent in their abilities to capture their own experiences. The most otherworldly of science fiction novels are often rooted in truth, or at least truth as the author sees it. Fears stemming from real-life events such as wars abroad or government influence at home are usually the influence of good sci-fi, and fantasies can be as simple as an exaggeration of the real world (the main difference being that in these parallel universes one or more of the characters possess magical abilities).

In “realistic” fiction, authors have the option of using their own lives overtly. But I think, more often, what they know is revealed more subtly. It can be the basis for a setting (Denis Lehane’s Boston) or at the heart of an experience (Raymond Carver’s gin-soaked problems of middle-class America) or be purely emotional (dare I mention A Million Little Pieces without sparking a fiction vs. memoir debate?).

What are the ways you use your own experiences in your fiction? Or, for nonfiction writers, do you ever find yourselves editing your lives in order to keep certain “things you know” for yourselves? That used to be a concern of mine when I wrote personal essays. Now that I’m entertaining the idea of fiction, I’m thinking about it even more because fiction is… for lack of a better word… frightening. I don’t know how anyone does it without incorporating at least a portion of his or her own life.

Further, what are some of your favorite author-inspired novels (as I’ll call them, I guess)?