Literary ambition is wanting to be known for knowing.

These encounters can be some of the most satisfying kind a writer can have with a reader–especially when you can bond over a mutually beloved book, thereby not having to talk about your own work anymore.

R: Writer, I loved that nod to Lolita at the end, when your guy ends up going the wrong way down the highway.
W: I put that there especially for you! [Unsolicited bear hug.]

But more often than not, shit comes out of left field.

R: Your narrator really reminded me of the guy from Travels with My Aunt.
W: [Blank stare.]
R: The Graham Greene novel.
W: Ah, um, I’ve read The Power and the Glory.
R: [Blank stare.]
W: I’ll have to check it out.

Later, the writer checks it out, can’t figure out what the fark the reader was talking about. Which is just a reminder that readers have intensely intimate experiences with books that authors have nothing to do with. We provide a diving board and a pool. What they do in the air is up to them, and sometimes baffling to us.

Finally, there comes what I like to call the Lando, when a reader makes a strong connection between the author’s work and some other work, works, or genre that the author has not read.

R: Writer, I love the James L Cain set-up!
W: [Blank stare.]

I call it the Lando because when it happens to me, I feel like people are wanting to talk to me about Lando Calrissian and the only movie I’ve ever seen is Spaceballs.

Second time.

R: What made you decide to write a neo-noir?
W: [Blank stare.]

Third time.

R: There’s that scene in Chandler’s…
W: Um, I’ve never read any Chandler, or Cain, or any noir or crime books, really.
R: [Blank stare.]

Which is what happens when your influences were influenced by that stuff, and you’re living unknowingly under second-hand influence. Or third-hand. Which is not a problem, but rather a testament to the richness of our culture. Which doesn’t mean you’re not going to feel awkward as hell.

SO, if you see me in person, like at a reading for my next novel in 2112, please, please talk to me about books I haven’t read. The blank stare is inevitable, so let’s call it a tribute–a moment of silence in honor of the gap between what I’ve created on the page and what you’ve created in your mind.

Then let’s toast to that necessary gap without which we would have no literature.

Here’s a list of ten things you might consider but probably won’t:

10. When you pick up the pen, put down the pipe.

9. If something you’ve written is blowing your mind, it’s probably a cliche. You just don’t know it yet.

8. Your most interesting material is all around you, not in some far-off land.

7. Seek out instruction, then decide what to reject.

6. Read “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and get over yourself.

5. Meet the reader halfway. Not more, not less.

4. Nobody cares how clever you can be.

3. When someone you respect tells you that your work reminds them of something you have not read, go read it!

2. Find other writers to share work with. Be supportive but critical.

1. You are confident now only because you don’t know how hard it will be.

Sincerely,

38 year-old Antoine Wilson

The worst possible time to do this (and therefore the time it’s likeliest to happen) is when you’re working on a first draft. The double-worst time is when those first draft pages are the middle pages of a novel, when your energy is waning and doubts are high.

Why should I bother? you ask, holding your sketchy, hesitant, wordy page up to a favorite passage from Nabokov, or Melville, or James, or Alice Munro–whoever floats your boat the highest.

Why is their greatness not flowing from my pen? you ask.

It might be, it might not be. I can’t help you there.

But I can tell you, hypothetical writer, that in addition to being masochistic, self-defeating, and just plain ill-advised, your behavior is also based on a fundamental error.

You’re comparing in the wrong direction.

Look down, not up.

There was nothing on that page until you put it there.

It did not exist until you made it.

If you must compare, here’s my advice: go with the Zero, not the Hero.

My stock response is “ass in chair.”

Phillip Roth said that the real reason writers want to know other writers’ methods is to find out whether they’re as crazy as they themselves are.

I’ve always been curious for more pragmatic reasons.

Here’s a piece of my method.

Every day, when I start work, I open a document I keep on my desktop, called TOMORROW.doc, along with whatever doc I’m going to be working on. I keep TOMORROW.doc open the whole time. Basically, I use it as a scratch pad, a clipboard for cut sections (many of which make their way to the folder CUTS, never to return), and a way to keep track of where I am in the main document. Pretty standard stuff.

But here’s the thing that makes it work for me: When I reach the end of the writing day, I write myself a note at the top of TOMORROW.doc, a note I know will be the first thing I read at the start of the next writing day. Part of the note–it’s been there a long time–is always the message: “Be patient. You have time.” But the rest of it changes from day to day.

Does it feel silly to write to my future self?

Yes, it does.

Even sillier than answering my own questions.

And yet TOMORROW.doc does everything I need it to do. It’s not enough to have the ass in the chair. With the ass in the chair I can tweet, FB, Scrabble, email, all that junk. It’s ass in chair, eyes in document, head in work. And for me, nothing gets the creative juices flowing like orders from headquarters.

Shit, nobody else is going to tell me what to do. That’s why I picked this job.

Peace out.

From DG Myers’ blog post Ten Rules for Criticism.

I have trouble remembering, too, what my favorite books were. Maybe it’s a symptom of moving around so much as a kid and changing languages to boot (from French with some English to English only). The Pooh books were my first chapter books, and later on I made my way through Encyclopedia Brown, Hardy Boys, all of Judy Blume, a bunch of Xanth books, and various Secret Seven adventures. But I don’t remember what the picture books were. Probably some Seuss. Richard Scarry. Don’t know if I ever got Goodnight Moon.

(When I moved into adult books, it was the Bourne Identity and the sci-fi oeuvre of Michael Crichton, especially Terminal Man and Andromeda Strain. The school library was stocked with this stuff. I have gone back and looked at these books, and frankly I find them hard to read. I can’t get past the bad prose. I can’t suspend my disbelief while also navigating those sentences. Occupational hazard.)

But now I’ve got a kid, a kid who’s really into his books, and so I’m visiting (and revisiting) all kinds of kids’ titles. We’re in the picture book stage still, though he does go in for a chapter of Pooh now and then, and it’s astonishing to me what’s out there.

Frank Conroy used to say that in good work, you could feel the soul of the writer behind the sentences. The same goes for kids’ books. Some are sublime and magical, many more are creaky and didactic. The brilliance of Seuss is his command of the language and his judicious use of the absurd. The weakness of so many other books is the insistence on delivering a message, however well-intentioned, to a captive and underestimated audience.

I’ve got more to say on the subject, but I’ll save it for a future post. I’ve got a novel to write. Meanwhile, have you got any favorite children’s books? Any that miss the mark but remain inexplicably popular? Can anyone explain to me what’s going on in “My World”?

Which is awesome.