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If you have an account on Facebook, I hope you'll become a fan of The Poacher's Son and invite your friends to do so as well. Yes, I understand that you probably haven't read the book yet (unless you happen to be one of the select few who received an advance reader copy) since it won't actually be available until May 11. But I promise you, the novel is really, really good.
Really.
As a journalist, I adhere to the old adage that you can't have great writing without great reporting (even if you're only reporting the blunt truths of your personal experience like Jane Austen or Emily Dickinson did). That's why I would recommend this article from the Columbia Journalism Review to anyone interested in writing fiction.
Before (and after) he became an acclaimed novelist, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a reporter in Colombia and Europe, and he learned many lessons in the newsroom that he later applied to his short stories and novels. I was particularly struck by this observation:
The majority of journalists let the tape recorder do the work, and they think that they are respecting the wishes of the person they are interviewing by retranscribing word for word what he says. They do not realize that this work method is really quite disrespectful: whenever someone speaks, he hesitates, goes off on tangents, does not finish his sentences, and he makes trifling remarks. For me the tape recorder must only be used to record material that the journalist will decide to use later on, that he will interpret and will choose to present in his own way. In this sense it is possible to interview someone in the same way that you write a novel or poetry.
I see this as an admonition to both journalists and novelists — the truth, very often, lies in those tangents and trifling marks.
My wife Kristen Lindquist is engaged in her own blogging project, and unlike me she has the discipline to post a new entry each day. Her blog, Book of Days, is premised on the concept of finding some recent experience, exceptional or mundane, and using it as raw material to write a haiku. But Kristen doesn't just write a poem, she explains what prompted her to do so in elegant, pellucid prose that frequently knocks me on my keister.
Here she's describing a snowshoe trek she made up Beech Hill in the neighboring town of Rockport:
Elsewhere, a pattern of snow on a branch looked just like a turkey track. Stands of staghorn sumac held up their velvety red clusters in offering to the sky. We found an acorn that had been tucked into the hollow of a small tree by some well-intentioned squirrel long ago. Along the trail we could hear wind rushing in the spruce grove at the summit, the distant Owls Head foghorn, the patter of snowflakes falling on branches and dead leaves. But we couldn't see the ocean from any point, only scarves of snow sweeping over the trees and soft contours of the near landscape. A place very familiar to us both was revealing a new face.
At one point on the way down, the sun tried to break through the clouds. But even the sun was too weak to overcome the storm. The solar disk hung there like a strange planetary apparition for a moment and then was gone. Such light casts no shadows. Dark, dead stalks against white fields offered a sense of contrast, but no softness, or color—except in the strange, wind-carved crevices in a some drifts that shone with the eerie blue light of glacial ice.
And here is the haiku she was inspired to write about that day:
Snow drops a curtain,
transforms the path through trees, fields.
In beauty we walk.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Kristen is a better nature writer than I am. Such light casts no shadows. Man, I wish I'd written that.
I visited my first American Library Association conference in Boston to sign Advanced Reader Copies (in other words I went to the ALA to autograph ARCs).
The only glitch I encountered was that I was scheduled to sign in the Macmillan booth while Al Gore was giving a speech in the ballroom upstairs. (Thanks a lot, Mr. Vice President.) Nevertheless I managed to sign 50 ARCs in 50 hyperactive minutes.
I didn't get to see much of the event beyond touring the exhibition hall. But I spoke to several librarians about how their profession continues to change as the computer eclipses the printed book and more and more of our conversations about reading take place online. There's no question we're living through bibliotechnical times. You do wonder what the future of libraries will be as e-books proliferate.
The librarians I met were, without exception, interested and interesting people. If there's hope for libraries to remain important community centers and repositories of learning, I trust these bright minds to find the way. We authors are counting on them.
