Know What Makes You Cry.

When I was a kid, I thought actors were actors because they alone knew how to cry on cue. When you get older, you find things that will make you cry, even when you think about them years later. I have two, one negative, on positive.

1985. I'm doing the tour of Europe. Old-school, I know, but we're doing it on the cheap. Bus tours. A few days in Germany. Two days in Munich. A day at Dachau. It's not out in the woods. Not where nobody could see. It's in the suburbs ten miles outside the city.

Concrete and stone pads showing where the bunkhouses were. I wished they hadn't torn down so much, but I suppose they had to. It looked clean, which is what is wrong.

In the museum. A picture. A mother in a winter coat over a dress, leading her two little girls by the hand. All in their good clothes, hair done, black and white. I stepped closer. The caption? "On the Way to the Gas Chamber."

So that was one time.

2002. May, I think. Walking home from the corner market to my apartment, carrying the New York Times. On the cover, Masai warriors standing on a grass plain, a dozen cows grazing. A son of this village, a student now at Stanford, had carried home the news of the attack on the World Trade Center. And his village elders had voted to give a dozen or so of their most valued cows to the people of the United States, to help them in their time of need. The U.S. Ambassador had arrived to accept the donation.

So that was another.

The thing about this kind of spontaneous emotion is precisely that it is not expected. Or expected, as you would at Dachau— if never in the street outside your apartment— but sudden. Not from memory, from history, but from a picture. Of a mother and two little girls. Or yes, in the street, of warriors and cows.

That's what I want you to know, you writers, you humans. That sometimes, the things that hit us the hardest are the things we did not expect.

The Big Man.

I just heard a story on NPR about Hawaii's own Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. The wonderful Iz. The tragically dead Iz, who passed away— as had every member of his immediate family— from the consequences of obesity. Iz is famed for his singing and ukulele playing, and is increasingly famous world-wide for his version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

The NPR story was about the recording of that song. Iz showed up at three in the morning at a recording studio that he'd booked over the phone. Nobody there knew him, and were startled by this enormous man who showed up with a battered ukulele. Iz then proceeded to change the lyrics and the music, and the recording that resulted— the first take— ended up sitting on a shelf in the studio for five years. When it finally came off the shelf, it became a huge hit.

The point is that nobody involved in the creation of that song knew what would happen to it. Nobody knew it would be rocketing up the charts in Germany fifteen years later. Nobody knew it would long survive Iz.

The thought here is that we need to take chances. Create without expectation. And to know that anything might happen. Nobody knows what song or what book might succeed, either artistically or commercially. Try. And be good to yourself along the way. We lost Iz at thirty-eight. The whole world will miss him.

Poor Oprah.

She's picked her latest book club selections— two from Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. She must be pretty burned from some of her previous selections. Heck, she helped make one writer famous when he rejected the invitation. Then there were the memoirs-that-weren't. So now she is playing it safe with a writer who is Really Most Sincerely Dead.

I'm guessing she had her staff check to make sure.

There is a Syndrome!

Everything must have a syndrome, yes? If only for insurance purposes. Here I am listening to Oliver Sacks, today's guest on Talk of the Nation Science Friday on NPR, and he mentioned an aphasic syndrome that leaves a patient unable to read but still able to write. Eureka! An explanation for all those would-be novelists who never seem to get around to reading books. It is called Dejerine syndrome or "alexia without agraphia." Apparently we are seeing a wave of undiagnosed infarcts of the posterior cerebral artery. Shocking!

Test yourself. Go read a book. For your health.

If You Keep Picking, It'll Scar.

I've queried an agent, a new agent, who has been receiving many, many queries. A community has built up on some writing boards of other authors who have also queried this agent. And several of the writers have had the same question for their cohort:

"I've made some changes since I queried Agent X. Should I write to her about the new version?"

They queried too soon. Here's when to query: when you have spent so much time rewriting and editing that you cannot find one more significant (or insignificant) change to make. If you are still reading through your manuscript and still finding problems or things you can improve, it's too soon.

I understand the urge to get your work in to an agent who is willing to consider all comers, but resist. Wait until your new agent's notes will make you crazy because OMG, you know that book is PERFECT!!!

NaNoWriMo.

I remember prattling on about this annual scrum last year. Not sure if I offered the same advice I'm about to share, but here goes:

What writers really need is a NaNoREADMo.

How many of the would-be novelists toiling away out there are going to also read a book in the month of November? Probably only a few, since they're spending every available moment desperately trying to shovel words into their laptops. But what about next month?

We need a month, a long month with not much else going on, in which writers vow to spend as many hours reading as they did in their NaNoWriMo efforts.

How about March? Half the country is defrosting, football season is over, and Easter candy is available in fifty-gallon drums. All the conditions you need for reading pleasure.

Buy a stack of books. Or go to the library. Read. Fill your head with some new words. With luck they'll still be there waiting when November rolls around.

March, 2011. NaNoReadMo FTW.

Education?

There's a thread over on the AbsoluteWrite boards about the appropriate education for a writer. Do you need a college degree? A graduate degree? There are arguments to be made on every side, and I myself have a semi-useless Master's degree in screenwriting. Okay, I'll say that what I learned at UCLA about story structure is pretty darn valuable, but the chances I'll ever be a screenwriter are vanishingly small. I just wish someone had told me that before I enrolled. And if you want to write science fiction, I'd suggest you get a solid science education somehow.

Anyway, here is the answer I gave to the original question:

"You need to be intelligent, experienced, talented, dedicated, and well-read. Of these, well-read is the rarest, dedicated is the most common, intelligent is the most important, talented is the least important, and experienced is the most interesting.

"How you get there is up to you."