I Like Byron, I Give Him a 42...

This past summer I fumbled along as a pastry cook to my chef's irritation. In an attempt to improve my production, he asked me what the greatest American invention was. A rhetorical question, I allowed him to answer: The assembly line. "Set up your assembly line and let it work for you," he told me. I did it because if I didn't I was gone. With time I learned that it took the thinking out of cooking and whenever you can take thinking out of anything you gain in speed.

My last novel, Any Color You Want, took at least nine drafts and a few years. But, that's the way novel writing goes, right? It takes drafts, it takes years. It's not cooking. It's not something that comes out of the oven the same day ready. Right?

Or is it? In Michael Eldridge's screenwriting course he made us fill out character questionnaires. These questionnaires forced us to think long and hard about each character, major or minor, to the point where these characters themselves could have entire screenplays written about them.

In preparation for The Boston Squeeze, a book of baseball short stories that I started writing last summer, I dug up the seven questions Eldridge asked us to consider for each character. I then tweaked what he gave us and built my own assembly line.

But perhaps "assembly line" is not the appropriate phrase. It has a physical, orderly connotation to it. Let's call it mapping. I'll map out each character, story and location three times each because I find my first attempt typically errs on the side of cliché. It takes another two to break through that wall of stereotypes to find the individual.

Once these are ready I won't have to think about each character, story or location. I can just write.

For some, the idea of a literary assembly line is apostasy. Writing should flow, they argue. It should come from inspiration. I do not believe there is one approach to writing. I have yet to attend a reading where an attendee didn't ask the author about their "process" during the question and answer session. I have also yet to attend a reading where an author gave a good answer. By good, I mean a detailed, useful answer. Like Mr Keating in Dead Poets Society, I have no desire to Moneyball writing. But I believe that there are detailed processes available for writers that, if followed, will not only separate them from amateurs, but streamline the writing process.

Another benefit of this system, hopefully, is more consistency. A good writer will retain command over his characters from start to finish; a poor writer loses track of his characters' characteristics. This leads to the characters either saying or doing things you'd wouldn't expect them to or you get the feeling that they aren't characters at all, but rather personifications of whatever clever thought or idea the author just had and can't help but share the story (and character) be damned. Oh have I done that before.

I won't know the results of this experiment till the Squeeze is through, but I'm hopeful.

Progress Update: Sent in Hooey Savvy to the copyright office. Yeehaw.

Detailing Hooey Savvy

f I find a book, a movie or a song to be great it's usually because it's memorable. This hit me the other night as I watched Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. What's memorable in this film?

1) The father-son interplay between Bill Murray and Owen Wilson

2) The red hats

3) The Zissou Adidas sneakers

4) Seu Jorge covering David Bowie songs in Portuguese

5) The Jaguar Shark

6) "Staralfur," the Sigur Ros song that introduces the Jaguar Shark

7) The Bond Company Stooge

8) The written correspondence between Murray and Wilson

9) Wilson's accent (never mind the moustache)

10) The unpaid interns

And the list goes on. Why? Because Anderson gave his characters detail and those details made them memorable. The importance of being memorable struck me because I know, in its present form, Hooey Savvy is not memorable. It has its moments, but it needs to be more consistent. Making it memorable is the goal of the fourth round of edits which starts tomorrow and should conclude next week.

The Clown Expert

n search of a good read last night, I picked up John Julius Norwich's A History of Venice (1981). Before reading the introduction's first paragraph where Norwich takes us back to his inaugural visit to Venice in 1946, I read Norwich's bio.

As the author of a 638 page tome on the history of Venice (through 1797), I figured he had a doctorate in history from a British university. On the contrary, he had only an undergraduate degree in French and Russian before joining the British Foreign Service. Well, then, I assumed, he must have been posted in Venice. Actually, he served in Yugoslavia, Lebanon, and Geneva.

This made me wonder: So what makes this clown an expert qualified to write about Venetian history?

Having read the tome before and discussed it with another historian who noted Norwich's lack of primary language sources, it is still evident through his writing and his bibliography that Lord Norwich did not just jot down his memories and feelings. Is it the definitive history of Venice? Probably not. Is it a good primer? I believe so. Does he know more than I do about the subject? Yes he does.

And this is something I enjoy about writing: The prep work necessary to write about subjects one may not be an expert in at the beginning. This is particularly true of my current project - the Hooey Savvy kids book on financial education. I have no formal training in economics, but in learning about it I also learn how to understand it and how to teach others about it in simple terms. If I had degrees in economics I might have a hard time simplifying what I've been studying and thinking about for the past decade for an audience of kids because I will have become fluent in the language. As someone new to the subject and particularly the language, I have to simplify it, to translate it for myself first before I can even speak it with anyone else.

Do I believe that what I've written is expert? Not presently. And that's why I'm reaching out to economists, among others, to proofread the work to make sure it is accurate and evenhanded. I believe that it is possible to get the economics right without having to sacrifice the kid parts of the book as so many others have.

In other news, it's the first day of Spring Training!

Progress Update: Finished writing lyrics to the 80 or so songs needed for the book. Have moved on to the third draft which I will finish in the next ten days.

28 stories, 60+ songs and the competition

ooey Savvy, my kids book on financial education, continues to develop at a good clip. I have written first drafts of the book's 28 stories and this week I'm writing 60+ songs to go with them. Once those are finished, I'll give them all a long third look before seeking outside counsel from teachers, parents and kids.

This past fall I read 10-15 books by the competition. From those I took away six flaws that I address in my book. They are:

1) A paucity of kid or animal protagonists for kids to identify with;

2) No songs or rhymes to help understand or remember difficult concepts;

3) Graphic design heavy on AP stock photos from the trading floor, not illustrations that complement the written word;

4) A number of books that try to explain the entire financial system in a single go while reading like a textbook (ie, books difficult to read in one sitting);

5) Few books that bridge the divide between financial street slang which we all know and more formal synonyms which many of us do not; and

6) An introduction to the gray and black markets.

While I await feedback from my editing group, I plan to re-read those books and many more and to review them on this site. In light of the obvious conflict of interest, I will attempt to set up a grading system with which to judge these books so we're talking oranges to oranges and to be as objective as possible.

That should cover the next two weeks or so.