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We recently returned from our trip to Canada and Michigan, where my family spent some very precious time together. It was perfect and I cherished every moment-can't you tell? Every time I look at my sons, a non-stop video plays in my head filled with moments from the time they were born to the present and I am SO proud of the young men they have become. Their wit and charm, love and compassion makes me all teary-eyed and leaves me smiling from ear to ear.

I am the shrimp now, they all tower over me and here I am wearing 2 1/2 inch heels!

Happy Mother's Day to Me- I am so blessed! Happy Mother's Day to you too!

Dear Mother,

I'm doing well. I've been promoted to first CabinImp, and the new responsibility is fun. Don't worry, the treasure hoard is very safe. Yesterday, we netted a young sea serpent and persuaded it to give us rides in exchange for some lemons.

A guide to telling apart two books with the same title.

Guy de Maupassant on Afloat:

This diary has no interesting story to tell, no tales of derringdo.Last spring I went on a short cruise along the Mediterranean coast and every day, in my spare time, I jotted down things I’d seen and thought. In fact what I saw was water, sun, cloud, and rocks and that’s all. I had only simple thoughts, the kind you have when you’re being carried drowsily along on the cradle of the waves.

Jennifer McCartney in coversation about Afloat:

Q: Does it aggravate you when people ask you how someone as young as you are can create a novel with so much emotional depth and complexity, or do you look upon it as a compliment?

A: I think some people are confused not so much by the emotional depth, but with the concept of how someone so young can have anything to write about in terms of life experience, and that’s fine. I’ve been lucky enough to have lived in six American states, in Scotland and England, and held over twenty-five jobs. That emotional depth comes from having a lot of different experiences, but that’s not a necessity for writing, really. A lot of Canadian and U.K. writers publish in their twenties . . . I’d like to think Afloat stands alone as a novel, regardless of my age. Most readers won’t know it was written when I was twenty-four.

I love ghost stories. And I mean ghost stories, rather than horror stories. If truth be known I am the world’s most squeamish person. I really do hate the sight of blood, which is the only reason why I haven’t seen Sweeney Todd yet. Anyway, enough of my foibles. I have been looking for an excuse for posting an excerpt from our book Mother Leakey and the Bishop: A Ghost Story, by Peter Marshall, for ages, but so far haven’t been able to come up with one. So, today I am posting it for no other reason than I really loved this book of literary detective work, and I hope you will too. Enjoy!

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In honor of New York City's first real snowstorm of the season.

"A blizzard of thickly falling snowflakes, more opaque than white, held nightfall back over the airfield and gave Daria her first deep thrill. Snow, I salute you, dear whirling snow, you that soften the cold and fill the darkest of nights with intimations of lightness, blotting the pathways, making space huge, and setting the wolves to howling! You deliver me from the sands, no more desert, yesterday is simply the past. You deliver me from the rot of inaction."

Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge

Read a note from the editor about Victor Serge

"Poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling. It should be precise about the thing and reticent about the feeling, for as soon as the mind responds and connects with the thing the feeling shows in the words; this is how poetry enters deeply into us. If the poet presents directly feelings which overwhelm him, and keeps nothing back to linger as an aftertaste, he stirs us superficially; he cannot start the hands and feet involuntarily waving and tapping in time, far less strengthen morality and refine culture, set heaven and earth in motion and call up the spirits!”

—Wei T’ai (eleventh century), epigraph to Poems of the Late T’ang, edited and with an introduction by A.C. Graham, on sale today, January 22, 2008

I've got about seven minutes to blog something of world-wide and lifelong importance.

....I'm drawing a blank.

I just joined a writing group - our first meeting is in January and I'm already worried about it.  I think writing groups are amazingly wonderful things and suggest that writers join them. I actually prescribe to the same rules that Orson Scott Card set out for us: Stay in your writers group for a year, then find new people... people will get used to your writing and will stop being those fresh eyes that you need to make your work better.

Of course, he said it in a much more polished manner -- but hell, he's been a writer forever and I can still barely wrap my head around the fact that a book has to be entirely in one tense.

Erm, for those of you who don't know... I wrote a book. I sent it to my editor (Stephen Barbara at the Donald Maass sold it for me), and the first thing she said was: do you know that some of this is written in past tense and some in present? Do you know which you'd like the book in?  Which is amusing, because about seven years ago I was in an online writers group and that's the same comment they'd always make. I think I might be tense-disabled because no matter how much I understand it when it is explained to me, I can't seem to pick out the difference in a manuscript.  I will be sending flowers to my copyeditor.

I've never heard of MY clients having this sort of problem, so obviously it's a "slow" thing and not a "common" thing (boo hiss on me)... and it's really embarrassing. I'm used to people saying things like, "Nadia, YOU are a literary agent?"  When I get really nervous I start speaking really, really fast and jumble up all my words. I like to think this is a pathological thing rather than a developmental thing... but if there is a way (or a dysfunction) that would allow me to blame this on my mother... please let me know.  And usually I can tell when a person is like, "Really -- you work in books?"  Yes, but I can edit emails. As long as you don't expect them all in the same tense, that is.

Anyway, I joined my first writers group since...forever... and it's all publishing people, which will either be amazingly awesome or scary. Right now it's two agents and two editors. Which feels a little bit high stress to me, but I'll let you know how that goes.

The reason for a writers group is because... well, because most agents/editors are unable to do the same job they were able to do thirty years ago (if they ever did it), which is to develop their author, work really closely with them and... well, be their first and best reader. So, now we suggest writers groups (hope you find a good one!) that will suffice instead. That kind of sucks.

I'm not sure if it's because... No, I know why it is: ok, here's my theory: there are more and more agents out there. There are more and more books being published that seem to sustain a certain amount of agent-industry growth... but agents aren't being trained/educated outside their own companies (it's still largely an apprentice industry, I actually just wrote NYU about this very thing... Hm... ), but the book market is polarizing between big books and small books. New agents fight over these books and these clients... and, in theory, make 15% of the already (probably) pitiful earnings their non-bestseller clients make. So, to compensate, we sign more and more clients. because 15% of one pitiful advance is really pitiful but one hundred times pitiful is less pitiful... it's... moreiful. (Just kidding, I wouldn't actually make up a word like that... Plus, I'd just tense it wrong).

So here, again, are our options: EGO & MONEY control everything... Are we good enough to pick less projects and work harder on those few projects than we could possible work on 50 clients or so? Yeah, I know a ton of agents who are this good. Ok, a dozen.

Can we afford it? Can our companies afford to pay us to make one HUGE deal a year (which can be fraught with "Oops, that fell through!")?  Do we have the money and the ego to sustain us through the, "Oh shit...what if this doesn't work out?"

See what I mean? Yikes.

I think I need to think on this some more. I'm sorry I called your advance pitiful. I wasn't really talking about YOUR advance. I was talking about advances in general (charming smile).

Last night I went out for drinks with my favorite agent (well my favorite agent that doesn't work at Firebrand, wink wink, nudge nudge) and the coolest editor I know and another really cool magazine editor. But it was supposed to be a social thing.

Which didn't happen. We, of course, spent 85% of our time talking about work. and 15% of our time (haha pitiful time) talking about things that are too inappropriate to write here.  But we got into a fun heated discussion about Option Clauses. And the amount of risk that agents/authors are taking vs the amount of risk that editors/publishing houses are taking.... and how limited an option clause can/should be.

We eventually got tired and slipped into the inappropriate conversation which was easier to handle and less charged. But I feel like my opinion of option clauses has changed slightly... but that's another post entirely as it'll be a long rant.

Ok, It's late, I need to work and respond to emails that seem to be breeding in my inbox like bunnies (really, where do they all come from?)

Look Mom, I posted twice in one week!
(My Mom doesn't actually read this blog. If she did, she'd be emailing me every day saying things like, "Did you use the word 'Shit'? Is that the kind of daughter you want people to know I raised?" or "Why do you make Mom jokes all the time? I don't get it?"... and that would ruin some of the humor, don't you think?)

(Just a side note... My mom got all serious over thanksgiving and asked if I had written her into my story...she asked if the mother in my book was really horrible or really nice, and she looked really, really nervous about it. I told her not to worry. My character's mother was dead...She was not pleased.)

(Hah.)

“Good art never bores one. By that I mean that it is the business of the artist to prevent ennui; in the literary art, to relieve, refresh, revive the mind of the reader—at reasonable intervals—with some form of ecstasy, by some splendor of thought, some presentation of sheer beauty, some lightning turn of phrase—laughter is no mean ecstasy. Good art begins with an escape from dullness.”

Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance, published by New Directions
Thanks are due to Thomas McGonigle for pointing us (obliquely) to this essay.

???Good art never bores one. By that I mean that it is the business of the artist to prevent ennui; in the literary art, to relieve, refresh, revive the mind of the reader???at reasonable intervals???with some form of ecstasy, by some splendor of thought, some presentation of sheer beauty, some lightning turn of phrase???laughter is no mean ecstasy. Good art begins with an escape from dullness.???

Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance, published by New Directions
Thanks are due to Thomas McGonigle for pointing us (obliquely) to this essay.

“A man can’t serve two masters.”
“You mean business and literature?”
“No; I mean theory and instinct. The gray tree and the green. You’ve got to choose which fruit you’ll try; and you don’t know till afterward which of the two has the dead core.”
“How can anybody be sure that only one of them has?”
“I’m sure,” said Merrick sharply.

Edith Wharton, from “The Long Run” in The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

"When she was alone, it was always the past that occupied her. She couldn’t get away from it, and she didn’t any longer care to. During her long years of exile she had made her terms with it, had learned to accept the fact that it would always be there, huge, obstructing, encumbering, bigger and more dominant than anything the future could ever conjure up. And, at any rate, she was sure of it, she understood it, knew how to reckon with it; she had learned to screen and manage and protect it as one does an afflicted member of one’s family.—“Autres Temps...”

Edith Wharton, from "Autres Temps..." in The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

“I had no commitments except, in a vague way, to remain uncommitted. I had no wife, no job, no ambition, no bank account, no use for large sums of money, no appetite for prestige, and no temptation to acquire any of them. I had, at that time, I think, already unconsciously assessed them all as so many pairs of weighted diver’s shoes—of no use to anyone who wanted to remain on the surface of life. If they had been wings I would have assumed them gladly; but now...I had once again the salutary sense of the abyss that yawns for everyone who has embraced the literary profession—everyone from Molière to George Gissing: literature, like every other form of gainful employment, was just another trap.”
—John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse

"The souls of short thick-set men, with chubby features, mutton-chop whiskers, and pale eyes peering between folds of fat like almond kernels in half-split shells???souls thus encased do not reveal themselves to the casual scrutiny as delicate emotional instruments. But in spite of the disguise in which he walked Mr. Grew vibrated exquisitely in response to every imaginative appeal."

Edith Wharton, from "His Father's Son" in The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

The souls of short thick-set men, with chubby features, mutton-chop whiskers, and pale eyes peering between folds of fat like almond kernels in half-split shells—souls thus encased do not reveal themselves to the casual scrutiny as delicate emotional instruments. But in spite of the disguise in which he walked Mr. Grew vibrated exquisitely in response to every imaginative appeal.

Edith Wharton, from "His Father's Son" in The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

"The Bishop had the immense dialectical advantage of invalidating any conclusions at variance with his own by always assuming that his premises were among the necessary laws of thought. This method, combined with the habit of ignoring any classifications but his own, created an element in which the first condition of existence was the immediate adoption of his standpoint."

Edith Wharton, from "Expiation" in The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

"The Bishop had the immense dialectical advantage of invalidating any conclusions at variance with his own by always assuming that his premises were among the necessary laws of thought. This method, combined with the habit of ignoring any classifications but his own, created an element in which the first condition of existence was the immediate adoption of his standpoint."

Edith Wharton, from "Expiation" in The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

Surely not every animal and plant could be sad and wretched; this was a dream or pretense of theirs, or some temporary disfigurement they were suffering from. Otherwise one would have to assume that true enthusiasm lies only in the human heart—and such an assumption is worthless and empty, since the blackthorn is imbued with a scent, and the eyes of a tortoise with a thoughtfulness, that signify the great inner worth of their existence, a dignity complete in itself and needing no supplement from the soul of a human being. They might require a helping hand . . . but they had no need whatsoever for superiority, condescension or pity.

"Soul" from Soul and Other Stories by Andrey Platonov. Available December 2007.

Found at MotherSister Brooklyn. The post also informs us that Biz Markie coined this phrase in his song "Just a Friend." But no one compares to Jamey Presley's frequent delivery of it.

In honor of the 115th annual convention of the American Psychological Association, which begins today in San Francisco:

We are all perpetually smoothing and rearranging reality to conform to our wishes; we lie to others and to ourselves constantly, unthinkingly. When, occasionally—and not by dint of our own efforts but under the pressure of external events—we are forced to see things as they are, we are like naked people in a storm. There are a few among us—psychoanalysts have encountered them—who are blessed or cursed with a strange imperviousness to the unpleasantness of self-knowledge. Their lies to themselves are so convincing that they are never unmasked. These are the people who never feel in the wrong, who are always able to justify their conduct, and who in the end—human nature being what it is—cause their fallible fellow-men to turn away from them.

—Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives

"Then I . . . headed . . . to pick up my new passport. Filling in the form the day before—born in London, 11 February 1915; height 5'9 3/4"; eyes, brown; hair, brown; distinguishing marks, none—I had left the top space empty, not knowing what to write. Profession? 'Well, what shall we say?' The Passport Official had asked, pointing to the void. My mind remained empty. A few years earlier, an American hobo song called Hallelujah I’m a bum! had been on many lips; during the last days it had been haunting me like a private leitmotif and without realizing I must have been humming the tune as I pondered, for the Official laughed 'You can’t very well put that,' he said. After a moment he added: 'I should just write "student" '; so I did."
—Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts, p. 21

Listen to a 1926 recording of "Hallelujah I'm a Bum!"

Download it at the Internet Archive [this also includes a brief history of the song, including its Wobbly origins—PLF had it a bit wrong when he identified the song as a hobo anthem, it was most likely written by the activist Harry McClintock, who went by the great nickname "Haywire Mac."]

Dan Zanes has also included the track on his "Parades And Panoramas: 25 Songs Collected By Carl Sandburg For The American Songbag." You can listen to a sample and view the lyrics at Dan Zanes's site.