Ed Lynskey's Blog: Cracked Rearview Mirror - Posts Tagged "novels"

There's been some discussion on how fast a reader can plow through a novel (nonfiction is a different animal). Some readers are slower than others. Wasn't there someone named Evelyn Wood who advertised to give speed reading classes? I saw her ads on TV at some time. Anyway, my sense is you read as quickly and efficiently as you can while still enjoying the written tale. If a writer's prose style clicks with you, you can pick up the pace a little more. For instance, I read a lot of private eye/noir books, so I know the genre's quirks, slang, and "voice". Not always, but I don't get hung up on the prose, and I can get on with, and enjoy, the story at hand. Of course, good, old skimming and skipping also works if you reach a boring stretch.

Everybody has a preferred place to hang out when they're reading. This assumes you've got the leisure to read between all shopping, work, and just keeping together body and soul. As a kid, I liked to read books in a shady copse of pin oaks. Reading on a bus or auto that's in motion leaves me sick. On the other hand, reading in bed at night seems to claim a lot of my book time. I don't have an e-book reader (yet), so I can't comment if owning one makes it easier to read during the various slow times throughout the day. I see readers in the bistros and coffeehouses, but the outside noise distracts me.

Some people do better late at night while others prefer to work in the morning. When I worked a 4 p.m to 12-midnight shift, I liked the hours just fine. That was then, some years ago. Now I'm more of a morning person, liking to hit the keyboard before the sun comes up. If I can get 500 new words before dawn cracks, I call it a good day. For me, reading is better suited to do at night. It looks like next year will see many pre-dawns with the new projects in the pipeline. Night owl or riding the dawn patrol, which is better for you? Different strokes.

My wife and I recently went to see the Coen brothers remake of TRUE GRIT starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, and Matt Damon. We'd seen the Duke in the first version the night before. I ended up enjoying both movies for different reasons. The Duke was in fine form playing Rooster Cogburn, funny and over-the-top. The Coen brothers played their movie grittier and stayed more faithful to the Charles Portis novel which I read this summer. Hailee made for a more convincing Mattie. From a larger perspective, does this re-make of TRUE GRIT signal a new run of Western films turned out by Tinsel Town? I can't imagine why not if TRUE GRIT/2011 does well at the box office and picks up some weighty awards. At any rate, I look forward to watching any others in the pipeline.

Some folks like the summer heat, while others are more drawn to the winter cold. I usually have to side with the summer folks. For some reason, I seem to do my better writing on the balmiest days when I should be outdoors, not at my desk working. You'd figure the beautiful weather might be a big distraction, but that isn't the case for me. In the winter, having to shovel snow off the sidewalk and driveway is more diverting than having to mow the lawn. I try to save doing my novel revisions for the wintertime, and do my first novel drafts during the summer. Sometimes it helps me to set the novel during the season in which I'm actually writing the story. I just finished reading Daniel Woodrell's WINTER'S BONE which is, obviously, set in the wintertime. The scenes are so bleak, vivid, and cold, I wondered if he wrote WB while sitting beside a red-hot woodstove.

Lake Charles, my new Appalachian thriller due out in June, took a long time to write. I dug out my old records stored on a floppy (remember using that Stone Age gizmo?). "Lake Charles" was first published as a short story for an ezine called Dead Mule in April 2001. Whoa! I thought. That can't be. A whole decade? But there it was on the spreadsheet. So, I emailed the editor at Dead Mule and told her the amazing news. I've got it hashed out if I live for another thirty years, that's three more books. Seriously though, I'd better pick up the pace a little. Or maybe Lake Charles needed the ten years to ferment, or whatever it is novels have to do. Should I rush my novels into print before they're ready? Or is waiting a better thing for me sometimes? I'm mulling over that, and more, as the publication date for Lake Charles grows nearer.

Disclaimer: Your mileage will probably vary.

A drumbeat, please. In no particular order, and away we go...

#1. A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews

#2. Leopards Kill by James DeFelice

#3. Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill

#4. Blonde Lightning by Terrill Lankford

#5. The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler

#6. I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane

#7. The Song Is You by Megan Abbott

#8. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

#9. The Night Caller by John Lutz

#10. The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy

Ed Lynskey
@edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles

Every writer has to find their own way in creating their particular product: in my case, novels. The most laborious step in the the process is revising the work-in-progress (WIP), no question.

I've read or heard of those writers who get it right the first time they keystroke in the words. That must count as a huge blessing, and I can only watch in awe of those authors.

But my drummer goes by a different beat. I'm forced to march to it. So, I do extensive rounds of edits. Over and over. Later in the going, I'll print out the WIP. It always looks different on the paper page. Why I don't know. It just does.

Lots of verbiage ends up on the cutting room floor. But then a lot also gets added. I don't use any special technique when revising. No scented candles are lit or soothing jazz plays there in the background.

It's just straight ahead grunt work. Hours and hours of it. The best thing I can take away from doing it at all is a sense of accomplishment. And I do.

I could write a chapter on how I come to name my characters. The process has evolved since I began writing fiction 11 years ago. For starters, I've shifted away from using exotic or hard-to-pronounce names. I don't want my readers (or me) tripping over the name each time it rears up in the text.

Which characters should get names? If the character speaks more than a few lines, then he or she is assigned a name. Lots of lists of names get drawn up. I also like to put together two different names (first and last) to form a new one. "Jesse Taliaferro" is an example. A reader later emailed me, wondering why I'd used her late grandfather's name. No. Jesse came from the bluegrass band Jim & Jesse, while Taliaferro was a Civil War general.

Research is the key sometimes. When I wrote The Blue Cheer, I researched online the most common surnames found in West Virginia, its setting. A teenager once emailed me, saying I'd gotten the same name as his. LOL. I only wished that I was younger than he was. Fat chance.

Sometimes when I recognize a real person's name being used in fiction, it throws me out of the story. I can picture their face instead of the fictional character's face. On the other hand, my small town cozy mystery Quiet Anchorage uses my two late aunts' names. So, go figure that one.

I wrote my Master Thesis a thousand years ago on Harry Crews. He's a Southern writer noted for, among other things, the heavy violence in his novels (See A Feast of Snakes. Early on, the idea of violence took root in my literary worldview.

Lately I've read more than a few books where the body count keeps rising, but there's no fallout or consequences. Murder and death are still a big deal in civilized society, so this jaded indifference seems strange to me. The violence escalates to the point of turning cartoonish like the Road Runner doing in poor Wile E. Coyote.

I've been taken to task by reviewers of my early books for the rising body count. I didn't believe they were any bloodier than in, say, Macbeth, Sopranos, or Joshua. The upshot is I've grown more attuned to the aftermath of violence, especially beyond the visceral immediate reactions people feel.

In my new Appalachian noir, Lake Charles, I include a Joshua figure in Jeremiah Wheeler who takes my young protagonist Brendan Fishback under his wing. As the dark events roll out, he grows more disenchanted and distrustful of Jeremiah.

Perhaps that's become my own situation. Earlier this year, I published my first small town cozy mystery, Quiet Anchorage. I just wanted to write something that didn't choke and retch on its own gore.

Ed Lynskey
twitter: @edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles