I'm overwhelmed with the extended coverage of this event on every blog I read and I don't feel the need to pile on. I'm wary of flogging it to bits. So instead of giving you the blow-by-blow and my take on every blow, I'm going to give you my big takeaways from each panel and the little nuances that always fascinate me.
As I mentioned on Sunday, the First Fiction panel was my favorite of the festival, which is a nice surprise because it is the one panel I had most looked forward to before the big day. That so rarely happens - that your high expectations are met - so I was soul-pleased, rather than simply pleased-pleased. The panel included: Marisha Pessl, Joshua Ferris, Alice Greenway & Antoine Wilson. Veronique de Turenne moderated on-the-fly in place of Susan Salter Reynolds, who was sick and could not attend.
There were funny moments, where the writers riffed off each other - mostly Ferris & Wilson - about turning off cell phones and one's status as a faster learner than the other. While this banter elicited many laughs from the audience, and me, it highlighted Alice Greenway's discomfort...slightly older, considerably shy. Her novel, White Ghost Girls, won the LA Times Book Prize the night before. She was shy and uncomfortable with public spectacle in a way that seemed odd during the panel. Yet, after two days of panels and discussions and readings in which it seems I've lost my own way - my own ability to parse meaning out of so much aren't-we-all-so-clever noise - her reluctance now seems, in the light of my own confusion, perfectly understandable. To be expected, even. I imagine her now, at home wherever home is, writing alone in her writerly space and feeling at ease again, able to let the thoughts flow freely, able to get characters down on the page, without fear of being questioned or podcasted or blogged or recorded for purchase later.
Veronique asked the panelists to describe the first thing they ever wrote:
Alice: Letters.
Joshua: An "Alfred Hitchcock rip-off called Crabs" - was very excited to use the word damn in a story. The idea of swearing in print a reward unto itself. When he asked his mother if it was okay to swear in print, she said "If it's in service of the story." Which made me immediately want to Google his mother. A writer also?
Marisha: Stories. About horses. Because I was into horses then.
Antoine: A non-fiction work that was comprised of all the words that could be made by turning a calculator upside down. He then wrote a chapbook called Potions Are Unpredictable.
Veronique asked them to pinpoint when they knew they could write:
Antoine: Was pre-med at UCLA & in the middle of his college pre-med experience, he "scrapped it all" to become a writer. Three books he read during this period of time influenced this decision: Thomas Pynchon's V., Paul Auster's New York Trilogy and Another Country by James Baldwin.
Marisha: She wrote stories privately when she was young and slowly gained the courage to share them & read them aloud with classmates. (This was delivered as a line she had spoken before. Oddly rehearsed.)
Joshua: He spoke of the odd relationship he had with calling himself a writer when he had nothing in print to back it up. He spoke of the bind unpublished writers are often in - where writing means everything, yet for it to really mean anything, you need to declare it to others. When you are starting out and cutting your teeth, this is so important -- yet it is also when you have no published work to show for your writerly intentions and so aren't taken seriously, which can be damaging to the young writer.
This answer set-off a great discussion on this topic among the panelists and it is the reason I enjoyed the panel so much. Ferris was so passionate about this conundrum and it is one I've struggled with for a very long time. To say "I'm a writer" when all published content in the world would suggest otherwise is a very difficult thing. So you hide it. Or are embarrassed by it. But it is this thing that means the most to you -- which is an odd thing to have to hide. Further, it's terribly painful to have this thing that means so much be ridiculed by the outside world at the very moment you've built your confidence up enough to declare it at all. No one has ever clearly articulated this -- certainly not in a public arena -- and I wanted to run up and hug him. Marisha and Antoine seconded this feeling and also spoke of their difficulties with knowing you are a writer vs. declaring yourself a writer to others. Marisha talked of working at Price Waterhouse Coopers in NYC and not wanting anyone to know what she was doing with her free time...especially in New York...because "everyone is writing a book in New York, it doesn't mean anything to say that." So she kept quiet.
A nuance that struck me as important, but easily lost in the bigger discussion: when you aren't published, when you are not known in the printed world as a "writer", is precisely when you need to be clear, with yourself, about being a writer. When you need to be able to say that's what matters to you. Otherwise, you may lose your way. The step of saying it out loud is a huge one - yet is so often followed by "what have you published?" and the newly confident writer loses all confidence and scurries back into their writing cave. Or gives up entirely. Ferris mentioned that he's even had to watch his own reactions now that he is a published writer -- there is a tendency even for him, to say to newly declared writers "back it up."
Alice: She knew at the age of "11 or 12" that she was a writer. A book that cemented that for her: Susanna Moore's The Whiteness of Bones.
Veronique asked them how much of their own lives makes it into a first book:
Antoine: His "diabolical and hair-brained" idea for the book came, in part, from a murder in his family when he was young. His half brother was murdered. But he was careful to point out that he was not close to his half brother, rarely saw him. So he got to see what the death of family member would do to others, without personally feeling the loss himself. He mentioned, though, that most of it was invention.
Marisha: "I like to think of the writer as enchanter rather than a thinly veiled version of the writer." When writing her book, she tried very hard to maintain that enchantress role, keeping herself out of the book. She even would say in interviews that it was purely fiction, a creation, nothing reflecting her. Now that it's been out for awhile however, she feels she's been lying. "It is me." She went on to discuss the subtle ways in which a writer is always evident in their work - from the rhythm of speech to the larger themes that are not apparent upon writing but are so evident upon re-reading.
Joshua: "Well, my book is basically the novelization of The Office." He pointed out that while he did work at an ad agency from which he gained many of the insights in the book, "I am not a group", this being a reference to his book written in the second person plural "we."
Alice: Her goals were entirely opposite of the other panelists -- instead of trying so hard to create something outside herself & not based on direct biographical experience, she wanted to write an autobiographical account of her time living in Hong Kong as girl. That was the premise which then became something "completely fictional."
Veronique asked them about their process and any tricks they use to get them unstuck when they're stuck:
Antoine: "Surfing." "Not the Internet." Real surfing. Somehow "stuff gets processed" when he's out on the water and he can return to the work again to sort things out.
Marisha: "I steam milk. We have this Italian espresso maker..."
Joshua: "I drink beer basically." Veronique asked how many until he's unstuck. He said as many as it takes, oftentimes he doesn't get back to the writing until the next day.
Alice: "If I don't start writing right away after the kids leave for school, I won't do it." There are too many distractions otherwise. If she doesn't get to it straight away, she ends up not writing at all. She also mentioned that when she is writing, she'll make a list of every errand, bill, chore that pops up so that she can continue writing without feeling the pull of taking care of those other things instead.
Veronique asked them about their mentors:
Antoine: "I used to think I was too good for writing classes until I got my ass kicked in a few." Took writing courses at UCLA Extension before attending Iowa. He wrote a fan letter to T.C. Boyle and other authors asking what a starting-out writer should do. T.C. Boyle wrote back, gave some direction, and eventually blurbed his new book!
Marisha: All the great past writers are her mentors. They are great to go back to time and again to "see how it's really done."
Joshua: Got his MFA at UC Irvine. It taught him how to read like a writer, which he felt was more important than writing. He mentioned he's a strong advocate of MFA programs, but that he learned the bulk of his MFA lessons in the first six weeks of the program and then had to slog through the rest. Felt he would not have learned as much on his own so quickly...that it may have taken much longer to come to some big realizations. Jeffrey Wolf was a good mentor.
Alice: Took some UCLA Extension courses and found Les Plexo to be an excellent mentor.
Veronique asked about the publishing process for their first novel...how did it happen:
Antoine: Long, painful process. Showed it to people when he thought it was good enough. It wasn't. He started with a "Jack Black manuscript" and pared it down to a "Lance Armstrong manuscript", then sent queries to agents.
Marisha: It took her three and a half years to write the book while working a day job. She went through five complete drafts -- "I always say it was three, but it was five" -- before feeling like it was ready to send out. She had been alone with it for so long, that she needed to be done with it. To get away from it or she thought she'd go nuts. She checked out Everyone Who's Anyone , found a list of literary agents, and decided she'd work her way down the list of all 5,000 agents to find someone to represent her. Queried 10 agents, 5 asked to see the manuscript, 3 wanted to represent her.
Joshua: Had a story published and received a phone call from an agent saying she'd like to read more. He polished off his novel draft (re-written from a years-ago draft in 14 feverish weeks) and sent it to her. Within 24 hours of submitting the manuscript to publishers, he had a deal.
Alice: Tells the story of her daughter befriending another child who was throwing up (I believe, my notes are scattered here). The mother of this child happened to be a literary agent. Alice eventually asked her to take a look at the manuscript, expecting the agent to recommend next steps, tell her who she should query, etc. Instead, the agent took it on and sent it out to publishers. Without any modifications.
Veronique asked them about how it feels to be on book tours, doing marketing for a first novel:
Antoine: He spoke of "me sitting alone and writing" and then the "reader sitting alone and reading" as his ideal way of looking at the writing then reading process. The touring (he's only at the beginning of his book tour) is hard because it takes him out of his writing routine, which is typically 3 hours a day. Mentioned that he's currently "deep in the woods without a compass" of his second novel. Joshua Ferris chimed in at this point with: "When we were speaking privately, you said 'shit.'" Abundant laughter from the crowd.
Marisha: The touring takes her out of her writing. Since she spent 3 plus years working on her first book, she was afraid that the touring would wreck her ability to work and she had a very hard time with the touring initially. Now that she's started her second book, she is more easygoing about it, it doesn't stress her out as much. She likes to meet the readers and see how important books are to them. It has made her want to write a second book that lives up to reader expectations. "Readers take their reading very seriously."
Joshua: Finds touring both fun and stressful. He met William Boyd (v. excited to meet him) at a book event and Boyd seemed very tired, weary. Ferris asked him how he was doing and Boyd perked up, saying he was great. That he was lucky to be doing what he was doing. That there were readers eager to seek him out and read him. This, from a man who has written so many books. Still feels lucky. Ferris went on to say, though, that it can get weird when it becomes about the writer instead of the work. At this juncture, he gestured to Marisha and said something like "you've gotten a lot of unfair press in this regard..." Marisha didn't touch it, which I had kind of hoped she would. But I get it. She has had a lot of press about the who of her instead of the substance of her work (which also bears scrutiny...more on this later.)
Alice: "I don't really like it." Quite evident.
I see now that, despite my earlier assurances, I have given every detail of this panel. Oh well. I'll spare you the Q&A, which was lively, and will put it in a separate post. I've used their first names here I see, glancing back up. So un-journalist of me...not using their last names. So unprofessional and so proudly displaying what can only be, in Andrew Keen's words, my "digital narcissistic thoughts." More on his bellyaching later. Much later.
