A Costume of the Mind

"Mouth to ear is much more fantasy than eye to eye. A costume of the mind."

~ Nancy Weber, novelist

While researching antique phones of the late nineteenth century for my current novel, The Night Caller, I became fascinated with the subtle points of the medium--the social lines between the dusty facts about Blake transmitters and Leclanche wet batteries.

In New York City, c. 1882, a subscriber would lease a telephone for $150 per year. Western Electric, then the predominant provider, would make a judgment call as to the worthiness of the customer. "Telephones are only rented out to persons of good breeding and refinement," a newspaper advertisement once read. Offering the commodity at such an astronomical price not only spoke to supply and demand, but ensured a device few could understand and many believed the work of the devil would remain respectable.

The invention of the telephone also had a substantial impact on societal interaction. The tea cup bell's jingle, or absence, became a third party to the conversation, filled with uncertainties. Although the phone's initial purpose fell strictly to business and matters of vial importance, its ability to tether people to the age-old questions of the lovesick--Will it ring? Won't it? Why doesn't it?--quickly became apparent. Few can deny the inherent compulsiveness of a ringing phone.

Stripped of body language cues and other non-audio charms, courting men and women entered a mysterious realm of heightened awareness. Emotions came in degrees of vocal tones, often through a filter of telegraph clicks, scraps of other's conversations and croaking frogs. Fantasies took root while listeners diverted the energy normally given to interpreting subtle facial cues into creative images of dress or absent preoccupations of the free hand or body. The perfect blend of intimacy and invisibility.

The freedom to be in touch more often, at a greater and safer distance, also required a measure of trust. Trust that the intended listener wouldn't find other diversions, a wandering gaze completely outside the conversation or a boredom so strong she'd put the receiver down and walk away for awhile, any number of social misfires oblivious to the caller.

I embraced the challenge of a love story told, in part, through this medium. Similar to the way antiquated love letters let the imagination run rampant, subtracting all but one element to growing intimacy heightens that element exponentially. Toss in fear from the 1880s perspective and the disconnectedness from the present day and it makes for a memorable dance.

A fantastic, fun resource to learn more about the evolution of society as it relates to the telephone is Once Upon A Telephone: An Illustrated Social History by Ellen Stern and Emily Givathmey.

Time Travel for Father's Day

Love you, Dad

Wow, what a great first line discussion. Feel free to continue to add your favorites or comment on the ones already there. Congratulations to Kim Lenox for commenting and receiving a $5 Amazon gift certificate. Be sure to visit her website to learn more about her Shadow Guard series and the October release of Night Falls Darkly. I'll be tapping into her connection with the cover art gods after this one.

Today, I'm scattered. Too many things simmering for any one thought to take hold. So, here's where I am now:

I taped the business card my tarot reader gave me at the Psychic Fair to my monitor. She told me to get my ducks in a row this summer--September would be crazy exciting. Since it's been there, it's taken on an energy of it's own. My mind isn't fully convinced of The Secret's power or the effectiveness of vision boards, but my productivity has spiked this week. Symbolic of my "ducks," it's become a magnet for other must-visualize aspects of my writing. Maybe it's only cognitive reenforcement and the universe has better things to do than to zero in on the card's hypnotizing symbol.

Some of you know how fascinated I am by handwriting analysis. TUL pens have created a general way to analyze your own complete with a sarcastic scientist to pass judgment. Startlingly accurate, some of it. Try it out if you have a few minutes.

Since we're deep into summer re-runs, podcasts aren't as painful an entertainment choice. Thanks to Margie Lawson's suggestion, I've discovered Writing Excuses, a joint venture of Brandon Sanderson, Fantasy novelist, Howard Tayler, Cartoonist, and Dan Wells, Horror Novelist. So far, episode 3: Killing Your Darlings, is a favorite.

Lastly, a blog friend of mine, Todd Wheeler, is offering up a summer reading challenge that completely overshadows my little slice of participation this week. For each book you read he'll donate $1 to a library. Help him reach his goal of $100 this summer.

I leave you with one of my favorite photos from the book Libraries by German photographer Candida Hofer. This book is like porn for nerds. HANDELINGENKAMER TWEEDE KAMER DER STATEN-GENERAAL DEN HAAG

First Line Comb-Overs and an Amazon Gift Card!

I'm working my way through Donald Maas's Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. Different in many ways from his non-fiction book; similar in his straight-shooting style. Chapter 25 is all about first and last lines in novels. Weather and description rarely sing. Scene setting isn't always strong. Mood can be disastrous. Action doesn't immediately engage the reader unless there's something puzzling about it. According to Maas, great first lines have the "intrigue factor."


What's the intrigue factor? A mystery. Something that makes us inwardly shout, "What the hell did that mean?":

124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

or awakens our subconscious into charging ahead to find out what the second sentence will bring. Our eyes race forward to see if any answers lie in those words. If not, what about the third line? At this point, the reader is hooked.

Great first lines lead readers into the world of the novel:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.
—James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)

They may raise a unwritten question begging to be answered:

In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.
—David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)

or present vivid physical situations in an arresting way:

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
—Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

The best lines often ignite a character's point of view as J.D. Salinger did in Catcher in the Rye:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Maas's exercise for writers is to find the intrigue factor in their opening line. What question does it pose? What puzzle does it present? If writers are unable to answer these questions, first try tightening it. Make it shorter. If that doesn't work, Maas advises, "audition your second line for the lead spot. Or combine elements from your first paragraph into one short, super-charged sentence." The exercise does not end until the writer has created a different first line.

American Book Review has compiled a list of the 100 Best First Lines From Novels. Read through them to find inspiration, then audition your own. If you're a reader, pick up the one your bookmark is parked in. Ask yourself, "Do I want to hear the next line?" Ask us. Post it here.

I'll start:

Even his own breath reeked of psychosis.

Analysis: short, back loaded with "psychosis"--the hero's internal conflict. "Even" is a nasty bugger--almost NEVER useful in literature, but it does speak to how overwhelmed he is. Can't get much deeper point of view than smelling your own breath. But does it match up to The Donald? (Maas, not Trump) Let's see. Does it pose a question? No. Raise a puzzle? Not really. Similar to this one (as it starts with mood or mental state--a Donald no-no):

He plunked two ice cubes into the glass and submerged them with Johnny Walker Black.
-Howard Swindle, Jitter Joint

However, Mass goes on to explain this lines gets an acceptable reading because the protagonist is an alcoholic and the plot concerns a murder in a rehab clinic. Vital information straight out of the gate.

So here's the second line, auditioned:

Stale from exhaustion and hours-old Jamaican Blue Mountain coating his teeth, Evan Braun’s urgent, but intimate exchange with the oak door spiked an inferno against the sweat sheen above his lips.

This second sentence has been a bitch. Some are lost in the denseness. Some think he's humping the door, which is clarified in the third sentence:

The peephole’s convex glass bubbled the front lawn into a telescopic blend of muted autumn colors.

But does it all raise a puzzle? Maybe. What does he see through the peephole that is making him sweat? Are these three lines enough to hook a reader? Jury's still out.

Your turn. Post the first line of your work-in-progress or the opening sentence of a book you're reading. Open it up to the same scrutiny a reader will bring to the page. Audition your second or third lines. Give each other feedback. Have fun. How often to we get to play "The Donald"?

Everyone who offers up first lines for analysis or gives feedback will be entered into a drawing for a $5 Amazon gift certificate. The more you post, the more chances you have to win. Let's break my statcounter record and help each other.

Kumbaya, people.

An Invitation

Granted, this one presents with more theatrics than Mullet Man from Craig's List. And no, this is NOT my September opportunity from the tarot deck. I SO wish could take a road trip to California to find out what specimens show up for this one. Here's the meeting spot. I can only imagine the interviews conducted under this "main sign."

"Pulse?"
"Check."
"Meds?"
"Good, we'll all need them."
"Rorschach test?"
"Yeah, I see Einstein's hair, too. You're in."

Dear Writer:

Although it must be a thousand years ago that I sat in a class in story writing at Stanford, I remember the experience very clearly. I was bright-eyes and bushy-brained and prepared to absorb the secret formula for writing good short stories, even great short stories. This illusion was canceled very quickly. The only way to write a good short story, we were told, is to write a good short story. Only after it is written can it be taken apart to see how it was done. It is a most difficult form, as we were told, and the proof lies in how very few great short stories there are in the world.

The basic rule given us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from the writer to the reader, and the power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, there were no rules. A story could be about anything and could use any means and any technique at all - so long as it was effective. As a subhead to this rule, it seemed to be necessary for the writer to know what he wanted to say, in short, what he was talking about. As an exercise we were to try reducing the meat of our story to one sentence, for only then could we know it well enough to enlarge it to three- or six- or ten-thousand words.

So there went the magic formula, the secret ingredient. With no more than that, we were set on the desolate, lonely path of the writer. And we must have turned in some abysmally bad stories. If I had expected to be discovered in a full bloom of excellence, the grades given my efforts quickly disillusioned me. And if I felt unjustly criticized, the judgments of editors for many years afterward upheld my teacher's side, not mine. The low grades on my college stories were echoed in the rejection slips, in the hundreds of rejection slips.

It seemed unfair. I could read a fine story and could even know how it was done. Why could I not then do it myself? Well, I couldn't, and maybe it's because no two stories dare be alike. Over the years I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.

It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but, after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

I remember one last piece of advice given me. It was during the exuberance of the rich and frantic '20s, and I was going out into that world to try and to be a writer.

I was told, "It's going to take a long time, and you haven't got any money. Maybe it would be better if you could go to Europe."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because in Europe poverty is a misfortune, but in America it is shameful. I wonder whether or not you can stand the shame of being poor."

It wasn't too long afterward that the depression came. Then everyone was poor and it was no shame anymore. And so I will never know whether or not I could have stood it. But surely my teacher was right about one thing. It took a long time - a very long time. And it is still going on, and it has never got easier.

She told me it wouldn't.

John Steinbeck, 1963

One year after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature

Time Travel Aboard the Mothership

Ten things I learned at yesterday's psychic fair:

1)Beware the Sandra Dee woman. She may look like the room mother for your kids, but the orb-eyed creature on her name badge should have been your first clue. She'll expound on her Earthly extraterrestrial mission and send you on your way with an I-Dream-of-Jeannie facial squeeze and a knowing stare.

2)Even the bathrooms have a mystical aura: a potent combination of flowing incense garb, residual heat from the aura photographer's bulb and the wrong end of the fru juice made from brown seaweed.

3)Scarborough Festival shirts are to psychic fairs what Skynard shirts are to monster truck pulls.

4)The only ring of Solomon I see at the base of my index finger is the inner goo of a Pop Tart from breakfast and it has nothing to do with wisdom.

5)The whites of your tarot card reader's eyes do not indicate a seizure. Her fifteen bracelets on each wrist might be interfering with a nearby electromagnetic field.

6)Even having psychic or higher-awareness skills does not redeem a man from being innocuous to details. It's nature. Just saying.

7)The compulsions I feel in this lifetime toward all things Reese's, purple and Oliver Hudson could be past-life shrapnel that didn't fully filter through the veil when I entered this life. This no doubt means I was a 1800s peanut farmer's wife, royalty, or a bartender with an astonishingly witty vernacular.

8)Something as disturbing as a short lifeline or impending health strife on the palm is still amusing in the presence of cherished friends.

9)Don't judge a psychic by a last name, but don't give him your ten bucks either. I'm sure Mr. Crooke would gift you with life's greatest secrets, but it wouldn't go down nearly as satisfying as the sangria at Pappasito's afterward.

10)The X-files Hallmark card belted out the perfect ending credits for the day. I want to believe. That the September thing will come true. That Sandra Dee will never teleport me back to her mothership.