Guests
by Jonathan Segura, August 8, 2008 9:40 AM
So, here we are: Goodbye day. I've had a great time, and I hope you have, too. Know who isn't having a great time? Abby, in this photo of her getting her first bath. I love her. Blogging is hard. I've written all of this week's posts in one document, and the majority of this now-23-page document resides about ten line spaces below, a rogue's gallery of false starts and edited-out bits. That's all the stuff that didn't make it, and there is a lot of it. Here's a sampling: - What I love about vacations is getting off a plane somewhere and listening to everyone speaking a different language. It's hilarious, and yet they, the other-language-speakers, don't know it.
- Basically, what I'm trying to say here is I've got fuck-all for material right now. This is why blogging is difficult. I mean, it's easy if you're one of those jerkoffs who thinks it's worthwhile to give the world access to your woes about the batch of your World Famous Nuttilicious Fudgtastic Nilly Willy Chilly Bo-Billy™ brownies you just baked that did not turn out just right or how great it is to be 14 days sober!!! or, I don't know, your belligerent account of a date gone wrong with some fucktard who pinched you on match.com and who is not, in fact, In Finance, but instead a greasy summer intern at Citi.
- I spent some time trying to figure out what to piss and moan about today. (Really ? thought went into this.) Contenders included those heinous reader reviews that make you stupider for having read them and are especially toxic now that the permanent record is electronic and painfully accessible to all; the scourge of babies that clog my elevator with their straight-outta-the-NSA-secret-weapons-lab strollers; the unfairly high price of Hudson bourbon; being shelved in the mystery section; and, oh, I don't know, maybe the cultural rape of Tibet or a similarly timely safe bet. And then I thought: Why not not be a whiny jagoff?
- I'm in a bit of a bad mood, so I thought I'd lob dull darts at a large, soft target: the internet. Here's the problem with the internet: blah blah blah.
- Why is it that the rudimentarily sketched penis is sometimes really, really funny? It works on some subway platform advertisements, but not most. It always looks about the same and is generally deployed in the service of ejaculating or pissing on someone's face. Occasionally it will exclaim in hastily scribbled capitals "Suck me!” or "Eat my jism!” Yawn. And yet, sometimes ? hilarious.
See? It's like Andy Rooney out-takes, taken out for good reason. So! I want to thank Powell's for putting up with me, Kyra for gently pointing out the things that I really should not say, and Lisa_Emily for depositing the sole comment. I'll leave you with this, my end of summer reccos: Obviously. A professional acquaintance's novel. A friend-of-a-friend's memoir. Somebody I went to grad school with wrote this. No
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Guests
by Jonathan Segura, August 7, 2008 10:20 AM
Well, here we are. It's my penultimate post, and because people like dog pics and I want you to like me, here's the first photo I ever took of Abby. She was seven weeks old. Is it hard to imagine why she owns me? As I write this, she is sitting under my desk, peering up at me with those big, sad bulldog eyes. Note to those of you thinking about getting a bulldog: Their powers of guilt-induction are something your evil, soul-crushing mothers can only dream of. All the pooch has to do is hit you with one doleful glance while you're walking out the door to go to work, and ? bang ? you feel like an asshole until you come home. This will happen every day. Enough. One of the common questions I'm asked ? really, people do ask ? is what advice I have for aspiring writers. My go-to glib response is, "Don't do it." And then the follow-up is something like, "No, really." So, herewith is some unvarnished advice for aspiring writers: - Give up those dreams of a million dollar advance. Not gonna happen. Set your sights somewhere in the $1k-$20k range, because that's what you should realistically be getting paid. Remember, this is an advance against royalties, not a reward for those years spent toiling in obscurity. Your book will sell a fraction of what you think it will, and if you earn out, everyone will be happy. It's also worth remembering that the money you see from your advance will be substantially less than the raw $$ figure ? you'll see half: total, minus 15 percent for your agent and 35 percent for Uncle Sam. Feel like inducing a good crying jag? Divide that number by your manuscript's word count.
- Have a platform. How I hate that word ? platform. But if you bring your own publicity machine and built-in audience to the table, well, that makes it easier for everyone, now, doesn't it?
- Don't be a needy prick. Your editor has better shit to do than to play armchair shrink to your amplified, self-indulgent insecurities. Those emails you're thinking of firing off to your editor or publicist at 3:30 a.m.? Don't.
- Remember that publishing is a business. And a troubled one at that. It's been said many times that publishing isn't about good writing anymore. And while I don't know that that's entirely true, it's certainly worth remembering that publishers exist to make money, not to indulge you in your lifelong fantasy of seeing your name on the spine of a hardback.
- Don't be in a hurry. First books take a long time to write, and please don't confuse finishing a first draft with writing a book. Edit, revise, rewrite. A few times. And then go agent shopping. Then, when you have an agent, don't think you're on the home stretch. It took a year of shopping for my manuscript to find a home.
- Still don't be in a hurry. Rewrite again.
- Get a good agent. There are many out there, but there are plenty of sharks. Quick anecdote: my first agent was a fucking lunatic. Out of her gourd nutty, but I signed with her because she was with an A-list agency, had good clients and had done well by a couple friends of mine. But she fucked me over and, unrelatedly, got shitcanned. Hooray for justice.
(It occurs to me that I'm sounding cynical.) - Listen to your editor. Your editor is smarter than you. I like to think of an editor as a reader's advocate. The line you think is genius might not be, and in fact it may be nonsensical and confusing to the people who will do you the grand favor of plunking down $14 ? money they could have spent on gas or the electric bill ? to buy your book. Your editor will strike this not-genius line and many others. Suck it up and admit your editor is correct. Your book will be better for it, and every time you don't stet, an angel gets its wings.
When I was a freshly minted MFA grad, I was grandly deluded about what lie (laid? lay? fuck if I know) ahead. These are things I've learned, and forgive me for thinking these bits are sound advice. Writing a novel and getting it published is one of the greatest things ever, and I am beyond flattered that so many people put so much work and thought into the book. So, happy writing and good luck, and remember this passed-down nugget of wisdom: The world isn't aching for more writers. Carve out your place and don't let them drag you down
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Guests
by Jonathan Segura, August 6, 2008 10:17 AM
Hey, look! It's a pic of my dog. Ain't she cute? Okay, back to business. My book is set in a small, seamy and fictionalized corner of Omaha where hookers mingle with deranged neighborhood watch activists and perverts, junkfreaks and no-hopers can do their things unmolested. So when the book came out, the fine people at S&S sent me to Omaha to do promo. Taped an interview for public television, had a couple beers with a reporter from the World-Herald, and did a reading at the Bookworm. Turnout for the reading was great and I saw some people I hadn't seen in a while, one of whom was my former shrink and another was a dude I used to be in shitty punk bands with. (He is now a cop whose name I plan on dropping if I get in trouble when I'm in town for the Lit Fest next month.) Now, Omaha's gotten its fair share of publicity lately ? write ups in the WSJ, NY Times, and the American Airlines inflight mag (!), among others, I'm sure. Jill from Powell's, who is probably sick of me referencing her here, is friends with some people I knew back in the day who have moved to Portland. (Robb and Joe: some dude spray-painted "Punk's Not Dead" on the outside of the Cog a few years ago. I think it's gone now.) I actually sorta vaguely know someone who last year moved to Omaha sight-unseen from New York and opened a boutique downtown. How crazy is that? So I thought I'd thumbnail sketch out a guide to Omaha, should you find yourself there. - Brother's Lounge: Sure, you can't smoke indoors now, but you can still smell the residual smoke funk at Brother's. The ceiling is a fuzzy chocolate brown, though I would imagine the panels rolled out of the factory as a nice white or eggshell. Trey, the lesser half of the ownership, says he was grumpy for a couple weeks after the smoking ban went into effect and imagined he was suffering from second-hand smoke withdrawal. Great jukebox, cheap drinks, and soft-tip darts. Plus, if you get there early, you can catch some serious old-school alkies doing their old-school alkie thangs, like falling off of the stools and talking about how the cops down in Bellevue are assholes who just looooove to give out DUIs. I used to live across the street from Brother's. Best couple years of my life that I can barely remember.
- Wohlner's Grocery: For the unimaginative, there's Omaha Steaks. For the rest of us, there's Wohlner's magnificent butcher counter and its stock of Wagyu beef. It ain't cheap, but it beats the hell out of anything else I've ever had. And, again, I'm from Omaha, where we know from beef.
- The Bullet Hole: Now, I don't want to brag, but I can hollow out the ten ring of a human silhouette target with a Glock .40 at 25 feet. So, for me, no trip is complete without a few hours spent at Omaha's finest indoor shooting range. The unarmed and unlicensed can rent guns and buy ammo on the spot (I think ? my people carry, so never had to check). Just be careful of hot, flying brass. My old man walked out with a nice brass burn beneath his right eye last time. Made him look sorta like a con, which is funny if you know him.
- La Buvette: Many times I've dropped off my wife at the Bouver while I went out and did whatever nefarious shit I needed to do. What do I know about the place? Not much. They have good wine, Kyra says, and a tasty cheese plate.
- Jackson Street Bookseller: Is it bad form to talk up a used book store here? They've always got great stuff in stock for cheap and used to have up behind the counter an original poster from Hunter S. Thompson's campaign for sheriff. You'll also want to go to ?
- The Antiquarium: which is bigger, if victim to a confusing organization and a less reliably good selection of books. But it's huge. The kicker here, really, is the record store downstairs, where Dave Sink, who is miraculously not dead, runs the best record store ever. If you're lucky, he'll tickle you between drags on his Camel straights. But if he gets to talking about The Mountain Goats, well, good luck.
- M's Pub: This used to be, I'm told, a journo haunt back when journos drank their lunches. (Quick aside ? before I moved here, I heard there was a contingent of reporters at the daily who went jogging together on their lunch breaks. Jogging! Can you imagine?) The bartenders build a mean, proper martini. Never tried the food.
That should get you through a day. Omaha ? hell of a place to drink and shoot, and buy books, beef and records
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Guests
by Jonathan Segura, August 5, 2008 10:26 AM
Late this winter, I received a package containing six ARCs of my book, and as soon as I opened the package and flipped through the ARCs, I thought: I'm going to get annihilated by reviewers. Why? My narrator's a jerk. His vocabulary is like licking the floor of a truckstop bathroom, he's cruel to his pregnant girlfriend, he's an unrepentant boozer, he revels in lowest common denominator sleaze and, most perniciously, he does not become a nice person by the end of the book. So it's to my genuine surprise that I've been fortunate in the reviews department. There is, however, one review that really, really pisses me off. It's from a trade mag, and the trade mag's dumbfuck reviewer wrote an asinine little review of my book and got hung up on the fact that my narrator is "unlikable." He also got the narrator's name wrong. (Writers, in addition to being boring, can also be petty, embittered grudge-carriers. I have a list, and it is long.) Because you're here at Powell's, you're more than likely a real reader who doesn't judge a book based on its narrator's or protagonist's niceness or lack thereof. But I'd like to think, in my not-for-profit heart, that if I help even one person who errantly clicks his or her way here to see the error in damning a book because its protag/narrator isn't someone they'd like to have over for tea and maybe buttonhole into babysitting the kid, then I've done my work. I've stopped reading many, many books somewhere shy of page 20. Most of the time, it's because the writing is terminally inert ? you know: not much happens, but much is supposed to be felt. This regretfully common phenomenon is often the lethal product of banal writing amplified by lazy editing and sent to market under the sinister guise of "literary fiction" written by a "brave new voice." Or it's just plain ol' stillborn junk about relationships, nurturing, and feelings. Hey, sorta got off track there. But, whatever. This is a blog post. (See yesterday's post re: I piss and moan.) Okay ? unlikable protagonists. Most easily defined, I suppose, as a character who does/says/thinks things that disagree with a certain kind of reader's narrow, overpowering and enflamed morality. (Like how I kick around the straw man as I'm setting him up?) Now, you know and I know that a character in a book is exactly that ? a character in a book, and is therefore as worthy a target for moral judgment as Santa Claus. Of course, rarely is a person subjected to 300 pages of life-experience filtered through Santa's eyes (and what a wretched exercise that would be). Instead, we get Mickey Sabbath and Humbert Humbert and Richard Tull and Frank Wheeler and Bardamu, to name a choice few sitting on the shelf above my desk. All enduring characters of 20th century fiction, though I can't think of one redeeming act any of them committed. But what great people they are to read about. They have obsessions, bigotries, resentments, failings, and, sometimes, hopes. They do nasty, mean-spirited shit and entertain nasty, mean-spirited thoughts (Humbert Humbert is, let us not forget, a pedophile), and while it's fun to watch them spiral downward, the big draw is in getting into the heads of people you and I might choose to avoid in real life. These are intriguing people, and I want to know them. I may not approve of what they do, but I want to understand them. It's the author's job to let you understand his characters, especially the despicable ones who aren't like you and don't think like you do and do things that you would do. If the author does his job and the reader does his (which is to allow himself to understand), then fiction is doing that neat trick it can do, which is to pry open your world a little bit wider than it was before you picked up the book. It makes you a better human. Put another way and in words borrowed from someone smarter than me: what you read should expand your world, not reflect it. Sounds nice, doesn't it
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Guests
by Jonathan Segura, August 4, 2008 10:50 AM
Let me share my credentials: I'm the author of Occupational Hazards, went to grad school at Columbia, and now work as an editor at Publishers Weekly magazine. Let me share some bio information: I'm 30, married, a dog-owner, live in Brooklyn, and maintain a lightly traveled and very lo-fi website. Here's the takeaway: I've got both of my feet in different graves ? magazines are in trouble, and there's no money in fiction for most of us. So, when I agreed to do this, I'd been drinking. It happened in L.A. a couple months ago: I met Jill from Powell's at a BEA cocktail party. I happened to have a book that was coming out, and she happened to be Powell's web marketing person, and here we are. I told Jill that I'm not much of a blogger and that she could verify this by checking out the posts I did for publishersweekly.com last year. She wasn't having it. I told her she would regret signing me up, and then we went to another party. Anyway, I have a book to flog, so will be here yammering into the void for the next few days. If there's a subtext here, it is this: Buy my book. My plan was to write five blog posts of approximately 500 words each and have them done the week prior to Aug. 4. Well, here we are on Friday, Aug. 1, and I'm chipping away at No. 1. I'm a little terrified. My average day goes like this: wake up, iron a shirt, go to work, come home, drink a martini, walk the dog, drink a few whiskies, and go to bed. I piss and moan about things while at work (an author's ridiculously over-thought and ill-advised acknowledgements page or pages; author bios along the lines of "Author X divides his/her time between a large, expensive metropolis and somewhere expensive/fabulous/resort-y"; author bios that draw cutesy comparisons between the author's real life and the lives of characters in the book; faith fiction; execratory jacket art, and particularly jacket art that features bare feet; book titles of the formula: The X of Y or The [occupation]'s [relation]; how hung-over I am). Weekends, I go to my Spartan tormented nerd-artiste cave and write. Not much doing here, in other words. Writers ? and I feel reasonably comfortable calling myself that now that the book's out ? are boring, boring, boring. I could regale you with stories about the intricacies of ironing the blue shirt and how it's an easier shirt to iron than, say, the black shirt with white polka dots, but I won't. (The black shirt with white polka dots is a bitch to iron, though.) I recently quit smoking. My friend Craig is a poet and thus is no stranger throwing on a sandwich board and hawking his work. I asked his advice on what I should write for the Powell's blog, and he said: "Don't be an asshole like you were on PW's blog." "I wasn't an asshole," I said. "You were an asshole." So: Sorry about that, Angela. Nothing personal ? it was my day to
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