"It's a wonderful thick pad, one hundred and thirty-two pages....I bought the pad yesterday in the 5&10....'Why do you need all those pads? What are you going to do with those bloody pads?'....'Accounts,' I said calmly, counting out bills. 'I'm going to do my accounts.'"From Diary of a Mad Housewife © 1967 Sue Kaufman
Does anyone still read Diary of a Mad Housewife? I think the book is actually regaining some relevance, given Tina Balser's ambivalence about her husband's social climbing. But even if you've never read Kaufman, her legacy lives on in an annual prize for first fiction, novels or collections of short stories. You can see a list of the recipients here. Not too shabby.
Tina Balser's accounts ? the titular diary of the mad housewife, although Tina disavows that term for reminding her of "those girls at camp, always fat and damp little girls, who had fake green morocco diaries" ? were on my mind this morning as I thought about how to close this week of blogging. What have I accomplished so far this week? Can I quantify what I've done?
- Exercise: Three trips to the gym ? two training sessions, one followed by thirty minutes of cardio, and one forty-five-minute session on the elliptical. My family also hiked almost nine miles Sunday along the Potomac River, walking from Alexandria, Va., to Maine Avenue in Washington, D.C. I have yoga today and another hour-long cardio session tomorrow, which means I both exceeded and fell short of my usual goals. I over-achieved on cardio, but skipped a yoga class, and I need a minimum of two practices a week just to shore up my less-than-stellar flexibility.
- Writing: Four chapters, 8,800 words ? inadequate! At this point in the process, which is largely revision, I should be clocking 10,000 words a week. Granted, I'm writing this before today's writing session and about 1,500 of those words were new ones, but this is the hardest part of the writing year. It reminds me of my family's car trips from Baltimore to Atlanta, and I'm just south of Durham about now ? more than halfway, but with some tough driving ahead.
- 310 roast beef and corned beef sandwiches. That's what we made at Viva House yesterday. I've written about Viva House for Slate* and my own website, but I'm not sure I've ever conveyed how much I enjoy going there every week. A recent article in the New York Times, about brain scans on those involved in altruistic acts, explains the phenomenon. I couldn't find the original article, but John Tierney continued the discussion on his science blog.
On the way home from Viva House, I stopped at an office supply store and bought the following: a set of gel markers, in eight colors; index cards; a notebook with lined grid paper; and a large sketchpad. I have come to the point in the work-in-progress where I have to break it down into some sort of visual manifestation. I credit this exercise to Madison Smartt Bell's invaluable text Narrative Design, although I think Madison would be happy to disavow the way I have applied some of his techniques. (This past spring, I spoke to his class at Goucher College, and produced the "outline" for my tenth book, To the Power of Three ? a set of forty index cards, with curling ribbon attached. I had broken the book down into chapters, one card per chapter, then taped the cards to the wall. I then selected a color of ribbon for every point-of-view and strung those ribbons to the chapters where that POV appeared. My working theory was that the result should be pleasing to the eye, an asymmetrical double helix, the ribbons twining around each other, with no color too dominant. In fact, I thought it was gorgeous, but I loved ripping it from the wall when the book was finished.)
I've been here before. I'll be here again. There's something missing in this version of the book. The characters don't have what they need to go forward. Two summers ago, I wanted my characters to go to Delaware and, draft after draft, I failed to give them a reason to do so. But, wielding my new markers and index cards, I'm confident I'll find what's missing. Writing a novel never gets easier, I'm sorry to report, but you do gain the knowledge that you've survived it before, so you will probably survive it again.
Finally, I'd like to end this blog with a shout-out to a Powell's employee ? Billie Bloebaum, who back in 2004 made one of my books, Every Secret Thing, a "Best Jet Bet." Writers are often asked if they have favorites among their books and most say they don't. But Every Secret Thing was important to my career, and I'm profoundly grateful to booksellers such as Billie, who were willing to hand-sell a book about a grim subject ? crimes by children, against children. Moments ago, in one of those eerie coincidences that most crime writers experience at least once or twice, my editor e-mailed me this CNN story, which happens to hew eerily close to the opening chapter of EST. But my book was, in fact, inspired by the murder of Jamie Bulger, which also inspired the Denise Mina book that I touted in these pages just days ago. (Caution: This overview is tough to read in parts, but if you do follow the link, please read to the end, as this is a very good account of the legal story behind the Bulger case, and it was the issue of anonymity, more than the murder itself, that caught my interest.)
We've come full circle. Time to say goodbye ? and thank you. And eat your kale!
*For those of you who do click through to the Slate piece ? I'm sorry to report that Ethel died this year.
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Laura Lippman, author of What the Dead Know, was a Baltimore Sun reporter for twelve years. Her novels have been awarded every major prize in crime fiction. The first-ever recipient of the Mayor's Prize for Literary Excellence, she lives in Baltimore, Maryland.