The best thing about having a book out in the world is that sometimes people ask me to do stuff in public. Not only is this a terrific ego-fluffer in what is often a lonely and crazy-making industry, but it means meeting great people who love to read. Which is convenient because that’s what I love too, and why I got into this dumb business in the first place.
Earlier in February, I spoke at my old high school for their annual Writers Week, which has been going on since I was in high school, mumble-mumble years ago. It was an amazing time. I gave the students some sound fatherly advice about why they should all become writers. If you have 39 spare minutes to watch a video, you can receive this advice for yourself. Also contains a reading from Franny and a SNEAK PEEK at my next book.
I’m doing a bunch more events over the next couple of months and usually post those on my website if you want to come say hi.
But for now, here’s…
Five Things I’ve Liked This Month that You Might Also Like
Hey! Winter sucks. The only way I’ve been able to manage not falling into annual despair is by buying or doing frivolous things. This year’s frivolity includes: drinking champagne for no reason (aka with chicken fingers, or pizza, or in the shower), buying a mini trampoline on sale, and putting together this relaxing and weirdly lovely bouquet of Lego flowers.
I’ve been thinking a lot about death. Not like in a morbid way. For research! Er, novel research! Do I sound convincing enough? Anyway, I bought a book of ancient Greek epitaphs. Here’s one that a guy wrote for his shitty cat 2000 years ago:
Wickedest of cats, rival of the man-eating pack, thou art one of Actaeon’s hounds. By eating the partridge of Agathias thy master, thou hurtest him no less than if thou hadst feasted on himself. Thy heart is set now on partridges, but the mice meanwhile are dancing, running off with thy dainties.
Speaking of ancient Greek stuff, I’ve gotten really into these videos of Greek plays performed on Zoom during 2020. There’s something so poignant and vulnerable and strange about seeing the actors’ floating heads in their living rooms. I first got interested in this after reading Elif Batuman’s amazing New Yorker essay about Oedipus and the pandemic and Zoom theatre, but only recently, while editing my new novel (see above on “death research”) did I think to watch some performances myself. The Center for Hellenic Studies did a whole series of these in 2020, and I think Sophocles’ Electra is my fave so far.
Other than death, one of my favorite things to read about is failure. I’m really fun at parties! A new book just came out called On Writing and Failure: Or, on the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer, by Stephen Marche. I promise it’s actually cathartic and not depressing, if you’re a writer or wish to be. I highlighted so many great quotes. Here’s one:
Here is the perfect allegory of the comparison of literary careers. The size of your dick depends on the angle you hold the mirror.
See? Told you.
And today’s one-question author interview is with Shauna Robinson, whose most recent novel, The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks, is funny, wry, sweet, subversive, and so much damn fun. Go get it immediately.
So Shauna… What writing thing do you absolutely suck at?
SHAUNA: Coming up with book ideas does not come naturally to me. I get jealous when authors talk about new ideas constantly popping up, which they'll often call plot bunnies. I do not have a field of adorable plot bunnies hopping around. I have... more of a plot sloth. Just one animal, very slow, somewhere high up in a tree where I can't see it.
Once I find my sloth, I have to work very hard to transform it from an idea into a plot. With my recent novel, The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks, the initial idea was pretty vague: someone who's in between jobs comes to her best friend's small town for a few months and wreaks some low-stakes havoc. This idea sat in my head for years. I kept rejecting it because it wasn't fully formed, and I couldn't figure out how to turn it into a plot.
Eventually, I figured out the process that works for me: (1) thinking about some of my favorite things to read about (bookstores! silliness!), and (2) making an exhaustive list of everything that could happen next and everything that could go wrong along the way. It can be a slow-moving process, and it usually takes listing a few dozen things until I find something that clicks. It's more of a brute-force method than the inexplicable magic of creativity, but that's okay by me. If it takes me more work to come up with an idea compared to the average author, that doesn't really matter if the end result is that we all have books we're happy with. My sloth and I are doing just fine.
Thank you, Shauna!! And speaking of sloths and bunnies… it’s time to wrap things up with our:
Bonus Lewd Animal Fact
A couple of scientists watched two male brown bears blow each other repeatedly in a Croatian zoo, coming to the conclusion that it was possible “these two brown bears might engage in fellatio for sexual satisfaction.” Isn’t science amazing.
Thanks for reading! I hope you’ll subscribe and share. And hey, did you know I have a book out in the world, available for purchase?