Susan Orlean has a funny little piece in the New Yorker on publishing her first book and all the editors and publishers she went through in the process. Nice to know that this happens to everyone.

What do Jackie Collins, William Faulkner, Dave Eggers, Virginia Woolf, and Steven King have in common? According to Rosecrans Baldwin at Slate, they all mention a dog barking in the distance in one of their novels. Apparently, it’s hard to find a novel that doesn’t include a far-off dog.

Perhaps distant dogs are a way for novelists to wink at one another, at their extraordinary luck for being allowed into the publishing club. When an author incorporates a faceless barking dog into his novel, he’s like an amateur at Harlem’s Apollo Theater rubbing the Tree of Hope—he does it because so many others have done it before him, and it might just bring him some luck.

Some authors do this on purpose to great affect; others use it to buy time or cheat a mood. The article is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it reminds us to pay attention to our tics and make sure every word is there because it matters. Now I’m going to pay attention today–do I hear any dogs barking?

I rather like SlushPile Hell, in which “a grumpy literary agent wades through query fails” by putting up short samples from bad queries. Snark is tiresome and mocking bad writing gets old, but this person isn’t overdoing it, and some of his/her comments are actually funny. Sample:

Do you ever get the feeling that we are all machines being controlled by someone or something beyond our control?

Katie Holmes, I’m just a literary agent. I can’t help you with your husband issues.

More here.

(Via Galleycat)

Eve Arnold, ‘Marilyn Monroe Reading Ulysses’, Long Island, 1954.

“This is so sexy, precisely because it’s Marilyn reading James Joyce’s Ulysses. She doesn’t have to pose, we don’t even need to see her face, what comes off the photo is absolute concentration, and nothing is sexier than absolute concentration. There she is, the goddess, not needing to please her audience or her man, just living inside the book. The vulnerability is there, but also something we don’t often see in the blonde bombshell; a sense of belonging to herself. It’s not some playboy combination of brains and boobs that is so perfect about this picture; it is that reading is always a private act, is intimate, is lover’s talk, is a place of whispers and sighs, unregulated and usually unobserved. We are the voyeurs, it’s true, but what we’re spying on is not a moment of body, but a moment of mind. For once, we’re not being asked to look at Marilyn, we’re being given a chance to look inside her.”

Jeanette Winterson from Solitary Pleasures–writers choose their favorite pictures from a new book, Reading Women. (Via Ordinary Finds)

Some writers love the first draft. It’s where they get to play, be creative, be swept away by the story in their heads. Other writers like the editing process. They love the meticulous ordering of words, the smoothing out and cleaning up of paragraphs, the plotting and filling in of holes.

Of the two types, I am the former. When writing is going well for me, the first draft can feel like I am seeing a movie in my mind. I become immersed in the world I am making. This makes sense–I am visual. I think in a combination of pictures and words and I have very vivid dreams. So the first draft is my playground.

I don’t hate editing, but it is boring. Sometimes when I am checking every punctuation mark or analyzing every word, editing feels more like data entry than a part of writing. That doesn’t mean that I’m not good at it, but I don’t particularly enjoy it. I have never liked crossword puzzles or Scrabble or other games like that either. I have a feeling that writers who like those games also like editing.

I say this because this is a summer of editing for me. I have a novel to finish and at least 10 short stories to edit. I am also judging a book contest, which is a bit like editing too, since you have to use the same analytical skills. So far, I am finding all the editing a little soul crushing, but it has to be done.

It’s true that writing is editing. I spend much more time editing what I’ve written than actually writing it. So I am a bit envious of writers who actually like editing. They probably get more overall enjoyment from writing than I do, just because writing the first draft takes so much less time than editing it does.

Which part of the process do you prefer, the first draft or the editing? Or are you one of those lucky people who like both?

Immediately after the NY Times Paper Cuts blog bemoaned the lack of reciprocity between visual artists and novelists, saying that painters don’t incorporate books into their art the way novelists incorporate the visual arts into their stories, I saw this fun project by Jane Mount called Ideal Bookshelf.

Mount takes the favorite books people choose to represent themselves and does a painting of their ideal bookshelf. She says:

We show off our books on shelves like merit badges, because we’re proud of the ideas we’ve ingested to make us who we are, and we hope to connect with others. I think this is endearing and charming. When I paint someone else’s bookshelf and they have the same book I do, I feel inordinately joyful about it, and about them.

Of course, the Times blogger wasn’t talking about literally using books or images of books in art. But seeing an artist portray a shelf of books as a window into an individual’s hearts, minds, and souls is surely a fun way for the two arts to join forces.
Off to work on what my ideal bookshelf would be! What’s yours?