Lev Raphael – Page 32 – Writing Across Genres

Authors: Don’t Let Reviewers Hold You Hostage

January 18, 2020August 3, 2015 by Lev Raphael

Unpublished authors imagine that once they are published, life will be glorious. That’s because they haven’t thought much about bad reviews. Every author gets them, and sometimes they’re agonizing.

As a published, working author, you learn to live with the reality of bad reviews in different ways. You can stop reading them. You can have someone you trust vet them for you and warn you so that nasty splinters of prose don’t lodge in your brain. You can leave town or stay off the grid when your book comes out.

Hell, you can be perverse and break open a bottle of champagne to celebrate a dreadful review. Why not? Or if you’re a mystery author, you can have fun with a bad review and kill the reviewer. Of course, you don’t have to go all the way to murder. Fictional defamation, degradation, and despoliation can be satisfying, too. But getting captured by a review is not healthy.

I remember a Salon piece of close to 3,000 words (seriously!) by a novelist who complained that Janet Maslin killed his novel in the New York Times. Killed? No critic has that power. But Maslin did trash his book. It happens. She also made a gross mistake about his book in her review. That happens, too. One reviewer claimed that my second novel focused on a theme that it didn’t remotely touch, which meant she was probably confusing it with another book of mine. Reviewers get sloppy all the time. Sleepy too, I bet….

The Salon piece was disturbing and at times painful — but not just because of Maslin’s error. It opened with the author describing how he moaned on his couch, face down, while his wife read and paraphrased the bad review, and her having to admit that Maslin dissed the book as “soggy.”

The author teaches creative writing and had published three previous books, so you’d think he would try to set a better example for his students. Instead, while he admitted he was lucky to have been in the Times at all, he focused on his misery and even shared that he’d previously thought of Maslin as a ghost friend because she gave his first book a great review. That was super creepy.

I’ve published twenty-five books and I read as few of my reviews as possible. Why? Because I’ve learned more about my work from other authors through their books, conversations, or lectures than I have from reviews. I don’t look to reviews for education, validation or approbation. I hope they’ll help with publicity, but I’ve seen people get raves in the New York Times without any impact on sales.

More importantly, we authors shouldn’t let our self-esteem be held hostage by the Janet Maslins of journalism, and we should try not to over-estimate their importance or expect them to stroke our egos. Bad reviews? Ignore them along with the good ones, and keep writing.

How do you deal with bad reviews? Have you ever felt trapped like the writer who wrote the Salon piece?

Lev Raphael is the author of the mystery Hot Rocks and 24 other books in genres from memoir to biography.

Reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” As an Adult

February 20, 2016August 2, 2015 by Lev Raphael

When the first Hobbit movie was coming out, I re-read the novel I loved as a kid to reacquaint myself with the story and was more enthralled than I expected to be.

The wry voice was something I missed as a twelve-year-old in love with the adventure and fantasy, and I reconnected immediately with what moved me most the first time: the ways Bilbo’s fooled Gollum and the dragon. In each case, the small, clever Hobbit outwits a fierce enemy. That was a real treat for me as a bookish, picked-on kid with a tough older brother.

Harper Lee’s Scout also defeated monsters when she helped defuse the mob in front of the jail. It’s one of the best scenes in To Kill A Mockingbird–if not entirely believable. But Scout herself doesn’t hold up for me today because I just don’t believe her voice. She often sounds too mature for an eight-year-old, like when she thought near the end of the book (according to her adult self) “there wasn’t much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra.”

And I’m mixed about the book itself: it feels like an uneven blend of southern novel of manners with the “race novel” Lee originally intended, folded into a courtroom drama which seems clichéd–through no fault of hers. We’ve all read so much John Grisham and Scott Turow, or maybe I have as a long-time crime fiction reviewer. The story of the rape accusation takes way too long to get going. And in terms of suspense, the final appearance of Boo Radley is a letdown after all the mystery and tension. He’s just not that interesting.

Some of Atticus’s sentiments also grated on my nerves, like his belief that “a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human.” That feels hopelessly naive and sentimental–especially when you consider that Lee wrote the book after The Holocaust. But closer to home, there was the brutality she saw in the south directed at Civil Rights protestors.

Flannery O’Connor damned the novel with pretty faint praise when it came out: “I think for a child’s book it does all right.” That seems unduly harsh (and unfair to YA literature). What works best for me as an adult reader is the local color, the barbed social comedy, and the graceful prose.

Of course the book’s dramatic core couldn’t be timelier: today’s America is still grappling with racial injustice just as Harper Lee’s fictional town was in Depression-era Alabama. That’s sadly a story which seems to make the news every week–if not more often.

Lev Raphael’s 25 book Assault With a Deadly Lie is a suspense novel about militarized police. It was a finalist for a Midwest Book Award.

People Will Say Anything to Writers

January 18, 2020July 29, 2015 by Lev Raphael

Did you get fired from your real job?

What do you write? (long pause) Oh.

Aren’t there enough books out there already?

Do you know Stephen King?

I’m into gaming.

You should write a book about my life, it’s a bestseller for sure.

My sister reads a lot. Have you written anything she would know?

I liked your book except for the characters.

I’m gonna write someday, when I get some spare time.

You should write a screenplay! That’s where all the money really is.

Your book was…interesting.

I thought books were dead.

If you’re a writer, what kinds of off-the wall comments and questions have you heard?

Lev Raphael is the author of The Edith Wharton Murders and 24 other books in genres from memoir to historical fiction which you can find on Amazon.

7 Reasons I’ll Skip “Go Set a Watchman”

August 3, 2015July 26, 2015 by Lev Raphael

1) As a longtime print, radio, and on-line reviewer, I’ve always recoiled at massive media hype. I prefer to champion small press books and books that fly under the radar–and they make me more curious. It annoys me to see a book blitzed so relentlessly, and when a PR stampede roars into life, I’m suspicious and get the hell out of the way.

2) When it comes to my favorite Southern writers, over the years I’ve preferred reading Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, Dorothy Allison, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Alice Walker, and Faulkner. Yes, Lee won a Pulitzer–but even though her classic book is wildly popular, it’s not at the top of my personal list.

3) The circumstances around the “discovery” of the book get murkier all the time and it’s increasingly probable that Go Set a Watchman is really an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird and not actually a “new novel.” Lee’s own previous comments about her working relationship with her editor make that pretty clear.

4) It’s unlikely that aged, infirm Lee had anything to do with publishing the manuscript. Her own sister was quoted by Lee’s biographer as saying, “Poor Nelle Harper can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence.” Where’s the proof she would want us reading what she’d kept private for so long?

5) Reading about Go Set a Watchman and reading excerpts (including Chapter One in The Wall Street Journal) hasn’t made it seem appealing. That includes Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker quoting a drab passage I’m supposed to find “lovely.” None of the reviewers has convinced me it’s a better or more interesting book than To Kill a Mockingbird.

6) If Lee weren’t famous, the manuscript (however it had been discovered) wouldn’t have been anything more than an archival curiosity. It’s something a scholar might have eventually published with “apparatus”: notes, timeline, an introduction, etc. But the Rupert Murdoch Money Machine has helped turn it into a global event instead.

7) HarperCollins publisher Jonathan Burnham said that “We [only] gave the book a very light copy edit.” So Harper Lee is such a genius that she can go right into print without real editing? That smacks of opportunism, sloppiness, or dishonesty. I don’t want any part of a book published in such circumstances. I might, however, watch Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird again to see if it holds up or if–like the novel–it’s just something that meant a lot to me in my adolescence….

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in genres from memoir to mystery which you can find on Amazon.

Writers: Don’t Call Your First Drafts “Garbage” Or “Shitty”

January 18, 2020July 15, 2015 by Lev Raphael

I know, I know: Anne Lamott says they’re “shitty” in Bird by Bird so she must be right. A lot of people swear by her. And she says that all good writers write shitty first drafts. Really? How does she know this for a fact?

But there’s a bigger issue here: the word itself. “Shitty” is an adjective I’ve never used to describe a first draft of my own and it’s a word I’ve never used in any creative writing class or workshop I’ve taught anywhere. I think it’s more than just pejorative, it’s gross and inappropriate. Messy is fine. Disordered, unfocused, rough, undisciplined, chaotic, jumbled, scattered, unfinished–any words like that will do.

But shitty? That vulgarity undermines your own work, and it’s a slippery slope–even though Lamott’s apparently trying to make people relax and feel confident. You get writers used to applying a word like that to a first draft and it’s too easy for them to survey other work of theirs in dark times and think, “This is shit.” It can plant the wrong kind of seed. Writers have to deal with enough doubts about their abilities and cope with jealousy of other writers as it is. We can brood endlessly about the wrong word spoken at the wrong time….

I once had a graduate writing professor call a story I’d worked very hard on “shit.” Luckily I’d won the MFA program’s literary prize for that story so I was partly armored against his invective, but I still found his language deplorable. I feel the same way when I hear stories from my own students who report how other professors have insulted their work, using words like “crap” and “shit.”

None of the first drafts of my hundreds of stories, essays, reviews, or blogs were “shitty.” Hell, some of the first drafts were pretty good. Surprisingly good. But I always knew they were just a starting point and that they would need more work, sometimes much more work. That was a given, part of the process.

For me, any draft is just opening a door, but with a sense of adventure and expectation because I never know where the piece will end up. So labeling it or dismissing it in any way, even if I’m dissatisfied or disappointed, is setting a road block in my own way.

I’m not saying that drafts make me want to put on a big hat and sing like Pharell, but every draft has possibility, and that makes me hopeful.

Lev Raphael is the author of Writer’s Block is Bunk (Advice for Writers) and 25 other books in genres from memoir to mystery which you can find on Amazon. He now teaches creative writing on line at writewithoutborders.com and there are still some openings in his June workshop.

My Bastille Day Faux Pas in France

January 18, 2020July 14, 2015 by Lev Raphael

Years ago when I was researching a book on Edith Wharton’s psychology and fiction, I visited her home north of Paris in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt. It was less than an hour north of the city and I’d written ahead long in advance to get permission to explore it and take pictures. I didn’t realize my clueless publisher would have no interest in the photos, not even an author photo of me in her garden. The ways of publishing have always been mysterious….

Arriving in that small town of fewer than 15,000 citizens, and fluent in French, I was puzzled that nobody I asked on the street seemed to know where Rue Edith Wharton was. I kept getting responses of “Desolé, M’sieu, connais pas.” Sorry, don’t know. Finally I resorted to the Town Hall for a map to find the home Wharton called Pavillon Colombe, which was built in the late 18th century for an actress. I later learned that the street had only recently been renamed for Wharton, which was probably why citizens couldn’t help me.

Though the facade of her home is aloof and impersonal, it opened into a cool, dark hall, beyond which, through French doors, stretched a sunny parterre. A shy maid showed me into a gorgeous salon filled with beautiful paintings, tables, books, and bibelots. A bell rang somewhere and the maid said, Madame la Princesse vienne. I stood there trying to figure out why she was using the subjunctive tense to tell me that the princess was coming (what was wrong with the regular present?), and I felt that I was in way over my head.

But I couldn’t help relishing the elegant rooms opening onto each other and onto the parterre. This was my first time ever in a French home of such grace and beauty.

Princess Isabelle von und zu Liechtenstein, the wife of Pavillon Colombe’s owner, strode up through the garden. She was drop-dead chic in black and grey with a colorful Chanel scarf at her throat, her hair in a chignon. As she passed wailing peacocks, she called out to two bounding white borzois in a high piping voice. It was an entrance like something out of a stage play, dramatic and somewhat intimidating.

Madame la Princesse gave me a brisk but exceedingly gracious tour through the house that bore no trace of Wharton’s former presence. On my own I toured the garden which also had changed since Wharton’s day, but still showed signs of her planning. In the Italian style, it was a tranquil, inviting progression of orderly spaces, light giving way to shadow, square spaces to round, grass to fountains.

Upon leaving and thanking my host, I struck the absolute wrong note. Bastille Day was coming up and I made some reference to it, because I’d never been in France before on July14th and was looking forward to the fireworks.

Without thinking, I asked if the Princess had any special plans. “Je porte toujours le deuil,” she said with no change of expression: “I always wear mourning.” She added that her husband was a descendent of Queen Marie Antoinette. My French failed me. My English failed me. Had I spoken German at the time, that would have failed me, too. Luckily, I was on my way out. It does make a good story, though, something Wharton herself might have enjoyed. I suppose the Princess’s version might be even more entertaining–if she’s ever deigned to tell it, of course.

Lev Raphael is the author of the mystery The Edith Wharton Murders and 24 other books in many genres. This anecdote is taken from his study Edith Wharton’s Prisoners of Shame.

Anne Lamott Is Dead Wrong About First Drafts–And That’s Not All

April 26, 2020July 13, 2015 by Lev Raphael

I know, I know: a lot of people swear by her. And a lot of writers find her inspiring.

People especially like to quote the writing guru on the subject of first drafts. She’s apparently very reassuring for anyone who fantasizes that established authors get it right the first time–though are there really folks naive enough to believe that? They can’t have thought too seriously or deeply about writing. But then there are also people who tell me that they’ll write a book if they ever get “some free time”–as if that’s all it took.

Lamott’s unsurprising points about revision are valid: you have to keep revising, and revision is the heart of good writing for most writers. Where I think she goes seriously wrong in Bird by Bird is when she uses the word “shitty” to describe first drafts. And she says that all good writers write them. Really? How does she know this for a fact? Where’s her proof?

“Shitty” is an adjective I’ve never used to describe a first draft of my own. And it’s a word I’ve never used in any creative writing class, workshop, or master class I’ve taught anywhere. I think it’s more than just pejorative, it’s gross and inappropriate. Messy is fine. Disordered, unfocused, rough, undisciplined, chaotic, jumbled, scattered, unfinished, inferior–any words like that will do.

But shitty? That vulgarity degrades your own work, and it’s a slippery slope–even though Lamott is ostensibly trying to make people relax. You get writers used to applying a word like shitty to a first draft and it’s too easy for them to survey their other work in dark times and think, “This is shit.” It can plant the wrong kind of seed in people who already have to deal with doubts about their abilities.

She’s unfortunately spawned hundreds, maybe thousands of writers who throw the words “shitty” and “shit” around in connection with their work without thinking through its implications.

I once had a graduate writing professor call a story I’d worked very hard on “shit.” Luckily I’d won that MFA program’s literary prize for the story so I was partly armored against his slam, but I was still offended. I feel the same way when I’ve heard reports from my own students who report what other professors have said about their work.

In that same Bird by Bird essay, Lamott also talks about how much writers suffer, and how writing is never rapturous. Well maybe some writers do suffer the torments of hell, and maybe for some writers their work is like a series of root canals without anesthesia, but never rapturous? Her writer friends must be really miserable. Most of the writers I’ve met enjoy writing. Yes, it’s true! They’re not martyrs–they love what they do.

You do not have to suffer to be a writer. It is not a requirement. It is not a badge of honor. It is not a proof that you’re a professional. And you definitely do not have to disparage your own work.

None of my 26 books has tormented me when I wrote them, and none of the first drafts of my hundreds of stories, essays, reviews, or blogs were “shitty.” Hell, some of the first drafts were pretty good. Surprisingly good. But I always knew they were just a starting point and I knew they would need more work. For me, any draft is just opening a door, that’s all. I don’t need to label it or dismiss it in any way, even if I’m dissatisfied or disappointed. I just keep working.

Of course its work, but it’s also fun. Promoting the idea that writers have to suffer plays to a stereotype that’s potentially damaging to beginners, though it may satisfy people who don’t write and don’t understand the process or the life.

Lev Raphael is the author of Writer’s Block is Bunk (Advice for Writers) and 25 other books in genres from memoir to mystery which you can find on Amazon. He teaches individualized workshops and edits manuscripts in all genres at writewithoutborders.com

Getting Fantastic Fan Mail

January 18, 2020July 8, 2015 by Lev Raphael

I’ve been getting fan mail for many years now and from many places–but last week was the first time someone wrote me from Brazil.

Just seeing the word “Brazil” curiously shot me right back to 7th grade Social Studies class where I had a snooty teacher who liked taunting us students.

One day he was lamenting how little we knew about current events. He said we probably didn’t know any world leaders outside of our own president and I raised my hand and said, “The President of Brazil is Costa e Silva.” I had seen the name in the New York Times, which my parents read daily, and it somehow stuck in my head. This only briefly deflected our teacher’s snide little speech, but I still remember his beady-eyed glare….

Back then, even though I had my favorite authors like Dumas and Isaac Azimov, and I sometimes dreamed of being a writer myself, I never thought about fan mail. When it started coming after I published my first short story in Redbook years later, I wrote back to everyone (of course now it’s email). That’s because when I was only about twelve, I wrote to an author of a YA novel and he actually replied–from Paris. I lost many things over the years through moves, but never lost that.

So here’s my surprising Brazilian fan email (with the town name and the writer’s omitted for privacy):

I am writing to you all the way from ——– in the countryside of Pernambuco, a Northeastern state of Brazil. I teach American Literature at a federal university, and I would like you to know that your work is read by my students, and it is really inspiring to us all.

Because my students are usually at different levels of English language acquisition, I usually have them read and analyze short stories. The one we worked on this term was “Shouts of Joy,” from Secret Anniversaries of the Heart. We all loved it!

Congratulations on your great and inspiring work!

The story they all enjoyed appeared in my first collection of short stories Dancing on Tisha B’Av which won a Lambda Literary Award. It was later reprinted in the book mentioned and pictured above, which collects 25 years of my short fiction. I originally published “Shouts of Joy”–an erotic Passover tale–in the mid-1980s.

Given all the time that’s passed, getting mail about that story is like finding a letter in a bottle washed onto a beach: mysterious and fascinating. It’s almost as if it’s happened to someone else, as if I’m a character in a story, or I’m a reading a story about someone else getting this email. In fact it is, since I’ve published so many stories since then, so many books, and become such a different writer.

What do I mean? Back when I conceived, wrote and published “Shouts of Joy,” I thought I’d only write short stories for the rest of my career. I’d started my career by having won a big writing prize and publishing in Redbook–which had 4.5 million readers-–before I left my MFA program, and there were many short stories writers I idolized.

But life had other, more interesting plans for me, and I’ve ended up writing in genres I never dreamed would call to me, including psychology and historical fiction.

Hearing now about the impact of this thirty-year-old story of mine makes me wonder who–if anyone–might be reading it thirty years from today, and where. You know, I think there might actually be a short story in that…..

If you’re a writer, what’s some cool fan mail you’ve gotten, and if you’re a fan, what’s the most surprising response to your fan mail you’ve received?

Lev Raphael is the author of Writer’s Block is Bunk (Guide to the Writing Life) and 24 other books in many genres which you can find on Amazon.

Writers: Don’t Get Trapped By Social Media

January 18, 2020June 24, 2015 by Lev Raphael

For the last few years, at every writers’ conference I’ve attended, the hottest topic has been social media. Writers crowd these sessions like medieval pilgrims seeking miracles at a shrine. They seem convinced that with just the right piece of information, they can use social media to promote themselves into writing stardom.

Any why shouldn’t they be? Session after session, book after book, writing blog after writing blog all seem to promise that if you figure out the way to use Twitter or Goodreads or Tumblr or Instagram or Facebook or Amazon algorithms and SEO you’ll hit the jackpot. Just read X’s blog or book and see how she did it…… Your books will be in the Top 100, you’ll have tens of thousands of followers and customers–if not more. Hell, you might even develop your own lifestyle brand. You won’t just have a platform, you’ll have a ziggurat.

But it’s not possible for every writer to score big, is it? And just like all the other other promotional fads of recent years–like blog tours and Skyping to book groups–this heavy focus on social media might end up wasting an author’s time.

Americans love quick fixes and snake oil, they always have. It’s not surprising, then, that so many writers are following what’s going to be a false lead for most of them. It’s really tempting to imagine yourself just a hashtag away from fortune and fame.

Writing is intensely competitive. It’s hard to have a writing career of any kind and not compare yourself to other writers–that’s endemic in the business. You’ll always find someone else selling more books, appearing at more venues, winning more prizes, making more money than you are, getting better reviews (deserved or not). But things have only gotten worse now that publishing is easier, and more and more people just like you, it seems, are getting rich because they have the secret.

According to the New York Times, “A small but growing body of evidence suggests that excessive social media use can lead to an unhealthy fixation on how one is perceived and an obsessive competitiveness.” We writers have enough ways to make ourselves miserable without even getting out of bed–hell, some of us probably can do that in our sleep. Honestly, who needs more help?

Do you feel pressured as a writer to be engaged with social media? How do you deal with the pressure?

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in genres from memoir to mystery to historical fiction–and beyond. His web site is levraphael.com and you can find his books on Amazon.

Fifty Shades of Wut?!

June 30, 2015June 19, 2015 by Lev Raphael

Now that E. L. James has published Grey, which tells the events of Fifty Shades of Grey from Christian’s perspective (without any shades, it seems), it might be time for you to catch up to the film version in case you missed it.

People often complain that movies don’t live up to the books they’re made from. But let me assure you, Fifty Shades of Grey is very faithful to the original material. It’s a stone dud, too. I finally caught up with the movie myself recently and can tell you that the first ten minutes perfectly set the stage. There’s a piss-poor, logy version of the classic “You Put a Spell on Me” on the sound track that sounds as if Annie Lennox were embarrassed to have her name associated with the project. But hey, it must have been a hefty paycheck.

That stinker sets the mood perfectly for Dakota Johnson, who’s the embodiment of the novel’s unreal nebbishy Anastasia. It’s totally unbelievable that she’d dress like a schlump for a big-deal interview, that she hasn’t read through the questions beforehand, and that she stumbles when she opens a door into Grey’s office. Just as his attraction to her defies belief. All of which makes the book idiotic from the get-go and the movie a good clone.

Once those ten achingly long minutes of the film are past, a desert of inanity stretches ahead of you. You lose the novel’s atrocious prose, but in its place there’s atrocious acting which is a reasonable substitute. And since there’s no real erotic chemistry in the book, the fact that the leads seem to be sleepwalking through the film even when their clothes are off totally fits. What’s strangest of all is that Jamie Dornan seemed much sexier playing opposite Gillian Anderson in The Fall. He was a psycho in that series. Go figure. Maybe the beard helped.

In the film, he comes across as a pretty accessory like the ties, cufflinks, and watches in his dressing room we see at the beginning of the movie. That was a highlight, cinematically speaking, if you’re into luxury goods at least.

Best moment of the movie, though: the trashy Victorian porn peacock feather. My spouse hadn’t read the book and muttered sarcastically when it came out, “Oh, dear.”

That pretty much sums it all up.

What I’d like to see is RuPaul’s version: Throwing Fifty Shades of Grey. Now that could be fun.

Lev Raphael is an avid movie goer, having been raised on classic films of the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties. You can find his 25 books on Amazon.