Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I keep thinking I’m going to like thrillers, but then I don’t. As a genre novel, a thriller is predictable in outcome, if not in the path to get there. And so the path must be completely captivating. Not so in this case. Not enough happened in this book. The characters weren’t really characters, but rather devices to propel a premise. This book received so much praise and attention, but it wasn’t for me.
I’m currently reviewing a copy-edited version of my novel CLEAN BREAK. We’re using revisions mode in Microsoft Word to make a review edits. This is so much easier than marking up a printout of the manuscript. Who says traditional book publishers aren’t embracing the electronic age?
My copy editor is doing a great job, although we seem to have two areas where our philosophies differ: she likes the word ‘that’ and loves the comma. She’s put in ‘that’ here and ‘that’ there. I take most of them out. I have a very complex relationship with the word ‘that.’
She also adds a lot of commas to my “run-on” sentences. Well, I guess that’s a statement about my writing style.
It’s been a while, but MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE did it for me.
Elizabeth Olsen, the younger and more talented sister of the famed Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen twins, gives a totally convincing and mesmerizing performance as a young woman who has run off from a cult where she has been sexually, emotionally, and mentally enslaved. She ends up with her estranged sister who is married to a Brit and living the life of extravagant consumerism in Connecticut at their weekend lake house.
Can Martha escape her past and start a new life? It’s a tough road. Martha can’t adjust to her sister’s life in the present and is haunted by her past life as revealed by a series of creepy flashbacks to her time with the JV version of Charles Manson (played by John Hawkes from WINTER’S BONE).
Throughout her ordeal, and Elizabeth Olsen nails the entire emotional range. It doesn’t hurt to be beautiful with a stunning body. And the ending isn’t conventional (thankfully), so that worked for me. My one gripe is the sister and her husband’s lack of empathy toward Martha—to me there is a scene missing where sis tells sis she knows something terrible has happened to her, so what is it. Even if Martha is too messed up to reveal what happened, her sister should at least try to find out.
Go see it.
My sister, an avid fiction reader, gave me some books to read. I recently finished THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS by Paolo Giordano. I was captivated by how the two characters were introduced, both of whom were severely damaged from childhood incidents. They later meet in school and continue to enter and leave each other’s lives. Giordano expertly, almost voyeuristically, gets at the inner lives of his characters, and his style and language are captivating. But this book is unrelentingly sad, so you have to be ready for that.
Also from sis was Anne Lamott’s IMPERFECT BIRDS, which centers on a northern California family. Mother a recovering alcoholic, non-descript step-dad, and the fiery 17-year-old daughter. The daughter likes to party California-girl style and something bad’s going to happen because of that, but 75-pages in nothing much had happened yet so I put this one aside despite the lovely writing.
Right now I’m reading the hot new psychological thriller BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP by S.J. Watson. So far I’m interested, but reading faster than I want to so I can get to the critical moments. (side note: I don’t get why Mr. Watson seems to try his best to obscure his gender on his web site.)
Also on my short shelf to be read:
Okay, this last dummy one doesn’t fit, but I’m brushing up on economics. I have a BA in economics, but nowadays once the discussion goes beyond the basic concept of supply and demand, I’m lost. Mostly I’m doing research because I’m thinking of a character who is an economics professor. I had such a character once, many years ago in a short story I wrote. He was an optimistic professor with a cynical streak and had published a couple of books on economics, one about supply and demand (the limit of my understanding), and a second, popular one, that analyzed the economic theory about why his first book failed in the market.
That story, “Getting Rid of Armando,” never went anywhere, although I ended up stealing one of its concepts about kids with imaginary friends for my upcoming novel, CLEAN BREAK.
November is National Novel Writing Month, during which over-caffeinated, ambitious and perhaps delusional writers sign up with NaNoWriMo to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. After signing up, writers can track their progress, get pep talks and support, and interact with fellow November novel writers—although I’m not sure who has time for any interaction when trying to write a novel in a month.
When NaNoWriMo started in 1999, there were 21 participants, six of whom won by completing a 50,000-word novel. In 2010, there were over 200,000 participants and more than 37,000 winners. There is no official prize, other than whatever pride or joy you might experience at having completed the Herculean task.
Here’s why I’m writing about NaNoWriMo: I toyed with the idea of signing up for it. You see, I’m between novels right now, which is a vulnerable place to be. My most recent novel, CLEAN BREAK, is finished and in production with a scheduled release date of June 5, 2012. As for my next novel, none of the ideas I’ve been exploring have transformed from spark to blaze yet. So maybe taking one of my ideas and running with it for a month would get me to the level of combustion I need.
I think not. Here’s why. While a 50,000 word novel is an appropriate word count for Young Adult, it’s too short for adult fiction. My first two novels were just over 100,000 words each. And to get to 50,000 words in a month, I would need to write 1,666 words a day, every day. Today, November 1, happens to be a day that I did write that many words, but how many of those words are really worthy of ending up in my next novel? Maybe a couple hundred at most, if I continue to pursue the idea I’m working on. Maybe none.
Which brings up the real reason I’m not participating on NaNoWriMo: that’s not how I write. I’m a slow, deliberate writer. Each day I go over what I’ve written the day before, changing, deleting, adding a little new, slowly building and shaping scenes and narrative. Until I discover who these characters are, what they want, why they want it, what’s stopping them. Until I understand what I have going, if anything.
I’m a turtle when it comes to writing, not a rabbit. I run well in the mud, not on the fast track. I’ve never zipped through a first draft. And I’m not about to now.
So I’m passing on NaNoWriMo and will continue my daily plodding. Maybe this idea will ignite, maybe that one. A few words, a few more. A wrong turn, circle back, try again.
Lionel Shriver, author of WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN, among other novels (none of which I’ve read), has a good essay in Slate about flawed, unlikable characters. Why they are important in fiction. How they propel stories. Ways they can draw out the reader’s sympathy.
Click here to read “Perfectly Flawed.” It’s on the self-serving side, since it’s mostly about her work, but still worth the read.
Shriver makes an important distinction among villains (we love to hate them), anti-heroes (Tony Soprano), and the flawed, empathetic character (Oedipus, Humbert Humbert in LOLITA, Alexander Portnoy in Roth’s PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT).
I’ve had my share of struggles with my agent and editor over what they’ve thought of as unlikable characters in my work. Gwen as an irresponsible pothead in STASH. Jake as cold and selfish in CLEAN BREAK, Celeste as unforgiving.
My counterpoint is that while these characters may at times be unlikable, and are in fact flawed, they are nonetheless real and also have positive qualities. Gwen is a dedicated wife and mother; Jake is committed to helping Celeste break free of her marriage; Celeste is determined to do what’s right for herself and her son. Yet mostly it’s their flaws that make them interesting and keep readers turning pages. Who is interested in the perfectly moral, exceptionally well-behaved character? No one. That’s a dull story.
What if the perfect title you’ve come up with for your novel has already been used by another author? Despair not. You can use the title, too. If you want.
Book titles can’t be copyrighted, although some can be protected by trademarks and unfair competition laws. To be protected by trademark, titles generally must be broadly known or have secondary meaning, usually in the form of commercial potential associated with them. Series titles, unlike one-shot titles, make good trademarks candidates. Think “Twilight” or “Harry Potter.”
Unruly Guides is a useful site for authors seeking copyright and trademark info.
With my first novel, STASH, I couldn’t find any other novels with that title. I limited my research to search engines and Amazon. My second novel, coming out in June 2012, is titled CLEAN BREAK. I found a few references to it in my research. There was a 124-page crime noir story published in 2004 by a publisher no longer in existence, a young adult novel published in the UK in 2005, and a thriller movie made in 2008 that apparently no one saw.
None of these uses of the title CLEAN BREAK dissuaded me from using it, even though none of the other uses were wildly successful. It gives me the opportunity to be the first. My agent, editor, and publisher all like the title as well. My agent said,
“Everyone knows what a clean break is.”
Yes, it’s basically separating yourself without baggage and without looking back from something or someone unpleasant in your past. The other thing everyone knows about a clean break is that it’s almost impossible to achieve. My upcoming novel will prove that point.
When I first started as at writer, I wrote only short stories (and some bad poetry). I would always write only short stories. The economy of the language, story, and theme appealed to me. Plus a novel seemed way too much of an undertaking, an almost impossibly long and complex test of skill and endurance for a beginning writer. I would never write a novel.
Well, that changed. What hasn’t changed is I still haven’t learned to never say never.
I’ve written five novels now: one published (STASH), one coming out June 2012 (CLEAN BREAK), one I’m trying to decide how to bring to market (THE NUDE), and two that definitely belong hidden in my drawer and nowhere else.
I also ran my first marathon yesterday, after years and years of saying I’d never run a marathon, believing I only wanted to run shorter distances: 5K, 10K, 15K, the half-marathon. But the marathon was missing from my running resume and I signed up for the Hudson Mohawk Marathon this year and spent months training for it.
In training and racing, I discovered a lot of similarities between writing a novel and running a marathon:
I’m pleased to report I finished the marathon. I felt good up until about mile 20, then hit a very hard wall and struggled the last six miles. I crossed the finish line in 4:14:25, not the time I wanted but I’d gotten there. I felt awful. Someone asked me if I’d ever run another one:
I wanted to say NEVER, but kept my mouth shut.
In the current world of publishing, part of an author’s job is to promote their own work. Like it or not. I discovered with my first novel, STASH, that my publisher was looking to me for ideas about how to position the book. This included the story’s brief ‘logline’ as well as writing back-cover copy, and identifying other authors who might endorse me, among other tasks.
Loglines originated with the movie industry. Here are loglines from two (outstanding) movies based on novels:
JAWS:
After a series of grisly shark attacks, a sheriff struggles to protect his small beach community against the bloodthirsty monster, in spite of the greedy chamber of commerce.
ORDINARY PEOPLE:
After being institutionalized for a suicide attempt, a teen struggles for sanity and closure but must overcome his greatest adversary first – his mother.
Here are loglines of three novels currently at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for trade fiction (which is the format for my next novel, CLEAN BREAK).
THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett. (Berkley, $16.) Three women — a white socialite and two black maids — work on a tell-all book about black domestic servants in 1960s Mississippi.
THE SIXTH MAN, by David Baldacci. (Grand Central, $14.99.) The lawyer for a man suspected of being a serial killer is murdered, and two former Secret Service agents are on the case.
SARAH’S KEY, by Tatiana de Rosnay. (St. Martin’s Griffin, $13.95.) A contemporary American journalist investigates what happened to a little girl and her family during the roundup of Jews in Paris in 1942.
Okay, here’s my first attempt with CLEAN BREAK:
CLEAN BREAK, by David Klein. (Random House, $14.99) Four lives intersect when a woman turns to a new friend to help her escape a damaged, violent marriage.
This logline is focused on the main character and the key conflict. Of course it bothers me to reduce the novel in this way. The story is both more complex and more subtle. There are important characters not even mentioned. 107,000 words of novel have been reduced to 22 words!
Yet . . . it must be done. And then there’s the movie poster, and the story gets reduced even more. Something like: “Can anyone make a clean break from their past?”
Buy the novel online:
ISBN: 978-0-307-71681-1
STASH is also available as an eBook
