Yesterday my son told me he had just renewed a library book on line. Had he told me he discovered the cure to migraines, I couldn’t have been more dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe such a thing was possible. Immediately I went on line to my account, called up my name, which, of course, had the word Delinquent stamped next to it. I renewed my book, and the delinquent sign went away. I was incredulous.

Since I was a child I’ve been in possession of an overdue book. When you have an overdue book, there comes a point at which you have to troop down to the librarian and pay the fee. Yes, you can stick the book in the return slot, but still comes the day, when you want to take out your next book, that you have to make amends. You have to go to the librarian, she takes out the calendar and totes up the days late you are. She’s always perfectly pleasant, but she looks disappointed. Then you take out the change and she takes out the metal box, which, when she opens it, reverberates throughout the library. Patrons lift their heads and they know.

The last book I’ve been reading has been causing me a particular level of agita. It’s Joseph Lash’s biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and it’s easily 1,000 pages long. I love it, I read it every day, but no matter what I do, I can’t speed up my pace. I’m halfway through and the book is a month overdue and I’ve been in a quandary. I figured if I went to renew it, they’d take it away from me. So I decided I’d soldier on, finish the book, and pay the fees when I was done. But knowing I’m paying five cents a day is taking pleasure away from reading. Plus, I assumed I couldn’t take out any other books until I resolved this one, which was cutting back on research for my novel. (This is why I don’t write blogs more frequently. Because I’m preoccupied with things like this.)

What a miracle then that I could renew Franklin and Eleanor on line. Turns out, it didn’t matter that it was overdue, so long as it wasn’t $25 overdue. I was so thrilled I immediately put five other books on hold. This is going to end unhappily. I feel sure of it. In two months time I’ll be sitting around with six overdue books and I’ll only be halfway through World War II. But thank you Westchester Library System. You’ve brought me great joy!

Normally I start the semester with a discussion of opening paragraphs, which seems a sensible place. However, in an exciting break from my own routine, I decided to begin this semester with a class on revision, a topic I don’t usually get to until week 9. By then everyone’s usually thrashed their way through a number of critiques. The last class is always about publishing and I know people want me to finish nattering on about revision so we can get to the good stuff. So I’m usually rushing through revision myself.

For this semester I decided to take a different tack. I decided to separate revision out from publication and put it at the start of the class. My hope is that not only can my classes discuss it, but we can also embrace it. Specifically I want to move past the notion of the idea of revision as being “fixing errors.” I want a more holistic approach to revision. I want students to view it not as a necessary evil but as an opportunity to explore their manuscripts and bring out deeper meanings that may have been dormant in early drafts. I want to get past the fear!

Of course, the only problem is that it’s hard to teach. I can tell you what a good opening paragraph looks like, but a good revision is much harder to quantify. A good sign is if The New Yorker agrees to buy it, but even an unpublished story can be successfully revised. There are some things, however, that can help.

1. Have a title that works. Almost always, if the title’s good, the story’s good. The reason is that an author with a title knows what the story’s about. So challenge yourself to come up with a good title.

2. Retype the story. From the beginning. Novels too. Don’t try to squeeze every little correction into the draft. Take a bold approach and start from scratch.

3. Cut out a quarter of the words. You don’t need them. Trust me.

How about you? Do you have any tips for revision?

I teach Beginning and Advanced Fiction for Gotham, but the trickiest classes I teach are in novel writing. The classes tend to be large (for Gotham), meaning they have from ten to fourteen people, each one in the middle of writing a novel, which means lots and lots of pages to read and discuss. But that’s not the problem.

The scope of the critiquing is more difficult in a novel writing class. Not only are we reading the pages under submission, but we’ve got to consider them in the context of what came before and what should come after. If we’re discussing chapter four, for example, you really need figure out how that builds from chapter one, which we read probably three weeks ago. Given that I have difficulty remembering the day of the week it is, this global viewpoint requires a bit of effort on my part. However, even that’s not the problem.

The problem, at the moment, is that one of my students suggested it would be interesting if, on top of the classwork and lectures, I added in a discussion of Jonathan Franzen’s big book, FREEDOM. The idea’s a great one. Everyone writing a novel today should be familiar with FREEDOM, I think. Certainly if you’re writing a literary novel. This has been widely reviewed as the book of the year, or the decade. Whether you like it or not (and I gave it four stars on Goodreads), you have to deal with it.

But how on earth to incorporate that novel into a ten-week class? This has been what’s preoccupying me over break. I can’t assign the whole book to read. There’d be an insurrection. We could read part of the book. Normally I’d suggest reading the opening 50 pages, but I think the beginning of Franzen’s book is the least inviting part of it. Quite honestly, I think only he could get away with such an unsympathetic beginning. I considered having each class member read a different twenty pages and report back, but that would deny us all a certain narrative thrust. Then I considered kicking the student who proposed the idea out of the class and forgetting about the whole thing, but that seemed hostile.

So I have two weeks to go before class starts. Any suggestions?

I love the fiction classes that start after the first of the year because everyone’s so hopeful. It’s a new year, people make resolutions. I’m always hopeful that I’ll teach the best class possible. My students are hopeful that they’ll achieve their dreams as writers. For many, this is the first time they’ve ever taken a writing class. So, I thought I’d throw in some tips.

1. Show up.
A successful writing class is as much about community and trust as it is the teacher. (Well, almost.) The better you know the other people in your class, the more free you’ll feel in your writing, the more risks you’ll be willing to take. If you don’t come, you’ll start to feel like an outsider. Of course it’s hard, especially in the winter. But make it your priority for ten weeks.

2. Submit work.
There are few things I hate as much as having my work critiqued. I feel like I’m running down the street naked. But I always learn and I’m always so proud of myself afterwards. I’ve done it! You don’t need to submit a lot. Hand in three pages. But get yourself out there. You’ll be glad.

3. Listen to what people are saying during the “booth.”
We may all be wrong. But we might be right about some things. Take notes. I’m always suspicious of people who don’t take down notes when they’re being critiqued. (I’m also suspicious of waiters who claim to remember whole orders.) Give yourself time to digest the critique. Listen to the good things!!!

I’ll post some more suggestions soon. (My resolution for this year is to write more blog posts. )

But what do you think someone should bring to a new writing class?

Early yesterday morning I went out jogging, alone except for a lot of hot deer and noisy crickets. Suddenly I rounded a bend and caught sight of six large men standing in a circle, looking down at something. I’ve seen enough episodes of The Sopranos to know that nothing good ever comes of interrupting large men who think they’re by themselves. I kept on going, thinking to myself that if I heard someone running behind me, I’d faint and that would be the end of that.

Anyway, nothing happened. But I got home and I was ruminating on the situation, thinking about the jolting fear I felt, which was qualitatively different than the nauseating fear I feel at the doctor’s office, for example. I imagined a thriller in which a woman jogging alone sees a crime. I imagined the various scenarios that could lead from that. Someone, I felt sure, could write a good novel about that. Though I wasn’t particularly interested in that part.

I kept coming back to the sensation of fear, which felt more interesting than the scenarios that could grow out of. Then I began thinking of short stories. I started sketching out ways to use that fear, not necessarily in the woods and with strangers, but in other places. I realized that a strong flash of emotion lends itself better to a short story. I further realized, though I’d be willing to argue about this, that short stories are more about fear, novels about hope. It was one of those realizations that may or may not be true, but I thought it exciting to think about.

What do you think? How do you decide which you’re going to write? Or read.

Freezing to death is probably not something on anyone’s mind this sweltering July day in New York. However, I was thinking about it because recently I went to an exhibit on polar exploration at the American Museum of Natural History.

You may be familiar with the story of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott. Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer so determined to conquer the South Pole that, growing up, he slept with his windows open to train his body to deal with the cold. Scott was both less prepared and more desperate, (an enticing combination from a novelist’s point of view). They both set out for the South Pole in 1910. Amundsen got there first. Scott, battered by bad luck, poor preparation and bad weather, died soon after reaching the Pole.

Endurance, sacrifice, luck, talent, preparedness are all issues we talk about in the novel writing class that I teach. (Not to belabor a point, but aren’t all writers explorers and aren’t some of us doomed?) More importantly though, I’m transfixed by the image of Scott in his final days. There he was, truly in the middle of nowhere, freezing, surrounded by people who were dying, and what did he do? He wrote. One of the things I believe, and probably say a lot, is that characters have to struggle because only then do we know who they truly are. That’s why although I respect Amundsen, and would prefer to be on his team, my heart always goes to Scott. Yes, it was all his own fault, but he handled it with grace.

Anyway, as I nestle into my sweltering box of an office, with my two trusty sled dogs by my side, I imagine myself somewhere colder and more dramatic. How about you? Who are your heroes?

I’ve been silent these last few months, but not because I’ve been quiet. In fact, many good things have been happening and so I’ve been running, chasing after them. I have also, literally, taken up running, which is quite an accomplishment. I would not describe myself as a natural athlete. My preferred form of exercise is walking my dogs. Unfortunately, they’re both getting old and don’t want to take long walks in the woods. After our last excursion, when I had to carry my little white dog up a very steep hill, I pointed out to them that it would be simpler if I just took up long-distance running. They seemed happy about that.

So once a day I go trooping off into the woods. After about five minutes, my heart is pounding, my face is red and I’m slippery with sweat. At about this point the high school cross country team swoops out. No matter when I run, they run soon thereafter, though I very much doubt they’re waiting for me. They’re all strong and young and they pound by, but they always salute as they pass me, which I think is cute. Periodically older people run by, who I usually know, because I live in a small town. They invariably yell, “How’s the next book coming?” I always say it’s coming along fine, which I think is the case.

However, on a more tangible front, I did recently find out that one of my short stories is to be published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. This was a real treat not only because it’s a great magazine, but also because it represents the first new fiction I’ve had published since The Fiction Class came out. (I had a story published in 2009 Best American Nonrequired Reading, but I wrote that ten years ago. And of course I’ve had a lot of articles published since then, but it’s not the same.)

So that brings me back to running, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about publishing it’s that it’s like a very, very long run. You keep running and you feel like you’re going to keel over. But when you stagger, exhausted, toward the finish line you say to yourself: That was sort of fun.

So what’s up with Bloomer readers?

Please welcome a fellow Gotham teacher to Bloomer. Sonya Chung is the author of the debut novel, Long for this World. Here’s a post by Sonya:

Students often ask me, “When did you know you were a writer?”  The question is so laden, so bursting with adolescent angst. 

And I don’t mean that in any kind of condescending way. I have come to think that we never really grow up, not in our most tender, verdant souls; that adulthood is a very nice and useful idea that allows us to function in a complicated world and give wise-ish advice to people younger than us; that we are always both hungry for attention/recognition/love and terrified of it – that look-at-me/don’t-look-at-me contradiction being, a friend of mine who studies adolescent development tells me, the hallmark of adolescence. 

(Case in point: my debut novel, LONG FOR THIS WORLD, was just released earlier this month, and I find myself, on a moment by moment basis, oscillating between hoping that a major literary publication, or maybe a more mainstream publication, or a hip-and-smart blogger, reviews it; and counting the seconds until I can go crawl back into my quiet little anonymous (i.e. un-googlable) life and finish writing the next book.)

So the question, “When did you know you were a writer?” is an identity question, a self-worth question, a personal freedom and fulfillment question, a nascent creative soul’s hungry question.  And loaded into the question seems to be a ground-zero that tethers the asker to a primary or base identity — something presumably more real, more acceptable, more common, more stable.  To be a bank teller, you apply for the job and show up every day for work; to be a writer, you have to know – via, perhaps, some mystical experience – that you’re a writer. 

Hmm… Marilynne Robinson said it best: “You are a writer when you are writing.”  My God, how simple – simplistic? – and yet how true.  Do not roll your eyes, reader, as if I’ve heard that one before.  As we evolve in our work lives, piecing together various kinds of work to earn money, step-by-tiny-step nudging out the non-writing stuff and making the writing central (or at least that which is writing-related), I find it to be even more starkly true: I am not a writer when I am doing a reading and answering questions about the writing of my novel.  I am not a writer when I am grazing on wine and cheese at a fashionable literary awards ceremony.  I am not a writer when I am teaching, i.e. talking about craft and helping others with theirs.  I am not a writer when I am Facebooking other writers or keeping up on literary blogs or rearranging my formidable bookshelves.  I am not a writer when I am drinking coffee in Brooklyn at the table next to a handsome, bookish type named Jonathan.

I know I am a writer when I am writing.  When I am working with words, when I am making ideas and characters come to life with language.  When I am laying out the pages on the desk and taking my blue ball-point pen to chunks of text that I know don’t work in the story, when I am losing myself while typing a paragraph where something terrible, or euphoric, or quietly illuminating is happening.  This may sound naïve, and perhaps you will find me here blogging in five years saying something different, but I feel strongly that I must be an honest book tourer/literary speaker/teacher; I must be writing while I am talking about writing.  Otherwise, I feel like a fraud.  Even if it’s just an hour of work on novel #2 in the morning because that’s all there’s time for, or even if I’ve been working on the same damn narrative arc problem in a short story for three months, I know that I cannot stand in front of you, dear asker of the question, and exhort you to “show, don’t tell” or “up the emotional stakes and conflict” or “quit your day job! Art first!” if I am not myself at the writing desk, messing with words, living in the trenches (and heights) of which I speak.  I certainly cannot talk about “when did I know I was a writer” if I have not just come from, or am on my way to, sitting down to write (or, in many cases, rewrite).

YOU are a writer if you are writing.  No kidding.  THAT is “how it feels” to be a writer; nothing more, nothing less.  I sit with my students, who’ve been writing three stories per ten-week session, along with analyzing all the wonderful master-writer readings and thoughtfully critiquing one another’s work, and I tell them: right now, you guys are writers.  Someone once said, “The secret to staying married is to not get divorced.”  The secret to being a writer is to not stop writing.  Show up for work.

Today marks the second anniversary of the publication of my book, The Fiction Class. Two years is a very long time in publishing. If I were to convert that into dog years, my book would be a very old dog. However, here we are, not exactly coasting onto the best seller list, but not yet on the remainder table either. In fact, last time I walked into a Barnes & Noble, I saw ten TFCs face out on the shelves. So, what have I learned in these last two years?

1. Librarians are more important than I thought. I have to say librarians were not even on my radar when my book came out. Only afterwards, when my husband figured out how to figure out which libraries were ordering copies and how many, did I realize just how many books libraries buy. Not only that, but librarians organize book clubs, recommend books. If I could do it over again, and hopefully I will, I’d send a letter and bookmarks to each library in New York.

2. Independent bookstores are more important than I thought. I knew they were important, but I didn’t realize they mattered quite so much. I’d read so many articles about the decline of the independent book store that I thought they’d declined. Which maybe they have, but they still have a lot of clout. Plus, they chat with each other. Make a friend at one bookstore and you’ve made friends at a lot of bookstores. If I could do it over again, I’d send letters and bookmarks to each independent book store in New York and possibly wider.

3. Barnes & Noble is important, which I knew, but not just as a corporate entity. Its stores are run by people known as CRMS and they are as passionate and lovely as everyone else in the book business. (Which is not me being snide. I mean it truly.) I read so many articles about the heartless megastores and so on, but I found the CRMs to be incredibly supportive. I’ve saved the names of all the CRMS I met and I will send them letters and bookmarks. (You notice a theme.)

4. People like writers. It’s an odd thing, but true. I spent so many years with a chip on my shoulder, fulminating about not getting published, being angry every time someone asked about anything. But what I realize now is that people were just curious. They find authors an interesting breed. They want to help. I am dumbfounded at the things complete strangers have done to help me—recommendations, introductions. One woman invited me to stay at her house in England. More importantly people have trusted me enough to share very personal information.

It’s been a great ride and I can’t wait to see where it goes. How about you? What have you learned in the last two years?

One of the most intriguing parts of being a new author is that I’m often confronted with unfamiliar situations that require an ethical response, or at least a polite response. Such as:

If someone reviews my book, should I comment? I don’t mean bad reviews here, thank God. What I mean is if someone writes something friendly and nice on her blog about The Fiction Class, should I respond? The obvious answer is yes, but it’s not so simple. For example, recently I read a blog that had a very nice discussion of TFC. Then I, all enthusiasm, posted a friendly comment. Immediately the discussion stopped and everyone went away. I could see the problem. It’s like discussing sex with your friends in front of your mother. No matter what you say you’re in trouble. On the other hand, doesn’t one want to acknowledge people who say nice things about you? I’ve resolved this by using a fifty fifty rule. Half the time I respond and half the time I don’t.

Another conundrum: Should you give yourself five stars on good reads? If you haven’t been to www.goodreads.com, you should go because it’s wonderful. Readers review books and give them a ranking from one to five. Mine was 3.45, as of this writing, which caused me a tremendous amount of depression until I happened to be looking at Anna Karenina and saw that was at 3.9. Taste varies. However if I gave myself a 5, I could bump my ranking up a little. But would that be right? I decided no, though I could be persuaded otherwise. (And I did ask my brother to give me a 5.)

A corollary of this is, do you have to give your friends good reviews? That’s a tough one. I’ve met a lot of people who’ve written books and I like most of them. The problem is that if I give five stars to everything, then I’m devaluing my critical reputation, such as it is. Which is more important: friendship or integrity? I resolved this by not reviewing books by friends, for the most part, but then you get people mad by not posting reviews. I plan to resolve this issue by becoming more friendly with people who don’t write books.

Here’s another one: If you are at a book signing with another author, and her friends come along to buy her book, is it okay to look pitiful so they will buy yours as well. That’s a no-brainer. Of course.

Finally, if you talk to someone who mentions they belong to a book club, should you immediately mention your own book? And a corollary would be, if you are leading a book club, should you recommend your own book? In this case I didn’t but only because I knew that everyone in the book club had already bought it.  And at the moment I’m only leading one book club.

Such are the issues that preoccupy me. What do you think? What would you do?