Girl's Eye by Sadie Netzer, Age 9

My daughter handed me this poem in an offhand manner yesterday. She'd written it with a large green marker in a sparkly notebook, in her bed with a flashlight after lights out. She's nine. I'm pretty sure I'm done as a novelist, because I don't know if I could ever match "sneeky and brave." But that's okay. 

Girl's Eye
by Sadie Netzer

From a girl's eye things
Must be pretty or perfect,
But some say okay and
Go on with their lives.

So some are princesses
And some are ninjas
And some just go on.

They all think differently but the
Eye of a girl is all the same.

The girl's eye is pretty and perfect and
Bright and so sneeky and brave.

We know what is right and
wrong, we know if something
is bad, we all see the same
and know the same.

So the girl's eye is
Amazing in so many ways,
But it never gets old.

How to Tell Toledo From the Night Sky Cover

Believe me when I say: "I love this cover." 

How to Tell Toledo From the Night Sky is a story of star-crossed lovers for the 21st century. Two astronomers meet and fall in love, only to find out that their mothers knew each other as children, planned for them to be soulmates, raised them to be perfect for each other, and then orchestrated their meeting. The book is about fate and determinism, science and faith, and asks the question: what is love?

Can't wait for you to read it.

A Marker to Measure Drift by Alexander Maksik: A Master Class in Craft

I picked up this novel with no expectations and no idea what it was about. By the time I got to the bottom of the first page, the book had me  by the throat and I finished it on the same day. I wish you could have the same experience, so if you trust me to recommend books, I'd say go and get it, read it, and then come back to read my interview with author Alexander Maksik, below.

Sometimes when I finish a novel that has really lit up my brain, I am restless with questions for the author. Why did you make that choice? What was going on here? This is exactly the type of novel I want to dissect, as if I can get to the bottom of it, find out what makes it so successful. A Marker to Measure Drift has some excellent lessons for writers.

Lesson #1: Everything is Personal. 

Maksik's main character is a young black woman from Liberia, and when the novel opens she is starving to death near a beach on a resort island in Greece. Maksik himself is a man, an American, and lives in New York. Yet one of the most arresting things about this book is how immediate and real Jacqueline's experience is, how unfalteringly close the prose brings us to her, physically and mentally, so I asked him...

LN: Your main character is a 24 year old African woman, and your novel is an antidote for that poisonous advice: "Write what you know." Your voice never felt contrived, Jacqueline's voice never felt artificial, and the relationship between her and her mother seemed to me to be particularly authentic. Did anyone ever tell you to write what you know, or imply that you couldn't properly write this character because you're a man?

AM: I don’t think there’s a writer alive who hasn’t heard that adage. The problem is that it’s often misunderstood as law, as a kind of strict limitation: you must only write about your immediate experience. It’s an absurd idea and it goes counter to the whole idea of fiction, the point of which is to fabricate, invent and imagine. On the other hand, what I know about relationships, about sorrow, about joy, about love, about lust, about loneliness, I know from experience. How can I not use what I know when I’m writing about these things? The adage should provide writers a sense of freedom rather than restriction. Writing fiction should be an act of deep empathy, a way to inhabit lives outside of our own, to imagine the experiences of others.

As for the rest, I believe strongly that it is the writing that must be evaluated. Not the writer.

Yes. Just because you're not in the demographic of the character doesn't mean you're not writing something sharply personal, something you "know" intimately, something from your own life.

Lesson #2: Memories Aren't Tidy

I'm always interested in the structure of novels and how these structures emerge -- whether they spring up fully formed in a first draft or whether they're the result of revision, rearranging. This book stays very tight to a short timeline, with flashbacks to earlier memories and scenes. However, the flashbacks aren't tidy and informative as flashbacks can sometimes be -- arriving just in time to provide a piece of information to a reader. The way Maksik handles his flashbacks, they're more glimpses or really "flashes" and the scattered way they came through seemed to mimic real memory and how haphazard and uncontrolled it can be. As a result, we don't really get "the whole story" wrapped up neatly, but we do get the whole story that's important to the character in the present. And I never felt like "Ah, I'm being filled in on the backstory."

LN: I found your choices regarding timeline fascinating -- there is a lot of the story that's left out, and yet we know enough, as readers, to follow the emotional arc of the character if not every little detail of her life. Did you write this book longer, and then cut? Or did you always know that this little piece of her story, with the past bleeding in in fragments, would be enough?

AM: I knew early on that this would be a short novel, and that it would be focused very precisely and intensely on Jacqueline’s immediate life. And I wanted as little separation as possible between Jacqueline and the reader, who would know only as much as she does. I like the idea of coming to understand a character through fragments, as you say. That’s the way we come to know people in life, isn’t it?

Whether or not it would be enough to be successful is another question entirely. I hoped so, but I certainly wasn’t sure. I’m still not.

Lesson #3: Follow Your Instinct, Not Your Rulebook. 

Another rule that Maksik violates, without drawing much attention to it at all, is the directive we've all heard to keep verb tense consistent within a novel. The end of the book moves to present tense. Switching verb tense is something close to my brain, since I've just finished going through revisions on a novel with some present tense sections, and it was a point of debate, whether that should be allowed to stand. When I asked Maksik about it, he didn't explain his choice or defend his scheme -- it seems he had no scheme and feels no explanation is necessary. He's just letting the material dictate how it needs to be told, and there's a narrative instinct at work there that he doesn't question. This answer was enormously satisfying for me to read, especially when he brought up another paragraph in present tense that I hadn't even noticed. I almost wanted to ask: "And your editor let you do that?" But the point is he knew it was there, and while it wasn't intentional it also wasn't an oversight. Somewhere between intention and oversight -- this must be where instinct lives.

LN: You switch to present tense in the final section. I feel it torques up the tension beautifully and almost invisibly draws us closer to Jacqueline as the book peaks. At what point in your process did you decide to do this, and why? Did you write other bits in present tense, and change?

AM: With that kind of thing, I really go by feel, by instinct. It wasn’t a conscious consideration, but I didn’t hesitate to do it. There’s another brief passage (p. 92) in the present tense. A single paragraph. I can’t say exactly why I made that choice. It hardly feels like a choice, really. It has something to do with that moment being a significant turning point in the novel. I could go on about it being a moment of tremendous relief for her, of change, of deep engagement. But that would suggest some serious intention and consideration, which if I’m to be honest really isn’t the case.

A Marker to Measure Drift is dense, foreign, and beautiful, but ultimately it is a very simple book. Here is a human, detached from humanity, in pain and need. The world swirls around, the past lingers, but this human is at the center, small and yet deep. Maksik's prose brilliantly delivers -- I think he has fully realized what this story could be, and has told it in the best way possible. An amazing accomplishment. Of course you should read this book, if you are a reader who is looking for a great story. But especially if you are a writer, this is one you should not miss.

(Find Alexander Maksik on Facebook and Twitter and you can preorder a signed edition here.)

Eleven Inequalities to Explain All Human Behavior

Do you think human behavior can be reduced to math expressions? 

Maxon's equation for walking at a reasonable pace.

In my novel, Shine Shine Shine, I introduced a character who interprets the world in terms of equations and code snippets. This helps him understand why people act the way they do, and allows him to determine how he should behave, in order to fit into different situations. He has equations to determine how fast he should be walking in varying circumstances, matrices to tell him when he should clap or stop clapping, geometry to show how his face should look when people say certain words to him, etc. 

Engrossed with this idea of reducing social etiquette to math problems, I began to wonder if human behavior could be explained in even simpler terms. So I have been attempting to develop a set of mathematical inequalities complete enough that one could use it to explain any behavior. 

Starting from the supposition that humans are consciously or unconsciously motivated by making choices between two inequal values or qualities, one which they see as better and one which they see as worse, I tried to pair these in expressions of either/or, where a person’s actions could be determined by choosing the preferred, or greater term. 

These statements aren’t meant to be truths, and none of these are universally applicable, of course, but here is my hypothesis: These eleven “reasons” can explain any choice made by a human being.

More > Less

Why keep on doing something that you’ve already done? Why try to get additional iterations of something you already have? Why not stop with one bite of chocolate? Why train and train to go faster or jump higher or lift heavier things? Why set a record? Why hoard dolls?

Elaboration > Austerity

Why does ornamentation exist? Why does a table go beyond being just a table and become a monstrosity of vines and coils and floral motifs and gold leaf? Austerity can be beautiful. And not everyone sees beauty in the same way. But this answers the question... why does the little girl choose the shoes that glitter? Why baroque?

True > False

People will endure pain, poverty, and all manner of deprivation for a cause they believe in, to stand up to wrong worldviews and defend what they perceive as right. They give away their money, donate their time and labor, against their self-interest sometimes, to prove that true is preferable to false, no matter the cost. 

Full > Empty

Looking at this figuratively, one can explain introverted behavior, gift-giving, whistling sea shanties on a long voyage. People seek out behaviors that fill them up, and yearn not to be bored, emptied, drained. They read, instead of sitting quietly for an hour. They stake out some alone time before re-joining a crowd. 

Kindness > Cruelty

Kindness! To turtles!

Often there is no apparent reason for kind behavior except that kindness in itself is preferred over cruelty. Of course it is not always the case. But this is why you get out of your car and are late to your meeting in order to help a turtle across the road, instead of smashing it with your wheel and moving on.

Work > Sloth

Production is satisfying. It fulfills a deep human need -- so much that we do it even when we don’t have to do it. People knit, sew, and bake, even though they can get knitted and sewn garments and baked goods more cheaply and easily than they can make them. People continue to work hard even after their basic needs have been met.

Success > Failure

Everyone knows the star of the football team gets the girl. Well, the winner of the chess tournament, the best diver, the most skilled guitar player, the best computer programmer... also get the girl (or guy). Success is attractive. Winning draws people to you, even if you’re winning at something obscure and unlikely. This also explains why people try, try, and try again through repeated failures, because success is so desirable, so preferred, people will risk everything to get it. 

Strength > Weakness

Interpreting strength as personal this can mean physical or spiritual strength, fortitude, etc. But in a larger sense it can be structural, or collective strength sought by a civilization making collective choices. This also explains why people choose something that lasts over something that dissipates. I considered making this "Function > Malfunction" -- but that's not quite the same thing.

Connection > Isolation

People often make choices and engage in behaviors purely to connect with other people, for the inherent satisfaction and goodness that it provides. Not always. Sometimes isolation gives “fullness” or “success” or “work.” But then Facebook. Twitter. E.M. Forster: “Only connect.” 

Pleasure > Pain

There are times when humans will endure pain for truth or work or success. But there are also times when we avoid pain just because it hurts, and seek pleasure for its own sake. People give up, stop short, quit. They fail, get lazy, and endure false worldviews. As Daffy Duck once said: “I’m allergic to pain; it hurts me.”  

Art > Absence

Making art doesn’t feed us, shelter us, or save us from attackers. But it is crucial enough to our humanity that we seem to always do it, no matter what. Music is better than silence, colors are greater than blank canvases, dance is greater than stillness; there’s something in us that needs to erect creative works against the absence, the nothingness that is the only alternative. We have to mark up our caves.

Well, does it work? Does it make sense? Can we use these to explain religion, war, doorknobs manufacturers, diets, blue ribbons, Crayola markers, and grief? Eleven is an arbitrary number, of course. Can it be reduced to fewer terms? Which of the above would you eliminate, and what others would you add? Are there redundancies or omissions? 

Hello Paperback!

Today the paperback edition of Shine Shine Shine is in stores! This is very exciting because it has special bonus material, a brand new cover, and I corrected the part where I called a river one name when it actually should have been another name. You pretty much need this version. Otherwise you might never recover from the whole river-misnaming fiasco that I perpetrated in the hardcover.

Not only can you find this novel at your favorite independent bookstore and online (and ebook!), but you can also find it at Target in a special signed edition! That's right, because Target chose Shine Shine Shine for their July Book Club Pick, I signed thousands of pages that were bound into thousands of books! Now you can find a signed copy at Target, or order one from Target online.

Here's a picture of the special message I included for Target readers, photographed by my friend Susannah in an actual Target store in actual Chicago:

Much as I love being sold in a place that also sells my favorite shampoo and also beach balls, I also urge you to visit your independent bookseller if you have one! Having spent a lot of time traveling this summer and staying in rural places where bookstores are hours away, I feel very lucky to live one mile from a great store: Prince Books in Norfolk.

I would love to see your pictures of you with Shine Shine Shine, visiting Target or any store, or hanging out on your rocket ship, or playing video games with your robot. Would you post them on Facebook and tag me so I can see too? Here's one from a friend in California: