Writer's Notebook - James Rafferty Blog

Considering Climate Change: Via Writing Fiction and Statistics

I have just completing reading the book How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil. In this book, Dr. Smil, who has written over forty books to date, takes on task of explaining how different processes which include energy production, feeding the world and a variety of material processes intersect with the challenge of Climate Change. In the introduction to this book, Smil explains that he is a scientist and that his life work has been to conduct a series of interdisciplinary studies which have resulted in many books. In style, he views scientists as either highly specialized (drilling ever deeper holes within a particular narrow discipline) or scanners of wide horizons. Smil prefers the latter approach and in this book devotes initial chapters to helping the reader understand diverse topics which include energy, food production, what he calls "four pillars of civilization" (cement, steel, plastics and ammonia). Smil makes a key point that in all of these areas, the use of fossil fuels has been highly integrated into the related processes and that this deep integration will make the overall challenge of de-carbonizing the world economy much more difficult than many of the "experts" perceive.  

I don't have the deep background in areas such as energy and food production which Dr. Smil describes, but like him, I've looked at the matter of climate change in an active way for many years. I studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for five years and earned bachelor and master's degrees in my chosen field of Management Engineering. After that I joined the high tech business world and took on diverse roles in information technology, operations, product management, consulting and marketing in the business world. I've also paid a great deal of attention to geo-politics. I like making connections between diverse fields and enjoy taking a systems view of how the world works. These perspectives have served me well for me in both the business world and in the diplomatic world of international standards. In parallel, I have pursued another passion, writing fiction, and I finished writing my first novel, a coming of age novel called Growing Up Single in 2006. Shortly after that, I decided to take all I'd learned from writing the first novel and choose a theme that energized me for my second novel. I thought hard about my various fields of interest and wanted a deep, challenging area could draw on the skills I'd developed in my professional life and where I could tell a unique story. 

In the fall of 2006, the concept of global warming was already getting attention in the news media and among climate scientists. But despite numerous international efforts, which at the time included agreements developed in Kyoto and other exotic locales, I wasn't seeing much progress reducing the carbon emissions that were causing global warming and It was obvious that the politicians in major countries, including the United States, and the powerful fossil fuel companies, were happy with the status quo. My sense was that this situation could go on for many more years and that the consequences of inaction would likely create a cascading series of climate-related disasters in the years to come. 

I started crafting a novel about a future year of climate disasters which would force the diplomats and politicians to act and approve treaties which would make a measurable difference in reducing carbon emissions. The lens I used to view this situation was through the experience I'd gained during ten years of developing domestic and international standards in telecommunications and in my business experience in working with vendors and customers from many countries.  

In my view, global warming was a classic example of what were often called "If This Goes On" science fiction novels which I devoured as a reader in high school and during college. I outlined a book tentatively titled Riding the Sea Change and started writing. I personally love statistics, but I'd noticed that the general public tended to ignore statistics, particularly of news they didn't like and needed to be reached another way. My goal was to create an exciting narrative story to reach those readers. I finished writing a first draft six years later and got copies out to beta readers who gave me a lot of useful feedback. I did more edits and started marketing the book to literary agents. My book tells a story about climate change as it follows diplomats who travel the world, fight battles amongst themselves and ultimately get pushed to do the right thing and create a treaty which could really change the world and reduce the carbon emissions trends.

In the years since I wrote the early versions of this book, my sense about how difficult it would be to forge an international consensus has been borne out. We have also seen many examples of climate related disasters over the past few years. I still feel that novels are a great way to grab the attention of readers by bringing the challenges of climate change to life in a narrative form. My journey in writing, editing and marketing this novel has been a great learning experience both in its writing and in keeping up with developments in climate.   

Returning to Dr. Smil's book, I think he has done a fine job in showing how deeply our society has baked in the use of fossil fuels into many aspects of our world. But the key tool he has used is to break down these trends and show the reader the trends is by using statistics. This is a great way to reach the engineers and scientists of the world, but many readers with less technical background may find it difficult to read through 229 pages that are crammed with statistics.  

In summary, I recommend that people who want to get a much deeper view on climate change and what it will take to address it should take a shot at reading How the World Really Works. But if you would prefer not to delve into a highly quantitative book such as this, you can also learn a lot by reading one or more of the novels that take on climate change in a narrative form.  

My book isn't published yet, but I'm working on getting it out there one way or another. Stay tuned. In addition, there other novels on climate change that are worth reading and can offer readers insights in a story form. Some books which I've read and can recommend include Bandwidth by Eliot Peper, Forty Days of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson and Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver.

Good luck on your climate change journey, whether its via the world of statistics, through reading great stories or some other approach which you choose to pursue.  

 

Book Review: Inbound Marketing

I just finished reading the book Inbound Marketing, subtitled Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs.  I've read and heard a lot about using social media for marketing, but authors Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah are like football coaches for new techniques of social marketing -- they break it all down into digestible chunks. 

Since I got interested in professional writing and related marketing techniques several years back, I've been hearing speakers exhort authors to "build a platform" and use social media to connect with your audiences.  However, often the details have been scarce.   No more.  Inbound Marketing is the textbook that takes a pulse of the tools that are out there -- websites, blogs, social media sites and analytics -- then offers step by step approaches to enable execution. 

So, if you're interested in how to use blogs and other social media to build a following, or have a business that you need to get off the ground, Inbound Marketing is chock full of tips that will help jump start your efforts.  If you're interested in learning more about Inbound Marketing, there's also a related group out on LinkedIn. 

Are you a writer who wants to build a platform and connect better with prospective readers?  Have you found helpful resources that will help you get there?   As a reader or as a customer for products marketing over the web, how do you feel about social media?  

 

Goals and New Beginnings

It's 2013 and time to set goals for the new year.  Recently I discovered that I'll be transitioning out of a product management position I've had for quite while, so it adds new zest to the planning process this year.  It's a bit scary, but I've gone through this before and come out on the other side, so I have a sense of what's ahead.  I'm also sensing that the time is right to move on to another venture, so there's more than a little natural rhythm pushing in that direction. 

I also continue to pursue my writing and am well on my way to finishing my second novel. I'm quite enthusiastic about this project and am confident that I'll have the completed and edited manuscript to market later this year.  I've also dusted off a non-fiction project concerning what it takes to build a successful consulting startup.  I had my own successful consulting company during the 90s and resuming that line of work is one of the possibilities for the year ahead.  We'll see. 

So that's what lies ahead for me in 2013.  I'll be working on my goal setting and various projects, not to mention figuring out my next career moves and my intent will be to write about that as it proceeds. 

Do you put together plans on a yearly or other basis?  Do you have any particular tips about planning approaches that work for you? 

Stories of My Aunt - An Appreciation

My aunt Carol passed away this past Friday after a long illness.  Carol was a remarkable person in many ways.  She once said to me that she'd been 10 years ahead of her time in several different respects and this was absolutely the truth.  She was not an easy person to be around all of the time, but she stepped up several times during her life and made a difference.  

Carol was an aunt, but only ten years older than me.  She was closer in age to me than to several of her siblings, which meant that we had a lot of common experiences.  In high school in Bloomfield, Connecticut, she earned numerous trophies and plaques playing tennis and these bits of recognition decorated my grandmother's house.  She graduated in 1960, then went off to the city for college.  My impression at the time was that she was going to Boston, but within a couple of years she'd landed in the Village in New York City.  She had a variety of experiences down there and got to know many folks like Bob Dylan, SF writer Chip Delany and poet Marilyn Hacker before they became famous.  She didn't particularly like Dylan, but was close enough to Delany and Hacker to show up as a subject of one of Marilyn's poems (see Nights of 1962: The River Merchants Daughter in her Back to the River collection) and later in one of Chip's autobiographical works.  

But I didn't know about any of that until later.  I discovered Delany's books in the early Seventies and met him in 1976, but didn't know about our common connection to Carol until a couple of years later.  I'm sure I saw Carol at family reunions in the Sixties, but don't remember much about that, other than knowing that she always treated me like an equal and had great stories about my childhood from times when she'd been my baby sitter.   In the late Sixties, she became a single mother and had a baby girl, Beth.  At the time, the details of this were shrouded in mystery -- she was reputed to have been involved with a man who'd died in Vietnam -- but she had changed her last name and now began raising her child Beth in Philadephia.  

I graduated from college several years later and joined a computer company, Burroughs, which offered courses in the Philly area.  On a couple of nights off, I went into the city to visit her and she was a gracious host, taking me to a very good Chinese restaurant and then we went out to have a few drinks and chat.   This was when I got to know her a lot better.  We were both in the computer business -- she was a programmer and I did similar work for my company -- but she also loved her city and was one of my mentors in learning about city life.  Her life wasn't easy -- she was the only single Mom I knew -- but she managed to combine work and being a mom in a marginal neighborhood near the University of Pennsylvania. 

So I visited her whenever business took me to Philadelphia and she always welcomed my visits and we'd take the time to have dinner together and she'd show me more of the city. 

A few years later, she relocated to Las Vegas and simultaneously created a startup business related to computer software.  It was classic Carol -- she mixed her professional and personal life in the startup -- while Beth stayed behind in Philly to finish her high school education.  Shortly after that, I had my first trip to Vegas to attend the Comdex computer show and we arranged to meet for a buffet dinner at one of the casinos. We had a nice dinner together and she told me about her experiences in the city and how the business was going.  I'm not much of a gambler, but she suggested I treat the Vegas gambling experience as an inexpensive form of entertainment.  It was good advice and helped me cope with the craziness that was and is Vegas. 

A few years later, the startup fell apart and Carol started making plans to return to the East Coast. Her mother Margaret was now 90 and had been living in an apartment by herself, but needed more help to stay independent.  Carol agreed to come back to Connecticut and rent an apartment that was large enough for the two of them. This began the period of Carol's life as caregiver for her mother.  Margaret was in good health, but she needed that extra support of live-in care and Carol put the rest of her life on hold and offered that. 

By now, I'd married and had children, and I have fond memories of taking my two sons to see their great-grandmother living in her own apartment along with Carol.  Margaret lived until the year 2000 before dying at the age of 97.  She was able to stay in the apartment for all of that time and Carol had been instrumental in making that possible. 

Carol returned to Philadephia and re-united with Beth.  Beth had gotten a college education and went on to get a job in the same computer field that several of us in the family had pursued.  By this time, Carol was retired, but she used her computer skills to gather the stories her grandmother Ellen had written during the Twenties and Thirties and distributed them to the family as part of our legacy.  Carol also got access to a large number of family photos and digitized them, then sent out a DVD to family members with the photos, Ellen's stories and the family geneology. 

A few years later, a social network called Gather.com ran a novel writing contest called First Chapters. I'd written a novel called Growing Up Single, so I joined Gather and prepared to enter the contest.  But Carol had gotten there first.  She'd joined Gather the prior year -- as an age 60+ social networker -- and she also had an SF novel, Juria, which she entered in the contest.  Once again, our paths had crossed and our common interest in fiction writing moved to the forefront.  We both put our chapters out in mid-February for comments from the Gather audience and hoped for the best. Privately, we exchanged emails and helped each other navigate this strange new contest experience.  We both got both praise and catcalls from the commenters, but Carol offered her candid and thoughtful feedback to me through private emails. It was fun sharing the experience together and the social network became another way for us to interact.  Neither of us won the contest, but we both learned a lot about writing and the world of publishing.  Better yet, we re-connected in this pursuit of our common interest.  She was gracious and always supportive during this often stressful period.       

A year later, another business trip took me to Philly, so I headed out on a weeknight and took the train to the suburb where Carol and Beth now lived.  Carol gave me a tour of the two story house and then we all went out to dinner.  We shared pasta and red wine, along with lots of stories about family, writing and the world of high tech we knew so well.  A few months later, Carol sent me an email, suggesting that I come by to visit again the next time I came to town.     

About six weeks ago, one of my brothers called me to pass on the news: Carol was dying.  She'd had a long term illness and now it had reached a critical point.  I got in touch with Beth, who confirmed her mother was gravely ill.  Beth had now put her life on hold and was the caregiver for Carol.  It was a tough time, made worse by the bureaucratic rules of a hospital that pushed Carol out during a point when she really needed that extra level of care.  We hoped for the best, but the end was near.  

So now Carol is gone, but she lives on in the memories of friends and family who knew her.  Carol was rebellious, rambunctious and even revolutionary in several ways.  She was truly sui generis (of one kind). This informed her many roles as mother, caregiver and friend, but I'll always think of her as my favorite aunt. As I've had this weekend to think about the times we spent together, it reinforces how much she meant to me and how she'd so often served as a caring and thoughtful guide as I navigated through various stages of life.  I offer these words in the spirit of celebrating her life and sharing a few stories.  I will miss her very much.

A Choice of Setting

One of the fundamental decisions a writer needs to make is to choose the setting for their story or novel.  I have travelled quite a bit, so this affords me a broad palette of possibilities when deciding where to set the story.  Sometimes I write science fiction, so there's an additional element of time which can also contribute to the overall setting. 

My first novel, Growing Up Single,  is a coming-of-age story set in multiple locations. I ended up using several of the places I'd traveled to as settings, including New York City, Paris, the Riviera and Montreal.  When writing a setting, I like to visualize in my mind's eye what I see and then include salient details in the description that I put in to words.  My goal is to sketch in enough sensory detail so that the reader can imagine them being within in the scene. I'm visual by nature, but adding a sprinkling of description using the other senses can really flesh out a scene.  Let's consider an example. 

I love being on the water, but the ocean has a very different feel than being alongside a lake.  If I'm writing about a walk on the beach by the seashore, the description would seem incomplete if no mention was made of the salt-infused air.  One might also feel the squishing of sand between the toes and hear cries of a passing seagull on this same walk.  As writers, we can include all of this sensory data in our descriptions, or weave in particular highlights and let the reader add in the rest. 

I find that writing about particular locations is highly subjective.  Paris is one of my favorite places, but when I listen to people talk about the city, inevitably they have found their own version of the city which has nuances that differ from my own experience.  At the same time, when I read Hemingway's delightful memoir, A Moveable Feast, much of which was set in the Paris of the Twenties, the city he described was quite recognizable.  One can still visit famous cafes by Montparnasse and other parts of Paris, and imagine that Hemingway is over in a corner scrawling notes for his next novel.  

The next time you visit someplace new, imagine what it would be like to use this setting in a story.  If you're a writer, you may be storing away the details or impressions of a location for potential use later on.  As a reader, you can consider how you'd feel if the location you're visiting appeared in a story and how you would react to that. In stories, we tend to focus on the characters, but things can get a lot more interesting if they're in a location which helps push them into new realms of experience. 

Talking and Writing

This has been a busy writing week for me. I'm getting ready to attend the Muse and the Marketplace writing conference, put on by Boston's Grub Street, this Saturday. I've participated at the conference the past two years and have gotten a lot of value out of it. I blogged about last year's conference here.

I've also been working on my second novel for quite a while and recently finished my first draft. The catch is that about two-thirds of the book is still contained in four notebooks written in longhand. I am very pumped to get ALL of the text into my PC, but this will keep me busy for quite a while. Recently, one of my writing friends told me that she'd been having good luck working with the Dragon Naturally Speaking software from Nuance. Aha. Possibly a way forward which might give my typing fingers a break. So, I'm trying it.

I opened up the package this past weekend and loaded it onto my laptop. That part was simple. The next step was to find the time to get my user profile established. Since the software needs to recognize your speech and then turn it into text, tuning it to your individual speech is essential, or so it seems. The first time, I worked on getting the profile established. This was relatively painless. The software wanted me to read a few text selections, which included excerpts from John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech. That part was fun, though they cut me off before the exhortation concerning what you should do for your country. They also wanted to get samples of content from my hard drive. Hmm. I let them go ahead. Finally, the profile was done.

Next, putting the software to work. On the first night, I fumbled around and spent a lot of time making manual corrections. One annoying thing was that Microsoft Word uses curly quotation marks by default and Naturally Speaking uses the generic type. I did an online lookup and the consensus seems to be that editors don't care which one is used. However, a mix of the two is distracting, so that'll need to be resolved down the road. My first attempt to turn the curly quotes off didn't manage to penetrate the fog of Word's autocorrect logic. Anyhow, after an hour or so, I'd moved about 430 words to my PC. Okay, but hardly a breakthrough.

The next night I tried again. This time I was more persistent and started reading longer stretches of text. The results were encouraging. The software did seem to be making adjustments and I had many fewer corrections than on the prior night. Despite various distractions in the background -- the current broadcast of American Idol -- I kept at it. The results: 2300 words in about 2 hours. I was pleased.

Two days into the experiment, I'm enthusiastic about the possibilities for this software to accelerate how quickly I can turn my hard copy into editable PC-based text. I'm still learning more about the software -- for example, on it's correction features -- but it's already getting me thinking about how using this tool might change my writing process for the better. I'll keep at it and report back on this blog as I gain more experience.

Vacations and the Written Word

Ah.  Finally, it's summertime and families like mine are packing their bags and heading out to their favorite summertime destinations.   Years ago, we'd strive for variety and our family still likes that, but there's a lot to be said for finding a place where you can unwind in comfort and indulge in a few tried and true pastimes. 

 

This is also a great time of year for the written word.  I'm always finding my reading time squeezed when I'm at home, but it's so much easier to find the time to sample those unread magazines and dip into that long promised novel when the bills and lawn mowing aren't there to demand your attention.   For example, I just finished the last couple of chapters of Herzog, by Saul Bellow.  It's a an entertaining but demanding novel that segues into imaginary letters written by the protaganist to girl friends, philosophers, family members and the like, but it's propelled by literary energy and a cast of memorable characters that held my attention.  

I know, I'm meandering, but that's the beauty of vacation time, you can suspend the notion that everything is on a timeline and let the world stretch out into more natural rhythms.  It works the same way for those of us who are writers.  I've been writing chapters during vacations for many years.  I can head over to a picnic table with notebook in hand, catch glimpses of the sun when I want and still hang out with the family.   Or, at night, as other family members descend into slumberland, I can write a few more lines or do editing on my PC.  In theory, I could bring my laptop to the beach, but that feels a bit too geeky and the notebook is much less intrusive.  Plus, I can set the notebook down, take a swim and then return, without worrying that the PC will wander off.  

For those years when we've taken a driving vacation, featuring stops at a few destinations, I've enjoyed bringing along a journal and making notes about whatever catches my attention.  I can remember one summer when the family drove into Quebec; my oldest son and I both wrote journal notes on the people we met and the places we travelled.  It added an extra dimension to our trips -- not just photos to remember these places, but also our own words, written when the memories were still very fresh.  

So, what are your thoughts on vacations and writing?  As a reader, is this one of your favorite times to open up a novel by a favorite author and hang out by the beach?   Do you like to write journals or blogs about your travel experiences?  If you write fiction, how does vacation time work for you?  Is the muse stimulated by having all of that extra free time?   Are you able to balance family and writing time?   Or do you just want to hang out on the beach and give the written word a rest?  

 
 

Brainstorming

In my writing group, The Writin' Wombats, one of our members posed a question about brainstorming.  I started to write about it and quickly realized that I had a lot of related experience, some of which is relevant to writers and much which can be applied to just about any kind of project. 

In my novels, I've started both of them by doing a bit of free form brainstorming on paper.  I like to draw maps which show topics I'd like to write about and then start filling in the connections.  If a topic is dense enough in its possibilities and connections, it just might be a good candidate to build a novel around.  After brainstorming about topics, I've found it's a natural development to start building characters once you've got a nucleus of good ideas.  From there, it's not a big step to actually start writing prose or develop a chapter outline.

I really learned about brainstorming firsthand from one of my early bosses.  I'd brainstormed before this, but he was systematic about it and got me enthused as well.  It helps to have the right tools.  In his case, these were two large white boards, which virtually begged one to get out the colored markers and start putting ideas down.  One key aspect of brainstorming is to focus first and foremost on generating ideas and writing them down, then worrying about the quality of the ideas later on.  There's nothing that will shut down a good brainstorming session faster than trying to evaluate the ideas as they are being generated.  Hold off the tendency to criticize and let the ideas get out there.  Among other things, this opens up the possibilities for cross fertilization between ideas, where one idea builds on another, which leads to another and so on. 

When I had my own business, I knew I needed to do planning, but struggled to find the time.  I also needed to get out and get a bit of exercise.  My solution:  the planning walk.  I had an inexpensive tape recorder -- these days you could use an ipod -- and I'd use the walk to brainstorm about ideas for building my business.  I generated lots of useful ideas and managed to get out of the office.  

I've blogged previously about OneNote here and here, but this is another example of a tool that is very well suited to brainstorming, since you can take notes in a number of free from styles and even draw maps if that's what you'd like to do.  

So that's a few words on my experiences with brainstorming.  

Do you like to brainstorm, whether for writing or another kind of project?   If so, what kinds of approaches do you take?  Do you have any favorite brainstorming tools?  

Jazzy Notes at Newport

Last Sunday I attended the Newport Jazz Festival.  I'm happy to report it was outstanding and well worth the price of the tickets.  I'm a long time fan of jazz and also like to play jazz guitar myself.  So you might think this visit to Newport was just the latest in a series, but in truth, this was the first time I've gone.  Why this time?  The lineup on Sunday was outstanding, my oldest son is also now a huge fan of jazz and it fit our schedule.  So we ate an early breakfast and drove my car down to Newport. 

We had one wrong turn along the way, but still made it in plenty of time to hear the day's music.  We started by staking out a spot on the lawn.   The Fort Adams State Park, site of the festival, literally is a fort.  The main Fort stage faces outward toward Narragansett Bay and the lawn seating surrounds a small island of reserved seats.  We walked to the far side of the stage, close to the harbor, and migrated inward until we found a clear patch and set down our folding chairs.  We were about two hundred feet from the stage, but the sound was very clear and a large screen offered views of the action on stage. 

We promptly left that spot and headed to the other stages.  In this venue, everything is set up in relation to the fort, so we passed one stage set up under a canopy to the left of the fort (Harbor stage) and continued through an opening into the fort to find the last stage (Quad Stage), also set up under a tent.  Clouds from earlier in the day quickly burned off, leaving us with a warm day that required large amounts of sunscreen to fend off the sun and water to stay hydrated.  Hence, the tents were very popular. 

We began our day by taking a seat and listening to the Matt Wilson quartet.  The first song was wild.  Wilson's quartet played very open jazz ala Ornette and was accompanied by a jazz string section, which plucked along to match the avant garde stylings of drummer Wilson and his band.  The raucous music - laid down by the instrumentation of sax, trumpet and bass in addition to Wilson's drums -- built to a crescendo and then backed all the way down to the quartet playing percussion on tiny porcelain tinker bells.  Then the instruments returned and built the music up to a wailing finish.  The music was out there, but clearly good.  Whatever illusion I had that Newport's lineup would be mostly conservative was instantly demolished. 

Next, we returned to the main stage, where a sextet led by pianist Amina Figueroa played melodic latin-tinged jazz that reminded me of the early days of Chick Corea's Return to Forever in their pre-electric days.   The band was excellent and Figueroa's music was easy on the ears. 

During the break, we headed for the concession stands in front of the fort and found a Greek menu to our liking.  My son and I both ordered lamb gyros.  A few minutes later they arrived -- thin slabs of lamb, covered by a bed of salad, onions, tomatos and mint, all covered in a light white sauce, then stuffed into freshly warmed folding buns, shaped like burritos, but much tastier.  We also had mint flavored lemonades and a large combo plate of thick hummus and copious amounts of tabouli accompanied by slices of pita bread.  We walked over to the portion of the lawn by the harbor, found a set of flat rocks to sit on and tended to our lunch.  The food was all outstanding -- easily the best Greek food I've had in years.  So we were well fortified to take in more jazz for the rest of the afternoon. 

Here's a picture of the main Fort stage from where we sat. 

 
 

Next up on the Fort stage was Arturo O'Farrell's Latin Jazz Orchestra. This band truly was an orchestra and had at least twenty musicians playing at all times.  This group played with high energy and extends the tradition of latin jazz groups from bandleaders like Tito Puente and Chico O'Farrell. Arturo was very knowledgeable about the traditions of this music and offered expert commentary to go along with each song.  One of the band's early songs was the result of a commission.  The title: Wise Latina.  This music had a contemporary feel and featured several of the band's fine brass players.   A couple of songs later, jazz trumpet great Jon Faddis joined the group.  His hot trumpet offered the expected stratospheric high notes and rapid flurries of sound, but he also played with a tone which at various times reminded me of either Miles Davis or Dizzie Gillespie.  Later, the band played another composition which Arturo noted was consistent with the band's mission to extend the pallette of Latin jazz, in this case by bringing in Ecuadorian influences. 

There was much more music on this day and I'll write more in my next post. 

Writer's Notebook: Book Review of Rock Paper Tiger

Several years ago, I finished my first novel and began looking for a way to get it published.   A few months into the process, I heard about a contest for novelists being held by Gather.com, a social network.  I entered the contest by submitting my novel’s first chapter.  By contest’s end, over 2500 entries had joined mine in the contest. 

Many of the writers stayed on Gather to comment on entries and watch the final stages of the contest play out.  Around this time, one of the other contest participants wrote an extended post expressing her frustration with the contest and all of the antics she’d seen to game the system.   A like-minded group of writers joined in and we had a lively exchange on this particular Gather conversation “thread.” In addition to discussion about the pros and cons of the contest, we talked about writing and the various routes to publication.  We were having fun with this, so she was cajoled to write a second post and the “Writin' Wombats” online writing group officially launched under her leadership.  

What does this have to do with the new novel, Rock Paper Tiger, published by Soho Press?   The woman who wrote that first thread on writing and formed the writing group was Lisa Brackmann and Rock Paper Tiger is her first published novel.  I’ve just finished reading the book and have to say that Lisa has written a thriller that really delivers the goods. 

Rock Paper Tiger begins in Beijing and we follow the first person account of Ellie (known to her Chinese friends as Yili), an American whose life is China is beginning to fall apart.   The first thirty pages set the stage well.    Ellie has an artist friend named Lao Zhang who lives in an out of the way suburb called Mati Village.   She takes the subway to see him, but he’s acting strangely.  Along the way, Ellie meets a few of Zhang’s acquaintances – lots of people like to hang around him.   She also begins to hear that some foreigners in suits are looking for her.  

Ellie takes us on a tour of the underside of Beijing as she moves around and it’s not always pretty.  The book is set after the 2008 Olympics have taken place and the city is a mix of the glossy new and much else that is run down.  Ellie loves Beijing, but is a foreigner and is never allowed to forget it.  When the men in the suits start getting nasty and Lao Zhang decides to leave Beijing for a while, Ellie decides to hit the road and visits several other Chinese cities.  

Interwoven within this story are flashbacks to Ellie’s experiences as a medic in Iraq, where she gets involved with a soldier named Trey and gets inadvertently pulled into treating prisoners who’ve been undergoing harsh interrogation.  Eventually we learn how she and Trey ended up in China and the tale cycles forward. 

Ellie is not always a likeable character, but she’s compelling and I found myself wanting to know what would happen to her even when it feels like every step she’s taking is the wrong one. Ellie moves from place to place but never manages to elude the “suits.” The tension mounts and leads toward an intense conclusion which draws together the threads of Ellie’s adventure in a satisfying way.  

Rock Paper Tiger dips into aspects of today’s headlines about China, including ethnic tensions, the aftermath of earthquakes and the censorship of online information, but all of this fits in well within the thriller and Ellie’s quest to make sense out of her life.  Brackmann puts the reader on the ground in China and we go way beyond the headlines and get a sense of what life in China is like -- both for the rising Chinese entrepreneurial class and for the many people who continue to live from day to day in lifestyles that haven’t changed for centuries.    The book feels like an insider’s look at today’s China, but manages to pull this off in the context of a character driven novel and a thriller with lots of bumps and chills along the way.   This is a fine novel and I recommend it to readers who enjoy thrillers, want to learn about today’s life in China or just want to read an offbeat, challenging novel written by a talented new writer.   

Writer's Notebook: Extrapolation and Context Shifts

In my online writing group, the Writing Wombats, we talk about various aspects of writing and sometimes get into chats about various aspects of craft and creativity. 

In a recent thread, we discussed the topic of how your experiences show up in your writing.  I'm currently writing my second novel and have written numerous short stories, so I've had lots of chances to play around with my basket of experiences and continue the exploration in my fiction. 

I write what I know, but often veer into extrapolations that take my characters into situations where they make different choices than I would, which is a lot of the fun of it. I have traveled to a lot of different countries, cities and other locations, and like to use these locations in my writing. I also like to take an experience I have had and then do "what-ifs" to explore those roads not taken.

Engineers generally know that they can't reliably take data from one context and extrapolate to prove a totally different context; but for novelists, those context shifts are fair game as you build a world for your characters to play in.

My first novel, Growing Up Single, was set in locales which included New England, where I grew up, New York, Paris, the Riviera and several cities in Canada.  The settings in my second novel are even more diverse and include stops in Asia, other parts of Europe and the Middle East.  But a setting is just the beginning.  It offers a canvas upon which a story can unfold. 

If you are a writer, do you mostly rely on your own experiences to shape your fiction or is this foundation really more of a jumping off point to fuel stories that go beyond your experience? 

If you are a reader, can you tell when the writer has really experienced the place or kinds of events that are depicted?  Or would you prefer to be brought into a very different world that takes you away from those touch points with day to day life?