Saturday, September 19, 2015

Highs, Lows, Frustrations, and Joys (Ch. 11-22)

Now that I am half way through Little Woman, I've come to the conclusion that it would never have a market in this modern day.

As a writer, I've been through the query process many times, and the biggest criticism I have gotten on my work is that I start off too slow.  You need a good hook in the first page/paragraph/sentence/half sentence that will propel the prospective reader in a hurtling death race to the final page.  If you can make it dystopian, dark, gritty, oversexed, and maybe a teeny tiny bit about demons or dark magic then all the better.  A book about a random period of time with the major driving plot point being that the father is off to war and sick just wouldn't cut it these days.  I mean, let's face it, nothing major happens.  It's a book about relationships and a slice of life.  You'd pretty much only find a probable audience for the novel in the Christian Fiction market.

These days it doesn't matter how well written it is, and don't get me wrong I believe Little Women to be one of the best written books of all time, if it doesn't fit a certain formula it isn't going to be picked up.  Honestly, if you put Hunger Games and Little Women up against each other vying for an agent's pickup which do you think would get picked?  Exactly.  And it's a tragedy.  Certainly they are each in a different genre, but it's a shame that there is nothing modern to compare it to.  There's the odd straight "fiction" novel that breaks onto the public consciousness like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Life of Pi, or The Help, but nothing that endures like these past few books and I wonder why that is.  The classics have a completely different feel than anything modern.  Whether we bring that to the reading because they are designated as classics would make for an interesting discussion to have, but for now, and for decades, nothing our species has written has endured for long at all.  Maybe we can't tell during our time in the same way people didn't know that they were in the Renaissance while it was happening.

My personal opinion, however, is that this work simply glows from scene to scene.  I've mentioned before about how the magic of these novels is in their reality, that this is really how people are and have all the hallmarks of having actually happened.  The newspaper, along with their little alter egos, and post office adventures are extremely endearing.

 It reminds me of the sorts of things my own children come up with when they are "dying" of boredom.  Lately when they say, "I'm bored!", I respond with a hearty, "Congratulations!".  After a minute of the confused look on their faces they ask why I'm congratulating them.  "Because, that means that you're on the edge of making up some great game, or might end up acting out a play of a story, or you'll get an amazing idea that you wouldn't have if you'd been on devices or watching TV.  We should get you bored more often".  That usually gets me an eye roll, an aggravated sigh, and fists on hips, but within ten minutes they usually prove me right.

My daughter chose Little Women (abridged version) as her book report book a few weeks ago.  Probably the biggest reaction she showed (other than "Wow, Papa, Amy is just downright mean") was the experiment of the girls to try and do nothing, to have a little holiday.  Ever since reading about that, and especially Beth's unfortunate casualty, she has endeavored to work a little harder even on the days she has free of chores.  Appropriately it has affected me in quite similar ways in the care and keeping of our home.

"Have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well.  Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty."

Try telling that to kids, let alone adults, these days and you'll get a response akin to, "Don't you tell me how to live my life.  You don't know me!".

In my daughter's homeschool materials I was delighted to find that at the top of her arithmetic pages and her spelling pages there are verses and maxims for her to read.  It used to be fairly standard in schools to have these "copybook headings".  We've become a culture that is obsessed with burning down the previous standards.  "If it's old it's bad," is something I've heard and even out of my own daughter's mouth.  It is an extremely human tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  It is a far easier thing to look at edifices and institutions of the past and say "burn it" than go through the hard work off picking over what is worth saving and taking with us.  As a species we always do what is easiest and most emotionally satisfying rather than what is actually best for us.  The older I get, the farther I look back and the more fastidious I am about sorting through the burnt wreckage for gems.

"Camp Laurence" was a delight.  I love it when I'm nostalgic for an era that I've never even been a part of.  Certainly I'm guilty of romanticizing the past and would find things to complain about if I were transported across space and time, but I do so love it, regardless.

Also, I love that Jo and I share the same birth month.  I do look at November far more pleasantly as a month because I was born on the first day of it.

Then the darkness comes...father is sick, Mother must leave, and then, while gone, Beth becomes sick.  Even though I knew it was coming, Beth getting sick was a blow.  I would write more except that I apparently don't like to talk about it.  Because of this, the return of Mr. March is incredibly bittersweet.  I do delight in Jo's quiet fury regarding the possibility that Meg and Mr. Brooke may get together.  There is something so honest, so genuine, about that emotion and how it plays out.

My great hope is that I'll be able to purposefully carve out more time for the novel.  I do have quite an affection for it.  It may even become one of those novels I dig out every year to remind myself there are encouraging and wondrous things in this world when it gets dark.

Of course October is the month that I read the Ray Bradbury novel Something Wicked This Way Comes to my daughter.  If you are looking for a good book for the prelude to Halloween it is very much worth your time, as is all Bradbury content.

Pax,

W