Auggie and Eli

Thinking makes it so

/ J. F. Riordan / 19 Comments

Who’s your audience? It’s a question asked of writers all the time. Agents want to know. Publishers want to know. Even book club readers want to know. Most writers know how to gauge our answers to meet our business needs. Of course, to be published, a book needs to meet customer demand. But, to be honest, most of the time that’s only a guess based on what has sold before, and demand can also be created by marketing teams and media campaigns.

So, while I am delighted to have my books published, I don’t think about any of that when I’m writing. I really only write for an audience of one: me.


I write the kinds of books I want to read, and to be honest, while I do read for information, I mostly read for comfort and companionship. When I had high-pressure, stressful day jobs, I didn’t want to come home to read high-pressure, stressful books. I taught in the inner city. I didn’t want to read about suffering, murder, crime, drug use, and lost opportunities. I lived with that every day. When I moved into an executive position, I still spent a great deal of time thinking about human misery and how to help alleviate it. Again, I was often in the inner city, visiting schools, homeless shelters, prisons, half-way houses, and addiction centers. I also had many uplifting experiences in the fine arts world, to be sure. But what hung with me was always the human traumas that went on before my eyes every day.

I don’t think I’m alone in that. Many people have intense, exhausting, high stress jobs. And some of them find catharsis in reading about intense things, perhaps because at the end of a well-written book, there can be a release of the built-up strains.

But that’s not for me. I want to go to a world where there is a group of characters who feel like friends I can hang out with. I want to look deeply at the small miracles of daily life. I want to feel enmeshed and revived by the creativity and joy of an ordinary day. And so, both in the novels I write, and in my books of essays, I linger on the hope, the joy, the beautiful and all the ways in which frustrations, unkindness, and misery can be diminished—although never eliminated—by the way we focus our attention.

And so, when I’m writing, my incentive is the pleasure I take in joining the worlds I’ve created. I write (mostly) about characters I want to be with, who live in a world I enjoy being in. Maybe that’s selfish. I don’t know.

But honestly, I don’t know any other way to write; I don’t think I could write a horror story if I had to. “Write what you know” is the old adage, and I really don’t think there’s any better advice. Luckily, based on my readers’ comments, the kinds of books I like are also liked by other people. And that’s a pretty good system, I think.

So now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go hang out with some old friends.

Cheers.

***

Turkey in the Sky Addendum

Many of you couldn’t find the turkey in the photos yesterday. That’s because I don’t have a good zoom lens. But here’s the best I can do.

Today’s Gratuitous Dog Photo

He’s snoring.

You can’t be dry in the dark

/ J. F. Riordan / 39 Comments

Yesterday was a curiously lost day. It was a little bit worrying to realize how much I depend upon technology, and how lost I was without it.

It was a busy day for us, however. There were branches hanging heavily with snow needing to be brushed off or beaten with a broom to keep them from breaking. There was the driveway to clear, along with the two foot high barricade of ice from the snowplow. And there were fallen branches to remove and add to the growing bonfire pile, all to the cheerful accompaniment of playful dogs.

But once we had done what could be done, we came inside to a strangely silent house.

At one point, cold, but too grubby and unshowered to go anywhere other than the hardware store, I just drove around, charging my phone and listening to music, while my exhausted husband napped. The snow was beautiful in the sunshine.

Later, despite my hair—which made me look as if I’d just been released from the local asylum—we went to a nearby restaurant for wifi, and by mutual consent, put Dry January on the ash heap of history. We met our favorite neighbors there, by chance. They had also been caught in the clutches of Dry January, and had thrown it over the night before, when their tree took out everyone’s power line. We traded anxieties about frozen pipes, spoiled food, and what to do if there was still no power on Sunday. They, too, have a pair of big sweet dogs, which we agreed tends to make you unpopular with hotel management. Our conversation was interrupted by several recorded phone calls from the power company, dangling hope with laughable vagueness.

Nevertheless, on the way home, parked alongside the road to our house was an armada of utility trucks, and the big tree that had been leaning perilously on the main lines was gone. The dogs greeted us as if we’d been gone a month, even though it had been little more than an hour. The house was ridiculously dark and growing cold, so we settled into a very early bed, with dogs and the gas fireplace to keep us warm, buckets of snow on the hearth, downloaded movies, and a decanter of Irish whisky.

This morning, the heat is on; hot coffee was waiting when I got up at 3:30; and my computer is up and running. In a little while I will reload the dishwasher and finish restoring the kitchen to its normal cheerful order. Most important: we will be able to watch the Packers game this afternoon.

As with so many life experiences, we have come away with an important lesson learned.

January is no time to give up alcohol.

***

Gratuitous Dog Photo

Eli kept his big coat on all day.