Guilty pleasures

1. Amazon.com. While I was shopping online for some stuff for my daughter, I came across a DVD of old black-and-white mystery movies. Four movies on one disc. It was about the price of a rental. I added it to my cart.

2. Old black-and-white movies. So last weekend my wife and I popped the DVD of old mysteries into the machine. We had seen (and liked) "The Kennel Murder Case," with William Powell as private-eye Philo Vance, before, so we skipped right to something called "Eyes in the Night." It starred Edward Arnold as wealthy private investigator Duncan "Mac" Maclain, whom I'd never heard of. Well, not only was it a pretty good little flick, but Mac happens to be blind. Now, before the PC police get on me, the disc did not have Closed Captioning or Descriptive Video. Nevertheless, I thought the depiction of disability was pretty cool. He doesn't have superhuman hearing or smell, but he is constantly under-rated, especially by the bad guys. He does things like turn off the lights to disorient the bad guys. Naturally, the darkness has no effect on him, so he can knock them all out. Which is improbable, to be sure, particularly because Edward Arnold was pretty pudgy. But as I say, he's not superhuman. At one point he's rescued by his well-trained guide dog. (I wonder if all the movies on this disc involve dogs. I'll lecha know. )

3. Old TV shows. The blind detective led me to think about "Ironside," the old wheelchair-using detective series I loved as a child. And not just because Raymond Burr was even pudgier than Edward Arnold! I discovered the first three seasons are on hulu.com … and I've been addicted to them. I realize it's totally unrealistic--the dude ends up in all kinds of places, including, say, the second floor of a two-story house, with no explanation as to how he got there. In fact, he never calls ahead to check on access, which was even more of a necessity in those days than now. And the things he's able to do with his upper body and arms make me wonder why he's not using crutches instead. But there is a ramp in his apartment/office. And he does have a lift-equipped van (a lift-equipped truck, actually, in the first two seasons). By the end of the series, a decade or more later, I think he was driving the van himself, though I don't recall any hand controls shown… Again, not the best depiction of disabilities, but I can't help loving it. Something about seeing this guy in a wheelchair living a more-or-less normal life--bossing everyone around, no less!--feels good. Or maybe it's just nostalgia.

If you have favorite disability portrayals, or other guilty pleasures you care to share, please send them to me at bmattlin@post.harvard.edu

And the verdict is in…

To follow up on my previous post, Amanda Hocking, the self-published novelist who was seeking a traditional publisher, just signed with St. Martin's Press for--$2 million.

For her, it's not just about the money. (Yeah, sure.) She was tired of the demands placed upon those who self-published and self-promote.

"I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc.," she's quoted as saying, in the New York Times. "Right now, being me is a full-time corporation."

Which has always been my complaint about blogging. To do it right, it's a full-time job.

Curiously, public radio's Marketplace program just did a piece about another successful self-publishing venture. This time the author seems to have launched his own publishing company to get his book out there!

His point, to summarize: self-publishing is no longer a last resort for writers. It is increasingly the first resort.

By the way, keep your fingers crossed. I'm juggling (well, agitating for) two new NPR commentaries. And my book proposal is in submission at two new houses!

***

Recent Observations & Random Thoughts about Book Publishing

The current issue of the New Yorker magazine has a funny cartoon I can relate to: a child looks up from her computer at her puzzled father and explains, "I'm not wasting my life online--I'm building my brand."  (March 28, 2011, p. 96.)

For many of us, that's what it seems to have come to. Or is supposed to come to. We're supposed to go online to build our brand identity, our public persona, our following, our platform.

If that seems utterly ridiculous, that's because it probably is. But then again, just the other day came a story about a young woman who has self-published a number of sci-fi novels with such great success--entirely through online branding and promotion--that she's on the brink of signing a contract with a traditional publisher for, at minimum, $1 million.

Is it any wonder folks like me are scratching our heads? And I shampooed just this morning! (OK, I don't really scratch my own head, but don't be such a stickler!) What does it take to get a new author out there?

No one says it should be easy. After all, nobody invited us to the party. We came on our own. And as everybody knows, books are a dying art anyway.

Some of us are hooked on the idea nevertheless.

Not that we are all voracious readers. In fact, I've always felt that I'm a particularly hard-to-please reader. I'm not one to consume books in big hungry gulps. I read slowly, thoughtfully, carefully. I easily get bored. I don't mean I need to read thrillers, because they can be pretty boring too, if they're not well written.

For me, I guess it has something to do with the language and the thoughts and feelings behind it. Hard to say exactly.

But this impatience or persnicketiness makes me want to write the kind of book I would want to read and haven't found yet. So I decided to create it myself.

As one writing pal recently observed, though, the writer's life is often lived within one's own head. And if you want to be read, you basically want others to live within your head too.

So I guess it takes a lot of gall or self-confidence or something to assume anybody else would want to live in your head.

Or to put it another way, you don't have to be crazy about books to want to be a writer.  You just have to be crazy.



New Yorker 3-28-11, p. 96



***

Anti-Smoking's Monsters

Here's a column that never got printed or aired –

A recent Public Service Announcement on TV features a girl of about 12 lighting up a cigarette and then morphing into a wheezing, raspy-voiced woman with a hole in her throat.

Disturbing, yes. But for me, the real problem is the woman at the end looks and sounds an awful lot like me. And I've never smoked.

I'm a lifelong wheelchair user because of an inborn neuromuscular weakness called spinal muscular atrophy. Which, among other things, makes me especially susceptible to breathing difficulties.

The ad I'm referring to comes from California's anti-smoking effort, but similar ones appear elsewhere. No doubt their messages are clear and effective. And nobody is a stronger supporter of the cause than I am. But when I see them, I can't help feeling these images are a public DISservice to people like me because they exploit people's fear of disabilities.

I'm sure those involved mean no harm. They simply want to get their stories out there. The actress with the tracheotomy hole, Debi Austin, for example, says she likes to scare people about smoking. She's made a kind of career of it. But why choose this particular method for imparting this important message? Why not X-rays of cigarette-blackened lungs, say, or gravestones? Instead, these commercials paint severe physical disability as your worst nightmare. A fate worse than death itself.

It's not just the lung-cancer brigade that does it. An anti-drunk-driving ad several years ago showed a young man in a wheelchair as a similarly frightening symbol of the dire consequences of carelessness, stupidity, or hubris. Like Dorian Gray's portrait, these images reflect remorse, or punishment – horror stories even more real than the witches and goblins of old fairy tales, which were created to teach children not to talk to strangers or venture into shadowy places without adult supervision.

Yes, people with physical deformities have been exploited as cautionary totems for a long time. But aren't we supposed to be more enlightened and inclusive nowadays?

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to ban cautionary PSAs. Cigarettes are especially bad for those of us with breathing difficulties, who can suffer terribly just from being in the same room as a smoker. But that doesn't justify frightening kids away from people who look and/or function differently, just to educate them about very real dangers.

My two daughters learned Cigarettes Are Bad before they learned to ride a bike! There ARE ways. The old "this is your brain on drugs" ad taught a similar lesson without depicting drug users as grotesque creatures to shun and avoid.

So I'm hopeful. When I was a kid, in the 1960s and 70s, you didn't see mixed-race families on TV. Things can and do improve. Perhaps when my kids are my age, we'll recognize that real people – with warts and all – shouldn't induce fear. In fact, sometimes the most dangerous threats are the ones that aren't unattractive.

Hey! There's a message I could support! That would be a real Public Service.

###

Like Seinfeld, It's Really About Nothing…

I have learned something surprising (to me at least) about teenage girls.

They talk about breasts--and breast SIZES--even more than young teenage boys!

Who's got big ones.  Who's got small ones.  Who thinks she does but doesn't.  And so forth.

Which I had thought was impossible. Really. I mean, teenage BOYS talk and think and giggle and dream about--well, you know. Am I right, dudes?

But girls do too?  Yup.  Girls do, too.  Even more so.

Plus, young women even use what I used to think of as slang-ish terms not suitable for so-called "mixed company"--primarily "boobs"!

Is it a sign of the times? Or was it ever so?

Of course, I never had sisters. Now I have two daughters. Teenage daughters. So I'm coming to understand many, many, MANY things I never did before.

I relate all this not only to improve my Google scores (and apologies for disappointing you porn-seekers), nor to demonstrate that I am now--in my advanced state of maturity--actually able to say the word "breasts" with a straight face, more or less.

I say all this as an example of Things I've Been Learning About. The advantages of the passage of years … the knowledge--dare I say wisdom?--that comes with age.

Speaking of the passage of time, I've been off-line for several weeks. I've had deadlines, then got behind. So I became a complete working stiff. Doing nothing all day every day including weekends but work on the work.

When this happens, I become like a bricklayer. A factory. Absolutely no solitaire. No crosswords. No Facebook. Hardly read the newspaper online.

But now, that is past. At least for the moment. Deadlines are met. I have others, but they seem doable so far. I'm back among the living.

Yet I find that's not as automatic an adjustment as one might suppose. It requires a somewhat conscious effort. Call it decompression. You know:

• Reading and answering old e-mail.
• Remembering to do the things I like, the pleasant distractions. Such as reading books & the paper.
• Reacquainting myself with my literary side.  
• Getting back to my book-in-progress.
• Coming up with new ideas for articles and essays.
• And of course, catching up with my online pals.

Which reminds me: I received an e-mail from someone who recently posted a blog about how to interview counselors and psychotherapists. An interesting idea. There IS a glut of social workers and licensed counselors and such, after all, at least in my neighborhood. So one can and should be choosy. Why not interview a therapist as you would a gardner or housekeeper, to decide if he or she is the right one for you?

Not sure why the blogger contacted me or felt there was an overlap in our interests or audience. Maybe I was just on a list. But, hey, the Web is for networking, right? For building community. For overthrowing tyrants. Whatever.

So here's the XXXX [link removed by request, two years later.  Strange world.]

More publishing news soon, I hope. Meanwhile, happy Mardi Gras!

***

On platforms and prisons

Since I'm writing a memoir, I try to keep up on memoirs.

Lately, I've been reading Ari Steinberg's recently released Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian . A really good read. Funny, moving, sharply observed, energetic, and ripe for a TV spinoff.

I recommend it.

I was put on to the book by a friend. This same source told me that a TV deal is brewing (it's also on Steinberg's Facebook page). Which seems a natural, since it's basically a fish-out-of-water scenario.

In brief: A recent Harvard grad from an Orthodox Jewish family ends up taking a job as librarian and English teacher in a Boston-area prison.  A true story.

It's full of characters with kooky nicknames and outsized personalities. Inmates and prison guards alike. A mix of races and types. Pimp jokes galore! And lots of wry observations about how life on the inside often resembles life on the outside, and vice versa. Except when it doesn't.

Here's the thing: It's Steinberg's first book. Before publication, he had a few clips in the Boston Globe, apparently. That's about it. No "platform," as far as I can tell. That is, no proven audience. No following. No guaranteed sales.

Once he got the book deal, however, his byline began appearing on the DailyBeast, in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and elsewhere.

So the question on my (jealous?) mind is, how did this guy get a book deal when I can't?

In fairness, this book IS well written. I concede that it may be a much easier read than mine. Yet it also seems, well, fairly unimportant … an amusing, occasionally thought-provoking entertainment … a diversion. To me, it's not especially deep. It's a small story. Unusual, to be sure, and offbeat, but ultimately pretty safe territory.

When it comes to the vagaries of publishing and personal tastes, most people would just shrug. Still, I wonder.

Despite this book's breezy sheen, it's a memoir, not a novel. Though less gritty, it reminds me a little of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, a book I liked, actually. As you might recall, that's the one that caused a controversy when it was revealed the author made up most of the supposedly true tale.

I'm not saying Running the Books is a work of fiction disguised as a memoir--though I do notice it's the same publisher as Pieces', Doubleday's Nan Talese imprint.  By the way, when I contacted the house about my memoir-in-progress a while back, I was politely told mine "would not be a good fit for our list. We publish only literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, and your memoir sounds much too mainstream…"

These things always baffle me. Doesn't "mainstream" mean that it suits a lot of people, i.e., readers? And isn't that what having a "platform" is supposed to mean, too--that you'll have lots of readers?

Speaking of readers, you should know that I've had about 50 pre-orders for my unfinished book. Which is great! Thank you, all!

But as ever, we need more to put this over. A lot more.

Maybe it's true that there's no pleasing me!

Part 40 of "Miracle Boy": Join the crusade!

Over the past few days, I've been Twittering (tweeting?) excerpts from favorite rejection letters of the past.

Why?

Gosh, I'm glad you asked!

I do this not to elicit pity. Let's make that clear from the get-go.

Rather, I'm posting the rejects because…

1) I think they're funny, with their pretentious self-importance, the way they struggle to say "no" ever so humbly and graciously (they never "reject", they "pass");

2) they illustrate the overarching, vexing conundrum--namely, What the hell do these publishing gatekeepers want anyway? Or: Why is it so hard to get my book published?

I'm not alone in this.  I know many, many struggling writers share a similar pain.

Some of whom no doubt suck. But many of whom are worthy.

I contend that publishers and agents often don't really know what they're talking about. To be fair, they're in a tough spot. Publishing is a profession both noble and storied. In that, it's a lot like the dinosaurs. Grand, but probably on the way out.

Look, many of these people want to be instrumental in putting great works out there but feel constrained by the bottom line. So they contort themselves in amusing ways trying to justify their existence.

There is a paucity of and desperate need for risk-taking. Or something like that.

Let's face it: You've read excerpts from my memoir (a new piece of which follows). My potential market would seem pretty vast: NPR is reportedly broadcast on 900 U.S. radio stations, transmitted to more than 150 other countries via satellite, and heard by countless more over the Internet; Americans with disabilities number some 50 million, not to mention their families and the professionals who serve them (one group, Friends of Spinal Muscular Atrophy, boasts 70,000 members!); the Harvard community is pretty sizable; and even readers of the financial magazines to which I contribute should figure into the mix.

So again I ask, What more do these people want?

Speaking of more, I'll post more rejection notes soon. Meanwhile, here is more MIRACLE BOY.

***

When time comes for me to take the S.A.T., Mother—as I've taken to calling her, to show my maturity—gets me tutored. She knows I haven't had Alec's academic training. Mom has become happier, except for the weekends of chemo- and radiation-induced nausea, during which she hides herself in her bedroom. She's become an item with a man named Bob, another writer and Harvard grad, like Dad. She's also working full-time at a small publishing house. Though she complains that it doesn't pay much, she insists she enjoys the camaraderie and intellectual stimulation. She's even trying to write her own book about having cancer. She says when it's published she'll take us to Europe.

For her, seeing me grow up and managing a degree of independence is a relief and a joy, she says. As if she doesn't want to leave this world worrying about me.

She doesn't even get mad when I tell her I was smoking with friends in the Park. I think she's just glad I have friends, have enough autonomy to be a little naughty. Fitting in has always been important to her. Being well socialized. Maybe it's a case of boys will be boys. But I knew she would feel that way, which is why I told her. I was almost showing off, like smoking with the guys was a badge of acceptance I had achieved.

It's very nice that Mother and I now have this kind of understanding and honesty between us. I'm glad I didn't "divorce" her and move to Stamford. The shrink knew what he was talking about!

When I at last take the S.A.T., Mother makes sure a proctor goes over my answer bubbles. I'm able to handle a regular pencil (or lightweight pen) and paper pretty well, but she's worried I don't press hard enough to make my answers register.

Soon all such standardized tests will be required to make accommodations like that for students like me. But at the time, we have to take accommodations into our own hands.

###

That's all for now! I need to write more. I have outlined the rest of the story, but I'll spare you that. Leave some suspense. From now on, let's talk about what we need to do to get this thing published. Really published. Old-school-style.

Hope you'll keep riding with me...