Man On The Street

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One of my favorite things about publishing a novel—aside from the international stardom and incalculable wealth—is that I’ve had the opportunity to call in and speak with book clubs around the country.

I’ve done it maybe a dozen times now over the last year and a half, and it’s always a good time.  I say hello and try to sound literary, and then the group tells me a bit about their reaction to my book and then asks me questions. 

Each group seems to ask a question that I’ve never been asked before—often about something I’ve never even thought about.  But there are a handful of questions that come up a lot, and one of those relates to whether or not I ever encounter my fictional characters in real life. 

Some context here. Tom Violet, the main character in my novel Domestic Violets, is haunted by this phenomenon throughout the book.  Tom is himself a struggling writer, and he sees his own characters, like ghosts, at key moments in the plot of Domestic Violets.

As a writer, it’s always seemed romantic that I’d see the people I write about wandering around in real life.  But it had never actually happened to me before.  That is…until last week.

I’d dropped my daughters off with their nanny and was in my car working my way through downtown Baltimore on the way to work.  The weather was crappy, which wasn’t helping, and I was listening to covers of Beatles songs.  And suddenly, there he was.  His name is Andy Carter, and he was walking out of a Dunkin Donuts with a cup of coffee.  He looked at me—if just for a second, probably because I was a random guy stopped dead at a red light staring at him—and then he flipped up the hood of his rain jacket and walked across the street. 

He didn’t look back at me. The light eventually turned green and I started inching forward again.  It was pretty obvious that he wanted to though.

“Hey,” he would have said.  “Hey, you.  Do us both a big favor and quit looking at pictures of Frowny Cat online and help me figure out my fucking life.  Seriously, man…it’s a cat that frowns.  Ha-ha. Get over it!”

That’s the thing about my characters…they swear a lot. 

And yes, I am available for book clubs.  Send me an email and we’ll set up a time.  

thenormannation@gmail.com

What’s Your Return Policy?

When I was younger, each year about this time I’d come up with an elaborate list of my favorite things of the year.  Books, movies, albums, TV shows.  With virtually no responsibilities and an embarrassing amount of spare time, I was able to consume all of these things incessantly. 

Not so much anymore. Sadly, thanks to the two small time vampires living in my house, I now read, watch, and listen less than ever. And, to make matters worse, I now have the short-term memory of an aging, wide-eyed goldfish, which has left me unable to remember anything beyond about three and a half weeks ago. 

So, instead of struggling and Google searching and giving myself a big headache, I thought I’d skip all the pop culture stuff and share my favorite moment from this past year. Somehow, all by itself, it manages to be both a perfect year-end review for 2012 and an exact microcosm of my current life.

A few weeks ago, plagued by cabin fever and an odd wave of naïve optimism, my wife and I decided to take both our daughters to the shopping mall by our house.  Our first stop was the Macy’s restroom where my three-year-old, Caroline, tried unsuccessfully to go to the bathroom. Our second stop was a different Macy’s restroom where Caroline tried unsuccessfully again to go to the bathroom.   

“It’s not coming out,” she told me.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

And so we soldiered on. Our destination: J.Crew.  I needed to find one more present for my dad, and my wife had a bunch of stuff from the store’s website to return.  Like a lot of unnecessarily tall women, about 90% of what she buys online goes back immediately.

With her mother distracted at the register, my one-year-old, Hazel, sensed weakness and demanded I let her out of the stroller. She did this by writhing and screaming like a wild animal who’d been tethered to a cinder block. When I set her down, she took off running toward…well, everything.  First, she tried to flip over all of the mannequins.  Then she unfolded an entire table of colorful wool sweaters.  Then she hid inside a clearance rack of polos and laughed at me. All the while, I kept one eye on Caroline.  She stood quietly, examining some long necklaces on a table by the registers—too quietly, actually, but I was distracted by the fact that Hazel was now attempting to barge into occupied dressing rooms.

By then, a long, impatient-looking line had formed behind my wife.  As luck would have it, this line was made up entirely of people in their teens and twenties. When I came out from the dressing room carrying an angry Hazel, I noticed that everyone in this line, each of them well-rested and childless, was looking at Caroline. She was saying “Mommy” over and over again, and her expression had turned panicky.

I knew right away what was happening, but I also knew that there was nothing I could do about it.  I imagine it’s how a person feels seconds before witnessing a train derailment. 

And then Caroline announced to all of us that poop was coming out. 

Happy New Year, everyone. 

thenormannation@gmail.com

Free Fiction. And It’s Free.

I was fortunate this month to have my short story Miss November included in a very cool, totally free digital anthology from my friends at Harper Perennial called Forty Stories. 

I wrote Miss November during a break from my novel Domestic Violets, which was published last August.  Seeing both of them now in retrospect, the similarities are pretty vivid.  Both are very domestic stories set squarely in the middle of marriages in transition, both include couples hell bent on not talking about what they really should be talking about, and both use humor as a device to mask their author’s long list of personal insecurities.   

The narrators, though, at least in my opinion, are two very different guys. While Tom from Domestic Violets infuriates everyone around him and sprints headlong toward trouble, Mitchell from Miss November is much quieter in his shortcomings, which somehow results in a more ominous conclusion. 

I wish I could tell you that Miss November was easy to write—that I hammered out those thirteen or so double-spaced pages over the course of a few hours while watching old Daily Show reruns.  But, in truth, it was a total pain in the ass. 

A writer friend of mine named Ryan Effgen told me once that a novel is like the Grand Canyon while a short story is like a diamond.  I can’t remember if he made that up or if he was quoting someone, but, either way, he was right.  Domestic Violets is a big, messy hole in the ground with jagged edges and streams that seem to go nowhere.  And Miss November is…well, at least my attempt at…something very small and really shiny.

You can download the entire Forty Stories anthology here to your computer, or here from Amazon.com to your space-age e-reading robot device. In either case, Miss November appears on page 298.  And did I mention it’s free?

thenormannation@gmail.com

A Bad Day For Book Nerds

To say that my novel, Domestic Violets, which came out last August, was eligible to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is a true statement.  Technically. Right? I mean it’s true in the same way that I was eligible to be named People’s Sexiest Man Alive.  After all, I am a man, and I am alive. Regardless, I think we can all agree that I can speak about this year’s lack of a winner with a healthy bit of objectivity. 

In failing to name a winner for fiction, the folks in charge of handing out Pulitzers did all of us a disservice.  And by “all of us,” I mean the rapidly shrinking number of people out there who still care.

Let’s face it—it’s getting harder and harder to be a true Book Nerd.  While certain aspects of TV have never been worse, much of it has never been better. Thanks a lot, HBO and AMC. Movies are delivered right to our homes now—either by mail or modem. And our actual televisions are so enormous and ridiculously advanced that even the shittiest movies you can imagine are marginally impressive, at least visually.  Even the weather is against us.  Thanks to Climate Change, I can’t remember the last time it was actually cold enough outside to not feel guilty about laying around and reading all day. 

But, as depressing as all of that sounds, we could always look forward to the Pulitzer.  The National Book Award is fun to follow—and so is the PEN/Faulkner.  But there’s something different about the Pulitzer.  Each year, when the winner is announced, I email my Book Nerd friends and we discuss it.  If we’ve read the book, we either complain about it winning or celebrate it.  If we haven’t read the book, we’re embarrassed, and so we go out and buy it right away.  And for a few days, we aren’t talking about Don Draper.  We aren’t talking about politics or sports or movies or whether or not 30 Rock is a repeat.  We’re talking about books. 

I’m not saying that choosing the best novel of the year out of thousands is an easy job. In fact, it sounds pretty overwhelming.  Next year, though, for the sake of everyone in the country who is still struggling to cling to Book Nerdom…come on, seriously…just suck it up and pick one. 

thenormannation@gmail.com

What They Don't Tell You

We’ve all seen movies where hapless, sensationally unprepared people are thrust suddenly into parenthood.  The filmmakers usually swing broadly here, giving us any number of comedic diaper malfunctions and projectile vomiting. 

I can’t help rolling my eyes because these things become so commonplace so quickly that they’re basically irrelevant. The other day, my five-month-old puked on me with such force that it nearly knocked me over.  Still, as warm formula and ground-up carrots ran from my chest down to my lap, I don’t even think I changed my facial expression.  My only real concern was whether or not any of it got in my soda.

What the film industry fails to prepare young parents for is something far more difficult to deal with, and that is, well…boredom.  Caring for small children can be really, really boring.  There, I said it.

I know that sounds terrible and I should probably stop typing and go report myself to Social Services immediately, but, if you have little kids, you know that I’m right, particularly on Sunday afternoons in March when it’s just barely too cold to go outside. 

You’d love to read or go see a movie at an actual theater.  You’d love to listen to music, eat at a restaurant, attend a sporting event, go for a run, drive without having someone scream gibberish at you from the backseat, or have an interesting conversation with a grownup.  Sadly, these things aren’t possible right now—and they won’t be for awhile.   

So, instead, you sit around the house.  And when I say “around the house,” I actually mean “on the floor,” because your two-year-old wants to play a game she made up called “Climb on Daddy.”  And when she says, “Climb on Daddy,” what she actually means is “Step on Daddy’s Crotch.”  And while your crotch is being stepped on, you’ll be watching the second half of some random, heavily edited-for-TV movie on ABC Family that you found while endlessly flipping.  Today, for me, that movie was Love Actually.  And you’ll do this all one-handed, because your five-month-old will insist on being in your arms the entire time, and if you put her down, even for a second, she’ll scream until she’s red-faced and gagging, and she’s not due for another nap for at least two more hours.

And, for the love of God, what’s that smell?  Whatever it is, the whole house smells like it. 

Please, don’t take this as me complaining. I chose all of this for myself—we all do, eventually.  But if you haven’t made this choice yet, I beg you to turn off whatever device it is that you’re reading this on and go somewhere. It doesn’t matter where. Seriously.  Anywhere. Please.  You may never have the chance again.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the transcript of a conversation I had with my daughter today. Twice.     

“I want to eat a cookie, Daddy.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve been eating cookies all day.”

“I want one, though.”

“You make a good argument, but no.”

“Can I have a cookie now?”

“No.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Can I have a cookie?”

“No.  Wait, honey, why are you making that face?  Do you have to go to the potty?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?  How about we sit on the potty for a minute?”

“No. I don’t have to.”

“Really?”

“Daddy, can I have a cookie to eat now?”

“No.”

“Daddy?”

“What?”

“I went poop.”

thenormannation@gmail.com

The Oddest Moment So Far

A few months ago, I found myself sitting alone in a bar in New York City.  As romantic as that might sound, I was actually anxious and, truth be told, a little hungover.  

The bartender asked me what I wanted, and so I ordered a vodka & soda, which was weird because I’d never in my entire life ordered one of those.  I have this strange glitch in my personality that causes me to panic order in bars when I’m nervous—I simply shout out the first drink that pops into my head. 

As I sat there sipping my very first vodka & soda ever, I took a deep breath and tried to come to grips with two competing strands of anxiety.  First, in about an hour I’d be reading from my novel at the KGB Bar in the East Village.  I hadn’t done many readings at that point, and I was second-guessing the section I’d picked, which dramatizes, in graphic detail, my main character’s erectile dysfunction.  Second, I was about to meet with a movie producer to discuss film rights. 

I was wearing a sport coat, which seemed writerly enough, but, other than that, I felt very much over my head.  I’d never met a movie producer before.  In fact, short of pointing at a startled-looking Ben Affleck once and shouting, “That’s Ben Affleck!” I’d never even spoken with someone from the film industry. 

When the producer arrived, I was thrown immediately by two things: he was obviously younger than me, and he was even more obviously taller than me.  The latter is fairly rare, and so I was struck with this vague sense of vertigo, the way you feel when you look up for too long at a tree or a building.   

“Hi, Matt,” he said.

“Hey, Matt,” I replied.  

We both have the same name.  As you can imagine, this happens to people named Matt a lot. 

We sat down and started talking, picking up where we’d left off earlier that week over the phone.  Matt ordered a drink, and he did so in such a way that led me to believe he’d actually intended to order that particular drink.  I admired that about him.  We chatted about books and the types of movies we like, and I couldn’t help but enjoy what was happening.  Matt was there to convince me that I should entrust my novel to him, and I was there, for some reason, pretending that I needed to be convinced. 

And then the entire bar started shaking. 

When it stopped, Matt and I looked at each other. “What was that?” one of us asked.

“An earthquake?” said the other. 

“Holy shit.” 

“I know.”

There were maybe five or six other people in the bar, and they all seemed to be having this exact same conversation.  However, people in the Northeastern United States are used to inexplicable, ominous things, so, after a moment, Matt and I carried on more or less like nothing had happened. We talked about actors and directors and screenwriters.  We talked about college football and how we both have relatives in the South.  We talked about literary agents and my writing process.

And then the entire bar started shaking again.  It shook and then stopped.  And then it shook again.  And then we heard frantic Spanish coming from the kitchen.  And then someone swore loudly.  And then we both at the exact same time saw that people outside of the bar were stopped dead in the street and were pointing up. 

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Matt.   

One of the unusual phenomena of publishing your first novel is that you find yourself in situations that you’ve imagined many times before. It’s similar to your wedding or the birth of your first child.  While it’s happening, you can’t help yourself from comparing it to how you thought it’d be.  I’d imagined meeting with movie producers, of course, every wannabe novelist has.  But five minutes later, as Matt and I stood on the curb outside holding our drinks and watching smoke billow from the top of the building we’d just scrambled from, I was aware that I’d imagined this meeting going differently.   

Fire engines had arrived from every conceivable angle.  Sirens were blaring and people were wandering out onto the street to watch as fireman climbed ladders and readied hoses and shouted instructions. 

“So,” said Matt. “I’m really excited about this project.”

“Yeah, man,” I said.  “Me, too.”

Q FOLLOWED BY A

I recently went on this really great new Website called Facebook and asked some readers if they had any questions about my novel, Domestic Violets, or about writing in general.  Here are some of the questions that turned up, followed by the answers that my team of assistants and ghostwriters put together in response.

You’ll notice that some people asked more than one question—often as many as three. Well played, readers.  Well played indeed. 

If you haven’t "Liked Me" on Facebook yet, you absolutely should.  In difficult times like these, I think the world needs to like me now more than ever before. 

Gigi C. asked...

Q: Who are your favorite authors?

A: I’ve got a lot of them.  Richard Russo for starters.  I read Straight Man and Nobody’s Fool in college.  I remember the exact moment in Straight Man—during a scene that starred a goose—when I realized that serious fiction could also be funny, which was a valuable lesson for me. John Irving is another old-school favorite of mine.  His best books have lingered in my head for a very long time.  I have an intellectual crush on Lorrie Moore.  Birds of America is one of my favorite story collections. David Sedaris, Nick Hornby, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, Jay McInerney, Zadie Smith, and Zoe Heller are all fantastic, too.  I could go on and on. 

Q: If they made DOMESTIC VIOLETS into a movie, who would you pick to play Tom and his father?

A: I actually can’t comment on Curtis’s role quite yet.  The book is in the very final stages of being optioned, and an incredibly awesome actor has called dibs on Curtis. More on that soon—I’m told the deal is done and it’s just a matter of signing contracts at this point.   

As for Tom, I never really had anyone in mind for him when I was writing the book, but I think Jason Bateman would be an interesting choice.  He’s a little older than Tom, but there’s this melancholy world-weariness about him that I think fits well.  My agent actually floated the idea of Bradley Cooper a few months ago.  I think it’d be a cool character for him to play.  He’s an actor who always plays the best looking, most charismatic guy in the room.  Seeing him dial that star wattage down a little could be really compelling—sort of like George Clooney in The Descendants.

Oh…and even though you didn’t ask, a friend of mine insists that Justin Timberlake needs to play Brandon, Tom’s would-be agent.  Now I can’t get that out of my head. 

Q: Do you listen to music while you write, or do you write in silence?

A: Absolute silence is terrifying, so I always, always have something on when I’m working. I normally don’t like listening to my favorite albums when I’m writing, though, like Achtung Baby by U2 or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco.  I’m too close to the music I love to have it not take over whatever I’m doing.  So, I usually have Pandora running on my computer in the background. Also, a friend of mine made me a mixed CD of movie scores a few years ago.  I go with that sometimes if lyrics are messing me up.  Scores are good because they’re all sound, mood, and emotion...but no words. 

Abby F. asked...

Q: Is there an author that inspired you to begin writing?

A: When I was as kid—like 11 to 17 or so—I read a ton of Stephen King.  I wanted to grow up to be a horror writer.  I totally ripped him off my freshman year in high school in a story I wrote for the literary magazine.  It was about a hunter who mounts all of these horrible trophies and animal heads in his study.  One night all the animals come back to life and maul him to death.  It remains my crowing literary achievement.  One of the janitors at my school actually made a formal complaint to the English department.  He was a big hunter, so I guess he was offended.

Matt Z. asked...

Q: How long did it take you to write your first draft?

A: The first draft took about a year, give or take. 

Q: When is your writing most productive: morning or night?

A: My entire adult life I’ve had 9-5 jobs, so nighttime is really when I do almost all of my writing. Even on weekends it’s tough to get much work done until after my two daughters have gone to bed. That said, nighttime writing is really more out of necessity than preference.  I’d love to wake up every morning, go for a run, and then sit down and get to work.  That’s every writer’s dream. Maybe some day. 

Q: Did you do an outline first?

A: I’ve never formally written an outline.  I do, however, always have key plot points in mind that I’m writing toward, which make up a loose plot in my head.  With Domestic Violets, I had a very clear idea how the book would end from day one, so that was really helpful for generating momentum—sort of like downhill writing.  For the novel I’m working on now, the end is a little hazier, but there are still some key turns that I know I’m going to want to take.  And I’m still trying to work a vampire in there somewhere.  A really good-looking vampire.  And possibly a car that transforms into a fighting robot.

Laura M. asked...

Q: How much time did you spend on revisions after the first draft was complete?

A: As I mentioned earlier, that first draft took about a year.  After that, I messed with it incessantly for about six months, just obsessing over the language and details.  Once I had something that I decided was finished enough, my agent sent it to a handful of editors where it began racking up an impressive string of rejections. 

Then the financial crisis happened.  I remember one day I was watching the news and I had this horrible sense of impending doom—and it was doom that I didn’t even really understand. A couple of days later, I started messing with the book again and trying to weave some of that confusion/anxiety into the story.  Six months later, I’d basically blown the whole novel up and set it squarely in the middle of the mess.  It really helped add some urgency to the "Death Star" sections of the book.

So, long answer short: one year to write the first draft, and about one more year of editing and fiddling and reworking and destroying. 

thenormannation@gmail.com