Begin With The End? by Kristy Kiernan

Endings have been on my mind a lot lately. We're approaching the end of the year, December 29th will mark the end of my regular Saturday blogging with The Debutante Ball, I've reached the end of my patience with this year's seemingly never-ending travel, and the end of No Country For Old Men completely unsettled me and got me to thinking about my own endings…fiction-wise that is.

I've received mixed reactions about the ending of Catching Genius. Some people thought it was just right, happy without being sappy, some people thought it was wrapped up too neatly, too quickly, too something or other. The thing is, I never considered what a reader might think of the ending. I wrote what was, to me, the inevitable ending. It simply WAS the way it ended.

With Matters of Faith (August 5, 2008), I again did not consider what a reader might think of the ending. I wrote it the way it happened, the only way I saw the characters reacting. I've yet to hear from a reader about it since it's not out yet, but I know I will. And I know I won't make everyone happy.

So when I saw No Country For Old Men, and was perplexed and slightly put off by the ending, I had to consider the writer's intent. The book was written by Cormac McCarthy and the screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen. I've not read the book, though after I complete my little deep thought processing of the movie I plan to. So I only have the Coen brothers' screenplay to consider.

And I have to wonder, was this the only way they saw it ending? Was it inevitable, the way I think my endings are inevitable? Or did they shoot multiple endings, the way I've heard other movies have been shot? And what's more important? The reader/watcher reaction to the ending, or the writer's vision?

And considering how wide a reaction I got for the Catching Genius ending, is it something I should even worry about? Do I change my own writing process to fit the majority opinion? Would it make my books sell better? I do want to sell more books. I want to be successful in this business, I want to have a long run, I want to please my readers.

Did the ending of No Country For Old Men ruin the movie for me? Absolutely not. In fact, I walked out of the theater believing that the writers must have had a good reason for ending it the way they did. And that if I considered it long enough I would figure it out, and though I might not agree with it, I had to trust them. It won't make me stop going to see a Coen brothers film, in fact, it intrigued me. Now I'm looking around at other Coen brothers' movies to see if these sort of ambiguous endings are a trademark.

And now I'm writing a new book. And I'm thinking about the end before I've worked out the beginning. Is that a good thing? I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, what were some of the best endings you've ever read or watched and why? And what were the worst?

In other news, I got the cover for Matters Of Faith this week! What do you think? I LOVE it, absolutely love it.

Kristy Kiernan writes from southwest Florida, where she often gazes soulfully out at the water, clearly deep in thought about important things, like endings, and worrying about whether she's spending more time watching movies than reading books. Visit her online at www.kristykiernan.com Or don't. Because Kristy's not pushy. Unless there's a cliff nearby.

Readers and Writers

Dec. 7, 2007

Fall semester is winding down at the University of South Alabama where I teach creative writing. Another group of students will be getting their master’s or bachelor’s degrees. In a world where degrees in English are not a “hot ticket” to corporate success, I’ve had many conversations with my students about where they’ll head once they leave the academic world. The answers are surprising and refreshing.
Some of my students, I have no doubt, are destined to become writers. A goodly number will even become published authors. I’m glad they know the distinction. Writers write because they love to write. They love the creation of story and characters and a place that exists only in their minds. Publication (by a legitimate publisher) is validation and a financial reward, but it isn’t the only measuring stick of talent.
There’s only one sane reason to enter this crazy writing business. I tell my students (and myself) if you can stop writing, do it. Be a plumber or a small business owner or a doctor. My students have the intelligence and abilities to become anything. But I can usually predict which ones will become writers. Not because they’re more talented, but because they cannot help themselves. They write because it is the thing that drives them. They view the world in a unique way, and they have a compulsion to share that view with an audience.
When I start a new class, I ask my students one question: Do you want an audience?
They instantly assume that there’s a right or wrong answer to this question. But like most things involving art, there isn’t right or wrong. There is only the individual “truth.” If the student is honest, this answer helps guide me in teaching him or her. A writer who wants an audience has already taken that step into the public or “commercial” market. It’s simply a matter of being honest as to how big a slice of the market a writer wants.
Do you want literary fame? Commercial success? The answer to this question requires a level of personal honestly that many writers find difficult. But writing demands honesty. Total honesty. Even honesty about ambitions and fears.
Once a student, or writer, decides that an audience is part of the package they choose, then the “rules” of publishing kick in. If a writer wants to be a bestseller, then he has to incorporate the elements of story-telling that a publisher recognizes as bestseller material.
Do I particularly like the “rules”? Absolutely not. But I write because I can’t help myself. And I accept that publishing is a business. If I want publisher X to print half a million copies of my book, then I must meet what publisher X perceives as the elements of a bestseller. Do I agree with publisher X’s perception—maybe not. But ever since Guttenberg developed the press and certain formatting criteria, mass publishing has become a partnership between writers and printers (i.e. publishers).
Some rules, such as word count, are based on physical need such as the size of the page, the shelving requirements in bookstores, the strength of the binding, the bottom line cost a publisher is willing to put into a book, things like that. Others have a much longer history. While each publisher has certain criteria, the elements of traditional story are much older.
Story is an ancient art form anchored in oral tradition. This structure, which many people misinterpret as a formula, goes back to the oral tradition and how stories captured an audience.
First of all, something has to happen to start the story. A spell is cast, a baby is stolen, a bomb is set. These inciting events pull the reader into the story through action. And then the tale unfolds, following a pattern of twists and turns that are familiar—and therefore easily accepted by the audience. Books, films, songs—each of these art forms has a long history of traditional structure.
Every generation brings artists who experiment with that traditional structure and how “story” is conveyed. This is one of my biggest challenges as a teacher. I’m a traditionalist, but I want to encourage and work with writers who are experimenting. To guide them without constraining their enthusiasm and originality.
I’ve done my best for this class, and I was paid the highest compliment by one of my students. He told me that he’d become a better reader. “I have a more critical standard. I expect more from a book, and I appreciate and enjoy the hard work and talent that goes into a good book so much more.”
While I teach writing, I also teach reading. When a student begins to read with intelligence and appreciation, I know I’ve succeeded on many levels. This is an educated person. One who can enter any field and succeed. Writing may be the goal, but reading is the reward.
In a world where technology and business degrees are the valued and sought after benchmark of a college education, liberal arts is often underappreciated and neglected. It’s viewed as a degree with “limited possibilities.” That this is backwards goes without my saying it. When a student has been educated to read, to really read and comprehend, this is a person with unlimited potential.
Whether my students break publishing records or write for the satisfaction of self-expression, they have been changed forever by learning to write. Yes, even though it astounds me that I’ve been part of this remarkable process, I’ve participated in a remarkable process—the creation of educated individuals.


Carolyn Haines has three new books out this year, and a short story included in the NYT bestselling anthology Many Bloody Returns.
Fever Moon, (February 2007) was a Booksense Notable book. Revenant, a thriller set on the Mississippi Gulf Coast pre-Katrina, was released in September by MIRA. Ham Bones, the seventh book in the popular Mississippi Delta Mystery series, was released by Kensington in July. The series will continue next summer with Wishbones.
Haines is a recipient of an Alabama Council on the Arts Fellowship. She is an assistant professor at the University of South Alabama. She shares her home with 8 horses, 8 cats, and 5 dogs and urges all pet owners to spay and neuter.
For more information visit www.carolynhaines.com

How to write Southern fiction

If I could sell ten books every time someone asked me “How do you get your ideas for writing?” … well, I’d be rubbing the best-selling shoulders of Mary Higgins Clark and Danielle Steel. Contrary to popular belief, we fiction writers do not get our ideas from flashes of divine inspiration. No, they generally come from good ol’ Planet Earth.

I’ve put together a list of places in which I find ideas for my novels. Let’s call it: “Turning Life into Fiction (Or: How to get published even though you spend six hours a day cleaning, cooking and schlepping the kids around town.) Here it is:

Keep journals everywhere. In the kitchen. At bedside. On the back of the toilet. And, most importantly, in the car. Record everything that amuses or moves you because you never know what you might use months or years later. An entire short story or novel might be hidden in the one line your eight-year-old utters on the way to school … or in the look of melancholy in the crosswalk guard’s face.

Consider the struggles in your life. (And, hey, let me tell you, as a stay-at-home Dad with a teenage daughter I have plenty of fodder in this arena!) Often, other people share these struggles, and they enjoy reading books that show they are not alone in their silent, daily battles. Look for conflict in your life, both minor and major, and decide if it’s worthy of a story. We read novels because we like to see characters tackle human, realistic problems. Remember that plot is nothing more than characters trying to solve their problems.

Keep a file of newspaper clippings … news events and personalities that interest you for some reason. It might be nothing more than an ad for used golf clubs or a story about a woman who is trying to keep the state from cutting down her canker-infested orange tree. When it’s time to write, dump all these things (along with your journal ramblings) into the computer and – like a puzzle – see what pieces fit together. This is how I start every book.

Remember that you are a welder; you meld personalities. After writing twenty pages, you might discover that the main character is not you after all; maybe it’s the quiet Japanese man who dutifully makes the sushi every day in the Publix deli … and maybe it’s he – not you – who is thinking of having the affair with the clerk at Nu Image Dry Cleaners. If you’ve based a character on yourself, don’t be afraid to let him or her morph into something beyond yourself. Remember that you don’t have to exactly mirror a character. The character might very well be living your own story … but perhaps she has your best friend’s temperament and your cousin’s limp that he got from falling off a horse at age ten.

Remember that everything in your life can be considered for your fiction – the relationship you have with your boss, the way your wife holds her coffee cup, your three-legged cat and her battle with cancer. Write all these things down. Be on the lookout for details from your own life that will add depth to your character’s personality.

Save your emails. They are journal entries masquerading as correspondence. Anecdotes and details often hide within them. And try to limit your email correspondence; it drains the energy you need for writing fiction. I have many good writer friends are not authors because they spend all their time writing emails.

So…. happy writing! And feel free to drop me a line through my website at AdHudler.com Sometimes it takes me a few days to respond, but I always do.

--Ad Hudler's comic novels have been published in five languages and featured on NPR, CNN and in the New York Times. He is known for creating quirky but realistic Southern female characters. His next book, "Man of the House," a sequal to his novel titled "Househusband," will be published by Random House next fall.

Go Read The Prince of Tides and Beach Music Again

I suppose I may be the last one to hear about this controversy, but in case I'm not and YOU are, take a look at this letter by Pat Conroy printed in the Charleston Gazette recently.

http://www.authorsroundthesouth.com/content/view/324/36/

In a nutshell, Conroy's books, The Prince of Tides and Beach Music, have been removed (read "banned") from two high school classes in Charleston, West Virginia. Where I'm from, I hope such a ban would be considered blasphemy. Pat Conroy is the living father of Southern literature. His work has influenced today's writers and brought beautiful attention and acclaim to our lovely slice of the nation.

God bless the English teacher who showed Conroy the world could be found in the pages of a book--that empathy for others and all of life's experiences are written in ink by passionate, creative thinkers. When I was starting out, a fledgling author with a full heart, a completed manuscript and no clue about how cruel the world can be to writers who expose their souls on paper, Pat Conroy stepped up and gave me words of wisdom. He blurbed my debut novel, The Spirit of Sweetgrass. He took time me, for a nobody. I will never forget it.

I will always consider Pat Conroy to be a pioneer in Southern literature. He does not write what is popular. He writes what he must.

So in honor of him and all of us authors whose books may be banned next, I'm going to go comb my shelves, pick up my copy of The Prince of Tides, and I'm going to read it again. Better yet, I think I'll pass it on to an intelligent high school upperclassman when I'm done. As for the violence and language inside, today's youth are exposed to as bad or worse in daily life or in reading the newspaper. Aren't they? At least give them some chance to see that souls can be redeemed in the midst of chaos. That tiny bits of light exist even in darkness if we look hard enough. That the real world is not all roses and joy, but despite this fact, true beauty is found by learning to read between the lines. As a writer and liver of life, that's what I know to be true.

Happy reading.

-------------------------------
Nicole Seitz is the author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass and upcoming novel, Trouble the Water. Visit her website at www.nicoleseitz.com.

Go Fish

by Lynn York


I don’t know about you other mothers of school-aged children out there, but I am possibly a little too involved with my children’s school work. On Sunday, I spent a long day with my son prompting, cajoling, querying, editing and biting my lip while he wrote a ten page history paper. Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph—it was excruciating. Every hour or so, he would stop and downsize his margins. Welcome to the club, son, I wanted to say. Writing is hard.

Writing is probably harder for my son than most. A brilliant kid with amazing insights, my son has a brain wired like a Def Leppard soundboard. He is so dyslexic that he cried when his first grade teacher put the words “saw and “was” in front of him. “It’s not fair, Mom, that they made two words so exactly the same,” he told me. He was right, it’s not fair. So I hovered last Sunday—making him tea, suggesting a transition here and there. I did a little literary cheerleading (“Great verb! Great verb!”). And as I have a million times over the past 10 years, I watched him struggle to get his ideas onto paper.

He was writing about a photograph of Confederate dead taken at the Battle of Chancellorsville. He had researched the exact troop movements, the battle plans, and the generals involved. He spent hours staring at the photograph which, he decided, had a kind of terrible beauty. He found a quote from the photographer about how his work was meant to be a commentary on the horror of war. My son, a member of the YouTube generation that can call up a clip of any atrocity on a laptop, connected mightily to this man’s mission. By midmorning, he was so full of ideas and Darjeeling, his head quivered like he had a bunch of fish swimming around in it.

If you write, you know this feeling. You work and you work, you research, you do exercises, you stare out the window, and then, in a flash, there it is—the whole beautiful piece of writing floats across your brain. You rush to your desk and try to transfer it into the real world of words. When this happens to me, I am usually thwarted by the second sentence. On a good day, I get a paragraph or two before a critical thought or a gnarly syntax problem interrupts the flow. I continue, but the vision—the goldfish—swims away. By now, I know I can’t wait for it to come back. I can fiddle with my margins, drink more tea—on and on, but eventually, I have to move forward, slug it out, write my pages. If I do this, I will finish the chapter, the section, and before I know it, the next book.

Yes, my son, I wanted to say, I am familiar with every step of this grim experience. We parents are full of experience, and we’re full of analogies about swimming goldfish. We like to share this wisdom with our children. On this particular occasion, I refrained. I sat across the room pretending to read the newspaper. I reflected on my own recent efforts to get my third novel written. Despite the great plans I have for this book—the interesting characters, the ambitious structure, the architectural plot—I end my days with pages that fall short of my ideas. If I keep writing, the pages will improve. The final book will approach the shiny flash of my first ideas, and in some ways, it may outgrow them. In other ways, for me, my work will always fall short. I don’t consider this failure as much as propellant, the thing that moves me on to the next project.

I am not about to share all this writerly angst with my teenage son on a nice Sunday morning. For one thing, he has enough angst already. For another, writing is a solitary pursuit. It’s one of those things—like showering, dating, and taking SATs—that a parent can’t do for her teenager.

I peek around the lifestyle section. Remember how perfect and beautiful a baby looks when he’s sleeping? This is the teenaged equivalent: my son smiles, lifts his hands to the keyboard, and begins to slug it out.

Lynn York is the author of The Piano Teacher (2004) and The Sweet Life (2007). She lives in Carrboro, NC. Her website is www.lynnyork.com and for her writing group, www.onewritinggroup.com.

A Love Affair With Land

About a month ago I attended one of those academic discussions about what sets Southern literature apart from other writing. While the participants debated the reasons we’ve all heard before – the War, the dialect and such as that – my mind began drifting away.

Suddenly I was ten years old and sitting in the passenger’s seat of my grandmother’s gold Thunderbird. We were parked on a dirt road deep in the woods, its tracks rooted and torn lose by a bulldozer. My grandmother was showing me the land that had been passed down in her family and would one day be passed down to me. In all seriousness, she tapped her fingernail on the steering wheel and said, “Now you can’t ever sale this land…unless of course you are in dire financial straits. But try not to let that happen.” (And they say Southern Baptist aren’t as guilt ridden as the Catholics.) After hearing about the history of our land, I grew up believing the conversation I had with my grandmother was a special bond, something unique to our family. It is only when I married did I learn that my wife’s grandmother had the very same conversation with her, even going so far as vowing to haunt any family member who should dare to break the allegiance between land and lineage.

Last night after finishing up Brad Watson’s novel The Heaven of Mercury, a National Book Award finalist, my thoughts returned to the question posed by the academics. What does make Southern writing unique? I love Brad’s book as much for its lyrical prose as I do for the dead on dialect of the multifaceted characters who live in the Gulf Coast town of Mercury, Mississippi. But more than anything I love the town itself, the center that escorts the reader through decades of marriage, separation, lost love and even murder. It reminds me all too well of my own place and people in Perry, Florida, also a small town near the Gulf Coast. After reading Brad’s novel I found myself tasting the salt air and thinking of the marsh that still sits behind the beach house that my grandparents once owned. The house, like the area, is not like the commercial high-rises of Destin. The place is more or less a fishing village. And the house is really a cottage, a two bedroom structure on stilts with a wrap around porch. Like the marsh, the house has survived decades of change in my family: marriages, divorces, successes, bankruptcies and the passing of those who once congregated to eat fried mullet and to picnic in boats along sandbars.

Late at night when sleep won’t come soon enough, I often close my eyes and feel the heat of summer at my feet as I stand on the porch of my grandparent’s house. I stick my tongue out in the air and look across the way at the marsh, with its tall pines, sawgrass and lanky white birds searching for food. I stare off in the distance and in my mind peace settles over me the same way my grandmother’s arms used to blanket me when I was a child. I am here…I am strong…I am at rest.

This Christmas I will make the journey back to the land of my people. I’ll drive down to the coast and visit that marsh that has yet to be destroyed by concrete. I’ll think about the past and the good times shared with those who loved and cared for me. I’ll watch the afternoon sun slice the water into slivers the same way it has since the days of my childhood. As the site unfolds, I will remind myself to be grateful for talented storytellers like Brad Watson who give us settlings like Mercury, Mississippi. And yet again I’ll be convinced of just how powerful this thing called ‘place’ is to the Southern writer.

Michael Morris is a fifth generation native of North Florida. He is the author of the award winning novel, A Place Called Wiregrass, and Slow Way Home, which was named one of the best novels of 2003 by the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the St. Louis Dispatch. His novella, Live Like You Were Dying, was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award.
www.michaelmorrisbooks.com

Richland Balsam Epitaph

by Pamela Duncan

High in the Blue Ridge stands a graveyard, one of many on these mountaintops, eerie aeries where the dead stand erect, monuments to themselves. Richland Balsam does not sound dead or dying. Words rich and land and balsam ring full and heavy with sap and life: verdant, aromatic, green words. But only ghosts abide here now, ghosts of greenness, straight and sharp as needles, rising from the mountain, accusing the sky. Hollow white bones deny the sun with silvery glint. Falling corpses lean together, cry and tremble above decaying brothers. Richland Balsam mourns.

Before death, light lived here, thousands of feet above sea level, a sacred cathedral, hushed and quiet and cool. Sunlight filtered gently through evergreen mesh and tended earth swollen soft and full with blessings of rain. Mosses, lichens, ferns, shrubs – so many living things thrived beneath the sheltering canopy of Red Spruce and Fraser Fir. Inviolable and pristine, it seemed. Perhaps then, as now, merely a dream: secluded haven for fragile things.

Then the killers came, invisible, insidious, launched by millions unaware of their power to ravage, in a war instigated by ignorance and waged by apathy. Now acid rains, and where nature reigns, one law exists: survival of the fittest. This holocaust appears irreversible.


A few years back, some friends and I followed the Blue Ridge Parkway from Boone to Cherokee, NC. Although I'm a native North Carolinian, it was my first real trip on the Parkway, and I wanted to see it all, every mountain, tree, leaf, and hawk. One friend, a botanist, raved about the incredible beauty of a particular trail on top of a mountain called Richland Balsam (short for Richland Mountain of the Balsams). At 6,410 feet, it's the highest peak in the Great Balsam Range separating Haywood and Jackson Counties.

"You won't believe how lovely it is," my friend told me. "It's so green and perfect and pure, shadowy and cool. It's like stepping into a fairyland, a magical place."



At milepost 431.4, however, the fairyland is gone. The 1.5 mile nature trail still loops around the top of the mountain, and it is still a beautiful place, but now it winds through weeds and the rotting remains of Red Spruce (Picea rubens Sargent) and Fraser Fir (Abies fraseri [Pursh] Poiret). Defenders of Wildlife lists this type of forest as the second most endangered ecosystem in the United States. My friend told me that, although there is no concrete proof, scientists believe acid rain is responsible. It weakens the trees' resistance to the aphids which literally suck the life from them.

"But there must be some way to reverse this, to save these trees, this habitat," I said.

"No, there's really nothing anyone can do. All of these trees are dying now, and that means the fragile plant, animal, and microbial life that can only exist in their shelter will die too."

Later, excited by a mini-nursery of spruce seedlings apparently flourishing beneath a huge tree, I asked, "But won't these grow and replace the dead trees?"

"That tree is dying and, without its protection, the seedlings will die too. This forest may never grow back, and even if it does, it probably won't be in our lifetime."

In the silence that followed, the wind pushed pale dead trunks against one another and, as they moaned, I felt a raging inside myself at the needless loss of this small forest, or any part of the environment that humankind has damaged or killed.


I cannot accept feeling helpless. The only way to cope with my anger and sorrow is to do something. Whether or not Richland Balsam is lost, I must do something. I'm not a scientist, a leader, a crusader, or a reformer. The steps I take are small, but important to my peace of mind. Everyone can recycle, conserve, and protect, and there are numerous resources available to tell you how to do these things.

The point is to DO them. Every day. For the rest of your life. I've been as guilty as anyone of forgetfulness, laziness, or blatant indifference, but Richland Balsam changed my attitude. I saw one real result of apathy, and realized my responsibility. It's like voting. You may think, "What good can one individual do?" But the combination of every individual effort amounts to an incredibly powerful force that may just keep what's left of this planet, our habitat, alive.

Writer Robert McKee says, “Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.” I believe that has always been the case and always will be. So, as a writer, there’s something else I can do. I can tell the stories of places like this in our Appalachian mountains, places that are dying or disappearing at a terrifying rate. I can tell the stories of the people who live there, too. I can put the idea into the world that they are part of our history and our future, and that they are worth protecting.


(Novelist Pamela Duncan is the author of Moon Women, a Southeast Booksellers Association Award Finalist, and Plant Life, which won the 2003 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. She is the recipient of the 2007 James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her third novel, The Big Beautiful, was published in March 2007. Visit her website at http://www.pameladuncan.com/.)