Defend the Process

Last month, fiction writer Jhumpa Lahiri wrote an essay in the New York Times about her fascination with sentences and described her writing process in this way: "I hear sentences as I’m staring out the window, or chopping vegetables, or waiting on a subway platform alone…. Over time, virtually each sentence I receive and record in this haphazard manner will be sorted, picked over, organized, changed. Most will be dispensed with. All the revision I do — and this process begins immediately, accompanying the gestation — occurs on a sentence level. It is by fussing with sentences that a character becomes clear to me, that a plot unfolds."

Lahiri's love of words, sentences and writing shimmered on the page. Her process isn't mine, (And only in my dreams do I compare my writing to hers.) but there are commonalities, and they lend a sense of kinship—writers are in this together. Most of my friends and acquaintances write, and I can't think of one who doesn't shut up and listen when awriter talks about his or her process.

Evidently my friends and acquaintances are a cut above.

A few days after publication of Lahiri's essay, a dissenting letter to the editor
was published. In it, a disgruntled writer suggested Lahiri's point of view misrepresents the craft of fiction writing: "…she perpetuates the notion that if you learn to write grand sentences, and string enough of them together, somehow — by magic — you’ll have written a story. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Language is the handmaiden of story, not the other way around. Master story. Everything else is gravy."

Thus speaks a plotter—in more ways than one. Admittedly, plot's critical, especially for commercial fiction, but isn't what comes first: plot/characters/sentences part of a process that's both the same and different for each writer?

The same day the dissenting letter was published in the Times, a senior editor at Mother Jones wrote an essay critical of some of the sentences in Lahiri's essay. "In an essay exploring her love of sentences in last Sunday's New York Times, the great writer Jhumpa Lahiri put together some awful sentences. I say 'put together' intentionally: The sentences themselves were mostly fine, at turns even terrific, but in several places they were assembled quite awfully. This surprised me in light of Lahiri's literary talent and the reputable publication to which she was contributing. Where the heck was her editor?"

Apparently a writer bold enough to admit an absorption with sentences makes her sentences vulnerable to attack.

The publishing industry is in flux, but Lahiri didn't address agency pricing, the growing influence of Amazon, the adversarial stance taken by some self-published authors toward those traditionally published--and vice versa. She dared to write about sentences.

Let's agree to disagree on agency pricing. Let's stick up for or rail against Amazon. I beg you, fellow writers, to join me in defending each writer's process as his or her own.

Oh, the Publisher and the Library Should Be Friends

When I got my library card, that's when my life began. ~Rita Mae Brown

As a kid, I looked forward to the arrival of the bookmobile. It was RV-sized and crammed with books. Every other week, I'd climb aboard, return the books I’d read and browse for more. Two librarians manned the vehicle—one drove, and the other kept the stock from falling. Both excelled at divining what a girl who'd loved Little Women might like to read next.

Throughout my high school years, I loved wandering the stacks of my town library, picking up books and scanning first pages and author bios. Back then, hardcovers were luxuries to average families, but the library put them in my hands week after week.

I wondered about the authors of the books I read, but did I think about the publishers? Doubtful, but I must have assumed they were happy to send their products to places where they'd be checked out by readers. I thought publishers and libraries were, excuse the pun, on the same page.

Either I was wrong or things have changed. Apparently, publishers don't like libraries' policy of lend-lend-lend. I wouldn't have known this if not for some publishers' refusal to make their e-books available to libraries.

As I wrote in a column for the women's fiction chapter of Romance Writers of America, we associate "friction" with politics and rubbing two sticks together to make fire, but Maja Thomas, a senior vice president of the Hachettte Book Group, uses the word to explain why Hachette, a "big six" publisher, won't make its ebooks available to libraries for lending. “Selling one copy that could be lent out an infinite number of times with no friction is not a sustainable business model for us,” she told Randall Stross of the New York Times.

Of the big-six publishers, only Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins make their e-books available to libraries. Penguin recently stopped making its new titles available and HarperCollins only allows an e-book to be borrowed 26 times before a library must purchase a new copy. When Laura Hazard Owen of paidContent.org compared the list of most downloaded e-books from libraries with the New York Times' best-seller lists, she found some notable differences. For example, forget about borrowing NYT bestseller 11/22/63 by Stephen King from the library as an e-book because its publisher, Simon & Schuster, won't allow it to be lent out.

Owens notes that publishers are not restricting downloadable audiobooks in libraries in the same way that they are restricting e-books. Alas, that, too, may change. Yesterday, Jane at Dear Author reported that Brilliance Audio, owned by Amazon, is pulling its e-book titles from the library market. (Scroll down to the fourth item Jane wrote.)

A song from the musical Oklahoma runs through my head. The first line's "Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends," and the chorus begins with "Territory folks should stick together." Publishers and libraries are mutually dependent. That may not be the best basis for friendship, but isn't it a reasonable foundation for alliance? Meanwhile, book lovers—authors, publishers, booksellers, libraries, and readers should stick together to foster reading in this generation and the next. Readers borrow books from libraries, swap them with friends, and grow up to buy them.

Towns and cities have slashed libraries' hours and cut librarians' book-buying budgets. That makes it doubly disappointing that some publishers won't allow library-lending of their e-books.

I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it. Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself. — I, Asimov. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Isaac ASIMOV