31 August 2009
Is it really the last day of August? I think 2009 will likely go down as one of the most un-summery summers in (my personal) history. Tomato blight, rain rain rain, a tougher teaching schedule than I had in the spring, a series of ailments and illnesses. My most summery activity was probably frequenting the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park semi-regularly; I even once, despite my lactose intolerance, enjoyed a delectable, life-changing frozen custard.
I did spend Sunday of the last weekend of summer upstate in Ulster County with friends who have 47 sublime wooded acres bordering a large creek. If this sounds luxuriously summery, you’re mostly right; but the occasion for the visit was to have my author photo taken by kind and talented Robin, who happens to be a professional photographer.
I fretted this outing for the week preceding. The life of the writer — contra my previous life working in a professional office five days a week — is one in which meticulous self-coiffing and productive writing tend to develop an inversely proportional relationship. I’ve never been particularly girly, but over the last two years or so, I’ve pretty much forgotten the how of the whole thing. Hair? Makeup? Outfit? Uy. Like many-a bookish writer types, I fantasized sending in to my publisher a photo of gorgeous Pax the Pup, so naturally winning and photogenic (on Amazon, there is an explicit rule for Authors on the Authors Administration Page: Please, no photos of pets or children. Oh, cruel corporate guidelines!)
Bring a few different outfits, any makeup you normally wear, and something for putting your hair up if you want to try that, Robin had advised when we spoke on the phone. Okay, I can do that, I thought.
By late afternoon, we had over 200 photos (the miracle of digital!). This lighting, that lighting, the white shirt, the dark shirt, smiling, unsmiling, standing, sitting, arms crossed, arms by my side. We included Pax in a few, for good measure. The weather cooperated. By the time we were done, my head was pounding and my stomach a little sick. But I was grateful; it was done, and I knew Robin had done a great job despite my anxiety.
In a few days, all 200 photos will be loaded up to an ftp site for my review. Somehow, I’ll pick one or two for the book jacket. Similar to my previous ruminations about the book jacket design itself, I’ll ask myself: what’s the purpose of this photo? What do I want it/what is it meant to convey? How does the photo impact the potential book-buyer or reader, if at all? Your thoughts? To be continued…
21 August 2009
A package arrived in the mail the other day from my mother.
As it turns out, Long for This World is not my first book. Miranda & Blair, the story of two girls, best friends, who have a big fight but then make up and become best friends again, was in fact my first book.
I have almost no recollection of writing Miranda & Blair. This elephant’s behind does look familiar, however. Apparently, Miranda and Blair take a trip to the zoo together; an elephant escapes; pandemonium ensues; four (blind?) mice save the day.
“This is her first book and hopefully not her last.” Ha! That’s funny. Who knew? Even funnier… the book I am now working on is called Sebastian & Frederick –about a friendship between two boys (who reconnect years later as grown men). Hmm… I wonder if I can work an elephant into the story line…
Welcome to the official blog site of Sonya Chung, author of the novel
Long for This World.
Published by Scribner and available in stores and online now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, and e-reader.
***
“An intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new, Long for This World marks a powerful debut from a young writer of great talent and promise.”
–Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and
author of A Short History of Women
9 July 2009
Another guest post up at The Millions, this one about the funny-ish experience of book jacket design for Long for This World.
Click here to read.
(If you happen to have any comments on it, please make them over at The Millions. Thanks!)
A Good Day
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24 June 2009
The other day, post-showdownatTheMillions, I was a little despondent (if you’ve read my essay, “How to Become a Writer,” you know that I have thin skin) and found myself wandering into a bookstore in Chelsea called 192 Books.
It used to be that bookstores unfailingly cheered me up; there was always something to discover, whether or not I actually bought something. And also a feeling of home, of sharing something fundamental with the other (possibly-despondent) browsers — all of us in search of hope in the form of beautiful writing.
These days I brace myself a little when entering a bookstore. The publishing process robs one of some of that book-buying/book-browsing innocence. It’s easy to get caught up in the sense that it’s all just sausage-making and to see nothing but pork fat and innards — loud displays, sensational jacket covers, the same-old-top-10-best-selling authors front and center. I don’t begrudge any bookstore, independent ones especially, for whatever they need to do to stay afloat; it’s more that my awareness of all the machinations now blares, infringing on the homecoming.
But at 192, something wonderful is being preserved. The place is curated, not window-dressed. It feels like a person, or group of persons, is behind the particular arrangement of books — not a McPerson, not a sales formula. Even in hard economic times, they seem to continue to understand their job as a mission — proactive, not merely reactive. As a consumer, I feel respected — encouraged toward a highest common denominator, not a lowest one.
Two of the new fiction releases on display were Joe Meno’s The Great Perhaps, and Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women, both of which are going on my to-read list. A terrific profile of Joe Meno by Edan Lepucki at The Millions first got my attention, and then the jacket copy at 192 really got my attention. Here’s an excerpt:
…Each [of the Caspers] fears uncertainty and the possibilities that accompany it. When Jonathan and Madeline suddenly decide to separate, this nuclear family is split, each member forced to confront his or her own cowardice, finally coming to appreciate the cloudiness of the modern age. With wit and humor, The Great Perhaps pre-sents a revealing look at anxiety, ambiguity, and the need for complicated answers to complex questions.
Having gone through the process of creating catalogue copy, this struck me; for blurbs and summaries there is often a push toward punchy advertising speak. This one seemed to me somewhat uncompromising; you can hear the author’s voice. (I mean, when you are releasing a book in the U.S. for the summer and thinking about how to hook the general reader, would the words cowardice, cloudiness, anxiety, ambiguity, complicated, and complexity rush to mind?)
A short video of Kate Walbert discussing “advice for young writers” over at Scribner/Simon & Schuster gives us a spare, truthful, and encouraging voice — bling-less and down-to earth. ”Don’t give up,” she says, then goes on to share the fact that the first novel she published was the third novel she’d written. There is so much wisdom, and liberating realism, in that kind of established-writer’s revelation.
Both Meno and Walbert have been at this a long time. Congrats to both of them on their auspicious releases.
22 May 2009
…if you poke around a little on a regular basis.
From a post at RobAroundBooks, a book jacket I am guessing I would have otherwise never seen – for a novel by a Korean writer (I’ve never heard of), published by Telegram, an indie publisher in London (that I’ve also never heard of).
Isn’t that lovely? I’m sort of speechless.
Click here for more about The Bird by Oh Jung-hee.
17 May 2009
The book jacket for Long for This World is done. Galleys next month. Exciting? Wish I could say yes. It’s strange when things become “final.” In every other part of life, completion feels good. With creative work, there’s a tinge of melancholy. Post-partum?
I’ve been looking at book jackets more closely lately. Anyone seen this one yet, for Denis Johnson’s new novel?
Ee-gads! There should be a disclaimer: No books were injured in the making of this book jacket. Still, can’t wait to read it.
5 May 2009
With job loss still on the rise; philanthropy, investment, and consumer spending way down; retirement funds dwindling to nothing; and everyone struggling to “do more with less” (when many have been doing with less for a long time anyway)… not to mention continuing death and violence in Pakistan, Iraq, and now Turkey in the news today (I won’t include the links here; you’ll find your way to the bad news on your own, I’m sure), and flu-and-more-flu (on this Cinco de Mayo); it might be easy to equate realism with pessimism.
When I was a college student, I became enamored of the philosopher/ivy league academician/jazz-and-hip-hop-activist Cornel West, who toured the country talking to 20 year-olds like me, saying idealistic things like, “Hope and optimism are not the same. Optimism says ‘things will get better.’ Hope says ‘Things may not get better, but I have faith anyway.’” (My paraphrase)
Lately I’ve been receiving and internalizing a lot of lower-your-expectations counsel from people in the book biz. Don’t expect a big print run, don’t expect the greatest book jacket in the world, don’t expect much in foreign sales, don’t expect to sell your next book (necessarily), don’t expect people to show up to your readings. Realism and pessimism, indeed.
(And I am as susceptible to pessimism as anyone. My friend B. and I, both of us writers, have written to each other about how “easily dispirited” we are, and how writers sometimes seem to have been born with one less layer of skin than a normal person.)
But. Miraculously (today, I can only speak for today), I am not dispirited. I’ve finished with the copyedited pages of Long for This World (just in time for the deadline), and the thing is real and alive — painfully flawed in some areas, but a work of my imagination and skill and vision. Not for nothin’, as they say.
I asked my agent if her colleagues at the recent London Book Fair seemed depressed about the future of the industry. She said no, not depressed, because people are still passionate about books, and that isn’t going to change. They are, however, she said, humbled.
I like that. A friend of mine once said to me that humility is simply self-truth — nothing more, nothing less. Neither grossly inflating nor grossly diminishing one’s star. Humility seems good counsel, perhaps the best counsel, for an artist forging ahead into today’s particular reality.
20 March 20009
In approaching a few writers to read the manuscript of Long For This World and possibly provide blurbs, I’ve been surprised by a more-than-once response, which goes something like: I’d be happy to read it, but you should know that I will only blurb it if I absolutely love it.
My first (inner) response is, Well, of course; why would you praise something falsely? Followed by Hmm, I suppose that response implies that it is not uncommon for writers to praise work falsely.
“Falsely” is too strong. The common practice, I believe, is for writers to praise what they love about the work of writers in whom they believe. In other words, the commitment is personal, rather than work-specific.
Wyatt Mason of Harper’s writes this week in his blog about the role of friendship in the making of literary careers. Quoting T.S. Eliot in a letter to the benefactor John Quinn:
I am sorry to say that I have found it uphill and exasperating work trying to impose [James] Joyce on such “intellectual” people, or people whose opinion carries weight as I know, in London. He is far from being accepted, yet. I only know two or three people, besides my wife and myself, who are really carried away by him.
Mason goes on to comment:
Quality is the key to any serious literary endurance, yes, but friendship is underrated as a critical tool. Anyone can write a blurb extolling, adverbially, the “fearlessly brilliant” and “daringly brave” (?) qualities of some someone’s latest something. But not everyone will write and circulate defenses of under-known works and undervalued artists, try to raise cash for the strapped genius, advocate in public and push in private for the virtues of the great but obscure… We forget, now and again, in the careerist whirl of the weird little business that is made of writing, how much altruism there is among those who do this sort of work.
Of course we’d rather believe in a pure meritocracy, but as Mason points out, it’s not so either/or. As in any field of work or path to success, there’s some element of luck/good fortune that comes into it. And the magic of the altruistic personal touch is still alive and well.
My editor and I will hope for some good fortune, but as far as blurbs go, we may just have to do this the old-fashioned way. In the words of the late John Houseman: we’ll have to earn it.
12 March 2009
I’m stealing this from themillionsblog.com, click here for the originating post.
Click here for my original post on a recent profile of the late David Foster Wallace.
People I trust (men, mostly, though) love both these books. I’ve not read either. One does wonder about the conversation at that marketing meeting, where the Netherland paperback design was decided. Not much of an attempt at all to veil the strategy, it seems to me. Or is this another sausage/laws situation?
