Ted’s Side Follow Up
If you are a Two Sides listener, maybe you heard Episode 20, Ted’s Side of the Story, when Lory interviewed me. Hope so!
I wanted to follow up on two things from the episode.
First, we talked briefly about writing with a plan versus discovering the story through writing. Lory is a planner and I am a ‘pantser’ (writing by the seat of my pants). If you want to explore this idea, check out Storytelling for Pantsers: How to Write and Revise Your Novel Without an Outline by Annalisa Parent. Lory came across this book somewhere and said “A book for Ted!” Or, something like that.
I mentioned a pantser quote, but couldn’t remember who said it. Here it is:
“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
E.L. Doctorow
Lory mentioned that we want to add more about writing to Two Sides. Maybe we will talk more about planners and pantsers someday.
Second, Lory and I were planning for Two Sides stuff when, on the spur of the moment, we decided to do Episode 20. Lory told me to go away and that she would meet me at the library in thirty minutes. I spent a little time in the library and I took notes thinking that she might ask how I spent my time. A Good Book Hunting sort of question.
Many books catch my eye as I wander through libraries and bookstores. For this trip, my notes aren’t on every book, but on those that my eye lingered on.
Come with me through the library.
I saw a display of biographies. Among the books was Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder. I recently purchased his book House. I started it but got diverted. Strength is a Pulitzer Prize winner about civil war and genocide. I wasn’t familiar with it but I am interested now. And the list gets longer.
On the same display I picked up The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees by Meredith May. I am fascinated by honey bees. Books about bees could be an episode someday.
Another display was called Reality is Stranger than Fiction. I looked at The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found by Violet Moller. Too much good stuff to leave behind. I borrowed this one.
On a humor display I looked at Last Chance Books. It sounds a little like the movie You’ve Got Mail. I’m a sucker for books about bookstores, but I left it behind. Maybe another time.
In the Young Adult section I saw a Lois Lowry book, Son. This is a companion to her books The Giver, Gathering Blue, and Messenger. It was published in 2012. It is hard to imagine that I haven’t read it, but I poked around in it a bit, and nothing sounded familiar. I’ll have to follow up on this sometime. If you haven’t read Lowry, you might want to check these out.
In the New Fiction display, I saw Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. This is one of a recent spate of retellings of ancient Greek stories from women’s points of view. I recently read, A Thousand Ships, a retelling of The Iliad. Stone Blind particularly caught my eye because I had thought that a retelling of the story of Medusa and her Gorgon sisters could be interesting. She beat me to it!
Then, in the New Nonfiction section, I saw the Storyteller’s Workbook: An inspirational, Interactive Guide to the Craft of Novel Writing by Adrienne Young and Isabel Ibanez. I’ve read a lot of books about writing (Another episode?) and probably don’t need another, but it looked interesting and it went home with me. This is Lory’s kind of book; she’ll probably want to see it.
Thanks for coming along on my Good Book Hunting trip!