In a Publisher's Weekly article, the CEO of scholastic books sent out a call for the promotion of worldwide literacy. The same day, an article in the chronicle of higher education told of a study that indicated students retain more of what they read in on paper than of what they read online.

Now, at the risk of being an optimist, I'll extrapolate some potentially excellent news for us book writers. Global literacy will lead to more book readers, so if the book reading within the currently literate population diminishes, but at the same time gets replaced with reading among the newly literate populations, we stay in business. Maybe even prosper.

With this happy thought in mind, let us all run out and support global literacy.

I wonder, would it be inappropriate to suggest extending generosity to Perelandra College.

In a book called Made to Stick, I paused while reading this passage: "To make our communication more effective, we need to shift our thinking from 'What information do I need to convey?' to 'What questions do I want my audience to ask?'"

I used to have SIMPLIFY on the bulletin board above my desk. Today, I posted MAKE READERS ASK QUESTIONS up there.

At a video conference on leadership, hosted by churches,  I listened to a slew of lectures mostly by folks whose books were for sale in the lobby. Though I had sworn off buying books until my to read stack got shorter, I bought Made to Stick. Meaning the authors' pitch stuck.

I placed the book about halfway down my stack. There it laid until some months passed and I attended a college president's conference (I'm president of the world's smallest college) and a speaker raved about Made to Stick.

The authors, Chip and Dan Heath, I would call business gurus. The book is about effective communication for the purpose of selling people on whatever, be it a doctrine or a widget. Or a book?  I wonder.

Last week I got an idea for a class or maybe a book about writing novels. It will present a plan to take the beast from conception to fruition and in the process give the writer some handy tools they can use thereafter.

We novelists generally hate to be asked, "What's your book about?" Summarizing a novel in few enough words so anybody will listen without yawning is a wicked challenge. I hear that Hollywood folks call this summary an elevator pitch, meaning you're riding in an elevator with Spielberg and have a few floors to sell him on your story.

As I pondered how to assist writers in drafting a cool elevator pitch, I thought, Hey, these Heath brothers are giving me stuff that might help.

The idea of a novelist learning a writing craft from a business guru might seem rather ignoble. But  editors, agents, publicists and such keep telling us, "Writing is a business." 

Oh, Lord, I'm going to go take an Advil or two.

Having beat the headache, I'll conclude this post with a teaser: The Heath brothers posit a six point scheme about what makes a catchy idea.  Those who don't care to read the whole book should return here next week. 

I've been reading Michael Connelly's Nine Dragons.

A certain passage made me think of the many times I've heard people ask writers if they begin with character or plot. 

And, it made me think of a talk I had with the person who's representing my books to films. She said major filmmakers aren't much concerned with character.

And I thought about some years ago when I was teaching at the University of Arizona and another writing prof mentioned that he considered our task as novelist in this era might be to accomplish what couldn't be done in film, which is write with close attention to character.

Nine Dragons is mostly police procedural, a genre I don't find all that gripping. Mike's a gifted storyteller, so he keeps me reading even through the police details. But when I fell for the book, when I really started caring what happens to Bosch, was in one certain paragraph . . . I'll take the liberty of quoting.

"All his life Harry Bosch believed he had a mission. And to carry out that mission he needed to be bulletproof. He needed to build himself and his life so that he was invulnerable, so that nothing and no one could ever get to him. All of that changed the day he was introduced to the daughter he didn't know he had. In that moment, he knew he was both save and lost. He would forever be connected to the world in the way only a father knew. But he would also be lost because he knew the dark forces he faced would one day find her. It didn't matter if an entire ocean was between them. He knew one day it would come to this . . ."

If you'd like to know what "this" is, read the book. 

But my point is, one paragraph, half way through the book, and I'm invested. Completely hooked at last, because now I can feel with Bosch. Without going beneath the surface of character, novels are just paper. Better to watch the movie.

Having spent two of the last three weeks gone for meetings and conferences, and missing my Zoe all the while, I've pondered a lot about being her dad. Then somebody remarked that I should encourage my girl to become something more financially secure than an artist and to consider, when she's ready to decide upon a husband, the fellow's projected earnings. In a moment, I knew how I want to raise my daughter.

She can become whatever she wants. She can marry (or choose not to) whomever she pleases to.  I'm fine with her running her own life.  I'll tell her everything I believe but won't demand that she believe the same. And I'll try to help her stay resilient enough so she doesn't have to live in a self-defense posture, so she can always perceive the world with child-like clarity and wonder.

Most of us adults are so busy defending our emotions we miss most of what goes on in this world that should astonish us every new moment. We need self-help gurus to remind us to simply be aware.

Raymond Carver wrote (I think he was quoting another writer) that a writer doesn't need to be particularly smart but only to be able to look at a leaf or an old shoe in amazement. I want Zoe, at twenty, thirty, fifty, eighty, to still be able to experience that way. If that means she'll become an artist of humble means, she's got my blessing, and may God bless her too.

Novel Journey: Forgotten Beauty

This is the first time I have linked to another person's blog post. It's by Athol Dickson, on beauty, and why authors need to write with beauty as a goal.

I have an amazing seven-year-old daughter. You might want to read what I wrote for the San Diego Reader when she was born. 

In too many ways, this past year hasn't been good to her. Her mother left last July, contending she couldn't handle being part of a family while trying to take care of herself and getting her work (college teaching) done. Well, no matter how hard she tried to explain herself to Zoe, no matter that our girl is a wonder of deep and keen intelligence, Zoe couldn't understand.

I think she still can't. And a few days ago, her gecko died. She cried and told me it was her fault, that she hadn't been a good gecko mommy. So I asked what she might've done that she didn't do. She couldn't think of anything. Then she cried again. 

The thing is, although I can't protect her from death and separation, I want to defend her innocence. Some days she comes home from school upset because one friend has been mean to another. And I know, from experience and from watching my big kids grow, we can only witness so much meanness or death, or suffer so much separation, before we drop our open arms and assume a more cautious stance. 

Zoe may become an artist. Everywhere she goes, she finds paper and leaves drawings behind. After only a few months, she can make real music on her violin. 

My life as an artist, and as a seeker of loving happiness, could be viewed as an ongoing struggle to throw off caution and open my arms. I can't abide the thought of Zoe repeating that struggle. Insofar as I have any power, I mean to help her become strong enough so she doesn't need much caution, and to love so deeply she can overcome fear. 

I want her to remain the kind of person Jesus referred to when he advised that those who enter the kingdom of heaven are like children.

A student recently asked what she needed to do to get 100% on an assignment.

Here’s my response:

“I don't  know. I don’t think I ever have given one. For quite a few years, I practiced Tae Kwon Do. The master was an international judge and a military academy instructor. He was ninth degree.  In traditional Tae Kwon Do, nobody, repeat nobody, became tenth degree,  because that would indicate perfection, with no room for improvement. I might give Feodor Dostoyevski a 99 for certain chapters of Crime and Punishment or The Brothers Karamazov. Maybe.”

Long ago, a student told me that the instructor in a beginning Creative Writing class had remarked, “If you get an A, you can be a successful writer. Get a B, you might have a chance, but it’s not likely. Get a C, forget it.”

Unless this fellow gave everyone A’s, that was not only a heartless remark, it was also patently false. I’ve known plenty of student writers who weren’t in the least impressive but who have, through patience and dedication, become masterful.

Grades are perhaps a necessary evil of education. Evil because: behind every grade lies the question, “Compared to what?”

According to traditional Tae Kwon Do, our quest should not be for perfection, but to achieve a patient and indomitable spirit, and to always do our best.

Master Jeong would make that advice into a chant, “Do your best. Do your best.”

My friend and sometime antagonist Don Merritt advised me quite a while ago that when seeking more readership for a blog, we need to strictly define our topic. He, for instance, has split his blog in two. One blog is on writing. The other is where he tackles anything that's not about writing.

As yet, I haven't followed his advice, because I  don't see a distinction between writing and engaging the spirit. I see writing, and living as a writer or I suppose any sort of artist, as spiritual exercise. Any artist will admit to at times slipping or plunging into a condition wherein we seem to receive the story, image, character or whatever. And all who have experienced this condition find it far more pleasant, and more likely to produce quality work, than laboring with the mind.

If someone contends that what I call inspiration is no more than a connection to a different part or function of the brain, I won't argue. I'm not trying to define or explain, only to get inspired more often and perhaps more deeply. 

William Blake felt so inspired, he claimed everything he wrote came straight from God. Writers of what we call scripture probably felt the same. Maybe they were nuts. Maybe not. 

Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, argued that Quality is real, absolute and elemental. In my approach to the world, Quality and God are the same, and to truly seek Quality in art (or in life) is to seek God. I thought of italicizing truly, but decided that might feel preachy.

Anyway, I'm not ready to spilt my thoughts or my blog in two. 

About a year ago, a voice in my mind advised, "Play more golf." Since it came so clear and I liked the message, I decided the speaker was God. If you think I'm crazy, that's okay.

So I asked, "Yeah? Then where do I get the time and the money? " All that came was a whispery chuckle. 

The past year, things have gotten ever busier, and money has found ever more means of escape. If I play golf once a month, I feel extravagant, though golf has long been a kind of therapy. At least it's the best means I've found for allowing my mind a break from all other pursuits, ambitions, trials, concerns, and tribulations. Which is why, I presumed, God would suggest I play more.

But the obvious answer isn't always correct. Here's my latest answer:

Golf is largely a mind game. The attitude with which we approach a round, or a shot, decides its success. One part of attitude is setting a goal. At least a hundred times I've asked myself, should I attempt to shoot par and measure my performance against that standard, even though I'm bound to fall short? Or, should I attempt to shoot bogies (one over par)?

An eighth grade teacher must've thought I was troubled by the pressure of having a mother who taught in our school. She took me aside and gave this peculiar advice: "Don't worry about getting A's. B's are fine. They'll get you wherever you want to go." 

B's are like bogies. All through high school and college, until graduate school, I aimed for B's and rarely got disappointed. And I've gone through life as a bogie golfer. I come home from games feeling slightly uplifted if I scored an 87 (three under bogie), and slightly dismayed if I shot 93 (three over). That, I'm finding, is a lousy attitude. A fellow who has played the game for as many years as I have shouldn't settle for bogies. 

Since each new hole is a new game, I can choose to address each one as a potential par or as likely bogie. If I choose the former, I get dismayed more often. Choose the latter, I get uplifted more often. And each of those conditions translates into better or worse concentration, meaning more or less tension, the primary mental elements of the golf swing.

But yesterday, the voice came back, with such clarity that I decided it was feeding me the reason it told me to play more golf. This time it said, "Go for birdies." 

For those who avoid the game I'll explain. A par three hole is short enough so you should be able to reach the green in one shot, where you can finish with two putts. A par four hole, you should be able to reach in two and finish with two putts. But if you hit the right shot to the green, and use only one putt, you score birdie.

"If I always go for birdies," I asked, "won't I be discouraged most of the time?" God knows, a discouraged golfer gets tense and loses concentration.

"That depends," I heard. "Why get discouraged unless it's the last hole you'll ever play?"

Those, I believe, are words to live by. There is always, or most always, the next hole. 

I'm no longer the following the advice of my eighth grade math teacher. Every hole I play, I'm going for birdie, even though I know I probably won't get one. But I'll be choosing optimism. And making that choice eighteen times a round will affect my attitude about other pursuits.

My dad was an optimist, or he tried to be. But his ventures usually landed him in a mess. He went broke plenty of times. Which made my mom, of the Great Depression generation, ever more pessimistic. She was a fervent believer in Murphy's law, and advised me, in ways both subtle and blunt, to prepare for the worst. Hence my affinity for bogies. 

Should I live long enough, and should I play enough golf with this new dedication, and should I succeed in bringing new optimism to each hole, no matter what I suffered on the last one, I'll begin to see optimism overcome the less productive attitudes. And we all know optimism is healthier and more likely to prompt creativity and inspiration. Right?

One of my bad habits is assessing the value of each day as it passes by what tasks I've accomplished. Someday I may kick the habit entirely. For now, though, I'm  going to alter it, on account of a realization. 

I realized that the tasks don't matter so much as the good ideas that come. 

When we analyze stories, we're wise to consider the climax, (the turning point upon which the success or failure of the character's quest depends), not as an action but as the thought or decision that propels the character toward the necessary action. 

Likewise, a valuable accomplishment won't happen unless a good idea sets it into motion.

Now, a good idea isn't worth much unless it's somehow acted upon. Lots of folks are flooded with good ideas and intentions to bring the ideas to life but never find the motivation to proceed.

But for those of us obsessed with carrying out what good ideas we're given, if we don't accomplish a single task, so what? We're not drones. What we're about isn't tasks but good ideas. The tasks will get done by and by.

Besides, this outlook makes me feel lighter.

1-11-10

To conclude this discussion on becoming a bestseller, let's return to the comment that sparked this discussion, which, in case you're just tuning in, began with the November 27 post:

"A Perelandra College writing student recently commented she wants to be a bestselling author so she can enlighten or awaken people."

In the film Citizen Kane, Kane's oldest friend comments that getting rich is no big trick; all it takes is to want money more than anything in the world.

What that means for this discussion is, the more passionately you want to succeed and are willing and able to sacrifice, the better your chances. Nothing can guarantee you'll become a bestseller. But your odds will increase to the degree that you:

• prioritize writing above all other pursuits

• study the craft

• study the elements of the bestsellers you most admire or want to emulate

• find a genre with whose priorities and essential themes you agree

• determine what draws readers to that genre and use that knowledge in planning and composing your stories

• pinpoint the readers you believe will become fans of your work, and discover ways to reach them

• find time and energy to study book marketing and apply what you learn

• diligently seek the right agent and publisher

Or, you could just sit down and write what comes naturally and get lucky. It happens. I've heard at least a dozen bestselling authors attribute their success largely to luck. But they may only say that to sound humble. When you hear fiction writers talk, keep in mind we're professional liars.

My wife and a friend have a thriller idea they want to explore. Neither of them have written any long fiction. They talked about their chances of making a fortune with this story, and her friend remarked, "I mean, it's not rocket science."

When she passed that remark on to me, I said, "Yeah. He's right. It's probably harder."

Most of us aren't going to become bestsellers, but that's no tragedy unless that ambition is the only reason we write.

I could list a number of reasons I've spent my adult life as a novelist. You've got your own reasons you might want to list. That way, you won't be disappointed if you don't succeed in reaching some goal you never even set as a goal.

If you hope to write a bestseller, it's wise to create a story people claim they couldn't put down, or that it kept them up reading all night. A page-turner.

Here are some clues about writing a page-turner, from Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais and Raymond Chandler.  

Mike Connelly gave a talk in which he mentioned that he tried to put a question on every page of his novels. If we ponder the kinds of questions we can offer, we can recognize a whole world of possibilities. Plot questions major and minor: Did the butler do the murder? Is the fellow in the beret an accomplice?  Character questions: Why does Joe sneer when referring to his ex? Questions prompted by detail: Where did Myrna get the scar?

Someone dedicated to breaking the best-seller code might go to one of Connelly's novels and compile a list of the questions that arise page by page. 

Last year at Murder in the Grove, a swell conference in Boise, Idaho, Robert Crais gave a keynote talk and informed us that he had learned from Raymond Chandler's letters that Chandler attempted to put something interesting on every page. And, according to Crais, Chandler wrote in longhand on steno pads so that the small pages would force him to include more interesting stuff. As what's interesting and what's not is mighty subjective, I won't expand on this technique except to suggest that we'd be wise to consider what interests the type of reader we're seeking. Some enjoy literary allusions, while others would rather read about autopsies or the firing range of a certain gun. 

Recently at the Men of Mystery luncheon in Irvine, California, Mike Connelly talked about a method Kurt Vonnegut proposed. I recalled Vonnegut's visit to the University of Iowa. Three times, in a class, at an open lecture, and again at a party after the lecture, he stressed that the most important factor in creating dramatic tension was building a character with whom we can sympathize and showing that the character desperately wants something he can't readily obtain.

That's sound and standard advice. But Mike added a twist. He said Vonnegut proposed that on every page a character should want something.

Let's say on page 32, Maurice wants a hamburger. Page 33, he wants a kiss from his mother. Page 34, he wants to stop in a liquor store for a lottery ticket.  As the story proceeds and the wants add up, not only do the questions (will he get what he wants) build and sustain tension, we also come to know Maurice darned well.

Michael Connelly and I began in the mystery field about the same time. He lived in L.A., I lived in San Diego. He, Alan Russell, and I did some traveling and book signings together. I consider Mike both a friend and a writer from whom I've learned quite a bit.

His career has developed the way a career is supposed to, with a readership that grows book after book. I've got some thoughts about why.

During college, Mike decided to become a writer of crime fiction. But instead of jumping right in and, like most of us, writing about situations we've only read or watched dramas about, he chose to major or minor  (I forget which) in journalism and become a crime reporter. This decision put him way ahead of most novelists for two reasons. First, by the time he began writing novels, he had seen and learned plenty that could make his stories feel authentic. And, as a journalist, he learned how to write clearly, which English majors, charmed  by style and rhetoric, may never do.

In Harry Bosch, the Los Angeles policeman Mike built his series upon, he chose a main character loaded with conflicts. Harry is a battle scarred Vietnam vet. His mother, a prostitute, was murdered. He's a lone wolf in a profession whose job description emphasizes teamwork. Often I've heard people comment about Bosch as a character. They love him and want to read more and more about him. My best guess as to why he's so compelling is that his character revolves around a certain definable trait. Bosch is haunted. Which makes him somehow simple and complex at once. Those who would create a character as compelling as Harry might try finding a single adjective to describe him or her and using that word as a unifying principle. 

I don't know whether Mike intended to write for the niche "police procedurals," but he has become a household word amongst fans of that sub-genre. The idea of finding a niche may seem limiting to writers, but to marketers and p.r. folks it's golden. If you fail to define your niche, you're not likely to get your book published, let alone become a bestseller.

When the time came for Mike to try to sell his first novel, he set out to find not only an agent, but the right agent, whom he found by learning who represented the authors he most admired and to whose work he believed his novel bore a resemblance. The tactic worked, and the agent he landed with, he has stuck with ever since. 

For advice about finding and working with agents, go to my web site and subscribe to my newsletter. 

Most of us writers are introverts, which Mike appears to be. But since part of our job is to impress or befriend people who can spread the word about our books, when we're in the presence of fans, booksellers, librarians and such, many of us attempt to pretend we're extroverts. We act like somebody we're not.  This has never been Mike's m.o.  What he appears to have done, is be himself. And that tactic worked. He's awfully well liked. I've heard plenty of talk about him, and never a bad word. 

Also, Mike learned from masters.  But that deserves a whole other story, which I'll dish out next time.

Happy New Year.

Sandra Cisneros and I were good friends in graduate school and now and then since, so I have some perspective on her career and can offer a couple suggestions about how to follow her path to fame and prosperity:

Find your distinctive voice. Sandra began as a poet. Her first book, House on Mango Street, which I suspect may still be the most popular, is a collection of stories in some cases so brief you wouldn't go far afield calling them prose poems. And they all come from a voice at once both wise and youthful. 

Seek out your niche and build from there. Arte Publico, a small publisher from Texas, originally published House on Mango Street. I suspect they promoted the book to college Chicano Studies professors and to high schools in areas with a substantial Latino population, because in those venues it gradually became not only a hit but a staple. 

Here's a link to an article about the future of publishing that advocates publishers would be wise to dedicate themselves to finding niche markets. publishers, but I suspect it relates to authors as well. I'll give a snippet from it:

"A stark illustration of this hit my radar screen last month.  A major agent told me that he sold a Mind, Body, Spirit author’s book to Random House, which sold 12,000 copies.  He sold the next book by the same author to niche publisher Hay House, which sold 200,000 copies! And Hay House, with over a million email addresses of people all interested in the same type of book, probably spent less on marketing to sell eight times as many."

Sure, finding a distinctive voice and a marketable niche probably won't be easy. The voice has to come from your unique personality, or you won't be able to sustain it. 

The niche? Well, I've been wrestling with this question for a spell, and the best niche I can imagine for my books is that they are most liable to appeal to former English majors with History minors (or vice versa) who appreciate somewhat gritty detective fiction and aren't offended by Christian characters who may be either heroic or despicable. 

If can identify a niche market for your work but doubt reaching it will allow you to support yourself and family with your books, take a look at some of the magazines that appear to thrive. I'd bet if your book sold to one out of every ten people who read English and put ketchup on broccoli, you could pay off the credit cards and buy rental property.

Now the question becomes, how to reach our target audience?

Until I find the answer, I'll leave that issue to marketing pros and move on to describing other paths to literary success, next time. So I'll remind you to subscribe. 

So, suppose you want to become a bestseller not by writing what people want to read but by introducing them to your view of the world, with the stories you feel compelled to create.

Having been around a while, I've gotten some insider knowledge about careers that worked like you want yours to.

John Irving was my first teacher at Iowa, and he impressed upon us that we should not expect to make a living writing. We should accept the fact that (lacking wealth or generous spouses) we would need another career. Our stories should be our passion and avocation. Okay, but a couple years later, The World According to Garp made him a fortune. He's been a bestseller ever since. 

To follow Irving's path, I'd suggest you:  1. have a wild imagination and get over any fear of using it; 2. diligently study the plotting of Charles Dickens, as Irving did;  3. become a master humorist and express your humor in quirky ways.

Richard Russo and I were friends at the University of Arizona. Though he had already finished the MFA program, I read and critiqued several of his stories. Since then, he has become a master. Film adaptations of his novels have starred Paul Newman. His books all become bestsellers. And they're mighty fine books, both enjoyable and thoughtful, as are John Irving's.

To follow Russo's path, you might: 1. seek out advice and when you get it, ponder to glean all you can from it; 2. find an agent who is in the business of nurturing authors; 3. build your stories around unique and colorful characters; 4. place those characters in an environment, such as Russo's Mohawk, that may intrigue folks in the publishing business, in the case of Mohawk, because it reminds them of their weekend retreat.

If neither of those paths seem the one for you, come back. I'll steer you in some other directions.

So, you want to become a bestselling writer but also want to guide readers into new realms, new ways of thinking. Here's a problem you'll no doubt run into:

Most readers don't want to learn new ways of thinking. They may like learning new facts, but regarding their outlook on the world, they want writers to validate and lend ammunition to their current attitudes. If you want to change Democrats to Republicans or Christians to athiests, good luck. Most people don't buy books that will challenge their belief. 

So, along with learning how to craft a suspenseful story, the most effective formula for becoming a bestseller is to share the attitudes of the majority. Which makes life difficult for those of us who don't.

A very well read and learned librarian told me that successful writers are those whose internal metaphors and symbols, conscious and unconscious, are  in accord with the ones in most people's minds. If this describes you, then your stories will come alive to those people and you can paint vivid pictures with a minimum of words. But suppose you're a bit quirky, and your internal symbols and metaphors are out of sync with the multitude's. You can attempt to discern what symbols and metaphors work best for most readers, say, by attending critique groups. But this may prove a challenge that would require more than one lifetime.

Similarly, if your beliefs about conspiracies or politics or spiritual growth or romance are close to what your readers believe and you can express their thoughts or desires, perhaps more fluently than they can, you may be half way to riches and fame.

But suppose your attitudes are somewhat singular. Suppose you think for yourself and you want to express what you think and that's a main reason you write. And suppose you dream of being looked up to, for financial reasons, by your brother the mortgage broker.

Next post I'll offer a few solutions. 

A Perelandra College writing student recently commented that she wants to be a bestselling author so she can enlighten or awaken people. This gave me pause, and prompted considerable reflection about what makes a bestselling author. 

To make any sense of this topic, we need a solid definition of bestseller. 

One author might claim bestseller status because a given bookstore tallies its sales by the month and his book ranked among the top ten during one of those months, perhaps because he visited for a booksigning and drew dozens of buyers, since it was his hometown.

Another author, whose long time career was public relations, developed an elaborate plan to lure folks to an online book launch party. She was attempting to land in the top hundred selling books of the day on amazon.com and thereby claim bestseller status.

Even the bestselling claims that give specifics may not be as reputable as they seem. If an author, by luck or design, happens to be featured at signings in the same week in the four or five stores the local newspaper surveys to determine its bestseller list, this may give a valid yet misleading claim to bestseller status. Such things can even occur in major cities, say Los Angeles, with the Times.

For this discussion, I'll define bestseller as a book that shows up on many bestseller lists and puts the author in a position to quit his day job without rousing anger or trepidation in his family.

And I'll turn to the heart of the matter by suggesting that the desire to become a bestselling author may be in conflict with other, and perhaps more important, desires. So those who aspire to be read by millions had best pause in their quest and answer a few questions before plotting their strategy.

First question: Do you want to write about what you witness, experience, and/or believe, or about what people want to read?

To revisit this topic every few days, in case it leads to some revelations, look right for the Subscribe gizmo and sign up. 

Here's a rather long quote from Josephine Tey (the speaker is Grant in The Singing Sands) 

"It's a harmless sort of weakness," Tad said, with a tolerant lift of a shoulder.

"That is just where you are wrong. It is the utterly destructive quality. When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in the mirror and buys things to deck itself out in. But that is merely personal conceit. Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable. You can never convince Vanity that anyone else is of the slightest importance; he just doesn't understand what you are talking about. He will kill a person rather than be put to the inconvenience of doing a six month stretch."

"But that's being insane."

"Not according to Vanity's reckoning. And certainly not in the medical sense. It is merely Vanity being logical. It is, as I said, a frightening trait, and the basis of all criminal personality. Criminals--true criminals, as opposed to the little man who cooks the accounts in an emergency or the man who kills his wife when he finds her in bed with a stranger--true criminals vary in looks and tastes and intelligence and method as widely as the rest of the world does, but they have one invariable characteristic, their pathological vanity."

I'm thinking about M. Scott Peck, in People of the Lie, arguing that all of what we call evil is rooted in narcissism, and of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley character who is perfectly charming except he needs to bump off whomever gets into his way. 

And I'm considering widening Tey's analysis to include even those we don't usually label criminals but just dishonest, such as liars and all kinds of cheats. 

Of course there are degrees of vanity. Still, observing people from this angle might serve to warn us about those we ought to keep our distance from. And no doubt it would help us write real and convincing  bad guys.

I'm developing a class in memoir for Perelandra College.  Yesterday a sort of introduction came to me. 

Here's a note I'll send students:

Unless you're a celebrity or have lived through some wild and overt (not interior) drama, nobody except maybe friends and family wants to read about you. At least when picking up a memoir, they want to read about themselves or people they know and are puzzled about.

So, to find more than ten readers for you memoir, you need to: 1. become such a stunning prose stylist that the one out of a hundred or so potential readers who appreciate fine writing will keep reading for that alone, or 2. focus your story on an element of your life or the overcoming of a problem that everybody, most everybody, or lots of people can relate to on account of their own experience.

The best example that comes to mind, I had the honor of teaching a class Philip Yancey attended. He's a masterful writer of non-fiction, but he hadn't yet tackled a memoir, and he was preparing to write one. We talked afterward and he said that during the class he had recognized the focus of his memoir. The story would be overcoming a childhood spent around a toxic kind of religion.

I'd bet a few hundred million of us can relate to that. 

I'm feeling a kinship to Pontius Pilate, as I keep asking myself "What is truth?" 

What's got me so ponderous is, I'm creating a class on memoir for Perelandra College, and at the same time beginning to pull together a collection of articles, hoping they can become the rough draft or the outline for a memoir.

My question isn't some James Frey issue about whether I should include a blockbuster scene that never happened. And it's not about distrusting memory. I'm comfortable writing scenes and thoughts from the long past as best I can recall them. If I later discovered it was really Gretl who said something I attributed to Harry, I would lose no sleep over the error. 

What's got me stumped is bigger than detail, and more thematic. 

My life is rocky at best these days. For now, at least, I don't intend to tell what happened to land me here. I'll just confess to struggling with depression and ask, because our past is the story of what got us to where we are, can I honestly conclude the memoir in the uplifting way I would prefer to, by ending the story at a time when I felt on top of the world?

Suppose I were a tycoon, and the theme of my life was that diligence pays off. Suppose I made a billion dollars, then lost it all. Is the truth that diligence made me a billion dollars or that it made me lose a billion dollars? It all depends when I end the story, right? Suppose I go all the way and end with losing a billion, then publish the book and make millions on royalties. Does that make my story a lie?

What I'm asking is, how can we honestly know the theme of our life story or stories until after we die?

I can think of a half-dozen pat answers for this dilemma, but none of them seem to work.