The Writing Center

At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend, we stopped by the Google exhibit, which was promoting its Authors@Google series. Over the past year, Google has talked with myriad authors — from Hillary Clinton to Martin Amis — and has posted the videos online. Google interviews authors at its Mountain View headquarters as well as its offices in New York, Santa Monica, Ann Arbor, London, and Dublin. Most interviews are up to an hour long — a nice treat for anyone who doesn’t catch his or her favorite author on the book tour. Best of all, one of the Google reps mentioned that Google will be expanding the program, continuing to interview high-profile writers while reaching out to the small presses as well.

You can check out the series at Google, or visit YouTube for the archives. Enjoy.

Today’s New York Times article on Deborah Rodriguez’s memoir Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil brings up an all-too-familiar topic: allegations of fabrications in what the author and publisher have presented as a “true” story.

Rodriguez, an American who traveled to Afganistan and eventually set up a beauty school in Kabul, relates this story and other adventures in her book, co-written with Kristin Ohlson. Yet the Times reports that the book has “raised the ire of six women who were involved at the founding of the Kabul Beauty School [who] say the book is filled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. They argue that events did not unfold the way Ms. Rodriguez depicts them, and that she exaggerated her role in the formation of the school.”

A note in the book confirms that some details have been changed for privacy reasons — but those involved believe that some of Rodriguez’s stories are misleading (”It makes Debbie out to be Mother Theresa,” one woman told the Times. “And it’s wrong.”), and some even question whether certain events actually happened (writing about one character in the memoir, the Times reports that “none of the women recalled ever having met anyone fitting her description”).

Like most other authors faced with such allegations, Rodriquez stands by her story — so we may never know what’s true and what’s not. Meanwhile, with every bestselling book that is challenged by sticklers for truth, the memoir genre is slowly but surely becoming something else entirely: fiction.

I got such a kick out of this blog about the language and style choices of Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. It’s a very amusing look at precisely what is wrong with the writing in the book — things that for karmic reasons I don’t like to point out myself (but am very glad someone else has).

Remember this: almost as much can be learned by looking at bad writing (i.e., what not to do) as by reading all the great stuff. The trick, of course, is knowing the difference.

San Francisco Chronicle book editor Oscar Villalon wrote a fantastic article on the seemingly neverending debate on truth (or lack thereof) in nonfiction. Inspired by a recent article in The New Republic calling David Sedaris to task for sprinkling bits of fiction into his “nonfiction” essays (rather ironic, if you think about the Stephen Glass debacle, but that’s another story), Villalon questions why we readers put up with fictionalized versions of memoir that insist on being represented as nonfiction. It’s a question well worth asking — and worth answering — and yet all that seems to happen is that writers keep fictionalizing their nonfiction and continue calling it nonfiction.

Villalon brings up the point that nonfiction sells better than fiction, as well as the even better point that it’s a whole lot easier if a writer allows him- or herself to make up events or details rather than toil away to make a piece work using the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But this only takes away from those wonderful nonfiction writers (Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Mark Kramer, Tracy Kidder, to name a few) whose words you can count on to be not only true but meticulously so.

When I’m in class talking about memoir or creative nonfiction, I make a huge point of emphasizing the importance of truth, down to the tiniest detail. (My students sometimes look at me as if to say, “Duh.”) But clearly some of our most prolific writers are not getting the idea. As Villalon points out, Sedaris told The New Republic that Angela’s Ashes could’ve been fiction and he’d have liked it just as much — yet isn’t some of the beauty and horror of it due to the fact that it’s a true story? Villalon also notes that Augusten Burroughs’ new book comes with a disclaimer stating that his nonfiction book is not entirely true — so why label it nonfiction at all?

Villalon writes, “Fiction is a lie that tells the truth.” And ultimately, he believes, “there’s no excuse for calling a work containing chunks of fiction nonfiction…No excuse, none.” If only every writer — and reader — believed the same thing.

I’ve noticed in our Metro classes a lot of interest in writing young adult fiction — and those of you who are working on such projects will enjoy this Wall Street Journal article (subscription required), “Teen Books Are Hot Sellers, But Formula Isn’t Simple.”

The story details Emmy-winning television writer Larry Doyle’s quest to find a home for his novel, which his agent pitched to editors of both adult and young adult books. With bookstore sales declining, publishers are looking at the young adult market as a potential to increase overall sales. However, while the teenage audience is easy to reach, thanks in large part to their love of the Internet, choosing whether and how to label a book for adults or young adults remains a challenge.

The WSJ reports that Doyle’s book was ultimately sold as an adult title, a choice the author says he’s happy with. After all, it’s easier to get teens to read adult books than vice versa (the article points to examples such as Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep). But for those who do want to target the young adult market, remember these two words: Harry Potter.

Today’s New York Times has an interesting feature on the pre-publication book tour and its effectiveness in book sales, particularly for first-time authors.

The industry credits Morgan Entrekin, the publisher of Grove/Atlantic, with the invention of the pre-publication book tour when his company published “Cold Mountain,” preceded by a pre-publication tour that likely had a lot to do with the book becoming a best-seller. And now, as this article explains, many publishers, especially the more independent presses, are hoping to generate the same buzz for new authors.

The Times quotes weary British author Steven Hall, recently in the U.S. for a pre-pub tour for his novel, The Raw Shark Texts, as saying, “You take a writer, the kind of person who wants to sit on his own for three years at a time, and then make them go to a bunch of dinner parties.” But as every author knows, writing today is as much about selling as it is about telling good story.

For any of you who may feel as though you’re too old to become a successul writer, check out this AP story about a man who began writing his first book at age 93 and now, at age 96, is a published author.

Harry Bernstein’s memoir, The Invisible Wall, about his childhood in northern England, grew out of the loneliness he encountered after the death of his wife. As he says in the article, “You know when you get into your 90s like I am, there’s nowhere else to think except the past. There’s no future to think about. There’s very little present…So you think of the past.”

But now he has quite a lot of future to think about. A Random House editor in London picked up his book and couldn’t put it down, and now, in addition to being published in England and Sweden, it will be released in Germany, Italy, Finland, and Norway. Bernstein is already at work on a second book, slated to be published in the U.S. by Ballantine.

I think all writers can learn a little from Bernstein’s wisdom. He reports that he writes when inspired rather than forcing deadlines, and he also says, “I’m not satisfied until I finish what I start. And I will not be satisfied until I start something new.”