Are you feeling stripped of ideas to write your next story and knuckling your head trying to shake inspiration out of the gobbledygook inside it? I’ve been there, and so have many others, and thumping your head will not hatch creativity. Knuckle no more. Better results are achieved through the power of observation. Inspiration is all around you. Here are some steps to set the gobbledygook in order.
Writing book reviews is a challenge for many indie authors. Yet, it is an essential skill to learn early on in any publishing venture. In The Book Review Companion: An Author’s Guide to Getting and Using Book Reviews, David Wogham explains the process of getting reviews and why they are essential in a step-by-step manner. From finding the right reviewers to rules and ethics of the game, this guide is requisite in all publishing endeavors.
September 9, 2020
“To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others. ”
― The Decameron
May 11, 2020
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them― Ray Bradbury
The corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused the largest number of shutdowns of businesses worldwide and changed life as we know it. In the first week of April, more than half of the world’s population has received orders to shelter in place. Will our economy and way of life ever come back? Experts agree that it will not until scientists have discovered a vaccine that will be accepted universally. That is not in the foreseeable future.
The world is undergoing a metamorphosis: climate change, rising oceans, weird bugs, rising temperature on Christmas Day and snow on Mother’s Day. As you ponder about what to do, enlighten yourself with reading the “good books”—the books that make you think about life in an alternative world. There are many of them. Here is a short list:
Animal Farm by George Orwell—an allegorical novella that tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury—a dystopian society where books are burned.
The Iron Heel by Jack London describes a futuristic world in which the division between the classes has deepened.
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift—a satire on human nature and a parody on travel
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll about a young girl’s adventures in a dream.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley—a dystopian science fiction novel of a consumerist society. Margaret Atwood called it “either a perfect-world utopia or its nasty opposite,” depending on your point of view.
And of course:
The Hand Maid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and any of her other books.
The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Not everything is dystopian. Check out the following:
Lost Horizon by James Hilton—the mythical sanctuary of Shangri-La.
The Giver by Lois Lowry—a young adult novel about a young man who lives in a seemingly ideal world.
I will be posting a quote each day. Hopefully, it will inspire you to read some of the greatest works in literature.
Lessons on Structure Learned from Writing My First Book
If there’s one lesson I learned about how to structure a novel is that it involved a lot more than the basic five elements of plot shown in the classic diagram of building a novel. It took me more than ten years to write my debut book Canaries Can’t Cry, but the real writing was done in less than a year. Most of the time was spent in learning how to write a novel. By that, I mean to build the structure, the framework that would keep my family biography from collapsing before the arc in the story reached its climactic zenith as it did with me many times.
My struggle wasn’t in learning how to write. I have written short stories, feature articles, travel articles, grants, articles on teaching, and even a software manual. My problem was in finding the structure for the family biographical saga—a work that I struggled to keep under eighty thousand words—is set in three countries and spans over six decades. I had questioned whether the novel should be written in the present or past tense, told from the first or third point of view, who the narrator should be, and where should I start.
I tried them all and was satisfied with the progress until each one collapsed, some of them went well beyond twenty thousand words. I abandoned my work many times and filed the pages away in a hanging folder hidden inside a file drawer. I brooded over my failure but believed in the story of a refugee family forced to leave their home in the former Yugoslavia—a history that has been neglected in the literature of biographies. But I don’t believe in failure. There is quitting a project after you learn that the effort isn’t important and move on to other things. Here’s the word “learn” for failure is learning what doesn’t work in the many steps to build the ladder to success. It took Madame Curie many experiments with uranium rays before confirming her hypothesis. She continued because she believed in her work.
I believed in my story and though I tucked away, I always exhumed from the crypt of the file cabinet it to give it another chance to life in print. But I still didn’t know where to begin. I share my experience in the hope to help a newbie writer avoid the mistakes I made.
Where do you start your novel?
I tried them all, only to have the story fall flat because the setup—its foundation—was too weak to hold the forward movement. More than once the story moved smoothly until it hit a wall that couldn’t be cracked, and the characters were trapped in a one-way dead-end street.
How I decided on the beginning—a good start is to introduce the setting, the conflict, and the main characters as soon as possible. It’s not important at this point to reveal the conflict if the reader feels the tension of an imminent life-changing event about to occur. I began my story about one third of the way into the plot and introduced the setting, main characters, and tension in the first three hundred words. In the first paragraph, the reader learns that the setting is a fishing boat, that one character needs crutches and another is a baby.
The boat rocked gently against the waves of the night and lulled the thirteen-month-old Antonietta, who lay asleep below deck. This same calming motion, however, brought an unease to Anita that rose from her stomach to the back of her throat. She sat on her traveling trunk, next to Otto, whose crutches leaned upright against the hull of the trawler. His head fell on his chest, not asleep and not awake, leaden with the trapped air of salted fish, overused fishnets and engine fumes.
A few lines later,
The only sound was the rhythmic chugging of the engine. She stood in the middle of the ladder, with the upper half of her body exposed. How far am I from Sansego? It hasn’t been an hour since I left. Could I still see it? The urge for a last look at the place that was her home possessed her.
In this case, the conflict is a forced abandonment of home. The main character is distressed, her husband uses crutches, and she has a baby. The tension is the hook.
A word about conflict—There is no story without conflict. What does the heroine want? Every episode, every scene in the story is designed to move the story forward EXCEPT that the heroine finds complications all along the way until she reaches a point of no return. She must move forward from conflict to solution, from another conflict to another solution until the climax, a bit more than half way into the book. It is the author’s duty to present these conflicts in pictures, that is scenes that the reader can visualize and feel.
SHOW DON’T TELL. I had to learn that, too. Russian novelist Anton Chekhov once said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” That is the visualization, the scene. With this in mind, I proceeded “bird by bird” in the words of Anne Lamotte, word by word, scene by scene.
Then came the questions: should I write it in past tense or the present? Should I use first person point of view (POV), the third person’s, the narrator’s, or other? In this situation it was impossible to keep the narrator present in every scene. Again, I tried them all, and each time I started over again and tried the next option.
There are many books in the market on how to write a novel, and many blogs with good advice, but there’s no substitute for learning on the job. However, learn the elements of structure.
The classic structure contains five elements identified in the graph. However, plot is much more than that. For additional free information on this topic, nownowel.com helpful.
Anchored in the Adriatic is the tiny island called Sansego, where people live their lives in heavy labor, faith, and superstition, working the land from cockcrow to vespers and the sea from vespers to cockcrow. This is the birthplace of author Antonia Burgato who, in Canaries Can’t Cry, stitches the stories her mother told of life on the island that, in part one, spans the time between two world wars. The author’s voice changes in the second part, as she comes of age in an America of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Elvis Presley and becomes an adult during the Civil Rights uprising, the VietNam War protests, and the women’s liberation.
Interviewer: Christina Hamlett
**********
Q: Your new book, Canaries Can’t Cry, focuses on the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus following World War II. This being a geographical. political and sociological period with which many readers may not be familiar, could you indulge us with a brief history lesson?
A: Dalmatian comprises a group of islands off the coast of Croatia. They belonged to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire until WWI, then to Mussolini’s Italy until WWII, and then to Yugoslavia until its breakup in the early nineties. Today they are a part of Croatia. By the time my mother turned 32, she had lived in three different countries without ever having moved as far as across the street.
Q: The title alone is compelling. How did you come up with it?
A: When my brother visited me in boarding in school, he told me of a canary he had bought for my mother to keep her company while at home alone. The bird flew on her shoulders chirping while she was at her chores. She loved that bird, but he had a habit of biting. She patted him on the head each time he bit her. One day she patted him too hard, and the bird fell lifeless in her hand. I couldn’t help but draw a comparison with a time when I was eight years old, and she had humiliated me with a public beating in front of the school. I will always remember that as the time she had killed my spirit as she had killed the canary years later.
Q: One of the challenges of penning an autobiographical work is striking the right balance between telling too much, telling too little and finding a place of common ground which will resonate with readers who otherwise have no frame of reference or context regarding the events and dynamics which unfolded. What was your approach to developing this very personal project?
A: In writing an autobiography, the author must expose her inner self. For example, I was still a teenager when I was thrown into the world of Rome alone. It was a painful, growing up experience better left buried. However, I needed to unearth details to take the reader on the journey with me. I chose details that are translatable to any woman too young to be out on her own without guidance.
Q: Your mother escaped from Yugoslavia to go to Italy where your father had an apartment. What did you find there?
A: It was after Italy had surrendered to the Allies and declared war on its former Axis partner. Germany had begun to occupy Italy. We had escaped from Yugoslavia hiding in a fishing trawler. When we arrived at my father’s house in Italy, we found his home occupied. Living quarters were scarce for anyone, we were told. If his home was left unoccupied, the Germans would have taken it. We were directed to a local farmer who made room for us in the chicken coop. When the Germans arrived there, we went to another farmer, and he gave his barn. We lived there until the Germans left and the apartment became available.
Q: After your father’s death, your mother brought you and your brothers and sister to America. Why did you leave Italy?A: With my father gone, my mother lost her privilege to live in the factory-owned apartment. America had opened a quota system to accept the many emigrants from the former Yugoslavia. Everyone my mother knew from her island in Dalmatia had already gone. She asked her father for her share of the inheritance, and she followed them.
Q: How old were you at the time and what were your first impressions of the country you would now call “home”? A: I had become a teenager in America. We had a living room with television, a washer and dryer in the home, a refrigerator, and there were supermarkets. Wow! I also discovered Bazooka gum.
Q: What was it like being a teenager in America? Is there anything you know now that you wish you had known then?
A: That’s a tough and painful question. I was disassociated with family and with school. I tried hard to fit in with other teenagers from the neighborhood, but I wasn’t like them. I belonged neither here nor there—and I wanted to belong here. I’m thankful that such times didn’t have violent gangs as today. I could have joined a gang, if the opportunity was there, just to belong somewhere.
Q: You also have three older brothers and a younger sister. How did your mother manage such a “full house”?
A: She put us all to work, and she took our paychecks. Some people are stupefied by that. But is it better to go to work and leave the children unsupervised or to send the children to work and let them contribute to the family’s well-being? There are arguments for both cases.
Q: Best advice she ever imparted to you?
A: It’s never one piece of advice but a sum of them. She guided us children to value education and responsibility in everything she did, in all her scolding and caring—not always the best for everyone. Our (my siblings) values in strength of character, compassion, and drive to self-improvement emanate from her role model.
Q: Mixed marriages are fairly commonplace in the 21st century but not so much back in the 1960s. How was your marriage to a black university student received by family, friends and coworkers?
A: My family was not blind to his color but saw his character and embraced him into the family. I had nothing but warm memories of my 14-year marriage to a black man in the sixties. His family and friends were the kindest people I have known. They were academics, belonging to the Harlem black elite. They roused in me a desire to further my education. The story was different in the working world. Some states still had anti-miscegenation laws, and feelings were strong in the southern states. I had been fired twice from jobs for being a “n….r lover.”
Q: Was it a happy, fulfilling partnership?
A: I would not be the person I am were it not for my first husband. He had exposed me to universities and to conversations beyond gossip and frivolous niceties. He taught me freedom of expression and helped me to revive my spirit that had died when I was still a child.
Q: Your move to California ignited a passion to start writing seriously. How so?
A: My husband had released in me a spirit that wanted to fly. My marriage had become confining, and I left a man I loved to search for my own identity.
Q: And your passion for playwriting—who or what was the prominent influence there?
A: I would have to say George Bernard Shaw was my primary influence in playwriting. I went on to major in dramatic literature after discovering his plays. The works of Ionesco, Beckett, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, and Sartre ignited passion in me. My second husband was a well-known playwright and a founder of the Los Angeles Theater Alliance. I had begun to find my voice with him by my side.
Q: Tell us about reconnecting with your brothers and sister. Would you consider yourselves close-knit or has time and distance pushed you farther apart?
A: My mother had sent us all to boarding school. We did not get to know each other until we came to America. She sent us to work as soon as we could to support the family. We learned responsibility and to care for each other. Today, we are closer than we’ve ever been.
Q: Your mother’s death, with the word “Finally,” had a powerful effect on you, and it seems that it was a turning point for you. How so?
A: In her life, she was demanding of me, trying to mold me in her image of a woman. I distanced myself from her, but physical distance does not break the emotional bond. Her death released her grip on me and my resentment of her. With that gone, I could see her strength, frailty, and courage, and I wish she could be here for me to tell her so.
Q: What was the easiest part of the book to write? And the hardest?
A: It was easier to write about my mother’s story because she told pieces of them often and with great passion. Once I switched to my story, I had to do much soul-searching and reveal long buried things. I didn’t want to delve deeply into my rights and wrongs, but if I didn’t, my readers would have felt something amiss.
Q: Did you allow anyone to read it while it was still a work in progress?
A: I had a beta reader. A dear and supportive friend. I also gave parts of it to a few family members. They knew my mother’s story needed to be told; they didn’t always agree with my version of it. It is the old Roshomon effect when everyone sees the same event differently.
Q: Is there a message you want readers to take away from Canaries Can’t Cry when they finish?
A: Live your life to the fullest without trampling on others. Your accomplishment is attained through your own efforts. If someone has given you a position, be grateful for the opportunity but question what you’ve done to earn it. If you threw someone under the bus to get somewhere, you have cheated.
Q: Define “home.” Is it the place you were born, the place you live now or the place that holds the fondest memories?
A: A home is where you find love and fulfillment. That place for me, at this time, is in California with my third husband, surrounded by encouraging and caring friends.
Q: How did you go about finding a publisher?
A: I did quite a bit of reading about traditional publishers and decided to go hybrid because, at this stage of my life, I didn’t want to spend the lengthy time in submissions and rejections. It took me ten years to write this book and I wanted this baby out.
Q: What are you doing to market the book?
A: In addition to this interview, I do much social media contacts, book signings, and speaking engagements to immigrant associations, especially to those engaged in second language learning.
Q: What have the reactions been from family, friends and fans?
A: Their encouragement motivates me to write my next book. Some have expressed a shared feeling, especially in the various “me too” scenes. They didn’t know that about me. I had never talked about them before for two reasons: First, I thought that was just normal behavior for a man; and, second, I thought that I had done something wrong, that I was guilty.
Q: What would readers be the most surprised to learn about you?
A: A few of my readers have remarked that they didn’t know what an interesting life I have had. I’m not so sure it was more interesting than anyone else’s life. I’ve lived with curiosity, adventure, and risk. That is my wealth.
Q: What’s next on your plate?
A: My next book, The Secret Life of the Very Old, is now in its editing phase. I’m already thinking of more projects. Four years ago, my husband and I took a year off to live in Italy. It’s in my mind to write that memoir. Another one is my displacement after my house burned to the ground from one of the California fires. I’m still displaced with lots of raw motions.
Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
A: People say their life is boring compared to mine. I’d say no one’s life is boring. Even an uneventful life has its unique story. Live life to fill your cup and shout it out. Thank you for this opportunity to talk about my book.
Galani Venice Style
Whether it’s galani or crostoli, this fluffy, crispy, and mildly sweet delicacy is a staple in many home gatherings of families and friends from the Veneto-Dalmatian region. This region broadly includes northeast Italy from Verona to Trieste and all the Croatian coast and the many islands in the former Yugoslavia governed by Italy in the period between the two world wars.
I recently made a plateful of galani for a book signing event to share with my readers. I talk about galani in Chapter 25, Nostalgia, of my book Canaries Can’t Cry. It is a common occurrence in social gatherings to place of big bowl of galani in the center of the table with a jug of red wine, much the way Americans would put a bowl of potato chips and a pitcher of beer, except that the galani are always homemade. In the chapter Nostalgia, I meet for the first time my uncle and cousins from Sansego, now living in Hoboken. In the middle of the table, they had a big bowl of galani and a jug of Gallo wine.
I remember this gathering as a warm get-together that ended in folkloric songs of Dalmatia. For this reason, I will always have a soft spot for galani in my heart and a warm place for a bowl of that pastry strip on my table. I now fully embrace my American culture together with my Veneto-Dalmatian heritage, and on, occasion, I heartily put of bowl of potato chips on the table. It’s as heartwarming and as satisfying as galani.
This blog is to share a bit of the social culture from my Dalmatian roots. I would be amiss if I did not include my family’s recipe in here.
Galani/Crostoli
1 cup flour, sifted, plus more for rolling the dough
1 egg
1 tbsp of sugar
1 tbsp of grappa
oil for frying
confectioners’ sugar for dusting
Optional: To the batter, you may add the zest of one lemon or orange, one tablespoon of butter, a pinch of salt
Method
To make the galani dough, place the flour in a large bowl. Add the eggs, sugar, salt, lemon zest, and grappa.
Knead the dough with your hands until it comes together into a smooth, even ball (it should bounce back when gently pressed with a finger). Wrap the dough in a damp kitchen towel and leave to rest for one hour.
Next divide the dough into small portions and roll them thinly using a pasta machine (or a rolling pin), dusting them with flour at every passage. Cut the strips of dough into rectangles (about 3×1.5 in.). Make small cuts in the dough or twist it as desired.
Fill three-quarters of a deep, medium-sized skillet with light olive oil (or avocado or grapeseed oil) and set it over medium heat. When the oil is hot (355F), slip in a first batch (3-4) of crostoli. Fry them until deep-golden all over, for about 3 minutes (or less). Watch then carefully, as they turn golden very quickly. Drain them with a slotted spoon and transfer to a plate lined with towel paper. When cool, dust them generously with fine sugar.
Galani or crostoli is ubiquitous throughout Italy by many names and variations. From crostoli, in northern Italy, to chiacchere in Lombardi, to bugie, sfrappole, grostoli, cenci, and frappe, the ingredients very from the region to region. In Venice they use grappa, in Romagna they use rum. Sometimes orange or lemon zest is added to the dough. The variations are as limited only by one’s imagination. My sister-in-law, a wonderful cook from Bologna, sticks to the basic of one-one-one-one: one cup flour, one egg, one tablespoon sugar, one tablespoon rum. Double the ingredients, if desired.
In addition to being a party pleaser, galani is an essential ingredient to complement holiday festivities from natale to carnevale.
Buone feste. Happy holidays.
La bella figura rules Italian behavior in every aspect of life—from the way you dress to the way to comport yourself and the way you speak, and, above all, table manners—all make up the impression you give others. La bella figura is a uniquely Italian concept of living with dignity and difficult for outsiders to comprehend.
There are no rules for what makes a good impression, la bella figura. Giovanni Della Casa (1503-56) wrote a set rules in his Galateo: The Rules of Polite Behavior to present to his nephew as a guide to simple decency. As important as acting upon polite behavior is learning what behavior to avoid. The successful man, must combine an exterior grace with a necessary social conformity. Anything that could give offense or reveal vulgar thoughts should be avoided.
What are these behaviors that make la bella figura? In the 2015 eBook release by Project Gutemberg, J. E. Spingarn describes that the Galateo’s real foundation of good manners is in the desire to please. “This desire is the aim or end of all manners, teaching us alike to follow what pleases others and to avoid what displeases them.”
These behaviors run the gamut from personal cleanliness to how to fold a table napkin. These include many dos and don’ts.
The “dos” “don’ts” seem obvious, but it is alarming how often people violate these basic rules of social behavior, and it behooves all of us to review them.
Among the Don’ts:
This list is by no means complete, but you get the idea. These manners of behavior may sound obvious and laughable but think of how many people you know who are guilty of one or more such social infractions.
The list continues, but you get the idea. Now for the Dos:
Italians use formal language when speaking to strangers or to people in a higher-level position, such as the boss. The singular pronoun “you” has two forms, the informal tu (you), used when speaking with a friend, and the formal lei (which does not have an equivalent in English) when speaking with a stranger. To use the informal tu in a situation that calls for the formal lei is a gross error of social ethics and will make la brutta figura, give the bad impression.
Through all the many rules of dos and don’ts it is significant to notice that Italians are a contradiction in themselves. Speaking loudly and shouting across the street is a common practice in many towns and villages. They have little patience for keeping their place in line without an audible annoyance and will wear flip flops and spaghetti-strap knit tops without sense of style.
Every town and country has its own code of social behavior. When traveling to a foreign country, it befits one to learn a bit of the cultural code of ethics to avoid a reputation attributed to a whole flock of geese rather than the goose or, worse, offending the people of that country by a wrong gesture. “The Ugly American” is a phrase popularized by the title of a 1958 book by Eugene Burdick, which gave a blistering account of Americans abroad who remain insensitive to other cultures.
Today Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo is universally accepted as the standard code of social ethics with the latest printing as recent as 2016. La bella figura is best understood as the desired extrinsic value of a character that produces admiration by others. It is superficial and yet all important because, as the saying goes, first impressions last a long time. For a more recent study on manners, America has Emily Post’s Etiquette.
As with everything, rules of social behavior change with time and culture. Be sure to read about accepted social behavior in the host country of your travels.
Themes of rebelliousness and of love found and lost recur throughout Canaries Can’t Cry, which takes place against the backdrop of life in three languages and three cultures in one family. The novel by Antonia Burgato is written in two parts. The first part centers on a young Anita rebelling against her rigid father and her fight against a curse he had placed on her marriage. The author stitches the stories Anita told of her life on an island in the Adriatic that spans the time between the two world wars.
The second part is told in the daughter’s voice, whose rebelliousness against her mother has an uncanny similarity to Anita’s rebelliousness against her father. Both living in America,
the mother clings to the old-world culture of the remote island while her daughter embraces the new world culture that spans the time between Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and George Bush—a time that comprises the social and cultural movements of the Elvis Presley phenomena, the Civil Rights uprising, and the women’s liberation.
The novel charts the course from clash of daughter and father in the old world to a clash of mother and daughter in a new world and how they reconcile their cross-cultural differences.
The book is now available on Amazon.com
