From the Trenches: Mother Nature's Son

Some of the world's greatest writers never become famous in their own lifetimes. One of America's best never made much money with his writing, and by the time he died only two of his books were in print...because he paid for them himself. 

Henry David Thoreau, who was born David Henry, paid to have 1,000 copies of his book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers printed...less than 300 sold. He built himself a shack in the woods after being schooled at Harvard, and many of his contemporaries thought he was quite odd. Maybe they weren't wrong -- but he was still a brilliant writer.

It just took a long time for anyone to realize it. 

Into the Woods

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts and went to Harvard in 1833 to study science, philosophy, math, rhetoric and the classics. But as an adult, Thoreau decided he wanted to escape the polished atmosphere of city living...and all the rest of society. 

In his own words, Thoreau went out into the woods "to live deliberately." He built a shack on a friend's land out by Walden Pond, to learn what he couldn't learn in college...and to write. He was told in 1845 to "build yourself a hut" and then to begin "the grand process of devouring yourself alive" by Ellery Channing. Thoreau followed the advice and just two months later, he was in the woods.

Here he wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but couldn't find a publisher. It was Thoreau's friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who suggested that Thoreau self-publish. He did, but very few copies of the book sold. He left Walden Pond in 1847 and worked to pay off various debts he'd earned. For years, he worked on his second book, Walden, which talked about his adventured in the woods. 

Today, it is considered to be a very important book. It's studied, and re-studied, and cited as a fantastic work of literary art. Back then...well, opinions were slightly different.

Publishers and critics weren't really interested in Henry David Thoreau. He wrote for himself instead, keeping journals and writing essays to the very last day of his life. Bedridden with ill health for weeks, Thoreau wrote frantically until the very end. His only fans were a few close friends who believed in his writing. They were the only ones who did.

Friends like Ellery Channing and Harrison Blake helped to publish some of Thoreau's very prolific writings after his death. The first were published in 1906, and slowly began to grow in popularity. It wasn't until the 1920s that literary critics began to discover him, and his talent. Today, the international Thoreau Society is dedicated to honoring and spreading awareness about his vast writings, in particular his famous Walden.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in the writing trenches when no one really considered him a writer...and he kept on writing, even after he failed at it commercially. He died with very little money, but he did have a circle of friends who believed in his genius. They were right, and because they kept trying everyone now knows the name Henry David Thoreau. He waited a lifetime to share his books, and never benefited from his patience. But the rest of the world did, and I'm pretty sure he would be pretty happy with that.

Books on Film: Flowers in the Attic

When a book is very popular among a large group of readers, filmmakers generally like to take special care with the film adaptation. They consult the author of the work, they read the book themselves, they pay homage to the original material. This isn't what happened when Flowers in the Attic was transformed from a YA horror book that struck a strong note with teen girls...into 93 minutes of on-screen swill that you can't ever get back. Cringe if you like, but that description really isn't harsh enough for one of the worst book-to-film adaptations in the known world.

The Book

Full disclosure: I'm a little biased. Flowers in the Attic is actually a very special book to me, as it inspired me to become a writer (the jury's still out on whether or not I am). It was written before I was born and published in 1979 by V. C. Andrews, known to friends and family as Virginia. The book was her first and it was an almost immediate success, spawning three sequels, one prequel and a wildly successful novel-writing career that continues decades after V. C. Andrews's death. It's sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

Most of them have been read by teen girls. The main protagonist is a teen girl herself, Cathy Dollanganger, and she's got a pretty charmed life. The story opens with a brief sketch of Cathy's life. She lives in Pennsylvania with her older brother Christopher and her parents, Chris and Corrine. A pair of twins are born when Cathy is 7, two blonde cherubs named Cory and Carrie. The whole family is blonde, and so beautiful they're known for perfection among their friends and neighbors. 

Of which they have many. All of these loved ones have gathered for a birthday party in the first chapter of the book, waiting on father Chris. He works through the week as a salesman, and comes home every Friday to big fanfare. This Friday, he's supposed to have even more than the usual weekend fun -- a big surprise party with a gorgeous wife, pretty kids and lots of friends, to boot. 

It's not meant to be. Chris is killed in a traffic accident, and the police arrive at the party instead of the expected father. Cathy's perfect world falls to pieces in the aftermath of her father's death. It seems her mother has never had a job and probably can't even spell the word job, so Corrine feels that her only choice is to return home to Virginia, and her parents.

It's the first time anyone has heard any mention of any grandparents. Before you know it, the family of five is whisked away into the Blue Ridge Mountains with only four suitcases between them. To a gigantic mansion they're led in the dead of night, and spirited up a back staircase of the house into a tiny, over-stuffed room all the way at the top.

Here the four children will remain for the next three years. They are told, in the beginning, that they must stay hidden for one night only. Corrine fell out of favor with her parents some time ago, you see, and now she must make amends. She must get her father, an old curmudgeon who's richer than most countries, to accept her. Once he accepts his daughter, she'll tell him that there are also four grandchildren he must learn to accept. 

Sounds reasonable, right? Only soon Corrine stops visiting as often, leaving her four children with only her mother, their grandmother, to tend them. She comes once a day with a picnic basket of food for them, and to quiz them to see if they're reading the Bible. Olivia the grandmother wears nothing but gray, and her heart is black. She reveals quite soon the reason Corrine fell out of favor with her family: Chris was actually her half-uncle, and their relationship was incestuous. This is a terrible sin in the eyes of the Lord. Olivia Foxworth and her husband, Malcolm, are extremely righteous people.

And sin is unforgivable. 

Cathy, Chris, Cory and Carrie have only one bedroom, one bathroom and the mansion's massive attic to share. The dusty, neglected space becomes their playground, and they decorate it with paper flowers and pictures they draw over the long, long months that follow. They cannot attend school, or go outdoors, or ever open the door to the rest of the mansion that's kept locked at all times. They can only recite Bible verses at the demand of their grandmother, and wait for their mother to arrive...and attempt to grow up in this hopeless fashion. 

Cathy is 12, and Chris 14, when they are shut away inside (this makes the twins 5). In the three years that pass, their teenage hormones awaken and their bodies change (as bodies are wont to do). And inevitably, incest develops. When Cory dies, Cathy and Chris start putting the pieces together.

They have been getting sick, and now Cory is gone. Carrie, once vivacious, now barely speaks or eats. All are thin, pale and weak. They devise a way to sneak out of the room, and start learning a little more about the house that surrounds them. They learn that their mother has no intention of ever letting them out, because if it is ever discovered that she had children with her first husband she cannot inherit the many millions that could be hers.

And the grandfather? He's already dead, and the promise of release that was dangled before the children is never going to manifest. In fact, a bit of investigation reveals the reason they're all sick: they're slowly being poisoned to death with arsenic. It's already been successful for one out of four. So they start to steal into the mansion and steal from their mother, who is planning on marrying a young and handsome lawyer. Corrine is going to continue her life and enjoy all the money while her young children wither and die.

Cathy and Chris aren't going to let that happen. They store up their cache of money and endure humiliation and abuse at the hands of the grandmother before at last, they make good on their escape. Looking back at the mansion, Cathy vows to get her revenge on the grandmother, on the house itself...and most of all, on her mother Corrine Foxworth.

That's not at all what happens in the film version.

The Film

Neither the critics nor the fans liked the film version of Flowers in the Attic, which came to theaters in 1987. When it did, Louise Fletcher was the biggest name associated with the flick. She's famous for being mean, having previously played chilling screen villain Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The film also starred Kristy Swanson in the role of Cathy, who at the time was a relatively unknown child actress.

Because of the horror element of the book, famed director Wes Craven was on tap to direct the film (if only), and he came up with a completed draft of a screenplay. But the producers shied away from Craven's inclusion of the incest which was so much a part of the book, so they chose a man named Jeffrey Bloom to write and direct instead.

V. C. Andrews demanded, and won, final script approval...but even this would not be enough to save this truly horrific film adaptation. She turned down 5 scripts before approving Bloom's, but it was further edited and ripped apart by producers and the two studios involved in making the movie. Later, Bloom talked about the contentious atmosphere in the discussion room, and the producers' insistence that certain important elements from the book be omitted from the film.

The author herself appears in the movie, though her cameo role isn't credited. You'll find her near the end of the movie, posing as a maid who's scrubbing the windows in Foxworth Hall.

Kristy Swanson has said that an adaptation of the book's sequel, Petals on the Wind, was also planned but never filmed. She even got a script for it, but found it to be such a "sexfest" that she "didn't know if it should be done."

How bad is the film version of Flowers in the Attic? Bloom eventually stormed off the set, fed up with the many changes to the book's nature, and the final scenes were shot under someone else's direction. Victoria Tennant, who played Corrine, also reportedly stormed off the set in anger after her final scene was filmed. According to urban movie rumor, however, there is some hope on the horizon: another adaptation is in the works. Rumor has it that a new screenplay will be written by the Andrews ghost writer, Andrew Neiderman, so a much better version of this classic book could still come to fruition.

What Got Adapted?

It's difficult to list every single thing that got changed when the book Flowers in the Attic became a film, and if I do I'll just become enraged, but I will hit some main points. In the film, the children were locked up for about a year, which is just a silly change. Why make it? Probably because the main actors in the flick were children, and they can't age on cue. The incest between Cathy and Chris was eliminated, and that ended up making Louise Fletcher look ridiculous as Olivia Foxworth.

It's not her fault. Fletcher wasn't put in gray outfits for her turn as Olivia, which just plain doesn't make sense, and most of her scenes she's screaming and looking wild-eyed for no real reason. This isn't in keeping with the character, though Fletcher worked quite hard at the role. Reportedly, she called V. C. Andrews over the phone to discuss Olivia's character with her, and stayed in character the entire time she was filming so she could maintain the proper distance from the children and the rest of the cast.

The children's ages were changed on film as well, probably because the timing of the events was also changed. Cathy and Chris are 14 and 17 when they are locked up, which is wrong, and Corrine is already marrying Bart Winslow on the day they escape. This is also wrong. Corrine married Bart while the children were locked up, and by the time they escaped the couple had already moved away from the mansion.

This is what leads up to the end scene of the film, which is so abominably bad the writer/director decided to walk away from the project altogether. He refused to film it, the producers insisted, and he walked instead. Unfortunately, they also shot the ending without him. In a scene that's almost silly in its over-the-top drama, Cathy confronts her mother in the middle of Foxworth Hall while Corrine is being married. Shouting "eat the cookie, Mother!" Cathy chases after Corrine...who winds up falling out of a window and being hung by her own wedding dress. That's when actress Victoria Tennant also stormed off the set, and that's how the movie ends...laughably. Instead of cold revenge, Cathy expresses crazy anger, and it completely ruins the entire movie (as if the other changes didn't do that already).

Throughout the film, there is also little to no mention of ballet, Cathy's dream and driving inspiration, Chris's desire to be a doctor, or Cory's beloved pet mouse and penchant for musical talent. Jeffrey Bloom did film some scenes depicting the incest in the book, but these scenes were cut from the final version. In his planned original ending, the children escape the mansion in secrecy and never confront Corrine -- which is much closer to the ending of the book.

Seriously, it's not a good movie (and I like a lot of movies). Even if it wasn't associated with the book, this wouldn't be a very good movie. But it is, and that makes it even worse, so please don't watch it. You should read the book, which is brilliant, and my summary absolutely does not do it justice so don't let that stop you.

Justice Keeps Intriguing Readers

"I  would recommend this to everyone who likes to be shocked and intrigued."

Justice has been reviewed at Books for YA!, and I couldn't be more pleased. Go and read the whole thing, and don't forget that you can win the book free. Look to the left of the blog to sign up for one or both of my giveaways, and get your own copy of Justice.

Writng a Bestseller Doesn't Require Instant Success

Every author probably dreams about becoming an overnight success the moment they put the first word on the first page of the manuscript. The dream is reinforced by books like Twilight and the Harry Potter books -- which were practically household names before they even hit the shelves. But some books are a bit slower in the bestseller race...and that doesn't necessarily mean they've lost. 

It's much easier if your book becomes a bestseller in 20 minutes, instead of 20 years...but would you really be disappointed if decades later something you wrote became one of the most famous books of all time? That's what happened to children's author Margaret Wise Brown, who wrote a book way, way back in 1947 that you've probably heard a thousand times. 

It's called Goodnight Moon, and it's one of the best-loved and best-known bedtime stories ever written. It's also a bestseller, but it didn't gain that title for many, many years after its initial publication. Though published in '47, Goodnight Moon was not a bestselling book in the '40s. Or in the 1950s. Nor was it a bestseller in the '60s or even the '70s. Margaret Wise Brown had to wait a long, long time before her little book cracked the big list.

In 1953, Goodnight Moon was selling around 1500 copies a year (which even in 1953 was way short of setting the literary world on fire). By 1970, it had started selling around 20,000 copies a year. When New Year's Day dawned on January 1, 1990, more than 4 million copies of the book had been sold. More recent estimates put the book's sales right around 16 million total.

Maragaret Wise Brown lit a small spark with her children's book, rather than a roaring fire. But slowly, the flame began to grow and spread. Today, Goodnight Moon is read by and read to many millions of children all over the world. It wasn't an instant hit with readers, but slowly they began to discover this wonderful bedtime story.

Everyone wants to write the next Twilight...but it wouldn't be the worst thing if maybe you wrote the next Goodnight Moon instead, would it?

Surviving Death

 "Lies, odd family connections and dirty deeds seeping out of every brick in the fancy mansion she lives in..."

 "Jade's writing is style is vivid and concise."

Author and friend of the blog, Melanie Cusick-Jones, recently posted her review of Death at Goodreads, and I hope you'll go and read it! While you're there, check out her book Hope's Daughter.

Writing 101: Bad vs. Badly

If you use improper grammar, do you write bad...or badly? Know the difference, and you can at least change the descriptor.

Bad and -ly

If you've heard the song, you know what the word means. Bad in slang can be used to describe any number of positive opinions and feelings. In more formal usage, bad usually denotes something that is undesirable. In grammar, it's a bomb waiting to explode ugliness all over your writing. The problem is, bad has a friend named -ly, and you never know when or where he's going to show up...or if he's supposed to be there. 

When -ly shows up to your word party, he changes everything. He attaches to bad to become badly, and that's a whole different part of speech altogether. Now, the word is an adverb, a word that's used only to modify another adverb, a verb or an adjective.What does that mean? It's simple: it means badly can only mingle with another word at the party.

If I say I was badly and end the sentence, badly gets lonely. He starts wrecking everything in sight -- like your book, and your reputation as an author. Why? Because he's got to have a friend, another word to modify. Add a word for him to modify, everything's great: I was badly irritated. Everyone's getting along and dancing to the music, and your words are flowing the way they ought. Have you ever said I feel sadly or I am happily? No, because -ly can't stand to be left alone.

Unless (you knew it was coming) action is involved. When things start to get lively, grammar rules start to change. That's what parties are like. It's absolutely correct to say I played badly after losing the big game, because play is an action verb.

Confused yet?

When it's used with action verbs, like go or throw, it's okay to use badly. But with linking verbs, like saw, it just won't work. You can't say I saw, because you must see something; saw is a linking verb, so badly just can't mix with it. 

Bad as a Bachelor

Alone, bad is an adjective, a different part of speech. All adjectives are used to describe something else. Like adverbs, they can't stand alone. In the phrase I've got a bad feeling about this, bad describes the feeling you're having. But feeling is a noun, which means it's not an adjective, adverb or verb...so you can never say I've got a badly feeling about this and stay grammatically correct.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, there's an easy trick to good grammar. If you're having trouble figuring out if you should use bad or badly to modify a word, just replace it. Shove a synonym in there instead like awful, incorrect, unsatisfactory or poor. Then, you'll be able to find out that you write badly, but only when you're using bad grammar!

Writing 101: There's a Word for That

There are so many words in the English language, the actual number can't even be provided. Some experts have tried to estimate, but there are new words being added all the time (and a ton of weird ones that people never really use). What I'm saying is, when you're writing about or writing with punctuation and letters, there's a word for that. There's a word for every itty bitty little piece of punctuation, for the extra add-ons in letters, for every wacky symbol you might find when you're reading.

Dotting the Is 

Everything has a name, even in punctuation. Knowing the proper words for things comes in pretty handy, especially if you've got a question about proper usage. Trying to use a search engine without knowing the right words is an exercise in frustration...and won't you sound learned and impressive if you know that the little dot over the i and j is properly called a tittle?

It's a fun little word, a lot more interesting than the name for the little bar that crosses the t (which is simply known as a T-bar). We can thank the Germans for giving us umlauts, the double dots that sometimes appear over foreign words (like naïve).

The French love letter symbols. They gave us the circumflex, that little half-triangle over certain vowels, but you can find this mark in all sorts of languages. Depending on where and how it's being used, the circumflex represents stress on a vowel sound, a rising and falling tone and all sorts of other pronunciations. 

Accent marks are those sweeping, slanted marks that appear over words like protégé. Sometimes, you'll find a weird mark underneath the letters. The funny little doodad hanging around on façade is called an ogonek, a Polish word that actually means little tail. You'll find funny n-words in Spanish with a curvy line over them (like piñata); that funny thing is called a tilde.

Put them all together, and what do you get? Diacritics. Sounds like a bunch of angry book reviewers, but that's the actual proper name for all those funny little letter extras that are used to denote specific pronunciation in words.

And once you know what they're called, you can actually use them. Digging through font and symbol sets in order to find the exact letter you need is such a tedious process, most writers don't bother (I don't). Many words that should have diacritic marks are written without them in American English, but technically that's not right. You can, however, keep a list of codes handy so you only have to type in a few numbers and make your correct marks. There's a word for everything. Once you know it, there's nothing you can't find out.

Writing 101: When to Use That/Which and Who/Whom

Which isn't used for people. That's one of the first rules of writing you need to know, and the first rule of using that/which and who/whom properly. 

That/Which

 

I've talked (a lot) about proper use of the word that in the past. It's one of the most over-used and under-valued words in the English language. I find it shoved in everywhere when I'm reading, and my experience is that it can be eliminated at least half the time. But one of the most important rules of using that and which is often ignored: it's not for people.

 

That and which are used for items, things, businesses and all other inanimate (non-conscious) objects. These words are not used to describe people. For example:

 

I saw the blue folder that was on the desk. 

I'm talking about a thing or an object, so I'm using the word that. In this example, I could just as easily use which instead. I can't use who. 

 

I saw the blue folder who was on the desk. 

The blue folder has no consciousness, so it's not a who. By the same token, if I replace the blue folder with a person, I have to stop using that. 

 

I saw Carl, who was on the desk. 

Who/Whom

People often use who incorrectly when that should be there instead. For example, companies and corporations are often dignified with who when clearly this is incorrect. I found a Huffington Post article in which Wal-Mart is referred to as a who. Wal-Mart is not a people, and although it may be made up of people who work and shop there, Wal-Mart is the brand name of a business and not a person.

However, that is sometimes used for people in writing. Some writers have specifically used it as a device and some use it to more accurately reflect the way people actually speak (because it's done a lot in everyday dialogue). It's been done so much, in fact, that some reputable sources have accepted it as proper grammar -- the American Heritage Dictionary says that can be used for people, sometimes, as a reflexive pronoun. 

 

It is acceptable in all but strictly formal writing, and sometimes in dialogue it sounds a lot better to call someone a that than a who. For example, "Mike? The guy that came in first in the marathon last year?" Strictly speaking, who should supplant that, but you're more likely to hear someone use the latter in everyday speech (because enough attention isn't paid to the majesty of good grammar in schools, but  I digress). And either way, it can't go in the opposite direction: Wal-Mart still can't be a who. That is flexible, sometimes, but the who rule isn't.