I enjoy dropping in at the blogsite Galleycat, to catch up on the latest publishing gossip. Often there’ll be photos of smiling authors attending chic book parties, and I’m always left wondering: where are all these book parties?  Who throws them?  Who gets invited?

Why does everyone look so glamorous?

It must be a New York thing.  Because up here where I live, in a small Maine town of 5,000, I just never hear about book parties.  One summer, I did host a book party at my house, but it was in honor of a journalist friend, Nicholas Von Hoffman.  And that turned out to be a lot of fun, because a lot of surprise guests turned up whom I wasn’t expecting, including Jamaica Kincaid and Paul Theroux.  They just walked in my front door out of the blue and introduced themselves, and after I picked my jaw up off the floor, I think I said something stupid like, “Are you THE Jamaica Kincaid and THE Paul Theroux?  Are you sure you’re in the right house?”  That’s the closest I ever came to feeling as if I was cavorting with the truly glamorous. 

But that’s a very rare exception.  Most of the time, my life as a writer involves sitting at my desk with bare feet and uncombed hair, muttering as I crumple up bad pages and toss them in the trash can.  So I love looking at those book party photos over at Galleycat, and imagining what it must be like to live the party-going life of the glamorous author.  Which seems to be every other author except me. 

I’ve read in a blog somewhere that as part of promoting your own book, you should throw yourself a book release party.  You should reserve a place in some chic restaurant or bar, invite your friends, wear a little black dress, sip cocktails, give away free copies of your new book, and bask in the spotlight.  That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? 

No it doesn’t.  It sounds like torture, being the center of attention.  The crowd would expect a speech, and then they’ll all notice that you have spinach in your teeth.  Everyone will try very hard to be congratulatory, but meanwhile they’re off in the corner whispering:  “You know what?  I secretly hated her book.” 

If I ever get even a whiff that there’s a party being thrown in my honor, I swear I will run screaming the other way. 

Don’t get me wrong — like most writers, I love going to parties and sipping cocktails and nibbling on tasty appetizers.  I do enjoy cleaning up once in awhile and pulling on the appropriate undergarments.  But I want the party to be in honor of the OTHER guy. 

A few days ago, I received the following email from a reader: 

You are among several authors that I read regularly who are disappointing me in one small (for a non-neurotic person) way.  For instance, Edwina would not have said, on page 122, “He was quite a bit older than me.”  She would have said, “He was quite a bit older than I.”  Perhaps if Edwina were a teenager, she might have spoken ungrammatically.  I wish popular authors would not encourage that one particular bit of poor grammar, as I certainly hope I would never see, “Him and me weren’t the same age.”

Now, before you jump on this reader for being nit-picky, I should say that this is one of the milder criticisms I receive, and I welcome all readers to write me, whether they have nits to pick or not.  His comments, in fact, are not all that unusual.  I often hear from readers (many of them teachers or editor types) who tell me that I have not used correct grammar in my books. 

And sometimes, they’re right.

In the above example, though, the ungrammatical phrase was in the context of dialogue.  As a novelist, I try to portray real people in believable situations.  When was the last time you heard a real person say, “He was older than I”?  I myself can’t remember hearing it in years.  I know that the grammatically correct phrase would be “older than I”, but real people are seldom perfectly grammatical when they speak.  Real people say “uh” and “you know” and they use incomplete sentences.  And they say “older than me.”

Recently I’ve been listening to a delightful audio course called “The Story of Human Language“, taught by linguist John McWhorter.  He points out that “proper grammar” is a rather recent invention that developed in parallel with the printed word.  Most humans speak ungrammatically, and over time, spoken language can diverge from what is “proper” printed language.  As an example he cites French, which has major differences between the spoken and the written form.  If an American who learned “proper” French were to travel to Paris and speak the way he learned French in his American high school, he’d be considered a weird foreigner — because the French don’t actually speak French the same way that “high” French is written.

English, too, is always evolving.  Witness any conversation between California teenagers on a school bus.  Yes, they’re speaking English.  But most likely it is ungrammatical.  And it may, in fact, provide clues as to the direction in which future English is evolving.  Language, says Dr. McWhorter, is not static.  It is constantly changing, and he provides some hilarious quotes from grammarians of the 18th century deriding all the new-fangled changes occurring to the English language.  A language which resulted, after all, from an amalgamation of numerous foreign influences.

So the novelist, when portraying real people talking, must make the choice: do I have them speak with “proper” grammar — or do I have them speak like real people?  If they speak completely properly, trust me– they will sound like stilted robots.  If they speak like real people, you will get letters from the grammar police. 

I’d much rather get the letters.

Coincidentally, the next day after I got that email, I was alerted to a teacher’s website that dissected a sentence in MEPHISTO CLUB as ungrammatical.  The points raised were valid ones (although there was also a typo involved — not my fault– that temporarily confused them.)  The tone of the site was very civilized so I felt comfortable commenting on their analysis.  I agreed that a disputed comma was unnecessary, but I also pointed out that, in a manuscript of 100,000 words, it’s not uncommon for a little thing like an extra comma to slip in.

The point is, a writer’s published words are always being scrutinized.  We mis-use a word, someone will notice.  We slip up on our grammar, someone will notice.  We get a fact wrong, you can damn well expect someone to notice.

It makes one afraid to ever write another sentence!

 

 

Since the announcement has already appeared in Variety and other media and online publications, I guess it’s time to share the news.  This was the press release from TNT entertainment:  

ATLANTA, March 3 /PRNewswire/ — TNT is planning a significant boost in
original programming, with 14 series in development and a plan to change
most of the network’s weekday, primetime schedule to originals by 2010.
TNT’s aggressive plan includes a mixture of scripted dramas, unscripted
programs and the network’s award-winning telecasts of the NBA. Under the
new strategy, TNT will continue to showcase popular movies on Friday nights
and weekends…     Scripted series in development include THE GENIE CHRONICLES, a fantasy-
adventure from DreamWorks Television, producers of TNT’s Into the West;
GENERATIONS, a family drama from executive producer Robert Redford and
writer/executive producer John Sacret Young (The West Wing, China Beach);
TECHNOPHOBIA, from executive producer Mark Frost (Twin Peaks); an untitled
project from the Hoosiers team of Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh; and an
untitled drama based on characters created by crime novelist Tess
Gerritsen…

        In Development (Scripted):   
    
    UNTITLED TESS GERRITSEN PROJECT    Boston medical examiner Maura Isles and police detective Jane Rizzoli
join forces to solve crimes in Beantown. This project, based on Tess
Gerritsen’s popular series of crime novels, comes to TNT from executive
producer Bill Haber (TNT’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes).
This deal was actually closed some time ago, but because of the writers’ strike, we delayed making the announcement.  I’m quite excited about the possibilities, but I’m also wary of pinning my hopes on a series actually happening.  So many projects get stuck “in development” and never get made.

But this is a very good first step!