Guest in Progress: Carollyne Hutter

How to keep your characters current with our ever-changing technology: just when you give that high-powered lawyer a Palm pilot, everyone has moved onto to BlackBerries, and iPhones. Did Dickens worry about things like this? We recently had a conversation in my writing group about whether someone’s character realistically would be reading a local, morning newspaper at a hotel in late 2010—maybe (I hope so anyway), but I believe the writer changed that to catching the local morning news on TV.

Tough question, and Carollyne Hutter is here to explore the role of technology in our writing. You may remember that Carollyne posted previously about writing for teens and about helpful resources for YA authors.


Technology in Their Lives
By Carollyne Hutter

A friend sent an email that startled me. I stared for a few minutes at the screen before responding. I had asked him a reference question. He had written back: “It’s lucky you caught me. I only check my emails once a week.”

Once a week? As a freelance writer/editor, I have a close relationship with technology, particularly emails, since my bosses contact me 24/7 with their BlackBerrys.

My friend’s email spurred me to think how dependent writers are on technology, and yet many writers I know don’t include, or rarely mention, technology in their fiction writing. Their characters live in low-tech worlds.

When I decided to write a young-adult (YA) novel, I went around asking other YA writers how they deal with teens and technology. Most said they avoided it, yet many teens mainline technology all day. What gave the teen series Twilight a gothic, old-time feel to it was the lack of technology in the heroine’s life. To me, this absence of teen technology was much more bizarre than her falling in love with a vampire.

As writers, we really should embrace technology in our characters’ lives because our characters use of technology is such a telling detail—just as what clothes they wear, what cars they drive, what they keep on their nightstands are all telling details.

My friend’s comment about only checking emails once a week conjures up an image of a low-tech person, doesn’t it? Just like as the opposite presents a picture: I have a colleague who always checks his emails on his BlackBerry during meetings, even if it’s a small meeting of three people. Or how about this—a friend who appears as a typical suburban soccer mom actually has her own biting, left-wing political blog under a pseudonym. Very telling.

I can understand a writer’s hesitation to deal with technology. I used to joke that I set my YA, Homesick, in 1989 so I wouldn’t have to deal with teen technology.

But the strange thing is I miss technology. Brigit, the heroine of my YA, has to fax her boyfriend in Germany. How slow is that? Or when she needs information, she has to trot down to the library, instead of checking it out on the web.

It’s actually been harder than I thought to leave out technology and go back to a time before cell phones, emails, and the Internet were popular. It’s probably been just as hard for me to exclude technology, as other writers tell me it is to include it.


About: For over a decade, Carollyne Hutter has been a freelance writer/editor in the Washington, DC area, specializing in international and environmental topics. Please visit her website— www.HutterWriter.com — to read Carollyne’s stories, essays, and nonfiction pieces. You can contact her at sayhi@hutterwriter.com.

Interview with Joseph O'Neill

An excellent, four-part interview with Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland, is running through the week on The Elegant Variation. Part 1 starts here.

Some excerpts:

TEV: Your wife was your editor at FSG and she turned down your second novel. Have you gotten over that or is it still a thing?

Joseph O’Neill: I’m still punishing her for that ...

….

TEV: How do you know when your novel is finished? Insofar as it’s ever finished.

Joseph O’Neill: I don’t know. I don’t know if there is a magic moment.

TEV: When did you know you were finished with Netherland?

Joseph O’Neill: I kept telling myself I’d nearly finished, to keep going. You know, when you talk to writers they all say, “Oh yeah, I’m just about finishing my book.” Then, about two years later, you go back to them and you say, “How did the book go?” They say, “Oh, I’m still just putting the finishing touches on it.” It can go on forever.

Good Housekeeping Fiction Contest

I didn’t know about this contest; it’s a great opportunity (and I must say, I'd be QUITE interested in reading the Salinger story that Good Housekeeping published):

To celebrate Good Housekeeping’s 125th anniversary in 2010, editor in chief Rosemary Ellis announced the magazine’s first themed short story contest, focusing on the lives of women today. The breadth of challenges women face and the often heartbreaking decisions that affect their lives are the foundation of the books written by Good Housekeeping’s guest judge, award-winning author Jodi Picoult, whose novel My Sister’s Keeper was the inspiration for the new Cameron Diaz film that hits theaters on June 26.

Ellis, the editors of Good Housekeeping, and Picoult, who had her first two short stories published in a national magazine while still in college, will select one grand-prize winner and two runners-up. The grand-prize winner will receive $3,000 and the winning story will be featured in the May 2010 issue, the magazine’s special 125th anniversary issue. The runners-up will each receive $750, and their stories will be featured on goodhousekeeping.com.

From J.D. Salinger to Daphne DuMaurier, Good Housekeeping has always featured well-known writers. Regular contributors to the magazine have included Ray Bradbury, John Cheever, and Rona Jaffe. More recently, Good Housekeeping’s fiction pages have featured the work of Nicholas Sparks, Maeve Binchy, Allegra Goodman, Jennifer Weiner, Elinor Lipman, Ann Hood, and this year’s guest judge, Jodi Picoult.

Readers 21 and older can submit their short stories of 3,500 words or less, focusing on the lives of women today at www.goodhousekeeping.com/shortstory. Submissions must be original, not a previously published work or finalist for any other prize or award. All entries must be received by September 15, 2009, winners will be notified in December 2009.

Last Call: F. Scott Fitzgerald Contest

I don’t like the high fee for this one, but it’s a local group and I know they’re legit. But the deadline is Friday, so get going!:

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference is sponsoring its 14th annual short story competition. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest is open to residents of Maryland, Washington D. C. and Virginia.

Send in your polished and unpublished stories of no more than 3,000 words. The contest is broken up into an Adult and Student section. For the Adult section, first prize includes $1000, presented at the 14th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference, and publication in The Potomac Review. Three runner-ups will receive $200 each at the conference. The Student section has a slightly smaller monetary award, but in our hearts, the acclaim is the same.

If you are interested, visit http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/fscott/contest-rules.htm

For either adult or student division, there is a $25 entry fee, and the deadline to enter is July 17, 2009.

For more information about the F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest and Conference, visit http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/fscott/index.htm

James River Writers Conference in Richmond

This conference in Richmond has always looked like a good one:

Announcing JRW Conference 2009
Friday - Saturday, October 9 & 10, 2009
The Library of Virginia
Featuring:
--Katherine Neville
--Thomas Lux
--Michael Knight
--Lee Boudreaux
--Karen Lotz

Costs and Deadlines:
JRW members receive first prioritywith one-on-one scheduling through July 31
Registration until August 31: $150
Registration after September 1: $175

More information and online registration

Here is what people had to say about last year's conference:
I drove 400 miles to be here. It was well worth the trip. Meeting published authors, literary agents, and editors made the weekend what I was hoping for and needed.

The diverse panel for each session...gave a more realistic picture of how things are done and appealed to a variety of styles.

"Chimps Watching General Hospital"

I was listening to the Terry Gross show on NPR yesterday and heard an interesting interview with a guy who had written a book about retired chimps (i.e. retired from performing or lab experiments). As it turns out, chimps really enjoy watching TV, according to this guy, and they like action shows, nature shows, and—surprisingly—soap operas. Apparently, General Hospital is a big favorite with the retired lab chimps, which the guy said was because they’re so familiar with people wearing white coats. (He seemed serious when he said this!)

Where is this leading?

Wouldn’t “Chimps Watching General Hospital” be a GREAT title for a poem? I wish I could write it, but since my poetic skills are less than nil, I send it out into the world for inspiration for others. No need to thank me….

Here’s the guest and book info from the website: Charles Siebert's new book, The Wauchula Woods Accord: Toward A New Understanding of Animals, details his encounters with Roger, a retired former circus chimp, who lived at the Center for Great Apes in Florida and preferred the company of humans to chimps. More info here.

Crabs: The Good Kind

This has nothing to do with writing, but reading this New York Times article about eating crabs on the Eastern Shore made me want to hop in my car and play hooky for a couple days. Try to tell me that photo doesn’t make you want to dive in and get cracking!