Comments on: Quiet Books: Can I hear a YES?!

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:38:53 +0000

Diana, thanks for stopping by. I don’t write for the market, either, but that little bit of hope for each story is LOOSELY based on thinking about where my books might find a place/fit. Mostly, though, I want to keep reading these books & hope the market will continue to support them.

By: Diana

Diana — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:29:39 +0000

Excellent post! Thank you so much for sharing it. As a writer, I don’t worry about whether my writing is edgy or quiet. I don’t write for the market. I write the story I’m given. And I let my characters give the piece its tone. The way I see it, the market is flexible. It changes with the wind. If I allowed myself to get blown around by its ever-changing moods, I’d never get any writing done.

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:13:33 +0000

Thanks so much. I was worried, in the post, about making it sounds like these books don’t take on the tough issues or that they smooth over the problems, which they don’t.

So…holocaust books are very hard for me to read–would you think this one would be more possible? Because of the way it’s written?

By: Rasco from RIF

Rasco from RIF — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:28:41 +0000

You have expressed so well here what I thought and continue to think about in regard to A LUCKY CHILD which I recently wrote about http://www.rascofromrif.org/?p=2836. I mean it is a book about a child surviving the holocaust, but now I know your words of “a quiet book” are the words for which I was searching. Your last paragraph in the response above “Some of these quiet books don’t even comfort me, really, but they let me take more time with the disturbance, let it settle in and let me see how I feel about it all.” was exactly what I was feeling. Thank you!

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:55:45 +0000

I’m sure edgy does change over time. Maybe gets edgier?

Some of these quiet books don’t even comfort me, really, but they let me take more time with the disturbance, let it settle in and let me see how I feel about it all.

By: Shawna

Shawna — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:41:03 +0000

You’re not alone! I think of ‘quiet’ books as the kind you can cuddle up with and read over and over.

I don’t know, I may be over-simplifying but isn’t what’s edgy change over time?

I suppose it could be because I’m not what I’d consider edgy, but, though edgy is nice, I also like the comfort of a quiet book.

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:03:39 +0000

Another one for my list.

By: Laurie Schneider

Laurie Schneider — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:20:07 +0000

I like how you describe “this meets that”. You’re right about the interest being in the difference. I think quiet can be edgy, too, in its execution. The writing in Allison McGhee’s All Rivers Run to the Sea, for instance.

By: beckylevine

beckylevine — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:57:12 +0000

I’m so glad your daughter likes these books–that’s SO who I was when I was young. This meets that is good, I think, but I like the different layers you get around the meet-up. I think the quiet books and the edgy books explore it in different ways, and I want both.

By: Laurie Schneider

Laurie Schneider — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:46:56 +0000

I am heartened that my ten-year-old daughter loves these books, too. Magical, she calls them. Stories you can wander around in, feel at home in. And yet I fear that they will disappear in the clangor and clamor of publishing. I cringe whenever I go to a conference and an editor or agent talks about how what they really want is a story that is “this meets that.”