LIVE! #56
7 January 2024
Agenda
- Why We're Here
- Literary Forensics
- - What do I bring?
- - What do I feel?
- - What do I notice?
- - What do I study?
- Next Month's Reading & Study
Why We're Here
We Writers want to improve our craft
by Reading like a Writer
through Literary Forensics training
we learn from each other
Roundtable Rules
Always refer back to the book
We practice active listening & serendipity
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but not every conclusion
Always refer back to the book
Meet today's author: Bonnie Garmus
- Born in Riverside, California, Garmus grew up in Seattle.
- She received her bachelors degree in creative writing/aesthetic studies
from UC Santa Cruz - She has worked as a copywriter and creative director in the US,
and has lived in Switzerland and Colombia. - Garmus is married, with two daughters, and has lived in London with her husband and her dog, 99, for the past 6 years.
- She enjoys open water swimming and has rowed competitively.
- Lessons in Chemistry is Garmus's first published novel.
- To date it has been translated into 42 languages and remains a best seller.
It was released in April, 2022, two weeks before her 65th birthday.
“The truth is, Elizabeth Zott is based on the
fundamentals of Stoicism as written by Marcus Aurelius, which are: self-responsibility,
and courage, and logic, and bravery. And that is her.”
- Bonnie Garmus
What do I feel?
What in the book elicited that feeling?
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but every conclusion should be questioned
We practice serendipity
- nothing is too crazy
Always refer back to the book
What do I notice?
- • Language and Grammar
- • Context
- • Point of view
- • Voice
- • Character development
- • Horizontal structure
- • Pacing
- • Layering of themes
- • Overall effect
Writing Lessons in Chemistry
- First novel (still unpublished) was 700 pages long and rejected by 98 agents.
- Began by writing a second novel about Mad Zott.
- Immediately after a bad work meeting that involved 10 men ignoring her ideas,
she wrote the the entire first chapter, and the final three sentences,
of a new novel about Mad's mother, Elizabeth. - She wanted Elizabeth to have a platform, on TV, that wasn't merely ornamental.
- As a TV chemist, Zott had to be attractive. 2 options: game show or cooking.
- Garmus studied 1950s chemistry textbook: fire dept called twice.
- During 5 years of writing Lessons, Garmus failed a class called
Finish Your Novel. - She then took a writing class at Curtis Brown and met her agent, Felicity Blunt,
at a cocktail party, who signed her to a deal on the strength of her first 10,000 words. - Garmus never had to query Lessons--not once.
- Garmus did not write to an outline, but after her first burst of writing she did have the
beginning and the end, "only needing to write the other 90,000 words".
Stats & Background
- Marketing: Humorous Fiction, Mothers & Children Fiction, Literary Fiction
- Genre: Realistic Historical Long-Form Archplot
- Print Pages: 400; Word count: 109,096;
Reading Grade: 7th
Avg. wds/sent.: 9.53; Lexical Density: 50.30; Flesch Reading Ease: 72.07 - POV: Omniscient (Garmus says 10 POVs--I counted 25)
Person: 3rd; Tense: Past - Publish date: April 5, 2022
- Publisher: Doubleday
- Audio book length: (11 hours 55 mins); Narr. Bonnie Garmus, Miranda Raison, Pandora Sykes
- 2022 Book of the Year: British Book Awards, Hay Festival, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones
- Notable books of 2022: NYT, NPR, Goodreads, Amazon
- Streaming: Limited series on AppleTV
Next Podcast, January 28: Avalon - Nell Zink
https://WritersWhoRead.com/live
February 4: Victory City - Salman Rushdie (UK, 2023)
March 3: Birnam Wood - Eleanor Catton (NZ, 2023)
April 7: Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld (USA, 2023)
May 5: Yellowface - R. F. Kuang (USA, 2023)
June 2: Mr. Texas - Lawrence Wright (USA, 2023)