Still Alice

I had always thought that, should I ever develop cancer, I would forgo chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is poisonous and barbaric, I believed. It brings us to the brink of death and then drags us back and, some folks never do return.
I'd rather take my chances on clinical trials and new treatments, I thought. And I firmly believed that these decisions should be made while we are healthy, when our minds are not clouded by the subjectivity and irrational passion that comes with disease.
Then I read Still Alice, a first novel by Lisa Genova.
Now, Alice does not have cancer. She has early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. But, like me, the healthier, rational Alice believes that she knows what is best for the Alice to come. She creates a quiz for herself that she takes daily, thanks to the reminder technology on her Blackberry. If she can't answer all the questions correctly, she is directed to a file that will instruct her to take a lethal dose of sleeping pills.
I won't go into the rest of the story because I don't want to ruin it for anyone. But I will say that the novel has altered my perspective on terminal disease. The author, Lisa Genova, has a PhD in neuroscience and works with Alzheimer's patients. She clearly knows her subject and almost seems to crawl into the Alzheimer's mind.
Her depiction of the progression of Alzheimer's is, admittedly, a bit too rosy at times.
Alice isn't anything like my husband's grandmother (Well, she wasn't really his grandmother. She was his step-grandmother and, also, his aunt by marriage, but I won't go into that here.). Alice doesn't confuse real life with soap operas and accuse her husband of cheating on her.
She isn't like my good friend's aunt, whom he found strapped to her bed in a nursing home when he visited. He was told that she had lashed out violently and that they had no choice, but to restrain her.
But the author's decision to leave out the nasty stuff doesn't matter.
We do have an Alice in our neighborhood who lives with her son. She is sweet, kind and completely unaware of her surroundings. Alices do exist. All cases are different and the author doesn't have to rely on the worst-case scenarios to get her point across.
And her point is more universal for me than it is, I think, for most.
Sure, she deepened my understanding of Alzheimer's disease with her well-informed fictionalization. She helped me understand that we are more than our memories and that no disease can change our souls.
But, for me, the lesson was broader.
Through Alice, I came to see that I cannot make rational, informed decisions for myself before I face the possibility of death or terminal disease. I don't know enough yet. I am ignorant, just as Alice was ignorant in the earliest stage of her own disease.
I am ignorant because disease is more than science.
Treatment is about more than medical cures.
And living is about more than being physically or mentally whole.
I am ignorant, but am happy to embrace that ignorance.
Thanks to Alice.

Sniffling gets you nowhere

To pass the time while waiting for the next round of cuts in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, many of us 500 quarterfinalists chatted on an ABNA online forum. A common topic was whether we would be upset if we made it no further.
Most of us agreed that we'd be thrilled regardless.
Our novels had been selected from a pool of up to 10,000 first-time novelists. That earned us critiques of our excerpts from two Amazon reviewers and, we would soon be receiving full manuscript reviews from editors at Publishers Weekly.
The reviews alone, we said with skin thicker than armadillos, were worth it. We couldn't wait to read the critiques from Publishers Weekly, we wrote. And most all of us agreed that harsher was better. What good was a pat on the back? We wanted to know how to make our novels better.
Bring it on, Publishers Weekly editors.
Bring it on.
So they did, and virtual lips started quivering.
Not all of them.
Most folks took it well and vowed to move forward.
But the volume of the sniffling few hurt my ears.
One woman wanted to throw in the towel because, amid all the compliments, a reviewer wrote that her novel suffered from disorganization. Gee. A disorganized first novel? Writing takes skill and talent. Organization is simply hard work.
My advice to her?
Get working.
Disorganization is fixable.
From what I read, every criticism by the Publishers Weekly reviewers focused on an issue that could be addressed: organization, depth of characters, pace. Now I didn't read them all, but I didn't find any that bashed a writer for lousy writing.
A successful writer needs thick skin and an open mind. And, for that reason, I have a feeling that the loudest of those rejected and dejected contestants will never be successful. That's a shame. They had some good stuff there.
My own review was everything I had hoped for.
Before entering the contest, I had shelved Spring Melt for further revisions. Too much back story, especially in the second chapter, I figured. I had wanted to rip those parts up and incorporate the same information more smoothly and at a faster pace throughout. But I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing.
Then I saw the announcement for the contest. Entry was free and, with each round of cuts, contestants got more reviews.
Why not?
With the first cut, I learned that my pitch (the general storyline) and my first 17 pages were good enough to attract professional attention. That was, for me, the validation I needed that my novel was worth my time and effort.
(As the rejections pile up, you start to wonder, you know?)
On April 15, I learned that I did not make the semifinals, where the field was trimmed to 100, but I did get that Publishers Weekly review last week. That single paragraph consisted mostly of a well-written synopsis.
But, in that paragraph was a one-sentence gem.
A precious one:

"At times muddied with flashbacks and digressions, this is still a solid story with believable characters and a pleasant and surprising resolution."

Those words --"muddied with flashbacks and digressions"-- were the words I was looking for. That meant that I was on the right track. That meant that If I could just resolve that issue, I would probably have a pretty good book on my hands.
I wasn't just guessing any more.
Now I have to admit that my skin is not thick all over. I'm more like a well-frozen river. I'm super thick-skinned in most areas of criticism, but my skin gets dangerously thin in those few areas where currents run fast underneath.
I'm human, afterall.
But the folks at Publishers Weekly knew just where to skate.
My lips didn't quiver. I didn't start sniffling. I didn't throw any towels.
I did, immediately and with renewed enthusiasm, started tearing my novel part.
So thank you Amazon.
Thank you Create Space.
Thank you Penguin.
And thank you friends, family and strangers who posted encouraging reviews.
I lost.
And I feel good.