Story Telling

You know when you're telling a friend about a movie you just saw and their eyes are glazing over, but you just can't stop yourself because you loved this movie so much and you want to tell them the story? You don't want to leave out any of the important details, but they look like they're about to pass out, so you hurry through it, giving a much longer version than a movie trailer, but condense it just enough to stay within the limit of average human civility?

I sometimes think I might be unique, as I do about this type of experience, but usually I am not, so I'm betting most people have done just what I've described above. This week's aha! about novel writing is that what you must do in order to understand the complete arc of the story you're writing is to summarize it in the same way you'd summarize that fantastic movie you've just seen. Only unlike retelling the plot of your favorite movie, this time it's exciting, it has your friend begging for the next twist in the plot, and salivating, waiting to hear how it ends.

It has to be that exciting, or it will never sell. And it can be. The reason it will be much more exciting is that it is your story, not someone else's. And you must be excited yourself, or the story will never make it in the big bad world of publishing. The story has to be really good. It has to be told in a unique voice, it has to start off strong, continue to grip the reader, and end with a twist. But it will be if it is the story that needs to be told that only you can tell. It will take off like wildfire if it is the right story. And whether or not it is the right story, is something only you, the storyteller can decide.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to use a well proven type of plot structure to make choices about my story. It just has not been working and I've been getting very frustrated. Every writer's process is different and what I realize this week is I have to create the arc of the story first, then test it against successful plot structuring. It is much easier to mold and knead an existing story than it is to mold and knead thin air as I've been attempting to do. Storytelling should be fun. It's time to have some fun, then check it out to see if it has all the elements needed to sell it.

More later.

Roiling

This week has been catch up on real life. Working extra hours to pay the bills and make up the time spent at the writers workshop. But no matter what I'm doing, the novel is always roiling around in the back of my mind. Wake up thinking about the plot and the characters, the epic nature of the story.

And other things too. Is that young, first time novelist, with the MFA in creative writing I've been reading, going to dampen my ardor for my own work, or can I learn something from her book? Is listening to 28 CDs of George Eliot's Middlemarch the right thing to be doing, just because it feels like the right thing to be doing?

Is it possible to work on solving the housing crisis in the San Juans by day, and work on the novel by night? Are the workers' cottages Dorothea designs in Middlemarch somehow connected to the lack of decent affordable workers' housing in San Juan County? Can I work that into the novel somehow? Or should that wait for the next novel? Oh yes, and then there's that thing about the economy, and boomers losing their life savings and no one talking about it...

And on it goes. Showering, dressing, cooking, eating, driving, working, paying bills, picking up the mail, and all the while, there's this invisible mechanism at work, working on the novel for me. I don't even ask it to. It's better than a lover in that it really does know what I need without me having to tell it.

The problem solving abilities of the subconscious. Time spent on worthy endeavors seemingly unrelated to the novel will, as has been the case so many times before, in time, prove fruitful, but how that happens is completely unpredictable. Which is the thing about it I love most. What is predictable is that it will happen.

More later.

The Rumored Death of Boomer Sex

This week I met Jane Smiley at a workshop. She told me to stop preparing to write the novel and sit down and write a sloppy first draft, start to finish, then begin polishing it. I traveled twelve hundred miles, and spent a considerable amount of money to get this advice. It was worth it.

What started out as The Winter of the Novel has actually turned into The Winter of Understanding How Incredibly Complex a Task it is to Craft a Novel of Which One Can be Proud. As recent publications prove, it is possible to write a bestseller, or even a series of bestsellers with very little talent for writing and not much to say. But that is not what I want to do.

The only question worth answering is, "What is the story that must be told, that only I can tell?" For the workshop, we were all asked to come up with break out titles for the books we have written or partially written, or the books we want to write. I picked Boomer Sex because I want to write from the perspective of the Baby Boomers and I know "sex sells". Hey, why not just put it right there in the title I thought, then write a novel to go with the title.

That wasn't necessarily a bad idea. The problem is, I got impatient. I wanted an outline for a great novel  that I could start writing right now. Because I got impatient, I crafted the outline of a novel I didn't like very much. I couldn't get into the story, it felt more like a cartoon of a novel than it felt like a novel. So it was very hard to pitch it at the workshop. I was discouraged to say the least. Having been discouraged before, I've learned that that uncomfortable feeling very often immediately precedes a breakthrough.

I also met Robert Olen Butler at the workshop. Bob said write about the things in Boomer Sex that are real. A woman approaching retirement age having lost most of her savings in the recession, that is something you can get passionate about writing. The same woman losing her husband to a divorce, is something you can get passionate about writing. The question to ask is, what is the yearning of your character. In the case of Boomer Sex, the yearning is not, "how do I get money again?" The yearning is "who am I now?"

The first day of the workshop, our leader, Michael Neff, told us you can't build a beautifully crafted home with a couple of boards, some nails and a hammer. And writing a novel of which you can be proud is more complex than building a beautifully crafted home. If anyone should understand that analogy, it should be me. Michael has been known to say "sex sells", nothing new there, and he's right, it does. He was telling the truth.

But the context of that comment is very important. Michael makes it very clear you need a tightly written and edited story that is unique, interesting, and keeps eyes on the page. Once you have that, there are many more, very specific, things you must do to improve the chances of selling it. But if you don't have that tightly written and edited, unique story, all the sex in the world won't sell it. Unless you're E. L. James. Of whom I'm sure there will soon be many imitators.

The truth is, it's much easier to talk about writing a novel, or blog about writing a novel, than it is to write a good novel. Going forward, having spent the past three months studying novel structure and all the essential elements of a good commercial novel will in the end save me many months if not years of flailing around. I'm very grateful for the homework leading up to the workshop, for the condensed help I've been given, for the chance to practice pitching my ideas to professionals, and to observe what the other dozen attendees are working on as well as their processes. All in all a rare and enriching experience.

More later.

iPanic

Did anybody else notice that when Barack Obama led Michelle onto the dance stage at the Inaugural Ball, except for the onlookers holding news cameras, pretty much everyone else in the room was holding up an iPhone or iDroid to take their picture? The picture of that from the back of the room was flabbergasting… and a little depressing.

You see, I don’t own an iPhone. I tried an iDroid when they first came out, but when the twenty-something goth girl at the iDroid store suggested I come to iDroid school, I put it back in the box, stuck the box up on the high shelf in my bedroom closet, and asked for a dumb phone. I still use my dumb phone. The only time it bothers me is everyday, all day, when I see everyone else on the planet using their iPhone or iDroid.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with novel writing, the sole purpose of this blog, the topic from which I have vowed not to stray until the novel is written? Good question, I’m sure there’s a way to tie it in. Sure, here’s a way. Research is essential when writing a novel, and what better way to do research than to google at will on any topic, at any time, from any place. Yeah, I’d kind of like to be able to do that, I’ll admit it.

Now back to bitching about iPhones. It’s getting to be so bad, when I close my eyes, all I see is a finger “sliding to unlock” and a voice saying, “just wait a second here…” I mean come on, why do you have to slide to unlock, isn’t that really the same thing as the phone always being unlocked? Except that there’s an extra step? I don’t get it, why the slide to unlock?

And why is an iPhone still a phone? I don’t get that either. It’s a flat rectangle for God’s sake, does anyone else think it just looks dumb to be holding a flat rectangle up to the side of your head? Or worse yet, holding it out in front of you like a tiny rectangular platter? I don’t know, call me strange, but at least the flip phone looked kind of like something meant to connect an ear to a mouth. And the phone function is such a tiny portion of what you can do on an iPhone, why even bother?

I just feel obligated to try and resist at least a little bit longer. I don’t even know why. It’s the principle of the thing. I don’t know what the principle is, but I’m sure there is one. I’m trying to hold out until everyone else on the planet is using an iPad or mini-pad. Didn’t that used to mean something else? It’s so hard to keep up. I don’t know, there was something about that Obama moment, I kind of iPanicked.

Balls

So I went to the writers’ conference on how to publish a best seller. It was great. Two agents were there to whom we were allowed to pitch our novels. Let me just say this: It was a great experience, but it did kind of remind me of one time when I talked my way into a passing grade in architecture school in spite of the fact I had no building and no drawings to show for an entire term’s work.

Yes, I really did that. And no, I am not ashamed of it… well not much anyway. I guess you could say I had drafter’s block. I knew how to draft; I learned that in technical school. I was capable of coming up with passing design ideas; this was not my first design class. So, what happened you might ask? Well...

This wasn’t just any architecture design class. I had been selected as one of the crème de la crème to study under a legend-in-his-own-mind professor. Even though we worked in a crappy old past-its-expiration-date temporary building on desks left over from World War I, and were crammed into our studio space like a box of number two pencils still in their box.

The stakes were high to say the least. I spent most of the term blank minded and terrified. I managed to do two things right, I kept trying to figure out what the professor was talking about, and I never stopped coming to class. A good thing, as that would come in very handy when I would later make my plea for mercy.

Everyday, I’d come to the studio, get out my tracing paper and pencils, and make wonderful looking little sketchy marks and diagrams along with everyone else. Every few days, we’d pin our sketchy little drawings up on a wall and wax eloquent to one another about them. That was relatively easy, given my gift for gab.

The fact I had no idea what I was doing and the professor might as well have been speaking Greek, did not deter me on my mission to look like I knew what I was doing. (Actually he might have been, according to their own reports, the other students were of such high caliber, I might have missed that as a requirement on the syllabus).

Anyway, the more time went on, the more terrified I became. I was in a near constant state of panic, which did not help my ability to assimilate or produce. Just telling this story is starting to give me palpitations and hives. I better get on with it and cut to the chase. So here’s what happened. The term ended as all architecture school terms end, with a Final Review.

What I later learned about the Final Review is I really could have put up my sketchy meaningless diagrams and talked about them. Most architecture students have the opposite of imposter syndrome and probably half the class had done that anyway. But I hadn’t read that part of the architecture school student manual yet.

What happened next is a blank. I don’t know if I appeared at the Final Review with nothing, or failed to appear at all. It’s kind of like a car wreck where you end up in the hospital saying, “I can remember only just up to right before the accident”. My next memory is sitting in the office of my professor about to make the ballsiest move of my as yet, barely budding, architecture career. It was divine intervention. To this day I don’t know what made me do this.

First, I told the truth. I had not, all term, produced anything of substance. I was repentant. I recapped for the professor what I had learned in spite of complete drafter’s block. I promised it would never happen again. And I may have smiled and batted my eyelashes, I was a lot younger and cuter back then. And…drum roll please… he let me off. He, the scariest guy on the faculty, actually gave me a passing grade. Badunk!

I learned a valuable lesson that day. I didn’t learn that I was an idiot who had no right to be in architecture school. I didn’t learn there had been a mistake and he felt bad I’d been let into the class by accident. This is what I learned; you never know what you might receive, no matter how unlikely the odds, unless you ask.

To say that was a valuable lesson would be like your architect saying, “we’ve gone a tiny bit over budget.” You can find that under “U” for understatement in the How to Be an Architect Manual. What a gift. That lesson has served me well ever since. I’ll ask for just about anything. You just never know.

Which brings me to the workshop. This is how the two stories are alike. One, when it came time to pitch our books, I’d changed my premise so many times, there was no book, just a title and a few highly implausible plot points. Two, it was a completely architecture student in the swing-arm-lamp moment. I was frozen with terror. And three, I have almost no memory of what happened.

All I know is, I am now the proud owner of a personalized, signed copy of Jane Smiley’s novel writing guide, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, and a picture of me with Jane Smiley was in my camera when I woke up this morning. Oh, and I know I have balls. Something I tend to forget on a fairly regular basis.

Speaking of balls. I have a vague memory of telling two agents I’d send them a copy of my manuscript as soon as it’s done, and they didn’t laugh, they didn’t even snicker. I have one of the agent’s business cards stuck in my copy of Jane Smiley’s book as a bookmark as proof. It just goes to show you, you really never know what you might receive, unless you are willing to ask.

Now, onward to write the novel.

More later.

The Gift of the Painted Veil

One thing I love about writing is that almost daily, unexpected gifts come along. I realize I need a big boost when it comes to plotting the story I want to tell, and I'm having some difficulty when it comes to Setting.  A friend happens to mention how much she loves Somerset Maugham. Short on time, I rent The Painted Veil and watch it.

If you know the story of The Painted Veil, you'll know two things about this story. The plot is simple, but gripping, with all the necessary elements, major plot points, reversals, and a twist at the end. The other thing you'll know is that the setting is exotic but not gratuitously, the setting fits the tone, the plot, and the theme of the story perfectly.

Thank you, Somerset Maugham.

More later.

Let the Fun Begin

You know when you're a kid and you get to do paint by numbers, connect the dots, and trace pictures in coloring books to your heart's content? Art projects with guidelines, when you're still too young to know it's nobler to color outside the lines? Remember the pure joy of those days? Art with parameters? That's the feeling that comes with almost being done with the first draft of an outline for the novel.

The method I'm following calls for lots of preparation. Reading other people's novels, reading pitches on the back or inside covers of novels, studying plot structure, multiple levels of conflict, sympathetic and not so sympathetic characters, setting, theme, voice, point of view, and most important, a compelling premise. All that leading up to the creation of an outline from which to write the story.

Having the first draft of the outline is momentous. There are still inconsistencies, not everything works yet. This stage is fun though. It is like connect the dots. In places the outline is still just dots with no clear way to connect them yet, but at least there are lots of dots waiting to be connected. This is a heck of a lot more fun than when there were barely any dots at all.

Little spurts of dialogue come freely to mind and are put down for later possible use. Use within an emerging structure. Descriptions of places are forming themselves, finally with a reason for their existence. Characters are lining up in the wings, spraying their throats and practicing their lines. Persistence is paying off, because having a plot outline means a full first draft of the novel is within sight. Yahoo!

More later.

Chopsticks

When I was forty-nine, I took up the piano for the first time. I'd been an adequate violinist in my youth, learned to read music, sang in many choral ensembles from the time I was twelve, had a deep love of the instrument, worshiped Dave Brubeck. How could I not succeed? Well, I'll tell you how.

I signed up for lessons with a jewel of a teacher at our local community center. Patrick was all you could want in a teacher, kind, patient, supportive but a firm task master. Each week I avoided practicing as I had as a young violinist. Each week I'd apologize to Patrick. Each week I'd promise to do better.

Just by showing up for the lessons and with a modest amount of practice, I was able to even participate in a recital. At least I think I did. Late middle aged women with panic disorders probably shouldn't agree to play in piano recitals. I see a flashback of a bunch of us, all ages, practicing for the recital. The actual recital is a hole in the swiss cheese of the rest of that memory.

Before I started the lessons, I was absolutely convinced that I could go from being a non-pianist to a pianist in record time. When I closed my eyes, I could see myself playing. I was visioning the outcome. I really had no doubt about being able to succeed at playing the piano.

But I did not succeed. Instead I ran off to Texas with the brother of a friend and spent a winter knitting dish cloths in front of the food network. I remember my piano teacher's parting words. "Be sure to practice safe sex." Yes, those were the parting words of my piano teacher.

I like telling little stories like this. It's fun. Really fun. I've been doing it all my life. I've been writing them down for ten years. I could go on doing it for the rest of my life. Easily. But noooo... I want to write a novel. Oh God, please don't let the novel writing turn out like the piano playing.

More later.

Preparation

I used to have a great fondness for painting the rooms of houses we'd bought, but I never really liked all the prep involved. However, being a perfectionist, and liking a job well done, once revealed, a good tip on how to improve the end result could not be ignored.

One day I forgot to take my anti-insanity pill and committed myself to paint every square inch of the basement we were having remodeled. I mean every square foot of sheetrock that had to be primed and painted, and every piece of trim that had to be primed, have nail holes filled, be sanded, and painted two coats.

Our contractor was a friend and long time colleague and knew all too well the tight budget we were on. His job manager very kindly gave me every painting tip he had, of which there were many, as that crew had to be versatile as well as proficient.

The best tip he gave me was to apply paintable calk to every joint between trim and wall, including the baseboards, using a caulking gun to fill the gap, then running my forefinger down the joint, applying just the right amount of pressure to create the slightest indentation with no remaining caulk on wall or trim, all before the caulking started to set up.

Every hour I wasn't working, I spent prepping the trim, walls, and ceilings, sanding, priming, caulking, filling nail holes, and repairing minor blemishes left by the sheet rockers, in preparation for getting out the brushes and rollers for actually applying the paint. Prep to paint time was about four to one. But I knew the end result would be well worth it.

I think you might suspect where I'm going with this. In its current iteration, this blog is about writing a novel. Yet truth be told, I've been doing very little actual writing of the novel. I mean crafting the words that will be on the finished page. That's because I've been doing my prep work.

Writing a novel really is like building a house or remodeling one. If the book is going to sell, the ratio of prep work to story telling may well turn out to be four to one. I won't know until the whole process is finished. What I find different about writing though, is that the prep work is really quite enjoyable. Not quite as much fun as writing dialogue or description maybe, but a different kind of fun.

And very rewarding because I know in the end it will be like walking into that freshly painted new space at my old house. Satisfaction in the knowledge of a job well done. And most likely, the beginning of an itch to get going on that kitchen remodel I've had in the back of my mind the whole time I've been painting.

More later.

Wrong Fork

Months ago, I had an idea for a novel. A good one. Something happened and one day my novel was a cartoon I didn't like or recognize, nor did I think anyone would want to read it. It helps to have a guy who lives in my house, reads a lot, and reads the pitch on the back of the books he buys.

He reminded me of my original story. That perhaps what it means to write the story that must be told that only you can tell means not losing the voice in which you best write, and the story can be a simple one, but true to your time and your experience. He got hooked by that little story back then and reminded me the hook has to be extraordinary. It can be simple, but it must be extraordinary.

I'd gotten all philosophical and got the idea my story had to be timeless, embrace deep, universal themes, and perhaps one day become a classic. Becoming too ambitious can kill a good idea. That little story had spunk, and it was original. So I've gone back to it. Much happier now.

More later.

Loose Gravel

When I was about twenty-five, my soon to be husband and I were invited to go along with some friends on a Mazama sponsored climb of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State. We went, not knowing that two years later the summit of Mt. St. Helens would be gone, blown away by an eruption we witnessed from the front yard of our North Portland home. We'd had our one chance to make it to the top of the mountain. Jim made it, I did not. I'm glad he made it to the top of Mt. St. Helens, because his life was cut short, and I am still here climbing mountains. Even if they are only of the metaphorical type.

We slept in a tent at the base of the climb and got up about one am. Our leader took us up the mountain. Prone to joint issues, my right hip started hurting part way up the mountain. By the time we were within a short distance of the summit, I was in such pain, I had to give in and let the others go without me. I cried my way back down the mountain. Our leader asked me if I was crying from the pain. I said, "No". Sometimes it seems like my life has been one long series of getting to ninety percent. In most cases, ninety percent is good enough. But just once in a while, you want to finish something all the way to one hundred percent of completion. You know, like once a year when you get your taxes done and you know they are complete. It's such a good feeling.

This blog is about novel writing. You can see where I'm going. I'm hooked on metaphors it seems. Here's another one. Writing a novel as mountain climbing. You have to prepare for it. It takes a long time. You have to learn skills you didn't have before. You have to be patient. The goal is to reach the summit. Along the way, you encounter encumbrances, steep patches, loose gravel, ice. You have to get there on your own two feet, but it helps to be part of a team, as occasionally you'll need to "rope up" for safety. Having a leader is not necessary for seasoned climbers, but for first timers, it can be very useful, maybe even essential.

I'm at a loose gravel spot right now. Slipping and sliding on a vocabulary of terms so numerous it does feel like I might slip and choose to give up. But unlike climbing Mt. St. Helens, this time giving up is not an option. The last thirty-five years have taught me many things, but one in particular, in order to have what you want, you've got to be tenacious, patient, and dedicated. And sometimes all you really have to do is not give up. Breakthroughs happen, problems that looked as tall as a mountain turn out to be scalable after all and may even lead to a new way to the top. Someone very wise once said to me when we lose someone close to us, we can do the things they can no longer do, thinking of them, honoring them. Jim always wanted to write a novel. Funny I forgot that till just now.

More later.

Choices

Some things about my novel keep changing, some have remained the same from the beginning. I don't want to say which, because I want you to read the novel when it's done and because of this thing called "talking out your story". That means when you talk about the story so much that when you come to write it, all the energy of the thing has dissipated in the telling and none is left for the writing. I learned about the danger of talking out your story from a writer of Western novels at a writer's conference in Wenatchee Washington around 2005. I went to the seminar because nothing else sounded interesting for that session. I do not remember the title of his seminar, what it was supposed to be about, or even his name. It was just one of those serendipitous moments when you hear just the right thing, perhaps something you'll carry in your back pocket and pull out occasionally for years afterwards. Being warned not to talk out my story has served me very well and I will be forever grateful to that unassuming, tall, weathered man wearing cowboy boots and jeans who has many published Westerns to his name, giving novice writers advice because he could, and just because he wanted to.

Now to the point. What I see at this point is that writing a novel is like walking down a path. Every few feet there's a fork in the path and you must choose which direction to go. You can backtrack somewhat if you make the wrong choice, but since there are so many choices, most of the time you just have to choose quickly and keep moving. I was once told it would be good for me to have to make a lot of difficult choices fast. I did not like this advice, as at the time I was afraid of making the wrong choice, so much so that I was often paralyzed by having to make a decision. I think the universe might want me to learn a lesson about decision making, because here I am pursuing this passion that involves constant decision making. Everything from what will be the theme of the story down to which words to put together in what configuration to give the reader the most pleasure and possibly insight.

More later.

Time Management

When I'm writing, like with any art form, I make the most progress during those times when I lose all sense of time. Feeling rushed is the enemy of the artist. Writing fiction is an art form. It requires no less freedom than a painter needs to create a painting. Painting or writing, the end goal is to make a connection to mankind through the expression of your art form, something that often requires periods of complete isolation from other people. Ironic. Art cannot have the constraint of time. It doesn't work that way. Perhaps that is why Tim Burton told Charlie Rose his most valuable asset as a creator is unstructured time.

The real world, including the world of publishing, requires good time management, and one of the requirements of good time management is allotting enough time for a task. So how do I reconcile these two seemingly opposing ways of looking at time? The artist who wants to make a living must walk the fine line between the freedom from time they need and the requirement to produce a finished product within a certain amount of time. When I was a child, my mother had a friend who was a painter. Their house was always a mess. She did become a well known painter over time. She bought the time she needed to explore, to putter, to let the muse work, by skipping housework. Not a bad trade in my opinion.

More later.

Plotting

You know what it's like when you go somewhere riding in the passenger's seat with a driver who knows where they're going? You spend the trip looking at the scenery, chatting, knitting, drinking your latte, and all of a sudden you are there and you have no idea how you got there. The next time you have to find that same place, you will have to figure out how to get there yourself. Well, all these years reading novels, that's what I've done. Riding along paying little attention to which road the author is taking me down or what direction we are headed or why. Just going along for the ride.

Because the plot has to make sense and has to take the reader where you want them to go, creating a plot line for a novel is like suddenly being in the driver's seat and wishing you'd paid more attention to directions. Creating a plot line is like drawing a map or giving someone directions. Your characters need directions so they'll know where to go. They need a roadmap. That is what the plot is, it's like a roadmap for your characters.

In order to create a roadmap for your characters you have to know where they will be starting from. That's the backstory. You have to know where they will end up. That's the climax and denouement. You have to identify landmarks and places where they may get lost in between those two places. Those would be plot points and reversals. You want readers to enjoy the scenery. That's setting. You want this to be a journey readers will want to spend money on the gas it's going to take to get there. That's your break out title, compelling first line, first paragraph, first page.

Interesting that making maps is sometimes called plotting. I've always liked drawing maps. That's a start.

More later.

On Kesey

It's been many years since I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, so many in fact, I don't remember whether I actually read the book or just saw the movie. It's assigned reading for the novel writing workshop I'm attending. I wasn't prepared to pick it up and not want to put it down, eating, sleeping, working, all interruptions keeping me from getting back to it. I was kind of blown away by how much I loved this book.

The cover advertises it as "a glittering parable of good and evil." Just twenty-two when the film came out in 1975, I may have seen it that way all those years ago. Now though, I am much more interested in the characters, the fascinating study in personalities. Big Nurse is a rule keeper, but one could argue she truly believes in what she is doing. McMurphy is no saint and actively participates in his own downfall. Chief Bromden isn't just a narrator, this is his story and the story of his people as much as it is McMurphy's.

This is a psychological thriller. Is McMurphy a psychopath? He shows some signs of being one. Is Nurse Ratched a sadist? Not all her actions imply that she is. The book needs these two strong personalities in a fight to the death. They must collide in order to break Bromden out of the protective shell of his self perceived helplessness. They are less characters in a novel than they are tools Kesey uses to discuss oppression and liberation, helplessness and self determination.

I have to laugh at myself whenever I notice my own prejudice against every generation that came before my own in terms of their psychological awareness, that somehow, Americans have never been more psychologically aware than we are now. More aware than we were in 1962. A prejudice perhaps encouraged by watching so many episodes of Madmen.

Kesey is brilliant in the way Jane Austen is. Transcending time and making you feel like you have a stake in how things turn out for these people, people they've created. And they can do this because they have a rare perception about people, how we act, think, and feel, about our limitations and our potential for heroic acts. And because they have a story that must be told, a story that can only be told by them. Oh that I might be so lucky. One can always hope.

More later.

Metaphor Fruitcake

A good antagonist in a novel is like yeast in a loaf of bread in that the addition expands the loaf in a way other leavening agents can't quite. Thus the historical popularity of using yeast for baking bread and good antagonists for infusing gripping action into novels that stand apart from the rest.

For my novel, I've identified two potential antagonists. One a man, the other a woman. Because most of the characters in the story are women, it seemed better to me to make the antagonist a woman too. Don't want to appear sexist or anything. Also the male antagonist is a bit cartoon like. The search for the antagonist it turns out is closely linked to genre.

The cartoon man is a good fit for cheeky, light, women's fiction. And would be a lot of fun, and would provide a lot of possibilities for moving the plot forward. The woman would work better in literary fiction, as her role as antagonist is less plot related and more psychological. For now, I'm keeping them both, waiting in the wings like Michelle Obama's inaugural ball gown.

Will the winner be the bright, colorful, fun choice? Or will it be the more understated, subtle one? Moving forward, weaving together the rest of the many components of good novel writing will reveal the winner I believe. At this point, the whole thing is still amorphous, with many variables making themselves clearer, dynamically interacting with one another to make the whole.

It must be this way. Like making a loaf of bread. If you decide at the last minute to add more raisins, you want to do it while the dough is yet unbaked, so the raisins will be evenly distributed throughout the loaf. A novel is like a loaf of bread in that once baked, or published, it cannot be altered. But up until the time you put it in the oven, you can keep adding and mixing and kneading, to ensure that any addition is integral to the whole thing.

This is my argument with the Fifty Shades of Grey series. It reads as though the author added characters and meaning after the first book was baked, so the series does not hang together the way it would have, had the whole series been thought all the way through together. Not altogether unsuccessful, but could have been much better. E. L. James could learn a thing or two from J. K. Rowling.

Writing a novel is a lot like designing a building. You work on parts, never forgetting the whole.

More later.

Life of Pi

The purpose of this blog is to record the experience of writing a novel. That involves confessing certain insecurities. I just saw Life of Pi, and I can't help asking myself, how can I compete with that for publication? 

'nough said, now get back to work.

More later.

Story Telling at Its Best

I had a long drive ahead of me so I stopped in at the library looking for an audio book. On the New Audio bookshelf, I found Toni Morrison’s – Home – audio book, read by the author, unabridged, four discs, four and a half hours. Perfect.

Suffering from allergies or a cold or both, I listened to most of the story on my drive. Next time I got in the car a couple of days later, I turned on the CD player and found I couldn’t remember enough of the story to pick up where I left off. So I had to start all over again. That’s embarrassing. And freaky.

Do not get me wrong, this had nothing to do with the book and everything to do with me being sick. As I listened again on my next long drive, the story made sense, I remembered who all the characters were, and I had time to listen to the whole thing straight through. Toni Morrison’s eleventh novel, Home, may be as close to a perfect novel as is possible to construct. An excellent example of everything I’m trying to learn.

Morrison is a master of “show don’t tell”. Somehow you find yourself knowing things about the characters, the setting, the time period and asking yourself, how do I know that? How did she tell me that without telling me that?

Though deeply wounded, the protagonist is completely sympathetic. This warrants studying. They say if you can get your reader to see your protagonist as sympathetic in the first ten pages, you are doing it right. Morrison does it right.

There is never a moment where you’re tempted to abandon this story. Every scene is completely engaging. You know the book has to end, but you don’t want it to.

There are no superfluous events or characters, and every description, every dialogue is necessary to the telling of the story. This is story telling at it’s very best.

More later.