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.
January 31, 2013
January 27, 2013
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.
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.
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.
January 26, 2013
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.
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.
January 24, 2013
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.
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.
January 23, 2013
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.
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.
January 19, 2013
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.
January 14, 2013
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.
January 9, 2013
The Hundred-Thousand Piece Jigsaw
I love jigsaw puzzles. It’s the perfect introvert activity.
All my life, often a day off has meant round the clock puzzle solving,
stopping only for tea and chocolate, well, and the occasional sandwich. The best puzzles are Thanksgiving weekend puzzles when the sandwiches are turkey and cranberry. My
family of origin taught me the value of a good thousand-piecer. If we learned nothing else in my family, we did learn perseverance. And dogged determination.
First you clear off a nice big table with room to spread out. Then you sort through and pull out all the edges and finish the border. Next you sift through the entire box, sorting pieces into like colors and identifiable objects. If it's a really hard one, you stay up until dawn, go to bed, then come back to it as soon as you get up. If you're feeling generous, you can share your puzzle. You can work in silence or put on music. A puzzle pieced together while watching a movie marathon is especially fun. When you finally put in that thousandth piece, the feeling of satisfaction is euphoric.
What I'm finding is, writing a novel is like doing a hundred-thousand piece jigsaw. In a good way.The challenge is bigger, but the process is much the same. You have to have a strategy. You work on it one piece at a time. You can work on one bit for a while, then move to another bit. You can work on the whole thing, or focus in on just one little area. If you get tired and none of the pieces are fitting, you can take a break. It is fun to work on it alone, but it is also fun to work on it with other people.
First you clear off a nice big table with room to spread out. Then you sort through and pull out all the edges and finish the border. Next you sift through the entire box, sorting pieces into like colors and identifiable objects. If it's a really hard one, you stay up until dawn, go to bed, then come back to it as soon as you get up. If you're feeling generous, you can share your puzzle. You can work in silence or put on music. A puzzle pieced together while watching a movie marathon is especially fun. When you finally put in that thousandth piece, the feeling of satisfaction is euphoric.
What I'm finding is, writing a novel is like doing a hundred-thousand piece jigsaw. In a good way.The challenge is bigger, but the process is much the same. You have to have a strategy. You work on it one piece at a time. You can work on one bit for a while, then move to another bit. You can work on the whole thing, or focus in on just one little area. If you get tired and none of the pieces are fitting, you can take a break. It is fun to work on it alone, but it is also fun to work on it with other people.
It’s been years since the last time I did a jigsaw puzzle of
any kind. Moving several times, having cancer, working again after the death of my husband; there’s always been too much to do, and I've been too scatterbrain to take the time I used
to think nothing of, the time it takes to do a large, complicated, but satisfying puzzle. I may not have done a jigsaw in a long time, but I realize I am now finally working on something remarkably similar. I guess if you’re meant to
solve puzzles, whether it's the thousand piece kind or the hundred-thousand piece kind, you’ll eventually get back to doing just that.
More later.
January 1, 2013
First Came Vonnegut
We cannot all read every novel, nor can we write every novel. All we can do is read what we love and write what we know. Thinking back to authors I've loved, Laura Ingalls Wilder will always be the author that piqued my interest in reading in the first place. After that, as my reading tastes matured, things changed.
Kurt Vonnegut was at the peak of his writing career when I was in high school. I read all his novels. Cynic, skeptic, able to look unflinchingly at the human condition. My kind of guy.
Next came Tom Robbins, a local fellow, funny in the same way as Vonnegut, but a little lighter. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues always brings back memories of my post high school vintage apartment replete with the fumes of unburnt natural gas.
Later I switched to Larry McMurtry, starting with Lonesome Dove. Never could look at carrots in quite the same way after that book. Was shocked but impressed to find out McMurtry penned Terms of Endearment. Only man I've read who wrote just like a woman. That's a compliment.
When I discovered Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, I found a kindred spirit in the characters and their lives with a preacher for a father, and a mother who went along with a life of sacrifice shared with children who did not choose it.
Likewise when I first read Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, it was so gratifying to find a second female writer who could describe great human suffering without ever abandoning the reader in that place of pain.
Nick Hornby came later. I first saw High Fidelity in movie form. Later, when I read the book, it reminded me of all that cannot be captured in a mere two hours, the narrative unique to the author, inside the head of the protagonist, much of which is lost on film.
Because I was cursed with probably some sort of undiagnosed dyslexia, I'm a slow reader. What I've had to do with that is wait for the very best to come along and read that at my own pace. It's given me a taste for literary fiction.
As I look at the list of my favorites, something else stands out. Voice. Voice is what stands out. Characters who could not stay silent, stories that had to be told, and had to be told in that one unmistakable voice.
Something to think about.
More later.
Kurt Vonnegut was at the peak of his writing career when I was in high school. I read all his novels. Cynic, skeptic, able to look unflinchingly at the human condition. My kind of guy.
Next came Tom Robbins, a local fellow, funny in the same way as Vonnegut, but a little lighter. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues always brings back memories of my post high school vintage apartment replete with the fumes of unburnt natural gas.
Later I switched to Larry McMurtry, starting with Lonesome Dove. Never could look at carrots in quite the same way after that book. Was shocked but impressed to find out McMurtry penned Terms of Endearment. Only man I've read who wrote just like a woman. That's a compliment.
When I discovered Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, I found a kindred spirit in the characters and their lives with a preacher for a father, and a mother who went along with a life of sacrifice shared with children who did not choose it.
Likewise when I first read Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, it was so gratifying to find a second female writer who could describe great human suffering without ever abandoning the reader in that place of pain.
Nick Hornby came later. I first saw High Fidelity in movie form. Later, when I read the book, it reminded me of all that cannot be captured in a mere two hours, the narrative unique to the author, inside the head of the protagonist, much of which is lost on film.
Because I was cursed with probably some sort of undiagnosed dyslexia, I'm a slow reader. What I've had to do with that is wait for the very best to come along and read that at my own pace. It's given me a taste for literary fiction.
As I look at the list of my favorites, something else stands out. Voice. Voice is what stands out. Characters who could not stay silent, stories that had to be told, and had to be told in that one unmistakable voice.
Something to think about.
More later.
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