Badgering–The Fool Edition
It may be April Fool’s Day, but this is no joke–you are writing a novel!
Yes, that’s right. Did you forget? Have you gotten distracted? Have you gone through a list of excuses? Well, no more, you novelist you!
I’ve read recently that there is an evolutionary reason for forgetting. Mother Nature wants you to forget lots of things, apparently, but not your novel. Forget to make the bed. Forget to return some phone call to somebody you don’t really want to talk to anyway. But don’t forget to write your novel. If there is an evolutionary reason to forget, it is to forget everything except the writing. Why do you think Mother Nature grows trees? For shade and clean air and places for birds to hang out? NO. She makes trees so we can write books. So we can have paper for our printers. So we can have lovely number two pencils. Sure, I’m willing to share the trees with the birds and the lost kites, but make no mistake–I’m hugging trees for the books hidden away in their insides. Press your ear to the trunk and hear those pages rustle (and you thought they were leaves).
You’ve been distracted enough. Is spring in the air? Love? These thing are not for you unless you’re putting them in your novel. Okay? Understood? If it can’t be material for your story it is an unnecessary distraction–but EVERYTHING is material. Go on and write it all down. Let the lawyers sort it out.
Excuses? You’ve run out. Really. From my little corner of the world I know all your excuses. Hey, I’ve got a kid and I teach–I’ve heard every excuse there is. Put down that excuses checklist and pick up your noveling pen (or keyboard). Finish that story. If the idea of finishing is too much for you, then finish the chapter you’re in the middle of. Still too much? Fine. Finish the page. Finish the freaking paragraph! You know you want to, and I know you can.
Giving up? Don’t make me laugh. What kind of April Fool’s joke is that? I once put about 26 shoulder pads (that’s right–cut out of my blouses and jackets) on the top of ceiling fan blades so that when my roommate, a true fashion maven, came home and switch the ceiling fan on, she got showered with shoulder pads. That’s an April Fool’s joke. Not writing, isn’t.
So, remember–you are setting a novel free from the bowels of a tree! Think about how good that is going to feel!
Be an April Writing Fool! I certainly am.
It’s Over!
Just a note to say that NaBloPoMo for March is over and done. Hurray. I’m never doing this again. I did it for three blogs and that’s just crazy. CRAZY!
But I did it!
The Rewrite Chronicles
Some writers edit as they go and when they reach that last line they say they are done–until their publisher gets ahold of it anyway. Other writers write, go back to the beginning and edit their way through in an orderly fashion. Maybe they do this twice. Or three times. But they have a method and in the end they have a book. The rest of flail around in a tangle of words and eventually look up to find that those words have fallen into order in spite of our best laid trip wires and other efforts at sabotage.
How do you do get your words to fall into line all nice and straight and polished–without making them dull in the process?
Used to I would print out the unruly novel and take a pen to it, jabbing it here, striking it into submission there, and cutting bits off that were really recalcitrant. This time around I’m taking a different approach. Instead of writing between the lines and margins, I’m retyping the entire thing, word by word, until I get to the end. Madness may set in by page 100, or 22, but maybe it will make me look at every word and how it works in every scene, and in the end I’ll have the novel I envisioned long ago.
Got through page one last night. Whew. And woke up this morning dreaming of new titles. Lydia had pointed out that the title I had didn’t fit the novel I had. I knew that, but didn’t want to admit it. But the novel I wrote during NaNoWriMo left behind the title I started the month of November with, and it is time to put it behind us all together. It’s weird to wake up dreaming of words, just a long line of titles, rearranging themselves in my sleep, but obsession is full-time, after all.
And the new title is…?
Trying to Shove the Guts Back In
Facing the day with an eviscerated novel in my lap is making me want to do housework. Why is it so hard when you want to get it right and do better and finish? Where to start? How to start?
Yes, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, but that first step feels like it’s off a mountain.
Update One: Binder is open. Cap is off pen. Writer is staring into space (as if the answer will float through the room).
Update Two: Binder, pen, and writer went for a drive and tried to donate blood. That didn’t work either. Writer still has all her blood but no freaking ideas.
Update Three: Writer decided to make art and listen to David Lynch talk about consciousness, creativity, and the brain. The binder and pen wait–maybe they’re meditating.
if you have a little time…
One of my students interviewed me for our school podcast! (See, I’m practicing for my interview with Terry Gross.) But anyway, if you would like to listen and surprise our students by increasing their hits, click here!
Why, It’s Just Like Visiting Your Dominatrix!
Why would anyone in her right mind give someone money to cause her pain? Or in this case, rip apart her novel? A friend of mine compared it to a visit to your dominatrix…yes, well…
What was I talking about?
Oh, yeah. But I’ve found the pain is not as bad as you’d think. I just had The Harpoonist beat the devil out of my story and while, yes, I was afraid to look at the damage, I must admit that the result is worth it. And the thing is, every flaw she pointed out, I already knew. She was spot on, and this should teach me to trust my own judgment. Wow–there’s an idea. If I could trust myself, I could write a damn good novel. Maybe.
ha-ha-ha
Now I’ve got a novel to go rewrite. Or rather, I’ve got a novel I need to prepare for another round of abuse.
You’re Too Tall
Now, being tall may not have anything to do with writing, but then again maybe it does. I mean, hasn’t your appearance–height, weight, color, something–affected who you are and how you see the world? Of course it does.
A friend sent me this New York Times article on being tall, and boy do I ever relate. I’m a little over 6′1″ and I can say that the world never lets me forget it.
Just the other day at work the subject of appearance came up, and I mentioned the grief I’d gotten since I was a kid for being such a tall girl, and how some men bristle when they see me, visibly bothered that a woman would dare to be taller than them. One of my coworkers, a tall guy himself, found this hard to believe. Sure enough, about an hour later, a fellow from the front desk came into the teachers’ room, paused in the middle of whatever he was talking about, and said, “Why do you have to wear heels? It makes you really tall.” HA! I looked down at him and said, “Are you suggesting I shouldn’t wear high heels?”
“You just make me feel short.”
“And that’s why I wear heels,” I replied.
Everyone had a good laugh and my doubtful coworker was doubtful no more.
How does this affect the writing? Well, perhaps if something about you makes you feel different, outside, or uncomfortable with your place in this world, it influences how you see things.
How’s the weather up there? Do you play basketball? I’ve always had fantasies about tall women. Hey, my friends have a bet you’re taller than our friend. Wow, you’re tall. You don’t play basketball? What a waste! Watch your head! String bean. Bean pole. Jolly Green Giant. Flag Pole. Super Twig. I like you, but you’re too tall. Your husband’s taller than you, right? Here, for this photo have your husband stand on this box….
I think writers tend to be the kids who were outsiders. Maybe you were the wrong race, the religion, the wrong gender, the wrong social class, the wrong build, the wrong family, the wrong weight, or the wrong height. Whatever. You don’t need to have not fit in to be a writer, but maybe it helps. Maybe these ticks are the reason we can see the world from another point of view.
Being an only child raised by a single dad in the 70s made me different too. You live out in the middle of nowhere with your father and no woman around? No, I don’t think my daughter can come spend the night. It took me years to figure out what they meant. Oh, when that movie Something about Amelia was on TV…you live alone with your father, don’t you? How do you feel about that?
It’s always something. But a writer takes that something and makes a story, and somewhere, one day, someone out there, is going to read that story and say, “Hey, it’s like that for me too.” And it’ll all be worth it.
Mixing Metaphors and Other Bad Things (or other reasons my novel is a mess)
Some writers use notecards and plan their stories. Others use outlines. Someone once asked me if I used storyboards. Probably some writers out there use them. And some writers have the ending and write towards that. Then there are those writers who write with no map whatsoever, starting with an image or a character and nothing else. Sure it takes longer to get where they’re going, but they get there all the same. That’s just it–if you’ve got it in you to finish, it hardly matters the method of travel.
I’m the fly blind sort of writer. My first novel started with an image from a writing exercise. Write about marbles the scrap of paper said. Well, writing about a game of marbles seemed predictable and, since I know nothing about the game, difficult. But as I thought about marbles, I thought about how they sound when they hit wooden stairs. Then I wondered why someone would dump marbles down a staircase. And so came a story–for better or for worse.
I read on a blog somewhere (and forgive me blogging gods for not remembering where–too much surfing addles the brain) someone suggesting that this unplanned way of getting the words down wasted a lot of time. Maybe. If it doesn’t work for you, it certainly does. But the only way I know to get to the end is to wander aimlessly around around something in the distance catches my eye–so, that’s where I’m going! And I get to see so much along the way.
Maybe these writing styles can be predicted by learning styles. I’ve tried notecards and outlines, feeling that I’m being efficient and productive and sensible. Professional. Soon though, I’m in a muddle, annoyed, lost, and frustrated, index cards missing or scattered on the floor or outline a mess with doodles crowding in from the margins. It reminds me of school. A while back I heard a mathematician talk in wonder about people who use these confusing and complicated methods of figuring out a math problem. She was baffled by these people. I had to laugh as she described one of these weird methods. How do I figure out 35% of anything? Well, let’s see. I know what 10% is. I multiply that by 3. Then I divide the 10% in half to get the 5% and I add it to the other total. Ta-da! 35%. Math teachers did not appreciate this. And if something was 33%? This is trickier. I compare 35 and 30 and figure it is somewhere in between. Close enough.
Now, math is not the way to write a novel, but I can no more manage an outline than I can follow a formula. I can feel the gears in my brain stopping spinning. I can sense this gap in my brain–question on one side. Answer on the other. The practical bridge between them–washed out.
As a teacher I can’t follow a lesson plan either. I walk into class with one, and before the first hour is done, I’ve forgotten all about it. But my students learn, so we do get to where we’re going.
To change metaphors again because my brain is hoping around wildly tonight–I can see, once I step back, that my novels are very strange houses. The foundation is there and the frame, but rooms are askew and walls tilting and perhaps beams are held together with strings of lights, the wiring being finicky and the plumbing loud. Perhaps there are holes in the roof where the sun shines through over here and the rain leaves puddles over there. Some of the windows close and some do not. The many staircases creak and don’t always go where you’d think. Sometimes it’s enchanting and sometimes you just think–they really ought to get someone who knows what they’re doing in here.
But I can’t read the instructions if they don’t come with pictures. Can you?
no surprise here
Apparently I am 77% addicted to blogging. A year ago this would have been ludicrous.
