Unravelling the Yarn

So my stale manuscript (see Knit One, Purl Two…Rip it Apart) has been out of the drawer and warming in the light of day for several weeks now, and I’ve found myself with more energy and enthusiasm for a project than I’ve felt for a good while.  There’s some pretty good writing in this thing, woohoo!  Okay, and I’ve also found a few more darlings and dispatched them heartlessly.

My first real steps in the process were to read the old synopsis and the chapter outline of the novel, making a few notes on areas that seemed to be more sideways motion than forward action.  I then dug into my “manifesto,” a somewhat random compilation of notes and ideas and sketches one of my former grad program mentors, Melissa Pritchard, had encouraged me to write to serve as a holding area of thoughts and debates on the project.  That was well before the days of Scrivener, of course, but that's another post or two.  Over the years, I’ve added to my manifesto by entering new elements, bullet point fashion, at the top of the first page rather than at the end, so my latest ideas and critiques and notes are the first thing I see. 

My goal with the reading of the synopsis and outline was to see how the project fit, structurally, within the guidelines of Larry Brooks’s excellent book Story Engineering, since the majority of the feedback on why the novel didn’t work had to do with a lack of consistent forward direction and increasing overall tension.  It turned out that, in an overall sense, I had my plot points and pinch points in about the right spots, so it seemed I needed to dig deeper to see why the novel still wasn't working.  And, after a few productive sessions of staring off into space and simply trying to BE in the story, I discovered some new, tighter, more dramatic plot elements and characterization that still maintained much of the existing action.  Perfect!

Tilt.

The Significantly Insignificant

A few posts back, I mentioned my reentry into Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, the opening volume of his modernist milestone, In Search of Lost Time.  It had been probably been six or seven years since my last read.  At any rate, I had suggested that, as soon as I finished reading it "in a few weeks," I'd write about setting and description--one of Proust's strengths--and how his writing is a superb example of how great detail can bring fiction to life.  The bad news is that I've not come close to finishing Swann's Way yet.  The good news is also that I've not finished Swann's Way yet, so I'm still savoring Proust's incredible subtlety and penetration in revealing to us not only the details of our surroundings in a way that makes us feel and smell and hear with a freshness that's new, yet comforting in its familiarity, but also in how he peels back the frailest of layers of the depths of what makes us human.  His writing brings the same deep warmth as the tiniest sip, rolled on the tongue, of a wonderful single malt, or a fresh cigar smoked in perfect surroundings, or--name your own sensual delight.

So, as I smile and close the book (figuratively, since it's on the Kindle app on my iPad) and lean back and dream and envy the way Proust has opened the world of ourselves to us, I recall another book I've been savoring these days, James Wood's How Fiction Works.  Wood makes his delightful and enlightening way through the craft elements of fiction and plumbs them with a subtlety and insight beyond most such books I've read.  Starting with POV and his rendering of "free indirect" style, through character, which he boldly notes as the single most difficult task in the craft of fiction, to setting and description (and much more.)  He pegs the deeper use of setting and description--what he terms a "commitment to noticing" or "thisness"--to Flaubert, as most do, and he then goes on to quote the sublime (Chekov and Mann and Bellow) and the flabby (sorry, John Updike in one of his later works!)  And, full circle, back to Proust, Wood says that "Literature makes of us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life."

Painting and Planning and Pantsing and Pacing, Oh My!

I'm not a painter, although I almost played one on stage when I sang an opera role where I was in a few scenes with Cavaradossi working at his easel, the painter who turned revolutionary and was in love with the beautiful Tosca in Puccini's extravagant opera.  That's probably the closest I've come to the execution of the visual arts other than fiddling with some watercolors and creating the dingiest shade of brown ever seen.

So, when I just finished reading Sena Jeter Naslund's latest novel, Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman, Mike's latest post about pacing in fiction came to mind as I thought about Sena's novel and what I'd taken from it.  The novel is a delightful quodlibet with the "Fountain" portion following the contemporary writer, a woman--a precisely detailed clone of Sena herself, right down to the details of her neighborhood and even her house--who has just finished a solid first draft of her latest novel about another woman, a well known painter who lived through the French Revolution.  And yes, they're both old and looking back on their lives, so the "Old Woman" segments are the actual draft of the novel about the painter.  Interesting conceit reflecting the interrelatedness of all the arts, another of Sena's favorites.  Of course, Sena extends the intertextuality theme and riffs off the Joyce homage and frequently improvs off one of her favorites, Virginia Woolf, with the opening line giving notice by immediately bowing to Mrs. Dalloway.

At any rate, Sena has done her research and a major theme of the work is the way artists--in the broad sense of that word--see the world and practice their art and craft.  A fascinating juxtaposition of the visual and the verbal, and their similarities of approach, even when we use different techniques and unique words to describe the concepts.

Knit One, Purl Two

Okay, so there's this manuscript lying in the drawer, after several years maturing or moldering in the darkness, waiting, just waiting for the tug on the handle that exposes it once more to the harsh light of day.  A manuscript that found its way into hibernation after a few major agents said it came oh, so close; a boutique literary publishing house had four folks give it a read before passing; and a well-known figure in the editing world read the entire piece (as a favor, not for a fee) and called the novel "bold and accomplished, absolutely publishable." Readers enjoyed the retelling of a little known Civil War character's experiences, found the settings and the territory in the heartland of Kentucky and Tennessee evocative, the voice and message powerful, and they loved to hate the antagonists.  

So what had gone wrong?

Flying Island's First Publication!

Today marks the first publication in our reborn online journal with a group of poems by Tracy Mishkin!  Check it out at the link on the left, and sharpen your pens and submit!

On the Thirteenth Day of Chrischannukwanzamastivus

In celebration of the holidays, here's a list of my twelve favorite books on writing.

But wait, if you read this RIGHT NOW, I'll include a thirteenth book at no extra cost!! (Just pay separate reading time and brain processing.)  The list is in no specific order and reflects my favorites as of today.  At this very instant.

1. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, by Janet Burroway.  Probably the most widely used textbook for creative writing courses, it is wonderfully detailed and a great foundation for any writer and an ongoing reference for those writing their tenth novel.  It's expensive but you can find used versions of earlier editions for a fraction of the cost and they're just as helpful as the latest edition.

2. The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, by Noah Lukeman.  Lukeman is a brash young New York literary agent and his book tells it like it is: agents (and editors of journals) develop an early warning system that allows them to not waste time on submissions they recognize as failures in the first five pages.  He shares all, so read it and do your tough revisions and get good critiquing on you mss before you submit.

3. Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, by K. M. Weiland.  Yep, that old conundrum, to plan your novel or go seat of the pants.  Can you guess which one Weiland recommends?  The more I write, the more I recognize the value of conscientious planning for longer works.

Eye Dialect and Cliches and Rejections, Oh My!

Wanna betcha eye dialect is purty much gonna be a dead giveaway of amateur or lazy writin' these days?

Sure, I can hear all the protesting that "we all talk that way," and all those favorite bestsellers where rich and famous authors use apostrophes and "gonna" and "gotta" from time to time and still make millions.  How can THEY get away with it?  And shouldn't we emulate success?

Well, it's like that old TV add for some financial firm--those writers did it the old fashioned way: they've earned the right to be a bit lazy.  Yes, LAZY.

Most of those bestsellers are so fabulously plotted they carry the reader along, flipping pages as fast as they can, paying as little attention as possible to such mundane details.  And that bestselling author has another deadline looming for their next six or seven figure advance, so they can't take the time to dig deeper and avoid a little cliche now and then, right?  Boy, don't we all wish we were there!

But, for those of us nudging our way toward publishing a novel, or even a story or two, the bottom line is that eye dialect is one of those "three strikes and you're out" elements that agents and editors talk about when they read the first few pages--if that much--of your submission.  So why is that, and how can we avoid falling into the trap of all too easy eye dialect?  And how, then, can we really characterize our creations with their speech patterns if we can't use it?