Did you hear that?

It was the sound of a darling, dying.

Hey look, Kill Your Darlings is now the name of an upcoming 2013 movie release...

10 Weeks, 10 Stories

So, I'm not sure if it will be valuable to you for me to do my usual "Cliffs Notes" style posts based on the Ten Weeks, Ten Stories class I'm currently taking at Grub Street. The class format has assignments every week followed by discussion of all twelve students' stories every week, which means that the vast majority of the discussion in each class will be assignment-specific rather than broadly theoretical. I'll make sure to bring you any fungibly useful tidbits, but whole posts may not be warranted or practical...

Here are some small thoughts from last week's class: STORY is just the things that happen, whereas PLOT is the arrangement of story events for maximum dramatic potential. STORY would be: The king died, then the queen died. PLOT would be: The queen died of a broken heart. PLOT causes the reader to ask why?

I'm still pondering how to interweave this definition in along with the other ideas we've discussed about how character is plot and conflict is plot... thoughts?

If that's not enough to get you thinking, allow me to share our first two writing assignments:

1. Write a 55-word story, in which the first sentence is 10 words long, the second sentence is 9 words long, and so on until the last sentence is only 1 word long.


2. Write a complete story in a single sentence: the sentence must be at least 300 words long, and you may only use one semi-colon.

Enjoy!

As a final note, I'd like to say that I'm thrilled to have some of my Monsters & Mayhem classmates in this class as well. Hi, Steve! Hi, Boris!

Hot Stuff

Image found here: Sex in the American College

Disclaimer: if you don't want to read about the craft of writing erotic scenes, come back next week. These posts will not themselves be pornographic.

This is the second post inspired by my Wednesday night Grub Street class, "Go Deeper, Baby: Writing Meaningful Erotica" with instructor Sue Williams. Please note that I really plan to respond to yesterday's comments IN the comments thread, but my computer yesterday wouldn't let me. Le sigh.

So! Yesterday you got some quotes from the experts, today let's talk specifically about craft.

Sue says that you need three elements for a scene to be especially resonant: feeling (emotions), thought (intellect), and sensation (the five physical senses). If the reader learns what a character is thinking, feeling, and sensing in a given situation, well then, the reader is right there with the character, and that's what good writing is all about, isn't it? This should of course also apply to writing about erotic encounters: if you shy away from the "good stuff," if stay on the surface because it's hard to write about or because it's embarrassing, then neither you nor the reader will really connect with the characters (no matter what they're doing). Get in there. Bring out the feelings, thoughts, and sensations of the moment. And maybe you don't have to use all five senses in the scene, but I think you should at least consider all five. (People don't write about smell often enough.)

Consider your meter and line-length. (Line length, you horndogs.) A longer sentence can build momentum and longing. Short sentences can reflect faster action. How are your characters breathing in a given scene? Could they say the lines you've written, in that moment? Is she holding her breath with anticipation, thereby able to let a long line play out smoothly? Is he hyperventilating, only able to let out short phrases?

Don't be afraid to be direct in your language. There's nothing worse than a bad euphemism. (Well, unless you're trying to be funny. Sex can be funny, just make sure you're only writing it that way on purpose.) Also, don't feel any obligation to be graphic. If you write your scene well, and then write, She reached for him, well, we all are going to know which part of him she reached for, aren't we?

The last craft suggestion is one I'm going to quote directly from Sue because she says it so much better than I ever could: "An orgasm can be hard to show-not-tell because it's a charged, internalized experience, which is not easy to communicate. One helpful technique can be to show the sensation through other objects. Put the power of the climax onto the way a desk bumps against a wall, the way floorboards squeak or the way fingers clutch at blankets... this communicates the inner pleasure more powerfully."

Finally, here are the writing prompts I promised yesterday. My favorite part about these? They don't have to be remotely sexual if you don't want them to be. They're just particularly interesting if there is a sexual component.

1. Write a scene/story in which one of your characters tries something s/he's never experienced but always secretly longed to do.


2. Write a scene/story in which one of your characters decides to break social rules for the sake of a powerful experience or encounter.

As Sue would say in her lovely British accent... have a go.

And once again, please enter my contest and spread the word! The winner gets my amazing fudge recipe AND a lovely SIGNED chapbook of flash fiction and essays on writing, and you get extra entries in the competition if someone comes by and says you sent them...

Let's [Write] About Sex

Art by Deanna Staffo, found at the Baltimore City Paper

Disclaimer: if you don't want to read about the craft of writing erotica, come back next week. These posts will not themselves be pornographic.

So, last night was my superbly awesome Grub Street class, "Go Deeper, Baby: Writing Meaningful Erotica" with instructor Sue Williams. I'm going to make this a 2-part post, so that I can just share some lovely quotes from the experts today, and we can chat more tomorrow.

From Sue Williams:

"Erotica is art and/or literature that arouses, or seeks to arouse, the reader."

"The more loved and understood our characters are, the more they encourage self-acceptance and reflection in our readers. And that's meaningful, baby."

"Meaningful sex does not have to be clean and pure."

"Desire is often more arousing than sex itself."

From Susie Bright:

You don't have to be doing it to write about it: "Consider how many overweight, chain-smoking, clumsy reporters cover sports with complete devotion. No one asks them if they are great athletes, or if they have even the smallest interest in physical fitness."

From Steve Almond's

How to Write a Sex Scene, the 12-Step Program:

"Real sex is compelling to read about because the participants are so utterly vulnerable. We are all, when the time comes to get naked, terribly excited and frightened and hopeful and doubtful, usually at the same time. You mustn't abandon your lovers in their time of need. You mustn't make of them naked playthings with rubbery parts. You must love them, wholly and without shame, as they go about their human business."

And a poem from Susie Bright's How to Write a Dirty Story:

There is no such thing as a person without an erotic story.
I don’t mean a tall tale, or a punch line, or a story about the one who got away.
I’m talking about our personal erotic history, what you might call our “sexual philosophy.”
Take a look at your own erotic story,
and you’ll see that it’s a motion picture of everything about you that is creative;
the risks you’d be willing to take,
the weightless depth of your imagination,
your attraction to the truth,
and the things that would make you go blind.

Anything you disagree with? Anything you care to add? Come back tomorrow for some more thoughts on crafting erotica, and two lovely writing prompts.

And please don't forget to enter my contest. The winner gets my amazing fudge recipe AND a lovely SIGNED chapbook of flash fiction and essays on writing by Steve Almond -- yes, the very one quoted above. You know you want it.

What happens in Steve Almond's class...

The man. The legend.

... stays in Steve Almond's class. (Unless I tell you about it.)

Last night's Grub Street class was Crank the Tunes, Crank the Prose: Music as the Path to Literary Improvement.

Have you ever wondered whether listening to music can improve your prose? It can. Certified Music Geek will explain how, using actual songs, by actual musicians, as his text. There will be a writing exercise, though it will not involve Steve doing his famous "Freebird" air guitar solo. (Unless the class begs).

There was music. (Not Freebird. Hey, does anyone else think instantly of The Devil's Rejects when they think of Freebird? No? Just me? Wait, you in the back, I saw you raise your hand. Genius movie ending, right? F---in' A.) And there was writing. And it was good.

Steve argued that music has the power to expand your empathetic imagination because music consistently seeks to evoke emotion in listeners in a way that not all literature seeks to do with readers... although perhaps it should. Musicians, he said, have permission to be overtly emotional, to honestly pursue feelings that are nearly unbearable. Writers do not always recognize that this same permission has been granted to them as well.

This does not mean cheap sentimental string-pulling. This means getting at the core truth of emotion. Truth lifts language into beauty and towards song. Not, Steve reminds us, the other way around. Crafting lyrical prose, in and of itself, does not bring you to truth. But if you can let music help guide you to a true and powerful emotion, then you can use that as the basis upon which you can craft something true of your own.

In some ways there was not much else that I can take from the class to pass on to you, because it's all about the music that moves you, personally. Or, about the specific ways in which the music moves you; we can listen to the same song and experience different emotions, retrieve different memories. So, Steve asked us to each think of a song that was specifically evocative to us, for whatever reason. We then wrote... not about the song itself, exactly, but about the song's place in our lives, about how it made us feel and why.

Not all writing need be cathartic... but sometimes it doesn't hurt.

Tell us in the comments which song you would pick. And, what kind of music do you usually listen to while writing, if any?

ETA: Check out the soundtrack to Steve's newest book. In particular, the song "Here Comes a Regular" by Dayna Kurtz. We did a freewriting exercise with that one playing in the background, and DAMN it's good.

How to Start Your Story

Last Monday, I took a Grub Street class called All The Right (Opening) Moves:

We all hear that the opening moves of a story or novel must grab the reader and capture her imagination. But how exactly does that happen? In this seminar, we will look closely at the first two pages of a range of short stories and discuss the strategies they use to immediately activate character and plot. You'll then have the chance to try these strategies out with the opening of one of your fiction projects.

According to instructor Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, there are SIX ways to start a piece of fiction:

1. The Plunge
2. The Wind-Up
3. Aerial View
4. The Rumination
5. The Hook
6. The Experiment

Jasmine explained some of these in movie terms, which I have to admit helped me really visualize and understand the options, so I'm going to pass that along to you.

The Plunge is the close-up view: boom, you're in the middle of the action, in the car with the hero, running down the street with the heroine.

The Wind-Up is the montage: the main event isn't happening yet, but we're getting critical and select pieces of information so that when the main event does happen, we'll be ready for the ride.

The Aerial View is, well, the aerial view. The panorama of the story's environment before we swoop down to street level.

The Rumination is the voice-over, giving you the main character's actual thoughts and ponderings.

The Hook is the incredibly high-voltage, dramatic, intense scene (followed by a screen that says "four hours earlier..." at which point the story backs up and begins at the beginning).

And The Experiment is just a way of saying that, if you're going to do something really weird and novel with your fiction, you should signal that to the reader up front. Like Memento starting out with footage of a Polaroid photo developing and being shaken in reverse: the whole movie is comprised of scenes patched together in reverse-chronological order, which could leave a viewer feeling confused, tricked, or blindsided if not handled properly. So, there's a funky device used right up front, letting the viewer know s/he should expect something extraordinary.

Note that these are styles you can use to start your story, they're not about content. It's easy to picture "the plunge" as starting at the moment of conflict but this need not be the case. You can zoom in close to the narrator before or after the moment of crisis as well. This is only about the method in which information is delivered.

And, of course, there are lots of ways to combine these elements. I think my first novel starts with a kind of plunge-rumination: you're right there, getting my main character's thoughts at the precise moment she realizes that she has a real problem on her hands. (But it's not an extended rumination, like, say, the first page of Lolita; we quickly move on from her thoughts, but stay close alongside her.)

WHICH STYLE DO YOU WRITE? Have you ever tried other methods for the same piece? I tried out the wind-up, the aerial, and the experiment for my in-class exercises, and I think my current short story is really going to benefit from "the experiment" method in particular.

Other students read variations of their openings out loud, and in some cases seemed clear which style worked better (and often the runner-up method seemed like it would work quite well later on in the piece, so it certainly wasn't wasted effort), but in other cases our opinions were mixed. But I think it's easy to forget that we have choices. Try out one you've never done before. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Oh, and just for fun, check out the 100 Best First Lines of Novels as chosen by the editors of American Book Review. I gotta say, #4 does nothing for me, but I think I'm in agreement with all the rest...

Monsters and Mayhem, Parts 5 & 6

Photo from National Geographic. No, really.

So we finally come to the end. Sorry it took me so long to write about the last classes in this series. To refresh your memory, I took a 6-week course called Monsters and Mayhem at Grub Street, taught most evenings by Sue Williams and KL Pereira. Week Six was really just a workshopping class, where we read excerpts of the works we had been writing in connection with the course, and gave each other feedback. (To my classmates: you guys are fabulous. Really.)

Week Five was taught solely by KL, and was about how context creates plot. (See also character is plot and plot is conflict.)

KL argued that, by placing one's characters in different environments, we can create conflict, expose desires, and thereby tap into plot. After all, if you understand your character, you will know how they will react to any situation or context. What would happen if you took your character and put her somewhere unexpectedly modern? Or historical? Or alien/foreign? Someplace more lonely or more populated?

She asked us to write a number of exercises, but I was most moved by these three:

1. Take a character you are working on and place them in a context in which one of their beliefs about themselves is irrevocably shaken or even shattered. How does your character react?
2. Imagine that your character suddenly loses the ability to speak due to something the encounter in their environment. What would happen? How would your character communicate? Write the piece without dialogue.
3. Take a character you've been working with an write a scene in which their surroundings make them feel with very young or very old.

What do you think? What are the environments you typically write? What would happen to your characters if you changed it up?

Love Your Characters

photo by Jenna

We started talking about it in yesterday's plot is conflict post. If plot is the mechanism by which your protagonist is forced up against her deepest fears and/or desires (tm Steve Almond), then we must know our characters deeply in order to understand what they fear and desire. To quote Grub Street instructor Sue Williams:

So love your characters, no matter how dark. Know what they care about. Put what they care about in peril. And you've got yourself a plot. The plot ends when you find a resolution (even if it's not a pleasant one).

To illustrate this point in class, we then read excerpts from Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs. (Remember, this is the Monsters & Mayhem class, so we're focusing on the dark underbelly of fiction.)

Hannibal Lecter is a perfect example of a beloved, yet monstrous, character. Harris must have loved Lecter, because we loved Lecter. And not just because he's a fun and charming love-to-hate-him kind of fellow. We REALLY root for him: to help Clarice solve the crime, to build that emotional connection with her, to get free... I was in a movie theater where the entire audience (including me) cheered because he was going to "have an old friend for dinner." Let's all admit it: that ain't right.

And yet it is. We don't love Lecter just because he's charming and has good taste in wine. We love him because he has qualities of real virtue: unlike the nasty little Dr. Chilton, he is not petty or hypocritical. (Indeed, in the excerpts we read in class, we see both these characters interacting with our heroine Clarice, and it is certainly not Chilton we want to have guiding her. Lecter is evil, but Chilton is a jerk.) And we can empathize with many of the things Lecter cares about... freedom, an intellectual challenge, and Clarice herself.

So take a minute. Get inside the head of some of your least lovable characters, and find something to admire, to envy, to respect. Find out where their heart lies, because they have one, even if it has been twisted by experience, or by fate.

What do your characters care about? What do your antagonists care about? What would happen if you tried to take those things away from them?

Monsters and Mayhem, Part 4 of 6

Hanya

What can I say, I'm in a devilish frame of mind right now. I'm reading Joe Hill's novel Horns, I'm writing about the devil (one version of her, anyway) for my Monsters & Mayhem class at Grub Street, and I'm re-listening to Mur Lafferty's Heaven series (note that Season Two is called "Hell"). Hanya protected me as I was growing up, and now her mask protects my daughter (and scares visitors), so I thought I'd start off this post with her image.

The fourth class in the M&M series was taught solely by Sue Williams and was subtitled, Plot is Conflict. If you liked my Character is plot post from last year -- and I know a lot of you did --you should have fun with this.

Plot is the mechanism by which your protagonist is forced up against her deepest fears and/or desires.

-- from Steve Almond's This Won't Take But A Minute, Honey

Those of you who've read (or listened to) Stephen King's On Writing know that he thinks that "plot" is slippery and untrustworthy, and that he prefers situational storylines. Sue, however, cleverly pointed out that all of the "what-if" situations presented in King's book are in fact CONFLICTS:

• What if vampires invaded a small New England town?
• What if a policeman in a remote Nevada town went berserk and started killing everyone? (Etc.)

It all loops back to the theory of plot-as-character, because if the reader doesn't care about the people in those small New England and remote Nevada towns, s/he's not going to care about all the exciting things that might happen there. But it's not character alone. Observe:

• What if there was a writer who went to a small New England town, hoping to face down his childhood fears?
• What if there was a boy who learned a lot about God and loss when his family got trapped in a remote Nevada town?

That's far less interesting, isn't it?

So. How do you find this conflict if, starting out, you only have your character? Read that short definition of plot again: Plot is the mechanism by which your protagonist is forced up against her deepest fears and/or desires. In order to really know your character's fears or desires, you have to know your character. More than that. You have to love your character.

From Sue's class handout:

You must love your characters, even if they are hell beasts. See things from their point of view, even if it's broken and dark. This way you will learn what they truly care about.

Tomorrow we'll talk more about loving your characters... especially the bad ones.

REACTIONS? Tell me your theories about plot, character, and conflict.

Monsters and Mayhem, Part 2 of 6

Nessie

Recap: for those who are new to the blog (welcome!), I am in the middle of a 6-week course at Grub Street ("a non-profit creative writing center dedicated to nurturing writers and connecting readers with the wealth of writing talent in the Boston area") called Monsters and Mayhem, taught by Sue Williams and KL Pereira. As a commenter once said, I basically do a Cliff's Notes version of all my Grub Street classes, and they've been a reasonably popular series of posts.

I hope the posts from this class will be applicable across multiple genres, but if you're really not into the speculative fiction genre, you can read the older posts in this series, or you can wait until the end of March, when I'll once again be taking some one-night-only seminars; specifically, I'll be taking "All The Right (Opening) Moves" and "Crank the Tunes, Crank the Prose: Music as the Path to Literary Improvement."

But back to the mayhem! Yesterday's class was all about monster psychology.

I urge you to take a few minutes to read Ramsey Shehadeh's short story Creature. After you've read it through once, take a look again at the second section (sections are separated by "* * *"), and look at how the author portrayed Creature's desires, insecurities, and motivations. Consider its wants and needs, its internal and external influences. Look at how much character development the author gives you in just that one paragraph following the section break.

Even if you're not a genre writer, let's think about this for a moment. How much do you know about your villain/monster/antagonist's backstory? How was s/he born or created? How was s/he raised, or not raised? (Tell me about your mother, we hear in a deep Freudian accent.)

Maybe try your hand at the following writing exercises:

• Describe your monster's birth or creation (in the case of my creature, hatching);
• Write a scene in which your monster/antagonist becomes frightening or repulsive even to him/herself;
• Write a scene in which your monster/antagonist fails to overcome his or her evil (or merely naughty) impulses... and does not regret it.

That short story I linked to? Includes all three such scenes. Yowza.

They say that the way to make vivid, well-rounded characters is to remember that every character is the hero of his or her own story. That includes monsters and villians. That includes characters who are self-loathing, or who wish they were more than they are... or less.

I hate to quote Ally McBeal (note to my foreign readers, I swear that show had nothing remotely to do with law as it is practiced in the United States), but there was one episode where a much-abused friend asks Ally, "Why are your problems so much bigger than anyone else's?" And in a rare moment of honesty, Ally replies, "Because they're mine."

No matter what genre you're writing, no matter what species your characters are, no matter how big or small their roles in your stories are... their problems are THEIRS. And that's what going to be important to them. They're probably not out to just be evil or get in your hero's way. They may want power, or love, or just to be left alone.

If those characters of yours get a lot of time on the page, you could do worse than to get inside their heads with them for a while, and see what got them started down those paths.

Monsters and Mayhem, Part 1 of 6

Neaopoleviathan

from Joe Alterio's Robots and Monsters gallery

So, I'm taking a 6-week course called Monsters and Mayhem at Grub Street, taught by Sue Williams and KL Pereira. (Sophie Powell will also teach in future weeks.) I'm taking the class because:

1. I love to read sci fi, fantasy, and horror, but I've never tried to write it. Why not?
2. I want to start writing more magical realism.
3. I think challenging myself to explore a new genre is a good thing.

So, what have I learned so far? Genre-jumping is hard. The first class assignment was to answer some in-depth questions about "your monster"... but I don't have a work-in-progress with a monster yet. The students around me immediately started writing about dragons and vampires and necromancers who trail ghosts behind them and a leviathan with a 6-chambered heart... and I was just sitting there thinking, dang I am out of my league.

But that's the point of pushing yourself, right? Finally an idea hit me from something my husband and I said years ago about the devil, and I came up with a "monster." I'm still more in the magical realism arena than in true speculative fiction territory, so I'm working with a real animal rather than a fantastical one, but this is still the first time that I've ever tried to get into the head of any character other than a contemporary human. And it's extremely cool. I might even have a short story idea building out of this.

Yesterday was all about character-building. Often writers get caught up in a good character idea and start writing before they've fleshed everything out, and then end up stuck, or worse, end up finishing a book without realizing that they've left out important things like where these characters get their money, how do they eat, and what happened to their families. Here are some questions to consider when creating your characters:

• Is your monster male/female/both/neither?
• What are its fears and desires? Is it good, or evil, or in-between?
• Was it born a monster or become one? If it became one, when? How old is it? Is it mortal or immortal? If immortal, does it age at all?
• What does it look like? How is it like/unlike a human? What powers does it have? How does its appearance change when it uses those powers or experiences emotion?
• Housing: it is a posh monster who decorates elaborately, or is it a hole-in-the-ground kind of guy?
• Does it have any particularly fond or terrible memories about its life before it was a monster, or about being a monster? Does it have parents, a spouse, children, or an unrequited love?
• When and where does it live now? Our world and time or another?
• Is it a solitary creature or does it crave company? Who does it like and/or trust? If if prefers groups, what is the hierarchy of that group, what are the rules, what are the consequences of disobeying?

Next week we'll be getting more into monster psychology. Can't wait.

DO YOU WRITE ABOUT MONSTERS? Tell us a little about them.

Your Title Here

A week or so, my author-friend Lisa asked me to talk about titles. I know a lot of people who struggle with the titles of their works, and since most of them don't want to pay someone else to title their novels, I agreed that it deserved a blog post.

Steve Almond said that you should try to pick a title that's uniquely yours... that so many short stories get names like "The Date" or "About My Father" and they're just miserably interchangeable and uninspiring. And Absolute Write agrees that "[t]itles need to come from within, rather than without." But sometimes we're too close to our own work to see the right answer: Amy Tan said that "[t]he words The Joy Luck Club had never struck me as unusual or remotely literary" because it was merely a social club her father had named. She had originally planned to title the book Wind and Water after the Chinese belief in feng shui and the balancing of the elements.* I leave you to draw your own conclusions about which title is more evocative.

Sure, writers are also told not to get too attached to their "working titles" because when it comes time for publication, titles fall somewhere between the content of the book and cover art as far as final authorial control goes... your opinion usually matters, but you're not the final decision-maker, and you don't get veto power. But we still have to work hard to find a good title to capture the attention of the agent/editor in the first place. And, one would assume that the better our own titles are, the more likely we are to get to keep them even after several rounds of editing.

So, how do you get your titles? The original working title of my novel was None the Wiser, and I picked the title very early on in the drafting process. My main character would have a birthday between Acts 2 and 3 ("another year older and...") and I liked the flat acceptance of it. Yeah, she would say, I'm older, but damned if I'm any smarter... except that of course she IS smarter and better at the end. Indeed, her awareness of her failings is part of that growth. Knowing she is not wise makes her wise... something like that.

My last round of beta readers raised the topic of title when I was long past thinking about it. It was depressing, they said. And it was untrue, because the main character is absolutely wiser, and while she might be self-deprecating about it, she certainly isn't blind to her emotional growth.

Hmmm. Good points.

Because Hemingway is referenced throughout the book, I went back to his collection of short stories and tried to find a title among his words. One beta reader liked "stronger at the broken places" but I felt that was too melodramatic. I liked "the end of something" but my readers again thought that was too depressing. "White elephants" would unfortunately make most people think of a sale before they thought of the short story or even the idiom. And after further thought, I wondered if I really wanted to reference a master in the title of the book and risk having myself unfavorably compared to him. Maybe not.

Since names are a big theme in the book (in particular, names as a reflection of identity), I next went online and read through every name-based expression I could find. Both English-language idioms and translated ones, paying particulae attention to anything Japanese in origin, since Japanese language and culture plays a large role in my character's life as well. In Name Only was, in my opinion, the best fit.** It indicates that there's something deeper than the name on the surface (whatever that name might be).

Who knows if it will make it to the shelves with that title, but at least I hope it's sending the right kind of signals about the book's content as I search for an agent.

WHAT ARE YOUR TITLES? What do you like/dislike about them? Are there any published books that you think have particularly good or bad titles? I have to tell you, it doesn't matter how critically acclaimed the book is, I have never been able to read page one of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. The title makes me die a little bit inside, every time I read it.

* Anecdote from Betsy Lerner's Forest for the Trees.

** The phrase What's in a name? is in my query letter but I felt it was wrong for a title. I didn't want a question as the title, it's too well-known, and there's that tricky referencing-a-better-writer-than-you problem again.

Curl up with a good (writing) book

I like to think that most of us are getting at least a few days off at the end of the year. (And if not, that probably means that you're working in a medical field or are a cop or soldier... THANK YOU!) So, what are we going to do with our time off? READ, of course!

Yesterday's Pimp My Novel Guest Post by Randy Susan Meyers was a great round-up of eighteen (yes, 18) books on writing. This post inspired me to pick up my copy of Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees which I bought months ago but never started, and it's exactly as awesome as Randy says it is. "Instant shrink for writers" indeed!

I would also add Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life to the list -- it's got great advice on networking and self-promotion, but also it's about self-motivation, self-encouragement, and how to write that second book. And third. And fourth. It's not a craft book; it's not about how to write, it's about how to be a writer.

I also need to finish Walter Mosley's This Year You Write Your Novel. "Let the lawn get shaggy and the paint peel from the walls..."

Is there a writing book you love that didn't make the PMN guest post list? Tell us about it! My to-read stack is only three feet high, I'm sure I can squeeze another book in there before it topples...

Themes? Interests? Symbolism?

Chicken? Egg?

Okay, we definitely were on a roll yesterday, and I'm going to try to keep it going. (Although I may very well fail, oh, god, the pressure, how am I gonna write something as comment-worthy as yesterday?)

Ahem.

So, according to your comments, it looks like we start our novels based on: the things that fascinate us, character and theme, putting a fresh spin on an old tale, theme, theme and story, situations, character, depends on the book, story, character and theme, more character and theme...

And when the writing is good, it all just builds on itself, doesn't it? It all seems so organic, because of course those actions would happen to that character based on that situation which underscores that theme... and it all just rolls together, and then on the page it's almost like seeing Athena, sprung forth fully-grown from Zeus's skull. Or, as Stephen King describes it, like uncovering the final pieces of the fossil and realizing that even the smallest bone from the beginning of your efforts really does fit into and support the whole, even if you couldn't see and understand the whole when you first got started.

So, where does that leave us, dear writers? If we start with something we love, something that drives us, whether it is a compelling situation or character or plot/story or thematic idea... can we go wrong, so long as we remember to bring the remaining elements to bear during the rewrite process?

Perhaps King was just warning us away from starting with theme as it overlaps with symbolism, rather than as it overlaps with character and story. One of the themes in my novel is the concept of identity... how do you know who you are and what you stand for? But another theme is that of naming... how are we represented and perceived based on the names and labels that others choose for us and that we choose for ourselves?

Identity might fall into the character-theme overlap. If I care about that moment where a person realizes who s/he is and who s/he wants to be,* then I will make certain character and story choices to bring out a tale that fascinates me (and hopefully, will fascinate readers).

Names, however, might fall more into the symbolism-theme overlap. If I start writing a book because I think names and their origins and meanings are ever-so-cool, and I definitely want to have the names of each of my characters mean something... well, that's kind of a non-starter, isn't it? Instead of being like the thin line between reality and fantasy in King's Bag of Bones, it's more like the use of blood in Carrie: something that "can serve as a focusing device for both you and your reader, helping to create a more unified and pleasing work" but not, ultimately, a basis for a novel, whether plot- or character-driven.

Where is the line between theme and symbolism? Are there symbols that you find especially moving? Are there any that are strong enough to carry a story, or are they just an element of the language craft?

Tell me more about what you write, and why it moves you.

* "...he had seen men come of age before and it always moved him. It was not a matter of their twenty-first birthday."

-- Hemingway, The short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

In which I finally disagree with Stephen King

He seems to be handling it well.

As I have likely mentioned before, I am a huge fan of Stephen King's On Writing. It's a fun read, it shares some fascinating personal history, and I think he's spot-on about the use of language, about how one should write first drafts "with the door closed," and about how art and writing support life, not the other way around.

Furthermore, I don't think you need to love his stuff or write like him to appreciate his insights. First of all, any time an author as successful as King talks about why writing is important to him, how he got started, and what his inspirations and motivations are, it's probably worth a read. Second, his recommendations are fungible across a wide variety of genres and styles -- I don't write horror, and I tend to underwrite rather than overwrite. If someone who struggled to get her novel over 60K words thinks she's getting good advice from a man who averages 2K words a day* and consistently puts out novels that are in the 300K-plus range, his suggestions are probably pretty darn universal.

But, as part of my November Big Think Project (which is increasingly replacing my NaNoWriMo efforts), I'm starting to realize that I must depart from King's advice about something very fundamental, at least as far as my own writing is concerned.

King says that writers should always start with story first, then progress to theme. That theme is something that can -- and should! -- be enhanced during the editing process, but that starting with these questions and thematic concerns is a recipe for bad fiction.

I disagree.

I'm not a plotter. Nor am I someone who starts with a nice, clear "what if?" story question like King does. I started my first novel with a character and a life-changing event. That's it.

Now, this indeed could have made for some very crappy fiction. There are plenty of life-changing events happening every day in the world (marriage, birth, death) that do not in any way support a 200+ page story arc. But, underlying this fictional life-changing event is what King himself would probably call one of my "deep interests." It's what got me started writing the story, it's what first breathed life into my main character, and it ended up being the basis of an entire book that, damn it all, I think is really good. That is because, for me, theme IS enough to power a novel:

I don't believe any novelist, even one who's written forty-plus books, has too many thematic concerns; I have many interests, but only a few that are deep enough to power novels. These deep interests (I won't quite call them obsessions) include how difficult it is - perhaps impossible! - to close Pandora's technobox once it's open (The Stand, The Tommyknockers, Firestarter); the question of why, if there is a god, such terrible things happen (The Stand, Desperation, The Green Mile); the thin line between reality and fantasy (The Dark Half, Bag of Bones, The Drawing of the Three); and most of all, the terrible attraction violence sometimes has for fundamentally good people (The Shining, The Dark Half).

-On Writing (emphasis mine)

Obviously, such novels also need a story/plot/action, because otherwise we're not really writing fiction at all, we're writing thinly-veiled diatribes. But at this moment in my not-yet-really-begun writing career, I need to start from theme, and let the story build from the things that fascinate me. Because otherwise, why would I care enough about the damn story to bother writing it in the first place? And if I don't care enough about the story (and its underlying themes) to put not merely my time but also my heart into drafting and editing, I can pretty much guarantee that no one else will care enough to want to read it, even if I do manage to craft some technically proficient language on the surface.

Right now, theme is my engine, but that doesn't mean that story and language need to be passively riding in the novel's back seat. Story and language are the novel-car's frame and body, the beautiful lines and shape that make you want to get in and go. But theme is what drives the car, what determines how far and how fast the story can go.

So, Mr. King, I'm sorry, but I disagree. I think that for some writers, thematic concerns can and should be front and center during the first draft of a novel. Because that's what I care about, and ultimately, that may be what makes my writing worth reading.

I hope this doesn't change things between us -- I love your novels, and your short stories, and I own every audiobook you've personally narrated, plus Ron McLarty's reading of Salem's Lot and Jeffrey DeMunn's reading of Dreamcatcher... did you know that Jeff and I were in a movie together? I'm so glad you and/or your associated casting agents keep hiring him for your movies -- The Mist, Green Mile, Storm of the Century -- because he is just a spectacular talent and all-around nice guy, and he deserves far more fame and fortune than he's ever going to get... but I digress.

In short, I'm still your #1,429,517 fan. Next time you're in town for a Red Sox game, come on over, and I'll buy you a coffee.

AUTHORS, BLOGGERS... WHAT DRIVES YOUR WRITING?

* That's right, he lives every day like it's NaNoWriMo.

Reminder: make NaNoWriMo work for YOU

This morning I see that some of the bloggers I follow are dropping out of NaNoWriMo... some are doing rewrites instead, and some are finding that the high word count obligation is reducing the fun of writing, and they're either quitting NaNoWriMo entirely or simply giving up on the 50K word count goal.

I'm here to say: THIS IS FINE. Rock on with your bad selves.

The goals of NaNoWriMo, to my mind, are as follows:

• Write fast enough that your inner editor can't catch you.

If writing too fast means that your quality drops to the point where NEW inner editors start popping up to block the path ahead, then it's no good! F*ck the 50K goal. Write at a speed that works for you. And, if you have a project that needs editing, then by all means avoid NaNoWriMo like the swine flu. Inner editors aren't always evil, they just need to learn their place and only show up when invited.

• Write more than usual. Lots more.

If writing too many words in a day just ends up burning you out, you're not going to end up writing more, are you? Slow down. If writing too many words in a day starts to feel like work, then you're going to start seeing it as a dreaded chore, and will end up writing less. Slow down. If writing too many words in a day takes away the fun in any way... well, then, seriously, what's the point? Slow down. It's cool, I promise.

• Write in a like-minded community.

You can enjoy the NaNoWriMo forums even if you never write a single word. When else will you have access to more than one hundred thousand writers who are willing to answer each other's questions? Someone on the forums taught me how to make paper. Several people on the forums answered my recent question about what it's like to get a first tattoo. Someone out there may very well have lived the exact experience you are trying to imagine for a character. Go ask 'em about it. It's a research resource that may be greater than Google, and it's available one month a year, and it doesn't require a word count of any size to get in.

• Put up or shut up.

It's all about getting your priorities in order. On the surface, joining NaNoWriMo means shutting off that rerun of The Simpsons and writing something of your own. But in a broader sense, it means no regrets. NaNo assumes that you will regret not trying to write a novel. But if anything about NaNoWriMo is making the writing process less effective or fun for you... well, then, that's going to give you a different set of priorities, isn't it? Maybe you DO need to watch that rerun, if it's the best chance for you to bond with your spouse/partner/kids. Maybe you need to rewrite something old instead of drafting something new. Maybe you need to write slower to fully enjoy the experience and get a "bad first draft" of a high enough quality that you will actually be interested in editing it later.

I burn out if I write much more than 1,000 words a day for an extended period of time. I would not have known that 1K was my upper limit if I hadn't TRIED for 2K/day during NaNoWriMo 2005... but guess what? Now I know. So I will never try to force myself to write more than 1,000 words in a day, even if it is November. If I've got genuine inspiration or a clear sense of story to carry me on, maybe I'll go for it, but I'm not going to push. And so, I joined NaNoWriMo this year knowing that I would not win. At least, not from a word count perspective.

But if I have a clear sense of what my next novel is about in December? Then I will have won the challenge that matters to me.

Don't get worked up about this. Do it your way.

Frank Sinatra, My Way (Royal Festival Hall 1971)

Big Think

Post subtitle: In which I turn into a squee-ing fangirl

I hereby give my undying thanks to Nathan Bransford for linking to the Big Think Interview with John Irving. Give it a listen; it's the most wonderful half hour ever.

Nathan linked to it because Irving expressed sympathy for young writers, but I'm linking to it because I think he says some amazing things about how he writes (and rewrites), about recurring themes in his work, and about his own literary inspirations. Also, because he's my favorite living author, and my admiration for him and his work is overwhelming... he just takes my breath away.

When was the last time you revisited the authors who make your heart skip? It has been way too long for me. I've been doing my how-to-get-published research and I love my copies of On Writing and Bird by Bird and I've been reading plenty of entertaining novels because (1) they're in my genre and I need to learn about what's happening in my area of publishing right now, or (2) a friend wrote it, or (3) it's a genre I don't write in, and I'm trying to expand my horizons...

But what about the novels that don't just entertain, but have actually moved me? The books that changed my life? When was the last time I reread those? It's so easy to get distracted.

John Irving moves me. And getting to hear him... scratch that. Getting to see him, talking directly to the camera as though it was a private writing class just for me, is making my heart flutter again.

He talks about how he writes the last line of his novels first, and then uses that as a kind of touchstone to help him guide the story towards its final destination. I write my last lines very early on in the process as well.

He talks about writing all his first drafts in longhand. I only write longhand intermittently, but in retrospect I'm starting to realize that many of my best scenes, the ones that hardly needed any editing at all, were written longhand in their first draft.

He talks about consciously taking the elements he admired from writers like Melville and trying to recreate certain aspects of that kind of storytelling in his own writing. Why the hell am I not doing exactly this with Irving's books?

I think I've been afraid. I think I haven't been daring enough. I think I was thinking too small. I am in awe of books with grand scope, and I have consciously thought "I could never do anything this good" after reading novels like Franzen's The Corrections, and Irving's The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules.

But I haven't even tried.

Don't get me wrong, I still I love my first novel. And in many other ways, it is quite ambitious. Another book that I love, Commencement, was described on the back cover as "hitting the sweet spot between Serious Literature and chick lit" and that is what I have been saying I want to do...

But I think maybe I've been spending too much time trying to make peace with the "chick lit" label (it's not all about shopping porn and desperately seeking Mr. Right!), and not enough time making sure that my writing shines a little more brightly on the Serious Literature side of things.

I didn't set out to write chick lit, it just -- apparently -- is. From a strictly industry perspective, that's the category for a first-person female narrative with a confidential tone. It just is. And so I'll embrace it for that novel (at least until I find an agent who "gets me" and can help me figure out if that's the right label going forward). But actively planning to write another "chick lit" novel because of all that stuff I've been reading about the importance of brand for new authors... I think that's a mistake for me. If it is, it is. But genre -- any genre -- isn't something I should be aiming for. I need to find my next story in another way, and I'll have to trust that my author's voice will be enough of a brand.

I've been very scared of writing my second book because I wasn't sure if I'd find material that means as much to me as the material in the first novel does. And I have something that I've been idly working on, and I'd hoped NaNoWriMo would jumpstart it into something bigger, just like the first book. But I don't think the extra keyboard/typing time is going to do it. I think I need more thinking time. More outlining and handwriting with my fountain pen and legal pad.

I'm intimidated as hell. But I've got my new John Irving in hardcover, and I'm getting the rest of his books out of the back shelves and onto my desk front-and-center. I'm going to raise my aspirations. I may fail, and I hope you'll all stick with me if it turns out that I am a "small writer" and this experiment ends up going horribly wrong.

I have to try.

Because I'm pretty sure that's why I started writing in the first place.

John Irving and Kurt Vonnegut.

*brain explodes*

ETA: additional John Irving amazingness here.

Writing in the absence of inspiration

In my opinion, one of the most valuable lessons taught by NaNoWriMo is how to write even when you're not inspired or in the mood to write. It's so romantic to think of writing as the result of a spectacular burst of creativity, and it all just flows magically from that seminal idea... but hey, sometimes there are deadlines. Sometimes, it's November. How do you write without the magical, genius, inspiring, motivating idea?

Maybe you take a long walk, and let yourself get bored to clear your brain, and let a new idea come to you. Maybe you take a nap or listen to music that makes you jump around and then start fresh afterwards. Maybe you reread earlier parts of your work-in-progress, looking for a nugget of information that can -- indeed, should! -- be expanded. Maybe you read another book to consider how other authors dealt with similarly thorny plot dilemmas...

Or maybe you Just. Keep. Writing. Sometimes the risk is too high that, if we walk away to "refresh" ourselves, we may never come back. And in November, any writing you do to help move your story forwards does count towards your final word count goal. Go ahead, do a little free association! Maybe indulge in some character development, writing short scenes that you know will never make it into the final draft, but that nevertheless help inform your own sense of the characters, and perhaps help you see the next (plot) encounter these characters will have. Write that backstory or give the character a crazy dream sequence. It all counts towards your 50K, and it gets you into the habit of working through the tough moments.

And don't forget the NaNoWriMo forums! Don't know what your character would do next? Get online and ASK someone! Join a word war, find a writing prompt, let someone else name that character you're currently calling "Bad Guy #2." Or just go moan to a crowd of sympathetic ears who will all encourage you to get back in the saddle. Writing need not be such a lonely endeavor, at least not next month...

Obviously, sometimes a break from writing really is called for, but I think that beginning writers often take too many such breaks, waiting for that romantic AHA! moment where the plot is suddenly laid out before us like a freshly paved highway. Sometimes, you just have to keep plugging away. As Stephen King says, you have to build good habits so that your muse knows when and where to find you when the time is right.

And in November, it's all good. Every dumb word you write gets you one word closer to your NaNo novel. And your odds of writing one good page in the midst of several bad pages are infinitely higher than your odds of finding a good page on your desk when you didn't write at all that day, because you were stuck, or had writer's block, or weren't feeling it.

When inspiration hits, by all means grab it and milk it for all it's worth! I have twice started my NaNo early because I think the spirit of NaNo is to write more, and I wasn't going to let a great idea get away because of a fun-but-artificial start date.

But if inspiration doesn't hit? Keep writing anyway. You will never know what you are capable of creating if you don't keep going over those rough spots.

Gearing Up For NaNo: Fortification

Main Entry: for·ti·fy
Pronunciation: \ˈfȯr-tə-ˌfī\
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): for·ti·fied; for·ti·fy·ing
Etymology: Middle English fortifien, from Anglo-French fortifier, from Late Latin fortificare, from Latin fortis strong
Date: 15th century

transitive verb : to make strong: as a : to strengthen and secure (as a town) by forts or batteries b : to give physical strength, courage, or endurance to c : to add mental or moral strength to : encourage d : to add material to for strengthening or enriching

Hunker down, everyone, NaNo is coming.

Yesterday I went to my very first local NaNoWriMo event. I have been a part of NaNo since 2005, but I've never gone to a Boston event because the scheduling was never compatible... I just don't do weekend events as a general rule, because that's family time. (Even before I had my daughter, my husband used to travel a lot, and the weekends were often the only real quality time we had together.) But this weekend the event perfectly coincided with Serious Girl's naptime, and my husband held down the fort -- see how I'm keeping the theme going here? -- while I went to meet the other crazy writers.

Boston Wrimos who attended the first meeting each got a goody bag in exchange for providing a writing prompt on an index card (to be used at the various write-ins* during November as extra inspiration) and standing up and giving a 30-second elevator speech** describing what our NaNo novels are going to be about.

An aside: these speeches were so awesome, I cannot tell you. Even the people who came up and said "I have absolutely no idea yet" managed to be funny about it. How is it possible for so many people to be so creative in such different ways? I love writers. But I digress...

So, the goody bag was filled with many things designed to fortify us Wrimos as we strive to meet our goal:

• A pen and index cards, for when ideas catch us unaware;
• A NaNoWriMo progress chart;
• Candy (in my case, two Tootsie Rolls);
• A writing prompt;
• A word prompt;
• An inspirational writing quote (in my case: I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. -- James Michener);
• A "NaNo buddy" -- one of those little capsules that grows into a sponge animal when you drop it in water;
• Three NaNo-themed stickers for adorning laptops, desktops, or supportive family members/pets; and
• An envelope marked "Break Seal Only In Case of Emergency"... contents unknown, but someone at the meeting said it saved her in 2006.

This is so thoughtful and clever and supportive, and I am so happy that the NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaisons for my area did this. Now, I already carry a pen and small notebook around with me at all times, and I have an Excel spreadsheet program that I use as my NaNo progress chart... but what else does a writer need*** to write, especially when on deadline?

When I was preparing for the bar exams (NY and MA), I ate a steady diet of Pep-O-Mint LifeSavers -- the large, individually-wrapped kind -- and I unwrapped entire bags of these candies so that I could eat them during the exam itself without making rude crinkling noises (we were allowed to bring food so long as it was not noisy or messy). I haven't needed that level of sugar fortification in a while, but I imagine that the massive supplies of hot cocoa mix in my pantry are going to come in handy in November...

I also recommend that Wrimos have the following books handy during the month of November:

• A novel you love, preferably in the genre you're writing. Not something so amazing that it depresses you because you'll never be that good. Something aspirational-yet-achievable. That's why you're writing, right there. To make your readers feel the way this book made you feel.

• A novel that sucks, preferably in the genre you're writing. You can do better than this! Hell, you are doing better than this! And this joker got published! Ha! Keep writing, you'll beat the pants off this book.

What do you need to write, especially for extended periods of time? Caffeine? Sugar? The heat or air conditioning turned extra-high or -low? A little mascot under your computer screen? A video to distract the kids? Tell us your secrets of success!

_____________________________

* Write-in = a meeting in which people get together and try to do nothing but write (ah, peer pressure...)

** Elevator speech = the super-short description every writer should have prepared in the event that s/he someday ends up in an elevator with his or her dream agent, and the agent says, "okay, tell me about your novel before I have to get out at my floor" (DING!)

*** Fine, we don't need anything besides a pen & paper or a computer, but there have to be a bunch of supplies that make writing easier for each of us, right?