Just when you think you're being insulted, it turns out you're being enlightened.
So I'm working on the book proposal. My friend Susannah recently read a rough draft of the overview. She said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Look, it's a mess, but you're just rusty. It's like you were a horse that was cooped up in his stall all winter, and then he gets let out in the paddock, and he's bucking and farting and bucking and farting, you know?" And after I had finished reeling, and staggering, and after I'd said, "Wow, I've heard rough drafts compared to vomit, and excrement, and saliva, but never a horse fart," she explained, "Hey, it's not a criticism. No one stands there watching that horse thinking he's stupid because he's bucking and farting. He just has to get that out of his system."
So, I think I'm going to embrace the farting horse analogy, actually. There's something joyful and mad about a farting horse. If you've never experienced it, I can't explain it. I'm not going to say it's sublime or anything, but it makes you smile. And bucking, farting horses are certainly not concerned with how their moves are going over in the press.
So I'm working on the book proposal. My friend Susannah recently read a rough draft of the overview. She said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Look, it's a mess, but you're just rusty. It's like you were a horse that was cooped up in his stall all winter, and then he gets let out in the paddock, and he's bucking and farting and bucking and farting, you know?" And after I had finished reeling, and staggering, and after I'd said, "Wow, I've heard rough drafts compared to vomit, and excrement, and saliva, but never a horse fart," she explained, "Hey, it's not a criticism. No one stands there watching that horse thinking he's stupid because he's bucking and farting. He just has to get that out of his system."
So, I think I'm going to embrace the farting horse analogy, actually. There's something joyful and mad about a farting horse. If you've never experienced it, I can't explain it. I'm not going to say it's sublime or anything, but it makes you smile. And bucking, farting horses are certainly not concerned with how their moves are going over in the press.
Labels: writing
I guess it may turn out to be that I am the last person in the universe to conclude that I am incapable of writing books for children.
My two closest friends, both successful writers, have expressed deep concern over the state of this manuscript. One has said, repeatedly, "It is the worst thing you have ever written." The other said that you need to be 50 years old to read it. In other words, not accessible to the 8-12 year old market for which I am aiming.
My two closest family members loved it. Beyond measure. Well, bully for me. I managed to convince my husband and one parent. I must be a freakin' genius. Kristen likes it. That makes one person who's not related to me. One.
The thing is, I do not believe the negative criticism. At all. I think it is a great book. It may not be finished, but it is great. More importantly, it is what I want. I want to write this book, perfect this book, publish this book, and read this book in public. None of my other projects, more sophisticated and literary in nature, make me feel pride. They all seem like, well, okay, I wrote this knobby thing. It may divert you.
I have concluded that the book needs something major, something sweeping, something to change the entire thing. Something holistic. Something never seen before under the sun. When it has that, the diction won't matter.
For now, I am going to keep working through it, revising and embellishing it. It's like decorating a lamp with buttons and beads. If you really love the lamp and every bead makes you love it more. Liking the work this much, how can I be completely wrong about it?
In the process of doing this, I will have a big idea that will change the whole book. I have them for other people. Why shouldn't I have one for me?
Labels: writing
It's hard to write about death. I didn't realize how hard it was until I tried to really do it myself. There was a professor at my college who did it well: Richard Messer. When I had him as a writing teacher, I was 19 and 20, and writing saucy, trouble-making things. He responded positively to something about my writing, which gave me confidence to keep doing it. Here is an excerpt from his book Murder in the Family.
*****
I kept her old leather coat--but she had that brand new beautiful yellow one,
why was she wearing this, her father's castoff, shabby and too big? I put it
on and feel the hairs on my neck rise. Something has fallen out of the
sleeve and under the table, then under the bed, as if it were alive. Down on
my knees, I feel into the darkness under the box springs. The soft whorls of
lint dust. It is at this moment I know again that someone else is in the
room. At the table by the window in the other room. Someone who sits writing
down everything I do with a black pen on white paper. And if the leaden pen
stops its slow-motion scrawl, the wall of language will dissolve, and there
will be nothing between me and the writer, between the writer and the
terror.
Together we watch a name appear on the white surface: Bruno.
The one on his knees rears up as though struck. And so he has been
struck--by the thought of his children dying. Where are they? They have to go to
school, tell curious playmates what has happened. They don't want to stay home.
He explains this to himself and it is to Bruno he speaks, the one who sits
like a bear, the one who records, the one who listens. All week he has only
been going through the motions; he knows it now. People around
him try to act as though nothing has happened; so does he. But Bruno knows
better. From the moment he recoiled in the hospital morgue after seeing her
body, he has been split in two. The part of his life he lived through her
began to recede into the past, calling out to the rest of him like someone
buried alive. That it will always be this way is what he fears most. That he
will never feel wholly involved, wholly there in the world again. That,
diminished, preoccupied, he will drift on in the prison of an unreal
present-past, always reaching back inside himself, trying to save her.
*****
At the time I knew him, I thought, wow, what a dark, kind of melancholy person, what a grey and haunted person. He was kind of scary and cool. Now that I'm older and I'm trying, myself, to write about death, I respect the writing he was doing. Death is really physical and low, and the awfulness is grinding and slow. The part right after the death is so breathless, how mundane, but your legs keep moving forward. I am not entirely sure what made me dig out this book and look at his work, but I'm glad I did.
Another one of his line that I have never forgotten is about how he wondered if he had spent his life trying to wake up, or trying to go to sleep. And in another, he says the dawn came through the window searching for survivors. Pretty amazing stuff, and it sticks with me after lo these long fifteen years.
*****
I kept her old leather coat--but she had that brand new beautiful yellow one,
why was she wearing this, her father's castoff, shabby and too big? I put it
on and feel the hairs on my neck rise. Something has fallen out of the
sleeve and under the table, then under the bed, as if it were alive. Down on
my knees, I feel into the darkness under the box springs. The soft whorls of
lint dust. It is at this moment I know again that someone else is in the
room. At the table by the window in the other room. Someone who sits writing
down everything I do with a black pen on white paper. And if the leaden pen
stops its slow-motion scrawl, the wall of language will dissolve, and there
will be nothing between me and the writer, between the writer and the
terror.
Together we watch a name appear on the white surface: Bruno.
The one on his knees rears up as though struck. And so he has been
struck--by the thought of his children dying. Where are they? They have to go to
school, tell curious playmates what has happened. They don't want to stay home.
He explains this to himself and it is to Bruno he speaks, the one who sits
like a bear, the one who records, the one who listens. All week he has only
been going through the motions; he knows it now. People around
him try to act as though nothing has happened; so does he. But Bruno knows
better. From the moment he recoiled in the hospital morgue after seeing her
body, he has been split in two. The part of his life he lived through her
began to recede into the past, calling out to the rest of him like someone
buried alive. That it will always be this way is what he fears most. That he
will never feel wholly involved, wholly there in the world again. That,
diminished, preoccupied, he will drift on in the prison of an unreal
present-past, always reaching back inside himself, trying to save her.
*****
Another one of his line that I have never forgotten is about how he wondered if he had spent his life trying to wake up, or trying to go to sleep. And in another, he says the dawn came through the window searching for survivors. Pretty amazing stuff, and it sticks with me after lo these long fifteen years.
Labels: death, richard messer, writing
Nanowrimo Day 19: The Sentence that Could Not Be Written
1 CommentsBy Lostcheerio on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 7:56 PM.
Yesterday I did it.
Maybe it was Marta's comment that pushed me over the block. She said, and I paraphrase, that if there seems to be a chapter that cannot be written, then maybe there is really just a sentence that cannot be written, and if I could identify that sentence that could not be written, then I could get over myself and just write it. After all, *identifying* the sentence is practically writing it. I would have to write it in my head in order to identify it.
So I thought of the sentence that could not be written, and by thinking of it, I wrote it. And then I wrote the whole rest of the chapter. It was nightmarish to write. At one point I leaned over to Dan and said, "I can't write any more of this chapter. It's too awful. You have to help" And Dan's response was, "Would you like to hear some dead baby jokes?"
I did punch him. But I also put it in the novel. Hehehe. I have now accomplished what I really needed to accomplish with Nanowrimo, which was to force myself to write that chapter/scene/sentence, which has been hovering over me for years. I feel better.
Thank you, Marta! For your inspired comment, you will receive one Bookbeast. You may choose which one you like, and tell me, and I will mail it to you, with my effusive thanks.
Maybe it was Marta's comment that pushed me over the block. She said, and I paraphrase, that if there seems to be a chapter that cannot be written, then maybe there is really just a sentence that cannot be written, and if I could identify that sentence that could not be written, then I could get over myself and just write it. After all, *identifying* the sentence is practically writing it. I would have to write it in my head in order to identify it.
So I thought of the sentence that could not be written, and by thinking of it, I wrote it. And then I wrote the whole rest of the chapter. It was nightmarish to write. At one point I leaned over to Dan and said, "I can't write any more of this chapter. It's too awful. You have to help" And Dan's response was, "Would you like to hear some dead baby jokes?"
I did punch him. But I also put it in the novel. Hehehe. I have now accomplished what I really needed to accomplish with Nanowrimo, which was to force myself to write that chapter/scene/sentence, which has been hovering over me for years. I feel better.
Thank you, Marta! For your inspired comment, you will receive one Bookbeast. You may choose which one you like, and tell me, and I will mail it to you, with my effusive thanks.
I spent all of my free time today editing seven chapters of a children's novel that I wrote two years ago. Now all thirteen chapters have been edited and I'm ready to write the final three.
In editing all of this material very quickly, I learned that I must have been channeling P.G. Wodehouse throughout, because I had to change all the things that sounded like "a bit of breakfast" to things that sounded like "some breakfast." Another problem with the draft: I had a very weak grasp on what similes might be appropriate for my intended audience. You can't write "like whores descending on a harbor" and expect a ten year old reader not to raise an eyebrow. I took out many repetitions of the word "urgent" and also rewrote many places where I had said "It was clear that..." I found myself still struggling with the point of view issue, should I stay strictly within my male main character's head, or is it all right and even necessary to stray into the female main character's head a little. Then there were the sections where I wrote notes to myself. "Describe the interior here, I dare you, you coward."
If I can get through the last three chapters without falling headlong back into British slang, I will have a respectable draft of this novel that's been hanging unfinished, with the two young main characters literally stuck in a stone hole 20 feet down in the ground, for two years.
I watched the movie version of "Bridge to Terabithia" yesterday with my kids. The movie was better than the book.
In editing all of this material very quickly, I learned that I must have been channeling P.G. Wodehouse throughout, because I had to change all the things that sounded like "a bit of breakfast" to things that sounded like "some breakfast." Another problem with the draft: I had a very weak grasp on what similes might be appropriate for my intended audience. You can't write "like whores descending on a harbor" and expect a ten year old reader not to raise an eyebrow. I took out many repetitions of the word "urgent" and also rewrote many places where I had said "It was clear that..." I found myself still struggling with the point of view issue, should I stay strictly within my male main character's head, or is it all right and even necessary to stray into the female main character's head a little. Then there were the sections where I wrote notes to myself. "Describe the interior here, I dare you, you coward."
If I can get through the last three chapters without falling headlong back into British slang, I will have a respectable draft of this novel that's been hanging unfinished, with the two young main characters literally stuck in a stone hole 20 feet down in the ground, for two years.
I watched the movie version of "Bridge to Terabithia" yesterday with my kids. The movie was better than the book.
Freelance Editor, Book Doctor, Manuscript Consultant -- What are the Kids Calling it These Days?
0 CommentsBy Lostcheerio on Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 6:21 PM.
One of the awesome clients of my book doctor service posted about the experience on her writing blog. She compares the writing of a first draft with birthing a baby, and the editing of that draft with watching the baby get surgery. I can understand that feeling, but I guess I've always seen writing a draft like birthing, and editing like brushing the kid's hair and straightening its tie.
If it has to be surgery, then let's remember that *we* are the surgeons. We don't have to sit in the waiting room wringing our hands -- we are not *only the* surgeons, we are *the only* surgeons who can possibly perform the operation. We are uniquely qualified, highly specialized surgeons who know every corner of the insides of that kid, and while we do get consultants to tell us where to cut and where to splice, only we can do it.
Surgery is supposed to be kind of exciting. Reportedly, it even makes you feel like a god. Maybe editing can feel that energized too, if we realize we're in control.
Another thing -- not every baby needs surgery -- most babies spring out of the womb fully grown and perfect and healthy. However, every first draft needs surgery. So, you're not alone in that operating room, there are lots of other people going after their drafts with scalpels and clamps flying, biting their lips, refocusing their lights, and hacking away.
Critiquing people's novels is, in some ways, not a hard job. You don't have to haul around buckets or wear a uniform or get up early or go to meetings. However, you do have to stand up and honestly tell people that their books need surgery. Being a good consultant means telling them exactly what tools to use, at what angles to approach, how deep to go, to make what you feel will be a better story. And then you wait in the waiting room, anticipating the results of their labor. :)
If it has to be surgery, then let's remember that *we* are the surgeons. We don't have to sit in the waiting room wringing our hands -- we are not *only the* surgeons, we are *the only* surgeons who can possibly perform the operation. We are uniquely qualified, highly specialized surgeons who know every corner of the insides of that kid, and while we do get consultants to tell us where to cut and where to splice, only we can do it.
Surgery is supposed to be kind of exciting. Reportedly, it even makes you feel like a god. Maybe editing can feel that energized too, if we realize we're in control.
Another thing -- not every baby needs surgery -- most babies spring out of the womb fully grown and perfect and healthy. However, every first draft needs surgery. So, you're not alone in that operating room, there are lots of other people going after their drafts with scalpels and clamps flying, biting their lips, refocusing their lights, and hacking away.
Critiquing people's novels is, in some ways, not a hard job. You don't have to haul around buckets or wear a uniform or get up early or go to meetings. However, you do have to stand up and honestly tell people that their books need surgery. Being a good consultant means telling them exactly what tools to use, at what angles to approach, how deep to go, to make what you feel will be a better story. And then you wait in the waiting room, anticipating the results of their labor. :)
Labels: book doctoring, editing, writing
How Script Frenzy Saved My Novel
3 CommentsBy Lostcheerio on Monday, September 17, 2007 at 9:03 AM.
I will confess to you now that I am not entirely of sound mind, when it comes to writing my own fiction. There was a point, and I only tell you this because we are very close friends, where I was almost paralyzed in my fiction by weird little habits and the writing ticks that I had developed.
I was very concerned about the way things looked on the page. I needed the paragraphs to appear in a certain way, very rectangular, all approximately the same size, and I didn't want words hanging down, no strange line breaks. I felt compelled to write my novel in small sections, not really chapters, but three page sections, and each of the three page sections had to be exactly three pages. Exactly. So, when I took out a sentence here, I had to add one there. When I added a sentence there, and it started hanging onto another page, I had to take out that sentence and add a different one.
Then I decided to do Script Frenzy. Script Frenzy is a month-long nightmare similar to Nanowrimo except that in Script Frenzy you write a screenplay in a month, whereas in Nanowrimo you write a novel in a month. Script Frenzy is in June while Nanowrimo is in November. I had never written a screenplay before, but I thought, hey, why not. It's not like my novel is clipping along at such an alarming rate that I can't take a few weeks off to do something else. I wrote my script. I used CeltX which is a free, downloadable script-writing software. It forces you do format everything correctly. Watching my script pour out of my frantic fingers, it did not occur to me to count lines in a paragraph of scene description, it did not occur to me to be offended by the dialogue straggling down the page, and by the end of the experience, the screenplay format looked very normal and familiar and right. And I finished 20K words and got to the end, which means I won, as you can see by my sparkling icon at the left.
I was very concerned about the way things looked on the page. I needed the paragraphs to appear in a certain way, very rectangular, all approximately the same size, and I didn't want words hanging down, no strange line breaks. I felt compelled to write my novel in small sections, not really chapters, but three page sections, and each of the three page sections had to be exactly three pages. Exactly. So, when I took out a sentence here, I had to add one there. When I added a sentence there, and it started hanging onto another page, I had to take out that sentence and add a different one.It was like math, kind of. It was very engrossing. I told myself that the form was being dictated by the very structured mind of the character, by the nature of the book, that I could always go back and change it later. Except, as the book progressed, I was not going back to change anything, and it was increasingly becoming this awful, hard little nut of overworked prose. With no dialogue. Did I mention that? We can't have dialogue spreading out all over the place and messing up our lovely juicy paragraphs, can we precious? No, precious, we can't. You get the idea. What started out with a mild compulsion turned into a book-crushing mania. I have known some famous and clever postmodernists who do this kind of thing with grace and dignity. I, however, was doing it with teeth-gnashing and forehead-clasping. Not the same.
Then I decided to do Script Frenzy. Script Frenzy is a month-long nightmare similar to Nanowrimo except that in Script Frenzy you write a screenplay in a month, whereas in Nanowrimo you write a novel in a month. Script Frenzy is in June while Nanowrimo is in November. I had never written a screenplay before, but I thought, hey, why not. It's not like my novel is clipping along at such an alarming rate that I can't take a few weeks off to do something else. I wrote my script. I used CeltX which is a free, downloadable script-writing software. It forces you do format everything correctly. Watching my script pour out of my frantic fingers, it did not occur to me to count lines in a paragraph of scene description, it did not occur to me to be offended by the dialogue straggling down the page, and by the end of the experience, the screenplay format looked very normal and familiar and right. And I finished 20K words and got to the end, which means I won, as you can see by my sparkling icon at the left.When I returned to work on my novel, two astonishing things had happened.
1. I can now comfortably write dialogue. This shocks me, because all of my life as a writer I have avoided dialogue whenever possible. I would write "He told her go to home." six times before I would write ""Go home," he said." When I picked up Script Frenzy, I felt certain I would go mad because of all the dialogue I would have to write. Somehow, I bullied myself through it, and on the other side of that experience, dialogue is no longer my enemy.
2. I have a much better understanding of how to describe a scene in terms of the physical surroundings. I used to really struggle with this, and found myself skipping over it a lot, or doing it in some sort of truculent, obvious way, because I could never feel relaxed about taking time out of the scene to look around the room and say, "The walls were green. The ceiling was high. On the floor, there was a carpet. On the chair, there was a dog." Writing scene descriptions in the screenplay was different. You're forced to create a very succinct paragraph to describe the setting, and the purpose of it is not to be lovely, but to be functional. So you find the three objects in the room that give it its character, or you find the scope of the exterior landscape you're describing, or the hat the character is wearing, or the empty diet Coke can under the radiator, and you hang the scene on that. Very useful. The skill translates perfectly into novel-writing. It's okay to drape a whole scene over the cut of glass on the chandelier. It all evolves from that. I get that now.
As I was writing my screenplay, I felt very strange writing a document that was not meant to be read. That is, it wasn't the final product. These words, in this screenplay, are not the art. They're instructions for creating the art. So, while the words are still important, obviously, the way they look on the page has no meaning. They're crammed into a standard format, and there's no deviating from it -- it's out of your hands. Working in this form really made me think about the story, the characters, the dialogue... and stop concentrating on the form.
Writing a screenplay made me a better novelist, for sure. When I returned to fiction, it was as if the hobbles had been taken off my horse. I'm glad I made the effort and took the chance on a new format, even though the screenplay itself may never see the light. At this rate, the book possibly will.
Labels: nanowrimo, screenwriting, script frenzy, script writing, writing
1. Maybe writing is just lying.
2. I'm cutting out of my writing group again tonight.
3. I've started walking to the art museum to think. During the walk, you know, not at the museum. When we get to the museum, we turn around and go home. Map My Ride tells me it's 3.6 miles round trip. This is about as much as I can do with inappropriate shoes, a stroller, a dog, and another child on a bicycle. We've done it twice:
So far I've had two ideas, both unrelated to the novel. Two ideas in seven miles is a number I'm comfortable with. I'm not crowning myself Pope or anything but I'm satisfied.
4. "The Libertine" was like the opposite of "Shakespeare in Love." Like all opposite pairs, they have some things in common: 17th century London, playwrights, female actors, and a bunch of people scrabbling around in the street. Strangely, in the time between Elizabeth and Charles II, London got a lot dirtier and nastier. John Malkovich was the king with a prosthetic nose. It was almost possible to forget he was John Malkovich. I never forgot Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp but the remarkable thing was that during his performance I never even caught a sniff of Jack Sparrow, or Ichabod Crane, or Willy Wonka, or J.M. Barrie. He's a master.
6. "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Snakes on a Plane" both started out with someone getting their head beaten in. From there, the two movies diverged in pretty much every way possible.
7. Samantha Morton is not Samantha Mathis. Samantha Morton never played Princess Daisy in "Super Mario Brothers." Samantha Mathis did. Therefore, my shock that Samantha Mathis was playing the female lead in "The Libertine" was misplaced.
8. Chloe Sevigny was in "Zodiac" as a dull, smart girlfriend of Jake Gyllenhaal. I liked her in this role. Between this, that, Big Love, and the other thing, I am ready to forgive her for her slouchy, droopy-lidded performance in "The Last Days of Disco." It's been ten years. I'm over it.
10. Speaking of Robert Downey Jr., "Fur" was bad. Susannah says the crime was taking Arbus' asthetic fascination with freaks and sexualizing it. I agree, but felt that the biggest problem was Robert Downey Jr. with all that hair on him.
2. I'm cutting out of my writing group again tonight.
3. I've started walking to the art museum to think. During the walk, you know, not at the museum. When we get to the museum, we turn around and go home. Map My Ride tells me it's 3.6 miles round trip. This is about as much as I can do with inappropriate shoes, a stroller, a dog, and another child on a bicycle. We've done it twice:
So far I've had two ideas, both unrelated to the novel. Two ideas in seven miles is a number I'm comfortable with. I'm not crowning myself Pope or anything but I'm satisfied.
4. "The Libertine" was like the opposite of "Shakespeare in Love." Like all opposite pairs, they have some things in common: 17th century London, playwrights, female actors, and a bunch of people scrabbling around in the street. Strangely, in the time between Elizabeth and Charles II, London got a lot dirtier and nastier. John Malkovich was the king with a prosthetic nose. It was almost possible to forget he was John Malkovich. I never forgot Johnny Depp was Johnny Depp but the remarkable thing was that during his performance I never even caught a sniff of Jack Sparrow, or Ichabod Crane, or Willy Wonka, or J.M. Barrie. He's a master.
6. "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Snakes on a Plane" both started out with someone getting their head beaten in. From there, the two movies diverged in pretty much every way possible.
7. Samantha Morton is not Samantha Mathis. Samantha Morton never played Princess Daisy in "Super Mario Brothers." Samantha Mathis did. Therefore, my shock that Samantha Mathis was playing the female lead in "The Libertine" was misplaced.
8. Chloe Sevigny was in "Zodiac" as a dull, smart girlfriend of Jake Gyllenhaal. I liked her in this role. Between this, that, Big Love, and the other thing, I am ready to forgive her for her slouchy, droopy-lidded performance in "The Last Days of Disco." It's been ten years. I'm over it.
10. Speaking of Robert Downey Jr., "Fur" was bad. Susannah says the crime was taking Arbus' asthetic fascination with freaks and sexualizing it. I agree, but felt that the biggest problem was Robert Downey Jr. with all that hair on him.
Nanowrimo Research Trip to Historic Virginia
0 CommentsBy Lostcheerio on Saturday, November 4, 2006 at 7:02 PM.
