A New Writing Year

Eudaemonia is all about reading and writing and with one year coming to a close and another beginning, I can’t help but look back to where I’ve been over the last year. Was it where I wanted to go?

I think it was.

Reading and writing are so intertwined for me that I can’t talk about one without the other. It was when I read Hoffman’s Hunger that I was hit hardest with the sense that I need to know much more, and not only about the mechanics of writing (although I continue to need that too). The book was written in 1989 by a Dutch author named Leon de Winter. The story takes place at the end of the cold war and drew heavily on the philosophy of Spinoza. I finished reading the book and immediately thought that it's the kind of book I wish I could write, but I can't.

It does not escape me that Hoffman’s Hunger fed a growing hunger in me for a deeper education. All signs this year led me to that conclusion, from my brief frenzied dive into modern economics, political history and American anti-intellectualism to my final December read of Annie Dillard’s Living by Fiction. I can’t disagree with this idea:

"The notion of the novelist as gifted savage dies hard, even in English Departments. (Perhaps it dies hard especially in English departments – for if Faulkner was a wise man of letters like thee and me, why have we not written great novels? Further, department scholars may doubt their own methods, their students, and especially their colleagues so much that they deny that anyone ever connected with that world could produce a novel worth reading.) It breaks our American hearts to learn that Updike was an English major. We wish to forget that Thoreau, like Updike and Mailer, was graduated from Harvard, and that Walt Whitman spent his life in his room studying and rewriting, and that Willa Cather lived among the literati in Greenwich Village, and that Melville left the sea at twenty-five. The will to believe in the fiction writer as Paul Bunyan is shockingly strong; it is emotional, like to will to believe in Bigfoot, the hairy primate who stalks the western hills, or in the Loch Ness Monster. In fact, by the time the media had worked on Hemingway, he was scarcely distinguishable from Bigfoot, or less popular – and Dylan Thomas, that sentimental favorite, was the Loch Ness Monster. The assumption that the fiction writer is any sort of person but one whose formal education actually taught him something is particularly strong in this country; our democratic anti-intellectual tradition and our media cult of personality dovetail on this point and press it home, usually with full cooperation from writers.

In opposition to all this romance, I say that academic literary criticism is very influential: students listen to critics. What student does not read fiction for one course or another? And who is writing fiction these days who has not been to college?"

Lest the writers who may be reading this take offense to such bold myth smashing, just think on it. She’s talking, of course about writers in the class of those she’s mentioned and like Bellow, Roth, Chekov, Borges, Chomsky, Dostoevsky, Ellison, Garcia Marquez, Hamsun, Joyce, Lessing, et al.

Not many writers come close to creating what these people have, and not many want to. The vast majority of readers who are not critics wouldn’t be interested in reading such works if they existed. But despite the small probability of creating what could be art and the even smaller odds that it might be read and appreciated, it’s still a bold, unrealistic and probably delusional aim for some.

It’s been a year now since I first began work on a novel called The Foundling Wheel and as of today, it’s treading water after twenty-four messy chapters and 52,973 words. In the beginning, I thought I’d finish a first draft in six months, and then I thought it would be a year. I haven’t added to it since early October, but I haven’t abandoned it. It’s still very much alive and I intend to finish it.

What’s given me trouble since the beginning is much larger than the story itself, although that’s given me problems too. If you were to ask me some time ago why I was writing it, I couldn’t tell you, nor could I say what I was trying to accomplish in the work, beyond simply telling a story. Sometimes telling a story is enough. For me with this, it’s not.

I can almost answer the question now.

I learned to trust myself much more this year. Oddly, (or at least I think it’s odd) I was not self-conscious about sharing my work with other people when I first began blogging and taking classes, but as time has passed, I’ve grown more confident in my ability to assess what I’m doing and less inclined to ask other people to do it for me. It stands to reason that until I’ve worked out what it is I’m trying to do and precisely how I’m going to do it that there’s no point in asking another person to judge whether or not I’ve succeeded.

What interests me most is – everything about human beings. I’m interested in philosophy, sociology, culture, religion and psychology. I’m interested in history and economics and technology. I know a little about a few things, but I want much more.

The subject matter for my blog posts will be much more focused in 2009. My reading choices will be much more intentional. I’m on a quest to educate myself on all of those things that, even if I had gone to college and pursued a liberal education as a girl, would not have had the impact on me then that they will now.

I’ll never be a scholar or an academic or an intellectual and I don’t aspire to any of those things, but I can be a more literate thinker.

Whether it makes me a better writer or not remains to be seen. I think it will.

Raw Clay and Alternate Endings

Writing the first draft of a novel has been challenging, fun, frustrating, exhilarating, depressing and wonderful. Over time I've been able to learn enough to get on the right path and I've accepted that each writer is on her own to figure out what works best for her. Here are some things I've learned that work for me:

1. Books and classes on craft can be a huge help, but only when I take advantage of them at the right time and only if I'm not subconsciously using them to procrastinate. The trick is to close the book, finish the class, stop effing around and get writing.

2. Reading is crucial. I am convinced that 97% of what I know about writing, I've absorbed through a lifetime of reading.

3. Web sites and blogs on writing, books, publishing and literary criticism have taught me a great deal. Starting a blog has introduced me to a writing community and it's helped me to clarify my own thoughts. On the other hand, the internet is the single biggest threat to my writing time, so I've had to tackle my addiction. Sometimes I specify a time limit for web surfing, or I go offline for a specific number of days, or deny myself internet access until I've hit a specific writing goal. All of those methods work, but it's absolutely critical that I establish limits.

4. I have to write every day or I lose rapport with my work. Author Tayari Jones made a comment I loved after she returned from a vacation. She said, "My novel is like a cat. It's mad at me for leaving it alone for a week. Now it refuses to speak to me." I find this is true for me. If I don't keep the novel with me all the time, it gets cold. Daily word count goals don't work for me. If I don't make the number, I feel like I've failed and I'm discouraged. My goal is to write something every day, and I usually end up writing more than I expected. Sometimes I only manage a paragraph and now and then I miss a day. If I'm really stuck, I hammer out a piece of flash fiction that's unrelated to my novel or I jot down notes about the novel and that usually triggers something.

5. To my surprise, writing longhand works for me. I used to write exclusively on my laptop, but this summer I started writing in a notebook and it opened up something different. I still generate quite a bit of new work directly on the keyboard, but often it's after I write a fair amount in longhand and transcribe it. Writing in a notebook allows me complete isolation from the internet. I always have a notebook and pen close by so I tend to write more. I've captured many more ideas since I started doing this because I don't need to get my laptop and open a document when inspiration strikes.

6. I've tried several approaches to writing a novel. I doubt I'll ever be someone who outlines. I've written chapters and edited as I wrote them. It seemed to work pretty well at the time, but in hindsight, it didn't work nearly as well as I thought it did. For the last several months, I've been working the story out as I go along. I am committed to moving forward until I get to the end of the first draft. I thank Tim Hallinan and his Writers' Resources for helping me understand the importance of finishing a complete first draft and giving me a sense of urgency to do it. As many wise writers have said, "you can't revise a blank page".

This is what is working for me now. Next week may be different. I feel like I'm working with wet, raw clay and by the time I get to the end, I'll have something with a recognizable shape. I may have to tear entire chunks off, or move them around, or add some, but I'll have something I can work with. Throughout the process, I've made notes on lots of things I need to change. I confess to rewriting my first chapter once already, but I've resisted further temptation to stop to rewrite and revise before I finish.

The first draft is nearly done, but I'll share something that many of you may find horrifying. I still don't know how it ends. I'm not one of those people who has known from the beginning exactly how the story ends.

Scott and I watched the movie, Married Life on DVD tonight. I always watch DVD special features and sometimes I'll even watch the movie over again with the commentary on, so I can understand why the film makers made certain choices. Married Life had three alternate endings and the film makers screened them to decide which one to use, based on audience response. This is a common practice and it's not surprising that the reason many novel adaptations end differently on film is that test audiences often react negatively to a book's original ending.

I've been struggling a bit because I'm ready to end my story and I haven't yet had that moment of clarity I was hoping to have. I suppose if Hollywood spends the time and money to shoot and edit four separate endings for a movie before they decide which to choose, perhaps I'm not the only writer in the world who is challenged by the end. I've noticed that Amazon reviewers tend to complain about unsatisfying endings more than just about anything else. No doubt, there is a lot of pressure on endings.

The importance of the ending to a novel varies for me as a reader, depending on what kind of story it is. Mysteries and thrillers have got to tie things up at the end or the book is ruined for me. With more general types of fiction, the ending is still important, but less so as the reader isn't usually expecting a "payoff".

What about you? Can you enjoy a book all the way through and then be disappointed by the end? Have you ever been angry at an author because of how a book ended? Do you tolerate a mediocre book, hoping for a payoff at the end? Does genre factor into it for you?

For writers, when do you know the end of your story? Have you rewritten endings that you initially thought would work, but then decided were wrong?

Odds and ends:

Rent it or buy it, but watch Young at Heart. I will watch this anytime I find myself whining about the unfairness of growing older. This documentary is uplifting and touching. I challenge you to make it through without crying at least two or three times and I promise you'll laugh most of the time.

Everybody has probably found Pandora Radio by now, so I wanted to share my Art Tatum Radio. It's something I can write to. Maybe you'll like it.

Books I Read in August 2008

Every book I read in August left me with lingering thoughts. I could write volumes about each, but I'm going to resist the urge and instead, provide a link for each to a review that echoes my sentiments.

Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen was a book I resisted reading for quiet a while, due to its popularity. I was particularly interested in reading it because of the shifts in time the story takes. It's told from the point of view of a man who is ninety or ninety-three (he can't remember) in the present day and shifts back to where the real story takes place, during the depression. This review is from the New York Times Sunday Book Review. It was a unique, intriguing story and it was very well written.

Hoffman's Hunger, by Leon de Winter came to me by way of the LibaryThing Early Reviewer Program. From the Toby Press:

"Felix Hoffman’s hunger is both physical and emotional. A Dutch diplomat with a checkered career behind him, he is now Ambassador in Prague in the late 1980s; his final posting. In Kafka’s haunted city, Hoffman desperately feeds his bulimia and spends his insomniac nights studying Spinoza and revisiting the traumas of his past.

A child survivor of the Holocaust, Hoffman married and had beloved twin daughters, but a double tragedy has befallen his family; one daughter died as a young girl of leukemia, the other, who became a heroin addict, has committed suicide. This has wrecked Hoffman’s marriage and his life; he has not had one decent night’s sleep since the death of his daughter over twenty years ago, and his constant physical hunger reflects his emotional hunger for truth and understanding. When Carla, a Czech double agent, gets into Hoffman’s bed, political and emotional mayhem ensues.

Hoffman’s past and his present predicament are inextricably bound up with the tormented history of Europe over the fifty years since the Second World War. Like Europe, he is at a crossroads, and the signs point to an uncertain future. With this spellbinding philosophical thriller, a bestseller in Germany, Leon de Winter charts a search for identity which is both personal and political.

Translated from the Dutch by Arnold and Erica Pomerans."

This book really blew me away. As soon as I finished, I knew I'd read this book again. I also had the thought that this was a book I wish I could have written, and that thought doesn't often come to me. It was Leon de Winter's first novel and it was published in The Netherlands in 1990.

Bad Behavior, by Mary Gaitskill is a collection of nine stories, originally published in 1988. This interview in Nerve.com will give you a fairly good idea of the kind of ride you're in for when you read her work. I'd previously read her novel, Veronica and found that although I really liked it, Gaitskill is actually a better short fiction writer. The stories are gritty and edgy and Gaitskill has a voice unlike any writer I've ever read. Certainly, this collection is a reflection of the sexual mores and rampant drug use in the 80s. She's really an incredible writer.

She Was, by Janis Hallowell is the second novel from this Colorado writer. The main character was a political activist in the early 70's and was responsible for a university bombing that killed someone. She's lived underground since that time and as the story opens, she is about to be exposed. See this review from Bookreporter.com for more on the story. Although there have been other stories about sixties and seventies radicals, what makes this one particularly interesting is that it takes place in the post 9/11 era and therefore, public and governmental views on terrorism are quite different than they were in the eighties and nineties. This book shifts between the past and present, Hallowell does it from the points of view of two different characters and her prose is lyrical and precise.

Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill reviewed in the New Yorker by James Wood here is the critically acclaimed new novel, described by Pantheon Books as:

"In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans--a banker originally from the Netherlands--finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an “other” New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality. Hans is alternately seduced and instructed by Chuck’s particular brand of naivete and chutzpah--by his ability to a hold fast to a sense of American and human possibility in which Hans has come to lose faith.

Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider’s vantage point, and the complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers. Most immediately, though, it is the story of one man--of a marriage foundering and recuperating in its mystery and ordinariness, of the shallows and depths of male friendship, of mourning and memory. Joseph O’Neill’s prose, in its conscientiousness and beauty, involves us utterly in the struggle for meaning that governs any single life."

O'Neill's prose is exceptionally beautiful and I found myself frequently reading passages more than once for the pure pleasure of it. The story was good, but by the end I felt there was something missing.

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. This, from Publisher's Weekly:

"Starred Review. Previous books such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood have established Murakami as a true original, a fearless writer possessed of a wildly uninhibited imagination and a legion of fiercely devoted fans. In this latest addition to the author's incomparable oeuvre, 15-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away from home, both to escape his father's oedipal prophecy and to find his long-lost mother and sister. As Kafka flees, so too does Nakata, an elderly simpleton whose quiet life has been upset by a gruesome murder. (A wonderfully endearing character, Nakata has never recovered from the effects of a mysterious World War II incident that left him unable to read or comprehend much, but did give him the power to speak with cats.) What follows is a kind of double odyssey, as Kafka and Nakata are drawn inexorably along their separate but somehow linked paths, groping to understand the roles fate has in store for them. Murakami likes to blur the boundary between the real and the surreal—we are treated to such oddities as fish raining from the sky; a forest-dwelling pair of Imperial Army soldiers who haven't aged since WWII; and a hilarious cameo by fried chicken king Colonel Sanders—but he also writes touchingly about love, loneliness and friendship. Occasionally, the writing drifts too far into metaphysical musings—mind-bending talk of parallel worlds, events occurring outside of time—and things swirl a bit at the end as the author tries, perhaps too hard, to make sense of things. But by this point, his readers, like his characters, will go just about anywhere Murakami wants them to, whether they 'get' it or not."

I'd not read any Murakami previously, but from the first few minutes, I was hooked. John Updike's review in the New Yorker is excellent. This was another book that I wanted to begin all over again once I'd finished it.

* * *

The limits I've placed on my internet use have been working out pretty well. I expect to reach 50,000 words with The Foundling Wheel today -- word count as of this minute: 49,294. I've had a target word count in mind of roughly 65,000 - 75,000 words, so 50,000 is going to feel pretty good. Carleen assures me that the seas are considerably calmer after 50,000 and I want to believe her.

I've had to make some radical changes to my web surfing behavior in order to cut down on my time on line. I now check blogs almost exclusively through Google Reader with one or two exceptions. I still read most posts, but I have drastically cut down on the number of comments I leave. I also realized there were a handful of sites I visit regularly, even though I always seem to feel somehow annoyed or agitated after visiting, because of either the tone of the blogger or the commenters. Something led me to those sites at some point in time and I kept going back out of habit, but I realized I can no longer spare the time on the distraction. I do have to wonder if I am the only one who has had this experience. It's sort of like having that "toxic friend" who somehow always makes you feel bad about yourself, yet you keep spending time with her.

Anyone else run into this online?

I did run across a great resource that I've subscribed to in Google Reader, called 43 Folders. It's about finding the time and focus to do your best creative work. Many of you may already know about this site, since apparently it gets about 8 zillion hits a month. It's good stuff.

Facebook and MySpace have never been much of a draw for me, even though I have (poorly maintained) pages and I do have some "friends". I've pretty much abandoned most of the social networking sites in the name of time management.

On the other hand, Twitter has become a lifeline for me. There is a small group of writers I "follow" around and their regular updates on writing activities motivate me. Since I'm not posting or commenting on blogs as often, Twitter also scratches that itch to check in and be accountable for my writing.

And, the biggest danger to my limited attention span these days is the election. I've decided to watch the debates and I check out any links that my fellow Twitterers find noteworthy, but other than that, I am trying to stay away from the day to day speculation and soap opera aspects.

I do have a small achievement to share. I entered the Women on Writing Spring Flash Fiction Contest (my first submission anywhere) and I got an honorable mention for my piece called, The Frailty of Memory. If you go there, you'll have to scroll down for about ten minutes to find my name. There are quite a few winners, but I'm pretty happy about this small bit of external validation -- AND they're sending me free stuff too!

How is your writing going? Any tips or anecdotes to share on effective time management in the information age? How closely are you following the election coverage?

Working Without a Net

Working my way through the first draft of a novel has been very much like walking a tightrope without a net.

Word count as of Wednesday night, 9:57 MST: 43,610

It's been quite an education so far and something about the process has shifted. I wrote the first first chapter of The Foundling Wheel (that's not a typo -- I've written a new first chapter) between Christmas and New Year's Eve of 2007. At the time, I was embarking on a brand new story with close to a dozen other writers who were starting their own stories. To be truthful, getting through the first hundred pages wasn't all that difficult. Over time, the words slowed and then they stopped coming at all.

I didn't do much, if any writing at all between March and June. What I'd been doing to that point wasn't working anymore. I did a lot of thinking and mapped some things out visually, hoping I could see what the structure looked like and where I needed to go. Slowly, I got moving again.

In July, I went to a retreat for a week and I returned inspired and reinvigorated. I've written six more chapters since July, but something has changed in the writing. When it flows, it really flows, but I have the almost visceral sensation of vertigo. When I wrote the first few chapters it felt very concretely like I was writing. I was posting the chapters as I wrote them, so although I was writing quickly, I was editing as I wrote. I'm not doing that now. In fact, I've got unnamed characters and other unknowns denoted by a "***" so I can go back and fix them later. Sometimes I feel more like I'm typing a story and not writing one. The second pass on these new chapters will require much more extensive rewriting than the first ten or eleven and those changes will undoubtedly set off a domino effect of cuts and major rewrites to the earlier chapters as well.

Oddly, the biggest change when I write is that my anxiety is gone. Despite the fact that the writing is much less careful and I still have plenty of questions about how this story will move forward, I'm not nearly as nervous, self-conscious and worried about it as I was, even though I truly feel like I'm moving forward blindfolded at times. I've paid lip service to my goal of finishing a first draft from the beginning and it's always been my goal, but for I long time I said it more in the spirit of "fake it 'til you make it" than out of any real confidence I could do it.

I can do it. I can't explain why I suddenly know it, but I do. It's kind of exhilarating.

It seems like it's been a long time since my last post. Work has been busy, I've been getting a decent amount of writing done, I've been reading quite a bit and frankly, the DNC and the RNC have been a huge distraction.

My list of August reads will be up shortly. Other things that have my attention are this season of Mad Men and the upcoming new season of House. Yesterday, Scott and I went to see the new Woody Allen movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and I loved it.

What's keeping you busy this week?

The Ever Changing Method to My Ever Deepening Madness

Steve Malley, friend of the blog from down under – is New Zealand considered down under? – has an expression he often uses after writing a post about craft, and it’s “take what you like and leave the rest”. If you haven’t checked out Steve’s blog, he’s got some very helpful stuff on writing.

I happen to think it’s an excellent piece of advice and I regularly do just that.

Recently, the good people from the ACME Corporation where I work paid for books and testing services from Gallup so that people like me (Anvil, bird seed and Dynamite salesmen) could identify our top strengths. I’m actually pretty cynical about business personality profiling, especially when the test identifies a person's top five repeatable characteristics and defines them all as strengths. Frankly, I don't think our top characteristics are always strengths in all circumstances.

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I decided to try and interpret my results in a way that might help me to become a better writer, or at least explain my scatter shot methods of trying to nail down a process.

These are the test results I received:

“As you may know, the Clifton StrengthsFinder measures the presence of talent in 34 categories called "themes." These themes were determined by The Gallup Organization as those that most consistently predict outstanding performance. The greater the presence of a theme of talent within a person, the more likely that person is to spontaneously exhibit those talents in day-to-day behaviors.

Focusing on naturally powerful talents helps people use them as the foundation of strengths and enjoy personal, academic, and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.

How well do you think these themes describe me?

Achiever

Your Achiever theme helps explain your drive. Achiever describes a constant need for achievement. You feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself. And by “every day” you mean every single day—workdays, weekends, vacations. No matter how much you may feel you deserve a day of rest, if the day passes without some form of achievement, no matter how small, you will feel dissatisfied. You have an internal fire burning inside you. It pushes you to do more, to achieve more. After each accomplishment is reached, the fire dwindles for a moment, but very soon it rekindles itself, forcing you toward the next accomplishment. Your relentless need for achievement might not be logical. It might not even be focused. But it will always be with you. As an Achiever you must learn to live with this whisper of discontent. It does have its benefits. It brings you the energy you need to work long hours without burning out. It is the jolt you can always count on to get you started on new tasks, new challenges. It is the power supply that causes you to set the pace and define the levels of productivity for your work group. It is the theme that keeps you moving.

Intellection

You like to think. You like mental activity. You like exercising the “muscles” of your brain, stretching them in multiple directions. This need for mental activity may be focused; for example, you may be trying to solve a problem or develop an idea or understand another person’s feelings. The exact focus will depend on your other strengths. On the other hand, this mental activity may very well lack focus. The theme of Intellection does not dictate what you are thinking about; it simply describes that you like to think. You are the kind of person who enjoys your time alone because it is your time for musing and reflection. You are introspective. In a sense you are your own best companion, as you pose yourself questions and try out answers on yourself to see how they sound. This introspection may lead you to a slight sense of discontent as you compare what you are actually doing with all the thoughts and ideas that your mind conceives. Or this introspection may tend toward more pragmatic matters such as the events of the day or a conversation that you plan to have later. Wherever it leads you, this mental hum is one of the constants of your life.

Relator

Relator describes your attitude toward your relationships. In simple terms, the Relator theme pulls you toward people you already know. You do not necessarily shy away from meeting new people—in fact, you may have other themes that cause you to enjoy the thrill of turning strangers into friends—but you do derive a great deal of pleasure and strength from being around your close friends. You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship. You want to understand their feelings, their goals, their fears, and their dreams; and you want them to understand yours. You know that this kind of closeness implies a certain amount of risk—you might be taken advantage of—but you are willing to accept that risk. For you a relationship has value only if it is genuine. And the only way to know that is to entrust yourself to the other person. The more you share with each other, the more you risk together. The more you risk together, the more each of you proves your caring is genuine. These are your steps toward real friendship, and you take them willingly.

Learner

You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning. The process, more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you. You are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered—this is the process that entices you. Your excitement leads you to engage in adult learning experiences—yoga or piano lessons or graduate classes. It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time and then move on to the next one. This Learner theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become the subject matter expert, or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or academic credential. The outcome of the learning is less significant than the “getting there.”

Maximizer

Excellence, not average, is your measure. Taking something from below average to slightly above average takes a great deal of effort and in your opinion is not very rewarding. Transforming something strong into something superb takes just as much effort but is much more thrilling. Strengths, whether yours or someone else’s, fascinate you. Like a diver after pearls, you search them out, watching for the telltale signs of a strength. A glimpse of untutored excellence, rapid learning, a skill mastered without recourse to steps—all these are clues that a strength may be in play. And having found a strength, you feel compelled to nurture it, refine it, and stretch it toward excellence. You polish the pearl until it shines. This natural sorting of strengths means that others see you as discriminating. You choose to spend time with people who appreciate your particular strengths. Likewise, you are attracted to others who seem to have found and cultivated their own strengths. You tend to avoid those who want to fix you and make you well rounded. You don’t want to spend your life bemoaning what you lack. Rather, you want to capitalize on the gifts with which you are blessed. It’s more fun. It’s more productive. And, counterintuitively, it is more demanding.”

Naturally, I’ll take “Achiever”. Who wouldn’t? I’ll happily choose to believe it’s an indication that I’ll persevere and write a book. I think the one to be careful of is the one labeled “Intellection” – which I suspect is not a real word and is most likely a cleverly disguised term for procrastination and navel gazing. Or maybe it's a predisposition toward making myself crazy by over thinking and having a difficult time focusing – but I digress – See!? “Relator” I can buy, even though I also doubt it’s validity as a real word. I prefer to interact with people I have a connection with, even when many of them are my invisible online writing friends. I doubt it has much relevance to writing though. “Learner” is a definite yes. I am passionate about learning and I always have been, and at the moment, my passion is all about learning how to write a novel. And finally, “Maximizer” (also a fake word) I hope will reflect an inclination to rewrite, revise, shape and polish until I’ve written the absolute best novel that I can, no matter how long it takes.

In all fairness, I am superstitious and would be inclined to do the same analysis of an astrological chart if I could interpret it to mean that I’m supposed to be a novelist. But I will take what seems to fit and beware of the scatterbrained “intellection” characteristic and go with it.

So where am I with The Foundling Wheel now?

I think I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, but I want to share what I’m doing and how I arrived here because I’m in the process of doing something I don’t hear too many people talk about, but I’m sure some of you do this or have done it.

To review, the first 11 Chapters, which came to 28,584 words in a format that is somewhere between a rough and early first draft were written completely by the proverbial seat of my pants. An incident that happened when I was in Germany back in the mid-1980’s gave me an idea that I started to build around. I didn’t let the idea percolate longer than a week and I didn’t have an outline or an idea of where the story would go or how it would end.

Then I didn’t quite know what would happen and I tried a variety of techniques I’d read about in order to brainstorm ideas. I jotted down ideas for scenes, subplots, themes and ends. I used index cards, white boards, easel paper. I thought about what I had and I came up with some new subplots, secondary characters and a fairly good idea of how the story ends. I was also able to define my premise. I realize a whole lot of people believe that these are all things that a writer should do before starting to write, but just as many believe that these are things that reveal themselves through the process of writing. I think they are revealing themselves.

I started to write the next chapter three times and each time I started in a different place. The third time I think I found a good place to begin – Chapter 12 really marks the start of Part II of a traditional three part structure.

But the longer I worked on this chapter, the longer it got. When I was writing under the weekly constraint to complete one chapter, each with a specific purpose and function I was able to keep each chapter as a discrete 2,000 – 3,000 word unit. This chapter would not end! I got to somewhere just shy of 6,000 words and realized I needed something else to guide and shape where I was going.

To get back to my original thought -- or Steve Malley's -- about taking what you like, or what works and leaving the rest is that there are a whole lot of ideas and techniques out there. What works for some people doesn't for others and what might work in one circumstance might not in another. The trick is to recognize that there is a way to approach every problem and not to get stuck when one method doesn't work and also not to get distracted by too many options. If you can't climb over the wall, dig under it. If that doesn't work, go around and if that doesn't work, blow it up. There's always a way.

So I'm writing what I think of as a working synopsis. Whether I read about this somewhere or I’d tried everything else and this was the last obvious thing to try in order to provide myself the direction I needed to explain to myself what happens in this story from beginning to end, I don’t know, but I finally consulted the books. Ah, my pretty pretty books. What’s interesting is that of all the books on craft that I have, nearly all references to synopses are to the type used for submission to an agent or editor, but finally I did find two books that reference “the working synopsis”. Hooray! Validation that even if this is not a tool that all novelists use, it’s one that some do.

There’s no real structure to this working synopsis, other than a present tense explanation of what happens from the beginning to the end. I think that by the time I’m done with it, I’ll have about 10-12 double spaced pages I can work from. It doesn’t break down into scenes or go into any detail, it just follows the significant action, and introduces characters and time lines.

So there it is. That’s what I’ve been doing.

I believe that if I had not chosen to move between three different points in time, I might have been able to continue writing a linear story in the way that I’d started, but it’s gotten too complicated for me to keep in my head and the scene cards just aren’t giving me the continuity I seem to need.

Since I haven’t ever heard anybody talk about doing one of these, I suspect most people don’t do them, but I’m very interested in hearing from those of you who do or even those of you who do something similar.

So how about it? Working synopsis? Anyone?

100+ Pages Into The Foundling Wheel

There may be some who’ve been following The Foundling Wheel who think I’ve run out of gas and abandoned it and there may be some readers who hope that’s the case. I assure you, it’s not.

Tim Hallinan gave me the greatest writing boost I’ve ever had by tempting me to take the Dickens Challenge. Writers crazy enough to take him up on his challenge would each start a brand new novel and post a chapter a week. The concept was to use the deadline and the seat of the pants approach to get down the first draft of an entire novel.

Before the Dickens Challenge, I was an obsessive fiddler and I’d never finished an entire first draft. My two prior novel attempts were definitely much more defined in my mind when I started them, but they felt overwritten and contrived to me.

Two days before the other writers planned to post their first chapters, the germ of an idea came to me. This seed got me through the first eleven chapters of the story, but once I exhausted my initial idea, I realized that I couldn’t keep flying by the seat of my pants.

Things I’ve learned from the Dickens Challenge:

- The deadlines boosted my productivity. By looking at the WIP in terms of weekly chapter sized bites, the idea of writing an entire novel felt much less intimidating and I could see real progress quickly.

- It forced me to write more and faster. This helped me to tap into my unconscious much more easily. It kept me from over-thinking, over-describing and over-writing.

- Posting a chapter a week made me much more focused on leaving a hook at the end of each chapter.

- People seem to be in agreement that I hit my stride around the fourth chapter. I think that’s a direct result of writing a lot without stopping to tinker.

- Now that I’ve re-read the work to date, I hate my first chapter and I’m not crazy about the second one. But I have something to revise, so I don’t mind a bit.

- Some of the chapters feel choppy. I’ve got multiple short scenes within a couple of them and I realize I did this in order to keep the chapters under 3,000 words, knowing that was pushing it for blog posts. When I revise, I’ll expand on some things and write better transitions to smooth out the choppiness.

- The earlier chapters need a lot of revision. Since the characters and the story developed over time, it only makes sense that the first couple of chapters probably need to be completely rewritten.

- Pantsing has been a much more creative process for me than writing to an outline. In previous WIPs, when I tried figuring the story out ahead of time, my creativity was stifled because I kept trying to stick to the plan. I’ve got much more confidence now in my ability to “what if” myself to a better and better story.

- Timeline is one of my biggest problems. I introduced the story in the present. Chapters 2-11 take place more than 20 years earlier with a couple of brief stops back in the present. People have referred to that part as being told in flashback, but I’m not too sure that’s what it ought to be. It's too long and too big a part of the story. I’m wondering now if the inciting incident in chapter 1 really belongs in a prologue so that the story can naturally begin in the past and proceed in linear fashion.

Issues I need to figure out before I can go on:

- What is my premise? What does Tracy want or not want, what conflict or challenge is interfering with that desire and where will she end up at the end of her journey? I had some vague concepts at the beginning, but now I need to nail them down. The good news is that I think I’ve got this.

- Plotting is a huge challenge. The problem is not a lack of ideas, it’s too many. There are an infinite number of possibilities I can explore in order to move Tracy forward and there are all kinds of possible sub-plots involving my secondary characters. Which to choose? How will they serve my premise? The more I think about it, the more cool ideas I think of.

- How should the story end? I have several possibilities and they all tie back to how I choose to move the plot forward.

Things I've found helpful:

- Time. With enough solitary time, I can nail this down. Driving, walking, and solitary tasks all open up the floodgates. My challenge is that I am not accustomed to making this time and pushing all the other demands away. Work has been unbelievably busy, which means that even when I’m not actively working, it’s hard to stop thinking about it. I believe the solution is to put walking time on my calendar and just walk even when I’m too busy. I’m not sure it’s going to work during the day, but I’m going to give it a try.

- Going back to the basics. I have a lot of craft books. I read most of them when I got them, but the trouble with books on writing is that you don’t always read the right book at the right time. I spent a few hours this past weekend with a book on plotting and structure. It forced me to go back to the very questions I’m working to answer now.

When will chapter 12 be done?

I don’t know. I do know that once I have answered the questions I’m working on now, I’ll be able to pick up at chapter 12 and keep writing until “The End”. I hope that those of you who have been following the story will still want to come back by then.

A big motivator:

A very good friend of mine emailed me at 11:23 MST this morning to tell me she’d just typed “The End” on the first draft of her first novel. She set a goal, she stuck to it and she did it. Tonight I read it and I really loved it. Naturally, she has some work ahead of her in order to polish it to a high shine, but she did it. Her characters are strong, her writing is elegant and clean, her descriptions are wonderful, her story is compelling and when I got to the end of the story, there was a lump in my throat.

I am very proud of her. She makes me believe I can do it too.

All comments and suggestions are welcome -- particularly with regard to the time line.

Six Things About Meme

My friend Karen tagged me for a meme. Here are the rules:

Link the person who tagged you.
Mention the rules in your blog.
Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.
Tag 6 bloggers by linking them.
Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger's blogs letting them know they've been tagged.

Here are six of my MANY quirks:

1. I’ve never been able to accept anything on faith. I can’t recall ever believing in Santa Claus, although I remember pretending to for quite a while. I was baptized, went to Sunday school and was confirmed, but I never believed in any of it, despite my best efforts. In junior high school, I wrote a term paper called “Psychology and the Belief in a Supreme Being” where I theorized that religion is a historical invention of the people in charge to control the rest of the people with fear of invisible entities. I’m pretty sure my seventh grade English teacher wasn’t quite sure what to do with me.

2. The sound of someone chewing or breathing loudly is so disturbing to me that when I hear it, I have to find something to focus on to block out the sound or I might even find an excuse to leave the room for a few minutes to get away from it. When I was a kid and my sister Leslie and I shared a room, the sound of her making mouth noises after she fell asleep was so aggravating to me that I would actually get up out of my twin bed, walk across to hers and punch her to wake her up and make her stop. Sorry Leslie!

3. I feel very strongly about the proper way to hang a roll of toilet paper, which is obviously where the paper spools over the top of the roll as opposed to coming from underneath. I am so obsessed with this “right” way that I routinely “fix” incorrectly installed rolls of toilet paper when I encounter them. I will do it in other people’s homes and now and then I’ll do it in a restaurant or other public bathroom.

4. I have a terrible fear of poverty and unemployment. I got my first job working in a D’Angelo’s sub shop in Rockland, MA when I was fifteen (I lied and said I was sixteen), and I have never gone a day without a job since. At times I’ve worked two jobs at once and for a few months once I had three jobs. I’ve been a bank teller, Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman, factory worker, short order cook, military member, civil servant, government contractor and technical sales person. Due to my fear of financial insecurity, I stay in jobs much longer than I should. I often wish I might have taken some time off between jobs, rather than finishing one on a Friday and starting the next one on Monday morning. In August, I’ll have been working in my current job for eight years.

5. I have a semi-pathological need for neatness and organization, but the paradox is that I am often messy and disorganized. Consequently, when everything is in its place and I have my schedule straight and my endless to-do lists all written out, I can get an enormous amount accomplished. The other 50% of the time, I am mentally scattered and feel like I can’t get anything done.

6. I believe I have an unusually strong connection with animals and spend an inordinate amount of time in staring contests with my cat and my dog. I am convinced that they know things about me that human beings don’t and I frequently imagine that they’re frustrated at their inability to speak English so they can tell me exactly what they’re thinking.

I know that a number of people have been tagged for this and some people aren’t into the memes, so this is completely voluntary – do it if you want to, or not. I tag: Patti, Ello, Charles, Lana, Shauna, and Larramie.

Next up: What I am figuring out about The Foundling Wheel or lessons learned on why you should never get over 100 pages into a WIP without a premise, or it’s all about plotting stupid, or structure -- don’t leave home without it, or pantsing is cool up until the point where you lose your way (see quirk #5 for further insight).

The Perils of "Pantsing"

Eleven chapters and 28,520 words into my first draft of The Foundling Wheel I have to pause for a moment and share a secret with you.

Sssshhh. Don’t let anyone read over your shoulder.

Okay – are we alone? No, really?

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENS IN CHAPTER TWELVE!!!

I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. I’m taking deep breaths. Om. Seriously, it’s not like I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had a premise and a fairly good idea of how to create what might be an interesting situation. Surely, there is an infinite number of possibilities for where I might transition from the past to the present. I’m just not sure what they are or which to choose.

I opened up a new file and I named it: Chapter Twelve. I typed 52 words and then I stopped.

Something tells me it’s time to step away from the story and find some time to take some long walks or paint a room or go outside and pull some weeds.

Muse, are you there? Muuuuuuuuuse? MUSE!

I know you would never find yourself in this situation. You either outline the whole story, or the story reveals itself bit by bit, getting better and better as you go along. I just know it.

But in case you’ve ever heard of anyone who’s gotten herself into a predicament like this, I’d love to hear how that poor lost soul found her way.

Uncle

Uncle.

Chapter Nine of The Foundling Wheel, my Dickens Challenge experiment in progress is not going to be ready this week. I’ve had too much going on this week to let Tracy and Aaron and Natalie back in to show me what happens and how. The interesting thing is that I have had just as much time to squeeze in the work as I always do. The chapters have been averaging around 2,800 words – but the time isn’t the issue, it’s my inability to shift mental gears. I’ve got part of a rough draft, but not a first draft. I wrote the last chapter I posted on the flight coming back from DC a couple of weeks ago, so I may find the time to do this sooner than I think, but as of right now I’m planning to be back on schedule next week.

Tonight, Scott and I attended a fundraiser for The Pendulum Foundation and an airing of the Frontline Special, “When Kids Get Life”. On January 21^st, I started a new blog called Compassion in Juvenile Sentencing and I’ve been Googling my fingers to the bone, trying to research the issues – if you’re interested, please check it out and email me your thoughts on the blog. There are so many parts and pieces to this issue that trying to address it at all is like trying to boil the ocean.

It was a sobering, but was also a nice experience that gave me a sense of community and brought home the reality that what these families are going through, could happen to anyone. I met several of the parents and family members of people who were convicted of crimes as teenagers and sent to adult prison for life without the possibility of parole. People don’t talk about it much, but most of the parents know that not only will their children die in prison, but they will die while their children are in prison. These mothers and fathers come from all walks of life and they are a group that most people don’t think much about, but they are us. I met a retired Colorado State Representative, the columnist who write a piece in the Denver post in January about Erik Jensen, and a number of young people who heard about the event and who believe that what we’re doing with children in this country is wrong.

Tomorrow, I fly out to Washington, DC and go immediately to meet with a young man who I hope to hire to work with me on my sales team. Tuesday, I’ve got a meeting with a government agency to work out how they’ll purchase the product I sell – and I need to finalize my PowerPoint presentation and email it out to them tonight because I can’t take a laptop into their facility.

Friday we take off for four days in Estes Park with Wes and Nicole Hyde, two of our artist friends and then the following week, I’m flying down to my corporate headquarters for our annual sales meeting. Bonus: It’s in San Antonio and I also have plans to meet Patti from The Patti-O while I’m down there.

I was honored with the Excellent Blog award by Liz Fenwick and there are so many excellent blogs out there that this it’s awfully tough to choose, but I’m going to name five of them that I find excellent: Kristen Spina, Charles Gramlich, Carleen Brice, and Iyan and Egusi Soup. Each of these bloggers has posted about something recently that I especially needed to hear.

My friend Yogamum tagged me with an interesting book-related meme:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)

I Killed Hemingway, by William MCranor Henderson. I just finished it last night and had naturally not shelved it yet. Bill Henderson has a great writing blog and is a participant in the Dickens Challenge.

Find Page 123.

Find the first 5 sentences.
The main character is having a conversation with a young woman about a friend of hers and her odd fear that extraterrestrials are eventually going to come and take her.

Post the next 3 sentences.
Okay – I’m going to cheat here and post an excerpt further down the page because the next three sentences were very short. Call me a cheater if you want.

“Smiling, Valerie sits back and pulls in her legs. All of a sudden I’m noticing a cuddly self-awareness in her movements that I wasn’t picking up on before. I think she’s about to come on to me. But what could possibly be the aphrodisiac? My ineluctable sexual modality?”

Okay, I can’t count either.

I’ll go ahead and tag five more people to do this (probably the only part of the directions I can follow). How about Larramie, Patti, Shauna, Rebecca and Karen. Let’s see if you can follow directions any better than I can.

And although I’ll be out of town for the big day, Tuesday (I believe) is a very big day for Carleen Brice with the release of Orange Mint and Honey and Therese Fowler with the release of Souvenir. Support your fellow blogger authors and tell everyone you know to buy these books!

It’s kind of weird that I’ll only be “off the grid” for a couple of days, but it’s amazing that it feels like I’m getting ready to go on a safari to some no-man’s land and I’m going to miss something terribly important! I’ve thought about our constant connectedness quite a bit and how it impacts what we write. For example, in a story told in the present day, it’s nearly impossible to write a realistic scenario where a character can’t contact someone or be contacted almost immediately. Conversely, when I joined the Air Force in 1980, went through basic training, then technical training and on to my first assignment in England, I was virtually unreachable except by letter. Even when I lived in Germany from 1985 to 1989, I didn’t have a telephone. There was no reason to take on the expense because it was too expensive to call the States or for them to call me (answering machines were also not in common use yet).

So my question is, how do modern means of communicating find their way into your writing – or not? Or, if your writing takes place in the past or in another world, how do the available means of communication factor in? Sometimes I think that the instant communication that’s so prevalent in movies and books provides an unwelcome deus ex machina that makes it harder to stress the characters out and makes things a little too convenient. What do you think?

Blackbird

Since this is one of the songs that plays a small part in the most recent excerpt of my Dickens Challenge piece, I thought I'd post it.

What is it about the Beatles that endures? They recorded music together for less than a decade and announced their break-up 37 years ago; yet, they're an indelible part of our cultural consciousness. When I was three or four years old, my mother bought "Meet the Beatles" and I can remember her playing it on our KLH portable turntable, turning the volume up loud and dancing with my little sister and me in our tiny living room. My parents had a lot of records, but until The Beatles, they were all classical and jazz. I'd almost go so far as to say that The Beatles mark the beginning of my awareness of the world around me.

Were the Beatles a big part of your life?

Dickens Challenge Progress Report

On December 9^th, I posted about Timothy Hallinan’s Dickens Challenge. The idea was to post a chapter a week of a brand new novel as an experiment to knock the creative cobwebs loose. When I posted the announcement about the challenge I had no intention of participating. I don’t write very quickly, I’d only recently started writing every day and I like to edit and revise compulsively.

Within a few days I was swept up in the excitement and less than a week before the Dickens Challenge writers planned to post their first chapters, I decided to join them.

Some interesting things happened to my process once I committed. I didn’t have any ready made story ideas, but I had the basic germ of something I thought I could work with and for two or three days, I brainstormed possibilities. About three days before the first chapter was “due” I started writing it.

The idea of winging it was terrifying. I was self-conscious about posting early draft work on my site. After all, I’d never shared any of my fiction on line and this wasn’t going to be my “A” material. One of the wonderful things about being part of this great online community is that I knew that all of you who stop here regularly would be supportive and that there was probably no better place to take chances.

It was a race to get the first chapter up. I worked pretty hard on the second chapter and really hated it when I posted it, but I didn’t want to miss my “deadline”. Once it was out there I decided it wasn’t nearly as bad as I first thought. And now, I’m actually finished with the third chapter early and will have it up Monday morning.

Some of the loose rules of engagement we’ve been following have been that we’re not going back to revise or rework chapters we’ve posted, and we’re not posting more than one chapter a week.

Having a deadline and committing to it has had a significant impact on my writing process. I suppose I could have given myself deadlines before, but it never occurred to me, even though I’ve always worked well under pressure.

Establishing a unique chapter as the weekly writing goal has been interesting. It has made the weekly goal much more fun to work toward than a word count ever was because it keeps me focused. Posting only once a week makes the need to leave each chapter with some kind of a hook or question even more important than it normally would be.

I literally don’t know what will happen from one chapter to the next, so I can’t say whether or not I’ll really be able to sustain this for the length of an entire book, but no matter what the results, this is proving to be a great experience.

We now have nine Dickens Challengers and you can check out their work at their own sites and also on the Dickens Forum. I’ve got chapters one and two on my sidebar and will continue to post links to each chapter there as we progress.

My fellow Dickens Challengers are:

John Dishon, newly married and newly out of college, is a beginning novelist with special interests in Asian culture and literature, who sees the Challenge as a way of getting one of his ideas for a novel out of his head and into written form. His book is called Country Snow and it can be found at www.johndishon.com

Nadja (NL Gassert) is working on the second book in her gay romantic suspense series set on lush, tropical Guam: When a vengeful STALKER seeks to punish Mason Ward for the sins of his past—and present—the security specialist needs to fight to save himself and those closest to him. You can read her at http://write-experience.blogspot.com/

Timothy Hallinan is a novelist who lives in Los Angeles and Bangkok, Thailand. The Fourth Watcher, which is the next novel in his Bangkok series, will be published in June 2008 by William Morrow. (The first, A Nail Through the Heart, is out now.) His Challenge book, Counterclockwise, can be found at http://www.timothyhallinan.com/blog/

Steve Wylder is an Amtrak ticket agent and freelance writer living in Elkhart, Indiana and Bloomington, Illinois. His most recent published work is “Time Passages: Reflections on the Last Train Home,” in Remember the Rock Magazine. His contribution to the Dickens Challenge is tentatively titled “Things Done and Left Undone” and can be found at : http://ontheslowtrain.blogspot.com/

Wendy Ledger has an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and has taught there as a lecturer of introductory writing. Her work has been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, The East Bay Express, and Music for the Love of It. She has two blogs, http://crookedtune.blogspot.com and http://weledger.typepad.com/pomegranate. Her contribution to the Dickens Challenge, is called “The Untitled Leap,” and can be found at http://weledger.typepad.com/pomegranate.

Cynthia Mueller is a US Army veteran living in Las Vegas, Nevada. After more than 15 years as a technical writer, she’s working on her first novel, Casual Duty, a mystery/thriller set at a remote Army post in the southeastern Arizona mountains. When the bodies of young women start turning up on the training range, Private Bridie Traynor must overcome her fear and lack of experience to help stop a killer before he kills again. Read it at http://anuncappedpen.blogspot.com/

Jennifer Duncan has been writing her first novel for eons. In faith and fear, she accepts this challenge as the search for freedom in the writing process. The two installments of “Waiting for Gauguin” have been posted at her blog ( http://quidite.blogspot.com/ ). Is it a long short story? A novelette? A novella? She doesn’t know. She must write to find out.

Usman is a businessman and writer who lives in Pakistan and has recently completed a book, which is now in revision. His work for the Challenge is a mystery/thriller called Capital Risks. http://reality967.livejournal.com

New chapters will be posted soon and it’s never too late to jump on board. For those of you who’ve taken the time to read the DC chapters, thanks for your encouragement and support!

How do you respond to deadlines? How much “pantsing” are you comfortable with? Are you comfortable with starting to write and trusting that the story will reveal itself, or do you outline and plot it all out first? For the DC writers, what are your thoughts on this experience?