A book I recommend for any writer

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I'm almost always reading at least one book about writing. (Right now I'm dipping into three.) Recently I read The Forest for the Trees by N.Y. agent Betsy Lerner, and I immediately wanted to send it on to people I knew who were seriously writing, especially those who had yet to publish. This is a very good book to prepare a writer for the world of publishing. It is also a very good book for a published writer. I learned quite a bit from it, and I've been in the publishing world for decades.

Here are some of the quotes I highlighted:

It wasn’t until I began working with writers that I understood Truman Capote’s brilliant assessment of the writer’s dilemma: “When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip.”

There is no stage of the writing process that doesn’t challenge every aspect of a writer’s personality.

I promise not to repeat the most common piece of writing advice: Write what you know. As far as I’m concerned, writers have very little choice in what they write.

I like that especially.

For most writers, writing is a love-hate affair.

Sigh...

People who try to figure out what’s hot and recreate it are as close to delusional as you can get. 

Exactly.

There comes a time when you have to let go of the New Yorker fantasy in service of just getting on with it. 

You mean I'm not the only one who had delusions of being published in the New Yorker?

The ambivalent writer confuses procrastination with research.

Ouch!

Writing demands that you keep at bay the demons insisting that you are not worthy or that your ideas are ridiculous or that your command of the language is insufficient. 

This is not always easy to do.

I could go on and on, but I'll end with one more:

...the degree of one’s perseverance is the best predictor of success. 

No truer words.

(Betsy Lerner also has a wonderful website and blog.)

Happy Holidays, all!

♥♥♥
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Construction site revision

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Years ago, I came upon a slender little book titled My Editor, by M.B. Goffstein. It's a poem of few lines, with simple, geometric illustrations, describing the process of working with an editor on revision.

I loved it so much I bought three, thinking of people I knew who might love it too. Now I only have one.

I've been thinking of it a lot, of late, going though the revision of The Next Novel, working with The Taskmaster (editor). The poem evokes the rewriting process as a construction site:

I begin to dig again, and lose myself in the excavation. 

Of course the new creation isn't quite right at first, and his editor sends him back to revise.

... my building worries me. It's stone cold, and I cry, "Why not have left it wobbly?"

There is a feeling of integrity in the early drafts that is initially lost in revising, until, with time, a new integrity emerges.

Take it apart, and suddenly see how it goes. 

This book is a treasure, and greatly heartening.



*****
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Caroline Leavitt on Butler's "From Where You Dream"

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I'm a collector of books on writing, but few "speak" so clearly as Robert Olen Butler's FROM WHERE YOU DREAM. I've mentioned his book a number of times on this blog. It is within reach of my computer now, so I was pleased to see novelist Caroline Leavitt write about it on her blog today: here.

I've a flurry of things to do today. In addition to family and office matters, here's my writing-related to-do list. It's rather long, considering that I'm not, momentarily, actually writing.

1. Print out manuscript (in preparation for first read-through on return from Christmas holiday): this takes longer than one would think.
   
2. Finish writing newsletter — prepare to send it out soon!
3. Revise biography and send it with photo to San Miguel Writers' Conference for their brochure.
4. Set up character profiles. 

Of all of these, the last is the most important, yet it is the most likely to be pushed aside. Also neglected: research!

More from "Immediate Fiction"

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Jerry Cleaver, author of Immediate Fiction, notes emphatically that emotion defines a character:

Who does she love & hate?
How does she love & hate?

It's in this realm of emotion that I'm most withholding in my fiction. It has to be dragged out of me every time! This time, I'm going to try to overdo it, at least at the start.

This quote from Immediate Fiction is spot on:

If you go too far out with your story, you can always cut back. An old writing rule says: The best way to find out what's enough is to do too much.

I need to keep this in mind this summer while writing the first draft. No brakes!

Want/obstacle/action

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Yesterday I finished the outline — or "blueprint" — of The End of Magic, working title of The Next Novel. Sixty pages! (Although there is lots of white space.) Twenty drafts! (Although many of these involved minor changes.)

Now it's time to move back to our country home and get to work. I've allowed myself four months to write the first draft.

One of the things I've enjoyed about our two-month stay in Toronto is use of the Toronto Public Library system. It's so easy to request a book on-line, so easy to pick it up. Jennifer Glossip, a wonderful fiction editor I've known for decades, shared with me the list of good books on fiction she gives out at workshops. A number of these titles were my favorites, as well, but several I hadn't heard of ... and so I've been having a look at some of them.

The one book that I gobbled up, covering it with post-it notes, was Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver. It had an immediate impact on my outline. What do my characters want? What is the obstacle? What action results?

Want/obstacle/action ...

These need to be evident on every page.

What I love about reading a book like this is that it sets off ideas, sparking like mad. I'll be posting more about this book in days to come.

101 Habits (last installment): On showing up at the office

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The most lasting "habit" I think I'll keep for myself from The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters has to do with how I think of my work.

At some point — I can't find the spot — one of the writers said that writing is scary, and that it helps temper the fear by thinking that you're doing it for money. I think there is something in that.

The other suggestion that I'm going to keep in mind is that when I finish the first draft of The Next Novel, I could work on another project. I could go back to puzzling over the plot of my abandoned novel on La Grande Mademoiselle, or develop any number of other stories that I would love to write. It's important to put a draft aside for a long period of time, but that doesn't mean everything comes to a halt.

Another screenwriter advised thinking of your writing as a corporation: you're expected to show up and get to work. These practical thoughts have stayed with me. Lately, I've been telling myself, "I had a good day at the office today." Or, "I have to get back to the office."

So: if I'm not here, it's because I'm at the office.

101 Habits (continued): on character

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On character:

"Another reason why scripts fail is that the lead character's need, motivation, or goal is often not clear. You have to know what they want, no matter what it is or how goofy it is. And if you don't care about what they want, you won't be emotionally invested in the character." [Amy Holden Jones, page 124]

This type of question always makes me wonder: what does my character want? I think she wants out of poverty, out of the incessant struggle for survival. I think she longs frivolity and impractical gew-gaws. I just now realized this.

On raising the stakes:

You want the stakes, as the hero perceives them, to be as high as possible. ... You want your characters to be at risk and have things of great importance to them to be at stake. [Michael Schiffer, page 135]

I immediately made a change to my outline after reading this.

The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, part II

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I've finished reading The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters: I got a lot out of it. I'd love to see such a book on highly successful novelists, but in spite of the differences between novelists and screenwriters, there is a lot to be learned here.

I love this quote on procrastinating:

"I know when I'm about to write when I become a neat freak and start rearranging the pens and pencils around ... " [Steven DeSouza, page 95]

There was quite a bit on outlining before writing, which supports the process I'm using now.

"I try to build the story as cleanly as I can, make sure the structure works, then I write it really badly, as fast as I can ... " [Akiva Goldsman, page 107]

This same scriptwriter also had this to say:

"Unfortunately, people believe that their first thing should be great. Writing is like anything else. You're not supposed to write a page and expect it to be good. You have to write a thousand bad pages to get to that one good page." [Akiva Goldsman, page 123]

I feel that with the first two (unpublished) novels I wrote I didn't understand that one, two or even three drafts were not enough. Often, beginning writers don't give themselves enough time.

"The reality is that in order to be good at it, it will probably take you as long as any other profession to master the craft." [Michael Schiffer, page 125]

More tomorrow ...

A Writer's Sunday

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I spent most of today revising, yet again, the "outline" of The Next Novel, which I'm now calling The End of Magic. I do love a rainy Sunday: it's a good excuse to putter in the office all day. I got out for a bit to plant potatoes and peas, but that was pretty much it.

And reading, of course. I'm browsing the books I left out last October, one on the breakfast counter (Pen on Fire), another on the bedside table (John Truby's The Anatomy of Story). I finished The Gathering by Anne Enright, and The Shortest Distance Between You and a Published Book by Susan Page, who I know in San Miguel.

I've been hearing good things about The Shortest Distance for some time, so I'm happy to have been able to read it, at last. It didn't disappoint. It's a very down-to-earth book on getting published — the nuts and bolts of it. I recommend this book. I learned some important things from it.

I especially liked the chapter titled "Procrastination" — for obvious reasons! Susan writes about "acedia" (uh-see-dee-uh), the painfully slow movements required to begin a new project (or to return to a project after a break). It's simply part of the creative process. Procrastination is resistance to doing something. Acedia is a slow giving into it, a letting go of resistance. My own feeling is that resistance is the first step in the creative process, and (now that I have this new word) acedia is the second. I'm sort of in-between the two right now.

I'm pleased with my "outline," but there are things about it that certainly aren't right. I want to tighten, hone. While it was printing, I picked up Truby's The Anatomy of Story (peppered with post-it note thoughts about my abandoned novel about La Grande Mademoiselle: my ghost!). I've yet to get beyond the second chapter, "Premise," because it is so dense: there is so much to try to work out: What is the premise of the novel? What are the possibilities? What is the designing principle? What is the conflict? The basic action? The character change? The moral choice?

So Truby's book is peppered once again with post-it notes, but on The End of Magic. Working through these questions -- or rather, trying to work through them -- I begin to question my entire outline. I'm ready to revise it even as the last page slides out of the printer.

Enough! (For today.)

The writer as athlete

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I finished, yesterday, Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami is the astonishing Japanese author (of Kafka on the Shore and many other titles). This is a book is a memoir of sorts, a reflection on running and writing, and the relationship between them. (He runs to keep fit for writing.) Of course it was the writing parts I found the most interesting, although I enjoyed learning about running as well.

Here are some lines that I found noteworthy:

"Writers who are blessed with inborn talent can freely write novels no matter what they do—or don't do. Like water from a natural spring, the sentences just well up, and with little or no effort these writers can complete a work. ... Unfortunately, that category wouldn't include me. ... I have to pound the rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of creativity. To write a novel I have to drive myself hard physically and use a lot of time and effort. Every time I begin a new novel, I have to dredge out another new, deep hole." [page 43]

That's what I'm doing now: dredging.

"Writing novels, to me, is basically a kind of manual labor. Writing itself is mental labor, but finishing an entire book is closer to manual labor. ... The whole process—sitting at your desk, focusing your mind like a Lazar beam, imagining something out of a blank horizon, creating a story, selecting the right words, one by one, keeping the whole flow of the story on track—requires far more energy, over a period of time, that most people ever imagine." [page 79]

This is one reason it gets harder to write a novel as one ages. It's simply hard work!

"You might not move your body around, but there's grueling, dynamic labor going on inside you. Everybody uses their mind when they think. But a writer puts on an outfit called narrative and thinks with his entire being; and for the novelist that process requires putting into play all your physical reserve, often to the point of overexertion." [page 80]

The last four months of working on Mistress of the Sun I watched my diet, avoided staying out late, and abstained from all alcohol. I felt like an athlete in training. I suspect that the depression that follows the high of finishing has to do with an extreme fatigue.

Sometimes Murakami refers to writing as a toxin.

"Basically I agree with the view that writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a like of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place. (Please excuse the strange analogy: with a fugu fish, the tastiest part is the portion near the poison—this might be something similar to what I'm getting at.) No matter how you spin it, this isn't a healthy activity." [page 96]

I first read this passage with resistance, but I think there is truth in it. Inevitably, writing a novel entails digging deep, and often into septic layers. I think a writer must be prepared for this, and have a plan in place for self-protection.

Donald Maass podcast

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I know I've mentioned before how I love to listen to Barbara DeMarco-Barrett's Writers on Writing podcasts when I'm doing the dishes, or sitting in an airport, or driving long distances. During this last long bout of travel (the last for a bit, I pray!), I enjoyed a number, but one in particular stood out for me: an interview with NY literary agent Donald Maass. I've read Donald Maass' book Writing the Breakout Novel -- and I wish I had it here with me now in my office in Mexico, because there are a number of interesting things he has to say in it.

Before writing the book, Maass made a systematic study of the novels that made the NYT bestseller list, wishing to identify what it was about a novel that made it outstandingly popular. I'm not attempting to be a Danielle Steels or Stephenie Meyer, but I do appreciate insights into what makes a story compulsively addictive. I like when a book has me deeply hooked: I love it ... and that's what I'm after.

Two things stood out in this particular interview for me:

One, that a compelling main character should be deeply conflicted right from the start: he or she must want two things that cannot co-exist.

The other thing he had to say that gave me thought was not so much about writing as about promotion: his belief that promotion and publicity isn't what sells a book — that what sells a book is the book itself. I'd like to believe that, but I'm not convinced. I don't think it's an accident that the Josephine B. Trilogy sold very well in the countries that invested a great deal in promotion (and conversely).

Letter to an aspiring writer

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I got an email today from a young woman who passionately wishes to be a writer. Here was my advice to her:

I urge you to follow your dream. Everyone feels insecure about writing, even the greatest.

I advise you to read books on writing. It's also important to read — constantly — for pleasure: this should be the writing you aspire to, and by reading, you develop an "inner ear."

I also advise you to write every day, even if for only for 15-30 minutes. Novels can be written in this way. Writing never really pays, and it's best not to put that burden on it. Find a way, rather, to work it into your normal life.

But whatever you do, persevere. Understand that there is an important difference between being a writer, and being published. You can be a writer now. It often takes decades to be published. Do it for the love of it.

Writing by dictation

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I just started to use my MacSpeech Dictate program and I have to say I'm impressed. I am standing away from the computer talking into a microphone, not even looking at the screen. In a few minutes I will go over and see what in fact has appeared.

I can't believe it. It's perfect.

So now what? I wish I had some research notes to test. Okay. I'll talk about Elizabeth George's book Write Away.

I like this book: she details the professional nuts and bolts of her way of writing a novel. She's candid and honest and not too abstract.

For example, she writes:

"To give myself a sense of direction, I do two things. I create a step outline. I then expand it to a running plot outline."

I find this interesting. Right now, I'm creating (in brief) scene ideas which I will, at some point, arrange in the order I think they might unfold in my novel. I am a long way from the making-order stage, however. Right now I just imagining scenes, one upon another. Soon, I will begin to think about ordering these scenes.

"Every scene contains something within it that triggers a scene that follows."

She can type her step outline on a single sheet of paper, and it doesn't take her longer than a few hours. It's confessions like this that make me feel like a wimp!

However, having now read the entire book, I understand how much preparation she's done before creating the step outline:

1. Idea: basically, the story described in one long paragraph. I find this one paragraph impossible to write. I'm still looking for the idea, no doubt casting my net too wide.

2. Research: once she has an story idea sketched out, she begins her research, which is extensive and well-organized (I am impressed).

3. List of characters: she lists all the possible characters in the novel, giving careful thought to their names.

4. Detailed description of each character: her documents describing each character are extensive — three or four single-spaced pages long. I always mean to do this, but never do.

5. Develop settings: layout, photos, maps, etc.

6. And then — the step outline. She aims for 10 to 15 causally-related events, noted down in abbreviated form.

I thought: okay, I'll give it a try — see if I can come up with a short list of linked events. But no way: it's hard. She's a thriller writer, so that surely must help.

More on this to come.

(I'm finishing this post in a café in Berkeley. I just stocked up on my new favourite pen — a bold Uni-ball Gel Impact RT — and my long-time favourite pencil, Twist-Erase with a .9 lead. Plus a lovely grid-lined spiral notebook, one of the many I buy and never use. This is the store I remember buying stacks of tiny cards for French vocabulary as a pre-teen. It now has a sign on the door, "This is a soft building" — a warning in case of an earthquake.)

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I'm in California now, in the basement apartment of my father's house. Tomorrow is my sister's wedding: the Big Day. Yesterday I got my toes and nails done, and took Dad to a barber to get trimmed up. Today I'll find a card, which as any woman knows is a time-consuming task, necessitating reading every card on the rack. The card store I have in mind is close to two of my favorite clothing-shopping stores, so will I be able to resist? (Doubtful.) A very good bookstore used to be in this block too, but the last time I was here, it seemed on last legs. If it's still there, I'll browse there, too.

I've been reading Elizabeth George's Write Away, and I like it. I love the quotes from her journals, her fears and struggles. She has a very matter-of-fact way of putting things. I'm almost finished with it, in part because I don't read the excerpted examples included (never have, never will).
Here are some quotes.

"...your setting should be a place that you want to know about, a place you are interesting in exploring, a place you want to describe, a place that resonates with you ... " [24]

"What you should keep in mind is that anything in a character's environment can serve as an indicator of his internal landscape if you use it wisely." [38]

She makes it clear that you need conflict to have a story, and that events must occur as the conflict unfolds, and that these events "must be organized with an emphasis on causality." (Like dominoes.)

Which made me ask: what is the central conflict in my story?

I like this especially:

"Skilled writers know that what you're supposed to do is continually open up your story. You do this by creating scenes in which you lay down — but do not answer — dramatic questions. You do this by making sure that if you do answer a dramatic question in a scene as the novel progresses, you've already laid down another. You do this by making partial disclosures instead of giving out all the information you possess." [43]

In other words, the writer is a tease.

On character (which is where she begins):

"I believe it's critical to know the basic need each character has in his life because the denial of that need leads directly to the second area that I consider crucial in developing a character. This is his pathological maneuver. Better said, it's what the character does when he's under stress. The supreme stress he's ever under, by the way, is having his efforts to meets his core need thwarted." [50]

"The final important area that I include in my analysis is to decide what the character wants in the novel. (I make this decision about each scene as well, giving an agenda to each character in a scene.) [52]

More on voice and plot to come ...

And no, I haven't been getting to my scenes. Thinking of them, but coming up short.

(Having written that, I wrote the five.)

Books on writing

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I love reading books about writing, especially when I’m somewhat stuck, or balky. Yesterday I took a load of unwanted books to The Bookstore in Golden Lake, run by my writing friend Jenifer McVaugh. In exchange, I brought home a load of new books, a number of them books on writing. The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri is a classic; a number of people have mentioned it. The Practice of Poetry by Behn & Twichell is a book that Jenifer loaned me, a book she recommends, and one I’m looking forward to exploring. The Sound of Paper; Starting from Scratch by Julia Cameron looked interesting. I got a great deal out of her book The Artist’s Way, but haven’t connected with any of her newer books. This one might suit; I don’t know. I'm skimming it — I'm a little annoyed, already, by her predictable list assignments, but, as is always the case with a book by a writer on writing, finding bits that resonate.

The book I started reading right away was (heh) Write Away by Elizabeth George. I like it. It’s nudging me to do things I know I should be doing, like character analysis.

“ . . . you cannot bring a character to life in a book unless he or she is alive before the book begins.”

I’ve always been a bit lazy about this, I confess, allowing a character’s eccentricities to emerge during the writing, or during a 3rd or 4th draft emergency analysis.

I like this about setting:

“Your setting should be a place that you want to know about, a place you are interested in exploring, a place you want to describe . . . "

And further:

"But it's tough to make a place come to life unless you've been there . . . "

I find this to be true, and it's a key reason for my research trips. But it's not only the sensual experience of a place that matters — for me it's the deep conviction that something happened, and that it happened here, on this spot.

One thing I like especially is that George heads each chapter with an excerpt from her writing diary.

"I am filled with doubts. Why isn't Steinbeck filled with doubts?"

Yet Steinbeck was filled with doubts while writing Grapes of Wrath. I suspect that every writer is filled with doubt, most of the time.

As for today: after writing in my journal that I was entirely dry in the scene-creation department, I wrote out (in brief) my allotted 5 scenes. Which pleases me greatly.

And then, on discovering that my reader mailbox was again 3-weeks deep, answered emails: one to the German translator of Mistress of the Sun, whose glowing email I treasure. One to a woman seeking a relative who may be related to Josephine (I get emails of this sort regularly) — I need to do a little research to answer. Several heart-warming letters from fans.

And now: taxes, which I hope to finish today. Beyond that, perhaps a walk on my horse, some research recording, some Q&As to work on, preparation for my European research trip (coming up).

Beginning is hard

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Beginning is hard. I remind myself that resistance is the first stage of writing. This morning I described — in only a sentence or two or three — possible scenes in The Next Novel. I wrote these out on 3x5 index cards. I intentionally held to five scenes — five cards: a modest beginning. I want to start something I'll keep up. If I keep to five scenes a day, every day, I'll increase it.

This is the first stage of the "dream-storming" method described by Robert Olen Butler in Chapter 5, "The Writer Prepares," of From Where You Dream; The Process of Writing Fiction. He cautions against writing a scene out fully, even if you can hear the voices, see it clearly. (I'm not sure I have the discipline not to write it out, especially dialogue.) He says only to give one sensual detail, one small thing to hook the scene — a smell, a sound, a feel.

I read this book over a year ago, and the procedure appealed to me. I resolved that I would try it for The Next Novel. It's not out-lining, but it's not just jumping in, either. It's a fluid visualization technique that's somewhere between the two. I'm hoping, in this way, to have a clearer idea of the novel as a whole before I begin to write it next spring. (I'm hoping not to take eight years to write The Next Novel.) Of course once I begin to write, the entire thing will change, derail, veer off in some unexpected direction. And then one goes back to the cards.

I'm a sucker for systems, anything to offer a step-ladder out of the swamp. I'll try this; it appeals to me.

How to begin

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A reader writes that she wants to write a book. She has a story in mind, but she doesn't know how to begin.

How to begin? This is a hard question to answer, but I'm going to try ... in part because this is where I am myself right now: back at the beginning.

I could start by saying something about focusing on the story — dreaming about it, walking with it — not even thinking about that looming scary thing: a novel. Anne Lamott wrote about this in Bird by Bird, an excellent book on just this thing — beginning — and I would suggest reading this book first above all the others. Another good book at this point is Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. She talks about the importance of dreaming, as does Butler, in From Where You Dream.

But for me, when I was beginning, I wanted a "how-to" system. I needed to know the nuts and bolts. I wanted steps to follow. "Dreaming," would not have helped me then. I had the good fortune to find a book that outlined the procedure of writing a novel, aptly named How to Write a Novel. The author described how to write down thoughts on index cards, and then sort the cards, grouping them into scenes. This I could do. A novel: no. A stack of index cards: yes. That book unfortunately appears to be out of print, but another author, Ken Atchity, describes a similar system in A Writer's Time. It gave me what I needed to write my first novel.

And now? Now I'm back to dreaming. I'm typing my thoughts onto the computer this time, but soon, I plan, I will transfer each onto an index card and begin anew.

On dream-storming

At a certain point, one must begin...again. Looking back, writing a novel seems an impossible thing to have done, and an even more impossible thing to do again. Frankly, it's hard on life and on the body. One must forsake things — pleasures often. "Write novel" is a space- and time-sucking up thing to have on the To Do list, and it will park itself at the top of that list for years. So reluctance and its sister resistance sets in. However, as pointed out by Susan Shaughnessy in Walking on Alligators (a wonderful book of meditations for writers), resistance is the first stage. In other words: I'm already writing.

About two years ago I read a book on writing that included a card technique for this initial process that appealed to me: From Where you Dream, by Robert Olen Butler.

It's Chapter 5 that interests me, "A Writer Prepares": which is exactly what I need to do. The technique is "dream-storming": investing 6 to 12 weeks or so (i.e. serious time) just dreaming up scenes, a good 200 or so. The next step is put them on cards, spread them out and begin to find the shape of the story.

What I like about this approach is that as you write, and when the story begins not to work (like immediately), you stop and re-dream it, so the plot is not a fixture, but an organic thing that keeps changing. Which, of course, it does anyway, but I'd like not to spend eight years trying to sort it out this time. What I'd like is to dream the story this year and write it the next, second and third drafts the year following.

But first, I must actually begin.