Just after complaining about my ability to write dialogue, I receive an email from a friend who just finished reading a draft of UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO.
Finished the book last week. It's a good story - well written and you're a very good dialogue writer. The dialog between Emma and Milo is excellent. Even though I recognized your own views in a lot of that dialog, I could still picture the conversation happening.
Nice to hear that my hard work may have paid off.
In the recent debate over how many spaces should come after a period, I unequivocally come down on the side of two. In the words of this blog’s author, “Taking the extra space away from a period strips it of its dignity.”
Unfortunately, it appears that there are forces mounting against this belief, including the Associated Press and the much despised MLA:
"Use a single space after the period at the end of a sentence." -- The Associated Press Stylebook
"Because it is increasingly common for papers and manuscripts to be prepared with a single space after all punctuation marks, this spacing is shown in the examples in the MLA Handbook and the MLA Style Manual.”
Global warming and nuclear proliferation have nothing on this vile and dangerous movement to remove the second space after the period. It must be stopped. Please join me in opposition to this insane and unnecessary movement.
Speaking of periods, the iPhone has a glorious feature that allows the user to automatically place a period and a single space after a sentence just by hitting the spacebar twice on the virtual keyboard. While I adore this feature, I’ve found that I text and email so much on my iPhone that I have begun to do this in Microsoft Word, which lacks this feature. So instead of periods after my sentences, I will sometimes find three spaces and no punctuation whatsoever: two spaces from my attempt to activate this iPhone feature plus the extra one I always add in order to have the requisite and appropriate two spaces after a period.
I suddenly find myself hoping that Doubleday agrees with my opinion or I may find my first novel, SOMETHING MISSING, maligned with one space after each period.
I shudder to even consider this possibility.
Each time I sit down in front of the laptop, one of my goals is to craft dialogue that is crisp, well paced, realistic and original.
A daunting task depending upon the day.
I’m much better at this than I used to be. The first draft of SOMETHING MISSING contained almost no dialogue, and though not intentional, I suspect that I was subconsciously drawn to a relatively isolated character like Martin out of fear of having to write any dialogue at all.
Eventually dialogue found its way into the book and my skills and confidence improved considerably, but my first drafts still tend to be littered with overly-dramatic monologues at key moments in the story, and I still have difficulty managing conversations between three or more people. But I’m working hard at improving on these elements as well.
This is why I was so offended by a conversation I overheard in the men’s room at the Bristol Clarion on Saturday night. I was standing in the handicapped stall, changing into my tuxedo in preparation for a wedding that I was about to DJ. As I was removing my clothing from the garment bag, I heard a man enter, and a moment later, another.
The first man, who I will call Bill, was considerably younger than the second, who I will call William. They began their conversation with hearty greetings and it became immediately apparent that the men knew one another well but had not seen one another in quite some time. Bill was recently divorced and works in insurance. William is a retired minister who recently moved to Wethersfield. As I listened, I couldn’t help but be simultaneously surprised and offended by the quality of their conversation. Exchanges between the two included:
Bill: I don’t know if you heard. We got divorced last March. After fourteen years, she just decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore.
William: So sorry to hear that, Bill. But it’s her loss. She let go of a good man. And when you’re ready, just remember: there are many other fish in the sea.
And this:
Bill: Are you preaching anymore?
William: Yes I am. I thought I had retired, but they asked me to handle a few services and now I’m working harder than ever. Who would’ve thought? Ha! Ha! Ha!
Bill: The Lord takes us down mysterious paths. Doesn’t he?
William: He most certainly does.
And this:
William: At least the rain held up until after the ceremony. Right?
Bill: Yes. Thank goodness for that. But it looks like rain tomorrow, too.
William: Really? That’s too bad. I had a church picnic planned.
Bill: Well, you know those weathermen. When was the last time they got something right?
William: You let me know when they finally do!
William and Bill: Ha! Ha! Ha!
I was beside myself. For a moment, I wanted to throw open that stall door and shout, “Are you kidding me? Is this the best you guys can do? My editor would be drawing huge lines through this dialogue! Could you be more boring? Could you be more cliché?”
Time and time again I read that the great writers of dialogue are excellent listeners and professional eavesdroppers, but whenever I take the time to listen in on a conversation, as I did on Saturday night, all I seem to get is drivel.
Then I started to worry. Are most conversations boring and cliché? Is mindless banter about the weather and the use of tired idioms like there are plenty of other fish in the sea more tragically common than I thought?
Worst still, could I also be this boring in real life?
I guess that in the end, all I can hope for is that the dialogue that I write to be more vibrant and entertaining than the dialogue that I hear in restrooms.
Sadly, that might not be so hard after all.
I think it’s important for writers to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Awareness allows the writer to take advantage of his or her strengths while mitigating the weaknesses.
In this spirit, here are my three most prominent strengths and weaknesses as a writer, as I see it.
Unfortunately, it was much easier for me to come up with weaknesses than strengths.
Feel free to add or take away from either list if you have thoughts of your own. I’d be interested in hearing differing opinions.
STRENGTHS
Character development
A bounty of original and unique ideas
Humor
WEAKNESSES
Physical description of characters
Over-emphasis on characterization to the expense of pacing and plot
Effective and realistic dialogue between more than two characters at one time
My agent, Taryn, informed me that after my fourth New York Times bestselling book, I’m allowed to write an entirely character-driven novel without any thought or concern for plot.
This makes Taryn the perfect person to negotiate my next book deal, since it’s clear that she drives a ridiculously hard bargain.
Last week, a student asked me for a lesson on creating strong characters for his fiction, including tips on how to generate the names of characters as well. I tried my best to answer some of his questions and share the process by which I develop characters, but to be honest, I had little to say to the young man. It’s so odd how my own writing process can be such a mystery to me. But like my student, I am incredibly curious to find out how other authors develop and name their characters and will do some investigating on the subject when there is time.
As for me, my characters often begin in some way with someone I know. For example, the character of Cindy Clayton in Something Missing is based upon a real woman named Cindy, whose real last name was taken from a different friend of mine. The Cindy of real life is a teacher in my school and the mother of two who is married to a police officer. The Cindy in Something Missing is also a teacher (different grade level) but she has no children and is married to a contractor. Other than the fact that both husbands are bald, the men that Cindy and her fictional counterpart married have nothing in common at all. And while the real Cindy enjoys a happy and loving marriage, the Cindy in Something Missing does not.
In this way, I often use real people as the foundation of my characters and then slowly begin to manipulate and change them into the characters that belong in my story. I provided the example of Cindy Clayton in this post because she shares an unusual number of similarities with her real-life counterpart, whereas most of my characters eventually become indistinguishable from the real-life person with whom I started. I compare this process to working with clay: rather than starting off with an unformed ball of the stuff, I prefer to begin with a block of clay that has already been molded into the general form of a human being and work from there. This has proven especially useful for me in terms of the physical description of characters, an aspect of writing in which I am quite deficient.
But there are also many times when I find myself beginning with the unformed ball of clay as well. Typically, the more important a character is to my story, the more likely that I began from scratch, whereas minor characters or characters that play smaller roles in the story often have stronger roots in reality. In Something Missing, for example, the character of Laura Green is not based upon anyone I know, nor is Martin’s father. These characters are more central to the story and seemed to have already existed in my mind, whereas a character like Cindy Clayton, who Martin never actually meets, did not.
As for Martin and Milo and now Wyatt, the protagonists in all three of my books, I like to think that they all began as a seed within me, a possibility of something that I could have become had the circumstances of my life been different. They are original and unique and certainly not based upon me in the strictest sense of the word, but they share qualities and experiences with me and represent a part of me that never fully formed.
For the most part, thankfully so.
And as for names, they are quite often plucked from real life. Laura Green has the first name of my high school sweetheart and my wife’s maiden name. Daniel and Sarah Ashley are combinations of former students’ names. But then there are characters like Sophie and Sherman Pearl and Clive Darrow, who seemed to have names from the moment they appeared on the page.
As for the choice of Martin’s name, I’ve written about that before.
For those of you on Twitter, you may be aware of the recent explosion of Twitter stories or novels, sometimes called Twisters, that people are now writing. They are essentially 140-character, self-contained stories, usually amounting to about three or four sentences. They remind me a great deal of haikus, particularly in terms of the turn that these stories usually take in their final sentence. The format seems to lend itself to a two or three sentence set-up with a final sentence of resolution, typically leaning toward humor or tragedy.
A bit Shakespearean, now that I think of it.
Requiring about 120,000 words to complete my own stories, this might not be the ideal form for me, nor does it seem very profitable, but they are oftentimes amusing to read, and I frequently find myself detecting the seed of a longer, more traditional novel within many of them.
If you’re interested in reading some, you can follow Arjun Basu on Twitter. He writes them almost exclusively, and I tend to like a lot of his work.
Here’s my own attempt at a Twister, which I will also post on my own Twitter feed:
May. Christmas lights still blinking. Cheerios in her bowl turned to mush. The milk had spoiled. Mom had been dead for at least five months.
My good friend often said that no one can write a decent book before the age of forty. Life experience, he believes, is required to write well.
I sold my book at the age of 37, three years under my friend’s presumed guideline. Sometimes I think I wrote it out of spite, just to prove the guy wrong.
Spite, I’ve always found, is the best reason to do anything.
I also become annoyed with myself from time to time for waiting so long to write my first novel, assuming that I could’ve done so ten or even fifteen years earlier.
But perhaps my friend is right. Though I have yet to reach the grand old age of forty, I certainly have a great deal of life experience behind me, and maybe this was in fact needed in order for me to be successful.
Guardian columnist John Crace would seem to agree, arguing that novelist and short story writer Jim Ballard’s life experiences before picking up the pen provided him with “a psychological and experiential depth” to his work.
Perhaps the broken home, the betrayal of my step-father, the near-death experiences, the near homelessness, the year I spent living with Jehovah Witnesses and a goat, the armed robbery, the arrest and subsequent trial for a crime I did not commit, and the public attack on my reputation and career have provided me with enough life experience to write successfully.
Perhaps it was good for something after all.
I spent the past week vacationing in Rockport, a seaside town on the north shore of Massachusetts. It’s a delightfully quaint and historic little town, its streets lined with tiny shops, each filled with tons of character and individuality. As we explored the town, dining in the restaurants and stopping in many of the shops, I came to realize that this was exactly the kind of town where I could one day set a story.
My newest novel takes place in the fictional town of Killingworth, Vermont and the protagonist of the story is a man named Wyatt. As my week in Rockport proceeded and I began to get to know the town better, I began thinking about the possibility of transplanting some of these tiny little shops and restaurants into my fictional Vermont town.
They were simply too good to pass up.
With this thought running through my mind, I entered a knickknack shop on our last day in town, planning to purchase a Christmas tree ornament as a souvenir. My wife and I pick up an ornament during each of our vacations as a means of reminiscing about our travels as we decorate our tree each December. The shop immediately appealed to me, with its eclectic collection of ornaments, trinkets, signage, and other odds and ends. An ancient, gold-plated cash register sat atop a high counter, and manning it was an equally ancient gentleman who was teaching a small boy to play dominos. It was just the kind of scene that would fit perfectly into my novel.
After choosing an ornament, I brought it to the counter in order to pay, anxious to see the mechanical cash register at work.
“Hello, sir,” the elderly man said, dropping his dominos in order to ring up my sale. “I was just teaching Wyatt here how to play dominos. A dying art, if you ask me.”
“Did you say Wyatt?” I asked.
“Yes, I did. This is Wyatt. My grandson.”
Wyatt?
Coincidence? Fate? Serendipity?
Weird if nothing else.
As I attempt to settle on a title for my second novel, I am amused by the discovery that a prize is given out annually to the book with the oddest name.
It’s known as The Diagram Prize, named for the information and graphics company where it was born.
This year’s winner: The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais
Runners-up included Curbside Consultation of the Colon, The Large Sieve and Its Applications, Strip and Knit with Style and Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring.
My favorite: A tie between the 1992 winner How to Avoid Huge Ships and the 2006 winner The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.
Interestingly, no prize was awarded in 1987 and 1991. No book, it was determined, had a title odd enough to be worthy of the prize.
While all of the books on the list of winners seem deserving, I would love to see what the winner might be if non-fiction and technical books such as these were excluded from the running. Other than a collection of short stories, every winner on the list appears to come from the realm of nonfiction.
I’d love to see a prize for the oddest title of a novel each year. But I have far too many projects on my plate to organize such a prize, though I must admit that the idea is appealing.
Hopefully my second novel, currently titled UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, would not be in contention.
Last week I accompanied my wife to a Passover Seder at the home of some of her old friends. I didn’t know many of the people in attendance, but the host knew about the upcoming publication of SOMETHING MISSING and introduced me as a writer, prompting much discussion about books, writing and the publishing industry.
At one point I found myself talking to a psychologist who was explaining to me that recent brain research seems to indicate that writers and other creative types have neural pathways in their brains that differ from most people, and that these pathways allow for the formation of broader, more complex connections that spurn creativity.
I listened and nodded a lot, unsure what to think of the guy.
He then proceeded to tell me that this fairly unusual brain structure is a double-edged sword in that many writers, artists and similarly creative individuals experience higher rates of mental illness, disassociative disorders and suicide as a result of these complex pathways.
“I’d better be on guard,” I said with a grin. “I wouldn’t want mental illness sneaking up on me in the middle of a book.”
“Don’t worry,” my new friend suggested. “These problems typically arise in people who lack strong family connections or well-established religious beliefs. Or in people who have suffered severe trauma at some point in their lives. You have nothing to worry about.”
It’s odd that this man would assume so much.
In terms of strong family connections, my mother is dead, I haven’t seen my father, brother or step-siblings in years, and other than my sister and an aunt who I see a couple times a year, I have no relationship with any family members whatsoever.
In terms of well-established religious beliefs, I am a former Protestant who currently has no religious convictions whatsoever. I consider myself a secular humanist on the best of days.
And in terms of an incidents of severe trauma, I’ve had two near death experiences, been robbed at knife point and gunpoint, and experiences a decade-long bout with post-traumatic stress disorder until finally receiving treatment.
In the view of this guy, I’m a mental illness waiting to happen.
Who knew that writing could be so dangerous?
I’ve spent the last week working on revising my second book using notes from my agent, Taryn, who, by the way, recently launched her own literary agency.
It took my all of two seconds to decide to stick with Taryn. While be forever grateful to Sandy Dykstra and her agency for signing me on, it was Taryn who plucked my manuscript from the slush pile and became its biggest fan. Ever since she read my query letter and the first three chapters of SOMETHING MISSING, she has been an amazing partner, collaborator, negotiator, and friend. She means the world to me.
Taryn provided me with about eight pages of notes on my latest manuscript, and as always, I agreed with most of her suggestions. But as I revise, switching back from the manuscript to the document of notes, I find myself engaging in a dialogue with Taryn, and though she isn’t actually sitting with me (we have yet to actually meet in person) I am often speaking to a quasi-fictional version of her out loud.
Sometimes I’m praising her for an ingenious suggestion.
Other times I’m basking in the glow of a compliment.
On occasion, I’m rolling my eyes, knowing that she’s right in what she has suggested but also knowing how much re-writing will be required if I decide to go along with her (which I usually do).
Not often, but sometimes, I find myself yelling at Taryn, reacting to a suggestion or comment that contains a kernel of truth that I do not want to hear.
“Who cares what my main character looks like?”
“So what if every female character had a pony-tail? It’s the only damn hairstyle I know!”
“How dare you say that this section of dialogue is cheesy? You’re cheesy! These lines are fine!”
“I don’t care if this anecdote doesn’t actually fit into the storyline! I think it’s funny and so should you!”
There have been times when my wife asks me to whom I am speaking, and I'm forced to admit that I'm that I'm talking to myself, even though I'm really talking to Taryn. .
And I can’t help but wonder if the same thing happens on Taryn’s end:
“What is wrong with this guy? It’s page 187 and I don’t know what his main character looks like!”
“Another pony-tail? What is this? A cut-and-paste novel?”
“What is going on? He follows up this page of crisp, clean dialogue with a block of syrupy monologue? Is he blind? Has he lost his ear for his character’s voice? What was this idiot thinking?”
“What is this supposed to be? This anecdote is not at all amusing and it doesn’t fit the damn story? Did he cut-and-paste this from his next book by mistake?”
I’m sure that Taryn is much nicer than me when reacting to my manuscripts.
At least I hope she is.
I was speaking to a friend who said that his head is full of stories but he lacks the chops to get them down on paper, lamenting his lack of writing skill. He wondered aloud if someone would be willing to write them down for him and craft them into books, at which point his wife said, “You’re not a writer. You’re just source material.”
She was right. While I wouldn’t want to ghost write his books, I’d be happy to steal anything he might have and use it in a book.
I’m always advising my students to keep their eyes open for interesting and unique moments in life that might eventually find their way into a story, and these often come from the ideas and stories of other people. For me, it’s always the odd, quirky, or inexplicable moments that capture my eye, and I can often be seen recording these moments into my iPhone voice recorder for later transcription. These ideas might sit on the page for months or years, waiting to find a spot in a novel or even a blog post, but I treasure each one, waiting for the moment when I can bring them to life and spin them in my own special way.
Three ideas that were recently added to my idea document include:
A student told me about how her grandfather makes his wife sit in the back of the car so that the dog can sit in the front seat.
At a bridal show, I recently met a Justice of the Peace who is also a used car salesman. He was passing out his dealership business cards to prospective brides and grooms, simply adding the letters JP after his name. In lieu of a brochure or pamphlet on his services, he was tearing out a one-page story on the use of JP’s in wedding services from a bridal magazine. The article did not mention him specifically but featured a photograph of him officiating a wedding ceremony. He was scribbling his name, address and phone number to this page and describing it as his literature on the business. I could base an entire book on this guy and might do so.
A girl who vaguely knows my sister told her boss that she was dead after my sister was hit by a car crossing the highway on foot about two years ago. The accident was real, but my sister survived her 200-foot flight across the pavement (barely), but the girl in question knew that a report of the accident had been in the local paper, listing my sister in critical condition. She simply advanced that condition from critical to expired a couple days later and asked for two weeks off (paid) in order to grieve for my injured but very much alive sister. Months later, she attempted to take more paid leave, explaining that Christmas was approaching and her grief for her lost friend was returning with the holiday season and the thought of my sister’s two daughters celebrating without a mother. Suspicious, the girl’s place of business tracked down my sister, called her, and confirmed that she was still alive, thus foiling the girl’s plan for a paid Christmas vacation and resulting in her termination.
All three of these stories will likely find their way into a novel someday.
Here’s a pet peeve of mine: Dream sequences in books, film or television.
I can’t stand it when I am forced to suffer through a character’s dream, particularly when it occurs in a novel. Though many writers seem to employ this tactic, I cannot imagine why. It strikes me as a lazy, less-than-subtle means of opening up a character’s mind to the reader. It almost always fails to advance the plot in any meaningful way and serves only to fill pages with material that should have been presented in a more clever and thoughtful way.
Right?
Jonathan Black wrote a piece in the American Spectator about the Acknowledgements page (or pages) in novels, declaring that “The Acknowledgments page cannot make a bad book better, but it can ruin a good one.”
How utterly ridiculous.
First off, if Black truly believes that an Acknowledgements page can ruin a good book, why would he ever read one? It’s not like the acknowledgements are essential to the story. Just skip the page or two and preserve the sanctity and potential greatness of the book.
But my problem with the piece is that it is built upon cliché, myth and otherwise ludicrous assumptions. To Black’s credit, he refrains from expressing such stodgy, overly-analytical, psycho-babble notions, but he manages to find people to speak these silly aphorisms for him.
Like Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly:
"It used to be a writer spent 20 years alone in a room and came out with an ink-stained manuscript and made a deal with Bennett Cerf. Now it's publishing by committee. Everything's sales and marketing and publicity."
Oh, c’mon, Ms. Nelson. Are we really going to continue to perpetuate the image of the lonely, tortured writer, laboring away for decades under a single, 40-watt bulb in order to produce a single masterpiece? My first book took two years to write and I thought that was quite a stretch of time. Writers profoundly better than I have done even better.
Edith Wharton, in the most productive period of her life, published The Valley of Decision in 1902, Sanctuary in 1903, House of Mirth in 1905 and Madame de Treymes and The Fruit of the Tree in 1907. No twenty year old ink-stained manuscripts for her.
Or how about F. Scott Fitzgerald, who published This Side of Paradise in1920, The Beautiful and Damned in 1922, and The Great Gatsby in 1925? Are we to criticize Fitzgerald for failing to spend the prescribed twenty years alone in a room?
And even if this image of the writer were once the case, Ms. Nelson, is there anything wrong with a writer producing a novel in less than twenty years, and (God forbid) with the help of others? Am I expected to believe that Dickens didn’t receive at least a few comments from friends and colleagues as Great Expectations was being serialized in All the Year Round? Or that Wharton didn’t pass on her manuscripts to friends such as Henry James, Sinclair Lewis or Jean Cocteau at least once in her life? Does the input, support and encouragement of friends, family or fellow writers somehow corrupt or otherwise invalidate the writing process?
Or how about the quote from Dan Menaker:
"Writing fiction is such a self-important business. It's not like you know a lot about elevators and someone suggested you write a book. You write a novel unbidden, because you believe people ought to know how you see things. Acknowledgments are an attempt to disavow that narcissism. They're a pose to mask egomania."
If Menaker is speaking about himself, that would be fine, but to offer up this generality about the thousands of writers who pen acknowledgements each year is just silly. While I may possess a streak of narcissism, and perhaps even a dash of egomania, I make no attempt to disavow these qualities. There are people who may find these qualities offensive, but they have helped me to stand in the face of the harshest of criticism and outright lies and continue to smile.
And there are also days when I fear that I am a complete fraud, a fortunate scribbler who managed to fool an entire publishing house into buying my book but will likely never do so again. To imply that writers are all one thing and none of another is nonsense. Menaker’s quote may be clever and well-phrased, but it is also overly convenient for Black’s piece while not accurately measuring the essence of every writer, or dare I say most writers. Narcissism or not, the acknowledgements in my book are not meant to mask my belief that I have important things to say. They are simply expressions of gratitude and a willingness to recognize that even someone with important things to say sometimes needs to the support of others in order to make people listen.
But my greatest complaint about the piece is Black’s sarcastic snipe at the author who acknowledges his or her spouse. Perhaps Black is not married and does not understand the value of a spouse who supports your work. Perhaps he is married but does not enjoy the same kind of partnership that my wife and I share. Perhaps he is one of those writers who prefers to toil away in solitude for decades before emerging with a completed manuscript. Perhaps his wife is invaluable to the writing process but does not desire any “syrupy praise.” But mocking the importance of some spouses, and my wife in particular, in the writing process for the sake of a laugh or a spat of highbrowed sarcasm, seems cheap and simpleminded.
How does one presume to understand the extent of a marital relationship?
In the interest of full discloser, I dedicated SOMETHING MISSING to my wife and acknowledged her in the Acknowledgements, which ran two pages and I will post under Other Writing. But I did not do so in hopes of currying favor with her or because she was “toting laundry and hunting for typos.” I thanked my wife because she deserved it. The story was better because of the questions she asked, the comments she made, and the encouragement that she offered.
To be honest, I did most of the laundry in our home until my daughter was born.
Black asks the question: Isn't writing supposed to be a grim and lonely pursuit?
This is perhaps the most ridiculous comment of the entire piece, but still, I will attempt to answer it. In the movies, yes, it seems that writers are a lonely and grim bunch. In books it’s much the same. Writers are tortured and suffering souls. But in real life, writers are human beings, surprisingly capable of a wide range of emotions. There are lonely days and grim days but there are also days when the words seem to be leaping from your fingers, and these are days of sheer delight. Perhaps it’s true that Acknowledgement pages have grown unnecessarily long in recent years, and perhaps some of these acknowledgements ring of corniness and insincerity, but this has nothing to do with the stereotypes and clichés that litter Black’s piece.
Writers are not lonely, grim, ink-stained scribblers. At least not all of us. Some of us appreciate a kind word, a sharp critique, or the suggestion of a title from a friend or family member. We understand the value of these people in our writing lives and wish to express as much.
We’re not writing these acknowledgements for you, Mr. Black. We are writing to the people who have made are stories better.
The Guardian published a story in which they asked a variety of authors if they thought that writing was a joy or a chore, in response to Colm Toibin’s recent admonition that he does not like writing despite his enormous success.
I found it quite interesting to discover how these authors feel about their craft and was pleased to see that most did not find writing to be as dispirited as Toibin.
For me, writing is about three-quarters joy and one quarter pain. In the rare instance that I am stuck somewhere in my novel, unsure of where the story is supposed to go, my entire existence becomes focused on how I should proceed. I begin to doubt if the story has any merit and wonder if I’ll ever find my way through the morass that has suddenly risen up before me. I start to think about the thousands of words that I have already written and how they all might be for naught.
I recently encountered one of these moments when I handed over the first chapter of my new book to my wife for her critique. While she didn’t dislike the beginning of my story, I knew immediately that I had missed the mark but could not figure out why. It took me more than a week to identify the problem and uncover the solution, and I am still pecking away at it, ensuring that the revision that I hand to her later today is just right.
Stephen King, in his book On Writing, describes encountering a similar circumstance when writing The Stand. He had hit a juncture in the book where the story had seemed to run itself out, even though it was not finished. He recollects the feeling of near panic, fearing that he had just lost his novel.
In these times, writing is not fun, and I begin doubting if I’m even qualified to tell these stories.
There’s also the matter of time. Being an elementary school teacher and the owner of a DJ company who is trying like hell to keep up with a one-month old baby, finding the time for writing is becoming more and more difficult, and I fear that the longer I am away from a story, the less effective I am at telling it. This search for time and concern over its loss has recently felt like an albatross hanging on my neck, causing me great consternation.
Then there are the moments of waiting that make me batty. I finish a chapter or complete a book and then sit back while waiting for people who I adore and respect to cast judgment on my work. As much as I may love a story or a character, it is the opinions of my friends, my agent, and most of all, my wife, that matter most. Waiting for them to give me the proverbial thumbs up or thumbs down on my work is an awful, endless procession of miserable impatience.
But other than these negatives, writing is a joy for me. Settling on an idea, allowing it to grow on its own, and getting to know my characters in much the same way a reader would is thrilling, rewarding, and a dream come true. I still find it remarkable that anyone would want to pay me for stuff I made up in my head but am immensely gratified and honored that they do.
A new idea for a book has lodged itself in my head, and it’s now competing for space with the idea that I am already pursuing.
Is it crazy to consider writing two books simultaneously?
I have a friend named Charles who is a biophysicist, a professor, a songwriter, a musician (guitar, bagpipes, and God knows what else), a poet, and a writer of short fiction. He reads James Joyce and Jose Saramago for fun. He’s been known to brew his own beer.
He’s not a great poker player, but he’s probably not trying very hard.
Charles is also responsible for the title of SOMETHING MISSING. Though he doesn’t know it yet, he also makes a brief appearance as a character in MILO, a novel that perhaps he will assign a title as well.
Charles is a methodical writer, often making me feel like a lazy, good-for-nothing vomiter of words (though I have not actually vomited since 1983). He has worked for weeks on a single sentence, ensuring that it is just right. When I ask him how a story is progressing, he says things like, “I’ve not four sentences now!”
Yesterday I sent him the first sentence to my new book, THE CHICKEN SHACK. I’m quite proud of this collection of words. I actually wrote the sentence a few weeks ago when the seed to this story was first planted in my mind, but I was waiting to finish MILO before committing it to digital print. Charles made one suggestion but otherwise approved of the sentence as well.
The story is now hundred, perhaps thousands, of sentences long. I’ll be finished with the first chapter by the end of today. But here is the first, which includes Charles’s minor revision:
They tried not to receive corpses on the same day as chicken, but since it was impossible to predict when a logger might fall from his bucket truck and break his neck, the two deliveries occasionally coincided.
In SOMETHING MISSING, the first sentence was designed to bring the reader immediately into the precision and minutia of Martin Railsback, whose life is predicated on mountains of precise minutia.
In MILO, the first sentence describes the catalyst of the entire book. It is the moment upon which the entire story hinges.
Both are sentences in which the protagonist is taking relatively ordinary action that ultimately leads to extraordinary results. The first line of THE CHICKEN SHACK is entirely different.
But hopefully as successful.
Just for the record, my wife's favorite first line comes from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. It is:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
I have no definite favorite, though I am partial to the first line of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE:
All this happened, more or less.
Also, FARENHEIT 451:
It was a pleasure to burn.
Lastly, CHARLOTTE'S WEB:
Where's Papa going with that axe?
Anyone want to chime in with your favorites?
More good news.
Have you seen the animated film Ratatouille?
In this movie, a famous chef proclaims his belief that everyone can cook, much to the chagrin of the professional chefs of the world. They take offense to the implication that a chef does not need proper training in order to prepare excellent food, and that anyone with a passion and a kitchen can produce great dishes. The rat in the film, Remy, sets out to prove that this famous chef, who is now dead, was right.
I have adopted a similar stance when it comes to writing: Anyone can write.
I believe that everyone has a story to share with the world, and it's only by picking up a pen or placing one's fingers onto a keyboard that a story can be told. Perhaps not every person will end up as a published author in the traditional sense of the word, but there is no harm in writing down your story and seeing where it might take you.
At worst you end up with a story that you can share with friends and family. At best, you have a story that the world would like to hear.
I'm preached this belief to my elementary school students for the past ten years, as well as several of my friends who I believe should be writing everyday. Two in particular frustrate me for their lack of effort or enthusiasm. They are intelligent, articulate writers who each possess a keen sense of observation and a unique viewpoint on the world. Every day that they do not write is a waste of their talent, and I have told them as much on many occasions.
Yesterday, I learned that both have begun to take my advice.
One of my friends, whose name is Shep, began writing what might someday be his first of many novels. He wrote to tell me that after much badgering by me on the previous night, he finally sat down and wrote for an hour.
I was so excited.
Later that same day, another friend of mine sent me a short story that she had recently written and asked me to read and critique. Again, this friend admitted that a serendipitously coordinated guilt trip by me and another played a role in her decision to share the story with me.
Perhaps one day you will be fortunate enough to read their work as well.