Translated from the English
I’ve signed up for National Novel Writing Month, where I’m contracted with myself to write 50k+ words between Nov’s 1 and 30, copy editing not advised till December.
(Hey, it’s December, kids, and you know what that means–that’s right, December is National Copy Editing Month. Kiss a copy editor you know, but make sure your spouse isn’t watching! Better yet, get to editing your own work. Especially if you wrote a mountain high enough in November.)
for Wordstock is a new project that wants to be written. I’m writing with pen and then will be typing and revising–this turns out to be a more focused and relaxing form, and more portable (there’s no startup time or technical issues for a paper notebook until it’s full). I filled quite a few pages at Wordstock, stopped when I ran out of steam instead of forcing it, then, following an observation given by author Karen Karbo on the topic of how working writers with families can get it done, came at it from a different angle and even a different set of emotions (amazingly freeing on the imagination). There have even been moments of pure giddiness.
I’ve filled quite a few pages in the notebook, with a lot of work to be done but no signs of stopping–and it feels right, the tone, the story, ironically, writing what I know (although there’s a lot left to be learned about what one knows to be able to write about it). And I think it’s unique without being weird, so there may be a market for it–leaving me free to not think about markets till I’m done. (I’ve noticed that the most recognized writers at Wordstock all said they did not think about markets or audiences when they set out to write, they just wrote the story they wanted to tell, and let their publishers fix a genre to it.)
Since I don’t have a writing group to work with, I’m lining up structure to compensate–I have an editor friend to whom I’ll mail my daily draft each day and, if she doesn’t receive it, she’ll call or email and ask for it. She won’t read it–it’s just to hold me accountable to daily deadlines unless we arrange something in advance. I’ll send out chapters for review to a select group of writer friends and to Debby, either in documents or as links to a new private blog on this site.
I won’t start chapters until I’ve written a few scenes that I think are really part of the story and possibly the ending (at least one or two variations of an ending sentence)–endings are important to me, I like writing them, and I like the idea of working toward a fixed point with this project. That’ll be soon, now.
I think it’s safe to talk around it like this without taking energy from the project. I don’t want to curse the project by even releasing any keywords, although I will say it started with an e-mail thread with Vandana, Steve, and Pam, with Pam as the prime goader. (That probably wouldn’t look good on a t-shirt.)
Note: More on Wordstock later–just a few observations worth sharing.
Now select some of those strangers you’re sharing space with and follow them mentally to their destination. What do they do and say on the way? What conflicts do they encounter, if any? What’s the next thing they do? Do they have a destination? Romantic, mundane, romantically mundane? What’s caught in their teeth that they don’t notice yet? Is their right ear deaf and does their left overcompensate? Do their shoes fit? What are they listening to on their music players? What are they reading? Are they reading the same page over and over, their mind elsewhere? Are they self conscious or think people are watching them and thinking about them, imagining all sorts of things? What’s in their pockets (anything precious)?
In a given public situation, especially where you and others are in a enclosed, even confined space, imagine an emergency or disaster (small or large) that requires you all to stay and even work together for period of time you define. There’s no one else, just you and them. Maybe remote contact via cellphones or other devices (outside or within your group), maybe not. Write a list of one or more scenarios. Look around and catalog these fellow travelers, then write character sketches in the context of those scenarios. Avoid cliches, or at least the obvious cliches. Try to avoid heroes and victims.
It could be a restaurant, a dinner with friends, a wedding, a market or store, a library, where you work or go to school. If it’s a store, maybe it’s a mundane location like a supermarket, maybe it’s a sex toy shop. What if it was up to you and the other “perv’s” to save the world? (Yeah, “perv’s” is a judgmental joke here.)
I do this exercise at least once a week during my bus or MAX train commute (and whenever I visit a sex shop), sometimes mentally and sometimes in my notebook. (It makes the sex shop staff think I’m a cop.)
A few days ago, four of my main characters suddenly took a break from the storyline to imagine their future adult selves. Since the interlude probably won’t fit in the novel, I’ll post it here soon. What they imagined revealed more about who they are in the story present. It was a nice surprise.
Writing that sparkles brilliant in the early morning dew, sure to swell the hearts of readers as it has that of the writer, is inevitably precious and should never see high noon. Thank god the late morning me who shows up for the shift change carries a fileting knife.
If the writer David Mitchell comes to town, attend. I went last night to his reading at Powells, a tour stop to promote his latest book, The Thousand Autumns of Jakob de Zoet. I expected a calm and sort of serious and intellectual author, based on the intricacies of structure in his earlier books (I’ve read number9dream, Cloud Atlas, and Black Swan Green) and his careful weaving of historical detail, character, style, and plot.
Instead, we got a skinny, boyish, enthusiastic 41 year old cross between Bertie Wooster, Jeeves, and Neil Gaiman (without the black clothing), in t-shirt and jeans, overly caffeinated, jet lagged, giddy from meeting Ursula Le Guin just prior to the reading (which was packed to overflowing), and my god funny. I called Debby afterward and told her I wished she’d been able to attend–no previous experience with his work was required to enjoy the hell out of the evening. He was also very sweet to a woman with a crying baby, insisting almost desperately that she stay–partially because he loved babies and partially because he missed his own very much.
It was also a lesson in reading performance. He started out slow, a little stuttery (he described himself as a “stuttering English introvert”), but the longer he read, the more he fell into character with believable Dutch and Japanese accents. (He lived in Japan for 8 years and Holland for several years.) He joked that his worst accent was American English and that he sometimes has to speak in caricature to be understood.
By being himself and by charming the audience, he probably does more for his book sales than most PR campaigns.
Of course there were people asking about his writing process, which had him scratching his head, then coming up with practical if not roundabout answers, including a comparison between writing a first novel and losing one’s virginity–where you look back on it and wonder what the fuss was all about. In response to a question about how the structure of his novels have steadily simplified, he described an index of style from Murakami to Marilynne Robinson, from the more clinical and highly structured to “human mud,” and that the story of human mud (relationships and emotional turmoil) did not need or want complex structure. His stories were steadily becoming less about (multidimensional) castles and more about mud.
A few quotes:
He saw Powells as “this great Borgesian City with little outposts of Portland attached.”
“The soul is a verb, not a noun.” Paraphrased from a Japanese character in his latest work.
“Real people’s misery is what novelists eat, really.”
“This cup of tea was kindly made for me about 2 hours ago–it has 2 tea bags in it–it’s like Guinness now.” (followed by smacking his lips)
About research and detail: “Novelists require a magpie mind.”
In summing up part of UKLG’s intro to the revised edition of Left Hand of Darkness, on writing for readers (which he read), he said, “I think this means, the [reader's] Eyeball has an Eardrum.”
He would make a great Dr. Who.
For most of us–I’ll talk for myself–for me, life is a series of false starts with a smaller percentage of completions, most habitual, some enforced, and a very few the result of self discipline.
People often say that 90% of getting the job done is just showing up; implying that once you’ve shown up for the task, personal ethics, peer pressure, or some other common human force will require you to complete your most important work. That’s bullshit. Starting is easy. It’s the extra 10%–and really the last 2 or 1%–that matters, and that is a hell of a gap. Two analogies (aside from “gap”): it’s like driving (or running) down a flat stretch or slope most of your way, then suddenly hitting a 60% incline (or greater). It’s like the ~1.6 % difference in DNA between homo sapiens and bonobos.
Writing is mostly false starts. Ideas are easy to come by. Writers, especially caffeinated writers, are easily excited and full of ideas. I have notebooks and, more recently, many blog entry drafts full of false starts.
Today, right now in fact, my wife Deborah is in surgery having her left thyroid and attached benign mass removed. It’s low risk, common surgery, as surgeries go. (What is it that we do to ourselves, how are we miscoded, that makes thyroid removal or irregularities “common?”). Her ENT doctor (also her surgeon, a youngish man in his late 30′s and not an ancient tree herder) is low key, articulate, experienced, confident, and cautious. And patient–with her, with us as a couple. We know the risk factors he quoted are gross percentages that doctors and medical writers use to generalize the outcome of an extremely complex method for calculating situational risks of surgical success in a few simple comforting words laypeople (and some medical people) can understand. The number of factors that influence a positive or negative outcome make a real a priori assessment of risk almost impossible to describe and acceptance almost an act of faith. So we accepted the generalization and sandbagged it with our feelings about the doctor, his approach, and diagnostic and surgical history, especially with thyroid condition treatment (yes, we checked). That’s good–he’s cutting Deborah’s throat open and wielding a scalpel around nerve bundles, blood vessels, and vocal chords tucked against her thyroid glands.
I admire Deborah more than I can say. She didn’t have a false start. She had the lump identified on discovery and, when it was diagnosed as benign, put a long term plan in place to have it removed, scheduling months ahead around her dragon boat competition, Noah’s start of summer vacation, our family vacations, holidays, and our finances (we’ll be making payments on the deductible for a few years), and folded in her personal health goals dependent on the surgery, including weight loss that’s been hindered by an uncooperative thyroid. Her plan runs on for years. She plans like the ancient Mandarins.
Me, I would have dealt with it immediately or put it off indefinitely until, perhaps, people began to confuse me with Zaphod Beeblebrox (either you get that or you don’t), adding it to my long list of false starts and likely sliding me under the far slope of the risk bell curve where X is time and Y is successful treatment following early action.
That’s what I would have done. In the last few weeks, we’ve practiced a little of that “living in unspoken urgency” that precedes an impending interruption and possible (no matter how unlikely) end: completing key maintenance tasks round the house (from a mundane list most homeowners know), replacing some old kid and cat-worn furniture, taking more day trips with the kids, celebrating our wedding anniversary with a series of dates. We stopped each other in passing more often. Impatient with our cold spring rain, she colored her hair to match the summer sun. Waiting on her in surgery, I’ve had this opportunity to write myself this reminder about false starts. And, if you’ve read this far, inflict it on you.
Could I do this without her–run the house, care for the family, fill her role and mine in taking on the day to day critical tasks that keep our family stable? If anything goes wrong, there’s less room for false starts. If it all goes right, and it almost certainly will, then is there any damn good reason other than habit not to resume life with–not a sense of urgency–but the enhanced need to complete (together and individually), so that living in a way that matters becomes normal?
If you want to exist, show up. If you want to live, and write, then complete the last 1%. And make it matter, however you measure that last word. I know I’m saying this because I’m worried and scared, regardless of the risk assessment. It’s classic for humans to fill the balloon with gas and then let the tank run out, the gas contract, and the balloon to deflate. I’ll need to leave a few reminders for when I backslide. I hope that Deborah’s presence is one. Scraps like this are another.
Postscript: Deborah’s just out of surgery and in recovery, one thyroid lighter. Dr. Kim said it had grown larger since the biopsy and was “sticky”–making the procedure last a bit longer than the scheduled two hours. During surgery, a pathologist ran a routine lab on the larger sample for cancer, with negative results to back up the earlier diagnosis. In a few weeks, Deborah will able to swallow without pain. For the next few days, she has a stack of novels and a couple of detective games for her DS next to the bed, a freezer full of popsicles, a husband with a week of vacation, and two young children who will be happy to see their mom and ready to run their dad happily ragged.
I haven’t written for a week till now. Nothing came to mind worth writing: no story to tell or coerce. I spent two days hiding out in a borrowed copy of the computer game, Dragon Age (not an entirely terrible place to hide). I mowed the lawn (usually, a satisfying task–we have terrain and, in the spring, daffodils that I carefully cut round but not down). At work I wrote confusing e-mail and gave directions I’d rather forget. I scowled–I have a magnificent scowl–if scowls were charming, my scowl would be Cary Grant or William Powell. It was a depressing week–except for the daffodils (and perhaps the animated slaying). I was edgy, hard on people, chalking it up to allergies and minor intestinal crud.
I woke around 4 this morning and thought, that’s it, I’m done before I’ve done it. Might as well die right now, posterity’s already putting double quotes around, “He mowed a nice lawn.” I don’t pray, but in my head I started reaching out for advice. And in the unreal clarity of pre-dawn, a pragmatic voice answered right back: You can write. It didn’t shrug and it didn’t rub my nose in anything. It just said, between the lines, You couldn’t for a bit, and now you can. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Just write. You want permission, call it permission. Just don’t call it late for dinner.
This isn’t about mojo* (which is more of a filterless cigarette or a chic manly body spray than a creative groove). It’s simpler, more like a light switch flicking on. Or a circuit breaker reset. Or a great ZOT! followed by bell chimes. Or a simple gift I’ll finish unwrapping later tonight.
* Also the simian nemesis of Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup, the Powerpuff Girls
Sometimes solutions to writing problems show up unexpectedly. I was reading a chapter in Half The Sky (unless you’re a caveman, read Half The Sky–now–or especially if you’re a caveman, first world or otherwise) about sex trafficking in the slums of Nagpur, where members of the Dalit (Untouchable) class, especially women, have almost no social or legal rights or protection, other than those they create with the support or leadership of social activists. (I won’t go into details–read the book: it’s smart, easy to read, hard to take–even when you’re already aware of its subject matter–and almost impossible to put down.)
I have henchmen characters, the shamblers, in Sea of Tigers whose origin has always been a little vague–one of those problems I knew I’d eventually resolve, although hopefully not with clichés. As I read the chapter described above, a voice–you know the voice–whispered, “The shamblers are Untouchables.” I don’t always trust that voice, even if it’s right–it’s also impetuous, a trait it shares with me. But the whisperer is right. They are Untouchables, although not from a single culture, and their leader organizes and runs them according to her complex (but not opaque) moral agenda. They’re not role models, they’re more privateer than criminal, but they are sympathetic and, in their ragged way, are working for a better world.
The shamblers’ origin wasn’t nagging at me when I read Half The Sky–I hadn’t thought about their origin in months–but it was clear that deeper parts of my creative conscious–that black hole where most of the real work happens and from which things can escape–had not forgotten about them and was actively seeking solutions.
That’s the beauty of eureka–it never gets old, it never stops being a surprise, it’s almost always a gift. Even when it’s a curse.
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