I’m going on vacation for a couple of weeks. Every year my family celebrates with great hope the extreme low point of the year at the Winter Solstice—like everyone else, I guess—and then takes the ten days between that and New Year’s Eve as time out of time, that gap in the Gregorian calendar between the Solstice and the New Year it inaugurates. We like to pretend there is no calendar, there is no schedule, there is, in fact, no movement of time. We will also be overhauling this website. . .at any rate, that’s the plan.
This year my husband’s starting his vacation tomorrow, so, hey! We’re making it a party. I expect to spend my days by the fire with my feet up eating chocolate. (Are you listening, sweetheart?) I will, of course, be checking email, so if you’re a client or considering becoming a client, you will still be able to reach me.
But I would not abandon you readers! Oh, no. I would never do that. Because I know that while I’m kicking back in my rocking chair with a cat on my lap, re-reading Ivy Compton-Burnett’s A Family and A Fortune (for that wonderful uncle Dudley and the dry, witty sniping about how the youngest brother Aubrey is “different” that the older brothers use to drive their mother crazy), you will all be hunched over your desks in your freezing garrets type-type-typing away at your beloved fiction, working on your craft, sweating over your plots, living with your characters in that ephemeral otherworld in which fiction writers prefer to live.
Glimmer Train, in case you don’t know, is a couple of sisters in Portland who run a quarterly literary journal of some serious repute. They’ve been doing this for almost twenty years now, and they’ve expanded into online submissions, monthly contests, and a writer’s magazine, Writers Ask.
I hope this tides you over.
Happy holidays! Watch for a new look for the website in the New Year, along with a co-interview with literary agent extraordinaire and author Donald Maass and independent editor Lisa Rector-Maass, a brand-new Free Edit project like the HOOKS project last fall, and hopefully even a brilliant way to bring back the old posts, which we’ve been mulling over lately. Yes, there is a very real possibility! Stay tuned—
Now, I don’t mind chopping wood. And I don’t care if the money’s no good. You take what you need, and you leave the rest. —Robbie Robertson, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”
Let’s talk about inspiration.
My husband and I are selling a house right now. (And on our knees mighty grateful for it, too, I might add.) This means we’re also emptying a garage.
I’m guessing you all know that winter is not the best time of year to empty a garage, particularly a garage full of all the stuff you didn’t know what to do with in your old house, which you’ve now been living quite happily without for two years since you left it all behind. My first impulse was to foist it off on the new owners.
My husband said, “Do they want that?” and I said, “No more than I do. But it’s the price of buying my house, dammit.”
Boy, five years ago I could have gotten away with it, too.
But instead we spent this weekend hauling all kinds of crap we don’t need from our old house—where we had a garage to store it in—to our new house—where we do not. It’s all in the kitchen right now. And I spent yesterday sorting other crap out of our storeroom to make room for it all.
I found an extremely heavy cardboard box labeled “Sweaters” and, acting on my writer’s unerring instinct for detail, checked inside to find out why we used to wear sweaters made of lead.
I found not sweaters but my old late-70s/early-80s issues of Rolling Stone magazine, the ones Alan Rinzler suggested I use to finance my son’s college education. The top one had a cover photo of Caroline of Monaco, looking remarkably like Carrie Fisher looking about twelve, in a tiara. The second one had a black-&-white cover photo of John Belushi, looking suitably somber.
The Belushi issue. I stopped sorting and sat down. . .
This fund is a 501(c)(3) charitable trust made up of donations from writers like you to help freelance nonfiction writers in times of acute financial distress. As you can see from the stories, writers who receive funds (not huge, either) generally qualify through not just one financial disaster but two—double-whammies. We’re talking about serious medical conditions like cancer draining a freelance professional’s savings and preventing them from working to support themself.
Do you believe in writing? in writers? in being grateful when you’re on the end that gets to give and not the one that has to ask?
I’ve mentioned before my addiction to the Hugh Laurie characterization of P.G. Wodehouse’s quintessential dingaling, Bertie Wooster. Bertie is everything hopelessly one-sided about the British upper classes: white, male, rich, privileged, and a complete brainless gorm. He’s melodramatic, narcissistic, and self-glamorizing to the point of insanity. He’s also, fortunately, good-hearted, talkative, impulsive, surrounded by people even more harebrained than himself, and driven relentlessly by something he calls the Code of the Woosters—which simply means Wodehouse put him into predicaments and refused to let him take the sensible way out.
And Hugh Laurie has given Bertie the flamboyant mannerisms and puzzled jolliness he needed to round him out perfectly. In Laurie’s hands Bertie suffers a constant, unending series of facial expressions, ranging from baffled to appalled to triumphant and everything in between—even when he’s not talking, his wonderfully-mobile face simply never rests.
My husband has gotten so fond of Laurie’s Bertie that it’s causing hitherto unknown resources of genius to surface in him. He announced recently he’s discovered how to read Moby Dick without getting bogged down in Melville’s nineteenth-century loquacity.
“Picture Bertie dragging on a gasper,” my husband says, “while holding captive one Jeeves standing in the doorway with a trayful of empty glasses enduring the moments until he can retire to the kitchen. Sometimes I mentally put in an ‘I see, sir,’ or ‘Quite so, sir.’”
And damned if it doesn’t work! Suddenly Melville takes on a whole new personality. Talk about your layering!
So today we’re linking to Moby Dick, to be read as told by Bertie Wooster.
A friend and I decided this morning that I should write a ghost story for the holiday season, a sort of Christmas Carol where Scrooge turns out to be right.
Let’s talk today about premise.
We were going on and on about how much we just love converting our living rooms into forests every year, with all the attendant falling branches and moldy puddles and mountains of composting needles being ground into carpets and other things we don’t normally leave lying around outside. And how fun it is to try to thread electric cords with little light bulbs through all of that, especially when you spend half an hour at it getting poked and prodded by the needles and branches and risking breaking the fragile little bulbs into a thousand cutting shards in your carpet, and then you’re done and it turns out none of the bulbs work. And hanging breakables from the aforementioned falling branches. And either climbing on teetering chairs to get a star on top of the tree and falling into it or putting a child up on your shoulders so they can fall into it. And your kids getting wound up on sugar from all the extra cookies and candy-canes, so even if they don’t fall into the tree you can enjoy the piercing, hysterical shrieks as they imagine they’re just about to. And the pointless fights among adults engendered by the raw nerves from listening to all the piercing shrieks.
And getting to listen to nothing but Christmas carols for eight weeks, on top of it all.
Yeah, a ghost story.
Now, because I’ve been writing a lot lately about plot and how to construct one—hook, conflicts, faux resolution, climax—I thought right away, What will be my hook? My conflicts? My climax? And I had some ideas, which I had not yet written down, when I got deeply embroiled in sorting out the logic behind the story. Because ghost stories, being fantasy, need rules made up for them, and this involves a lot of logic.
It’s bad enough when you write a realistic story and let illogical things happen—as we all know, real life does not have to make sense, but fiction always does. But you simply can’t get away with writing a fantasy story and letting illogical things happen. This is dues ex machina in the worst way, and as soon as the reader stops believing in your logic they stop caring about your story.
The real beauty of all stories—but especially fantasy and sci fi—is the logic behind them. Not only do you put your characters through hell, but you make sure the reader can’t possibly see any way to avoid it. . .
Let’s explicate that piece of Carson McCullers dialog. There’s tons to learn from it, but today we’ll just focus on conflicting agendas and how she rings such a realistic, poignant note by keeping her characters firmly and clearly grounded in their separate agendas.
Doctor Copeland:
“I will not be hurried. Just let me be. Kindly allow me to sit in peace a moment.”. . .How could he leave when there was neither beginning nor end, neither truth nor purpose in his thoughts?. . .“Why have you done this to me?” he asked bitterly. “You know full well that I do not want to leave. You pressed me into saying yes when I was in no fit condition to make a decision. I wish to remain where I have always been, and you know it. . .I will not [recover elsewhere]. But I would have recovered here. I know it. Pshaw! Say what you will. You only come before me like a gnat. I know what I wish and will not be pestered into doing that which is wrong. I have always managed, and I could manage yet. Pshaw! You come before me like a gnat. And I ignore you. I am sorry. Forgive me, Daughter. I wish [you could be the one going], too. I just feel that I have failed. I do not know [how]. Just leave me be, Daughter. Just let me sit here in peace. . .”
He is crystal clear: his agenda is to stay in his home. His hidden agenda is to fight his feeling of failure. Failure over what?
Portia:
“Father, us not trying to rush you. But it time now to get gone from here.—I done all I can. He determined to sit there till he good and ready to leave.—[Father,] I reckon I going to have to dress you like a baby. Here your shoes and socks. Let me take off your bedroom shoes and put them on. We got to get gone from here pretty soon. What I done to you now? Listen to you carry on!” Portia said angrily. “You done grumbled so much that I nearly worn out. You done fumed and fussed so that I right shamed for you. Father, less us quit this here argument. Us have all done the best we know how. It entirely the best plan for you to go on out with Grandpapa and Hamilton and Buddy. They going to take good care of you and you going to get well. Who you think could pay the note on this here house? How you think us could feed you? Who you think could take care of you here? You just trying to be contrary. [Saying you ignore me] certainly is a nice way to talk to me while I trying to put on your shoes and socks. Course you sorry. Course we both sorry. Us can’t afford to quarrel. And besides, once we get you settled on the farm you going to like it. They got the prettiest vegetable garden I ever seen. Make my mouth slobber to think about it. And chickens and two breed sows and eighteen peach trees. You going to be crazy about it there. I sure do wish it was me could get a chance to go. How come you so determined to grieve? How you mean you done failed?”
She is also crystal clear: her agenda is to get him to safety. Her hidden agenda is to fight the inevitable change happening to them. What change?
Do you see how both characters’ speech is so single-minded it’s practically monologue? Only in a few places do they respond to each other. Even Doctor Copeland’s first question, “Why have you done this to me?” is rhetorical. He doesn’t really want an answer, as you can tell if you continue reading what he went on to say after that.
For the bulk of the conversation, Doctor Copeland only responds to Portia in order disagree with her and tell her he’s not listening to her. Then he goes right on with his own agenda.
For the bulk of the conversation, Portia only responds to try to change Doctor Copeland’s mind, to counter his arguments (to disagree back). However, it upsets her more to stick to her agenda than it upsets him to stick to his. She isn’t passive and bitter, as he is. She’s angry. And she’s having a terrible time controlling herself—she swings back and forth between conciliatory and angry, back and forth, without equilibrium.
So let’s talk some more about Point-Of-View. Because this is quite a sticky widget.
The simplest, commonest, most straight-forward POV is third-person limited. And there’s a really good reason for this.
Because it WORKS.
Once upon a time it was first-person limited.
However, first-person got kind of beat to death over the millenia, so now we use third-person for everything but the most specific situations. True, it’s not as immediate and intimate as first-person, but it does have the benefit of allowing the reader to feel they’re in the room with the protagonist themself, going through the protagonist’s experiences alongside them, rather than having to do it all from inside the protagonist’s own head.
Fortunately, keeping the aspect limited rather than omniscient also optimizes immediacy and intimacy. . .
NaNoWriMo has come and gone, and there are now millions more written words in the world than there were a month ago. Aspiring writers all over America—all over the planet—are sitting in front of their masterpieces wondering what they have to to do to them before they can start querying agents.
How do you know when you’re done?
A client asked me this recently, saying, “I write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and every time I think I’m finally finished it turns out I have to rewrite again. This can’t be how Stephen King does it.”
Here’s the short answer: You’re done when your editor tells you you’re done. That’s how Stephen King does it.
Here’s the long answer: training, practice, and time. Truman Capote recommended a year between rewrites. A year? Yes, a year.
How much patience do you have?
The way professional writers (you know them—they’re the ones agents and publishers ACCEPT) do it is:
1) Plot. Come up with a truly gripping story.
What would be an amazing thing for someone to do? Hunt a vicious white whale across the seven seas? Ride a raft down the Mississippi with a runaway slave? Help an escaped convict, in terror of your life, when you’re only seven years old?
AND. . .what would be another amazing thing that could happen at the same time? The whale hates your guts and is determined to kill you? Your raft is highjacked by a couple of confidence tricksters? You’re hired by an insane old woman to help her “educate” a wealthy girl to hate poor boys?
And how could these two stories finally collide in a shower of fireworks? Against all odds, you actually FIND the whale? Your partner, the runaway slave, is “sold” by the confidence tricksters? You come into money from a mysterious benefactor—the escaped convict from long ago—which enables you to impress the young woman you’ve grown up loving?
2) Character. Spend approximately ninety-nine years locked in a small windowless room daydreaming and writing notes and backstory and scenes about your protagonist and main characters. Go outside and write down everything interesting you see about everyone in the world. Give your characters paralyzing internal conflicts—two desperate needs they can’t possibly satisfy simultaneously—along with a hellfire-&-brimstone motivation to satisfy them. Then give them a time limit, and make it short. Not only MUST they satisfy these opposing needs, they must do it NOW.
3) Language. Spend another ninety-nine years reading voraciously only the best literature and studying and practicing incessantly the art of constructing beautiful, simple, straight-forward sentences full of telling details (and only the telling ones!) in a steady, reassuring rhythm to rock the reader into a state of hypnosis that prevents them from seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, or even tasting anything in the real world around them. Then learn how to shock them with sentence construction and when and why and where.
4) Editing. Learn to wrap your legs around the back of your head and do the Charleston, which is prerequisite to the extraordinary feat of getting enough distance from your own writing to be able to edit it objectively.
5) Patience. And wait for the years to do their work on you. Because all of this takes time, lots and lots and lots and lots of time, time to well up from your subconscious, to get out of your fingers onto a page, to sink into the writing-skills part of your brain, to become an aspect of your very personality. Fiction writing isn’t something you spend a few years earning a degree and then just go get a job in, like real paying careers. It’s something that takes your entire life to grow into.
That’s how you find out when you’re done.
OR.
There is one alternative.
Instead, go find another writer who already knows how to come up with gripping plots, complex characters, and driving internal conflicts and is willing to help you. Someone who already knows how to write simple, straight-forward sentences in a hypnotic rhythm and can identify the beauty and hidden strength in yours. Someone who not only knows how to do it, but knows how to teach, guide, and mentor others. Someone who’s already completely objective about your work, even without the Charleston. . .
Find a really great editor. And let them tell you when you’re done.
I can hear you now: but how could this be? What possible motivation could someone really great have to make room for you on their schedule right away (when there are so many professional writers out there, who also need editors) and not charge you the moon and the stars?
Well, someone has to be one of their early clients in this phase of their career. Really great editors come to freelance work from previous writing careers, and they all have to start freelancing somewhere. Someone has to be the one who gets in on the ground-floor before their schedules extend into the distance and the rates go up to the standards set by other editors who have been freelancing for longer (or who just set higher rates).
That someone could be you.
You know how publishing writers say their success is a combination of determination, patience, and being in the right place at the right time?
The actual writing is what you live for. —Raymond Chandler
Let’s talk about plotting and Point-Of-View.
Carson McCullers was only twenty-three when she published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, her classic story of the fragility of human connection—nearly a child prodigy.
Within the amorphous struggle to understand life, as portrayed through WAY more protagonists than most novels can handle, McCullers’ structure is of necessity complex but crystalline. . .
This week we’re linking to an excerpt from a novel by Millicent Dillon, A Version of Love.
I know who Dillon is because in 1995 I stumbled across her biography of Jane Bowles in a bookshop in lower Fillmore in San Francisco, A Little Original Sin, introducing me to the extraordinary, baffling, intriguing world of Jane, ever since one of my favorite writers. In the process of researching her biography, Dillon got to know Jane’s husband, the writer Paul Bowles, quite well and eventually wrote a biography of him, too: You Are Not I. Dillon went on to edit the collected letters of Jane, Out in the World (the bulk of them “agonizers” to Paul, as they traveled extensively and often separately throughout their lives, while maintaining an extremely close marriage) and The Viking Portable of Paul and Jane Bowles.
NOT ONLY THAT. But Dillon is an award-winning fiction author herself. She has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a resident writer at Yaddo and won the O’ Henry Award five times. Her novel Harry Gold was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2000.
AND. I have been having a long, luxurious, protracted conversation with her for months now about Jane Bowles, during which she’s commented periodically about her work on her latest novel, which she’s been working on for five years. She just finished it. Take note: you heard it first here.
So I’m recommending that all aspiring writers take a good, hard look at these early chapters of A Version of Love. Notice what she puts in. Notice what she leaves out. Notice the telling details, the significance of the dialog, the exposition that exists only to say something she couldn’t have said any other way.
Most of all, notice the polish. Dillon is a craftsperson of the highest order. This work of hers—in its deceptively simple, meticulous, factual tracking of characters through experience—is the essence of literature.
Short story author Scott Warrender is a Mentoring Program client. I have done full Copy, Line, & Developmental Editing on a number of short stories for him, the first of which was his poignant fictional memoir of Africa, ''The Boy With the Newsprint Kite,'' now published in the Foundling Review.
Clients’ Books
Bhaichand Patel is the author of two nonfiction books: Chasing the Good Life (Penguin Books India, October, 2006), and Happy Hours (Penguin Books India, October, 2009). I edited Patel's debut novel, When the Streets Were Cold and Dark.
I've edited a number of nonfictionessays for my friend Lucia Orth. (Many years ago, my contribution to Baby Jesus Pawn Shop was simply a peer critique and participation in a standing ovation.)
The poet Chris Ryan is the author of The Bible of Animal Feet (Farfalla Press, 2007). He has recent stories in Pank, Anemone Sidecar, and A Cappella Zoo. I edited Ryan's novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him on his debut novel Heliophobia and WIP Pogue.
