Write Talk

Maureen McHugh (my yoga hero) on thickening the plot:

We are so hardwired to make assumptions about other people’s interior states, that we make assumptions about all sorts of interior states. We personify stuff. We describe houses as ‘happy’ or ‘gloomy’. We think that the grocery cart has it in for our car door. We think that characters in fiction are people. We can leap to rather complex assumptions about them on the basis of fairly flimsy details. The details that we find most telling tend to be their actions. So in fact, part of character is what I describe them doing, and if I think of situation and describe characters acting in the situation, I am in fact characterizing as much as I am generating plot.

Alan at the LBC on poetry and fiction informing each other:

Which is a roundabout way of saying, I think, that the poetry reading and writing that I was doing post-MFA was beginning to have an effect on my fiction–but not in sense of a specific technique, but rather a mindset–or let’s even call it a position–that I wanted to take with my writing. That I wanted to push myself into real engagement with the world, and how I was situated within it. Sometimes, but not always, that led to a more political type writing; it also, for sure, helped open up the aversion to philosophy that I’d harbored for some time, and began to read philosophers speculatively, in ways that could open up new ways for me of looking at both writing poems or stories. These are obviously tenative baby steps, and when I mention being "comfortable" earlier, I should make it clear that this involved being comfortable with being uncomfortable.

And, finally, David Lubar says it short and sweet:

An insprirational message for any writer who has gone online to procrastinate: There is nothing on the internet as interesting as the book you are supposed to be writing. Get back to work.

It seems like whenever I resolve to post more about writing, it just doesn’t happen.

My packet was actually due this morning — I wrote down the wrong date on the calendar. But it was almost done and I got it in around noon and Tim was, of course, a champ about my space-out, which is only to be expected. This is my fourth packet; I believe the last one I talked about in any detail was number two. That’s because my third packet fictioneering consisted of the kind of crap you occasionally crank out in a novel when you know what happens in thirty pages, but not exactly what happens in the thirty pages you have to write now (I can’t write out of sequence, just can’t). I gave myself a couple of good breadcrumbs in those pages, but it was mostly treading water — some nice, entertaining dialogue, but where was the tension and action?

So, I spent this last month on tension and action. You know, making Actual Things Happen. Letting the antagonist(s) show up for work, etcetera. For a little while, I was feeling as if I hadn’t gotten enough done this month, but that was only until I remembered that I was expecting to have gone on to the next 50 pages or so rather than rework these. In reality, I messed around with a short story (that I still need to get into better shape soon), substantially reworking it, and turned out about 50 pages of mostly brand-new novel. That’s a pretty good month, all told. Especially since I did the PW piece somewhere in there.

I still feel like the slowest writer in the world, but, oh well. These pages are still a little rough, but better (I hope — will find out soon). The thing that turned it around was getting back to my lunchtime hour of writing in the corner at work with my headphones and no wireless. I probably wrote half of the new stuff this week and it was the key stuff. As a concept, I have always hated routine with its associations of boringness. But really, what is it except a rhythm you get into? I’m not advocating writing every day for every writer — I certainly couldn’t manage it forever. But.

It does make a real difference when you show up at the page most days. It really, really does.

Now, to keep doing it. Which should be somewhat easier because I mainly know what happens from here on out — when I stop working as much as I should be it’s because of one of two things: 1)too busy and stressed or 2)consciously or subconsciously hung up on some detail that always turns out to be much easier to solve While Writing Than While Thinking About It. On number one, I just have to keep doing the yoga, the magical, magical yoga and on two, well, I’ll fall down, but I need to remind myself it’s always eventually solved at the keyboard. Or while sleeping.

Now to figure out what the hell I’m submitting for the summer workshop (and write my fingers off on MN so I make my last packet of the semester really count) … something old, something new or something in between?

Anyway, cheers. Good weekend, everybody.

Y’all will remember that making playlists can be a useful outlining and writing tool for me. And I hadn’t made one in awhile, not since way back when the novel had an entirely different name. I prefer writing to certain kinds of songs, so that’s the kind of playlist this one is, not necessarily one I hear as a soundtrack to the novel.

Well, it is, but not in an overt way. There’s way more slow, drawn-out quiet songs on here than there are chapters like that in the novel (I hope), but I like those for thinking and writing. They blend into invisibility easier. So, without further ado, here it is. Remember that my iTunes is all stuff I’ve downloaded since I got my computer last summer, so it’s all from music blogs and albums I’ve bought since then.

Warning also: It’s long. That means I don’t have to keep hitting repeat. Most tracks findable online at the Hype, if you’re intrigued by something.

Hotaru – Kama Aina
She Was a Girl, She Was in Love – Matt Baldwin   
Splintering – Arizona       
The Funeral – Band of Horses   
Mushaboom (Postal Service Remix) – Feist       
Minors – Flying       
My Dad Is Rich – Brian Ross    
This Sentence Will Ruin/Save Your Life – Born Ruffians
True Affection – The Blow       
I Turn My Camera On – Spoon (Live at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley on 8-12-2006)      
Cursed Sleep – Bonnie "Prince" Billy 
Crowd Surf Off A Cliff – Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton      
Hunters Map – Fionn Regan      
My Head Is Blank – François Virot       
Hello Hello Hi – From Bubblegum to Sky       
Rich Man – Ghostland Observatory         
Holy Cow (demo) – Margot & The Nuclear So And Sos      
On a Neck, On a Spit – Grizzly Bear       
Wild is the Wind (Nina Simone Cover) – Cat Power                     
My Heart Is An Apple – Arcade Fire   
I’m Just a Child – Coming Soon         
Bonnie & Clyde – Headset       
Citizens of Tomorrow – Tokyo Police Club   
Gotta D.J. – Hot Springs                   
Strange Desire – The Black Keys       
Winchester Gun – Katamine   
Under the Gun – Kristin Hersh       
Elephant Gun – Beirut       
Vertigo – Kristin Hersh       
Alaska – Camera Obscura       
Everything’s Just Wonderful – Lily Allen                   
We Were Sparkling – My Brightest Diamond       
I Can Get Us Out Of Here – Lucero       
To Go Home – M. Ward   
Volcanoes – Islands       
Dancing Queen – Mantissa                   
Up To My Neck In You – Mark Kozelek       
I Am Not Willing – Moby Grape               
I Was Wrong – The Morning Benders      
Hold On, Hold On – Neko Case   
Breathless – Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds      
Shade And Honey – Sparklehorse       
Something of an End – My Brightest Diamond       
Home As A Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always And Forever – Woodpigeon   
Scientist Girl – North Atlantic       
Cross My Heart, Hope You Die – This Is A Process Of A Still Life 
The Fatal Flaw – Lucinda Kruy & The Sun-Ups   
Song for Augustine Pt. 2 – White Flight       
Celebration Guns – Stars      

The vacationing Carrie has a work in progress meme:

Turn to page 123 in your work-in-progress. (If you haven’t gotten to page 123 yet, then turn to page 23. If you haven’t gotten there yet, then get busy and write page 23.) Count down four sentences and then instead of just the fifth sentence, give us the whole paragraph.

So, here’s page 123, paragraph with sentence five in it:

She issues the cyborg an order. "You. You drive us home."

You’ll note it’s still in present tense because I haven’t gotten that far in the revision yet. (The cyborg is a Secret Service agent, by the way.)

And, since that was so teeny, here’s the paragraph in question from page 23, which has been revised (for now):

It wasn’t like I’d fainted or run a marathon or anything hard, only lost everything I thought I knew about the world. Except that it was falling apart–I was apparently right about that.

Now you.

So, usually I hate maxims and wise little sayings, etcetera ad infinitum, but I make an exception for Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project because I often find myself nodding my head at her posts. The other day, she posted a list of the secrets she’d learned in adulthood that changed her life once she figured them out. One in particular stuck out to me, since I was in a fit of multi-day procrastination:

What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE.

I decided I was going for force myself to put this into practice. The three things that offer the most instant rewards when I do them every day, but which I have the hardest time actually being consistent about are: 1) WRITING, 2) eating and drinking sensibly, and 3) exercising. Pretty basic stuff, right?

Since the spreadsheet for a novel doesn’t actually appeal to me, I made a Word document with some tables in it — because I want some sort of spreadsheet, even if not one specifically for my book. I put the quote from Gretchen at the top and made a table with numbered entries for 1, 2, and 3 with Yes or No check boxes for each. Each day, I have to honestly assess whether I did all three of these things. If the answer is NO, then I don’t get to watch any TV the next day, not even if it’s a Veronica Mars day or an Office day or whatever. (Two days a week, I am allowed to take off from any one of these things without sanction but must still do two of them.)
(More after the cut.)

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Oh Woe: Time & SanctionsRead More »

Ben had a great post the other day about becoming reticent about posting about the writing process before things are done or sold–and about how BORING not talking about it can become. He says:

Like, you know how you don’t, traditionally, tell people about the first trimester of a pregnancy? So that if you’re going to miscarry, you can miscarry in peace?

But not talking about trouble and dismay, dead ends and trashed story beginnings and terror, makes this blog, frankly, duller.

And, well, yeah, I agree. (Um, not that Ben’s blog is dull, because it’s not, but that his point is right on: The possibility of failure is exciting. Always, in life and in fiction.) And I’d intended at one point to move those sorts of posts over to the teeny LJ, but I just feel differently about that space than I do about this one. This is my blog, that’s just an annex. It seems weird to exile my posts about writing, and I never really managed to make such posts over there anyway. (It should be solely for friendslocking and commenting and possibly metrics and whining, I’ve decided. Basically, what it is now.)

I was also thinking about this in trying to decide how going through the MFA program was going to change Shaken & Stirred* (or if it would). And how can it not? I’m writing a lot more, and I’m thinking about writing a huge amount more (both my own and other people’s), so it follows that I’d be posting about how fucking hard it is and what I’m learning more than occasionally. I think this place would get dreary pretty fast, otherwise. Also, it seems like MFA programs in general come in for a lot of casual slamming and my experience so far has been nothing but amazing. So I want to inject some honesty about my own impressions into that sea of carping.

That said, posting about work-in-progress and the Process still feels dangerous, for the reasons Ben describes, but screw it. My lone New Year’s resolution was to stop second-guessing. Feel free to skip these write porn posts if you like; I won’t be offended. Sometimes I think a writer’s process is only interesting to that writer, but then I remember that I actually find other people’s processes endlessly fascinating.

Which brings me to the real topic of this post, or at least the second one:

Revision. (Clicky below to follow.)

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Clues of RevisionRead More »

And it’s even writing-related! I need warm boots for my first MFA residency in Vermont this January. The dynamite Haddayr Copley-Woods pointed out some excellent options at Zappos and I think I’ve narrrowed it down to the following fabulous selections:

crunchy
tall
flowery
gray
these (I keep going back and forth between tusk and rootbeer — possibly too short; opinions requested, but I kinda like these best at the moment) (or here’s a slightly taller version)
taller

Which is where you come in. Preferences? Other candidates? (X-posted at LJ, which is the usual writing nattering spot these days.)

Updated: Thanks to all who played! Cleary, crunchy has won the fantasy boot competition. But the actual cold weather-livers have confirmed my opinion that these or a taller version of these (why is the taller version not available in tusk? gnash) are probably going to work best … especially when wearing pants. I like pants. So I’m gonna try those first and see if they work. Next stop: warmer coat that does not look like a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man costume!

Awhile back I posted a gross yet interesting thing from my Aztec Dance Tunes’ research that I couldn’t use. Here’s another remarkable tidbit of unusableness from an interview with Christopher Faraone about Ancient Greek love magic:

The other thing that struck me about these spells is that they are used by men to inflict great pain and suffering on women, but the men want the pain and suffering to stop when the women arrive at their door. Thus a common formula reads something like this: "Burn, whip, torture the heart, the liver, the body of Ms. X, until she leaps from her home and comes to me, Mr. Y." The assumption of the users of these spells is that these women are not going to make love to them or even look their way unless some supernatural torture is applied to them to force them to come. One of the ideas that I explore in my book is that you have the same kind of assumption and the same application of force in a certain type of marriage in the Greek world called bridal theft, or abduction marriage, a form of kidnap or elopement that was still practiced in Greece and the Balkans even in the 1950s. In more traditional places where a man was interested in a woman and there’s no way for them to get together–maybe she’s from a higher socioeconomic bracket–he might get a bunch of his buddies together and kidnap her. In some cases, however, he might do this with the tacit agreement of her parents, who might be glad to forgo the expense of a wedding or a dowry. There is not enough evidence for me to actually prove this, but I suspect that erotic spells were a kind of supernatural form of abduction marriage. That’s the sociological frame, but when you’re working in the ancient world there are no certainties because we don’t have a lot of good evidence even for this kind of marriage.

Of course, maybe I’ll use some of it in the next one… in which I will definitely be modeling the heroine’s father sorta, kinda on Professor Faraone himself. An idea of great joy.

John Crowley posted about the dangers of writing as if you’re transcribing a movie in your head. In an exchange in the comments, he says:

It may be a skill thing indeed. Writers of the "show-don’t-tell" school have to find a way to tell without seeming to tell. They have given up the deep richness Tom Disch talked about and yet because it’s a necessary and central part of fiction they have to win it back by other means, often at great effort. It’s part of the reason why that directive can produce bad writing, or is at least not unambiguous as a prescription. Wayne Booth famously pointed out that the distinction is hopeless: there is nothing in fiction that is shown and not told — it’s all told.

And later:

If you could make mental movies like Hitchcock made actual ones, you would be in a different mode. And the "layered way" IS the glory of fiction and not available to film; it is the way that books are made as rich as the best films. But many inexperienced writers try to skip that step, proceeding directly form mental image to recounting. "I come in the room. The mangy dog is standing by the refrigerator. His eyes are on me. I hear a noise behind me, and turn. An even mangier dog is standing in the doorway. Turning to the window, I see a face looking in at me. Fear takes over my body, and I run to the left of the mangy dog, past him and out the door. Scenery rushes past me as I flee down the dark street," etc. Even good or potentially good writers who have fallen into this trap and are faced by their own production of stuff of this kind and know it’s no good don’t always see the reason, which I called Mental Movie Transcription.

It’s worth reading the whole thread.

My slush bomb submission (finished pell mell at the last minute) has been sent. Let it be rejected forthwith! (And here’s Charles Coleman Finlay’s running tally of submissions.) And now for photographic evidence (the cat was watching the return of the mailing voyage):