On writing

This is an update on the post: “NaFFWriMo–A flash fiction story, every day of November” from mid-November

Well, I managed to write 30 stories during November 2016, one each day. My goal was to see what it would mean to let raw creation dominate my writing efforts, rather than thinking, researching, overthinking, over-researching.

I enjoyed it. Most days, I was up early and spent about 40 minutes creating a rough germ of a story. Of the 30, maybe 5 excite me. Another 10 or 12 at least have potential. Perhaps 7 or 8 have a beginning, middle, and end. As many as ten proved to go nowhere, and I don’t expect them to turn into something.

My effort had for fuel a list of over 100 story ideas. But stories often just emerged from my head, somehow, or ricocheted off the original idea and went in a new direction. I still value the time I spent making, and the existence of that list, and it has about 70 unused story ideas, some with potential.

Shut up and write

Here are the insights of some great writers I heard at the September, 2013 National Book Festival, in Washington DC. Where I use quote marks, I’ve taken a verbatim, or nearly-verbatim quote. Otherwise, you are seeing my paraphrase of a point the author made.

Don DeLillo

A questioner told DeLillo about sitting with his girlfriend as she read the final chapter of Underworld. On finishing, she said, “What the Hell was that?” DeLillo’s response: “That’s what I said!”

Amity Gaige

“Literature doesn’t have to resolve anything. Raise or open the question, or the contradiction, don’t try to answer them.”

In literature, there aren’t any bad guys or good guys. Let any character be more complex than that.

The unreliable narrator has much to offer in carrying a story.

“The writer is writing a love letter to the reader” a “message in a bottle.”

“You can’t be a writer with a closed heart or a closed mind.”

“I’m always writing, always looking.”

Brad Meltzer

A tiny detail, an observation, a fact from history, yields a “what if” and gives you a story.

“Governments don’t lie, people lie. Figure out why they lie and you’ll get a good story.”

Ayana Mathis

“Transcend the borders of ourselves” via literature

Writing creates a bond with the reader, puts demands on us, gives us certain responsibilities.

“Radical empathy” will fuel the writer’s work.

In writing fiction “you find your way into another human being and it is astounding what happens.”

Khaled Hosseini

“Memory can be a cruel dictator”

“Books have a function and roles beyond what the author intended.”

“We all see different things in a piece of writing.”

The symbols and metaphors in his writing are most of the time happy accidents, not really planned. His writing is an act of discovery. “My books always surprise me.”

Writing is “discovering each character at that moment when they are discovering what they are capable of doing and are not capable of doing.”

On work on his next novel, he’s “flinging stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.”

 

 

In the novel I am crafting, I created a character who is close to my protagonist, and who is in a couple of dozen scenes. His last name, Ross, only gave me a little trouble on his introduction, and in some of the early scenes. The young man is called Ross by his friends, as men often call each other by their last names. I wrote along.

But after the first half or so of the story, my central character spends the weekend at Ross’ house with the Ross family, meeting the Rosses.

This is when the final “s” in his name began to create all sorts of trivial problems for me. When to add the ‘s or just the ‘ ? How to pluralize a name ending is “s”? Trying to write around this has created all sorts of awkwardness and I am going to have to change his name. I will likely forget his name, confuse myself, and add errors along the way. Names matter, and this guy is already Ross to me. It’ll take some getting used to the change.

Names matter. This was a rookie mistake I am rather sure.

One recent morning, I spent a couple of hours doing research for my novel-in-process. The story is set in the 1910s and I am intent on getting the historical details right, though the work is not the kind of historical fiction that includes great historical figures or events. I just want the historical setting, the look, the feel, the details, the places, and so on to be as historically-accurate as possible.

To do that, I often have narrow and specific questions to answer. That recent morning, I was working to get right the immediate environs of the West Philadelphia Station of the Pennsylvania Rail Road in September of 1916. I had assembled maps and descriptions of the rail system, and had charted the route my character could have taken leaving the station and walking to the University of Pennsylvania a few blocks away.

But I wanted to know a little more, and was intent on understanding what kind of neighborhood he passed through, what it was like, what he saw, heard, and smelled as he walked through there. So my need for accuracy included details that would inform me, the writer, but that would barely be in the book at all. In particular, what did the neighborhood smell like? It was at least semi-industrial at the time.

This “squirrel hunt” involved research triggering other research and yet more research. And I was able to find out what small and large industries dotted the route he took. A notable one was the Croft and Allen Chocolate Works–he would have smelled chocolate, probably as soon as he got of his train.

Ultimately, what several hours’ research yielded that is actually in my manuscript will pass in a rush for the reader, but it will be accurate. My reader will know that the smells of chocolate and manure, and paint, and coal gas mingled before Johnny’s nose as he walked south on 34th Street. No more than a few words will be the yield of three hours’ research. That is the reality as it has emerged for me in this work. I am entirely satisfied that that is what several hours of research led to. It’s as it should be.