Jennifer R. Hubbard's Blog, page 49

Lessons from early work

I've caught up with my blog comments on previous posts, some of which I hadn't seen until today. (I do appreciate comments and try to respond to all of them.)

I've mentioned that I have been cleaning out boxes of old writing, keeping some stories and discarding others.

The materials I'm discarding are those that just didn't work (most of which were rewritten later and better). Here are some examples of pointless details I included in early stories:
"She chattered on about the family while I packed and got my change ready for the bus."
"I put stronger light bulbs in the lamps ..."

This is what I mean when I say, "Skip the boring parts."

But by far the biggest flaw I'm noticing is a tendency to have characters tell other characters big chunks of exposition. Sometimes it's telling what I should be showing. For example:
"'It's just that Sarah's going to be away and I think he's scared of being alone. He's been like that since his heart attack.'"
I could have let the reader figure out that the character is afraid, and why.

Or this, from a story about girls who had just lost a battle to try to establish a girls' basketball team at their school:
"'They've got their flimsy cover-up excuse. No money for an all-girls' team. And we can't join the boys' team because, according to the impartial Coach Timothy, we're not good enough. Not that he's prejudiced, or anything. It was perfectly fair of him to tell us to hit the showers after two minutes of warm-ups. Hell, anyone can make decisions about team cuts after watching us run a lap and a half.'
'He did let us shoot some baskets.'
'Yeah. Two lay-ups, which I made. One foul shot, which I made. You got one foul shot, which you missed. ...'"
The thing about that dialogue is that the characters are recounting events that they both know about, because they both witnessed them firsthand in  each other's presence. A perfect case of As-you-know,-Bob!
(In addition, that story was very soapboxy, lacking any complexity or nuance.)

But it's not all drivel. My favorite finds are stories I'd forgotten about, or stories that are as interesting as I'd remembered. I like best the ones where a character is an interesting situation right from the first paragraph, and is observing and reacting in the moment. The ones where there's a little mystery, something not quite right, a source of tension. That's what I always aim for, but it's not easy to hit that target.

Sympathy for the character

I'm reading one of those books where, character-wise, my sympathies do not seem to be aligned with the author's. That is, I like the character I'm not supposed to like a heck of a lot more than I like the two characters I am supposed to like.

As an author, I'm naturally interested in how this happens, what the author has done to alienate me from Characters A and B and defend Character C, when clearly I'm "supposed" to feel the other way around. Here's what I've identified so far:

--Character C is more passionate than either A or B. Both A and B have drifted along, with vague ambitions that they've never really pursued, doing a lot less than they're capable of. C has smaller ambitions (for which C is criticized by both of the other characters), but at least C has pursued those ambitions with zeal. The thing that A wants most, A has never even taken the slightest step to pursue (and somehow sees this as C's fault).

--C is sort of quirky and hapless and, early on, is placed in a vulnerable and quite funny situation (from which A is completely absent). This was the start of my sympathetic connection to C. Right after this scene, A does something deliberately mean-spirited toward C, which made me dislike A. I think this act by A is where my sympathies were most firmly channeled into the pro-C anti-A camp.

--Early in the book, Characters A and C have a difference of opinion over a subjective matter. The book immediately implies (and continues to suggest) that Character A is "right" and C's views are pathetic. But as a reader, I'm unconvinced. Since this is a matter of opinion, I don't see how either of them can be "right," or why C's opinion isn't just as valid as A's. This perceived unfairness toward C shored up my protectiveness toward C. And at one point, C has a chance to thwart A's expression of A's differing views, but instead enables A to find a wider audience for those views.

--There's a scene where A blames C for something that was under A's control, not C's control. After several pages of fuming at C, A only seems vaguely aware that maybe the true blame lies elsewhere.

--C does some things that benefit B, but B has only contempt for C.

--Both A and C deceive each other. C confesses immediately. A punishes C for C's deception, but continues in A's own deception.

Maybe I'm wrong and the author is planning a twist; maybe I will find out in the last third of the book that C is supposed to be one of the good guys, and not a buffoon after all. So far I think not. (But if that happens, then this author is a genius at properly manipulating my sympathies.) Overall, though, whichever way this book goes, this has been a useful exercise in allowing me to see what can make characters likable and unlikable. In this case, I see that when a character is treated meanly and unfairly by other characters, the so-called justification of "but that character deserves it for being really boring/nerdy/annoying" doesn't always work, and the unfairness may backfire, leading the reader to sympathize with the supposedly boring/nerdy/annoying one.

What's your story?

In This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, Ann Patchett writes that she only has one story in her, and she keeps writing it over and over: "a group of strangers are thrown together." And it's true of the two novels of hers that I've read: Bel Canto and The Magician's Assistant.

Naturally I had to ask myself whether I only have one story, and if so, what it is. When it comes to short stories, I think I have many. But novels? All three of my published books feature a character struggling to overcome some monumental event from his or her past. Sometimes it's the fairly recent past, as in The Secret Year and Try Not to Breathe; sometimes it's the more distant past, as in Until It Hurts to Stop. There is forward movement; there are different kinds of relationships and different settings; and some of these stories end more happily than others. But I do see that common thread.

Even when I look at my unpublished books, the ones that I think are the most successful (and still might want to publish if I can fix their flaws) include that same element. Is that what it takes for me to really get the wind in my sails, I wonder--a character facing down the monsters of yesterday?

Patchett embraces her one story rather than fighting it. I'm still willing to try to tell other stories if they occur to me--I won't shut the door on new ideas--but if those attempts fizzle and I am left with my one story, well ... that's no tragedy. There are thousands of ways to tell that story. I am endlessly fascinated by how people heal, how they put back together what has been broken or live with the cracks and the missing pieces, and how they go about changing. I guess it shows in my writing!

Inside the struggle

I have sometimes described revising a manuscript as wrestling with an octopus. There's always a tentacle that's sure to slip free and slap you on the forehead. Beth Kephart doesn't use that exact image, but the struggle she describes in this post sounds eerily familiar: "I could get some parts right at the expense of others. ... It was like trying to manage a sine curve."

This is not a novice talking. This is a seasoned and accomplished author of articles, novels, memoirs. An award-winning writer, a teacher and mentor of others. She writes, "The second book is harder. ... You have already used some of your favorite images, your most primal memories, and you have expectations now—those that originate within yourself and those that come from external forces." And spoiler alert: It doesn't get any easier after the second book.

Which I find oddly comforting. The flailing, the trial and error, the false starts and endless rewrites, are not necessarily signs that we're doing it wrong. This just may be the way that a book gets written.

Writing first

As a night owl, I used to do all my writing at night. Many of my short stories were drafted in marathon sessions starting around 8 PM on a Friday or Saturday night, and finishing at 11 PM, or 1 AM, or whenever.

If I didn't have a day job, I might still be writing that way. But on nine days out of every fourteen, I go to the job that pays the bills (writing contributes, but can't support me financially). And when I come home, I do write for at least an hour, often two or three.

However, I've gotten older and busier and more tired. And when writing isn't first on the list, it often gets pushed back and put off--especially first drafting, which takes so much mental and emotional energy. So what I've started doing on non-day-job days is to write first thing in the day. After I finish breakfast, I sit down in my writing office and do my day's goal (whether it be to write for two hours, or add 1000 words, or add 2000 words, or revise ten pages, or whatever). Then I go about my other chores, knowing that whatever else I do or don't get done, at least I have written.

It's made me happier, since I'm generally happier when I'm writing regularly. And I know I'm lucky to be able to do this. I can set my own schedule on these five days. I decided to try this after hearing from other writers that the only way they could reliably get writing done--without getting sucked into the vortex of social media, email checking, etc.--was to write first.

I used to think I couldn't write in the morning. But over the years, I'm finding I can write in more different times and places, using more methods, than I would have guessed. It's never too late to try a new system.

Diaries

I've always said I'm not really a diary keeper. I think of myself as having made a few brief attempts at diaries over the years, and quickly abandoning them. But in the course of cleaning out my writing office, I've discovered many notebooks--many more than I remembered--with diary fragments in them. I've made a "diary" pile with which I will do--something at some point. I don't know what.

Just glancing through them, I can tell that there are three kinds of times in my life when I keep diaries:
1) When something I perceive as historically momentous is occurring. (9/11, for example)
2) When I'm traveling and want to remember the new settings through which I'm moving.
3) At times of emotional upheaval and angst.

Therefore, I have one diary of Type 1, and random fragments of the other two types scattered throughout several notebooks. Type 3 is the most embarrassing and the type I would most like to send to the shredder. Pages and pages of moaning over why some long-forgotten crush did not seem to return my interest; pages analyzing his every expression, word, gesture, and eyebrow twitch; pages dreading (and trying to head off) break-ups that I could see looming. When I read Type 3, I'm mostly relieved to be done with the roller-coaster relationships of my teens and early twenties.

My diaries give a very distorted picture of my life, because I kept them only when I was trying to remember something unusually important (travel, history), or when I was trying to analyze a miserable patch in my life. The times when I was happy and busy with ordinary pursuits, I didn't need the record or the reflection that a diary provides.

There are diarists who can do the "happy ordinary" diary well, who can write about daily life and keep it interesting. They can reflect on a variety of life events, not just the crises. But ultimately, diaries do what we need them to do at the moment. Sometimes they preserve an important moment, and sometimes they help us get through a moment and leave it behind.

But that other idea is so shiny

"As it turns out, I have had this same crisis with every novel I have written ... . I am sure my idea is horrible, and that a new idea is my only hope. But what I've realized over the years is that every new idea eventually becomes the old idea." --Ann Patchett, "The Getaway Car," This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Patchett has a lot more to say about this, but I don't want to copy her whole article. I relate to her point about novels taking so long to write that it's especially hard (harder, say, than when writing a poem or short story) to keep one's enthusiasm high for the duration of the whole project. Short stories were always satisfying that way: I could draft from beginning to end in one sitting; I could keep the whole thing in my head as I revised; if a story failed I could just go on to the dozens of other stories I had in various stages of completion.

But a novel takes more commitment, more tolerance of the slow times, more trust that all the little ripples you set in motion will reach the various shores you've aimed at. It takes so much longer to build in the layers that a novel needs (a short story can be layered, but it can also be punchy or piercing, and even if it has a hundred layers none of them need to be a hundred acres across, the way the layers of a novel must be). A novel takes more patience. And when a novel fails, it can mean months or years of work without a visible product.

As happy as I am with the books I've written, every single one of them gave me days (or weeks) when I was ready to give up on them, when I'd had enough or didn't see how to fix them or wondered who else would care about them besides me. They also gave me days of pure joy, days when I was so wrapped up in the story that I never wanted to leave that fictional world.

Mostly, it was a matter of waiting out the darker days. Trusting that another day's work might bring me to the corner I needed to turn.

Practice

"Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours ... . Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story."
--Ann Patchett, "The Getaway Car," This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

This quote reminds me of an article on Quantity vs. Quality that I stumbled across recently (and I'm sorry I can't remember where I first saw this link). The takeaway from it was that putting in the time, repeating exercises again and again, will improve your craft just through sheer volume. (The Write Practice, where this article appeared,  also allowed for the opposite approach, focusing on quality.)

And all of it resonates because I've been cleaning out the boxes and files in my writing office, a slow task that will take a long time, and I have found some truly hideous poems and stories from years ago. But two things struck me about these early efforts:

--That there are so many of them. I wrote a lot. And when I liked a story, I produced multiple versions of it.

--That I've gotten better.

There are people who can write something brilliant the first time they try. But most of us don't. Most of us reach the art through the craft, as Ann Patchett said. People recognize that playing the piano, skating a triple Axel, or hitting a three-point shot in basketball takes practice and repetition. Writing's the same way, in my experience.

I have notebooks full of my stumbling, my practicing. I'm finding that only a small percentage of it is worth keeping. But the sheer quantity of it reminds me how much I have put into writing, and how silly I'm being when I expect things to be easy (say, when I expect to produce a perfect first draft instantly!)

Transition

It's my day to blog at YA Outside the Lines, where I talk about the transition from December to January, from old year to new. A sample: "January is the month that gives me trouble: it seems bleak and boring in comparison. The party’s over, quite literally, and what do we have to look forward to?" [hint: I do find some optimism about January eventually!]

Thirteen memorable books

I’m not going to list all the books I’ve read in 2013, nor the “best” books (too hard to determine), nor necessarily all my favorites. And many of the books I read in 2013 were published in earlier years. But here, just FWIW and in no particular order, are 13 books I read in ’13 that have stuck with me for one reason or another:

Fiction

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova. A brilliant professor develops early-onset Alzheimer’s. As she loses her memory and her career, what remains of her identity? This story has stayed with me—and based on conversations I’ve had with other readers, I’m not the only one.

Birthmarked, by Caragh M. O’Brien. Gaia works as a midwife just outside the Enclave, the protected community she serves. But when officers of the Enclave imprison her parents, she starts to question the rigid rules of her society, especially the forced reassignment of children to new parents. A good book about power and the possible consequences of environmental destruction. Also includes some code-breaking!

Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan. Two boys trying to set a record for the world’s longest kiss form the central story, but the plotlines weave through several characters’ lives, tying together the generation of men lost to AIDS and the generation for whom coming out is more common—but not necessarily easy.

Poetry

Plume, by Kathleen Flenniken. This is a book about betrayal, loss, and invisible dangers made visible. Centering on the community of Hanford, Washington, and the various forms of radiation exposure its citizens experienced, it’s a horror story and a discovery story and a love-of-family story. I reread it almost immediately; it still grips me, weeks later.

Photography

Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows, by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams. Vivian Maier was a nanny who spent most of her free time perfecting her amateur-photography skills, capturing the world around her. When she died, she left behind thousands of photographs and negatives, a small fraction of which were assembled in this collection. The images are stories in themselves.

Nonfiction

The Test: Living in the Shadow of Huntington’s Disease, by Jean Barema. There was a 50-50 chance the author had inherited the incurable, degenerative disease known as Huntington’s. This book chronicles his agonizing over whether to get the genetic test, his siblings’ and mother’s experience with the disease, and his countdown to his own test and receipt of the results. Even those of us who don’t fact Huntington’s confront many of the same questions about mortality, and the physical losses that may come with age.

Days That I’ll Remember: Spending Time with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, by Jonathan Cott. This book captures Lennon in his post-Beatles life, dealing with couplehood and parenthood, exploring new creative frontiers. It’s a relief to see a book that doesn’t vilify Ono as the woman who “broke up the Beatles,” but rather explores the artistic and political views that she and Lennon shared and kindled in one another.

Rapture Practice, by Aaron Hartzler. Hartzler grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household. But much of what he was drawn to (partying, rock music, dating), his family viewed as sinful. This book records his ever-more-painful attempts to please the family he loves, while unable to resist exploring the music and relationships that call to him.

Stuck in the Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders, by Jennifer Finney Boylan. Boylan shares her own experience parenting before, during, and after her transition from male to female, and she also interviews so many other parents that the result is a rich and diverse exploration of what it means to be a parent, what it means to be a child, and how gender does (or doesn’t) affect parent-child relationships. Plenty of food for thought here.

Stories from Jonestown, by Leigh Fondakowski. I blogged about this book here—an unforgettable look at a movement that started out in hope, peace, and brotherhood, and ended in the tragedy of murder and suicide.

Into the Tangle of Friendship: A Memoir of the Things That Matter, by Beth Kephart. Kephart explores all kinds of friendships: how those bonds form, and how they strengthen, and how and why they sometimes dissipate. And it’s as beautifully written as all her books.

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, by A. J. Jacobs. Jacobs attempts to follow the Bible literally. He immediately confronts a few problems: which version of the Bible? How to interpret passages that are unclear or conflicting? What to do about actions that are now illegal (like stoning people)? But in studying and trying to live the Bible, he discovers plenty about both God and humankind.

Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Concise, poetic, and meditative, this is a book that’s meant to be savored and reread. It records the kind of deep pondering, the questions and discoveries, that can come to mind when we let ourselves stop and think and reconnect with the natural world.


source of recommended reads: all from library, except Gift from the Sea, Plume, and Two Boys Kissing, which were purchased.