The Writing Process

What a Bookstore

2012-01-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

Scene from favorite used bookstore (more like a book campus): the Book Barn in Niantic, Connecticut, USA.

[I liked this photo so much I asked fellow member tymfos of LibraryThing for permission to snag it. The photo and the text next to the photo are by tymfos.]

Osborn and SR51

2011-04-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

AN MRI AND OTHER EVENTS

2011-01-31T14:34:00.000-08:00

Last October my bicycle and I vied for the same point in space as a young man and his van. That didn't work so well. The van escaped unscathed; I suffered a “slight” separation of my left shoulder. It started whining immediately, then followed up by howling like a whipped puppy for weeks.

Later that month I lay on my back waiting for an MRI of my shoulder, waiting to be inserted into the machine like a pizza into a brick oven. There I would be required to lie still for thirty or more minutes. No scratching an itchy nose, no stretching a cramped muscle.

Because I'd had two MRI'S in the past--both to diagnose knee injuries--I was unprepared for the panic that assaulted me when the conveyor belt began to move. In 1982 two, armed, young men held up the supermarket where I worked. Fear assailed me then, but not panic. And I had some control of that fear. I had virtually no control as I moved headfirst toward the maw of the MRI machine.

I sat up as though spring-loaded, fueled by fear of entombment. My heart threatened to rip away from its moorings, my lungs to burst through my chest. The conveyor belt stopped.
For ten minutes, the two young women administering the test counseled me, obviously having faced this situation before. I was embarrassed by my newly-discovered claustrophobia, embarrassed that I'd acted frightened in front of two very pretty women. That's probably a sexist attitude, but eventually it helped me to lie back down and ride into the bowels of the machine.

There I was assailed by sounds of intermittent pounding, like elves hammering on the outside of a drainpipe. After perhaps fifteen minutes, my fear-meter--heart rate and breathing-- returned to near normal readings as I silently chanted “These people are here to help me. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

Mid-afternoon Christmas Eve, my sister Laurel and her ex Herb picked up my wife Gloria and me from our home in central Phoenix. Usually when I'm in a car, I'm driving, not a passenger. And riding in the back seat is definitely a rarity. Even so, I never expected a claustrophobicly-induced panic attack.

The doors of Herb's car shut with a solid, new-car thump. As he backed it out of the driveway, the terror from my MRI experience poured into my mind like water flooding a basement. I worried that I might not be able to unlock the car door in case of an emergency. I drive a 1993 Corolla with old fashioned pull up/push down door knobs. New cars always seem to have more complicated locking systems.

Three blocks down the road I nearly screamed, “I've got to get out of here.” My inner child was floundering in a flood of panic without a sump pump to drain it. I imagined myself diving out of the car, rolling to the curb, and running home as fast as my bum knees would allow.

Herb turned the car off McDowell Road onto I-10, causing my panic to hit its zenith. I felt like a death row inmate being escorted down a corridor by two prison guards heading for the death house.

I took deep breaths and tried to follow my family's conversation, even throwing in a few lame comments. I used my cellphone to snap a photo of Laurel as she leaned between the front seats to talk to us, then took a photo of Red Mountain in the distance. As with my time in the MRI tube, eventually I was able to calm down, to “get a grip.”

Gloria and I decided to celebrate New Years Eve 2010 by going to an ASU women's basketball game. I'd followed the Sun Devils in the Arizona Republic and watched an occasional game on television, but had never been to one.

To avoid parking hassles we rode the two-year-old light rail from Phoenix to Tempe, and got off just a few blocks from Wells Fargo Arena. Seated at mid-court, we watched the Sun Devils win 49-46. Oregon missed a potential game winning shot at the buzzer.

On the ride home, cold air whooshed into the car at each stop as the doors slid opened to swallow or disgorge passengers. Law enforcement officers from Tempe, Phoenix, and the Department of Homeland Security bounced in and out of the train ready to pounce on holiday revelers who reveled too much.

As we left Tempe and entered Phoenix, I tried to recreate my panic attacks, a decidedly bizarre impulse. I have no idea what put that bug up my butt, but there it was.

At first I could dredge up only a pale reflection of my previous demons. That was puzzling since I'd realized all along that lack of control was the driving force behind my panic attacks, and I certainly had even less control of a train that must weigh hundreds of tons.

Against all reason, I worked diligently to recreate that nightmarish, wild child panic. As I began to succeed, my fear rose. Eventually I asked myself, “Do you really want to do this?” I decided that past a certain, indefinable point, doing something stupid edges into insanity. I stopped.

So, what does this have to do with writing? After all, this blog is supposed to be about writing.

John P. Marquand wrote a novel called Women and Thomas Harrow. The protagonist was a writer who forced himself to go to a party or some such event despite not wanting to go. He did it because, after all, he was a writer. And it was an experience.

Henry James said something to the effect that a writer was a person upon whom no experience was wasted.

Draw on your experiences.

(Does anyone know the exact Henry James quote? I poked around the internet without any luck.)

Addendum: February 10, 2011
A Henry James quote from my friend Wes: Experience is never limited, and it is never complete: it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

Patron at Burton Barr Branch Phoenix Public Library

2010-12-31T14:18:00.000-08:00

The Einstellung Effect

2010-11-10T11:25:00.000-08:00

Click here to getImages &
Chess Pictures - Pictures

In his novel class, Jim Sallis often says not to settle for "first thought" ideas. They're usually not original, nor especially creative. He also says a danger for writers is to think you "know how to write." The idea there being that you should always be open, indeed searching for new ways to achieve the effect you want in your fiction. I assume this would apply to writing non-fiction as well.

In Andy Soltis column "Chess to Enjoy" in Chess Life Magazine (November 2010) he notes that even top-level chessplayers often fail to force checkmate in the most efficient manner, i.e. the fewest moves. This happens both when they solve chess problems and when they are playing chess games. He writes: "This phenomenon is striking to psychologists, who gave it an impressive name: the Einstellung effect."

The basic idea is that you tend to solve a problem with ways you know and are comfortable with even though there may be a better way or ways to solve it. It seems to me that Sallis is warning against the Einstellung Effect in your writing.

Beware!

July 4, 2010 Pioneer Park, Prescott Arizona

2010-07-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

It's Been Awhile

2010-07-07T14:25:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking I need to broaden the scope of this blog especially since I haven't writen anything for it for a long time. One thing I can add is reviews of books on writing. The following is a review I've just posted on LibraryThing. It is an ARC (advanced reading copy) so it's not yet published as of this date.

If you're a serious reader, I highly recommend LibraryThing. Look under "Links" to get to it.

THE CREATIVE WRITER'S SURVIVAL GUIDE by John McNally

This book delivers more than I expected. As the title suggests, it isn't a “how-to-write” book. McNally warns the reader right up front in the first section: “If you're looking for a book so that you can learn how to write a short story, a novel, or a poem, you definitely need to look somewhere else.” Rather, it is “a highly subjective and idiosyncratic take on the writing life. ...using my own life as well as the lives of other writers I've known as anecdotal support for my opinions on a wide range of subjects.”

McNally built an instant trust with me with such honesty. And he keeps that trust throughout. There are six main sections in the book, each with its own series of 1-3 page essays. The sections are, 1)The Decision to Become a Writer 2)Education and the Writer 3) Getting Published 4Publicity 5)Employment for Writers 6)The Writer's Life.

In each section, McNally's strong desire to give an honest view of the writing life and to help aspiring writers succeed shines through. I also believe I detected a reluctance on his part to suffer fools gladly, that is, beginning writers who think they know everything already, stuffed shirts, and the like. This isn't done in a hateful way, but more in a cranky, headshakingly, amused and baffled way. Funny stuff.

Many of the topics he writes about could be dry and downright boring, especially since few writers will be at the stage of a writing career where every section would be pertinent to them. McNally finds a way to make each section interesting. Most of his anecdotes are fascinating and often funny, including an accidental, surreal, near feud with Ursula K Le Guin, who had been one of his “childhood heroes.”

Besides the unexpected humor, he delivers unexpected moments of poignancy when telling tales from his own life. In Part One, “This Writer's Beginnings,” is both hilarious and touching. It's a gem, alone worth the price of the book. If I could talk to McNally, I'd say, with affection, “Write a memoir, you big dummy!”

If you don't have a successful writer whose brain you can pick, “The Creative Writer's Survival Guide”, is probably the next best thing.

In the Neighborhood

2010-05-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

AT THE PHOENIX ZOO

2009-08-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

A GOOD THING TO REMEMBER

2009-08-17T09:55:00.000-07:00

Each semester in his novel-writing class Jim Sallis mentions a fellow writer who has a note above her computer that says: Every character wants something every page. A good thing to keep in mind when we write fiction.

From M. Scott Peck’s book Denial of the Soul: “The human condition is that we are conscious beings with a will of our own living in a world that often doesn’t behave the way we would like it to.” He’s talking about real people, but since we want our story people to seem real, they need to be fully immersed in the human condition too.

Photo by Charles

2009-05-25T17:32:00.000-07:00

THEY HIDE EVERYWHERE

2009-05-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

We search in many different places for ways to improve our writing of fiction: In “how to” books, classes, workshops, and writer's groups. But ideas that can spark improvement sometimes hide in curious places.

In M. Scott Peck's In Search of Stones, the late psychiatrist and author wrote “It is a great principle in psychiatry that 'all symptoms are overdetermined.'” They have more than one cause. He adds that “For any single thing of importance there are multiple causes.” He gives as examples, why he and his wife Lily traveled to Great Britian to search for ancient megalithic stones such as Stonehenge and why his and Lily's marriage works.* In our own lives, at least on the big issues, our motives are often mixed.

What does this have to do with writing fiction?
We know that our characters should have complex personalities. Does this mean only that they should have numerous and diverse traits? That is a beginning, but another way to create well-rounded characters is to give them multiple motives for each major thing they do, think, or feel.

In my novel, Boyd, the 14 year-old protagonist, becomes friends with Mr. Henry, an elderly man. Mr. Henry tells Boyd that “People rarely do anything for only one reason.” I didn't realize then that I'd stumbled on a truth about fictional characters. That didn’t happen until months later when I read Dr. Peck's book. I guess Mr. Henry was smarter than his creator.

Suppose you have a character you call Frank Burr who wants to get revenge on Ralph Stern. Stern murdered Burr's daughter and got away with it. A pretty good motive for Burr. But you give the character and the story greater depth by giving him multiple motives. Perhaps they went to high school together and Stern stole Burr's girlfriend. Or they'd been childhood friends and Burr always suspected his father liked doing things with Stern better than with Burr. Maybe Burr's dog was recently run over by a car and now Burr is just pissed off enough at the world to actually go after Stern. Dig deeply, find those motives.

In Peck's, A World Waiting to be Born, Civility Rediscovered, he writes “All blessings are potential curses.” By blessings, he means positive personality traits. He opines that “...a strong will is the greatest blessing...” because “...a weak will guarantees failure.” Still, a strong-willed person will be quick to anger. Peck says “It is strong-willed people who wrap golf clubs around trees because that damn little ball won't go where they want it to.”

Peck was writing about real people, but the same is true about fictional characters. We can add to the seeming reality of our characters by showing how a character's strong personality traits can be both positive and negative.

The thrust of my novel is Boyd's search for identity. Is he going to be like his parents, not such good people or like his grandparents who have given him a strong moral center? He’s driven to try to understand other people, a strong and usually good trait. But taken to an extreme, it could cause him to act recklessly, maybe hang out with people who use illegal drugs. The reader would be surprised if he did that, but it would also be believable because of Boyd’s personality. Boyd using drugs wouldn’t be believable however. Ideas for improving your fiction are everywhere. Stay alert and you will find that they hide where you least expect them.

* M. Scott Peck and his wife were divorced in 2003

Chase Field, Phoenix, Az. Photo by Charles

2009-04-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

CUT IT OUT!

2009-04-15T21:32:00.001-07:00

Extraneous words slow down the reader. That's obvious; all writers know it. But for years I assumed it meant that needless words kill the reader's interest. Because we all hold attitudes and preconceived notions that interfere with our perceptions it's not surprising that my take on this axiom was not the literal meaning.

But in September of 2008 I finally realized that the reader is literally slowed down because eyes must roam across those black, wiggly shapes called letters. If each letter is a unit of distance, then the reader's eyes must journey farther to cover and interpret a thirty-word sentence than a five word sentence. I jotted the idea into my journal shortly after it entered my mind, searching in vain to find any other lucid ideas to pal around with.

Fewer words allow the reader’s eyes to arrive sooner at the next compelling moment. If the words in between compelling moments are excessive, then it does follow that the reader can lose interest.

For several semesters I’ve been taking a novel class taught by Jim Sallis, a successful writer for over forty years. In his first class of the 2009 spring semester, he and my fellow students critiqued “Casa Grande 2, a chapter from my novel. They exposed pockets of fat in what I'd thought was prose so lean as to be nearly anorexic.

When revising a rough draft, my goal is to always weigh each paragraph, phrase, or word against the “do I really need this?” standard. But if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I've laid truck loads of bricks over the years. I generally read my “final” draft several times, each time stumbling over extraneous words that hide like bugs in the woodwork. Without a word-by-word check, like those bugs, they remain hidden, only to pop out at the worst possible time.

So I vow to conduct a word-by-word search-and-destroy mission to eradicate them. But can I muster the discipline to do such tedious work?

To add to the problem, it's not always clear what's extraneous and what isn't. In a previous semester, I revised a paragraph in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and submitted it to Jim and the class for discussion. This unsolicited chutzpah was entirely my own idea. I'd cut extra words with glee, wielding my pen with, I thought, surgical precision. Jim asked the class what, if anything had been lost. The consensus: no information lost, vital tone lost. Alas writing is more an art than a science.

If you've cut your draft down to 1% body fat you speed your readers to the next compelling part. Now the real challenge comes. You have to create even more of those moments. You have to pull the good stuff out of your subconscious, to tap what Stephen King called “ the boys in the basement.”

SEE "LINKS" ABOVE for Jim Sallis' website and The Three Legged Dog website, a band Jim is a member of. Okay, for you purists, ...a band of which he is a member.

WHAT'S THIS ALL ABOUT?

2009-01-10T16:51:00.000-08:00

In the fall of 2008, a friend started a blog that focuses on spiritual issues. She urged me to start my own and suggested I make it a "writing blog."

I've kept a writing journal(s) for a number of years and have occasionally thought of keeping a separate one for writing concepts and techniques that I deem really important, that I don't want to forget. So, if nothing else, this blog may fill that role.

But my hope is that at least a few people read my blog and get some ideas that help them as they learn--you never stop learning even if you've published a ton of work--and that I'll get some comments that help me. I've always been facinated by the writing process, mine and other people's.