What's the cruelest thing you've ever done? Describe it in detail. Now sit with that and feel it. How did you feel when you were doing it? How might the receiver of your cruelty have felt? How might that have changed them? How do you feel now? How might it have changed you?
I'm going to change this up a bit. Instead of analyzing writers here, I'd like to stick in excerpts that have resonated with me. As this blog is a selfish endeavor, posting things that motivate me and help my own writing... well, that seems appropriate. Also, it's the words I carry around in my head and it is the words that inspire. So. She was a flamboyant depressive; a woman who kept a revolver in the duster drawer, and the bullets in a tin of Pledge. A woman who stayed up all night baking cakes to avoid sleeping in the same bed as my father. A woman with a prolapse, a thyroid condition, an enlarged heart, an ulcerated leg that never healed, and two sets of false teeth - matt for everyday, and a pearlised set for 'best'. It's a bit from one of my favorite writers, Jeanette Winterson, describing her mother in the beginning of her memoir, "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?". This is the description I aspire to write in my fiction... maybe one day I'll reach for it in non-fiction as well, but micro-toddler steps for now. I have no idea who her mother is, and I can't conceptualize a person who behaves as Winterson describes, but I have to know her. The words have captured me and not only do I want to discover more about this odd woman, I want more of this ugly-beautiful poetry. These words. You want it too-- I know you do. She filled the phone box. She was out of scale, larger than life. She was like a fairy story where size is approximate and unstable. She loomed up. She expanded. Only later, much later, too late, did I understand how small she was to herself. The baby nobody picked up. The uncarried child still inside her. I often read these sorts of excerpts when my own words run dry or feel flat. What do you read when you want inspiration? What style teases words out of your belly and onto the page?
I'll blame it on the snow that continues to suffocate NH with its exhaust-stained crust; or not enough vitamin D. I didn't write for over 3 weeks. Man, that felt shitty. I did watch two seasons of Idiot Abroad, and I finally read Gone Girl... but the only writing I managed during my writing time turned up as scribbled rants at my characters and a couple OneNote tabs filled with "research" that looks suspiciously Pinteresque.
It wasn't the not writing that bothered me... It was, and is, the feeling that I'll never finish the damn story. It's there. I keep chipping away pieces of its opaque shell. Will I ever uncover the whole thing? Why won't it just pour out of me like some writers say their stories emerge? What do other writers do when this anxiety strikes? What pieces of your self do you keep hidden? What parts make you the most uncomfortable? What do they taste like? How do they smell?
The risk of reading new writers, especially indie authors, is that sometimes I want to love the book but I can't. Even though the writers are talented and the stories are crazy imaginative, there are things missing or distracting because writing is fucking hard. Round characters. Dialogue. Showing not telling. But not showing too much. How many times did I use the word small? All the male characters are the same. The main character is too perfect. Now she's a douchebag no one can connect with. Adverbs. Adjectives. I just Johnny Depp'ed the shit out of that character. Another flashback?
I read several authors this month and they were entertaining. I could feel the beauty and passion they poured into their stories' creation. But. There are so many of us writing. And lots of the collective 'us' are great writers. People like me are hanging onto this ride by our fingertips-- hopefully surviving the savage dips. The difficulty of crafting a well-told story overwhelms me. I am overwhelmed and I know the only way to deal is to keep crap writing until I have a piece of shit I can smudge smooth along the cracked edges. When I invest in a new writer and their work is not shit, but doesn't yet shine either, my own weighted mediocrity births writerly compassion and I cop out. So no spotlight this month. Suggestions are welcome for the next!
I've never done a blog hop.... this is crazy. I copy a link and things appear. What will happen next?
All silliness aside, I did submit a story to a small press this past month. Harvard Bookstore ran an interesting flash fiction call. Writers had between February 1st-15th, to write and submit a piece under 500 words, and it went to press on March 1st. I wrote the crazies out of my sub consciousness for an hour, and then spent just two days trimming it up with all the fixings for a passable story. There wasn't a whole lot of time to freak out over it, and I wasn't attached. After a day of intermittently looking at the "submit" button, I finally did. I submitted to that button. And then I began the ritual of obsessive anxiety. Did they prefer a certain format? Should I have included both my name and title in the header? Can they tell I'm old? Am I boring? Holy fuck, I'm so boring. A week later, I regained my sanity and congratulated myself for submitting my writing to actual people. Goal met. Even better? I crawled up out of this hole that we ["creative types"] create for ourselves. It's the tan place (not even as interesting as beige) that my squishy brain slips into when the crack of societal judgment squeaks open. It's a sad constricting little existence, and it's the sole reason I don't show my writing to many people. It's nobody's fault really-- The tan place. There are a few folks who exploit it though-- growing its shadow to loom larger than its true meager existence. They are most like to be the people we put in charge of the judging. We entrust them to judge us to help us grow, or to judge us to extract our best for readers. Those voices unrestrained are the reason, the necessity, for writers' mythological reptilian skin. Reptiles are cool. But I would rather write with satin feathers of blackness. Shortly after I pulled myself back into the beautiful bubble of my own weird existence, my bubble-twin-soul/best friend tweeted Banu Kapil's perfect open letter that speaks directly to that tan, tan place of judgment. Read it if you get a chance. I've been reading her subsequent post over and over and my adieu will be happily punctuated by its sharing. Wyoming Border: Notes Due to a mistake in my scheduling (IWSG is the first Wednesday of every month so I had to juggle my blogging "plan") I'm going to take this opportunity to present a subpar haiku. This will happen every now and then-- be thankful for its rarity.
First though, two websites regarding haiku that I enjoy... The Haiku Foundation Haiku World Woodstove creaks hot as the steaming mug nears my lips "Mom!" a child cries. "Poop!" I hate prompts. They open up my writing, but I resist them in a similar fashion as my five year old's reluctant teeth-brushing. I don't want to open up. I'm fine right here. I will flail. Lucky for my writing hygiene, I have a copy of the magnificent Wonderbook. This book makes a writer happy. The first prompt I tried was intriguing, but opened a rabbit hole... The internet information vortex. I love the shit out of information. The prompt asked me to find four blurbs on a random subject, in different writing styles, and--- And what? I'm sorry, did you say something Wonderbook? Six hours into the first step I had four thousand blurbs on a variety of random subjects and was shaking with insomnia-induced glee. Step away from the prompt.
My second attempt was more successful (in the actually-write-something sort of way.) I took it slower. The Writing Challenge on pg. 78 centered around an illustration of a Kraken ravaging a ship. It's geared towards figuring out how to write better opening scenes, and how to see the many different possibilities and nuances a writer has at her disposal. I used it for a dynamic scene I've been struggling with in my novel revision. The prompt, the questions, the chapter that followed it up... It all blew my mind. Rewriting the options for narration timing (When does the narration occur? Before/During/After the event?) to change the emphasis, forced me to imagine alternatives I had not considered. I wrote the attack scene, changing the details to fit my story, but bumped the retelling to just a few minutes after the decimation. My main character roared back to life. Yes! I may resist them, but a good prompt helps me every time. My first Writer Spotlight is on emerging author, Julia Elliott. From her bio:
"Julia Elliott's fiction has appeared in Tin House, the Georgia Review, Conjunctions, Fence, Puerto del Sol, Mississippi Review, Best American Fantasy, and other publications. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. Her novel The New and Improved Romie Futch will be published by Tin House Books in 2015, and she is currently working on a novel about Hamadryas baboons, a species that she has studied as an amateur primatologist. She teaches English and women’s and gender studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where she lives with her daughter and husband. She and her spouse, John Dennis, are founding members of Grey Egg, an experimental music collective." Even if I had never read anything she so brilliantly wrote, I would still want to be this woman's friend. It's not really stalking if it's virtual, right? Baboons. Women and gender studies. An experimental music collective. I'm very close to using that annoying *swoon* I see in mommy blogs so often... but I won't. I won't fake-pass-out on a velvet settee, because I want to talk about Julia Elliott's awesomeness. I read The Wilds, a small collection of Elliott's short stories. This is the bit that caught me. (Spoiler: It's the very first paragraph, from the very first story entitled, Rapture.) Brunell Hair lived in a lopsided mill house with her mama and her uncle and her little withered-up critter of a grandma. In honor of her eleventh birthday, she was having a slumber party, but so far, only my best friend, Bonnie, and I had showed. Our mothers had had some kind of powwow, during which they'd smoked cigarettes and worked themselves into a tizzy over how vain and selfish we were getting, finally declaring that sleeping over Brunell's house would be just the thing to "teach us a lesson" about how fortunate and spoiled we were. Truth told, we wanted to see Brunell in her natural habitat. We wanted to see the creepy troll-child's lair, witness the antics of her Jesus-freak mother, spy on her uncle, who'd appeared in several television commercials. And see her Meemaw speak in tongues. There is a possibility that other readers won't be as close to weeping as I am after reading that, but I choose to pretend those people don't exist in this world. If I could crawl inside Elliott's beautifully twisted mind and roll around in the sticky deliciousness of her oh-so-lavender imaginings, I would be one blissfully whacked-out writer. For the sake of reality, I'll settle for inspired. Julia Elliott is a new favorite. I'm looking forward to her next novel The New and Improved Romie Futch set to be published by Tin House Books this year. Biddy Debeau Rides for His Life: A Novel
By Gordon B. Hilton Literary Fiction, 228 pages, Published Nov 2014 I read this through Story , a site that enables authors to give free reader's copies of their work, for a limited time, in exchange for unbiased reviews. I'm hoping to read and review from Story Cartel throughout the year. Cartel Book Description from author's website: Set on the roads and freeways, byways and back routes of the wicked west coast, "Biddy Debeau Rides for His Life" tells the story of Biddy Debeau who, after discovering his on-again, off-again girlfriend overdosed in a closet, decides it's probably a good time for a fresh start. But it doesn't go well, and he soon realizes there’s more to escaping yourself than escaping your life. This is a story with some meat on its pork chop. I sped through pieces of it, greedy for the what-next. In other places I slowed down, reread, and even set the book aside to digest. For a while I was sure I hated everything about it, but couldn't resist the pull of the characters and the grace of its twisted prose. Even after I reached the end (which I am a little ashamed to admit I sprint-skim-read to for about 6 pages because I couldn't bear to not know for 20 more seconds) I sat dazed and undecided. When I recovered, I knew I loved it. A bonus? Reading Biddy helped me as a writer. The storytelling is wild and vivid, but always crisp. I often drift into "purple" and struggle to maintain clean lines with my need for sensory immersion. I might do a freewrite in Hilton's style this week to get a better feel for how he balances his imaginative description with clear wording. There was a confusing entry to this novel (so if you notice that, don't let it deter you.) It may be specific to me as a reader, but I've noticed it with a few new novelists -- the hook gets in the way of the story-learning. It takes me a few paragraphs to get my bearings. I need clarity. Otherwise, my confusion overwhelms important details. Hilton's writing --his style, his voice-- is incredible. I've no doubt he'll nail this in future novels. This is why reading improves writing, right? Now I'll try to remember this in my own stories. I want to grab the reader, but add only enough crazy to keep them interested while they orient themselves to my characters, the time, and the place. My Amazon Review: Biddy Debeau is a horrible, misogynistic alcoholic. We endure pages of painful decisions, watching the self-flagellation, and wondering when we'll get a reprieve-- but still we read, and gasp, and fall in love. The complex layering of thought coupled with sensory detail kept me committed even when Biddy was at his darkest. Hilton challenges us to see, feel, and taste the raw struggle of humanity... of our often lack of humanity... through a gritty, completely captivating character who will stay with me for some time. |