a writer's journal

Sunday, June 22, 2003, at the Indiana University Writers Conference

A four-hour drive to Bloomington, Indiana, with a stop to visit a friend, and suddenly I'm at the conference check-in table, I'm signing in at the dorm, and then I'm sitting, along with eleven others, at a long table. Robert Olen Butler sits at the far end. Everyone starts calling him Bob, but I can't. Feels too familiar, at least at first meeting. After a brief discussion, it's decided that we'll do away with the massive manuscript-swap. Instead, the focus will be lecture, exercise, and Q&A format. Suits me. I'd rather hear him talk about writing than hear fourteen people critiquing each manuscript in turn. As a side activity, I agree with the two sitting at my end of the table, agree to a bite of Thursday morning breakfast while we mini-workshop our manuscripts. That's manageable.

Aimee Bender reads two short stories during the evening reading session, weird stories that are strangely moving in their emotional range. Marilyn Chin reads poetry. My tired mind lets it drift by, almost unnoticed. The dorm mattress is soft. I'm sleeping before I'm fully sunk in.

Monday, June 23, 2003, at the Indiana University Writers Conference

Morning workshops: David Wright on Creative Non-fiction (not my genre, but interesting debate on what's allowable, what not) and Clint McCown on 'Setting as a Central Character.' And over the noon hour, I lug an armload of give-away literary journals to the car.

Butler's basics fill his afternoon workshop sessions. Highlights, from my perspective:

• He teaches fiction as a thing of art, a thing which does not come from the writer's mind, from rational facilities, but from the unconscious.

• As a reader, you are not meant to understand a work of art, but to 'thrum' to it.

• Analysis of literature is a secondary and artificial concern.

• The best writing comes from the unconscious, from the writers 'dream-space.'

• Modes of discourse in the best writing -- moment to moment, perceived through the senses.

• Modes of discourse in lesser writing -- from the head, analysis, abstraction, summarization, generalization, exposition.

• Except, the above lesser modes can exist in the best fiction, IF dramatic irony is involved, if there is a subtext to what, on the surface, may seem like analysis, etc.

• Fiction is the art of 'human yearning.' Yearning drives fiction. It makes everything in the story fit together.

• In amateur fiction, characters respond to problems, rather than act on their yearnings.

• The artist doesn't know, before writing, what effect he wants to have on the reader.

• There are five ways to show character emotions on the page: (1) sense reaction, (2) sense-perceived external reactions in others, (3) flashes of the past (memory), (4) flashes of the future (anticipation, fear, desire), (5) sense selectivity (focus on certain cues, ignoring others.)

Elizabeth Dewberry teaches a 'no-experience required' workshop in writing the ten-minute play. Participants act out six professionally-written short plays as a demonstration of what the form looks like onstage. Fatigue is setting in by now. I write 'Beware the same emotional loop twice' in my notebook--that's all. Afterwards, I grab a Burger King supper, go back to the dorm, spent. No way I'm going to the author readings tonight.

Tuesday, June 24, 2003, at the Indiana University Writers Conference

I'm up early, practicing my reading, which is scheduled for later this morning, opening scene from "Things Kept". I drop a couple paragraphs from the text, ones introducing Dale Selby who will not reappear in the excerpt, then reword a couple tongue twisters, and add a few dialogue attributions where the speaker's identity depends on paragraphing, which will be invisible in the reading.

Wright, in his Creative Non-fiction class, talks about the selectivity of memory and the techniques for influencing readers. My mind is on my upcoming reading.

And the reading goes well, I think. Perhaps sixty people there, and my voice seems to steady after a shaky start, and, although my delivery does not approach that of many readers, especially the more professional, ultra-expressive ones, I do feel reasonably good about how it all goes--given my limitations.

Notes from Butler's class today:

• Sense details and images are patterned to interlock, interweave, in an organically whole work of art.

• He referred to the work of Keith Johnstone (sp?) regarding improvisation in the theater, how it builds by reincorporating elements already 'in play.'

• Applying the above: In writing fiction, once the story is going, you are constantly reincorporating things already in play, recomposing the elements over and over.

• In the summary sections of your writing (especially in those parts) use sensual details.

• Fiction technique and film technique are closely related.

• Montage-- the psychological understanding that emerges from juxtaposing two things. Examples: The grave and the woman walking away. The Biblical murder and the mother waiting. Dickens's Great Expectations, the graves, then the hills and the wind and Pip.

• There is a time-stopped effect from sentences with no independent verbs.

And here is Butler's abbreviated 'dream-storming' process for plotting a novel:

• Begin with a character for whom you have a deep intuition about what they're yearning for. This character may arrive with a few attached details.

• Dream-storm at the scene level, and note a few words to identify each scene. (Ex: Jay kidnaps the ranger.)

• Each scene must have a sensual hook to it.

• Generate many possible scenes that might belong 'in a novel such as this.'

• Scenes must come from the unconscious, and they are utterly flexible at this point.

• Generate a few such scenes every day for ten or twelve or fifteen weeks. DO NOT order or sequence them or worry about incompatibilities, one with the other.

• Explore deep into the book, 100 or 150 possible scenes, each with keying words written on index cards.

• Then, in sensual mode, look for a first scene, a second, etc, perhaps a first eight scenes.

• Continue each day. When you hit a gap, fill it in with newly-dreamed scene(s).

• Keep it flexible, and keep out of your head!

In the evening, Conference Director Amy Locklin reads her poetry, and David Wright a non-fiction piece, and Elizabeth Dewberry the engaging opening to her novel, Flesh and Blood, a copy of which I buy for my wife.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at the Indiana University Writers Conference

Wright's emphasis today -- always know who your audience is.

At Poet Brenda Hillman's Q&A session, this kernel -- "Always do the next bravest thing you can as a writer."

 And today, Butler does a very interesting (and encouraging) thing. First, he reads "Open Arms," a emotionally-moving short story in A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. This he wrote in 1990. Afterwards, he reads word-for-word his journal entry from eighteen years earlier, the event that served as partial compost for the story. And finally he reads a short story written a few months after the journal entry, a story exhibiting many of the amateur flaws he has been lecturing against for the past two days. The story lacks the depth, the resonance and emotional impact, the art of his later work. In his first use of the journaled material, Butler summarizes, explains, analyzes, abstracts, and generalizes. In essence, he is the narrator, while in the "Open Arms," the narrator's unexpressed, personal relationship to the essence of the story he relates is at the heart of the story itself, adding a whole new level. This story, written from the unconscious rather than the head, never loses touch with the character's humanity, never lets the narrator act immorally, heinously, as the early effort at a story did, albeit inadvertently.

In sharing his clunky early effort, Butler gives us all a bit of hope for our writing futures.

And after he critiques my chapters 4-6 in a private session, I come away feeling good about the novel-in-progress, with what it might become. And Butler signs the five books I've brought along from Kentucky, plus his story in the new issue of "Story Quarterly."

In Elizabeth Dewberry's class, we're writing short plays, acting and critiquing them, an incredibly interesting process of trying-out and repairing and trying-out again.

It feels strange, being on campus for more than a few hours after so many years. The young energy of the place is palpable, even in summer. The nearby stores, the café's and coffee houses, people reading on street corners, talking earnestly, their hands moving like extra tongues, music late into the night, life pulsing everywhere. I'd forgotten how it feels, a campus alive.

In the evening, Kevin Young reads his poetry, jazz poems and blues poems. Clint McCown reads a humorous story of marital infidelity, iguanas, and guillotines. And the bed is soft again tonight, although I'm awake only seconds to enjoy it.

Thursday, June 26, 2003, at the Indiana University Writers Conference

Breakfast this morning is pancakes at Michael's Uptown Café with fellow-conferees Josh Rolnick (early 30's, Menlo Park, CA) and Jeanne Sirotkin (fifty-ish, Detroit, MI). We exchange critiques of our manuscripts. Both give me very useful comments, the kind of stuff I can really use, and I find myself worried that I've shortchanged them in my critiques.

Butler's opening comment on the first day was, after reading thousands of manuscripts by aspiring writers, the place where they invariably fail is not in the writing itself, in the technical aspects of putting sentences together. Stories fail because of 'process.' The writer hasn't produced art, has not approached his work as an artist would.

Today, he leads the group in an exercise to get us into the place where we need to go as a matter of routine when we write. In a series of steps, we write through most of an hour, our writing directed by Butler's seven suggestions in sequence. And when we've finished, several are in tears, having gone to uncomfortable places and re-experienced painful moments. I end up in a somewhat familiar place, and I'd like to think it indicates that I've visit that source of inspiration often enough to know its landscape and, while not a totally comfortable place, it's not exactly a foreign land either.

Poet Brenda Hillman leads off the evening readings, and then Butler reads a new short story, one of his postcard series, a story that will be in "Zoetrope" this fall. The story is hilarious, a tale told by a reticent accountant who asks a young lady with a cork leg to go on a hayride date. Butler's stage skills are obvious, his timing and 'takes' reminiscent of vintage Johnny Carson. Afterwards, I buy a copy of Good Scent to give as a gift, have it signed at the authors reception.

Friday, June 27, 2003, at the Indiana University Writers Conference

Abbreviated workshop session with Butler in the morning, before the conference ends. First he talks about journaling, using it specifically to learn to write moment-to-moment in a sensual flow, something with emotions attached. Each day for fifteen days, try to journal in this mode, but writing in flow, not interrupting the flow to edit or correct. Do this for fifteen days, then return, now with some objective distance, to the first day's journaling. With a red marker, highlight every instance summary, abstraction, interpretation, generalization, etc. in the first day's journaling. The next day, journal a new page, then return with red highlighter to the entry for day two. Continue each day, the goal being to never pick up the red highlighter when looking at entries from two weeks prior.

On the difference between 'told anecdotes' and stories: Anecdotes don't have character yearning as the controlling, central influence. Stories do.

Another approach to finding your story (or novel), one different than the one involving 'dream-storming' scenes (see Tuesday's session): If you have a scene and a character, just write and see where it goes. This is a meandering, and when you eventually discover the character's deep yearning, then you're ready to start. Now chuck all you've written, and start again. If what you wrote belongs, it will come back on its own. If not, it doesn't belong.

Avoid repetition in how yearnings are manifested. It will 'twang' when read. As we all know, twang is the polar opposite of thrum.

And I find myself plucked suddenly from this place knee-deep in writers, in my car heading southeast, at once sorry it's over and eager to be home.

Saturday, July 5, 2003

I've generated note cards with ideas for mini-scenes within the major scene that lies ahead in the novel. And one of these suggests a backstory element that must be inserted in the opening chapters, an elaboration on the apple tree incident. It's an element which will stand well on its own and seem complete. So the reader should experience an unexpected resonance when this long ago act also plays into how the present-day story unfolds.

What has me halted right now is this: There are two directions the novel can go, and there seems to be no way that both can be combined, as much as that appeals to me. Either direction requires LeAnn's full involvement, and one would certainly overwhelm the other in her mind and heart if both situations develop. Unless I can construct a bridge of sorts between the two, that is. It would have to be done carefully, so it does not stick out, does not announce itself as the author-contrivance that it, in fact, would be. I'm reluctant to trash either story direction, but I truly fear that I'll end up constructing an ungainly thing, neither fish nor fowl, that lack's a novel's necessary unity. I'll seek possible ways to tie the two together for a while longer. A few more days, maybe. No more than that.

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