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a writer's journal
Sunday, May 29, 2005
My short story collection, Things Kept, Things
Left Behind, was a finalist for the Morehead New Writers Award,
first prize being publication of the manuscript by The Jesse Stuart
Foundation. Sadly, being a finalist brings no prize, only a heartening and
encouraging note from the chairman of the judging panel. Don't get me
wrong. I am heartened and encouraged. But, all else being equal, I'd
rather be published.
Okay, the collection still needs work. It's close,
though.
Meanwhile, my poem is in the current issue (summer) of
Arts Across Kentucky magazine, and WIND magazine with my story,
"Paragon Tea," will be out within a few weeks. And with the Morehead NWA
business settled, I've started submitting stories again to favorite
literary magazines.
My writing focus now is The Sin Eater's Son,
the novel I started a few months back and have been nudging forward ever
since, page by laborious page. I'd like to have the first fifty pages and
a synopsis in reasonable shape before the
Sewanee
Writers Conference, in case the short stories I'm workshopping there
spark enough interest for someone to ask if I've got a novel (i.e.,
something worth a publisher's time) that they can see. In the right
cirumstances, I might mention an older manuscript, Tucson Winter.
Or Being Jericha Mize. Both need significant work, though.
When it comes to novels, better the new one, The Sin Eater's Son.
Friday, May 6, 2005
I've borrow a half dozen books from the local library,
fiction by writers who'll be leading workshops at this year's Sewanee
Writers Conference. A few past participants have given candid comments,
and I want to read some fiction by each before listing workshop
preferences. They are certainly a talented, eclectic group.
The opening twenty pages of my novel-in-progress is out
for comments from House Writers tomorrow. It's a start, but I don't feel
vitality, life, in the two primary characters. They still need work. Maybe
tomorrow's critique session will help in that.
My poem, "Five Moments in Her Day," will be in
Arts Across
Kentucky magazine next month. I've been thinking about how easy
writing that was, once I'd found a form, how that narrowed the challenge
to something easily handled. 'Freedom in the form'--is that what it's
called? It makes some sense now.
Saturday, April 23, 2005
This past week I've been away. Visiting relatives back
east. Came home to an acceptance letter from this July's Sewanee Writers
Conference. I'll be in one of the fiction workshops. Sewanee is a full two
weeks, high-level, high-energy, and intensive--this according to past
participants. Should be a productive way to spend my Al Smith Fellowship
Award.
The New Yorker this week has interview comments
by Saul Bellow responding to questions from Phillip Roth. The most
interesting aspect was Bellow reflecting back on the genesis of his early
novel, Augie March. At the time he was in Paris on a
Guggenheim Fellowship, somewhat depressed and trying to write what he
describes as a grim manuscript about two men dying in adjacent hospital
beds. One morning, as he watched municipal workers flush street gutters of
overnight refuse by opening water hydrants, he experienced an epiphany of
sorts, an abrupt lifting of his mood and a flooding of memories of a
charismatic young boy and odd family he'd known in childhood. He says,
"This came to me in a tremendous jump. Subject and language appeared at
the same moment. The language was immediately present--I can't say how it
happened, but I was suddenly enriched with words and phrases. The gloom
went out of me and I found myself with magical suddenness writing a first
paragraph."
Bellow talks more about the language needed for the
story, how it seemed to appear and then to carry the writing. I read this
to be what I've called "voice" here, what Saul Bellow is calling "the
language that appeared" in this interview. It just seem so critical to get
that right, both for the momentum of the writing and for a firm hold and
pull on the reader.
Now back to my novel-in-progress, the search for its
essential voice.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Patterning. It's a excellent way to launch a story.
Maybe a novel, too. We'll see.
Okay, I made that term up--patterning--at least
I think I did. Thinking back on my many months of writing short fiction, I
see that my most successful stories had beginnings patterned consciously
after those of great stories, ones I've read and enjoyed. Which is not to
say there is plagiarism involved here. In the story's final form, the
bones of the inspiration are not visible. Okay, maybe I see them. But no
one else does.
For example, the opening of "First Husband, First Wife"
was patterned after "Chef's House," a classic story by Raymond Carver.
When Lee Smith read and critiqued "FH,FW" at Hindman last summer, I told
her that my story grew out of Carver's. She said she knows that story
well, that she teaches it. Her expression told me that she saw nothing of
his story in mine.
Which is good.
I read somewhere that great painters did this sort of
thing, did it rather shamelessly.
Anyway, I'm trying the same technique with my novel
opening, using the opening pages of a well-written suspense novel as a
pattern to launch mine. I'm confident that it won't be recognizable in the
manuscript's final form, so no one will know. Promise not to tell?
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Last week I attended the Green River Writers' Novels-in-Progress workshop
at Louisville's Spalding University campus. Lots of good writers there,
some inspiring sessions with writers from the region, and lots of great
downtown restaurants to choose from.
The Saturday agent panel was sobering. The agents emphasized the
importance of having, especially for a first novel, some unique tag line,
pitch line, or snagging concept. An agent may love your book, and an
acquisition editor may want to buy it. But the advertising and
distribution people at the publishing house want to be handed a ready way
to sell the novel, a built-in basis for buzz. Lacking that, the publishers
will say nice things, but pass. They can sell weird, edgy, quirky stuff
most easily, will buy it much more readily. And if that isn't
discouragement enough, there was also the answer, as expected, about short
story collection at the big publishing houses. They just don't sell, so
they are not interested, not unless there's a buzz-worthy novel attached
to the deal. Small publishers, who are much more open to collections, are
a better bet.
Nevertheless--I'll push ahead with writing the best novel I can, and I'll
define success as my own satisfaction with the finished thing. Any
acceptance after that, I'll consider gravy.
Monday, March 7, 2005
I should never reread prior entries here in this journal. I want to edit.
That last one, for example, March 1--it sounds so damned pedantic I want
to puke. I know I can write it better than that, get to what I wanted to
say without sounding that stuffy way I sometimes do. An excellent example
of wrong voice--consistent, but oh so wrong.
The new novel will probably be, to some degree, connected stories with
more than one viewpoint. Why? Selfishly, it's how I'd rather spend my
writing time. And comments from others indicate that I write better
writing short. And while I'd love to write the blockbuster novel, that's
not what I read. Give me a story about character struggle, about how hard
it is to be human in this world, about characters simultaneously in love
and conflict with each other...and with themselves. The downside?
Connected short stories -- the story cycle-- seems to be what every MFA
candidate writes these days. The lit. world today is awash in them.
Tuesday, March 1, 2005
I'm learning what a key role narrative voice plays in how fiction works.
The strongest short stories have the most solid and consistent narrative
voice.
On some level, conscious or not, the reader wants to know: Who is telling
me this story and how does this person relate to what's being told? The
reader may not ask the question, may not be aware of it, but the writer
should know the answers and ensure that it is consistent and under his
control.
A first-person narrator who is also a story participant is simplest.
Still, the time of the narration, its distance from the events, needs to
be established and maintained with an unwavering consistency. Are events
being told essentially as they happen? A day later? A year? Thirty years?
And the attitudes implied by the slant of narration need to appear
consistent with the character's behavior, carrying with it any implied learnings.
Third-person narration includes these same concerns, plus added issues.
Narration by a voice other than that of a story character opens a wide
range of author choices--and opportunities for all sorts of disorienting
inconsistencies of voice. Is the narrator 'of the community,' or an
outsider? Is his attitude sympathetic? Ironic? Analytical? Emotionally
involved? Detached? Disdainful? Sarcastic? The range of possibilities is
wide. What is important is that the reader senses a consistency in the
voice, that it not dart about among extremes, that it not mimic David
Sedaris on one page and John Updike on the next. The reader wants to make
an attachment to that narrating voice, wants to like and trust this
imagined person who whispers a story in his ear. He wants to be delighted,
surprised, entertained, and informed by it. What he does not want is to
feel manipulated, jerked about by mercurial, fragmented attitudes, by the
writer's narrative whims.
What this means is that sometimes you must forfeit the best lines, the
slickest turns of phrase, or the most poetic prose...if it doesn't fit. A
strong, consistent voice is worth the lot of them, worth it many times
over.
All of which explains why I've re-written the first four pages of my
novel-in-progress so very many times. Until I find the right voice for the
manuscript, the thing will not work.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
The good news this week is that WIND, A Journal of Writing & Community
will publish my story, "Paragon Tea," in their upcoming issue #94, which
will feature the work of poets and writers from the Appalachian Writers
Workshop at Hindman Settlement School. This particular story is probably
the least 'Appalachian' of any I've written so far, so it should be an
interesting contrast to the others there. And maybe it will attract
attention of a publisher for Things Kept, Things Left Behind, the
collection from which it is drawn. In any case, WIND is a great credit for
the resume, and it will be good to see my work up there with that of the Hindman Workshop's many fine writers.
Earlier today I also participated in a 'jury project,' a mock trial for a
law office in Richmond, a personal injury case. The experience itself was
interesting, as were the six other people who signed up for the panel. I
suspect some of the day will find itself composted in future fiction. It
has distinct plot possibilities.
Monday February 7, 2005
Reading dozens of short stories--fifty maybe, or seventy--by a wide range
of writers in recent months, I've noticed how substantial narrative voice
can be, how heavily it can flavor the writing and how a story comes across
to the reader. I'd like to work some of that into my writing. It's easy to
do wrong, to do clumsily. In the past, I've taken the easy road and aimed
for little voice in the narration itself, and what there was nearly
indistinguishable from the point-of-view character's voice. With the new
novel, I'm trying something riskier. Wish me well.
And while I call it a novel here, I'm still not sure to what extent it
will be a true novel, and to what extent a series of well connected
stories. That will come out in the writing, I suppose. Thus far, the
writing is slow as I try to get the opening voice right.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Okay, I'm not reworking the story collection. Instead I'm plotting on the
novel, using a method of building up potential scenes on index cards. It
was suggested by Robert Olen Butler at the 2003 IU Writers Workshop. This
novel will be planned out ahead of the writing in more detail than my
earlier ones were. I'm expecting that, as a result, the manuscript will be
tighter, the storyline less meandering, the themes more clearly focused.
That's what I'm shooting for anyway.
And with the fellowship grant, I'm looking at writers workshops for this
summer, gathering information, thinking about which to apply for.
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