February 7th, 2009

One-Moment Exercise–Results

(10 minute freewrite on the prompt in the last post, unedited)

He’s still tasting the goddamn date square. It’s been over an hour and some fierce regret, but it still pastes his tongue, his gums above his wisdom teeth. He is dying for a sip of water, has been for a while, but he didn’t dare take a finger off the wheel with Iz watching, and the rental-car office is so tiny and wobbly looking it seems like it might not even have running water. Plus, every time the clerk looks up from the computer, the file, the computer, he is glaring at them. At them both, but Judge feels like the kid can sense it was Judge behind the wheel when they hit the median, though he wouldn’t go as far to say “at fault.” Judge wouldn’t go that far at all.

It’s hot in Ohio. It was hot in Ontario too, but in that province it was also dawn, which gave your clothes some clearance from your body. Now everything is slicked tight, even the baggy canvas of his shorts, even the thin cotton of the street-stand t-shirt that says, Fest. It is a generic t-shirt, bought for four-dollars in Outremont when he spilled red wine at a party and ran downstairs to see if he could by a new one. For four dollars, he didn’t care what fest, all though here, in Ohio, with the rubber-decal letters sweating to the hair on his chest, he panics briefly that someone might ask him. Not Iz, of course; Iz was at the party.

She also smells like date squares, which is not helping anything, the cinnamon-fruit dust that hangs in the shared air between them. And she stands so distant from him, while firmly occupying the same wicket at the wood-veneer desk. She is keeping her distance? Or she is trying not to touch in the confined space where to touch means to stick, and sweat.

Why is the clerk not sweating? How can a modern business establishment not be air-conditioned? What is wrong with Ohio? The shallow bowls around the kid’s eyes are not even shiny, his forehead dry, his tight small braids tapering neatly to the back of his neck. The clicks of the computer are dry and precise, too, but in Judge’s mind, each one is thousands of dollars.

February 6th, 2009

Exercise–The Single Moment One

Wednesday evening I went to the info session/meeting/dinner for me and my writing/teaching/administrating colleagues at SWAT/Now Hear This. It was very exciting/friendly/delicious/scary, because very very soon, I’m going to be entrusted with some actual high-school students, and expected to teach them something, and that will likely be every adjective mentioned above (except delicious).

In an effort to calm down, I will of course be over-preparing. I have a wealth of classroom experience from the other side, because I have had so many good writing teachers the past 11 years or so. So I will be culling through memories and notebooks, trying to find what helped me most. I’ll also be asking around to find such things that helped *other* writers–if you have recommendations or fond memories (or, in fact, bitter memories that you would like me avert for future generations) please drop me a line/comment.

I actually used to love writing exercises, and find they work well in a classroom, where everyone’s used to obeying orders, and it’s tough to order anyone to “think freely.” Exercises are a trick to free you up in tight parameters, and to that end, usually they are timed. I prefer 10 minutes for the ones I’ll be running, but if you are playing along at home, obviously I won’t be checking your work!!

Single-Moment Exercise
Describe a single moment in the life of a character. It could be someone in a piece you’ve been working on and got stuck in, or someone you just invented clean out of your head. If you are really stuck, use yourself, right now. Describe all five senses as the character is experiencing them: the taste in her mouth, the feel of his clothes, temperature, comfort-level, smells, feeling of health or illness, what’s in her field of vision/aural landscape, and of course what’s on his mind. Do not move forward into ramifications–these are unknown–and try to stay away from flashback unless the character is dwelling on the past. Stick to immediate perception as much as possible.
Ok, go!
I’ll put up my exericse on the weekend, in case anyone’s curious.

Outside the thunder’s jealous / of the way you shake
RR

January 29th, 2009

The Midcentury Men

Sometimes it seems no book will ever again lodge in my psyche the way the books I read in my teens did. Of those, a disproprotionate number seem to be by white male Americans writing in the middle of the last century. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), John Cheever (1912-1982), J. D. Salinger (b. 1919) and John Updike (1932-2009) were mixed in with plenty of writers who weren’t male, 20th century, American or very good, but I certainly did acquire a lot of my writing-by-imitation lessons from those 4. Even now, I still think about them all the time, despite their differences from each other, and from me.

Of those guys, it’s Updike that I feel most ardently. Maybe because he’s the only one who’s been creatively active in my lifetime (I don’t expect Salinger to publish anything further, other than perhaps a Unibomber-style manifesto, at this point, though when I was 14, I was sure he would). And maybe I’ve so admired Updike’s stories just because he wrote the most like I wanted to write–though I do think most writers come to the page because *no one* writes exactly what we want to read, and we write to fill our own gaps.

What I think Updike had that I want is that penatrating gaze beyond the glaze of the everyday, that ability to full characterize the third person and give a tiny breathing space even in first. Those *voices*, that self-consciousness of characters who, even if they are don’t know they are in a story, know that people are always on view in the world, visible and audible. Updike’s characters can’t stop talking, at least to themselves, especially to themselves. They can’t stop thinking and I can’t stop thinking about them.

All this is by way of saying that I am upset–to a rather surprising extent–that Mr. Updike passed away Monday. I’m sure I’m not old enough to say who my greatest writing influences are–the best idea is likely to not worry about this until I’m dead, and then if anyone’s still interested, they’ll have my collected works to study. Nevertheless, I *feel* like Updike’s with me a lot when I write, although I don’t know that it shows…yet. I can think of specific places in *Once* where there’s that inside-outside doubling voice, but there aren’t very many. Someday, I’m going to finish the book that really does show the influence…not soon, though.

Perhaps Updike is a strange heritage for me to claim, given his somewhat masculine worldview, and his often rarefied settings. Maybe he represented an age, if not a place, that my parents come from, and he felt a paternal figure to me as a writer. I imagine a lot of people felt that way, although maybe not of 30-year-old women who write mainly about people in cities with lousy jobs.

Maybe all I’ll leave all this to whoever still interested after I’m dead, and just concentrate on the many books of Mr. Updike’s I haven’t even read yet. It’s not like I’ll miss hanging out with him, and books are eternal. But I don’t get to scan the table of contents in the New Yorker hoping he’ll be in this week, or hope he’ll somehow get the Nobel eventually, or I dunno, just feel good about all his stories yet to come.

For lack of a better ending, rest in peace.
RR

January 10th, 2009

On Diction

A tip: When something has gone catastrophically wrong in the life of a writer, do not offer the comfort that this turn of events will be “excellent material.” While the disaster in question may in fact someday be a topic for writing, that is a pretty tarnished silver lining when one has just lost their job, heart or luggage. I guess I can’t speak for everybody, but certainly, these things matter to me far more in and of themselves then for their potential as stories. If the adage “tragedy + time = comedy,” it’s a lot of time, even if the story won’t wind up being all that funny.

I find events and anecdotes to be the easiest part of writing, anyway. If you buy the “1% inspiration, 99% perspiration” theory of writing, the inspiration is for me is the idea, the thing the stories supposed to be about. And ideas are pretty thick on the ground, catastrophe or not, reality-based or not. Everything else, that 99% of sweat and struggle, is finding the words and structure and voice to show that idea on the page in some way ressembling how I see it and feel it in my head.

When I find something in real life that that seems like material, it’s usually not a thing that happened, but words: a way of saying things that’s new to me, or a new thing to say entirely. Vibrant writing, I think, comes from language in tune with who the characters are, their vocabulary and emotions, articulateness, vernacular: diction.

I like to go places where language is used differently from how I use it . No one at my doctor’s office would use the word “diction” but they might use the words “incidence,” “ameliorate,” “aggressive therapy,” “monitoring” or “gown” in a very different sense than I would normally encounter them, if I encountered them at all. This is why I can’t leave anyone alone who works in medical profession–sorry, guys!

Lately, I’m in love with yoga-diction, even though I’ve never been the biggest fan of yoga, nor very good, either, since flexible+clumsy+poor equilibrium=floppy. And I do not enjoy all the pressure to relax–tension is one of the core components of my personality, thank you.

Anyway!

In an intro yoga class, they mention the Sanskrit words for the postures, but genially and loosely translate them for the neophytes. I love this stuff–it’s direct quotes, near as I can reconstitute it: “Ok, now for Cow Face, first we’re going to form the lips of the cow with our crossed legs, like so…ok, great! And now, for the ears, let’s reach our right hands up into the sky…” There’s something you don’t hear elsewhere.

Yoga or any sort of organized physical training give me a chance to look at bodies and body parts with scrutiny that I don’t usually give them. “Make sure your ankle isn’t sickling,” “Look up at your biceps,” “Let’s tighten up those lower abdominal muscles,” “How close together can you get your shoulder blades?”

This stuff is strange and not very relevant to most action, but it’s useful to be able to see things from such a radically new angle (from the floor, with your legs in the air above you and your knees resting on your forehead). As a writer, words are all I have to work with, and I’m always in search of more, and more ways to use them.

Which is why I’m telling myself it’s gonna be fun to go to the passport office this week. Really! Who knows what they’ll *say*?

And now you’ve turned the other cheek
RR

January 7th, 2009

That Terrible Point…

Either the draft is a) done, and I am merely toppling it into overdone incomprehensibility by continuing to pick at it for a few more days, or b) not done, and I am abandoning it to underdone incomprehensibility by not continuing to work on it for a few more days.

Oh. Look. It’s after ten–I’m going to bed!

Take me with you / I start to miss you
RR

December 12th, 2008

Language, Open and Shut

Writing is the only art form that mainly strives to be not itself. Any serious writer dwells in the beauty of language, the elegance of phrasing, sound and rhythm, but over the long-term, the longer-than-a-sentence term, good writing strives to make you stop seeing it, stop seeing the words on the page and start seeing the images and characters those words create. As a writer, I want readers to feel my stories as people and events, not in ink on paper.

To achieve this, of course, the writer is reliant on language, the very thing she wants to make you not see. To achieve an image that transcends ink and paper, you need language like a stone polished so brilliant that we see only the reflection of the world, and not the stone’s surface at all. The rightest word must be the most precise and specific, penetrating and resilient, in order to engage the reader in creating the image in his or her mind. If you just say “tree” the reader might see a budding maple from outside the window of her third-grade classroom, or she might see dying yellowed pinetree on the shoulder of an Alaska highway, but more than likely, the reader will just see the Times New Roman letters t-r-e-e, and nothing more.

A writer seeks to corner an image, an emotion, a sensation–to make it stay put for a minute so a reader can get a sort of fleeting, slantwise glimpse of what the writer sees in *her* head when she thinks about trunks and branches and leaves. You can never do it completely, and some writers are ok with more gaps in the fence than others. The task allottment might differ from writer to writer, or text to text, but the project of creating meaning in a story, novel or poem is always a joint one between writer and reader.

In conversation–well, in good conversation–statements are like story-writing. When I describe my day, date or dinner to you, I’m trying to give you enough information that you can recreate it in your own head. Same as a story. But dialogue is a much more delicate dynamic than text, and we not ever *just* offering information–in conversation we ask for information in return. And there is a very different linguistic necessity in asking questions, or even opening topics, than there is in making statements/telling stories.

I’ve had considerable sensitivity training, in the formal sense (there are many life experiences that qualify as sensitivity training, I know) and one of the things I’ve been taught is to open language as wide as possible, to leave space in a question for *every possible answer*.

You’d think that’d be easy–by the very fact of asking a question, we admit we don’t know the answer. But quite often, the words we use to ask can imply that we believe we know the range of the answer. When I point at a woman’s wedding band, and say, “How long have you and your husband been married?” that’s (say it together, grad school kids) heteronormative. When I suggest that an acquaintance buy a certain item, I suggest I know she can afford it. When I make an idle joke about a colleague being “off her meds,” I imply that I know she’s never taken mood-stabilizers.

And, as we’ve so often established her at Rose-coloured, what do I know?

Most people are tough enough to weather such slights, and generous enough to forgive them. But it’s alienating, absolutely, to misapprised (literally, mis-seen) again and again. And if one is going through a particularly vulnerable time, maybe you aren’t that tough. Around this time of year, there’s a lot of seemingly inoccuous queries about family that could be truly upsetting if your family is dead/abusive/too distant to afford plane fare. Never even mind that we aren’t all celebrating the same holidays–even as a Jew who enjoys Christmas, I don’t find it so unreasonable that *everybody* stick to saying “Season’s Greeting” to those whose denomination is unknown.

That my version of “open” language comes from sensitivity training leaves me open to a little bit of mockery, sometimes, and other times is just confusing. I am so well programmed (I actually eventually taught the class) that I really fear hurting someone by asking loaded questions like, “How was your Mother’s Day?” “Why don’t you buy a new one?” “Are you going to talk that over with a friend?”

So I’m a little over-delicate–I don’t ask a lot of questions if I can’t make them very neutral. Because I am actually passionately curious (read: nosy); I want to know everything about your life you feel like telling me. But there’s the thing, I want to know *anything*–and if I slant the question so that it sounds like I already know, or expect to know, why would you speak at all?

When I tell a story, on the page or in conversation, I want to give you the gift of what I know, more or less elaborately done up with paper and bow. When I ask a question, I want to give you clean a clean and empty box, with the flaps folded back, to make it easier for you to give me anything at all.

Can I put this lightly?
RR

December 8th, 2008

Dead-hot Workshop

Once, I wrote a story called, “In the Time of the Radio Gods,” about my usual favourite themes: love and awkwardness, death and music, ghosts and grad school. I did a couple drafts and then read it aloud to 20-odd other writers. Then everyone said what they liked and hated about the story, a teacher corralled some of the comments into usable form and added her own insights, and then I revised it again. That was my first workshop, in high school Writer’s Craft class, and I’ve been workshopping on and off (mainly on) ever since.

Workshops are not for everyone. I’m sort of infamous for wanting to do everything as a team sport–I’ve never seen why I should choose a narrative direction, a life course or an entree all alone when there are so many estimable opinions to be accounted for. Not everyone feels that way, and to have to face those 20-odd opinions when you really only want to sort out your own feelings about the work can be very hard. Workshopping too early, too much or with jerks can be very upsetting.

Nevertheless, I sort of feel that any writer who would like to publish ought to try workshopping once. Just to see how it feels to get other people’s opinions on your work, to learn how to discount opinions that don’t help and make use of the ones that do. I know there *are* writers who work perfectly in splendid isolation, who can produce work that resonates immediately and powerfully with no oustide help, but I do not think they are the majority. The rest of us need to know how our work will be read to help us write it.

I’ve actually seen some talented writers set themselves way back by slaving over work for ages, and then having the first person who reads it be the slush-reader who rejects it with a one-line form-letter (I’ve *been* that slush-reader). The year before that lovely workshop, I actually had a story published in a lit journal, and I found the editorial process devastating. The ed in question liked the work but want it to be better than it was, and he had no patience with my tiny 17-year-old feelings. He had a job to do, and that was create good writingl, not necessarily a good writer (though, honestly, the best editors do both). In a workshop, people have the time, energy and impetus (grades, the fact that you’ll be commenting on *their* work) to be thorough, tactful, and to try to say something you’ll actually be able to use. A good workshop leader will at least try to keep students on-task and thoughtful, and to push readers to go with the writer’s ambition wherever it might lead.

Of course, I’ve workshopped in not-so-ideal circumstances: profs who didn’t give a toss, colleagues who cried in the face of criticism, friends who felt awkward saying anything but, “It’s great!” Once, a class workshopped a rather good excerpt from a semi-autobiographical “mom-lit” novel. Then, at coffee break, I ran into said mom in the hallway with her coat on, car keys in hand. “Babysitter issues?” I asked her. “No,” she shrugged. “I just only like the part of class where we talk about *my* work.”

But I also got my first tastes of absinthe (blech) and Bukowski (well…) in workshop, got told my work was boring, poetic, post-modern and brilliant; made amazing friends, learned how to deal with rejection, learned how to write a query letter, learned a lot about sex (not all workshoppers want to talk about their sex lives, but a fair number do). My workshop leaders and colleauges have been some truly talented writers, some truly famous writers, a kitten named Chub-Chub and some genuine friends.

This post is sparked partially by having lunch yesterday with the leader of that first-ever workshop leader, Pam North. So many years later, I am still so grateful for her attention and insight, and so many years later, she is still giving that same attention and insight to class after class of maybe-writers-to-be. Also this week, I’ll probably be relying on the attention and insight of my writing-friend (a dear one, but no one who would ever so succumb to the urge to say “It’s great!” just to make me happy), Kerry. *Also* this week (this is quite a workshoppy week, I guess) my four-person monthly workshop will once again reach quorum, when our fourth member returns from the coast for a holiday cameo. I will thrilled to hear of her adventures and give her a hug, but I am also thrilled to be reading her work again. Following the path of other writers through their giant leaps forwards and occasional missteps is another reason to workshop–you learn where you might want to go.

My worst moment in a workshop was one a prof handed back a story without any comments at all and, when I asked what he thought, sighed and said, “Oh, Rebecca, I don’t care what you write.” Not awesome. But the fact is, most people don’t care what the writers are up to, and in a workshop there is an unusually high concentration of those who do. Which helps when, like after the moment above, you need a little honest feedback, a little genuine praise, and maybe a hug.

Alex never gets what she wants
RR

December 2nd, 2008

The Short Story’s Moment of Mystic Expansion

“The short story concentrates on its grain of sand, in the fierce belief that there — right there, in the palm of its hand — lies the universe. It seeks to know that grain of sand the way a lover seeks to know the face of the beloved. It looks for the moment when the grain of sand reveals its true nature. In that moment of mystic expansion, when the macrocosmic flower bursts from the microcosmic seed, the short story feels its power. It becomes bigger than itself.

–From Steven Millhauser’s *NYT Book Review* essay, The Ambition of the Short Story

This essay was part of Bruce Johnstone’s presentation at the Waterloo reading last week, and it was joyful news indeed. The writing little high flown at times (takes a few swipes at the novel, a perfectly respectable form of prose) but it also reminds a story reader and/or writer of the possibilities and responsibilities of this beautiful form. I don’t understand the picture of the cow, actually. Do you?

When Johnny saw the numbers he lied
RR

November 15th, 2008

Unblockable

Something I’ve said in the past that, taken out of context, could make me seem obnoxious, is that I never get writers’ block. I get too tired to write, or too busy, or too lazy, but if I am actually able to get myself into the chair to write, I can write. The concept of the intimidating blank page/screen is foreign to me.

Obnoxious, right? Well, obviously, there’s more.

Anyone who wants their words in the wider world, ie., wants other people to bother reading them, had better be a perfectionist. To publish, or try to publish, stories that I feel to be sorta “meh” is a nightmare-ish construction to me–oh, the shame of letting strangers read a badly turned line.

I, however, am a perfectionist over the long term. As I type away, I am not exactly thrilled, but certainly ok with letting a bad line, an awkward scene, a hackneyed metaphor stand in a rough draft. Sometimes I just can’t think of anything better right then and I’d rather get the whole thing laid out where I can see it before I start fiddling. It’s ok with me if the fiddling and fixing comes much later. No one’s going to sneak into my hard-drive in the night and read at it and laugh at my lameness. I’ll get it on the 2nd draft, or the 3rd. There’s always another chance; I write a lot of drafts.

People who get writers’ block, I am given to understand, do *not* write a lot of drafts (since it’s not a condition I suffer from, I don’t know exactly–feel free to correct me!) They are willing to wait, cursor blinking, until they have it nailed–it takes longer for them to get it down on the page, but they get it right the first time. A novel concept for one like me, who has so far cut close to 1500 words out of a first draft and isn’t even close to done. I was pretty sure those 1500 words weren’t aces when I wrote them, but they were a bridge from where I was to where I wanted to go–I needed them at the time, although not any longer. That time spent writing what would be later deleted is my version of staring at the blinking cursor–writing garbage, or redundancy, or perfectly adequate narration for another story, is my version of writers’ block

I figured this out with a friend who found the process of writing deadly slow, but her stories required almost no editing–by the time she got there, she was there, the story whole and polished. She was envious of my ability to just keep slugging, no matter my mood or doubts about the story or confusion about whether it even *was* a story. I was envious of her ability to say what she wanted to say straight out, with no excess verbiage or pointless digressions.

We realized that, though our processes were so radically different, from first word to final draft took us both about the same amount of time. Which is encouraging/comforting/non-obnoxious. And makes me feel a little better about the fact that another 1500 words could and probably shall be cut from this story.

I think the message here, if there’s a message, is: any way you go, as long it eventually leads forward, is fine.

I’d certainly be curious to hear what anyone else has to say about blocks, drafts, and the way forward.

It stoned me to my soul
RR

October 16th, 2008

Writing fiction is not my job…

…because no one is making me do it–though I have tons of help and support, I could stop tomorrow and no one would mind. That’s a really good thing for me to remember when I’m tired and bitchy and writing the nth draft of something hard: no one asked me to write this, no one is dying to see it but me, but no one will write it if I don’t. That’s usually enough to keep me working, and when it isn’t, I probably shouldn’t have been writing that piece in the first place.

It’s probably dreadfully tacky to quote oneself, but the above is from me, in response to one of Leila Amiri’s thoughtful interview questions in our interview for the Concordia Link. I forget the above far too often, but putting it here might serve as a good reminder.

You were working as a waitress in a hotel bar
RR