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Putting a Story to Rest for a While

Recently, I wrote a post on the roller coaster ride of novel writing — about the highs from the little successes and the lows of constant uncertainty.

I battled my self doubts about the novel I’m trying to write (a story about a woman named Millie) by focusing on better character development, reassessing plot points, and scratching out a new outline for chapter one. Still, each writing session ended with a persistent twist in my gut, an uncomfortable feeling that suggested, No. This is not the story you should be writing. Not today.

I ignored my gut, thinking “today” meant not this particular 24 hour period. Really, I was afraid I’d mark myself as a quitter if I put this manuscript down.

All I have to do is finish the draft, I told myself. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be done.

Continue reading “Putting a Story to Rest for a While”

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On Stanley Kunitz, Memoir, and Fiction

Sitting in my critique group the other night, it was Stanley Kunitz who came to mind as we discussed the challenges in writing memoir.

Not because Stanley Kunitz wrote memoir, but because his poem, The Layers, seemed to answer the question of how to write memoir.

How does a writer condense decades of one’s life into 300 pages?

What years do you ignore? Which memories do you highlight? And, how do you make it all come together without retelling every minute of every day of how you got from there to here?

After my mother passed away, a good friend gave me Stanley Kunitz’s book, The Collected Poems, and she pointed me to page 217. The poem,  The Layers, in its entirety, is a beautiful tribute to loved ones gone but never forgotten. We are touched by the people in our lives in a way that, even after their presence is diminished – for one reason or another – we still feel their power.

Two specific passages from that poem stayed with me during the early days, months, years of grieving for my mother. Then, as I sat around the table with other writers and talked about memoir, those passages burst forth again:

When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
…
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.

Writing memoir isn’t about retelling every detail of every day. It’s about picking and choosing those pivotal moments, or about recounting those powerful relationships in our lives, that served as a catalyst – that swayed us one way or another or shifted our perspective slightly – and forced us to grow and to change.

I mentioned the poem to my critique partners, and the second I related it to memoir, I realized the same principle applies to fiction. The main character in my WIP has experienced pivotal moments in her life as well. I don’t have to wrestle her into confessing every gorey detail about her life from first memory and beyond. I only need to discover places along her journey where she stayed – just long enough – that they left an imprint, and I only need to write on the people in her life who, like precious stones, line her path of character development.

*****

Kunitz, Stanley. The Collected Poems. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. Print.

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The Mother, The Writer: History repeats itself.

When I was pregnant with my first child, experienced parents approached me and my rounded belly and always smiled an empathetic smile.

One by one, they hinted at what I was in for once that baby arrived: no sleep, life as I knew it would be over, and the crying…oh the crying.

I heard them, but I didn’t heed their words, because I was riding high on the excitement of holding a baby in my arms. Sleep is underrated, I thought. Life is boring anyway, and a baby’s cry? Like the sound of sweet music.

But after my son was born, I realized the crying of which they warned me were the sobs of a new mother. Cries from me, falling apart after several sleepless days and nights and battles with feeding and a moment in the hospital when I feared I would never be a good mother.

“I told you that you’d feel this way,” my sister said, through her own tears, as she tried to comfort me.

My recent attempt at fixing my WIP brought with it a similar flood of emotion and self doubt.

I’ve read over and over how novel writing is hard work – the first draft may come out easy, but the real challenge comes in rewriting. I nodded each time I read those words, because the logistics made sense. A first draft is never perfect. I got it.

Then, I pushed those wise words aside and set my gaze on a dreamy image of me holding a published novel in hand. I told myself, I can do this rewrite thing, chapter by chapter. And, character development (my latest issue)? That’s easy enough. I’m the author. I can make up whatever I want.

But, that’s not exactly true. While I, the author, control all the variables, those variables must make sense in relation to the real world. As Larry Brooks says it in his book on character development*, a character’s “…major behavioral tendencies and specific actions need to be in context to psychological truths, and if [they aren’t] your story will suffer for it.”

After a few days of scribbling notes and typing frantic details into a new document, I stared at my WIP with wide eyes and climbed aboard that same roller coaster that new mothers ride. My head swelled and my stomach fell and soon enough I said out loud, I’m not so sure I can do this. What if I get it all wrong? What made me think I could ever write a novel?

As I write this post, it all sounds so dramatic. But, that’s the way I felt in the last few days. And, I don’t think I’m alone.

Ray Bradbury was talking to some self-doubting writer when he said, “You fail only if you stop writing.”

And, Amy Tan was easing the fears of another writer when she said, “I started a second novel seven times and had to throw them all away.”

Whether I start over completely from scratch, or I get back into the ring with my main character and wrestle her into confession, I’m not sure. Regardless, I have a WIP in my hands, a story that needs finishing, and I am the only one who can do it.

~

* Brooks, Larry. 2010. The Three Dimensions of Character Development: Going Deep and Wide to Create Compelling Heroes and Villains. [e-book] Larry Brooks, available at www.storyfix.com.

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