Thirty days, 50,000 words, one first draft. That’s a sure-fire way to jump-start a novel.
In a few weeks, writers from every walk of life will crack their knuckles and punch out that dreamy first line of a story that will carry them through a mass, online write-in. Coffee shops will break out the extension cords. Families will go ignored. Stories will get written, dammit, no matter what.
National Novel Writing Month.
I’m not participating this year. Several other projects demand my attention, one of those being the rewrite of a novel draft born during my first NaNo experience. Though, I won’t be a slave to the purple word-count bar this November, you will find me hunched over my laptop – crazy – this October.
That’s right. I’m doing all my mad writing this month.
I joined up with a group of authors on an anthology project, and I have it easy. I just have to write a 10,000 word story.
Just.
I’ve been sweating over this story.
So, in an effort to accentuate the “fun” part of this project, one of the authors spearheading the anthology suggested our own mini-NaNo: 10,000 words in thirty-one days. And, in true NaNo form, someone sent out a rally cry from the discussion board. I’m holding fast to that cry each time I sit down and open my file: No looking back.
. . .
Okay, that’s not entirely true. I’m sort of looking back. But only to recall the spirit of my first NaNoWriMo experience, in which I made it all the way to the 50,000 mark. If I could do that then, I can do this now. Here’s my plan (tips that apply, really, to any first-draft writing spree):
1. Start once, and stick with that beginning.
I’ve restarted this short story three times, and each restart kills my confidence. Restructuring the beginning can come later. When I get to that point, I know exactly what resource I’ll turn to: the October 2011 issue of Writer’s Digest, page 52, where Les Edgerton, Nancy Kress, and James Scott Bell talk about the first 50 pages. Their articles mainly address the novel writing process, but successful short stories and novels have a lot in common, one being powerful beginnings.
2. Write a scene at a time.
If the scene I know should come next absolutely won’t come forth, from my mind to the screen, I’ll write whatever scene is formulated in my mind. Reordering can also come later. . . . I’ll be honest here. Practicing this tip is more difficult than it sounds; I want desperately to write in a linear way. But, I also want to reach the end of the story.
Give yourself a good deal of raw material to work with before you begin to edit.
My friend, E. Victoria Flynn, spoke of a similar idea in her comment on my most recent post, where we talked about the amount of writing we put down on paper in relation to the writing we send out into the world:
My stories wouldn’t exist…if it weren’t for [all] the chaff.
Write the chaff. Trust the process. No looking back.
I’m not kidding.
Scroll down, not up.
Forge ahead. Whether you’re about to embark on a 50,000 word journey, or are in the middle of a 700 word blog post that’s choking your muse, remember a first draft isn’t the be-all-end-all of your writing career (…this I will repeat to myself in the mirror tomorrow morning, you know).
If it’s the 50,000 journey you’re on, leave your Twitter handle. I’ll cheer for you. I have pom-poms.
“Tell your mother she has never had any idea
how easy it is for something to be destroyed.”
— from “Snakes” in Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self
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I’ll admit, I was first attracted to Danielle Evans’ collection of short stories, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, because of the title. But, it was the stories themselves, and the characters within, that held my attention.
Sana Krasikov (author of One More Year: Stories) calls Evans’ writing “quietly magnetic.” I love this description; it’s so true. Evans creates characters who are within my reach, even when their experiences differ from my own. I slid easily into their lives and found myself in the middle of deep loss, heartache, and threat. Yet, I didn’t want to look away. Instead, I was compelled to sit with the characters, even after the story ended, and then go back and read about them again.
For a chance to win a copy of her book, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, drop your name in the comments section. I’ll choose the winner on Tuesday, February 1st.
~
CC: The opening story in your book, “Virgins,” first appeared in The Paris Review three years before this book was published. Did you discover an emerging theme in your writing early on that led you to publish a book of short stories? Or, did you consider a theme and then craft the stories?
photo by Nina Subin
DE: “Virgins” was actually one of the last stories in the book to be written. It was published in 2007, just about a month before I sold the collection to Riverhead. Typically there’s about a year between selling the book and publication, but various things can slow that process down—in this case, my editor’s maternity leave, and my first full time teaching job, which coincided with the start of the editing process and meant I had to learn to divide my writing and editing time from my teaching time. I didn’t write most of the stories with any end goal in mind. By the time that I wrote the first draft of Virgins, in 2006, I had a sense that most of the stories that I was happy with belonged together somehow. The only story I wrote with the collection in mind was “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” which I thought tied together the themes of various stories, but took them someplace new. In the editorial process, a lot of what I had to think about was how these stories, which I’d always thought of as somewhat separate, could become one thing. At points I’d find that, for example, a particular story could survive having an element cut and still work, but cutting that element would take something away from the collection as a whole. There was a story that went in after the collection was sold, because it seemed to add some balance after a few stories were cut from the original version of the manuscript, and another that almost went in, but that in the end I couldn’t make claim its own territory—it seemed too similar to work I’d already done. So, there was a lot of thought about the book as a book, and not just a series of stories, but mostly I was thinking about topic and form and organization. Questions of theme I think are generally best left to readers and reviewers—at least personally, I find they can crush my writing if I let them guide it.
CC: Each of your stories is written with such strength and emotion. I especially love, “Snakes,” where you tackle issues of race, family, and failed expectations head on through the lives of Tara, Allison, and their grandmother, crafting each character’s emotional depth or shallowness with great skill. How do you approach character development? Do you spend more time getting to know each one before you write? Or, do you write more organically, allowing the characters to reveal themselves throughout the first drafts?
DE: I generally try to write organically, at least at first pass. The good thing about working in shorter forms is that if it doesn’t work, you can just throw it out. There isn’t that sense of pressure that you have with a novel that you’ve been working on for two years, or that you realize will be a decade long commitment. So, if I have an idea for a story, or I feel drawn to a particular character, I just write it, and if it doesn’t come together, I can abandon it, or I can leave it alone indefinitely and return to it months or years later, because a story is short enough to easily drop back into if there’s anything redeemable in it. “Snakes” is an example of that. The first draft of the story was one of the earliest things I wrote—it was actually something I wrote in one of my first college creative writing courses. For years I’d revisit it and not quite know what was off. I knew Tara was withholding something—there was always a kind of secrecy and repression built into the story—but I had no idea what. Then my editor read it, and in her critique asked some smart questions about Tara, and suddenly I had an answer. Once I had that answer it was easy to go back into the story and tear out most of what was there so I could rewrite it with greater clarity.
CC: In the Acknowledgments, you say, “The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing is one of the best places a writer could ever call home.” I’d love to hear more about your experiences there and how they shaped you as a writer.
DE: I think if most early writers were to make a list of ideal gifts, those gifts would include time, money, and faith—not necessarily in that order. There are many institutions that are good at providing one or two of those things, but The Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing really provided all three. There was a teaching commitment that was enough to keep you grounded, but not so much pressure that it cut into your writing time, there was a stipend that was enough to live comfortably on in that part of the country, and there was a real sense of community, a sense that we were there to do our work because someone genuinely believed in it. There are a lot of writing spaces where people feel like admitting that they don’t know something or need help navigating something is akin to failure, and I think the creative writing faculty at UW-Madison really worked to create a space where that was not the case, where it was safe to ask questions and you could expect thoughtful answers. Once you are in a position where people think you know the answers to certain questions, procedural or existential, about writing, you realize how much time it takes to answers those questions, and exactly how generous the people who kept their doors open for you were. Madison is also, hands down, the prettiest place I have ever lived.
CC: What are you reading these days?
DE: Student journals, forever and ever. But, I am amassing a collection of books to read during the summer: Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, Jane Brox’s Brilliant, a history of artificial light, Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies. I am looking forward to Tayari Jones’ forthcoming book, Silver Sparrow, which I had the pleasure of hearing her read from last Fall. Last year I read and loved many books, but especially Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad and Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. And, I exaggerate a bit about the journals. In the context of teaching, I also get to reread some of my favorite books and poems and stories—among them Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days, and Edward P. Jones’ The Known World. I’m teaching an independent study this semester where some of the books are chosen by the students, so I’m reading Blood Meridian for the first time, which I’m looking forward to.
CC: Do you have any final thoughts or advice for writers on the rise?
DE: My main advice is to do the work that you believe in, because that’s the only part of the process you can predict or control.
I pride myself on being a quiet observer: in a church pew, during a staff meeting, behind a muffin and a steaming cup of coffee in a cafe. Most days, it takes me a long time to warm up to any conversation. But, stick me in front of my laptop (and smack-dab in the middle of rewriting a story) and suddenly I’m all talk.
At least, that’s what I’ve noticed lately with my work-in-progress. The early drafts of my novel were heavy in exposition and light in conversation. Now, I have a clearer vision of the plot, and I know my characters better. And, dialogue comes easy for me. The problem is that once the characters start talking, I let them go on and on. In rewriting another section last week, I noticed a whole page of chit chat. All that character banter started to tug at my writer’s gut, which suggested I should to rethink my use of dialogue.
Nathan Bransford posted on the Seven Keys to Writing Good Dialogue, in which he pin points one area of concern. He says, “A good conversation is an escalation…Characters in a novel never just talk. There’s always more to it.” In all writing, each character, scene, and piece of dialogue must move the story forward. I practice that in my short stories and flash fiction. But, in this novel rewrite, much of the dialogue I’ve written just fills up space. Though realistic, it reads flat and doesn’t necessarily propel the story.
Janet Fitch (author of White Oleander) has her own post, entitled “A Few Thoughts About Dialogue,” where she carries this idea of flat conversation even further. She says, “Dialogue is only for conflict…You can’t heap all your expository business on it, the meet and greet, and all that yack…If someone’s just buying a donut, nobody needs to say anything.” Then, she throws in a quick example of unnecessary talk: in response to a character asking, Want a cup of coffee? she writes, “No. I don’t. Ever.”
I’m guilty of that kind of dialogue: in the span of one chapter, my characters have discussed getting a cup of coffee or tea twice. That’s a lot of “coffee talk.”
Many writers think a story should be largely narrated, in the manner of classic literature. But here’s a good rule: fight the urge to narrate…A story should consist of one scene following another, connected by narration.
I don’t want to nix half of the conversations in my novel just because I want to avoid too much talking. So, how do I find a balance between dialogue and narrative? After reading Bransford, Fitch, and McCarver, I found three different techniques:
From McCarver’s article: Find a particularly long narrative section and see how it might be broken up into more of a scene with dialogue.
After reading Fitch’s post: Find a section in the story where the characters have a whole conversation, and then cross out the dialogue that is commonplace. Because, as Fitch says, “A line anybody could say is a line nobody should say.”
From Bransford’s post: If the dialogue does carry the story forward but still feels “thin,” look for places to add gestures, facial expressions, and/or any details from the scene that enhance that section. Bransford says, “gesture and action [are] not [used] to simply break up the dialogue for pacing purposes, but to actually make it meaningful….”
How do you balance your story with narrative and dialogue? Do you talk too much?
In a few weeks, writers from every walk of life will crack their knuckles and punch out that dreamy first line of a story that will carry them through a mass, online write-in. Coffee shops will break out the extension cords. Families will go ignored. Stories will get written, dammit, no matter what.
