How I Write

It would be more than a little presumptuous of me to claim to be any authority on writing based on one and a half NaNoWriMo drafts, but since my 3:30 am bedtime has left me rather unfunctional today, I thought I'd talk a bit about how I how I write my installments.

The first issue I deal with is plot. In Stillwater, I'm trying to stay essentially faithful to my source, but that faithfulness is to mood and character, and not to every particular incident. So I draw on my theater experience and dig for objectives and motivations: What does each character want? How does he or she achieve that? How do these objectives clash? How do they come together? All drama is change, so how are the characters different at the end of the scene? I consider the details of my source, and look for the best way to alter them so to fit the particular story I'm telling without warping their original significance.

When I start to write, first I focus on telling the story, then I start layering on details that convey mood or character. If a line doesn't push the plot forward, illuminate character, or convey mood, pacing, or setting, I cut it out. I've had to kill several of my darlings that way, but sometimes I find that a detail or observation that was irrelevant and clunky in one segment fits perfectly into another.  Sometimes I know that I need to fit a particular line or quote in, and I need to craft the scene to let that bit flow seamlessly from what's already happened.

For me, the dramatic arc of a scene is crucial, and since I'm writing in small installments, I have to make sure that not only the story as a whole but each segment has its own rise and fall. Sometimes, as with part 30, the dinner with Rene, I have to keep writing until I reach a certain closing point, no matter how long it takes to post; sometimes, as with part 31, I find that I'm simply not going to get as far as I wanted to without killing myself, and I need to focus on a smaller incident instead of pushing through to a bigger scene. Either way, I have to find the dramatic timing of the section so that it stands as a complete incident within the context of the larger story.

I try to make the strongest character choices possible. Is it more significant if Melly mutters a line or whispers it? What if Alys turns away when she says this? On stage, distance creates tension and often an actor conveys more truth through physical action and gesture than through dialogue. I don't have those visual cues on the page, so I try to find details to convey the subtext as efficiently and elegantly as possible. The setting of the scene can often help with this: is it intimate? Is it cavernous? Cozy? Uncomfortable? Familiar or not? Does the setting reflect the character of the scene? How different will a scene between Melly and Malcolm be if I set in in the car, a place of tension, rather than on the stairs, a place of intimacy?

When a scene involves a lot of characters, plot, and idea, I find it helps me organize my ideas to write a rough draft to get everything in place before I go back and craft it to make everything hang together. As an example, here's my first rough script for the dinner with Rene, containing lines I think should be spoken by particular characters to build my scene:

Richard: But does Carson Winter seriously believe that people should be cannibals? 

Alys: Oh no, he’s never serious about anything except publicity. 

Rene: He doesn’t seriously believe in objective morality, anyway. He holds that morality is all a construct, and that all ethics are situational. Cannibalism is just an extreme way of making that point. 

Richard: But what is his argument? 

Rene: Oh, It’s entirely specious. First off, he says that cannibals ought to cook and eat people in ways that don’t cause any suffering. 

Esther: Well, okay. Who wouldn’t agree with that? Less suffering is always better. When I was at the Buddhist retreat, we spent the whole weekend talking about compassion.” 

Cheryl: Do you know that in some places they eat dogs? I think someone ought to write about that. 

Rene: Now, suppose we’re cannibals. 

Melly: But we aren’t cannibals. 

Alys: But it’s so much fun to pretend! 

Melly: I don’t think it’s fun to pretend to be a cannibal.  

Rene: No, Melly’s right. We don’t have to put ourselves into it right now. Suppose that there are cannibals somewhere, as we know there have been. Winter says that cannibals are in fact obligated to kill humans in ways that don’t cause them any suffering, even if they’re just going to char them up on the grill and eat them for dinner. Would you agree? 

Alys: Yes. 

Melly: No. They shouldn’t be eating people at all. 

Ian: Melly, how is Rene ever going to get through his argument if you keep objecting? 

Malcolm: It’s your uncle’s argument, not Rene’s. But Melly’s right. 

Rene, with his mouth full: But if they are obligated to cook up and eat people in ways that cause the least suffering, then that supposes an obligation to cook and eat people at all.  

Esther: Well, it’s good to know that even cannibals have standards. 

Cheryl: I don’t even understand what you’re talking about, but I think it’s just nasty. 

Alys: Does he really say that in his book? I never read it. 

Ian: What do you say to that, Melly? 

Melly: It’s all wrong right from the get-go. Just because there have been cannibals in the past doesn’t mean that people have to be cannibals. It means that some people did bad things. 

Ian: But don’t you think that people who are cannibals have an obligation to at least minimize the suffering you cause? 

Melly, stubborn: They have an obligation not to eat people in the first place. 

Ian: But then they wouldn’t be cannibals. 

Malcolm: So much the better. 

Alys: Oh God, don’t we all have an obligation to talk about something over dinner other than Uncle Jerk’s theory of cannibalism?

You can compare that with the finished scene and see how I fleshed this out into a working part of the whole.

When I first started the project, I had a very different idea of the style of the story. The very first thing I wrote -- before November 1, so it was never part of my NaNo count! -- was a little isolated prologue in the loathed present tense. Interested readers may find it amusing to compare this with the final scenes in which I actually used these incidents: first and second.

A girl, sitting at the bend of the attic stairs, crying. She is small for her age, 15, and her long dark hair falls around her face. A man, passing the door, pauses, then opens it and stands silhouetted in the light of the second-floor hall. 

He asks the girl what’s wrong? He knows her by sight: Melly Arceneaux, daughter of a family who used to live and work at Stillwater, the plantation his family owns. The family has moved to Baton Rouge where the father, recently retired from the Marines, moved them after finding life in the country too dull. But Melly has stayed behind. She is not always in good health: the man has seen her in the past, as a child, unable to run with the others in their games. Sometimes she has been on crutches or canes; occasionally in a wheelchair. She uses neither now, but her walking is slow, timorous. She does not rush, and it gives her a dignity beyond her years. 

She is not dignified now. She is crying, fit to break her heart, and her face is wet and her dark hair tangled. The man coaxes her to speak. Is she hurt? No. Has anything happened to her? No, sir. Has anyone been unkind? A pause, but she shakes her head. Everyone has been very nice, Mr. Malcolm. 

You know my name then? 

Yes sir, I use to hear you called in when you was playing in the field. My mama told me who everyone was, too. 

She speaks with the soft Cajun twang of her family, and Malcolm knows that Sophia and Olivia, who have a talent for mimicry, have likely been parroting her accent and her loose grammar to amuse each other. 

Do you like living at Stillwater, Melly? 

Another pause. She is honest and does not want to say yes, but she has a sense of propriety and does not want to hurt Malcolm’s feelings when his family have been so good as to let her stay in the country for her health. Malcolm tries another tack. 

Do you miss your family? Stillwater isn’t the same without the sounds of children playing over at the cottage. I miss it. 

She looks up, quickly. No one has missed her family. She has heard Miz Esther Davis, Mrs Spencer’s sister, say repeatedly, when she thinks Melly isn’t listening, that it’s a marvel what a difference it makes to the place now that all those noisy children have left. 

Melly does miss her family. She misses her familiar home, where she felt safe and comfortable. She misses the responsibility her mother, so often a single parent, was happy to push off onto her. She misses the small brothers and sisters who looked to her for the offices her mother was often too hassled to fill. She misses Reńe… 

Reńe? Your oldest brother. He’s in college. 

Melly’s eyes light up. You know Reńe, sir? 

I talked to him several times. A very smart young man. 

Oh, the smartest there is, sir! There’s nothing Reńe don’t know, or can’t learn. He’s gone up to college. He wants to be a professor one day, maybe even write a book, sir — said in the reverent voice of one for whose family this is a rarity, a vast and noble pilgrimage into higher education. Malcolm is touched. His own family, plantation owners and descendants of generations of college men, have not supported his own particular educational goals with such respect. 

You miss Reńe. 

Yes, sir. He says that he and I, we’re twins. We understand each other. He tells me, Melusine, one day you’ll go to college too, and you and I, we’ll pull this family kicking and screaming out of ignorance and sloth, you see if we don’t.  

She pauses, flushes, embarrassed at having spoken so freely about her family and its flaws. But Malcolm does not seem to want to condemn her family as Cajun trash. He asks: 

Is Melly short for Melusine? 

Yes, sir. 

That’s a beautiful name. 

Thank you, sir. Reńe told me that Melusine was a mermaid. She swam free in the water, and then never did she have heavy legs.  

And how are your legs today? 

Better, sir. Melly says this with a sigh. She seems ready to cry again. 

Do you want to go to college, as Reńe does? 

No sir, said emphatically. 

Malcolm is surprised. In his world, No is not an acceptable answer to the question of college. Why not? 

Sir, to go out… To go out where people stare, to have to talk before strangers, to go away from what is warm and close and safe…  

It is hard, Malcolm concedes, almost in spite of himself. But one learns to speak in front of strangers. One learns to find what is familiar and cling to it. One can push down the ache for what is familiar and lovely until it becomes a hidden treasure that gives strength… 

Melly is wide-eyed. She has forgotten to hide behind her dark hair. Do you hate to go to strangers, sir? 

Yes. 

But Mama said you are going to be a priest. A priest can’t stay at home. He has to go out. 

Yes, Malcolm says with a sigh. I’m studying to be a priest. And you’re right — a priest must leave home. But it is hard. So hard that I wonder if I have the strength to do it. Stillwater is my home, and I think that no one loves it as I do. 

I love it, says Melly.  

Do you? 

Yes, sir. It has always been my home too, though I didn’t live in the big house until now. But I could not leave it when my family did. Here I can walk, Mr Malcolm.  

He looks at her. We are kindred spirits, you and I, Miss Melusine. They say that blood is thicker than water, but we have Stillwater in our veins, and it runs deep. 

Her face glows. Reńe loves Stillwater too, sir. 

Then he is better than a brother to me, and that makes you better than a sister. 

The bell rings for dinner. Melly jumps. The shine dies out of her eyes, and she seems to shrink and fade. 

Will you come to dinner, little sister? I’ll sit by you so you won’t feel so alone. 

Thank you, Mr Malcolm. 

You can just call me Malcolm. I’m your brother, remember? 

Thank you, Malcolm. 

You’re welcome, Melusine.

This was fun to write, but it was wrong on several levels -- too much inappropriate tension between Melly and Malcolm too early, too much affectation, and not a style that I thought I could maintain. Still, it carried the seeds of dialogue that I could use later, and it helped me get my first impressions down -- always key!

The process of writing Stillwater is different from last year's draft chiefly in that last year I started with only a few images for the story instead of having a full-blown source to consult, and so the chief questions I asked myself were, "What happens next?" and "What if...?" But for each story, my main concern has been how to make it as interesting and honest and consistent as I can, installment to installment.

Forgot to mention: one thing I do before posting is to read each scene aloud to make sure that the prose isn't clunky, stilted, painful, or just incorrect somewhere. This isn't infallible -- often I'm reading it so late at night that even with precautions I miss something -- but it's one of my most foolproof editing tricks for recognizing when something doesn't flow or just lands flatly on the ear.

Show, don't tell

I never took a writing class, but even I'm familiar with the advice given to novice authors: "Show, don't tell." It guards, I believe, against a certain didacticism and lazy instinct to merely describe events instead of examining them through the lens of human action. This is a fair caution. And yet, it has its limitations: sometimes it seems the pendulum swings the other way -- writers feel obligated to describe every scene and conversation in tedious detail, whether or not those details contribute to the plot, mood, or character development. If art is reality distilled, this is reality stilled: bogged down in such petty effluvia as to lose all focus, direction, or purpose.

I received an email today with an essay by Fr. Robert Barron (it doesn't seem to be available on the web yet) about evangelizing through beauty:

In his masterpiece Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh implicitly lays out a program of evangelization that has particular relevance to our time. “Brideshead” refers, of course, to a great manor house owned by a fabulously wealthy Catholic family in the England of the 1920’s. In the complex semiotic schema of Waugh’s novel, the mansion functions as a symbol of the Catholic Church, which St. Paul had referred to as the “bride of Christ.” To Brideshead comes, at the invitation of his friend Sebastian, Charles Ryder, an Oxford student, devotee of the fine arts and casual agnostic. Charles is overwhelmed by the sheer majesty of Brideshead’s architecture and the sumptuousness of its artistic program, which includes magnificent painting and sculpture, as well as a fountain of Bernini-like delicacy, and a chapel that was a riot of baroque decoration. Living within the walls of the manse, Charles mused, was to receive an entire artistic education. The beauty of the place would entrance Charles for the rest of his life, drawing him back again and again.  

 In the course of his many visits, Charles came, of course, to know the inhabitants of the house, Sebastian’s strange and beguiling family. Especially through Sebastian’s mother, the aristocratic and devoutly Catholic Lady Marchmain, he became familiar with the moral demands of the Catholic Church, especially as they pertained to Sebastian’s increasing problem with alcohol. For many years, Charles joined Sebastian in his friend’s rebellion against these strictures, but in time, he came to appreciate their importance, indeed their indispensability.  Finally, at the very close of the story, we learn that Charles, the erstwhile agnostic, had come to embrace the coherent philosophical system of Catholicism and to worship the Eucharistic Lord who was enshrined in the beautiful chapel at Brideshead. Many years after entering that chapel as a mere aesthete, he knelt down in it as a believer. 

Father Barron makes many good points here, but he's mistaken in one thing: the chapel at Brideshead is not beautiful, not to Charles Ryder's trained eye. It is not "a riot of baroque decoration"; it had been renovated some twenty-odd years before Charles sees it in the Arts and Crafts style, and though Charles is hesitant to say so to his hosts, he finds it hideous. The chapel is a symbol, throughout the book, of how the falsity of poor art can stand between an aesthetic soul and God.

"You're an artist, Ryder (says Brideshead), what do you think of it aesthetically?"
"I think it's beautiful," said Cordelia with tears in her eyes.
"But is it Good Art?
"Well, I don't know what you mean," I said warily. "I think it's a remarkable example of its period. Probably in eighty years it will be greatly admired."
"But surely it can't be good twenty years ago and good in eighty years and not be good now?"
"Well, it may be good now. All I mean is that I don't happen to like it much."

Charles does learn to see God despite ugliness: at the end of the book he kneels in the chapel, before "a beaten copper lamp of deplorable design".

The on-going conversation about the engagement of Catholicism and the arts has been active lately with the advent of movies such as Here Be Dragons, For Greater Glory, and The Passion of the Christ. (I would assume that Protestants are having their own conversations about movies in the Fireproof vein.) It's telling all these movies were embraced by various stripes of Catholic media, as is presenting Catholicism in a non-hostile light were the only thing necessary to make a movie good art. Also telling is the fact that of the recent spate of "Catholic" movies, only The Passion of the Christ received anything approaching critical acclaim. The critics can always be wrong, of course, but they're also a useful standard, trained as they are to look for a certain baseline level of quality: is the movie consistent? does the plot make sense? is the acting good? does the director understand cinematic structure? is the screenplay coherent?

As Catholics, we also have standards for judging, not just art, not just movies, not just novels, not just entertainment, but every product of man's hands: Is it good? Is it true? Is it beautiful? Catholic art is much more than just slipping an explanation of dogma or a favorable portrayal of a priest into a work -- it's high quality, honest, and evocative whether or not religion is explicitly mentioned. Since God is Truth and Beauty and Goodness, what is good and true and beautiful must point to Him and participate in His life. Conversely, art that relies on wedging Catholic imagery or teachings into formulaic or unrealistic portrayals of reality doesn't do itself any favors. Not everyone who says, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven.

I read a Catholic novel the other day, and I'm sorry to say that it was one of the more poorly written pieces I've had the misfortune to read lately -- though as I tend not to be a consumer of pop fiction perhaps my quality level is misaligned with the general taste. It told and it showed, neither to best advantage. The premise was unbelievable, the characters were by turns too period and too anachronistic, the plot needed several kinds of tightening and crafting, and the writing shifted between being didactic, obvious, repetitive, and plain boring.  And yet it was praised by several Catholic reviewers whose taste in fiction and ability to evaluate literature I will ever after hold suspect.

Catholicism is more than an Old Boys Club or mutual affirmation society. Catholic reviewers shouldn't be afraid to insist, in charity, on quality from Catholic artists -- that's part of the role of a reviewer. Of course, it does not make one a bad person or a bad Catholic to be unable to construct a paragraph -- but it does make one a bad writer. Good writing, like all good art, raises all those who encounter it, regardless of education, and evangelizes those who love beauty without realizing that Beauty is God.

The Business of America

Every so often one hears the quote "The business of American is business." The quote turns out to come from Calvin Coolidge, in an address that he gave to the American Society of Newspaper Editor in 1925.

The context is a discussion as to whether one should be disturbed that newspapers and magazines are commercial ventures, whether a commercial press is a tainted press. The extended quotation below is interesting not only in underlining Coolidge's view of business (which while arguably a bit over-optimistic in regards to human nature is also not as materialistic as some uses of the quote would suggest) but also as an example of how public rhetoric has changed over the last 90 years. Cal was clearly a more plain spoken rhetorician than famous famous speakers of the 19th century (contrast this with a speech by Abraham Lincoln or William Jennings Bryan) but the standard of rhetoric even from a "plain speaker" in the 1920s was clearly very different from today.

Some people feel concerned about the commercialism of the press. They note that great newspapers are great business enterprises earning large profits and controlled by men of wealth. So they fear that in such control the press may tend to support the private interests of those who own the papers, rather than the general interest of the whole people. It seems to me, however, that the real test is not whether the newspapers are controlled by men of wealth, but whether they are sincerely trying to serve the public interests. There will be little occasion for worry about who owns a newspaper, so long as its attitudes on public questions are such as to promote the general welfare. A press which is actuated by the purpose of genuine usefulness to the public interest can never be too strong financially, so long as its strength is used for the support of popular government.

There does not seem to be cause for alarm in the dual relationship of the press to the public, whereby it is on one side a purveyor of information and opinion and on the other side a purely business enterprise. Rather, it is probable that a press which maintains an intimate touch with the business currents of the nation, is likely to be more reliable than it would be if it were a stranger to these influences. After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. I am strongly of opinion that the great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life. The opposite view was oracularly and poetically set forth in those lines of Goldsmith which everybody repeats, but few really believe:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

Excellent poetry, but not a good working philosophy. Goldsmith would have been right, if, in fact, the accumulation of wealth meant the decay of men. It is rare indeed that the men who are accumulating wealth decay. It is only when they cease production, when accumulation stops, that an irreparable decay begins. Wealth is the product of industry, ambition, character and untiring effort. In all experience, the accumulation of wealth means the multiplication of schools, the increase of knowledge, the dissemination of intelligence, the encouragement of science, the broadening of outlook, the expansion of liberties, the widening of culture. Of course, the accumulation of wealth can not be justified as the chief end of existence. But we are compelled to recognize it as a means to well nigh every desirable achievement. So long as wealth is made the means and not the end, we need not greatly fear it. And there never was a time when wealth was so generally regarded as a means, or so little regarded as an end, as today. Just a little time ago we read in your newspapers that two leaders of American business, whose efforts at accumulation had been most astonishingly successful, had given fifty or sixty million dollars as endowments to educational works. That was real news. It was characteristic of our American experience with men of large resources. They use their power to serve, not themselves and their own families, but the public. I feel sure that the coming generations, which will benefit by those endowments, will not be easily convinced that they have suffered greatly because of these particular accumulations of wealth.

Stories: What Happens or How You Get There?

I've been reading (well, re-reading after nearly twenty years, which is a lot like reading for the first time) Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire novels. A week ago I wrapped up The Warden, a genial little social commentary/satire which is notable in that genre for the fact that every major character is acting in good faith and is, at least moderately likable. It's also very short, so if you have the desire to get a feel for Anthony Trollope's literary charms, it's not a bad place to start. I've now moved on to Barchester Towers, in which a larger tempest is troubling the teapot of the imaginary cathedral town of Barchester.

What struck me, however, is a bit which deals with different ways of telling a story. Trollope has just spent a chapter laying out the possibility that young (and pretty) widow Eleanor Bold will end up marrying one of two rather self-interested suitors (both of whom had just learned that her late husband left her a lot of money.) After reveling laying out the dangers before Eleanor, Trollope then turns to the reader and says:

But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope. And here perhaps it may be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this, is too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are never to be realized? Are not promises all but made of delightful horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species of deceit in this to which the honesty of the present age should lend no countenance?

And what can be the worth of that solicitude which a peep into the third volume can utterly dissipate? What the value of those literary charms which are absolutely destroyed by their enjoyment? When we have once learnt what was that picture before which was hung Mrs. Ratcliffe's solemn curtain, we feel no further interest about either the frame or the veil. They are to us merely a receptacle for old bones, an inappropriate coffin, which we would wish to have decently buried out of our sight.

And then how grievous a thing it is to have the pleasure of your novel destroyed by the ill-considered triumph of a previous reader. "Oh, you needn't be alarmed for Augusta; of course she accepts Gustavus in the end." "How very ill-natured you are, Susan," says Kitty with tears in her eyes: "I don't care a bit about it now." Dear Kitty, if you will read my book, you may defy the ill-nature of your sister. There shall be no secret that she can tell you. Nay, take the third volume if you please—learn from the last pages all the results of our troubled story, and the story shall have lost none of its interest, if indeed there be any interest in it to lose.

Our doctrine is that the author and the reader should move along together in full confidence with each other. Let the personages of the drama undergo ever so complete a comedy of errors among themselves, but let the spectator never mistake the Syracusan for the Ephesian; otherwise he is one of the dupes, and the part of a dupe is never dignified.

I would not for the value of this chapter have it believed by a single reader that my Eleanor could bring herself to marry Mr. Slope, or that she should be sacrificed to a Bertie Stanhope. But among the good folk of Barchester many believed both the one and the other.
(Barchester Towers, Chapter 15, Anthony Trollope

Having moved on several chapters past this point, I have to say I think Trollope pulls off what he promises. Through some odd working of the Paradox of Suspense, despite the fact that he has now told us quite baldly that Eleanor will not marry either the oily preacher Mr. Slope or the young spendthrift Bertie Stanhope, the progress of the Eleanor plotline becomes no less riveting. Partly this is because of the nature of the conflict involved: Eleanor isn't actually attracted to either man, but people who are enlisted in the various factions of the book's main struggle work themselves up a great deal worrying that she might be. So while we may know that she won't actually marry either, the question of how the whole conflict will play out remains very much up in the air.

However, I'm inclined to take the dictum rather further than that. Perhaps I'm more than usually immune to "spoilers" (I am usually quite happy to read reviews that give the plot away and don't find my eventual enjoyment lessened, except in the case of fairly surface level "who done it" kind of stories) but I do think that most of the time the interest in a story is much more in how one gets there than where one gets. And indeed, even if I know where a story is going, I tend to still experience a strong feeling of suspense while reading it: even when I'm re-reading a book and thus know not only how it will end but how it will get there.

Nonetheless, outright telling the reader how some plot point will end up, as Trollope does here, is unusual (though don't be concerned, the eels don't get Buttercup either.) Should it be? Can most stories not withstand "spoilers"? Or would "would people still be interested in reading if they knew how this revolved?" be a good self-test for authors in determining whether they're writing something of sufficient interest?

What we did on our summer vacation

We spent the weekend in the wilds of Wisconsin, where the internet access is sparse and the milk is fresh. The occasion was the  2012 Gerasene Writers' Conference, sponsored by The Korrectiv. The alchohol consumption was prodigious, the under-18 population was positively anti-Malthusian, and the highlight of the weekend was the world-premiere reading of Matthew Lickona's Surfing with Mel, a short story in script form about Mel Gibson's (further) descent into madness as he tries to get a film project about the Maccabees off the ground. (Here's the germ of the project, though the workshopped story had a different focus and was powers of ten more profane.)

Also, people told me what was wrong with the beginning of my novel, and Darwin blew things away out on the back 40.

And while we were packing, we found the key to turn Eleanor's expander, stashed deep under the seats of the car. Vacation: truly a time of renewal.

First Sentence Impressions

In my idle time, I've set upon the daunting task of revising my novel. The section that cries out most for rewriting is the very beginning, which was thrown together slapdash to meet the NaNoWriMo wordcounts before I discovered the muse of bourbon. My problems begin with the very first sentence:

In the summer of my twenty-second year, fresh from college with an elegant diploma in one hand and no job offers in the other, it was decided that I should become the companion to my Great-Aunt Emma. 

I feel a great mortification upon contemplating this line, not because my conception of the character become far less passive as the story progressed, but because the grammar doesn't match up. Who was "fresh from college?" It? How could I have made such a bizarre error?

One thing that has become clear to me, in retrospect, is that perhaps it was inadvisable for someone who'd never written fiction to jump in for the first time by writing a novel in thirty days. It's too late to change that now, but I'm trying to educate myself by reading up on the craft of writing fiction. One thing everyone seems to agree upon is that a first sentence should serve several purposes: to pull the reader into the story; to set the tone; to capture the attention of the editor or agent or whoever is going to buy your manuscript.

Here are a few first sentences of works I've pulled off my bookshelf.

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov,a land owner well know in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. -- The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again. -- Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier 

"They made a silly mistake, though," the Professor of History said, and his smile, as Dixon watched, gradually sank beneath the surface of his features at the memory. -- Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis (a much funnier novel than the first sentence suggests) 

When I reached "C" Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning. -- Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh. 

So. -- Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

Two things strike me about this list. First, that many of these lines are (naturally) meant to be directly followed by other sentences, so that the first sentence need not stand on its own as a summation of the story. Second, that much of the literature on my shelf is at least fifty years old. For contrast, here are three opening sentences from novels I enjoyed, all published last year.

I have never much liked Shakespeare. -- The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips. 

It was the last night of 1937. -- Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles 

Today I'm five. -- Room, by Emma Donoghue

These are short, but informative: Arthur is chatty and informal; the narrator of Rules of Civility is reserved and is writing about her past; the child who narrates Room speaks in the present tense.

I have struggled in recent evenings with my first sentence. What information do I want to convey? What tone do I want to set? Since the narrative is in the first person, what do I want the reader to know about her at the outset?

The character had grown more assertive as I wrote, so I wanted to change the passive voice of the original. I liked the structure of the sentence (and so did Darwin). The first part carried crucial information about the character -- she's a recent graduate with no imminent job prospects -- so what needed to be rewritten was the second half. Oddly enough, though I found that while writing the draft I did better work when I typed, the best way for me to revise this sentence was to write by hand over and over again.

In the summer of my twenty-second year, fresh from college with an elegant diploma in one hand and no job offers in the other, I was elected to become companion to my Great-Aunt Emma. (still too passive) 

In the summer of my twenty-second year, fresh from college with an elegant diploma in one hand and no job offers in the other, I turned my back to the career path and became caregiver to my Great-Aunt Emma.  

...I detoured from the accepted career path... 

...I rejected the career path...  

In the summer of my twenty-second year, glowing with academic success if not with career enlightenment, I forsook that path to become caregiver to my Great-Aunt Emma. (at this point I was growing weary of the path image, which wasn't going anywhere) 

In the summer of my twenty-second year, fresh from college with an elegant diploma in one hand and no job offers in the other, I laid down any career ambitions and took on the role of caregiver to my Great-Aunt Emma. (closer, but too wordy)

Finally I found a formulation I liked well enough, which propelled me into what I would consider not a revision, but a new first draft.

In the summer of my twenty-second year, fresh from college with an elegant diploma in one hand and no job offers in the other, I laid aside career ambitions to become caregiver to my Great-Aunt Emma. Perhaps “ambitions” is too strong a word — I was neither lazy nor incapable, but I suffered no delusions that studying literature had prepared me for much other than the tired trifecta of writing, teaching, and applying to grad school. These held no interest for me. For that matter, neither did geriatrics, but the fact remained that Great-Aunt Emma could no longer live unaccompanied, and I was the most eligible companion by virtue of being the least employed member of the family. 

I was also Emma’s namesake, which was a veritable sign that my stewardship had been preordained. Various relatives made this point to me at the packing party my parents were throwing on the eve of their early retirement to Florida. My older sister Stacy was particularly pleased.  

“I’m glad Mom and Dad didn’t name me Emma,” she said, as she sat in the living room and stuffed newspaper into boxes. “You were always her favorite anyway, maybe because you liked being around all those stupid books. Any time I tried to touch one of them, I thought she’d kill me.” 

“Perhaps she likes me because I don’t call her books stupid.” 

Reading Fees and the Plight of Literary Magazines

Speaking of fiction writing, John Farrell has an interesting post up over on his blog at Forbes.com about how increasing numbers of high profile literary magazines are looking at charging reading fees in order to review unsolicited manuscripts. I can certainly see why this would drive writers up the wall -- and goodness knows unpublished fiction authors are not the most flush-with-capital group of people in the world. But John outlines a real problem that magazines face as fewer people subscribe to print magazines and yet authors find it easier than ever to flood their manuscripts into the surviving literary mags via online submission.

Two Quotes for Your Evening

I apologize if things have been low on substantive posts and high on links and quotes around here of late. Perhaps it's the late summer atmosphere getting into the brain, or maybe I'm just dry at the moment.

I "read" this just the other day (heard it on my morning commute) and it struck me as an example of when telling rather than showing is actually far more evocative. I'm a sucker for the truly well written generalization, though as Austen pastiches quickly teach one, there is nothing worse than one done badly.

Certainly the tense nerves of men of action -- less notorious than those of imaginative men -- are not to be minimized. This was true of my father, who, like many persons who believe primarily in the will -- although his own will was in no way remarkable -- his in his heart a hatred of constituted authority. He did his best to conceal this antipathy, because the one thing he hated, more than constituted authority itself, was to hear constituted authority questioned by another but himself. This is perhaps an endemic trait in all who love power, and my father had an absolute passion for power, although he was never in a position to wield it on a notable scale. In his own house, only he himself was allowed to criticize -- to use a favorite phrase of his -- 'the powers that be'. In private, he would, for example, curse the Army Council (then only recently come into existence); in the presence of others, even those 'in the Service' with whom he was on the best of terms, he would defend to the last ditch official policy of which in his heart he disapproved.
Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones

They loyalties we hold are complex things. Often we're willing to criticize ourselves that which hearing the same criticism from nearly anyone else will cause us to defend. And then the description itself is simply so delightful. In one paragraph one feels one knows Nick's father rather well. Perhaps he is someone in your family, or at work. No scene has been played out, nothing has been shown, and yet this description is both specific and general enough to flesh out a character to a degree that a great deal of less deft dialogue and descriptive narration would have still failed to do.

This other was brought to my mind by a line of argument I came across lately. It is an example of why I like No Exit so much, and find so much truth in it, despite the fact that my own view of the world is so nearly opposite to that of Sartre.

Garcin: Listen! Each man has an aim in life, a leading motive; that's so, isn't it? Well, I didn't give a damn for wealth, or for love. I aimed at being a real man. A tough, as they say. I staked everything on the same horse.... Can one possibly be a coward when one's deliberately courted danger at every turn? And can one judge a life by a single action?

Inez: Why not? For thirty years you dreamt you were a hero, and condoned a thousand petty lapses -- because a hero, of course, can do no wrong. An easy method, obviously. Then a day came when you were up against it, the red light of real danger -- and you took the train to Mexico.

Garcin: I "dreamt," you say. It was no dream. When I chose the hardest path, I made my choice deliberately. A man is what he will himself to be.

Inez: Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It's what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one's made of.

Garcin: I died too soon. I wasn't allowed time to -- to do my deeds.

Inez: One always dies too soon -- or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are -- your life, and nothing else.

Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

This planning of great virtues while excusing small virtues is so typical of how we justify each individual sin -- all the sins of the "good person". The description is so incisive I find myself feeling as if Screwtape must have said the same thing at some point.

Writing vs. Creating

When we moved into this house, the shelves in the library were filled with books that the children of the previous owner hadn't wanted to divvy up amongst themselves. There were a few gems tucked away, but most of them were, as Darwin put it, "novels that were Very Important the year they were published", or biographies of minor cultural figures and second-tier authors. We kept a great deal of them on the principle of hating to get rid of books, but now the tedium of contemplating the sheer bloat of mediocre prose evokes a deep lethargy upon me.

I spent the other evening skimming a biography of a woman who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1929. I'd never heard of her or her novel; you haven't either. At the time it was considered a shocking and sensual novel about a black woman and her sensual, shocking life, written by a white plantation mistress. Perhaps it was a step forward for civil rights in 1929, but the snippets of her writing in the biography made my teeth ache. One more book to be culled from the shelves.

People tend to think that writing is a vastly creative act that confers a certain immortality on the author's thought, but the truth is that most books published are read by a few people and then quickly forgotten. (Or, in the case of Dan Brown's novels, read by many people and then quickly forgotten.) This is attested to by the myriad forgotten tomes here, their few insights had been gleaned in one quick deflowering years ago. And what of all those authors who poured so much ink and effort into getting their baby into print? What did they neglect in order to write these dusty books?

Betty Duffy, who has more literary power in her pencil eraser than Ms. Pulitzer 1929 had in her collected works, writes:

And I thought, heck--why wait to get pregnant for this reward? I'm going to enroll in the Master's Program now!

I downloaded the application materials. I talked to friends who are enrolled in the program. I had my husband's approval. All systems were go.

Then I got pregnant. It's funny how this works on me. Maybe other women don't feel this way about having babies--but I called Pedge on my way home from my last community class in which I'd been a lackluster participant, and asked why it is that I've lost interest, once again, in these projects I've built up in my mind. Is it that I'm chicken? I'm afraid of failure, and having babies is away of excusing myself from trying? Am I just morning sick? Do I harbor some deep-seated anti-feminist notion that I don't deserve further education? Why do these things that were so important and exciting to me just a month ago, suddenly feel so trivial?

Pedge put into words for me what I had begun to sense, but felt sort of stupid saying, since at the time I was only a few weeks along: "You really are a different person than you were two weeks ago. You're now a mother of six. It's completely unknown territory to you and it makes perfect sense that you would want to move other things out of the way so that you have room to become the person you are going to be."

And it doesn't mean I'll never go get that MFA, or nurture anything other than children--but for now there really is nothing else I want to do but allow myself to mother this child.

My congratulations to Betty, who in raising her six children is engaged in one of the most essential and enduring occupations in this world.

Left Out

I'm heading in to the last lap of War and Peace, in which we see how things turned out for everyone. One person for whom things do not turn out terribly well is Sonia, seen through the lens of her cousins' guilt here:

From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself and Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess Mary to be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized the wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and imagined that her wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could not find fault with Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her, but often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome.

Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about her own injustice toward her.

"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal—there is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."

"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.

"'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not come off. She is a sterile flower, you know—like some strawberry blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she doesn't feel it as you or I would."

Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel must be understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with Natasha's explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her position trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services for which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from her with insufficient gratitude.

What seems particularly sad here is that Sonia is so left out, by circumstances not her fault, that this is all she gets -- a few paragraphs near the end. There's a whole life sketched briefly here. And yet, it wouldn't be correct to say that a whole other novel could be written about Sonia, who is here written off so briefly by her relatives, because part of the injustice is that Sonia has been denied a story. She wouldn't be an interesting main character, because circumstances (having been the poor cousin that Nikolai fell in love with young, yet could not think of because it was only possible for him to marry someone with money) have given her a life in which not much happens. Condemned by circumstance to be a side character.

The Hunting of the Snark

A while back, I'd downloaded the free sample chapters of Bill Bryson's new book At Home: A Short History of Private Life to my Kindle app and found it quite delightful, the sort of light non-fiction brimming which the author's curiosity which is infectiously fun to read at odd moments -- yet shrunk from buying the full Kindle version because paying $10 for an ebook just rubs me the wrong way somehow. So I made my way down to the library to look for a copy. There I found that some fifty people had already done likewise and placed reservations on the book -- so rather than join the throng I picked up another of Bryson's books which happened to be in. I'd never ready anything by Bryson prior to stumbling on At Home, but the premise of The Lost Continent seemed appealing: Having lived and worked in Europe the author decides to take a road trip through small town America and write about the interesting (and odd) things he finds there.

Yet somehow the infectious curiosity which had made At Home so enjoyable to read was wholly absent here and replaced with that particularly modern mode: snark.

Now, Bryson is clearly a good writer, and he draws the reader along in an engaging way. Yet somehow the snarky tone breeds a certain frustration in a book-length work, as opposed to that child of the snark, a blog post. As the author's unremitting put downs, however creative, of everything he finds build up in chapter after chapter you want to shake the author by the shoulders and say to him, "All right, we get it. This was a lousy idea. But you're no longer a sulky kid sitting in the back of the family station wagon. You're an adult driving the car. How about if you turn around, drive to a big, cosmopolitan city, and write about something you like? Stop being professionally miserable and get a move on!"

Though really, my beef with snark is not that it's negative. It's that it's shallow. Snark, including Bryon's here, is usually of the, "Would you beeeeelieve this shit? I get into this town, which is not even a one horse town. It's a half horse town. The horse was cut in half by a semi on the main road a couple weeks ago and people haven't yet finished exclaiming, 'Would you look at that, now!' to each other and moved on to actually getting out of their chairs and moving the animal. And like all other half horse towns in Iowa, half the establishments are owned by someone named Vern. I'm not talking about Vern's Fusion Bistro or Vern's Art House Theatre, either. No, it's always Vern's Grocery. Vern's Hardware. Vern's Christian Bookstore. Vern's Tavern. So I went into Vern's Motel and asked the lady behind the counter, with her hornrimmed glasses and beehive hairdo, if there was a room available."

Now, this is in fact fun to write. I had fun parodying it just now. Snark is fun. That's why throughout the world people dash off blog posts full of snark on their lunch break for the delectation of other people on their lunch breaks who can in turn leave snarky comments, or post lolcats, or link to it on Facebook with the universal modern question, "Have you seen this? WTF?"

But I'm not at all sure it works to write a work longer than the average blogpost in snark-ese. Especially since a book lacks a comment box in which the reader can participate by making original contributions such as "LMAO". Indeed, after the first twenty pages or so, during which I kept thinking, "But he'll get down to real writing shortly, right?" I found myself reading further mainly in order to see if someone would eventually dose out a comeuppance to the author. But thus far, no.

I don't know if I'll finish it or not, but I'm disappointed.

Your humble correspondent

Lookit me, posting on my own blog!

Believe me when I say I've missed you. I have composed numerous rants and half-posts in my fertile little brain, only to find that my current internet connection doesn't always deign to let me log in and post. And time is of the essence --I'm not exactly living the single mother lifestyle, since I have my dad and brother to help me out in the house during the week when Darwin is in Columbus, but there are many duties that now fall to my lot which consume a great deal of time and energy. Blah, blah, blah --who isn't overwhelmed? I keep reminding myself that statistically, I'm one of the most fortunate people in the world, in history. Most of my daily inconveniences are of the petty variety. I prayed that I could realize that there were worse fates than having one's son spill lemonade all over himself and the floor right before a road trip, and lo and behold, it turned out to be the feast day of St. Issac Jogues.

Since my email isn't always doing it for me, I've tried to turn to more traditional forms of correspondence --to whit, the letter. However, I've, run into the singular problem that no one sells stationery in Ohio. I seem to recall that in Texas you could walk into Target or Staples or any store of that I'll and find yourself in the midst of plenty of lovely writing paper and fine writing implements, delightful to the senses. In Ohio I've found no stationery so far, but everyone wants to sell me journals, scads of them. From which I can only deduce that the good citizens of Ohio want to write, but only about themselves? I'm making another foray tomorrow, to a Barnes and Noble in an expensive part of Columbus. Eons ago, when I worked at a Barnes and Noble in L.A., we used to be heavily stocked with stationery. If I strike out there, I'll just resort to snitching my dad's printer paper, I guess.

I used to be a great letter writer back in the day. By "great" I mean "prolific", not "talented". Darwin and I used to send each other tomes of agonized love, rich with all the cliches of the genre. I believe I fancied myself a great stylist. Upon sorting out our closet preparatory to the move, I found a box (a shoe box!) full of this old correspondence. As I paged through his letters and mine, I felt a sensation akin to that of the unfortunates subjected to the Total Perspective Vortex. Passages that once seemed so eloquent and incendiary now paraded with all the grace of a herd of hormonal elephants . The most engaging bits were the parts I tossed off as stupid filler: minutiae about family life or the weather or work. The most fascinating letter of all was one Darwin sent me from Greece, simply describing the place and his travels there. And I burned with shame to recall that at the time I'd sulked because I thought he didn't write enough about ME.

I've got a long way to go before I can even compete in the humility stakes with the big dogs like St. Isaac Jogues, but I guess it's a consolation that at least I still have a whole hand to write with. As I keep telling myself, things could definitely be worse.

Dr. Johnson, Call Your Office

Harvard economist Greg Mankiw wrote a column for the NY Times about how increasing taxes on those who make over $250,000/year may result in those people deciding to work less, and raised rather more anger in the process than he might otherwise have done by using himself as an example. UC Berkley economist Brad Delong fires back with a blog post in which he declares, among other things, that if people are primarily motivated to write news paper columns by thoughts of money, then they won't write good columns and without good columns the republic will be no more:

Greg says that it's worth it for him to write columns if they generate $2000 in net bequeathed wealth in 2040 but not if they generate $1,000. But that shouldn't be why anybody writes columns. Indeed, if people write columns not because they are driven to inform and educate their readers but rather because it is a way to make money to leave to their children--well, then those columns will be written not to inform but to entertain, and so they will be worthless as sources of information and education (rather than as sheer entertainment) to their readers.

I do not think society can survive if the voices writing on political-economic issues in our public sphere are doing so not to inform but merely to entertain. I think that society can only survive if those who write columns are driven by a geas to make Americans better-educated citizens but rather to leave more wealth to your children. We ought to write columns not because we think our children will need extra money in thirty years, but because we think our fellow-citizens need better information now.

Of course, Samuel Johnson disagreed, and said rather more pithily that none but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Johnson doubtless knew what he was talking about, having lived by writing for much of his life, and suffered grinding poverty at times which DeLong can at best only imagine. When Johnson was granted a royal pension such that he no longer had to write for a living, he pretty much stopped writing. More pity for us, for who could not desire that Johnson had left us more of his writing.

Yet for all that DeLong's writing ideals sound much more high flown than Johnson's, I think what he says about the relative quality of writing for pay versus writing out of a selfless desire to inform is pretty clearly false. Good writing is good writing, regardless of the motive that led to it, and mediocre writing is mediocre no matter how idealistic the writer. If one doubts this one need merely consider how many people still read Johnson 250 years later -- and contrast that with the likelihood that anyone will read DeLong 250 years hence.

I do?

Thought I'd get in on the "I write like..." fun that's going around, and here's what I find.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I've never read any David Foster Wallace, so I can't say whether I think the comparison is apt. But I used several writing samples, and they all returned the same answer.

The Great American Novel, and others

During the height of my ambition, perhaps around age 10, I thought I might write the Great American Novel. I wasn't really clear what exactly the Great American Novel was, but I was sure it involved summer camp, and I spent a great deal of time hashing out the details of my character's names and personal appearance and the number of brothers and sisters they had -- all crucial details in such literary serials such as The Baby Sitters Club which the girls in sixth grade passed around during study hall. These were the sort of seminal works in which you learned all you needed to know about the characters by description of their personal appearance: such girl had frizzy reddish hair and braces and wore a turquoise turtleneck! This one had her ears double-pierced and wore big sweaters and leggings! 'Nuff said. And these were the minutiae that had to be wrestled with by the budding author of the Great American Novel, which could only be written with a mechanical pencil in a fresh lined notebook (not one in which half the pages had been torn out or scribbled upon by younger siblings, or with the wire binding twisted and warped), or preferably, upon one's mother's collegiate electric typewriter, when the ribbon could be unraveled and rewound upon the spools.

I think I first encountered the term Great American Novel in the place where I first encountered so much literature: in the back of our set of encyclopedias. This particular repository of knowledge has passed out of our family, so I can't give any details about the age or the title of the set, but at the end of each volume one could find synopses of novels whose titles fit within the alphabetical confines of that book. I owe much of my knowledge of literature of a certain provenance -- the works of Theodore Dreiser or of John Steinbeck, God's Little Acre (referenced somewhere in P.G. Wodehouse, and I knew what he was talking about), Trilby, Silas Marner -- to these encyclopedias. I don't know what the editors' criteria for inclusion was, as Don Quixote and The Picture of Dorian Gray were included, but not such novels as Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. (I can state this with confidence not because of my own encyclopedic memory, but because the plots of both were new to me when I read them.) Nor was a novel I would consider a leading contender for the Great American moniker: The Great Gatsby.

My enthusiasm to write the Great American novel waned along with my fondness for the nifty names with which I endowed my juvenile characters (but none of my actual children), and I try to avoid the kinds of novels in which the height of characterization is to describe the clothes the characters wear ("her Prada handbag brushed against her toned thigh as she strode down the hall, her Manolos clicking on the parquet floor with each step..."). Still, I miss the idealism of the days in which a vast literary potential could be unlocked if only I had the proper writing instrument and a fresh blank notebook. Then, time was on my side.

Speaking of Great American Novels, drop in on our discussion of Absalom, Absalom! at Reading for Believers.

Very Young

I am always pleased when I run into examples of how successes in art and accomplishment need not necessarily begin very young ages. It's not so much that I hold out any particular hope of achieving artistic greatness in the years before me, but simply that it gives one a bracing feeling that Things Can Still Happen. While, on the other hand, whenever I run into yet another mention of some insufferable prodigy composing his first pieces at the age of five, I want to kick the next child I see. Fortunately, the next child I see is likely to be my own, and will certainly be doing something reassuringly child-like rather than composing odes or sonatas or some such nonsense.

All of which is to say that I am rather charmed to run into Jerome K. Jerome's quoted recollection of his writing of Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog): "I remember only feeling very young and absurdly pleased with myself."

Jerome was thirty when Three Men In A Boat was published in 1889, and I think we can forgive him for feeling absurdly pleased with himself as a result.

No more Chicken Soup for the Blog Soul

A friend recently lent me Words in a French Life, a book assembled from a collection of blog posts -- a variety of literature that is burgeoning in these days of the internet. The author had been committed to writing every day about a different French word while exploring her life as an expat in France, raising children who were more proficient in the vernacular than herself. And I enjoyed it, in general: dredging up my college French to translate the phrases sprinkled throughout, learning new words, and looking at life in a different country. But writing every day must take its toll -- a few of the columns seemed a bit forced. There I would be, reading a perfectly good account, only to be thrown out entirely by a last inspirational sentence tacked on to bring the thing to a neat close.

I can't blame the author for this, exactly -- it seems to be endemic in blog writing particularly. I've grown very wary of the pretty conclusion, the spiritual lesson learned, the great insight gained through the grind of daily life. I know why writers use this trick, and I've done it myself -- hard up for something, anything, to post, I remember this little anecdote that could just do for posting if I can put some little inspirational twist on it. And people seem to eat the stuff up, so it must be fine, right?

Of course people draw inspirational conclusions from daily life all the time. What I find tiresome is the... craftedness of it all. Of course good writing must be crafted, not just flung at the page, but it takes a particular talent to draw inspiration from the ordinary while not seeming gimmicky or easy. Pentimento strikes me as an example of that kind of exemplary writer who can at all times maintain both honesty and real style in her writing at all times.

I don't even want inspiration from the internet anymore. I've been trying to immerse myself in Scripture, reading passages from the Wisdom literature each night. This is real. This is what can reach into my soul and open me to God in a way that reading a blog can never emulate. Who can say anything that Qoheleth didn't cover 23 centuries ago?

And that's fine. I like reading funny stories about people's kids, with no moral tacked on. I like musings on the political situation (to a point). And I love good, true writing -- not flashy, not gimmicky, not designed to lift me up or force a life lesson or "make me think". Bloggers can do the writing and I'll do my own thinking, without a serving of Chicken Soup for the internet soul.

Writing in a Community

I don't think that I shall shock any of our readers if I reveal that my real name is not Darwin. My real-world name is not terribly hard to figure out. It takes perhaps two clicks from this blog to reach a page where it's possible to find my real name. But for various reasons, I've maintained that anonymity over the years. However, there are a good many people who know me in real life who read the blog. More than that, after writing a blog for four-and-a-half years, you get to think of a number of your long-time readers and commenters are friends. The blog becomes like a corner coffee house or bar where the same characters assemble regularly -- with the occasional stranger dropping in as well -- and discuss a range of topics, with everyone knowing the basic terrain of who everyone else is and where everyone is coming from.

The way in which a blog can serve as a combination magazine and coffee shop is, to me, one of the most appealing elements of the medium. It's more personable than simply sending one's words out into the void, knowing that someone out there is reading them but seldom sure of what others think about them.

At the same time, however, this community element to blog writing makes one particularly aware of the difficulties of writing within a community. As the number of people I know (whether locally or online) who are blog readers increases, I increasingly find myself thinking, "If I write about that, so-and-so might be offended."

There are, I think, implicitly two different sets of rules which are observed in relation to expression in a community versus published expression. When we are in social situations, it's considered impolite to discuss topics which implicitly criticize others or their beliefs. Thus, topics such as politics and religion are generally avoided, to avoid emphasizing the differences among those present. Topics which might seem to be an accusation towards someone in attendance are also out of bounds. So for instance, if Uncle Arthur has just divorced his wife so he can spend more time with his secretary, any discussion of how people don't take marriage seriously any more around the Thanksgiving table will be taken as an attack upon Uncle Arthur, and approved of or rejected accordingly.

When someone writes for publication, there seems to be a general truce that, "Well, Alison is a writer of course, so she's always looking for subject matter, but she's not necessarily writing about the family. She needs something to write about, or they won't pay her." That, or concerned family members can simply ostracize the writer or stick their heads in the sand and not read any of what he or she writes.

Blogging occupies a certain middle ground. It is generally accepted to be a conversation of sorts, and so it seems to be considered reasonable to assume that if a blogger writes about something which appears to apply to someone the blogger knows personally, then it's probably commentary on that person. And yet, for the blogger himself, the search for material is much the same as for the "real writer". And indeed, for the blogger who thinks in a "writerly" way about his writing, discussion a situation (even one drawn from a specific real life example at hand) is often not a way of saying "I like Cheryl" or "I hate Bill" but rather of trying to come to some better understanding of the world and our place in it.

Guided story writing

Seems like when Darwin and I were in grade school, there was a craze to teach poetry by having youngsters jump write in and write a poem, regardless of the fact that the youngsters had been taught nothing about what a poem is or how to write one. ("It rhymes!") To my mind, the first step in learning to write is to listen to poems and stories in order to develop a taste for the mental flavor of prose and poetry. The next step is guided writing.

A child develops a skill first by watching someone perform a task, then by doing the task with help (while imitating what they've observed). Once the child has practiced the task with help and correction, he's ready to try it on his own. We're at the helping stage here. I have the girls narrate a story and provide plot elements, and then I write it down as a narrative, explaining how I'm crafting the ideas and dialogue into structured sentences, and developing the flow. For example, here is this morning's project, with our work in parentheses.

Rose Beauty

("What's the name of your character? Where does she live? What did her parents do?")

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Rose Beauty, because she was a beautiful as a rose. She lived in a house painted with blue and red and orange squigglezags. Her father died when she was eleven ("When did her father die," I asked. "When she was born?" "When she was eleven, " said Eleanor firmly.), and her mother was a scrubwoman.

One day she met an old witch woman. (We debated on how to describe this character -- a sorceress? An old hag? "Witch woman" was the preferred descriptor.)

"Good day, old granny," Rose greeted the woman. (At first Rose just said hello, but I suggested some alternate greetings, and Julia wanted the witch called "Granny" rather than "old mother". And instead of just writing "said Rose", I added the greeting.)

"Please give me a drink of water, my dear. If you don't, I will cast a spell on you."

"Here you are, granny," said Rose, fetching a cup of water.

"Now my must wash my dishes, or else I will cast a spell on you." (Julia liked the spell formulation.)

"Yes, granny," said Rose, and scrubbed the dishes clean.

"Now you must sweep the floor," said the witch, "or else I will eat you." (Eleanor got tired of the spells.)

"I'll make it shine, granny," said Rose, and she swept the floor clean. (I suggested this as a way of pepping up the usual "Yes, granny".)

"You're a good girl, Rose, and you deserve a reward," Granny told the girl. "If you go to the stable, you'll find a surprise."

In the stable, Rose found a red horse with wings.

"You're so beautiful!" exclaimed Rose. "I'll call you Scarlet." The horse nuzzled her hand. (Julia wanted to name the horse Black Beauty at first, but I pointed out that it was an odd name for a red horse, and suggested Scarlet.)

They flew off to seek their fortune. On a beach ("Where did they go?") they discovered a chest that was fastened with huge brass locks. (Description of the chest built up through discussion.) Next to the chest there was a hill of sand with a shovel stuck in it. Rose began to dig. Two feet down she found a rind of heavy golden keys. (The girls were all for the keys being buried, so I asked them how Rose would know the keys were buried. Eleanor liked the shovel, and Julia wanted two feet down.) The keys fit perfectly in the locks. Inside the chest were heaps of coins, precious jewels, and beautiful dresses. On top of everything sat a note on yellowing paper that read:

My dear, I give these riches to you because you have a kind heart. Be sure to use these riches to help the poor.

(Julia came up with the idea that the old witch had left the chest for Rose.)

Rose married a prince and they were always kind to the poor. They lived happily ever after.

THE END

Some of the story was direct transcription, but much of the final form was me crafting suggestions aloud as I wrote them down. The girls get a sense of the different ways a basic formula can be developed and structured. When they get older I'll let them write stories on their own and then edit them for grammar and flow. Hopefully by then they'll have had enough exposure to the way a writer can use the tools of the craft that any flaws in their writing will stem from exuberance, not ignorance.

Why Read Fiction

Quite some time ago, bookmarked a posting on the First Things blog because it reflected comments I'd heard from several other quite intelligent people my age that I've run across:

A few days ago our editor, Joseph Bottum, observed with a shake of his head that none of the many Junior Fellows at First Things in recent years reads novels with any regularity.

I had to confess I was no exception, thus perfecting his despair. “The dominant Western literary form for the past two hundred years” he said “but you all say, ‘Nope, we’re done with that.’”

Why is this? I can’t speak for anyone else, but, for my part, I just don’t get drawn into fictional narratives the way I did as a child.

I turned towards the philosophical and historic in my mid-teens, which gave me Plato’s kind of impatience with lying poets. At some point I found that I had to force myself to turn the next page because I really did not care in the least what happened to imaginary persons. The only narratives I now read with easy pleasure are travelogues, histories, and biographies, packed as they are with the red meat of the real.

But I’m making a good-faith effort to regain a taste for novels. I’ve started with Jane Austen, hoping that the goodly helping of edification will help me painlessly transition from my addiction to propositional truths to a healthy appreciation of the formal properties of a well-wrought story. I’ve read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility and am now in the middle of Persuasion. She’s quite as wise, perceptive, and delightfully ironic as everyone says, but I’m still having the hardest time staying interested in the plot.

Now, I don't share Mr. McDaniel's hang up in this regard at all, though I do find that I don't read as much fiction as I used to as a teenager. But as I say, several good friends have surprised me by expressing similar opinions. Helene Hanff who wrote 84 Charing Cross Road and Q's Legacy, two of my favorite books about books, observes at one point in 84, "I never can get interested in things that didn't happen to people who never lived."

Some of this is, I think, simply a matter of personal taste. However I wonder if some of it also has to do with a modern idea of what fiction is. There are two contradictory ideas of fiction which I hear often:

1) I am the author and I have created this story, which is mine and is precisely what I say it is, for your entertainment. Read it and be diverted.

2) The author has created a text which does not necessarily have an inherent meaning. You as the reader must encounter this text and determine what it means to you.

Both of these, if one actually internalizes them, strike me as rather boring. If a story is simply something which a particular author thought up in wholly artificial fashion and presents to you for amusement, what exactly is the point? Why should I care that that author made up that particular sequence of unreal events? If the story does not have meaning in and of itself -- if meaning is something that I apply myself -- why should I care about the story? Clearly, anything worth knowing is already in my head, and reading the story is like staring at an uncarved block of stone and imagining a sculpture.

On the question of why we read and write fiction, the works of ancient authors like Homer and Virgil have always struck me as interesting. Both to some extent, I think, believed in the myths they were recording. (Virgil less so than Homer, and neither in a literal sense, perhaps.) Yet both knew they were making up the details of these stories as they went along. And their readers in the ancient world both knew that the stories they were hearing or reading had been composed by human authors, and also believed that they in some sense reflected real stories about the gods and heroes.

The key insight here, I think, is that worthwhile fiction describes something that is at root true -- indeed it shows reality in a more distilled fashion than actual observation -- even if the details are made up. When fiction ceases to be seen as describing something true, it ceases to be worth reading.