Category: Writing

The Scythe in my Toolshed

This is an update on how Hawk is coming along.  The answer is: mostly all right, I think.  I should qualify that (joke, Moshe).

The book took an interesting and fun twist while I was in Texas last month, and I like where it’s going.  In brief, I’ve taken the first chunk of chapters and moved them to the back, leaving me to write up to them.  This isn’t something I’m used to doing, which is a challenge.  The way the book has decided to structure itself is also a bit weird, fun, and difficult.  If I can pull this off, I’ll be pleased with it.

But the interesting thing is that I find myself writing a WHOLE LOT OF CRAP.  I mean, I usually figure that, while I’m putting things together, there will be a lot that drops out in revisions; but never like this.  The first draft of the first chapters contain an amazing amount of flab, and as I write, I keep reminding myself that, in the mental shed where I keep my writerly tools, there are delicate scalpels, jigsaws, a hammer, a set of screwdrivers, and, for situations like this there’s a  scythe.  I haven’t used it much, but it’s there.  I know that once the first draft is done, there’s no reason not to haul it out and get to slashing.  The point is to get to where the story comes together in a way I like; then I can go back and cut away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.  I’ve done that before; but this time it’s just amazing how much doesn’t look like an elephant.

For me, a great deal of writing revolves around tricking my brain into doing what I want it to do.  That is, finding a way to let the hindbrain tell the forebrain what the story is that I’m actually writing.  I have a lot of ways of tricking myself, but one that seems to consistently produce good results is just to keep going.  Keep plowing on, even if I’m writing page after page of running in place.  Eventually, there comes forward movement, and then eventually a nice shape and the snick of things coming together, and then I go back and make it look like I knew it all along.

But this time, there is just so much running in place that it’s freaking me out a little bit.  I’m falling back on my cockiness, and reminding myself that I’ve done this before (like, 20-some times); I can do this, and it will come together.  But in the meantime, it’s a little bit scary thinking of all the work that scythe will be doing; I mean, when I’m done, am I going to have a novel or a piece of flash fiction?  But the big secret is, that “little bit scary” is kind of fun.

 

Another Way to Write Badly

I just finished watching season 3 of Boardwalk Empire.  I rather liked the first two seasons.  It’s an era that interests me, I’ve always liked Steve Buscemi, and the writing seemed fairly intelligent.

I don’t know what happened this season.  All of a sudden, you start having an absurd body count.  And not just in the number of bodies, but they keep pulling the trick where character A appears to decide not to kill character B, then suddenly does.  You can only get away with that a couple of times before the viewer starts rolling his eyes and going, “Do the writers expect me to fall for that again?”  And you can only produce so many bodies before you get “The Dark Knight” effect of, “Oh, a fight.  Am I supposed to care what happens?”

Perhaps its Scorsese’s influence, I don’t know.  But, whatever, it was disappointing.  Violence needs to matter.  When there’s too much of it, it stops mattering.  When it stops mattering, it’s worse than morally questionable, it’s boring.

 

Happy New Year

2012 was a good year for me, hope it was for all of you as well.  May we all have a fun and productive 2013.  I’m staying in tonight and writing.  Why?  Because I like it.  How cool is that?  I try to remind myself, from time to time, how lucky I am to make a living doing what I love, and this is a good time for such reflections.

Okay, done reflecting now.  I’m over a third of way through Hawk, approaching the halfway point.    Back to the word mines.

 

Of Course Fiction is a Drug. Now . . .

In fact, it is many different sorts of drugs, producing many different effects, depending on the chemical one is consuming, and one’s own brain chemistry.  What produces euphoria in one, might produce heartbreak in another,  profound insights in a third, mere boredom in a fourth.

What all of these drugs have in common–or, at least, the subject of today’s sermon–is the time-release nature of the capsule the reader is consuming.  One might say that the reader is consuming words at a given rate; but more important is that the reader is consuming information.  Every sentence, every paragraph, every comma, is designed to control the flow of information to the reader.  And that sometimes means speeding it up, sometimes slowing it down.

Not long ago I had the insight that two of my favorite things to do as a writer are: to tell the reader things, and to not tell the reader things.  Let me expand on that a little.  When I say “tell the reader things” I mean, in particular, conveying information by the expedient of simply saying it.  “His name is Mark; he is a good friend and a jerk.”  When I speak of not telling the reader things, I mean giving the reader the information needed to form his own conclusions: “Adam spoke about Mark in notably uncomplimentary terms.  I couldn’t argue with anything he said, though it made me uncomfortable and a little sad.”

There are times for doing each of those, and one of the main factors to consider is: how fast am I dispensing information?  Am I in danger of making the reader irritated or impatient because he wants to run ahead of me?  Am I asking him to hold too much in his head without giving him time to process it all?”

Before this post gets too loaded with information long, I’ll just make one recommendation.  If you want to want to see the dispensing of information performed perfectly, delightfully, elegantly, go read Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny.

And that will do for now.

 

Natter

So, I’m still in Austin.  I’ve been swimming every day because if you’re a Minnesotan and you’re someplace where you can swim in December, you do.

I’ve been working a short story for this project as well as getting some stuff done on Hawk.  The latter, by the way, took an interesting turn.  I was sitting around with Skyler White (the Whites have graciously put me up while I’m here), and we were talking about how stories work, and she said, “I love it when a story does this.”  And I said, “Yeah, me too….hey!”  So most of what I’ve already written has been moved to later in the book, and I’m kind of excited about the new approach.  We’ll see.  As part of working on the short story, I just reread Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead.  Jesus, he was good.  I miss him painfully.

Spent a lot of yesterday going over the new home page, and making notes about it.  Kudos to Corwin and Felix.  I like it a lot; though we’re still working out some details.  Also, thanks to everyone who commented on it.

Saw “Lincoln” for the second time, and was blown away again.  I’m not a huge Spielberg fan, but this was a lovely bit of work.

And I guess that’s about it for now.