Given my feeble attempts to resurrect my novel — OK, I haven’t done jack shit on it lately, though I’ve done much cogitation — it’s occurred to me that a writer’s skills can be as much hindrance as help.
To illustrate, let me go back to grad school, figuratively speaking. There was an unspoken rule (one of many) in my MFA program that posited, "If your imagination is too active, your story must suck."
Not knowing this, for my first workshop I submitted a story about a pizza delivery driver. The rub was that homeowners could shoot a small-caliber weapon at a driver when a pizza order took more than 30 minutes to deliver.
It was intended as satire (duh), but that part seemed to go over most of my classmates’ heads. The general question people had was thus: What about the relationship with his girlfriend? I looked at the floor, murderously.
Granted, the story about the pizza delivery driver did suck, but not because it needed more information on the driver’s gal pal. Instead, the writing was pedestrian; the characterizations were weak. There didn’t seem to be much at stake for the narrator/protagonist except staying alive, which, to many in this world, is motivation enough.
Fawkes: father of all plots, and bad hair
But it did have something going for it: a plot with an actual story in which things actually happened. Compared to the following: a 5,000-word epistolary about Why I Broke Up With You, a three-paragraph meditation on packing peanuts and Why I Broke Up With You, and the guts of a novel about life in rural Wisconsin in the1920s by someone who had never been there. In each, I couldn’t have cared less (though I tried). There was no story in the stories.
Now, I’m more likely to volunteer for experimental ass-transplant surgery than tout my virtues as a scribe, but one thing I am excel at is plotting, be it a piece of "sudden fiction" or an 800-page doorstop. For me, the other aspects of writing are like sweating blood, but I can always come up with a smart twist or clever narrative, and can bring together disparate strands of the story into a cohesive whole.
In the hands of Salman Rushdie or Margaret Atwood, to name two current Great Writers, a big, messy story isn’t a hindrance but a vehicle to get at a larger truth. While I couldn’t explain "The Moor’s Last Sigh" without a syllabus, and Wife and I have argued about precise plot of "The Blind Assassin," the complicated threads of story work in service to the book as a whole, not conversely.
Rushdie and Atwood’s characters are blood and flesh, their pacing is impeccable, and I would give my left one to write half as beautifully as either.
Faulkner was not drunk when he did this
The ability to write good narratives is as much crutch as aid; when I’m stuck writing fiction, I do one of three things:
1. Describe the room, the characters’ clothing, or something else. Or make a bad joke.
2. Add a new plot thread.
3. Log on to Bonerfarm.com and log off three days later.
You know which one wins. Instead of activating the senses, have a character take action that illuminates his or her motives, or even just describing trees and flowers, it’s more plot, plot, plot, or feed the livestock on the Bonerfarm.
(In a different life, I would write for television or the movies, I imagine, but it may be a little late for that. I could always do reality television. Bookfraud TV.)
Which begs the question: should I just abandon pretense and make the most of the tools I have, and write genre like crime or science fiction, which puts a premium on plot and less on the aspects that make literary fiction, you know, literary?
And for those of you who do write fiction, do you find yourself relying upon your strengths too much, so they become weaknesses?
Does it have to be an either/or?
Rely on strengths? What strengths?
I can’t get past the puritanical book editors who get all skeevy over the chaperone in my novel having sex with one of his students. They all freak out and say “that would never happen in real life.” Apparently they dont’ watch the news. Sigh.
bernita: i don’t think it’s a matter of either/or, but there are few among us who can consistently master plot, characterization, pacing, poetry, etc. not saying that i can’t, for instance, but, man, is it a struggle sometimes.
travis: we all have strengths as writers. some of us, it’s plot. others, it’s terseness.
collin: i don’t understand that one. i mean, jesus — talk about something at least mildly prurient that might sell a few books. even if it didn’t happen in real life. that’s why it’s a story.
Everyone always tells me my lead character doesn’t do much…just observers..
Could I be writing about myself over and over?
God.
Here’s hoping not.
I found you via bernita’s blog. Lots of good points.
If you have some time, I’d really love to know the list of unspoken rules from your MFA course! Sounds either funny as hell or daunting; but enquiring minds want to know!
I’m a very curious person. Despite this, I’ll will not be typing the URL from #3 into my address bar.
j.: i don’t know if that’s so much a weakness as an indication of style. hell, nick carraway was a pretty passive dude, and he narrates “gatsby.” so there!
if i were to worry about writing about myself all the time, i wouldn’t write, because i’d have nothing to write about.
writtenwyrdd: welcome to b-fraud, where you’ll get twice the blog satisfaction or your money back. you can get the list of rules by clicking on the link that says “the rules” in the upper right-hand box. or maybe i’ll just e-mail ya.
thirdworst: you shouldn’t be so reticent. you never know what’s awaiting you on bonerfarm.com.
Thanks, bf. duly read and laughed at because they are entirely too true. I was in an English program with a focus on creative writing, and this behavior was particularly obvious in the poetry classes. I confess I haven’t yet mastered teh art of zipping my defensive little lips, but I do try, seeing as it does just make you look defensive.
“And for those of you who do write fiction, do you find yourself relying upon your strengths too much, so they become weaknesses?”
Strengths, right.
(I got here following a comment you made on Sarah Weinman’s blog and this looks like a nice place)
Whenever I got into trouble with my novel I introduced a new character to keep things fresh. I ended up with a big ensemble cast I really liked. And then, the first review I got on Amazon said something about it being the crappiest novel the guy had ever read, “constntly introducing new characters pointlessly,” or something like that (I only read the freakin’ review a few dozen times).
So, whatever you chose to do to keep going and finish the damn thing (and you really should), it better make you happy. Sometimes I say it took me ten years to unlearn everything I learned in creative writing classes. The truth is, mybe longer….
written: thanks for the nice words and for stopping by. it’s good to know that the same miserable rules for fiction workshops apply to poetry as well.
john: thank you, too, for the nice words.
i admit that i laughed when you described your amazon review. or rather, i laughed when you said you’d read it a few dozen times.
the thing about new characters — as opposed to new plot threads — is that it’s so hard to keep ‘em straight. “gravity’s rainbow” has 400 characters, but then again, i’m not pynchon.
Yeah well, remember, Pynchon wasn’t always Pynchon – and I bet there’s an Amazon review for “Gravity’s Rainbow” that’s hilarious.
Now, let’s all get back to work
Writing realistic dialogue has always been a snap, but prose? Has always been my Achilles hell. (That originally was a typo.) I’ve worked on it, read some classics, diagrammed a few sentences. Stopped taking creative writing classes, as they only seem to make me better and editing other people’s stuff.
My dialogue? Is still better. Maybe I should write plays or something. At least my prose doesn’t make people writhe anymore.