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Naked Cartwheels #1

Just Write It and Get it Done
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” (Virginia Woolf)

I’m reading away at novels-in-progress for the novel-tutorial thing I’m doing up at Skidmore next week. It’s always good to pick up someone’s thick manuscript — I know the work that goes into even putting together that many pages. I’m enjoying my reading and comment-writing (though it’s tough-going at times). It’s like holding someone else’s committment in my hands. I need to be working on my own Novel 3, but that’s on the agenda for this weekend.

Reading these solid chunks of other folks’ imaginations has me thinking about process. So: a very few of the things I try to remember when I’m writing, and stuff I try to elaborate on when I teach fiction (though some of this works for journalism, too –

1. Read the Arts: The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner, and The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts by David Lodge. The last one isn’t as intimidating as it sounds. There are many other books I suggest, but a sister needs content for future blog entries.

2. Whatever you’re trying to write … read books in that category. If you’re writing about a Louisiana family (for example), even if you’re from a Louisana family, read a novel or three about a Louisiana family. Read a good recent (last fifty years) history as well as a good overall history of Louisiana (from back when it was infamously “purchased”). Check out the Louisiana state website. Talk to your Louisiana relatives. Read a Louisiana daily paper. You’ll write from a more confident and informed stance, even if you use no specifics from what you’ve read. You’ll see connections between names of places and streets — where before you saw none. You’ll see the actions of your characters and your plot in a larger, more interesting context. You’ll know your characters better, and you’ll write them with more fullness.

3. Consider the uselessness of the semicolon. Aside from the fact that they’re ugly, there is no reason for it, except in the shorthand of blogging, emails, IMing, bibliography, and the occasional list in a daily newspaper piece. Semicolons are about indecision and lack of confidence as far as fiction writing goes. A period is absolute. A comma is clear. An m-dash is dramatic. When you are really wanting to combine two independent clauses, pick clear, compelling punctuation — and keep it moving. Speaking of punctuation, I need to take those apostrophes out of Borders (look right, and down). Reluctant disclosure: a semicolon or three exist in Bliss. I fought with the copyeditor but was worn down. God bless a thorough copyeditor (and I had an excellent one). Some of my best friends are, or have been copyeditors. But they can be … well, let’s just say they can get on my nerves.

4. When describing, a place, a person, a piece of cake, whatever — use the five senses. Don’t stop at What does it look like? As you write, think: what does it smell like? Taste like? Feel like? What does it sound like? What would it sound like if it fell? You don’t have to use descriptions based on all of the senses in your piece, or in one paragraph, but if you at least come up with them in your head (or better, on paper, to be possibly edited out in one of the many drafts I know you know are important to do) you’ll probably find something better than the green apple. Or, He was a tall guy with long hair.

5. Mysterious writing works only in mysteries, and then only sometimes. What do you gain by dramatically referring to your main character as “she” for the first few pages of your story/novel, other than getting on the reader’s nerves … especially if you’re just going to eventually call her Stacy or Tracie or Michelle without any big to-do on page eleven? Unless her name is a plot device, or maybe if she has some weird name that means something else in translation, or maybe you’re writing in the first-person, and it’s awkward to state the character’s name outright — just say the name. It gives the reader something to hold onto. And name the place. You’d be surprised how many writers don’t say, San Antonio is a hard place to grow up, or whatever. They spend a lot of time alluding to important things for no real reason except it makes (to them) the story seem more “deep” somehow. “Deep” happens nauturally, and sub-, if not unconsciously. I’m not hating on writers who allude for the sake of alluding. As I mentioned earlier, all these things are things I try no to do when I write. Also, there are ways to allude to things, like the year in which the story takes place for example, without stating flatly: It was 1991. Find out the events of 1991 that are common to most everyone. Find out the events that were big in San Antonio that year. For example, the Spurs won the Championship that year, in a repeat. If someone in the novel says that, the reader can assume it’s 1991, or around 1991. Hm. Or 1996 … when the Spurs did it again, so that’s not a really great example. But you get my meaning. One could, if setting a story in L.A., allude to the Riots — Watts or Rodney King. Or if setting it in NYC, allude to Dinkins. Or if in Oakland, allude to Black Panther free breakfasts or the Jonestown Massacre (been there, done the last two myself). Allude away … specifically.

Argue with me if you will, but I warn you: I am too long in all this to go down without a fight. Unless you’re a copyeditor.

A few other tidbits:

Quivering vibrato, curlicued melisma, notes held past the vanishing point: the favourite technical tricks of Idol contestants are often like screams divorced from the pain or ecstasy that inspired them’ .. This separation of ‘authentic’ emotion from its performed facsimile links these two ubiquitous phenomena in contemporary singing - the breathy child and the gymnastic vocaliser … Ben Brantley argued that the influence of American Idol had infiltrated musical theatre voice production, provoking a fascinating debate about singing styles and the ways that they’ve changed. He suggests a way forward: ‘We must cherish such performers. Good, well-trained voices that can carry a tune and turn up the volume come cheap. What does not is the voice that identifies a character as specifically and individually as handwriting.’

I HATE it when people articulate what I’m trying to say waaaaaaaay better than I articulate it. I was just talking about this last post, no? Anyhow, read more here. It’s a fine piece.

Thanks to the Village Voice music page for snagging the recent Gladys Knight post for their “Blog Rock” thingy. A shout to the staffers, too: I think they’re on strike as of midnight last night. Today they plugged Chris Weingarten.

Cooking today. Reading those manus. Waiting on stuff to be delivered. Working.

Danyel is a former ed-at-large for Time Inc. and a former ed-in-chief of Vibe. She writes around for Elle, Cosmo, Essence, wrote once (!) for the New Yorker, will show up in Rolling Stone sometimes, still reps in spirit for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and wrote concert/album reviews for the New York Times back in the day. Smith is the author of the San Francisco Chronicle-bestselling novel, More Like Wrestling, and she wrote the introduction for the New York Times-bestseller Tupac Shakur. Her second novel, Bliss, will be published July 12, 2005. Danyel lives in NYC, but was born and brought up in California.

Visit nakedcartwheels.blogspot.com to enjoy more of her writing!

Message Danyel Smith and tell her what you think

By Danyel Smith on 7/19/2005[read on] [4 comments]