Tag Archives: revision

Writers’ Math

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Some writer’s math:

The protagonist of my novel manuscript, Jonas Adams Abraham, is 12 going on 13. The manuscript itself is 12. When I started writing Jonas’s story, I was 26.

Liaa, the 15-year-old protagonist of a manuscript I put to bed in order to focus on a potentially more commercially viable book (see above) can be counted, in effort-years, as 7. I conceived of the novel while I was an undergrad at Emerson College, probably age 19.

A short graphic story featuring a 11-year-old (and later her 15 and 17-year-old selves) is approximately 7 years into endless-tiny-revisions. 3 or 4 years younger than Jonas in terms of sequence, the script represents hours rather than years of effort.

Other writing has similarly aged, as I have aged, moving further and further from our society’s specter of the overnight (and enviably young) author-sensation. As I stretch into my fourth decade of being an animal on this beautiful, awful, bizarre, heart-breaking planet, my gift of experience and dreams for what-might-be enter with me.

Together we are growing up.

[/end math!]

I attended a lecture by Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz where he described himself as a slow writer. In my memory of his self-depreciating story, Junot painted his peers as writing circles around him —his works requiring long years of incubation while theirs stacked like shiny red apples at a city grocer. It was the first time I’d heard a published author describe this phenomenon and the truth hit me with a spine-straightening zap of static electricity. I took notice.

I tried that idea on: slow writer.

Some pondering:

Slow writing. Manuscripts that catch up to and then out-age the characters who roam their pages. Words with enough history to manifest their own internal humor—self-referencing for the benefit of no one in particular (beyond the author.)

What does it mean to be slow now, when fast is culturally mandated? I pose this question while typing on a tiny, high speed iPod keypad, this mini computer that I slip into my pocket as I zip across a major city in our nation of nations —where many cultures move together at different paces, generally not peaceably.

I write this understanding that time is a construct by which my body must abide. But time doesn’t truly exist in my manuscripts. And the manuscripts exist without relation to time. They are or they are not. On my good days, I do not blame my works for being what they are. I can neither stop them nor speed them up. Nothing I do has much impact except for my resolve to arrive again and again, twirling time fluffily onto a white paper cone, or maybe creating an elastic loop as I build on ideas and cultivate the gifts of my characters’ laughter and heartbreak, their triumphs, mistakes, and revelations.

It seems this could go on forever, but it won’t because I cannot. My physical self is limited in a way art will never be. Really, which one of us is slow? Which of us just is?

[/end pondering!]

Pretty words, huh? Existential thoughts even as I, in the more practical sense, park my butt on a chair, or stand leaning over a laptop, and plant a hand on the keyboard, typing in that curious one-handed way I do where the craft spools out —my right hand magically comporting itself through the middle-school-taught positions, keyboard-left and keyboard-right, without having to peek. Slow going. Real slow.

Real and slow.

-Phoebe Sinclair, 2018 WROB Ivan Gold Fellow

Year in Review

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Last December, I was pulling everything together for my application to the Writers’ Room fellowship. It would be difficult to quantify just how different my writing life is now. I have a new job that will make it financially feasible for me to stay on at the Room next year. I have a new place that’s quiet enough to work in. And the manuscript that was one-quarter drafted when I applied for my fellowship– a story I was, and still am, truly excited about– was finished about two weeks ago.

The revision process was nonstop, as it always is, because I absolutely love revising. I can and will work on revisions anywhere: on the train, in a waiting room, in front of the TV while my family watches a contentious football match. But drafting is a much more delicate process for me. It’s something that’s gotten harder, weirdly enough, since I’ve gotten better at writing.

It’s become harder to accept the gap between what I can envision, what I know it will eventually be, and what I write on my first go-around. It’s way too easy to go back and self-edit, to limit what I get done because I won’t let myself just get it down on the page. Every time I’m drafting a new manuscript, there’s at least one moment where I’m convinced that the last book I finished is going to be the last book I ever finish.

Being in the Room has been life-changing in that regard. Not only is it a different head space when I need to turn the world off for a few hours, but my being there at all feels like a vote of confidence that’s been hard to come by in my writing life for a while. It’s encouragement and a fire under me all at once. Every time I took the train into State Street after work, picked up my dinner and took the elevator to the fifth floor, it was to dive into the resources that have been given to me this year with the expectation that I’d use them well. With all that behind you, it’s easy to push past your uncertainties about that last bit of dialogue and just get to work.

To do that, I developed strategies that I’ll probably keep using. I doubled, and often tripled, my usual daily word counts. I know I would have finished this manuscript one way or the other, but being at the Room helped me finish it in a way I could be proud of.

The book is in other people’s hands now, and as I think about what’s next, it’s hard not to reflect on the fact that my fellowship will come to an end early next year. It’s a bittersweet feeling. But it’s fun to think that this time next year, a new crop of writers will be looking at their writing life and marveling at all the ways it’s changed.

Rebecca Mahoney, 2017 WROB Fellow

 

Not Everything Has To Be Work

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As a teenager, taking writing workshops as part of my arts school concentration, I remember submitting to a contest with a group of classmates and getting the news that all of them had placed except me. Sometime later that day, in the haze of rejection-crying and ice cream, I decided that it didn’t matter if I was mediocre– I just needed to want it more than they did.

Looking back at the rejections that followed, I can trace where that became a cycle, to match disappointment with self-discipline. The first step to being taken seriously as a writer and to ensure that writing had a foothold in my limited free time had to be treating my writing like a job. I don’t think that was wrong— it got me this far, even when that ambition could be an unwieldy thing to carry.

I’m also a person with anxiety, which means being careful about what I tell myself that I ‘have’ to do. And the problem with treating ‘wanting it’ like a job is that ‘want to’ slowly becomes ‘have to.’ You end up wanting it just about as much as you want to do any job. Which is to say, not that much.

Coming to The Writers’ Room was a big part of reframing my creativity as something fun and vital again, not a benchmark I had to meet or a fight I had to win. And for the most part, it’s been really successful. My drafting sessions are the most loose and productive they’ve been in years. I’ve started more easily questioning some of the conventional wisdom I’d internalized: that I needed to write every day to be serious, or that sometimes it was going to feel like pulling teeth but I had to push through it. I decided that whether I was daydreaming up a scene or just letting my brain go offline after an exhausting day, everything was important work in the end.

Here’s the fun thing about undoing a bad habit, though: you’re never quite as done with it as you think you are.

As I write this, I’m planning the move to a new place tomorrow, so for the past few weeks, the part of my brain that would normally be dedicated to thinking through a scene has been running through where my desk is going to fit in the new room, or where my hairdryer is. There’s not a lot of space left for my work-in-progress, currently stopped just before the climax, and I find myself worrying about its lack of real estate in my brain, or putting pressure on my rest nights to be as restful as possible. In trying to be kinder to myself, I think I was a little too successful at making everything, even relaxation, into a job.

So maybe the thing to tell myself isn’t that everything is work. Maybe it’s not everything has to be work. 

Easier said than done, I know. But I like the sound of it.

-Rebecca Mahoney, 2017 WROB Fellow

Depth

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Last week I read a very good article titled “When Things Go Missing,” by Kathryn Schulz, which appeared in a recent issue of The New Yorker. As the title indicates, the article is about losing things. The author begins with anecdotes about losing one’s possessions, such as wallets, clothing, keys, and cars.  You know she’s going to write about losing more important things, and she does – about losing people.

At 7,000 words the article was long but very readable.  I began reading it on my phone while I was waiting to pick up my kids and kept reading it even after they got in the car and wanted me to start driving.

Later I fell to wondering how the author had written at such length on a topic you might not think anyone could write a lot about.  So I read the article again and noted all the different directions in which the author took it, each like a ray radiating out from a center to illuminate it. There was a paragraph or more on all of these strands: anecdotes about lost objects, people known to the author who lose things often, advice people like to give on how to find things, advice the internet gives on how to find things, types of things it’s possible to lose, data people have compiled on lost things, explanations for why we lose things, why we feel the need to know how something got lost, why we like to blame other people for our losses, why it’s more worrisome to lose things when we get older, and finally, the worst things we can lose – those close to us.

By the time we get to the end of the article, the strands of it have wrapped around us securely.  We get the sense that the author has considered her theme from all angles, deeply.  The resulting perception of depth provides the piece with both momentum and credibility.

If there’s one thing I miss about my former life in economics it’s the sublime feeling of having explored something in depth. There was a problem and there were the resources to study it.  As well, I suppose, there were deadlines, support, the need to reach closure – or else.

I find it so challenging to get the same sense when I’m writing fiction. The problems are hard to define. The resources, if you count all books, are infinite or, really, none.  Countless influences addle my brain.  Writing fiction imposes many constraints – you can’t just write about a theme in a story – though it provides more artistic leeway.

At the same time it’s easy to perceive when any piece of writing, like this blog post, has or lacks depth. As in people, shallowness isn’t attractive in writing.

I read this once about the philosopher Spinoza, who was deeply interested in science and mathematics, that for him the ultimate benefits of scientific study were spiritual. I like this thought so much. It seems to explain why I’m so preoccupied with depth. I could extend the thought to writing and say that the more considered the writing, the better for the soul.

–Anu Kandikuppa, 2016 Gish Jen Fellow

Me in My Book

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A new friend recently told me that they’d started reading my book. Initially I was, of course, happy that they’d bought a copy and decided to make time to read it. Happiness was swiftly overcome with a sense of trepidation, here was this person still forming opinions of me about to delve into what was possibly my deepest emotional truths.

Photo Credit: Debka Colson
Photo Credit: Debka Colson

In memoir, we carefully choose what to reveal, what stories to tell, and what moments to carefully edit out. But in fiction, the unreal acts as an obscuring haze over the real, meaning we’re more likely to tell emotional and psychological truths. Because every character is a magnified faucet of oneself, reading fiction is like reading the most personal there is.

I first came to this awareness when revising. As I shouted out what, exactly, my character needed to realize at the climax of the story, I was struck with the knowledge that this truth was exactly what I struggled with most as a person. I ended up laughing off the tension then, but the realization has remained.

When my first book was published, I was most worried about my friends and family reading the book. Sure, reviewers would like it or hate it, but hey, I went to art school and am so used to criticism and rejection that maybe someone should be worried. My family and friends, though, knew me as I presented myself and told my story; what would analyzing my fiction reveal? They, of course, just told me what they liked and moved on. Was I reading too much into it, a result of a sound education in critical thought?

I recently did a revision of a book that I know is very close to my life. When I began the book, I asked my mom for permission to write it, knowing it might someday alienate us from a family friend. She, of course, gave her blessing (and the book hasn’t been sold yet, so any concerns are way off in the future). The weight of needing permission opened up all sorts of questions. What had my parents thought of the book I’d published? They’d never really said. Was there something they were keeping from me? I’m not worried about it, but I still wonder, what does our fiction reveal about ourselves to those closest to us? Is this something only a writer would think about, or is it something other readers are aware of?

If you have any answers, musings, experiences, or thoughts on these questions, I’d love to hear them.

-Marika McCoola, 2016 Ivan Gold Fellow

Ruthless Cutting

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“I had a computer file where I would stick these things, a little novel prison, and I’d tell myself if I missed those scenes they’d be allowed to come out and get back in the book.”                                      -Ann Patchett

Revisions always begin with ruthless cutting. Between end-of-semester grading and a revision, there’s been ruthless use of both my zero and delete keys this week. But, as Ann Patchett writes, the beauty of writing on a computer is that you can save all those little darlings that you’re killing.

plainicon-com-45533-512pxAs I write this I have three different documents open that serve just this purpose: one contains cut passages, another lines to possibly use elsewhere, and a third is the “working doc” of scenes I’ve copied to revise and paste back in. Each revision (and this is the second for an editor) has it’s own file, not to mention the countless drafts saved under different names.

I find that having this net is freeing. I am ruthless with the delete key if I also have the ability to cut and paste. However, unlike Patchett, who writes that these scenes never make it back, I have one scene that I pasted back in yesterday. Who knows if it’ll stay there, but it was wonderful to know that it existed; I didn’t have to rewrite the entire thing, I could find it, cut it, paste it, and then make tweaks… and tweaks needed to be made. I remembered the scene well enough, but what I didn’t remember was that it was written so early on (and cut so early) that the protagonist’s name was different. We’ll see if it stays, but it’s nice to know that the work wasn’t wasted.

Ultimately, that’s what I think is important, knowing that the cutting isn’t wasteful. Even if it never ends up in a book, it served a purpose, it helped me figure out my characters and establish my setting; I learned from it. Sometimes it helps to remind myself of this, especially when I consider all those sad, forgotten files in my computer, pieces that will probably never become printed prose.

Patchett quote form this article: “Ann Patchett on Stealing Stories, Book Tours, and Staying Off Twitter.”By Mary Laura Philpott, Lit Hub, August 29, 2016: http://lithub.com/ann-patchett-on-stealing-stories-book-tours-and-staying-off-twitter/

-Marika McCoola, 2016 Ivan Gold Fellow

Writing Advice I Give Myself

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For this post I thought I would collect some of the writing advice that I keep on and on giving myself. I am my harshest critic. I nag myself. I’m a bore and a bully. I’m unhappy with much of what I write and pelt myself constantly with bits of difficult-to-follow advice that take away most of the pleasure I might have obtained from my writing but also almost always improve it.

You there, I tell myself. Yes, you. Don’t always be so concerned about plot and how to make the story proceed. I know you do this because plot is your weakness but you must think more broadly about your story as a way to envelop your reader in the character’s soul. I didn’t say this, Chekhov did (I paraphrased his words). Imagine, visualize, and intuit more about your character and his world than what is necessary for the story. Even if your story covers an hour, write it in such a way that the reader realizes it is just one passage within someone’s full, complex life. If you do this well the specifics of plot will matter less.

Do not, repeat, do not, get carried away by the pleasure you take in language. Yes, language is fun to play with but what you make with it matters more in the end. So play if you must, but in the end make every sentence work to illuminate the idea, the reason for the work’s being. The language must be in service of the story, except for writers who are so very good with words that words become the reason for the story’s being. But you aren’t like that.

Consider temperature. Stories may be cool or hot. A cool story is written from a distance and allows you to be ironic and contemplative, which I know you love being, but whoever’s reading it has to be at least a little like you to appreciate it. A hot story is written from the middle of a character in the throes of whatever feeling is prompting the story. Hot stories may, by definition, lack perspective. The characters may seem narrowly – foolishly? – centered on their own lives but these stories use a universal language of human experience and so have the potential to touch readers immediately and reliably. Cool or hot is a decision you should make upfront but don’t just default to what comes easier to you. Take up a challenge once in a while.

Yes, you must revise. Sad but true: one’s first attempt to communicate is never very good. But there’s such a thing as over-revising. Over-revising results in self-conscious writing, writing with much of the edge taken off it. Writing that’s supposed to be flawless but is flawed because it’s stripped of spontaneity. Though your first draft may be imperfect in expression, the thought behind it is often the truest. If you over-revise you run the risk of improving the delivery but ruining the thought. Always keep in mind what you were thinking when you wrote your first draft.

–Anu Kandikuppa, 2016 Gish Jen Fellow

A Writer’s Confession

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My biggest problem as a writer is trying to protect my characters.

Tension and conflict don’t come easily to me. As someone who survived public school by disappearing around tense situations, it’s understandable. However, it’s problematic when it comes to writing fiction, as you might imagine.

This problem is not something I would’ve figured out with the help of my critique partner, who, thankfully, gives straight, blunt feedback. We didn’t realize this problem right away but working with the same person for four years can be extremely helpful when it comes to understanding process and recognizing pitfalls: I protect my characters, my crit partner avoids physical description. Unfortunately, being aware of this hasn’t changed how either of us write our first drafts. Rather, it’s changed how we both revise.

Both my critique partner and I know that in a first draft I will write a scene and then trickily protect my character from the worst. Our solution to this is to simply flag the parts in which the conflict and tension can be pushed. This allows me to work through a first draft (rather than continually revising) and then return to these moments and discuss how to push the scene. In return, I flag moments where she needs description, and highlight other moments where there’s good description, so my partner knows when she’s achieved it.

Right now, I’m itching to go back in and fix a scene that needs heightened tension at almost every moment but I’m holding off until I can see more clearly what’s going to be around the scene. Until then, I’m making notes- on the train, over lunch, when I wake up- whenever an idea strikes.

RatIn a dream last night, a rat ran over my bare foot. I’m wincing right now, remembering the feel of its matted, wet fur and sharp toes against my skin. This morning, in my overflowing notebook in which I’m juggling projects, I jotted down a note to “Add (copious?) rats to alley scene.” I may as well use an unsettling dream to upset my protagonist.

-Marika McCoola, 2016 Ivan Gold Fellow

 

School Events

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Though my book Baba Yaga’s Assistant has been out for almost ten months now and I’ve been working on many other projects, I find that much of my time is still spent working for this book. For me, this takes the form of school visits. While writing a book is an isolating task except for occasional critique group meetings, school visits are my chance to meet my audience directly and honestly, they can be a lot of fun.

Photo Credit: Debka Colson
Photo Credit: Debka Colson

Last week I loaded my bike panniers with books and headed over to Arlington, MA, to meet with students. In the beautiful library, I set up my powerpoint and prepared. As students waited for the other classes to arrive, we talked about what they were reading. There was a list of what you might expect: Rick Riordan, Raina Telegemeier, and Jeff Kinney, but also some titles you might not expect. I gave some recommendations, and then we got started.

I always begin with a brief background, then move into the idea and research process. I spend a bit of time talking about the importance of revising. The kids’ eyes always get big here, their mouths dropping open as I explain just how many times I revised the piece; this is every teacher’s favorite part.

I’m at the point where I can do this presentation in my sleep, but if anything, that makes it better, because it frees me up to read my audience when I speak. I ask questions as I show slides, asking students to show their knowledge and connect my process with what they’ve been learning in their English and art classes.

Once I’ve established the writing process, we talk about the phases the art went through (again, revising is important here!) and I end with a final spread. This is my favorite part: asking students to break down how the different art elements are working. The students are always able to look at color and shape and indicate how it relates to mood, tone, and setting. Meanwhile, their teachers’ mouths are dropping. Unless one of the teachers is trained in art, they generally are not aware of how much visual literacy is a part of graphic novels and how adept their students are at analyzing it.

Then, of course, there’s Q&A. Always call on the random squirming boy in the back. Generally, his question is surprisingly relevant and insightful, not the run of the mill “will it be a movie?” Which is a question every author fields at school events and most would rather not.

With groups under fifty, I tend to end my presentation with an exercise, getting the students to practice their own writing and drawing. I love to see what the students make and what questions they ask, but it’s also a point at which insecurities arise. I’ve found that fifth graders will do pretty much anything but seventh and eight graders, especially those who are in advanced classes, worry about doing something wrong. We’ve all been in this situation, had this fear, but it’s only recently that I’ve begun to wonder if this is directly tied to revision.

As writers, we’re aware of how much work, how many changes, will ultimately go into our final. Whatever we do for a first draft or pass can be shitty; it’ll get better (it might get worse first, but it’ll get to a better place eventually). Focusing on endless sketches and countless revisions, something I didn’t get to do until college, makes work less precious, more malleable. If we allowed for more of this in schools, would students be more willing to take more risks? Or is the time allotted to testing and prepping an impediment to this very important skill?

I don’t have the answers to these questions yet but what I can say is that I love visiting schools. I love being able to take time out of new projects to connect directly with my audience, to learn what they’re reading, what they’re excited by, and how they engage with the concepts inherent in my work. When a student lingers after an event to tell me about what they’re working on, or that they liked my book, well, then I know it was worth it. Luckily, I have some more visits planned.

-Marika McCoola, 2016 Ivan Gold Fellow

 

On Acceptance

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When I enter the Writers’ Room of Boston, the successful works of writers greet me. Displayed in the foyer are the completed masterpieces of WROB members who’ve reached my goal: to publish a book.

The sight is one of accomplishment, passion, pride, hope, persistence, drive, faith, timing, and luck—we have no control over the latter two.

As writers, not one of us escapes rejection. For a long time, I received several rejections a week, sometimes every day. Yet somehow, instead of discouraging me, the rejections fueled me onward. I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I took the “right” steps, if I did the things writers were supposed to, I’d successfully put my words out into the world, connect with others, and reach my goal.

I honed my craft in writing workshops and networked with industry professionals at many writers’ conferences and retreats. I earned not one but two MFAs. Renowned authors became my mentors, encouraging me. I published in magazines and built my “platform.” I signed with a respected literary agent who was excited about my work.

But four years later, with two books unsold, my agent lost his enthusiasm. Eventually, I made the difficult decision to leave him.

I went back to the task of querying.

One by one, I received rejections. I was told that in the current nonfiction market I’d never sell a book, because I wasn’t a celebrity. I was advised to try to break into the publishing business by writing fiction, a genre for which fame wasn’t a prerequisite to becoming a debut author.

So I wrote a novel. One agent who requested the first five pages emailed me her reaction: “Writing fiction is a talent, which you obviously don’t have.”

Worn, I believed her. I put my manuscript away. I felt utter despair. I lost sight of the goals I had already accomplished. I saw only my failure. The encouraging words of my mentors rang hollow in my ears. I lost faith that I’d ever publish a book. I began to think such success simply wasn’t mine to attain.

Photo Credit: Debka Colson Print by Bread & Puppet
Photo Credit: Debka Colson
Print by Bread & Puppet

But I couldn’t stop writing. Call it masochism or tenacity – some days I really didn’t know what it was, but I was driven. I wouldn’t let the publishing business zeitgeist deter me.

When I received the Writers’ Room of Boston Nonfiction Fellowship, I made my way to the State Street office. I turned the key in the elevator panel. I pressed the button for the fifth floor: it lit. I ascended.

When the door opened, an overwhelming sense of acceptance welcomed me.

Now here I am, writing in the Room, feeling renewed purpose and solace in the sound of my fingers typing sentence after sentence, amidst the sounds of other writers doing the same.

In the words of Billy Joel, “I’m keeping the faith, yes I am.” We all are.

-Tracy Strauss, Fellow in Nonfiction