Part of my New and Improved Writerly Resolution is to keep track of goals. SO. Goals for the next month. (November 27th-December 27th)
-Revise Blackout and submit to at least 3 publications
-Revise The Orchard and submit to at least 3 publications
-Revise Trespass and submit to at least 3 publications
-Finish draft 1 of Untitled Aquarium story
-Minimum of two chapters of Illustrating Ruth
Progress: Master’s exams as a sadistic exercise and I am the special snowflake in the creative program who gets to take them. I love my program. I really do. If I don’t pass these exams I’m going to cut all my hair off in mourning (and really, it’s getting Rapunzel-length at this point. I an do bona-fide Heidi braids). ANYWAY. 32,317 words. 85 pages. I hate most of them right now, but I’m feeling kind of misanthropic.
Chapter: On… oh, I don’t even know. Six? Seven? Seven. Oy.
Dilemma: I really, really want a reader or three to tell me if I’m going completely the wrong way with the content, but the sucker is 85 pages long and I’m not sure it’d be good for me to have a reader at this point, or if I should just enjoy my own space. Humbug.
Journal for the week:
I’m coming up on the master’s exam and I want to kill something (very small, not very painfully, but there’s a homicidal impulse there anyway). I’ve produced a lot of page length this semester (I’m on page 85, and it’s not all great quality— at this point I’m ready to say there’s not much quality, but that’s probably exams talking) and I’m happy about that. The thing that frustrates me most is that I feel as if I’m blindly moving towards what this wants to be, and sometimes I reach out and find it, and sometimes I feel as thought I’m writing around something. But that’s what revision is for, I guess, and as I write I find things out about what needs to happen in the narrative.
I’ve introduced three more important characters in the past few chapters, and they’re finally starting to become what I want them to be. I’m not sure how necessary some of the introductory material is, but I like having them there regardless. It pulls away from Ruth’s relentless interiority, which I enjoy but have doubts about, and lets the baby come in when she needs to do so. The thing that’s really frustrating me is that Paul is supposed to be important to Ruth but he’s …not interesting me a whole lot. I’m wondering if there’s too much of him, if I just ought to cut him altogether, or if I should just let him be present when he needs to be.
Anyway, exam over on Friday. Things will get better then.
Weird week. Weird past two weeks, during which production slowed down but thankfully did not stop.
Word Count: 26,739.
Chapter: A few pages into five.
Actual Pages: 69! 69 whole pages! Granted, maybe only two of them are are good, but still that’s long (for me). I think I may actually hit my end-of-semester 100 page goal at this rate.
Class Journal for the Week:
I’ve kept up a semi-steady stream of words, although this has been a little harder than the first two. I feel like I’m starting to overthink and expect things from this, and knowing I need to step back and relax, let things come regardless of how the turn out helps. I’ve written two more chapters since workshop, around 65 pages in all. The last chapter I wasn’t quite sure about— I ended up writing and then re-writing the ending scene because I felt like it was a little cheap. I don’t know. I don’t have any distance from this project at all, which is bad when I’m asked to assess it, but good for the writing. Mostly I’m just writing to please myself, we’ll see if anyone else ends up liking it. With some restraint in there.
I’ve put a lot more scene and some white space into these new chapters (and a bit of revision on the first two chapters). I feel like it’s helping to solve some of the problems with pacing while still allowing for long moments of interiority. I’m also starting to move into my (very loosely plotted) ideas, so… I guess I’ll see how it all comes across. I can’t say if it works or not, but I hope it does. I think the most important thing for me now is to keep going and get some semblance of a first draft written, and then later I’ll worry about the rest of it.
Word Count: 18,903 words.
Chapters: Three is almost finished
Workshop: Went fine and was (mostly) extremely helpful.
More on the process soon, but need to go get ready for tonight’s workshop. The wordcount is somewhat pleasing, since I think this is now the longest piece I’ve ever written. Which is a little over fifty pages. So I’m pleased about that. I’ve been toying with the idea of working on a short story collection on the side, which will let me have something else to go to when this becomes frustrating. Besides roleplaying, that is. ;)
Biggest struggle right now is how much magic realism to incorporate in the tattooing/painting. Suggestions of books/short stories that use magic realism in a subtle way would be fantastic.
Signs of Noise
These are types of comments that I downplay or even discard:
1. Criticism without specificity: This type of noise involves people telling me that a character, plot point or section is not working, but they cannot articulate why. Criticism without specificity might lead you to discover a “hotspot” in my work (as noted above), but offers little in the way of actual insight on how to revise.
2. There’s nothing new here: The main objection someone offers is that the thing I’ve written has been done before. Of course- Everything’s been done before. If I write a scene with one original idea in it, I’m psyched for days! Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a revolutionary writer. That’s okay. I would argue that originality — the ability to surprise — is a rare quality and can’t be forced anyway. That shouldn’t stop me from writing about what I want to write about.
3. Comments involving the idea of something being “cool”: What’s cool? I’m 36. My cool ratio continues to decline at an inverse ratio to the power of my distance (in years) from age 24, where I reached my own personal tiny apex of cooldom. Although, if I ever write a screen play, I reserve the right to take “cool” into account.
Signal
Comments I tend to favor:
1. My genre: For the last six years or so, I’ve been writing in what folks sometimes call adult literary fiction which means I favor character over plot, avoid the ear marks of so-called “genre” works (like science fiction and fantasy – both of which I very much love to read- romance, Western, horror, etc.) Therefore, I tend to favor comments from people working in the same area.
2. Criticism with specificity: If someone can criticize my work with a surgeon’s accuracy, I’m much more likely to give credence and weight to their commentary. I like comments that point to the narrator’s voice, word choice, specific plot points and reveals, and comments that point out obvious disconnects or contradictions in plot flow.
3. Folks with similar goals: Again, this goes with #1 above. Specifically, I favor comments from someone like me who has been writing short, adult literary for the last few years with the aim of finishing a collection.
4. The editorial gift: From my perspective, some people have an editorial gift. They might not be the best writers, themselves, but they have a good sense of how a story should flow and they seem to come up with wonderful insights on how scenes could be revised or let the characters and story shine through. I cling desperately to these people.
Sitting and pecking at the keyboard in preparation for workshop. I’ve already had one reaction, which was complimentary about the language and criticized the pacing and the characters, which he wasn’t invested in.
Hmm.
The pacing is something I’ve been anxious about, because this has been so far a very interior project with not a lot of scene, and what scene there is is pretty small. So I may need to do some extensive rewriting to include more scene in the first two chapters, and to let Ruth move outside of herself. At least that’s what I’m guessing is needed, but we’ll see. I might be leaning on something Mrs. Dalloway-like too much.
The characters I don’t know about. I’m not sure Fellow Student would ever read anything like this voluntarily, which makes me a little doubtful about this criticism. Obviously I think Ruth is compelling, but it’s certainly possible that she makes everyone else snooze. But that I have to wonder if it’s a measure of taste.
I don’t know. Workshop is awful but helpful (sometimes). I will say that vague criticism like “the pacing is slow, maybe you need to sharpen it up somehow” is not entirely helpful. “The pacing is slow, cut back on the interiority and put some of this in scene/put in shorter segments/allow for interruption by other perspectives” is infinitely more useful. I’m at the point where I’m really hoping for specific criticism and not general end comments.
Mostly I’m just talking things out for myself.
Excerpt taken down because the audience of this seems to not be the intended one. I’ll continue with the journaling and thoughts, but I’ll likely create a locked LJ community for excerpting when I’m further along.
Word Count: 9,808
Workshop Date: Approaching, story due in Sunday at the latest
Today: Day of noveling! Seminar was cancelled, grading is done for the week (with the exception of people who think it’s funny to turn in take home tests late— alas).
Facebook: To be avoided.
Gym: Necessary evil.
Hopes: Finish second chapter (suspect will run to around twenty pages long, which will put chapters one and two at ideal workshop length, which is excellent). Revise and clean up for workshop, then start chapter three.
Panic: Keep at minimal security level.
The choice to change to a different idea was definitely the right one, even if I did make it in the middle of a complaint about how the last project wasn’t working.
I’ve written about 6500 words this past week, which is a pretty good output for me. I was able to use a few pages of what I had as a frame for the first chapter, and feel like I have that done (as a rough, rough draft). I’m not worrying too much about polishing right now; my biggest challenge is to sustain the length. I’m tempted to revise now, but I know from experience that it needs to come later.
I got some excellent feedback on Monday, and have spent most of the week expanding the first chapter, which moved from 5 to 12 pages. I feel like it’s in a good spot now, length-wise. Right now I’m trying to balance the contrast between Ruth’s (the main character) voice and the grittiness of her situation.
Since one of the most important points of this is that Ruth is billingual (English and Mandarin Chinese), I’m wondering how much Mandarin to incorporate into the writing. I don’t speak any Mandarin, either. Right now I’m not having the narrative include much Mandarin at all. In my mind, Ruth uses Mandarin in private spaces (writing, calligraphy, speaking to her daughter). And as I write this, I’m remembering that my great-uncle speaks Mandarin, so I should probably pin him down next time he comes into town. I’m also concerned about making some cultural faux pas and making Mandarin and Chinese culture into a fetish object, which is absolutely not my intent. I don’t want Ruth to be within any kind of cultural framework (she’s a white woman who was adopted by a Chinese mother), and want her to be isolated, with all this heritage that she doesn’t have a right to.
But so far I’m feeling optimistic about the project, and I feel fairly decent about day-to-day productivity. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep going without getting stuck— I’m managing to spend at least some time on it each day (perhaps more than I should, given that I’ve been neglecting other work. But that’s another difficulty).
So I’ve put aside this idea that I’ve been toying with and that was just determined not to be right. Instead I’m doing what I probably should have done in the first place, which was returned to a project that started as a one page response, and has slowly worked its way up into a several page piece, and now I’m hoping will become a novel.
The thing that draws me to the new project is the voice; it’s a voice that I’ve spent some time with in several different projects, and one that I’m admittedly attached to.
Right now all I have is a meditation on the woman’s chosen profession, which is (more or less) calligraphy, and how it relates to her daughter. I’m thinking of structuring this as a piece with different sections, each with a Chinese character as the (loose) focus. I want the narrative (as it stands) to move forward through each section, but also allow for fluidity of time and thought. I want to integrate pictures of the characters (perhaps at the beginning of each section), but at the moment I’m mostly poking it to see what rises to the surface.
One thing that I’ve noticed through the different ideas I’ve considered is that I’m really interested in these fascinations that we (or I) get with people— not so much love, but the desire to physically be a person. Not that he or she is so much better, but that desire to inhabit a space between love and want, seeing an image of a possibility. At the heart of this voice is the loss of a romantic love (the father of her child has disappeared), but I don’t want to to overwhelm the piece.
I’ve been working on this piece off and on all day, and although I’ve mostly been sorting through old material, I feel much calmer and happier about it. I need to compile a collection of music better suited to this project, though.
