Try It Out Tuesday: What writers hold dear

This is a questionnaire. Imagine that you are
1: famous and I am interviewing you
2: an obsessive writer who wants only to explore and develop her talent
3: both
4: fun, fast and frisky.

The questions are in bold throughout the post. Read on to know where they come from or just go ahead and answer them. If you decide to answer the questions in depth and if you decide to share them please:

1: Post them in your own blog and link to this post
2: Post a link in a comment below so that we can read what your room is like!

Read Monday's post FIRST. Or else ONLY the bold stuff will make sense. Up to you.

You are trapped in a circular room. Or maybe I am holding your hand too tight and I really suck at singing kumbaya. Who could suck at singing kumbaya? Not me, I assure you. Its that other writer on your right.

And I LEFT OUT A REALLY GOOD QUOTE!!!! Here is something from Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird. She will also be quoted often. Why??? Because I read really slow and I'm doing an 'instructional' post a week! I'll try to include a variety of authors, but I take too many notes so it takes me sooooo loooooong to read. Always. Here she is:

There [is] something noble and misterious about writing, about the people who can do it well, who could create a world as if they were little gods or sorcerers.

SO perhaps we are not sitting in a room. Perhaps we are sorcerers. Perhaps we are little gods. Oh God, please no. Please don't let me a little god. hehehehehhee. I really don't wanna.

Fireblossom's comment on yesterday's post made me wonder. It got me thinking that maybe Forster's room is just that: Forster's room.

Today is about finding out what binds YOU to writing. As long as you know that, then you don't have to be in the room. You can be any where you want to be. I like to write everywhere, and I would be very angry if someone put me in a room.

I like to write by the beach, on a mountain, in the car, on the bus, on a train, in the rain, with a shoe, when I'm blue. I ain't Dr. Seuss so I'll stop. You get it. Forster put us in a room for the purpose of his book. It made it easier for him to analyze writers and writing if he took us out of our element and put us in his. I WANT OUT of Forster's room. What is your room? What is mine?

What is your imaginary writing haven? Do you have only one or do you have many?

If I had to pick one imaginary writing haven that I could create, it would be on a small clearing half way up a mountain in an all glass room with curtains I could draw all the way shut if I wanted to. But mostly, I'd leave this open. Behind the room is a gigantic mountain face with lush green foliage. In front of the room is a cliff face that drops off to the ocean. In the room is a big luxurious bathtub. There is a desk and pens of paper of course. But there is techie stuff too. I can type in the bathtub. And the room records what I say, but only if I turn that feature on. The computer screen can be big or small. I can write on a pad that converts my handwriting. I can use my hands and touch paragraphs or phrases and verbally send them zooming into the beginnings of other chapters, to be worked in at a later date. I have many more techie needs, but I'll leave it at that.

What does your writing room say about you?

My writing room tells me that I want to see the world and also shut it out. It tells me that I'm in love with, and respectful of and thankful for both nature and technology (but I don't dare attempt compare the two, not today anyways.) It tells me that I want to record everything, that I wish that my journal could link to my brain. Also, that I love water. I am a bathaholic. And that I'm okay with being watched by the animals and the people that come to my clearing, as long as they accept that I'll be watching them with a writer's eye.


What does your writing room say about your writing?

My strength would be my attention to detail and how I recognize and make purposeful use of what inspires me. My weakness is that I have a hard time letting go. Of the fact that my journal is not my brain. Of characters. Of my story. But my story is not finished yet, so I have to trust that I will be able to let it go when the time is right.

Release, give in, sustain.

Feel free to answer these questions if its suits you. You may answer them in your house, with a blouse, on this blog, or on a hog, or in a post with me as your host.

Remember though that all the world is a haven if your perspective is right.

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. my little tiny line got good. That needs to be bigger. I'll say it again:

Remember though that all the world is a haven if your perspective is right.  

Learn Something Monday: What writers hold dear

What binds writers together? What are we really? What sets us apart? What's wrong with us?

We're overly sensitive. This makes us acutely aware of the minute details in everyday life and gives us the ability to create an emotionally charged-fictional scene. And we have a wrogan.

I am going to include many quotes from E. M. Forster in the following weeks, but his book Aspects of the Novel makes me sigh. Lucky for us, when he wrote it in 1927, he admitted to purposefully keeping it conversational, in line with its originally oral delivery. So the prose reads like an old dream. This, my writer friends, is the real deal:

We cannot consider fiction by periods, we must not contemplate the stream of time. Another image better suits our powers: that of all the novelists writing their novels at once...at work together in a circular room. They come from different ages and ranks, they have different temperaments and aims, but they all hold pens in their hands, and are in the process of creation. Let us look over their shoulders for a moment and see what they are writing.

This is pretty amazing. For one thing, its intuitive and true and gives me the warm fuzzies and makes me want to hold hands with all of you and sing kumbaya around a giant mother tree. For another, its unique. E. M. Forster was the first novelist to be invited to give the annual Clark Lectures, usually given by critics, scholars and historians. He dared to look beyond the date of an author's birth and the subject matter and the school of the thought and the trend. Forster desires to examine what all excellent works of fiction hold in common: "The Story; People; The Plot; Fantasy and Prophecy; Pattern and Rhythm."

But looking at the elements of fiction was not new of course. Aristotle anyone? Still, the idea that writers do more than combine the elements, just like the craftsman does more than use the tools, is very appealing. 

Why should I be so very touched by this image? Why the hell am I so sensitive? Forster says, 

The novel's success lies in its sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject-matter. Empires fall, votes are accorded, but to those people writing in the circular room it is the feel of the pen that matters most.

Isn't that so true? Don't we just love the action? Sure, we devote ourselves to our characters, but they come and go. What marries us to writing is the feel of it. We are more alive and more aware than ever possible.

Its the rush that we're after. Janet Burroway and Elizabeth Stuckey-French say that "we write for the satisfaction of having wrestled a sentence to the page, for the rush of discovering an image, for the excitement of seeing a character come alive."

It is so very pleasing. Here is a giant mother tree I am fortunate to know on a near daily basis:

What do you think about Forster's image of all the writers of all times everywhere together in one circular room? Do you feel the rush that Burroway and Stuckey-French describe?

T

the first photo is of me and my friend and the second photo is from this blog. i pride myself on not being a google ganker. and the Burroway/Stuckey-French quote is from the book Writing Fiction: A Guide To Narrative Craft. worry not my writer friends, those writer ladies will be featured many a monday on this humble blog. as a side note, I misspelled Aristotle so bad that spell check suggested "prostrate." Prostrate anyone?

My wrorgan

I have made up a new word. It has now become a "page" on my blog because I know that I will inadvertently refer to it often.

The desired result of the writer life is to satisfy the wrorgan.

Because your wrorgan is very needy. It is your writer's organ that only writers have. I guess you could think of it like a stomach. If you don't feed it enough words you get really cranky and act like a beezy. If you feed it too many words you barf some of them back up.

My wrorgan is lower than my tummy though. It's in my gut. Pretend like somebody sucker punched you in the gut or you got the wind knocked out of you and say HUH! The place where you bend in on yourself is where my wrorgan is. This is also where the third chakra is, which is the personal power place.

So, be powerful and satisfy your wrorgan and you shall you have a happy life.

and hell yes when the wrogan is hungry it goes roar!!!

I changed my template...again

Hello lovelies,

I am playing around with this whole blogging thing, and am trying to get my theme/focus just right. I'm thinking the paper background is good because we already know that I love paper. And its bright and light and not too restraining. Also, my last picture was straight up weird, and I'm really not that weird, or at least I pretend not to be. I have realized that this blog is about teaching oneself how to write. So I'm giving it a schooley vibe.


What do you think?

No man's land

Rewriting is limbo. It is neither here nor there. Rewriting is the in-between. There are so many rules of editing and so many rules of writing. Good rules. Excellent rules. One of them is that the two don't mix.

Don't write and edit at the same time.

That is a rule. And for very good reason. You gotta just get it out! If you keep tweaking something when its half done, its very likely that you won't get a full rough draft.

But what about re-writing? As you know, I am rewriting an entire novel on paper. I am extremely tempted to type it up, but I told myself (and even tacked the written rule to my wall) that I am not to type in what I've written down until the whole thing is done. The logic is that if I type it in, I will be tempted to edit it while doing so, but since I'm writing, I ought not edit. Thus, I ought not type it in until I have written THE END.

But lately, I've been doubting the rule on my wall. Probably just because it is a rule. And who likes those? Not me. I've been pondering (gasp!) typing in what I have so far (gasp!) before its (gasp!) done. But I resisted the temptation, somehow.

That means no retyping or editing. Not for now. The more I write, the more I understand the process. There are more than just the two stages of editing and writing. There are many in-betweens.

Like a spectrum.

Moving

I'm getting "out there," wherever there may be. Moving is so intense...oh so intense! Its like writing. Not just for its intensity but also...necessity. I have to move. I am something of an escapist. Or an adventurer. Or a traveler. How do you want to put it?
I wonder if it'll ever stop. The moving I mean! Not the writing. No. No. The writing will never stop. But...will I ever stop moving? I believe that I will. That we will. How do I know this?

Well...get ready for intense...because I know how I want to die. Or at least, where I want to be. I see myself as an old crinkly woman living on a rounded mountain peak in the middle of a nowhere forest in some tropical Latin country surrounded by dark-skinned children. I am in a village, and it is muddy. I have been here for a long time. Here, I am respected. And the children love my stories. (Y por supuesto, cuento las historias en español.)

You don't get to be an old woman like that if you move all the time. I know that Gabriel and I will find the "right" place someday. I see it as a place inside my heart. My secret garden. In a way, we are already here. And part of being here is searching for there. Moving closer and closer. Going deeper and deeper inside the heart of the future we imagine.

And its fun. Its life.

P.S.....
We have our first visitor since moving to Hawaii. It is so great to have you-know-who here!!

My pacing trick

Every chapter or vignette or scene must have its own arc and its own beginning middle and end. Its own climax.

My book is told in vignettes, and I have two narrators. It switches from one narrator to the other. They get about 2-7 pages each time.

Sometimes I get confused on what the climax is for every scene. It always comes back to this: what is the main point? Before I write a vignette, I ask myself, What are we learning in this scene? What is the question that is being answered? For example (not related to my book) a boy tells a girl he loves her and we want to know her reaction. So the question is, what is her reaction? The answer to the question should come near the end. It should be the climax. The rest of the scene should lead up to it. Once the question is answered, another question should form.

Like, what is he going to do about it? How are they are going to resolve their differences? Whatever the question, it should be more exciting and interesting than the question before it, but not as exciting or interesting as the question it leads to. This keeps a nice pace.

Every time something gets revealed, something else comes up. You never want your reader to loose interest. Nor do you want to give them too many questions and no answers. (Ahem...like the TV show Lost). 

This also ensures that the climax of your book is the most interesting part. The book's climax answers the book's biggest question and changes the main character's life.