Good and Bad

Walter Mosley wrote in his great, little known book about Writing called This Year You Write Your Novel, that the writer is going to have good and bad days, and that the great writer (like some kind of Iron Man racer) manages to have the guts to get through both. Some days are going to be sublime. Some days are going to be crap. Some days are going to be...middling.

Now, honestly, I loathe these types of books. Really the heart of the matter is that you either have the guts to write a book -- and to learn on the way what it takes or what you don't have to give -- or you simply don't. And maybe you can live with that. Or maybe you feel like you can read a little book which will continue your delusion that you're that mystical personality called "a writer." But i have to say, this book has helped me through the dark hours. This book, with just a few simple lines here and there, has articulated the very essence of the struggle to write; and so I like it. I don't think it's for everyone. But it's good, unpretentious, and clean.

The real key is having the patience, the stamina, the heart to write on those days in which you feel like what you're writing is shit, which it very likely is. The number of "great" days is likely hugely less than the number of "crap" days. The thing you've got to remember is that what you're writing is not supposed to go on the bookshelf, in the printed volume, as soon as it leaves your holy/unholy fingertips. I think about this advice all the time. In fact, I think it's saving my life.

Outlining (Process House)

I don't always outline my projects. But I did for this latest one. Here's a picture of the fifty part outline I wrote by hand one night. I stayed up late drinking wine and scratching out this vision of the book I'd been vaguely turning left, right, up, down in my mind -- but never really fully forming it.

I worried as I started out on the book that the outline would feel too rigid. That's always been my fear, really. You can imagine and plot out the greatest story; but when you sit down to write that sucker, something may happen that you didn't expect, and the whole damn outline is shot to hell. Then what was the point in writing the outline in the first place? The other issue is that great prose has to be spontaneously created. It has to feel as if it's sprung from some place naturally, organically. You can't plan it, and you can't expect it to appear before you just because you're writing to the outline.

All that said, I went to work the other day and photocopied this document. (Later found out that faculty must now strictly limit their use of the photocopier!) I put one copy on the nightstand. I taped one copy to my office desk. Then I brought home the original, done in pencil, and I keep it by my desk. I have to keep a few inches away from the ledge of the desk; if I don't, the twins are likely to grab it and ravage it, tear it to pieces. And you know, that might not be a bad idea, considering my reservations.

But the good thing about the outline is that it forces me to consider how the story must keep going. The story must keep moving forward at regular intervals. There must be what Janet Burroway said "constant discovery and decision making." Sometimes my work gets bogged down in detail or lingers in scene too long as I grope to figure out what should happen next or what's going in a specific character's mind or heart. But this outline is all founded on the notion of continuing revelation and the central character doing something significant.

All the same, if I'm not open to potential changes or moments in the story, as it naturally arises, that don't jive with the outline, the story's going to have that same dead stagnant feeling that's worried me to no end on other projects.

The other thing...you've got to press through. You've got to keep going every day, or you'll lose touch with the story, with the people, with the themes and the whole world you're creating. The outline helps there. I've demanded, of myself, that I get through every numbered section, every day; that keeps the story going forward and it marks progress, about 1500 words a day. After that I'm toast. Also, that takes about ninety minutes, and with all I have to do, that's about the most time I have on my hands, on a daily basis, to write. Yep, it's come down to that.

I've stapled the outline to a few blank sheets of paper. I get ideas about how a certain section should work better after I've written it. But I've got to press on. I've got to shape the whole contraption first, then see if I can tweak the gears or oil the grooves better later on. Pressing on is really a big deal. Get that first draft down; along the way, I'm noticing what could be done better. But I just have this sense that if I go back and try to correct things or reshape things, I'll be writing section one forever. Can't let that happen. This story is potentially the one. Not gonna blow it.

The Discussion

A few days ago I completed writing on "The Discussion." I wrote this novella, if I can term it anything like that, entirely by hand, in a small journal. The pages are about the size of index cards, and in sum total, it's about 300 pages. 

I didn't "fill the page," however, which is always a kind of burning desire of mine when I look at blank page. Get something on there, my gut tells me. That page is naked, by god, clothe it.

For some reason, perhaps as a result of all the "challenges" I've done through the years with my good friend Pete Duval, I forced myself to write one sentence paragraphs. So literally, what you have here, is a series of single sentences, which somehow managed to tell an extended story. No kidding, there are no multi-sentence paragraphs here.

I'm reminded, in some ways, of a Larry Brown story from Dirty Work; but that was really a poem, and this has no poetic quality to it. 

Anyway I'm pleased that I've finished it, and I wanted to tell you about it. Am I pleased with the story involved? I'm no so sure, but tonight I started a reading of it, like picking up a strange book off a shelf, encountering the thing as it's totally alien to me, as I would any other book; and I've found it curious so far. The whole piece takes place over twelve hours, in essence an intense conversation between lovers on the verge of estrangement, in a remote hotel in the north Georgia mountains. The whole thing is charged sexually, and there's an eerie side story involving the unusual son of the older woman. Okay, it reads like a modern French novel. Does it say as much? Or as little? I'll know on subsequent readings and writing.

The next step is to type the damn weird tale. I've started doing that, and I'm retaining the one sentence graph structure, which is so ridiculous it makes me laugh. But who the hell knows, maybe this is the start of my true nature as a writer -- the essential experimenter. Or, perhaps, it's the start of a new process for me. It does occur to me that the one sentences are nothing more than the beginning of paragraphs I've yet to write.

Special Projects: Two-Dimensional Found Art Journal?

I think that I’m discovering how much I enjoy these small scale experimental writing projects. There’s a sense of immediate pleasure and satisfaction that comes with making something that I don’t get with the novel work and the stories. It reminds me of the pure satisfaction I used to get from developing photographic prints in the darkroom. I had made something, and it would be there forever, and it was physical and immediate. Writing can be so damn abstract and obtuse. What we need really is writing that has the same effect on the writer and the reader as the chef and the five star meal.

To that end, for our Thanksgiving trip to the desolate urban landscape of Granite City, I’ve been keeping a small ‘found art’ journal. I’ve been working on it every day, at every free moment I get, cutting and pasting with scissors and glue stick, and scribbling with a somewhat leaky blue pen.

Some explanation. Recently we were in arty, cozy Asheville, North Carolina, and there in an art gallery I bought a $6, hand-sized journal, the exterior of which had been made from the cardboard of a Bass Ale beer sixpack. So, the outside of the journal is a partial image of a Bass Ale beer box; the inside is about 60 pages of plain white paper. The whole thing is bound somewhat loosely with very light string.

I’ve used this journal to keep track of our trip; but, I’m not really writing your typical (banal?) journal; I’ve decided to paste small found Art onto page and then scribble something below each item in the remaining white space. For example, I took a receipt from a breakfast we purchased in the airport lounge and wrote a few sentences about the breakfast.

Sounds off, I’m sure, but the experience has been extremely pleasure. I don’t have any idea why, except that it seems like a small project that I can complete; and it becomes a peculiar testament to our trip; and, perhaps most importantly, it makes me realize that incredible things are happening to us all the time.

I ought to explain that last sentence. What I mean is that there is always a gap between when I collect an item to paste into the journal and the time when I actually paste it into the journal and write about it. During that time, something bad happens. I actually forget the context of the moment in which I collected the item. In fact I tend to chalk up every moment, for the most part, as wholly ordinary. But, when I sit down to write about the item, when I sit down to remember the moment, a whole flood of rich memories and stories and observations return to me—and in turn, I realize, that Rilke was right. There is never a boring moment. If you are not poet enough to bring out the poetry of your life, then it’s your fault. It really is.

So, in short, the journal are an act of defiance against ordinary experience; they are testament to Rilke’s idea. Or, of course, I’m seriously deluded, and the little scraps of paper and casual observations I’m making are quaint, and ultimately, banal. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Because, what’s key here is the pleasure I’m taking in the creation. You need to love what you do. Otherwise, give it up, forget everything, and maybe then you’ll fall in love with something totally different in nature.

The Discussion

I've been working on a novel for the past couple of years about a so-called Fifty-Two Week Strip; and that project will be complete soon. But I've also stumbled into another project, a kind of creative diversion that I'm grown excited about the last few weeks because it's far more experimental and unusual in nature than work I typically do. 

Jenny dug out this little Borders bookstore journal for me from some unpacking we hadn't done until recently. 'Is this yours?' It seemed like it was, although I hadn't used it. I looked at it closer, and I realized that a certain number of pages had been ripped sloppily from the front of it. I hadn't written my name or any project title inside the little canvas cover, lined page journal. So it was still game for something. As for what happened to the earlier writing, who cares.

At some point I hit upon a peculiar idea, and I've been running with it. I decided to write an entire...what to call it?...I don't know, a novella of one sentences; and I'd write the whole thing by hand, in this newly discovered little "star" journal. I carry this journal everywhere with me now, and when I have a free moment or two, I pick it up, and I write out the next line of the novella. Except I have forced myself (not sure why) to write only one sentence paragraphs. So it's an unusual read, at this point, with it's own little rules (which, really, is what all greats work of fiction are) that I'm still trying to learn, even 85 pages (small pages) into the writing. Literally I write a sentence, and then I break the paragraph, and I write another sentence....We'll just have to see what the end results are. I'm assuming I'll finish it, and then I'll type the thing in; will it remain in that one-sentence paragraph form? I'm not sure, but I'm trying not to consider that stage of the writing process. All that matters now is moving forward in the narrative, which I don't want to divulge for fear of gold leaking out of my saddlebag. The title, as it stands now, is "The Discussion." Very Nicholson Baker of me, no doubt.