In the introduction to The 90-Day Novel, Alan Watt suggests several writing exercises to prepare for writing your novel. The first (and most fun) is the "fear exercise." It goes like this:
Write for five minutes, as fast as you can, beginning with the sentence: "I'm afraid to write this story because..."
I'm afraid to write this story because I don't think I can. I'm afraid that my novel will suck. Actually, I'm convinced my novel will suck. My ideas aren't interesting enough. No one will want to read what I've written because it will be boring. I'm afraid it will be sentimental and over-written. I'm afraid of the way people will judge me. I'm afraid to spend hours and days and weeks on this novel and it turn out horribly. I'm afraid I'm wasting my time. I'm afraid I'll spend weeks on one idea and realize that I want to write about something else. I'm afraid I'll enjoy writing this novel so much that I'll want to write another one. I'm afraid that people will tell me my novel is good when it's really not good at all. I'm afraid people will tell me it's not good when it really is good. I'm afraid I'll never figure out what I'm supposed to be writing about.
The moral of the exercise:
(1) "by acknowledging our fears, we are no longer ruled by them" (13). I'm not sure if I believe this. Even after making a list of my fears about writing this story, I still feel trapped by them. Maybe I have to give it some time.
(2) "the fears we experience are identical to the fears our protagonist experiences....if we inquire into the nature of our fears, we will begin to recognize all sorts of connections between ourselves and our protagonist. Our fears make us uniquely qualified to write our story" (13). This is interesting to me. I would have never thought to relate my fears about writing to my protagonist who is not a writer. But now that I think about it, I can see some similarities. Many of my fears had to do with the way my novel - and myself - would be received and judged. I have always struggled with having confidence in myself. I am my worst critic, and I assume that everyone else perceives me the way I perceive myself. But this blog is not a therapist, so I'll move on. Throughout my novel, my protagonist will struggle with being independent. After her brother goes to prison, she will have trouble defining herself and knowing herself because she has spent her whole life defining herself through him. She does the same thing with her father. My protagonist will also spend a lot of time working on a boat with her father, and she might think she's wasting her time.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
My "favorite" novels
Novella workshop started this week. I've got a long road ahead of me. There are 96 days in the semester, including weekends and breaks. If I write one good page a day, that means I will have a 96 page novella by the end of the semester! I have my fingers crossed, but I'm not holding my breath. For the class, we're reading The 90-Day Novel by Alan Watt. I hope this book, along with the class, will keep me motivated, inspired, and writing.
On the first day of class, we talked about writing, writers, and books. We went around the room and said what our favorite novel was and why. I usually don't like questions like this. If you know me, you'll know that I have a lot of favorites. If I marginally like something, I bet there was a point in my life when I said it was my favorite. But it was nice to hear what books other people enjoyed and would recommend to aspiring novelists. Some of the novels included Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, Serena by Ron Rash, and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
My favorite novel is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. At least this is what I told the class. The truth is, I really really really really really love East of Eden. I like it because it's long. It's about family. It's about place. It's about America at the turn of the 20th century. I like it because it's a good story -- it's a good story told by a good storyteller. It's beautiful and oddly magical.
Here's a short list of some of my other "favorites":
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
On the first day of class, we talked about writing, writers, and books. We went around the room and said what our favorite novel was and why. I usually don't like questions like this. If you know me, you'll know that I have a lot of favorites. If I marginally like something, I bet there was a point in my life when I said it was my favorite. But it was nice to hear what books other people enjoyed and would recommend to aspiring novelists. Some of the novels included Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, Serena by Ron Rash, and Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
My favorite novel is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. At least this is what I told the class. The truth is, I really really really really really love East of Eden. I like it because it's long. It's about family. It's about place. It's about America at the turn of the 20th century. I like it because it's a good story -- it's a good story told by a good storyteller. It's beautiful and oddly magical.
Here's a short list of some of my other "favorites":
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
"Build it, and they will come"
Jeremy's presentation reminded me of this today. Jane Vandenburgh talks about the build-it-and-he-will-come dynamic in writing. I remember chuckling as I read the reference, but it was toward the beginning of the book, so I kind of forgot about it until today when Jeremy referenced it. Vandenburgh writes:
This is the terrible truth about the book you want to write: The only one who understands what all this entails is you. And the only way you're going to discover what this is, is by writing it....This may seem hard because it sounds circular in its logic, as if you're being asked to use your hand to draw the picture of the hand holding the pencil that's drawing the hand holding the pencil....A novel has mystical, self-generative properties -- it wants to prove itself to you if you can relax and let it. (page 11-12)
This is the think I love about Vandenburgh. She lets you know it's okay that you have absolutely no clue what you're doing and where you're going. In fact, she tries to convince you that it's better that you have no clue. I think there was no better time in my life to read this book. Not only was the book useful for my interim project and the novella that I will be writing, but I think the book has taught me something about life that I wasn't expecting. I'm going to graduating in a few months, and I'm still not sure what I'll be doing. Now, I like lists and plans and routines and being able to predict things. But Vandenburgh's advice about writing made me think about my time at Wofford. At Wofford I have learned things and experienced things that I could have never imagined as a freshman. I have built a set of skills and passions throughout my time at Wofford, and I can only hope that the opportunities will just keep coming.
In other news, I've been tweaking my presentation (thanks for your help, everyone!) and working on my paper. Until I started writing my paper, I didn't realize how much I had learned and done over interim! Though most of it was reading, I feel like I've learned a lot, and I'm really excited to get started on my novella.
This is the terrible truth about the book you want to write: The only one who understands what all this entails is you. And the only way you're going to discover what this is, is by writing it....This may seem hard because it sounds circular in its logic, as if you're being asked to use your hand to draw the picture of the hand holding the pencil that's drawing the hand holding the pencil....A novel has mystical, self-generative properties -- it wants to prove itself to you if you can relax and let it. (page 11-12)
This is the think I love about Vandenburgh. She lets you know it's okay that you have absolutely no clue what you're doing and where you're going. In fact, she tries to convince you that it's better that you have no clue. I think there was no better time in my life to read this book. Not only was the book useful for my interim project and the novella that I will be writing, but I think the book has taught me something about life that I wasn't expecting. I'm going to graduating in a few months, and I'm still not sure what I'll be doing. Now, I like lists and plans and routines and being able to predict things. But Vandenburgh's advice about writing made me think about my time at Wofford. At Wofford I have learned things and experienced things that I could have never imagined as a freshman. I have built a set of skills and passions throughout my time at Wofford, and I can only hope that the opportunities will just keep coming.
In other news, I've been tweaking my presentation (thanks for your help, everyone!) and working on my paper. Until I started writing my paper, I didn't realize how much I had learned and done over interim! Though most of it was reading, I feel like I've learned a lot, and I'm really excited to get started on my novella.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
And she brought with her a bunch of dirty rugs
Today I've been working on my paper and thinking about my presentation. I'm sad interim went by so quickly, but I'm happy that I'll get to continue this project during the semester. I'm hoping to keep up with this blog throughout the semester as I work on my novella and take the novella workshop.
Here's what I wrote this morning. I saw a woman walking out near Converse the other day, and as soon as I saw her I thought "I know you. I've met you before." Really, I'd never even seen the woman in my life. I felt like I was seeing a ghost or magic, a crack in this dimension. She was a character I had written. In fact, she was the grandmother in my novella. I didn't know it until I saw her walking down the road near Converse, but I'm certain it's her. And she brought with her a bunch of dirty rugs.
Grandmother looks like a penguin when she walks. Her arms arm straight and stiff behind her and she leans back as if every step forward is a struggle to keep from staggering backward. Her whole body sways as she walks, like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. Ever since she lost her hair, she's wrapped a bandanna around her head. Today she has on the pink one with little green flowers. It's fabric from a dress she used to wear back before Lola was born, back when Sandy was young and she was young. But her teeth are still good, and she's proud of that. Everyday she wears a long skirt, and everyday she pulls the back of the skirt up between her legs and tucks it in the front of her waistband. Lola always asked her why she didn't just wear pants. The way she wore her skirts made her look like she had on a big diaper. Grandmother would always laugh and wink and say "Maybe I do."
Grandmother thought the remedy for everything was beating the rugs. Lola was convinced it was Grandmother's way of forcing her to get the chore done. But she couldn't deny the fact that she always felt better when the sun went down and all the dust that was in the rugs was now in her hair and stuck to her arms and lungs.
The morning after Clayton was in the accident, Lola woke up to find all the rugs hanging over the chain link fence in the backyard. Lola never knew how Grandmother was able to pick up all those rugs by herself, much less sling them over the fence, but she often prayed for the day she'd be too weak to make it out the door with one of them.
Grandmother was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs with a broom. Usually, Grandmother didn't help, but that morning, she brought an old mop out and beat those rugs until Lola feared she might pass out. The dirt and dust flew around them. Lola's whole body hurt. With every swing of the broom, she thought she wouldn't be able to do it again. Then she'd be rearing back to bring it down again. Grandmother started coughing, but she didn't stop. That's when Lola knew how bad things were. She knew Clayton must be in trouble.
Here's what I wrote this morning. I saw a woman walking out near Converse the other day, and as soon as I saw her I thought "I know you. I've met you before." Really, I'd never even seen the woman in my life. I felt like I was seeing a ghost or magic, a crack in this dimension. She was a character I had written. In fact, she was the grandmother in my novella. I didn't know it until I saw her walking down the road near Converse, but I'm certain it's her. And she brought with her a bunch of dirty rugs.
Grandmother looks like a penguin when she walks. Her arms arm straight and stiff behind her and she leans back as if every step forward is a struggle to keep from staggering backward. Her whole body sways as she walks, like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. Ever since she lost her hair, she's wrapped a bandanna around her head. Today she has on the pink one with little green flowers. It's fabric from a dress she used to wear back before Lola was born, back when Sandy was young and she was young. But her teeth are still good, and she's proud of that. Everyday she wears a long skirt, and everyday she pulls the back of the skirt up between her legs and tucks it in the front of her waistband. Lola always asked her why she didn't just wear pants. The way she wore her skirts made her look like she had on a big diaper. Grandmother would always laugh and wink and say "Maybe I do."
Grandmother thought the remedy for everything was beating the rugs. Lola was convinced it was Grandmother's way of forcing her to get the chore done. But she couldn't deny the fact that she always felt better when the sun went down and all the dust that was in the rugs was now in her hair and stuck to her arms and lungs.
The morning after Clayton was in the accident, Lola woke up to find all the rugs hanging over the chain link fence in the backyard. Lola never knew how Grandmother was able to pick up all those rugs by herself, much less sling them over the fence, but she often prayed for the day she'd be too weak to make it out the door with one of them.
Grandmother was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs with a broom. Usually, Grandmother didn't help, but that morning, she brought an old mop out and beat those rugs until Lola feared she might pass out. The dirt and dust flew around them. Lola's whole body hurt. With every swing of the broom, she thought she wouldn't be able to do it again. Then she'd be rearing back to bring it down again. Grandmother started coughing, but she didn't stop. That's when Lola knew how bad things were. She knew Clayton must be in trouble.
Friday, January 27, 2012
How to build a runabout
Vandenburgh says research is a way of stalling, an excuse for not writing. She writes:
Bodega? In California, where I live, a bodega actually means something that more approximates storeroom. Around here, in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood, the little store on the corner is more likely the tienda; the open-air market's a mercado. The bodega? It's a wine bar in Europe, while in the big cities of the East Coast, only the corner grocery, the bodega, would hold a character like GiGi. Why do I mention this? Because it's so very easy to get sidetracked as you enter the House of Plot in all these writerly diversions, whereby you allow your story to be linguistically hijacked, so you can stop doing what you're doing (which is being confused) and go do a little research. It's all so very interesting! It's also stalling. We stall because we're afraid to commit to the upward trudge, to confront the vast amounts of darkness at the top of the stairs, to take this darkness in, to admit that it pertains to us, to admit the first thing about the monumentality of what we don't know, that we cannot find out by using conventional research methods. page 63-64
This may be the historian in me talking, but I don't quite agree with her here. I find research inspiring and helpful when I get stuck. Research can create characters, situations, and even worlds that you could never imagine otherwise. I often find myself researching animals, birds, insects. I like what they can say about people. I guess her main point, though is to not get so caught up in research that you forget to write.
That being said, I've been researching boat building today.
A big part of my novella is going to revolve around building a runabout. I've never built a boat before. Actually, I've never really built anything. I don't know where the idea for the runabout came from. But I'm sure it has something to do with watching my father build Volkswagen engines when I was younger. My father always has a project, so, naturally, the father in my novella is going to have a project that his daughter, the main character, is going to become interested in.
Though I don't want to get too technical in my novella, I would like to sound like I know what I'm talking about. I've been trying to familiarize myself with the basics, such as framing, planking, battens, jigs, and the technical terms for boat parts. Here are some websites that I've found particularly interesting:
http://www.glen-l.com/designs/hankinson/buildingmahogrunabouts.html
http://www.bronkalla.com/layout.html
http://intheboatshed.com/index.php?option=com_glossary&Itemid=67
http://www.thelittleboatshop.com/rascalrunabout.html
The wonderful thing about writing...and interim
Greetings from Kiawah Island! Yesterday afternoon my mom called and said I should join her at Kiawah Island, where she's representing ETV at the English Teachers Conference. I packed up my bag and was on the road within the hour. I've been walking on the beach, reading, and writing all day. It's nice to get away from Spartanburg for a little while.
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