Poison

A friend of mine put on an old Baleen album while I was closing the coffee shop the other day. As the Jeff Buckley-esc vocals crooned over a dream-pop, shoegaze background I told him I used to be poisoned toward music. I used to hang with people (person--it only takes one) who disliked hearing new bands, who found reasons to dislike things and spouted them, and these reasons seemed reasonable to me and I took on the habits of dislike.

Now that I'm older, now that I've played with more bands and listened to a wider rang of music I find I like most of it for one reason or another. I can be very specific when asked, but I'm never asked. When I dislike something, though, I tend to get skin-crawl when I hear it, and even if I can tell it's well written, I can't listen to it.

Sometimes I think about people who hear a song or a band and instantly say, "this sucks" or "they're copying that other band" in a dismissive way. It is a habit that could close you off to enjoying music. To having your mind blown by music.

I recently had my mind blown by this song:




It was the first time I'd heard the whole album and I just fell in love. But THIS SONG. . . oh man I wanted throw my bra on stage. But I was in my car so I just hit repeat until I got home.

It's different for everyone, that poison, or that mind-blowing. You can dislike a band, like I did Green Day for so long, just because your friends are stupid about them. You can like a band just because some cool kid liked them. Shonen Knife--while I like them a lot, I wouldn't have listened to them if they hadn't been vouched for by Kurt Cobain. 

This idea of poisoning your experiences with negativity could sound a little new-agey, but it can crop up in other instances. I've recently had to move back to Charlotte, NC, to work the same job I had before I left (forever) a year ago. My disappointment sometimes swells to bursting and I have to sit on the bathroom floor for a few minutes and silently weep. But when my pity party is over I find I can be quite positive about my situation. I don't have it as bad as I could, and being unhappy is something I have a lot of experience with, so I think I can take it. I plan on getting out soon. I just don't know how. Or when.

Meanwhile, little experiences like loving an album or hearing a song that makes you feel amazing are the stuff of life. I guess I don't know where this blog is going or what else I'm going to write about, but I think if I try to keep writing in it maybe it will do me some good. 

Wow, did I say CRAFTED?

 

Thank the writing gods that the first draft of my novel was too long. The above picture is how I feel about most of it.

Okay, I'll be nice, yes it's the best thing I've ever written <wince> but no, it's not the best thing I COULD have written. I went through and took out the questionable things first, the scenes that had no bearing on the plot, the ones I put in for kicks--the ones I added because I was afraid it would be too SHORT. Okay, that only took off 5,000 words, which is a good start. So I cracked my knuckles and dove in to see if I could say the same things more concisely.

The fact that I'm only in chapter 3 (of 17) and have already cut an additional 3,000 words tells me something. It tells me that this stage, this step, which I so joyously ignored when I felt I had 'finished' the book, is the most important step. <facepalm>

I had read authors saying things like, "oh now you have to edit? the easy part is OVER!" and thinking, surely constructing an entire world out of your frikkin head is hard? Isn't that the hard part?

HAHAHAHAHA noooooooo. . . . It also isn't the most bruising for the EGO. Let me talk about the process.

So I read a scene that I was previously really proud of (because at this stage, I am proud of most of it), then I ask questions. The first, obvious question is, do I need this scene? If I can't justify its existence through character or setting or plot development, then out it goes. Usually the answer is yes, because I already went through and cut 5,000 words of that crap already.

The next question is, what is the main point of the scene? It usually gives depth to something or someone. If it doesn't, it explains something or someone. The next question after that is, how can I get the main point across without ALL THESE GODDAMN WORDS????

Yeah. So I go paragraph by paragraph, and break down the main point of each, and slide phrases together and cut out repetitions and extra adjectives (also, ands and thens), and pick the most powerful or important image and stick to that instead of the flowery BULLSHIT I seem to have vomited up on my first draft.

And let me clarify: I'm calling it my first draft, but it really isn't <wince>. The very first draft is on notebook paper. Each chapter written out and typed separately, then edited when I was ready to type the next chapter. Then I went through the whole book and 'edited' it, which was obviously just lip service I was paying judging on what I'm working with now. And now here I am again. Editing. For real.

This time it's slow going, like using a very fine toothed comb to clean a shag carpet. And it is not fun. It is far more like finishing a research paper you're really trying to make an A on and not much like creative writing at all. But it has become embarrassingly clear to me that it is the most important step, that tightening up the writing, making choices, cutting out the admittedly beautiful imagery or symbolism that doesn't help the story is what separates amateur from professional.

 I don't know if I'm a professional, I'm certainly not paid for this pain (yet), but I will say that I feel much better about the whole thing now I've asked those questions. I kind of feel this contempt for my past self, who just threw images and words around like a carefree hippie throwing blossoms or frisbees. My present self just wants to scream at my past self, take this shit seriously you twerp!

The First Novel

I just spent four months writing a novel. I don't have a job or any hobbies, and during the winter here in Canada going outside is not for the faint of heart, so I just sat here at my desk writing. Making shit up.

The book itself is a story about someone trapped in a situation, specifically a magical spell, that they neither asked for nor can really get out of without help. It's the best thing I've ever written, which is to say I've learned more crafting this story and these characters than anything I've done previously, because I actually did craft this story.

When I started writing stories I was 13, a freshman in high school. I vomited words onto paper without much thought. I described my surroundings. I let the pen guide me into the dark recesses of my apparently rather disturbed mind. It was exhilarating and it was fun, and sometimes cathartic. But it was not craft.

I wrote stories about murderers and rapists, crazy pariahs trapped in webs of madness. These stories usually started from a place of pain inside me and rocketed through wild, bloody fantasies that bore me up on their fetid breath like a kite buffeted by foul winds. The stories do not develop a character or trace a history; they are not crafted.

For this story, my first novel, The Spell, I threw myself into WHY. Why does this character do what he does? Why would this other character act this way? Why is he here, not there; why does she think this, not that? Then I had to decide how much was important enough to mention to the reader.

I had a first draft to work with, which I finished in 2009, but it was written in the way I wrote everything back then: I just started writing whatever was there in my head. It was only 35,000 words long, 135 pages, and it stank. It was a self-serving mess of masturbatory metaphor built, top-heavy, upon a weak, ill-conceived plot.

I went back and threw myself into it. I admit freely this would not have happened if I'd never read the Wheel of Time books. They struck a chord with me like no fantasy novels I had read previously, and I thought, I am inspired. I want to write this fantasy story and really put some effort into it.

I added and added and added. I had back story for characters who were, themselves, back story. I added settings just for flavor, characters explaining things just to have them included. When I finished I went back through it and hacked at the bits, trying to fashion it into something that made sense, something that flowed well and was easy and interesting to read.

And now I realize it is too long. At 120,000 words, this novel is too long for a first-time novelist. Many agents would not even look at it.

I am not a writer who is attached to what I create. I have lost far too much writing in my life--to hard drive crashes and floppy disks being put through the laundry--to feel like I couldn't part with 20,000 words of this novel. It can be trimmed and the story will stay intact, I know this. I thought I was done, and that felt good, but I am not done, and now I have another daunting task. 

Now I get to learn how to edit, and edit ruthlessly, to chop flowers from the garden so that the edges of the beds will speak in cleaner, more drastic lines, uncluttered by prose, or by poetry. Now I get to go back and make the story the point of the novel, and not the writing.