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My first novel was published by North Star Press nearly three years ago. 2014 seems like a long time ago: Obama was still POTUS, and nobody even considered the upcoming election much yet. I was preoccupied with a lot that year, including getting the book, Our Senior Year, finished and the cover ready to go for my events. For those of you who haven’t read it, the book is essentially a fictionalized account of my time at a small high school in Iowa. I named the town Clarmont, a pastiche combining another nearby town, and patched together a few of my best friends at the time as characters. I also split my personality in half and had them be best friends, a decision I’m not quite sure worked very well but was useful in telling the story from two different (albeit similar) perspectives.
I’d recently read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, one of the first “horror” novels (depending on your time frame) of the modern era, and one told entirely through epistolary forms of the time: monographs recorded for others to listen, letters, and diary entries. This got me considering a journal entry to tell one character’s side of the story. This journal is located by the other main character at the beginning of the tale, and he uses it to tell the story in what ends up being the actual book. There are some plot twists based on my experience at that town over four years, including an amalgamation of some car wrecks, and a suicide. The friends were based on people I got to know quite well during my senior year there, as I had run with a different group of people aimlessly (and neurotically, though I wasn’t aware at the time) up to that point. I realized the people in my own grade were having an awesome time, and that it was time to start seeing what they were into. I have since come to understand our activities as pretty stupid, but no too much outside the norm for kids of any era. But all of this did not bode well with my parents, who raised me on a farm outside the town based on pretty strict religious structure. This is reflected in the character’s attending a youth group night at a local church. This entire novel was really a reaction against my upbringing. Circa 2013, when I was finishing the last drafts, I was coming off an important conversation with my parents a year earlier regarding my breaking away from their Christian faith. I would end up telling them parts of what the story would entail, and tried to make sure they were aware that the parent characters are not really them. One is an alcoholic, and my father doesn’t touch the stuff, and my mother was not overbearing and mean like in the novel. Still, I had conceived the novel in my high school days as being against this type of strict upbringing. Yet I couldn’t view this work through any other lens than a strictly religious conflict up until now. I’ve recently had some powerful emotional breakthroughs regarding all of it (the ignorance coupled with the extreme fundamentalism) and have come to some much better ground surrounding it. I’m not so angry any longer, and it feels better. I thought it would be as good a time as any to revisit what was driving this first novel. A lot of it was driven by anger, and fear. Since our initial discussion I had since come to see how I was raised through a mostly negative light, and struggled to distance myself from it through this novel. There is a discussion in the book dealing with a documentary I watched in real life produced by PBS describing a lot of the fallacies in where the Bible comes from. After, the father and son discuss why they don’t believe in this stuff anymore, but must for the sake of their mother. This was one of my first clumsy attempts at inserting commentary I’d arrived at much later into a fictional time zone where part of me existed. I was also at the time afraid my parents would know more about what I thought. I thought this passage in the novel would be enough to cover some of this. It never was. But that’s another great revelation to hit as a writer: I’m not who I thought I was. That’s right, I can evolve, both through life and in my work. My marriage has taught me a lot about the life part, now it’s time to tackle the writing bit. The person who finally finished that book in 2013-14 is not the person sitting here writing this today. I have a new, and different outlook on religion and all of its various manifestations through society. And instead of forgetting about it, like it’s not a part of me, I have come to the conclusion that I can only incorporate it into my writing. I have seen so much of it used in the wrong way, in ways that will affect me for the rest of my life. But instead of the anger, I have to approach it with the opposite. Compassion, understanding, but also ruthless interrogation. What causes humans to believe such things? Where does it come from, and where is it going? I have no idea, and things are only getting more confused with the technological revolution of recent years. AI appears to be the closest thing we might get to a “god” on this planet, so what does that mean for religion? These are all things I didn’t realize I wanted to write about until they wouldn’t go away and kept turning into a huge idea. Therefore, I am going to begin drafting a new book, involving ideas about the future, climate change, technology, and seeing where it leads. I’m also going to continue re-writing Observe and Detach so it’s ready for an agent, but I can’t suppress this any longer. It’s time to start harnessing the tide of creative growth that comes from a healthy examination of one’s path. That’s my main point for you aspiring writers out there. Look at where you come from, gaze at what you wrote, but don’t let it define you. You are never who you thought you were. I wish there was some other better way to figure this out besides time travel or something. But as I near the midpoint of my thirties, I’ve come to understand that if you can learn from your mistakes, and where you come from, you’ll go a long way toward finding out where you’re going. (Also when I first started thinking about this essay, I couldn’t help get this infamous YouTube video out of my head. Denny Green was a perennial character in my parent's’ living room as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings a million years ago…)
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Hello once again readers and welcome as I wrap up the final title from My Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fiction. As with Reading Like a Writer, I wanted to bookend last year’s list with another tome on writing. I decided on Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, which had been recommended to me by a few people. The book itself was decent, but had some glaring issues I couldn’t overlook. Lamott is much less funny on the page than she seems to think she is, and I found myself stunned that her editor didn’t try to correct this irregularity. Despite this there were a few portions that did make me laugh, and there are many excellent ideas through the entire book. I want to turn to some of the main lessons I took away from this work:
While there are many excellent pieces of advice throughout this work, I am not going to give it my full recommendation to other writers out there. Lamott really could have used a stronger editor as the book weaves in and out of her rambling considerations of her own talent, her internal feelings, and how nerve-wracking the writer’s life can become. While I don’t doubt many of us have experienced these things, it’s equally if not important to find ways to break through the self-doubt. All of this being said, there is a reason why this book has been a massive bestseller for years and is routinely included among lists of “books on writing.” There is absolutely a lot to gain from reading it, so I certainly would say take a look if you enjoy her previous writing (and I must confess this is the first book of hers I’ve ever read). This wraps up my first year experiment in reading nothing but fiction (and two books on process). Up next, I begin my foray into Another Year of Fiction. I have decided my first book will be Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me. Stay tuned for an essay on that book in the coming weeks, and as always thanks for reading! I want to write today about an important facet of the writer’s life: being alone with your thoughts enough to compose something on the page. While some of you out there may be lucky enough to write by yourself or in a separate room, odds are most people have to deal with this situation simply by dint of having a relationship with another human being.
My wife and I lived in a very cramped apartment for the first five years of our marriage. This led to numerous issues regarding space, and while a lot of it got rectified when we moved a bigger place last year, we still could not avoid the fact that we are occupying much of the same area together, almost all of the time. How can we as writers learn to deal with such a situation? How can we with partners in our lives learn to be alone, together? First I’d like to address the simple matter of how to write even when there is somebody in the same area doing something completely different like watching television. Headphones can be invaluable to cut off the noise, and to place you in the right mindset for writing. For me that’s a heavy dose of classical and/or ambient music. But more to the point, we as writers need to find the proper mindset for working on our craft even in a fairly cramped environment. My wife has her own concept of “alone time,” which she needs just as much as me. Even in a one-bedroom apartment we find our ways of separating, whether that’s moving to the bedroom to read or putting on my headphones and jamming out on a story. While we do have to occupy the same space, we manage to live in our own worlds at certain times. I think this is an important concept for anyone who lives in close quarters with another human being: make sure they too have the space they need from you, when they need it. This can be tough to understand and acknowledge, but believe me, if you can find an arrangement that works out for the both of you, it will do wonders for the entire relationship. But I want to go deeper than that. What does it truly mean to be alone, together? We as writers are basically unable to do our jobs unless we can be solitary and cultivate our thoughts. How is this possible in our world full of distraction and people? Those who work with me have probably come to know me by turns inherently taciturn and, as I’ve been described by too many people to count, “quiet.” This was especially apparent in my previous job, in which personal connections broke down and I became utterly consumed with keeping to myself. While this led to some humorous anecdotes in my current manuscript concerning neurotic behaviour in the white-collar workplace, it did not lead to me connecting very well with my co-workers. I find myself currently employed in a bookstore, surrounded by some of my favorite works but also by people who do a lot more thinking before they speak (not a huge concern of the office-dweller, in general terms). And yet even here I find myself not speaking much more, often because I have a lot of ponderous thoughts about my books going on in my brain. While part of me keeps trying to make myself interact more with my fellow booksellers, many of whom are very deep people with interesting stories to tell, I must remind myself that the work is residing up there in my cranium, and to make sure I allow myself the time needed to grapple with it. Those of us who deign to use the written word to tell a story need not be so afraid of living a withdrawn life. I cannot stress enough how important it is to retain the singular lifestyle required of the writer in various circumstances. I am lucky enough to have a job in which that isn’t too difficult, but I would highly recommend this to any aspiring writer: find ways to keep within yourself and your thoughts as much as you can. That’s not to say you should be inwardly focused all the time, but you will never reach your full potential as a writer unless you can be alone with your thoughts. Whether that’s being home alone, together with your significant other or alone among others in your workplace, it’s imperative to cultivate that mindset as often as you can stand it. On this I can only offer my considerations as I ponder the direction of my writing career. While the first draft of my third novel resides on my hard drive, I have for the past few years been chewing over the direction of my fourth one, and how it can reflect reality. This began as the seed of an idea as I was waiting for the bus some afternoons after the office job, and continued into a bigger notion the more I was able to contemplate it, either when others were present or own my own. The important thing to note here is that I would not have been able to get this far without being able to honestly and deeply appraise my own thoughts. Make sure you are giving yourself the same amount of space. This ties in with what I hope will be my final essay on the writing process this year, which is a doozy: What exactly is a writer for? That is, what are we as purveyors of the written word attempting to do with our careers? I’ll be the first to admit I have expressed utter cluelessness on this score for a long time, but as this year has progressed I have come as close to an answer to that question as I’ve gotten yet. I hope to get that essay out of my brain before this horrendous year has passed. And of course, stay tuned to this space for the final few updates in my year-long experiment in reading fiction, the incredible results of which have guaranteed its continuation into the next year (more on that next month). Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to add your own reactions to these ideas in the comments. Happy holidays, everyone! Short stories - what are they? I’ll admit that’s a question I still do not fully know the answer to, but I hope to have a much better perspective after this year. As I’m taking a bit of a break from working on my third novel I have decided to work on a batch of stories, some of which I hope will find publication in literary journals. As it stands right now, I should have about ten in good enough shape to send out in the next few months. But I thought a really interesting way of showing this process would be to workshop at least one of the stories through the blog on my website.
And as promised, here is part 2 of “Allison.” Allison moved in next door to me a decade ago. Her parents had the largest moving van I had ever seen in my young life. Her father poured sweat down his lanky back as he attempted to haul her great armoire up to her second-floor room. It was the same piece of furniture I would snoop through years later, looking futilely for her diary and any mention of me it might contain. My childhood had reached a dismal point by the time I watched the ancient house beside ours become populated once more. My after-school experiences involved playing football by myself in our backyard every day or remaining inside to watch Full House. This all changed after the Chalmers moved next door. The days of playing video games by myself in the basement wearing torn up old sweat pants were replaced by those of Allison rushing into the living room with a basketball, bouncing it off my stomach and screaming to come out to this great new court she had found at the back of the Danielson Woods. We did a lot of that kind of stuff together the first year, and I am eternally grateful. If not for this girl I would never have known that a bullfrog will piss in your hand if you hold it too long, if not for her I would never have gotten my stupid groove on at any high school dance I ever attended. “You looked so goofy playing a team sport back there by yourself,” Allison said, leaning on her palms and looking about ten percent guilty for what she just said. Our conversation had relapsed into reminiscence. “There weren’t many other kids in our neighborhood,” I parried. “And most of them played tackle football, which was ‘strictly prohibited.’ Remember?” I wagged my finger up and down in the air, recalling my mother’s set of rules. Allison burst out laughing again, and for a brief moment we did connect. But, it was probably more me watching her. “I have to get back,” she said, jumping up and almost pushing me off the dock playfully in the process. Perhaps something had crossed her plane of thought that she didn’t want to deal with right then. The next time I saw her she would be in the loving embrace of Jeremy. They were inseparable, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Jeremy Shepherds was a basketball stud who won the final game last year with a three-pointer at the buzzer. I didn’t like him. Walking the halls of Winterset High I would shake my head in disbelief, meandering to the other side when his clique and their letter jackets wandered through, talking about how bitchin’ last night’s party was our how fuckin’ fast they sped down that gravel road. On night out on the lake during our junior year, Allison told me she thought his whole group would be lucky to even graduate with the rest of our class. Each time I thought about that night and then saw them together, it hurt so much more. I hated the fact that I couldn’t talk to her anymore. We still hung out a few times that summer, but it was overshadowed by the “other” man lingering in the background. The ominous six-foot presence that had to call her whenever just the two of us wanted to hang out. He wasn’t right for her. I believed this to be true, and by the time August rolled around I decided to finally tell her how I felt. It’s funny how things work sometimes. Each day I found torment thinking of how she might react. On the last week before we both were to leave for college, I took her out to the lake on the hottest day of the summer. Her reaction was one of laughter: the kind she used to bark at those stupid jokes I told. Before Jeremy took her away. “Josh,” she said, pulling a strand of auburn hair from her shutting eye. “You’re kidding, right?” I felt like a sharpened spike had been pre-selected for me and shoved right through my heart. I didn’t know what to say. There she was, sitting there, the smile that once took up that gorgeous face leaving as the realization that I wasn’t kidding slowly dawned. “Josh...I...you and I...we can’t…” she was stammering now, just like she did when it cost her a speech medal six years ago in the regional final. She turned, her lengthy hair shining amid her stunning eyes. The shock of my admission had left its mark on her face. Suddenly I felt guilty for putting such a burden on my best friend. Now it was my turn to falter through the words. “I...I’m sorry, Allison. I just thought it would be better to tell you now than to regret it for the rest of my life. We’re going to be away from each other for four years, at least. I didn’t have a choice.” It was the wrong thing to say, but it sure as hell was true. I could see the sadness in her eyes. “Who says you didn’t have a choice? I could have gone our entire friendship without you saying that, you know. Jeremy and I...we’re together. You know that. And I really like him, Josh. You should respect that.” She took my hand in hers. Her beautiful face was downcast, as if she couldn’t face up to what she had to say to her best friend. “Besides, you’re better at being my friend,” she whispered through choked tears. I saw a vision of my room, Allison running and tackling me, shouting to get moving and play some dang football. The first pinpricks of tears clouded behind my brown eyes. For an awkward moment we sat there and watched the sunset, as we always had. Then I managed to say my final words to Allison Chalmers: “I understand. I’ll see ya…” I have been to college for almost a year, but I still cannot get that fucking conversation out of my head. It plagues me all the time, but mostly in my dreams. I know she was right, but part of me can’t deny the feelings I had for her. The hell was I didn’t want those feelings to go away. I did meet someone: a tiny bombshell with goldenrod hair named Jamie. We met at a frat party a few months ago and hit it off. Maybe it was her thin glasses frames or my stupid jokes made more moronic with alcohol, but we got along pretty well. I kissed her two weeks after that, alone in my dorm room, and the only thing I could think about as her chapstick covered lips graced mine was how much I wished I had kissed Allison on that dock. After that it was all over. I still woke up to the fleeting images of the girl I was in love with, but I didn’t want to look in the mirror each day and realize I was someone who couldn’t get over a simple rejection. So I decided to call her. My fingers developed a nervous twitch as I pulled up her contact information on my cell phone that night. I held my breath, leaning against the cheap wooden dresser our benevolent college decided was good enough for all incoming freshmen. Jeremy Shepherds answered Allison’s phone. I let out all the air I had collected in my lungs like a steam engine. “Ward! What the hell is up, man?” I had forgotten the high school tradition of jocks addressing everyone by their last names. I managed some type of weak reply that must have sounded ridiculous, because Jeremy was laughing on the other end. “Ward, she’s not here right now. She’s getting ready for our big date, considering how far I had to drive up here to see her. Want to leave a message, or something?” I declined, saying that maybe I would get in touch with her some other time, and hung up the phone. Our big date. I slowly wafted my body down into the leather chair my roommate must have traveled back in time to pick up from 1977. I stared at the wall, thinking about Jeremey Shepherds and that stupid red Chevrolet he used to drive. I haven’t thought much about Allison since that evening. My life has begun to rescind into the kind of childhood days I had before I met her. I play a lot of video games and smoke a lot of reefer, and have more or less forgotten about class. I guess I never got over the fact that she saw less in me than I saw in her. In my dreams I still see things like the old swing set her folks bought when she was ten, how she would dare me to jump off when I reached a high enough altitude, and how I always chickened out at the last second. There is one dream I have a lot more often now. I’m sitting on the dock. Except this time Allison is not there. This time it’s only me staring across the briny deep. I can only sit there in desperation, waiting for someone to arrive whose only aspiration is a simple conversation. Then I realize she will never be there with me. I will always be alone, watching the waves. Short stories - what are they? I’ll admit that’s a question I still do not fully know the answer to, but I hope to have a much better perspective after this year. As I’m taking a bit of a break from working on my third novel I have decided to work on a batch of stories, some of which I hope will find publication in literary journals. As it stands right now, I should have about ten in good enough shape to send out in the next few months. But I thought a really interesting way of showing this process would be to workshop at least one of the stories through the blog on my website.
The story I chose for this workshop is one I crafted way back in my college days. Back when I was an aimless youth I took a class specifically on Creative Writing (those really into my work will recognize this as one of the classroom settings in Last Man on Campus). While to this day I feel I never put enough into the class, I did wind up with one story that I think could eventually stand on its own for publication. I now present part of that story to my audience, with some slight editing from its previous incarnation, in the hopes of kick-starting an interactive workshop. Without further ado, here is the first part of the short story “Allison:” I told Allison Chalmers I loved her the summer after our senior year. I told her I had loved her since the third grade, when our entire class was forced to distribute little pink paper valentines to everyone but I had saved one for her that stated: “Will you be mine?” I told her I loved her when I saw her scorching down the Winterset High asphalt track, piercing April rays of sunshine floating over her back and her competition from the surrounding schools left in the dust. I told her I had loved her since we held each other at our last prom, blue streamers hanging askew around us in the gymnasium. I told her I loved her even after Jeremy Shepherd had entered the fray. I told Allison these things the afternoon of a desperate, hot August day one week before I was to leave for the state university. My voice sounded freshman-year shaky and my body trembled as if some hidden brute within wanted to leave my presence to avoid this conversation forever. I told Allison I had loved her the entire ten years we had known each other, and that even though she had found another, I knew she belonged to me. And how did she react to this confession? This statement of trust that I conveyed to her on that scorching day at the end of summer? It wasn’t what I expected. * * * The real reason these feelings began to make their way into my heart, levelling any thoughts of friendship I ever kindled for my best friend, came the summer before we both went to college. Allison and I had a special place in Winterset that was just for us: Lake Clarmont. This summer was different because it contained the final few months we would get to spend laying out on the dock watching the boats sail over the foamy waves, birds scattering everywhere and fish fighting for their lives within the briny deep. Allison always called it the “briny deep” like she was floating on a pirate ship in the middle of the Atlantic, not sitting on the rough rocky shores of a reservoir. One night stands out in my mind, playing on repeat like a film projector gone mad. It was a week after the big graduation jamboree, and I was very glad to have the final futile exercise of high school finished. The two of us were sitting on the cement dock where the amateur fishermen of Winterset attempted to catch the big one and make the others jealous. This was how we released the pressure of having to attend school for twelve years. What amazed me that summer was how Allison and I kept each other so close even while our thoughts of college in the fall loomed overhead like a booming thunderclap. Most nights I was sure Allison would be tearing down the main drag of town instead, seeking a real man unlike my skinny-ass self, but she never did. This was why she was my best friend in that entire God forsaken town: she never wanted more of a friend than me. This was the last real night both of us had stayed out there for such a long period of time. It wasn’t long after this that Allison hooked up with Jeremy at our senior keg in the Danielson Woods. He swept her off her feet, offering more for her brilliant life than I could ever hope to give. I’ve never had a girlfriend for my entire 18 years on this planet, and no matter what anyone else tells me, it still sucks. If the subject is broached in conversation I’ll shrug my shoulders, crack my knuckles and say something nonchalant. But the truth is that I can’t get over it. Like a specter that I can only see in the mirror at night, it haunts my soul, voicing my inferiorities and how I could never hope to attain her. The same spirit was creeping around my brain’s storage area the night Allison and I sat there on the concrete, the small waves lapping up against the flat gray wall. “Why do they make little bubble caps like that?” Allison asked, the sun’s reflection in her glasses impeding any sense of what her eyes were trying to say. “Because they get so mad at each other they begin to foam up. Like rabid water.” For some reason my lame jokes always got her to laugh, and she couldn’t stop. The sound was symphonic to my ears that evening as the sun began losing its battle with the stars for the horizon. Allison was stunning there before the setting sun, now a dark red blot on the far side of the lake. Her glasses reflected light in the most peculiar ways, and were now emanating the moody spasms of lake water. At this moment some kind of starter’s gun went off in my head and I decided I had to tell her before summer’s end. It was either that or risk the ghost coming in the night and chopping off my head, ending it for all eternity. So that’s it - part 1 of the short story “Allison.” I will be posting the second half in the coming days. Until then, feel free to take a stand in the comments (or email me) regarding what you liked or did not like about the first half of this short story. I will take all comments into consideration as I revise this story and try to make it presentable for publication. Thanks for reading! It’s time once more for an update in my year of living (actually) reading fictionally. To recap, I’ve tackled everything from 19th-Century literature to a cat mystery novel, and each selection has given me few important ways to improve my writing. The fifth book in this year-long experiment was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Swedish crime novelist Stieg Larsson. This was another attempt to read a mystery novel, but I never expected to be so compelled by the work that I could barely put it down. I won’t give away much of the amazingly and intricately detailed plot, but I will say that it’s is a taut psychological thriller that delves deep into societal themes such as violence against women, corporate illegality, hacking, investigative journalism, and family dynastic issues that turn horribly ugly. It was a fantastic read and it’s going to take some restraint not to jump immediately into the next book of the Millennium trilogy.
Now, to some of the major lessons I learned about writing from this work.
Overall I enjoyed reading this novel and at times struggled to put it down, so intensely interested was I in the mystery. I feel like I understand the genre even better after reading this book, and would definitely recommend it for people who like to be shocked or are interested in the more societal topics Larsson takes on within the work. Up next will be the final book of the first half of this experiment, and one I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Then I will tackle one book on writing, and return in the second half with a more recommendation-based list of titles which I’ll post at that time. Stay tuned for more updates on my year of living (actually reading) fictionally! It’s time for the third update in my year-long experiment in living (actually reading) fictionally. For those of you keeping score at home, the first book I tackled was Oscar Wilde’s fascinating 19th century novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Next was Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1952 novel The Old Man and the Sea. Now I have switched gears, turning to a book my wife suggested, Lillian Jackson Braun’s 1988 novel The Cat Who Played Post Office.
I will be the first to admit I never thought I would read a mystery series, let alone one whose main mystery-solvers are a pair of Siamese cats and their owner, Jim Qwilleran. But part of my learning experience over the past year has been opening myself up to new concepts, one of which was trying to understand various niches and where my own writing might fit in among them. As usual, I won’t get too much into the plot or give away the ending, but I will say that this was a very engaging novel and Braun creates a world, albeit a few books into the series (which originally started in the Sixties) that I enjoyed jumping into each time I sat with the work. This leads to the first point about writing I wanted to observe.
These are the three main writing lessons I’ve come away with after reading The Cat Who Played Post Office. And yes, I would recommend this book (or series) to anyone looking to get some enjoyment out of their reading. While it probably won’t cause you to make a deep reappraisal of your world and society, it still should give you some good ideas for how to become a more popular author. Up next in this experiment I turn to an author who I have sorely neglected for some time, and hope to begin rectifying this by reading what is considered his best work: Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment in my year of living (actually reading) fictionally. It’s time for another update on my year-long experiment in living (actually reading) fictionally. For those of you following along at home, the first book I tackled was Oscar Wilde’s fascinating 19th century novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Next up is Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1952 novel The Old Man and the Sea.
Having not read much of any Hemingway outside of For Whom The Bell Tolls, which was based off his experience in the Spanish Civil War, I was past due to catch up with his better-known material. My wife encouraged me to read this as it’s one of her favorite books, and I can definitely see why. Hemingway was known for his tight sentence structure and there is no better example of such writing than this novel. Once again I don’t want to spend much time on the plot or influence of this book but let it suffice that this is a book about struggle. Struggle against that major goal in your life, struggle against your own personal demons, or struggle against some external force. The pure brilliance of the novel is that by keeping the story simple, Hemingway allows each reader to take away whatever he or she can regarding their own life. This helps lead into the first major writing lesson I found in this work. First: Keep it simple. This adage is quite familiar to those who have read Hemingway’s work for years, but it especially rings true in this book. It can be said that not a whole lot happens in this novel, but what matters is how it is told. Through the simple language the reader feels they are right next to the fisherman in his boat, witnessing his travails in hooking the marlin and his strife in fighting off the sharks that attack it once it has been killed. Similarly, the author brings you right inside the internal and external monologues of the main character Santiago as we witness the conflicts roiling his soul in his attempt to land the biggest fish of his life. This is a writing technique that I hadn’t really considered and is one I hope to possibly use in the future. Hemingway had me hooked from the first pages of this novel, and I read with rapt attention all the way through the ending, which does not disappoint but offers a bold shot of illumination as I considered this book through the prism of life itself. This brings me to the next huge lesson as a writer I pulled from this book. Second: Using a novel to tell a deeper truth about life. Hemingway’s final published work has been analyzed to death and read by countless children and adults who have found their own meaning in the fisherman’s battle to hook the marlin. All I can really speak to here is what I took away from the story, which is that each one of us has our own “marlin” in our lives that we are constantly pursuing. How many of us have sought a goal such as this and caught up to it, only to find “sharks” arrive to tear and drag away the carcass? Due to a lack of preparation, Santiago finds he has very limited tools to help him both keep the line going and fight off the sharks as they try to steal his prize. How many of us have felt the same disappointment in ourselves that he did, vowing to do better next time? The sheer force of the elementary language causes us to view this story as a metaphor for our own lives, and is written in such a manner that anyone can take away a parable that fits their own struggles. That is a major accomplishment for any writer, and proved without a doubt this man deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature the year after he published the work that would draw him international renown. As with Wilde’s novel, this is another one I would highly recommend for any writer who wants to see a near-perfect example of the use of language to tell a deeply complex story. Once again we can learn volumes through the text itself, and while Hemingway was no stranger to offering advice to other writers, it is through his own work that we can learn the most. Up next on the agenda for my year of living fictionally: Lillian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who Played Post Office. Or as my wife would put it, an example of “reading for pleasure” and a forcible ingestion of a type of genre book I would normally never take a second look at. Of course, this was before my time working at a bookstore and learning about the value of various niches. Stay tuned for another essay on that book as we carry on - and as always feel free to toss me your own recommendations for later in the year. (Part one of this essay involved the more superficial reasons of “why to write.” In this next part, I will attempt to dig even deeper into the reasoning behind our creative impulses and how to harness them for your art.)
In the first part we looked at how to take events and actions and scenes from your own life and see the story value in them. But how do we even come up with such things in the first place? As I wrote in the last part, ultimately this decision will have to come from your own heart, just as our life experiences don't match up very well. But in a way, isn’t that exactly the point? You ought to be able to describe your dreams and desires much better than I could, and are the only one who can view deep into the well of ideas within yourself. So how do we access this part of ourselves: the one that seems a mystery even to us, the observer of our internal life? To briefly return to the more superficial part of all this, it needs to be a clear signal from your subconscious that can also be turned into a good yarn. Returning to my first novel, Our Senior Year, the signals from my subconscious were the feelings I was experiencing during that year of my life. But I wouldn’t have had anything without a proper story. Therefore I had to add other aspects to the story, either by repurposing other things that happened in my high school days or even making stuff up. You can do the same thing - just hone in on a strong memory from your life. What were you feeling at that time? Can it be expressed through the written word? If so, get that part down first, and then see what’s missing. This can be done in myriad other ways, but I’ve found that if you harness a good idea from your life first, it can lead to the rest. For as Picasso supposedly said, “art is the lie that lets us see the truth.” At the end of the day this is what you should hope to accomplish with your art: creating an excellent lie that lets the world see your inner truth. This could be the simple truth about growing up in a small town, dealing with its high school residents, and your religious family, as it was for me. Or it could deal with your own set of specific circumstances. Remember, this is your best asset. Nobody has lived your life before, and nobody will since. Draw from the most volatile of your own experiences to get the best results. I’m not saying any of this will be easy, of course. Putting your own personal pain and misery on paper for the world to see isn’t a smooth prospect even for the best of us. I anguished over what people from my hometown and family would think before I published that first book. But I don’t worry about that anymore, because I created a falsity that told a truth about myself and the universe of a small town. As long as you are being true to yourself and your story, you shouldn’t give a damn in the world what anyone else thinks about it. (Ok, you’ll have to care about what some people think, like your editor, but that’s a ways down the road.) If that doesn’t work, you can go more abstract or less. A simple look around you may suffice. Can you tell a story about the people you see near you, or your apartment, or your home, or your neighborhood? Or if you want to go more granular, consider your deepest held beliefs and principles, and try to puzzle out why they exist. If you think this country is messed up and going adrift from the intent of its founders, try to gauge why you feel that way. Is it because our democracy is failing? Is it because people are apathetic? Write an essay corralling your feelings that may be of use in a larger story. If you have feelings for another but you are ashamed or afraid of them for whatever reason, try to figure out how they are holding you back and put it into words of your own choosing. We are getting more in the territory of dealing with the overall picture of life here, but any writer worth their salt can tell you this is the center of the “why write” question. “Write what you know” is a platitude worthy of being ignored if you think you can, but there is a reason it has stuck around for this long. And that’s because it works. It works because it’s so simple. What do you know? Think about the thousands of answers to that question, any one of which could lead you down a rabbit hole into a story idea you didn’t even think was hanging out among the inner recesses of your subconscious. Or maybe it’s sitting right there in the open, waiting for you to understand how well you know it. This could be your feelings for another person, the way you view your occupation through the prism of the current society, or how you deal with setbacks and advances in your own life. The point is, only you know how you’re going to react to these things, and therefore only you will know where the story lies. And if it’s not in that particular thought, move on to the next one until you find it. This second part of the essay is rambling into esoteric territory, so I’m going to leave the topic alone for now. I hope that you have found a bit of guidance into the “why” of writing through these posts, but if you didn’t please know that what works for one writer won’t always work for another. At the end of the day all I can hope to accomplish is helping others locate what I have found within myself that allows me to press forward with my writing. The “why” for me is easy: I have found what I’m meant to do with my life, and now comes the hard part of refining it and trying to find a modicum of success. But in order to figure out that big “why” we must first locate the initial “why:” why we sit down to pour our hearts and thoughts out onto the page in the first place. Once you discern that within yourself, you’ll be ready to start creating stories. Those of you following this blog in 2016 know about my year-long experiment in living (actually reading) fictionally. This is off to a grand start as I’ve finished the first book on my reading list: Oscar Wilde’s seminal (and only) novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. While I could spend the majority of this essay expounding on the literary shattering of the 19th century social consciousness that this incredible piece of work affected, this operation is more geared toward taking away writing skills from each book I read.
So regarding the novel itself I’ll keep it brief. This was absolutely one of the best books I’ve ever read. Considered a “philosophical novel” it is all of that plus much more; a daring look at aestheticism in the age of Victorian prudishness, it also contains one of the more remarkable examples of early science fiction writing as a play on the Faust legend of selling one’s soul to the devil. Except in this case Wilde does the story one better in that Dorian Gray’s soul has been transferred to a portrait, which keeps track of every malady and malfeasance he accomplishes while his own face retains its youthful luster. For those who have yet to read this marvelous work I won’t give away too much of the plot other than to say it will keep you hooked straight through to the end. Now I want to move on to the takeaways from writing I gathered from reading this amazing book. But first a quick aside: I’ve written before about how rather unnecessary all those “how to write” lists and columns from authors have become to me. Instead of looking at those, I have maintained that the best way to learn from an author better than yourself is to simply read their work. That should teach you everything you need to know about how to improve. And in this case, that comes through in spades. First: The adage of “show, don’t tell,” and its purported usefulness. This mantra is spouted to almost every writer attempting to make a go of it, and for the most part it is valuable, if pithy advice. Yet Wilde almost entirely ignores this in his novel. While the literature is a pure joy to engage with, and is a valuable critique of his own society at a time when that was frowned upon, just as interesting to me as a writer is what he doesn’t say. We are right there with Dorian Gray as he finds out the horrible secret of his portrait, but not necessarily when he goes on to a life of debauchery and hedonism outside of a full chapter on his interests in tapestries, jewels, and other expensive tastes. In a later scene in the book, Gray blackmails a scientist friend of his into performing a horrific act that will eliminate some evidence. These two are mentioned as having been good friends until Gray’s sullen reputation causes them to never see each other again. Not mentioned is the actual incident, or what Gray uses to blackmail his friend. Long stretches of time pass with barely a mention, and you have to pay close attention to see what point of the story has been reached in each chapter. To me, this would appear to go against the “show, don’t tell” rule, but in fact is an excellent example of how to elude things like this in the service of telling a story. For up until reading this book, in my mind the most sacred of golden calves in the writing world was description: make sure your reader knows what’s going on by showing him or her, and making sure they get the full measure of your scenes and characters. Wilde turns that on its head by consciously avoiding a lot of the headier parts of the story in favor of letting his audience consider what Gray is up to during the intervening chapters. While this probably comes as little surprise to more advanced literary readers, to me it was a quiet revolution in my style of writing, and one I suspect will be attached for some time. Second: The use of the novel to speak volumes about one’s society. As is pretty well known, English society didn’t care much for Mr. Wilde or his supposed improprieties. Despite being one of the most brilliant minds of the nineteenth century, he was cast aside by his peers for daring to criticize his contemporary culture and its vagaries and norms. Seeing this in the twenty-first century, it’s easy to recognize just how important it is to use art in this regard. Those of you who have known me for a while understand my obsession with politics and the situation our lovely world finds itself in these days. In fact, the bizarre qualities of our modern life (escape of accountability by politicians, rampant corruption in the financial sector, devastating poverty for the vast majority) are things I hope to target in my third novel. So it’s very motivating to read such an incredible analysis of Wilde’s own day in his text, just to see how well to do it. This is seen no better than in Lord Henry Wotton, friend of Dorian Gray and a supposedly bad influence on him who leads him to a lifestyle of ruin. And how does he accomplish this? By urging his young companion to engage in art with all of his senses, and to live for the moment in any way he can. This type of lifestyle was unheard of in 19th century England at the time and caused mass opprobrium against Wilde that could culminate in him being put on trial for various obscenities a few years later. Sadly, as is too often the case with many great literary authors, Wilde obtained a more fair scrutiny after his death. But the legacy of his work reflected a sea change in the notion of what a novel, and art in general, could and should be. These are the two biggest lessons I’ve learned from reading this marvelous work, but you out there may draw different conclusions. That’s why I would strongly urge anyone to pick up this book if you haven’t read it yet. And I would highly recommend it for those of you trying to figure out your own writing voice, as it’s a great example of how to write exceedingly well. (And if you’re looking for further recommendations, I posted my own set of favorite fiction books last year.) Next up on the docket for my year of living fictionally: a change in the lineup, as my wife really wanted to read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea together (much like we read To Kill a Mockingbird a few years ago - and yes, we are married dorks). It’s a relatively slim volume I’m ashamed to admit having never read, and shouldn’t knock me too far off course from the list I created earlier. And of course, those of you out there are always free to send me your own recommendations. I’ve received a few great ideas so far, but can always use more. Now it’s on to the next book! |
AuthorJohn Abraham is a published author and freelance journalist who lives in the Twin Cities with his wife Mary and their cat. He is writing a speculative dystopian novel and is seeking representation and a publisher. Archives
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