I love this discussion. Katie's ideas on writing from deep intuitive places resonates deeply, and I'm definitely going to read Ron Carlson's book on writing. I have two new stories that I've started and have been neglecting because I have no idea where they are going, and I think I'm letting that be an excuse. I remember Julie Orringer once saying that the most important thing to do is get through the first draft-- I've got three drafts now moldering while I wait to become a person who can impose structure on her work. That's a big bunch of bullshit.
I wrote to Katie earlier that I'm thinking maybe while structure in drawing is something that you need to have down first, in writing it is not. And maybe is detrimental. Maybe. Some writers... like, when David Mitchel wrote Cloud Atlas, he must have worked out the big trajectory of the novel first-- in fact I think perhaps that's the nature of most science fiction... probably. I would like to think about this more, though: is this one of the divides in literary vs. genre fiction? Plot?
But maybe David Mitchel started with the characters, found out about them, and then let them go. I'm starting to think that maybe structure is a second draft kind of affair. Or maybe structure is something that I might have a loose idea of for my first draft, and it is refined in the subsequent drafts.
There is something that has been bugging me, though: Larry McClary. My first and second semester of drawing, both of my teachers sent me to the library with suggestions to look at specific artists who did composition well. I'd bring a drawing to workshop and they'd say, "you need to work on the composition." And when they couldn't articulate why my composition wasn't working, they'd say, "you need to take a class with Larry McClary." Which I did, my third semester, and Larry broke it down for me. Since taking his class, I know what needs to happen to make a drawing: compose it, lay down a value pattern, choose your media, choose the elements of the craft you're focusing on: gesture, line, perspective, etc. But what was scary is that I don't have that kind of ground-up knowledge of how to write a story. And even though the earlier drawing teachers were amazing, they couldn't articulate composition like Larry could. I want to study plot like I studied composition.
My friend Rolf said that he read this study once about the age of different artists hitting their peak. He told me writers hit their stride much later in life than other artists. Maybe that is because it's really not an art you can break down easily. So again, I love this discussion.
This is what I'm working on in my writing right now:
1. Getting through my first drafts.
2. Being a student of structure
3. Letting my intuition and subconscious rule the first draft
4. Learning my craft
4 comments:
Oh man. I just typed out the longest response to this and it was deleted!!!! It had a long excerpt from Gardner's The Art of Fiction that I had lovingly typed out from scratch and now I am so annoyed that I'll leave it out for now. Maybe I'll post it in my own blog??
Anyway, I think that one reason is takes so long to master the craft of writing is (and I hope I'm not being too pushy or big-headed when I say this, since I admire other artists so much!) that writing is the most complicated mind-game of all the arts. It is less like a painting and more like a Sunday Times crossword puzzle. The only media that I think come close are filmmaking/theatre production, but those are not solitary endeavors.
Okay, I have to get that excerpt in here, but I'll do it in a separate post...
From his chapter on "Plotting," which is great and full of wonderful diagrams (my favorite is an isoceles triangle with a representing what would NORMALLY happen given this particular set of circumastances (this is the flat line on the bottom), b representing what DOES happen in the story due to struggles and conflicts that the characters brave -- basically, the course of action the character takes, and then there's the climax and the next line, c, representing the denoument.)
All bold for emphasis mine:
Even at the end of a short story, the power of an organized return of images, events, and characters can be considerable. Think of Joyce's "The Dead." In the closing moments of a novel the effect can be overwhelming.
We are of course not talking about just any old return of images, etc. The images and experiences brought together in Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses create an equally symbolic but vastly more complex thought-emotion in which the principle of coherence is loving affirmation against odds associationally recalled. The 'yes' that begins as a copulative cry enlarges outward to become a mystical affirmation of all the universe, including even death. To achieve such an affect, the writer must rise above his physical plot to an understanding of all his plot's elements and all their relationships, including even those that are inexpressible. The novel's denouement, in other words, is not simply the end of the story but the story's fulfillment. Here at last, emotionally if not intellectually, the reader understands everything and everything is symbolic. This understanding, which the writer must reach before he can make it available to the reader, is impossible to anticipate in the planning of the novel. It is the novelist's reward for thinking carefully about reality, brooding on every image, every action, every word, both those things he planned from the beginning and those that crept in in the service of convincingness. Unfortunately, though the effect of a true denouement can be described, the writing of a good denouement cannot be taught. One can only give hints and warnings. The most useful hint is perhaps this: Read the story over and over, at least a hundred times--literally--watching for subtle meanings, connections, accidental repetitions, psychological significance. Leave nothing--no slightest detail--unexamined; and when you discover implications in some image or event, oonch those implications toward the surface. This may be done in a variety of ways: by introducing subtle repetitions of the image, so that it catches the reader's subliminal attention; by slipping the image into a metaphor that helps to fix and clarify the meaning you have found in it; or by placing the image (or event or whatever) in closer proximity to related symbols. As for the warnings, two are of most importance: On one hand, don't overdo the denouement, so ferociously pushing meaning that the reader is distracted from the fictional dream, giving the narrative a too concious, contrived, or 'workshop' effect; and don't, on the other hand, write so subtly or timidly--from fear of sentimentality or obviousness--that no one, not even the angels aflutter in the rafters, can hear the resonance.
I, too, am loving this discussion...even as I scurry to read and reply during my lunch hour. From my pt-of-view at this stage in the game, I think preparing for a painting or drawing, and preparing for writing, are two quite-different if not entirely-different things. When I draw (or when I used to), the first stages were the most awful for me...all that plotting, planning, sketching...all that math! Getting all the measurements down. And then how I loved when that stage was finally done, and you could throw yourself into the rendering, painting, laying on of graphite or color. You didn't have to think at that stage; you just *saw* and *reacted*. In an ideal writing moment, I think that is the first draft...seeing in your mind's eye, reacting on the page, living in this world, and loving the adventure of it...and then it's the second (and third, and fourth, and twentieth) draft(s) that are more mathematical and precise...the editing stages.
I am so thankful to grad school for so many things, and I think it definitely did teach us to edit...but we need to forget all of that in the first drafts.
In my humble opinion.
And, of course, it's so much easier said than done...that Internal Critic can perch on your shoulder and be one loud bastard.
Tonight in my Field Workshop I read from "Polly," the story about the woman whose fiance is missing somewhere around Japan in WWII. That story was a weird one for me, because I thought about it so much before writing it, and researched, and then sat down and let Andrea Barrett hold my hand as I worked out the structure of the story, literally I looked at what she accomplished on each letter in "Theories of Rain," and tried to mimic that. About halfway through the story moves in its own direction. But I'm afraid to touch it, and re-edit it, in fact, it's the only one of mine I haven't gone into and done major revisions to.. . my latest draft is v.1.25. I've done only minor grammatical edits.
In my thesis defense, both Gaby and Ann Williams said that the story had problems that I'd fixed in later drafts of my other stories. The problem in that story is in voice. It's a little formal.
It's weird because John told me to scrap everything else and just work on that one story. I think the hand-holding on the structure issue was key, but also, I think everything else I'd absorbed in grad school kind of kicked in on that one... re-reading it tonight I was really kind of humbled by the things I set up in that story and then played out. I'm not in that kind of practice right now. I want to be, but I'm not. I was re-reading the thing I was working on most recently, and was really questioning my ability to write at all.
(Hold on while I say a little prayer: Second draft. Second draft. Oh, goddess, second draft.)
It reminds me of that discussion I had with Jacob, though, where he says that all the emotional impact in your art comes from craft.
Seriously Katie, I think this art form is a very complicated mind game. And Nicole: it's all about the 20th draft. I'm feeling better about the idea of not nailing the plot on the first draft. Nevertheless, I'm not letting myself off the hook on this one, because I think there's something about plot I'm not getting on my own, and I need to study it and then do it, and do it again, until it becomes intrinsic.
I'm going to post our discussion regarding Jacob's comments on "Cold Fire" to Chafe.
You guys are smaaat, as my buddy John, from Philly would say.
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