About my writing:

“I see myself staunching wounds. All the pages of all my books going into a great hole in people and slowing the loss of blood.”

Talking with an old friend about art.  Her philosophy came up, and mine, and my place in the world through art.  That’s what I came up with.  I don’t really think about myself in that capacity, because I’m not important in that way.  My words are.

Class has been tough this quarter.  Life has been tough.  The writing, as always, has been good.  I’m coming up on the end of this book and whenever I do that, in my experience, I get a little nervous.  No reason in particular, really.  It’s the same with starting a book.  Anyway.  I’m about 30,ooo words away from the end, maybe a little more.  It’s a treat to hold cards to your chest and finally get to lay them down.  The writing comes fast and somewhat easy, lately.  I should be finished in a few months.

Was laid out for the last week or so, sick.  Had a good and ridiculous time bar-hopping the weekend before that.  The places life takes me, sometimes.  The Antagonist came for a visit, on her way to Australia.  She cooked for me, we drank, we watched movies, we wrote.  She changed the alarm on her phone to a recording of me singing the beginning of Tom Waits’ “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”. Went to LAX for the 8th(?) time.  I’m now going steady with the 105.  Bought her a promise ring and everything.

May have some good news for you next time.  Meanwhile, I enjoyed the vlog thing, so, requests?

Bit of poetry.  Excuse the out-of-syncness.

Welcome to the second part of my “How to Write a Novel” series.

With the first installment, I told you, young writer, to have something to say. I should add that this something ought to be something you feel strongly about. I hope that goes without saying, but to be sure. You don’t want to start a novel about animal cruelty if you aren’t a vegan or a member of PETA, or something. Remember that this is the soul of your book, it’s what should drive you when the pure joy of writing itself is temporarily exhausted. You want to get up in the morning, and think, “Right now, people all over the world are massacring innocent carrots. I must save them.”

Or something like that. Moving on.

Knowing Your Story

This is equal parts personal and universal. Sequentially, this should occur almost concurrently with the next post in the series (which will talk about inspiration).

I’ve never been one to plan my story. Except when writing a screenplay, I’ve never mapped events out, only kept a loose list of things I wanted to happen. Between these nodes of concrete events was the rest of the story, and that I made up as I went along. I follow this mode of operation in all aspects of my writing. The characters develop subconsciously, as does the theme and plot. This may not work for all of you. And it doesn’t always work for me. Sometimes I get stymied. So it’s important to know what you want conveyed, and whether in a concrete fashion or not, what you want to happen.

The method of your conveyance is character. All themes and I’d say half of the actions in most any novel need to be brought across by your characters. This means you can’t break in with a deus ex thema to explain your morals, nor act like some weak-kneed Evelina and let outside forces speed the plot. So, briefly.

Characters- I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t handle a great number of characters at once. I don’t deal with mobs well, and my writing style doesn’t allow for multiple voices to be heard at once. But it’s equally hard to say anything but “pretty scenery” without some exchange. Hence, two main characters in my first novel. Keep this in mind when coming up with your characters– you probably don’t want a Power Ranger cast worth of main characters, unless you plan on relegating them to the depth of ROYGBIV.

Once you know at least the quantity and type of main characters you want, a good exercise (that I’ve never tried) is to write, whether in brainstorm format or no, their backstory. From birth to present. Age 3, fell off trike and skinned knee–formative event, first sight of blood. Age 7, showed his to see hers. Age 8, father left. Age 9, met best friend.

That sort of thing. Maybe even write a short story or two with them. Or scenes from the book that you’ll never put in. (You’ll do this anyway, via editing. End up cutting scenes from the book that the reader will never know about but happen in your head, nevertheless, and end up impacting the course of character development.) Remember that, at the most basic level, the relationship the reader has to have with your characters is love. Love the protagonist. Whether it’s love or love to hate, that’s inconsequential. But you can’t have an unlikeable character. If you do, you have to be ready to give them their just desserts.

Once you have a solid conception of your characters, you let them roam free in your…

Plot- Which, if you’re noticing my theme, will happen organically. You’ll find your characters bouncing around in this world you created and acting nearly independently of you. That’s how it often happens, anyway.

The plot is the least subconscious thing you’ll be working with in your book. It’s something that requires harder thought and it’s the framework that you want to have most in place by the time you start writing. However, you’ll find, like everything in writing, that you’ll be surprised in the middle of the night by some twist that your characters bring you to, and you’ll have to break things apart and reorganize them. Oftentimes your prof or teacher will tell you it’s a good idea to put all of your plot-nodes onto notecards, or organize them in any other such way. Not a bad idea. Again, something I’ve never done.

When I started writing my first novel I had a good basis for my work in both temporal directions–that is, I knew what the past was, and I knew what the far future was. What was in between, I’d fill in. Don’t fight it if you get lightningstruck and your last scene comes to you before you write the first. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll make span the gap. But, for the breakdown, it’s really, truly important to have guideposts set up along the way. Know your beginning, middle, and end. And if not that, know what’s near the end. Have little scenes planned out, those little inspirations you get throughout the day, set up like signposts. It seems forceful, maybe counterproductive to the creative process, but you’ll be surprised, again, at what your own skill will produce. A scene here and there keeps your plot linear.

Aristotlean writers will tell you that plot comes first in a book. It is prime. I don’t agree, but. A strong plot is never a bad thing. A way to get a strong plot is to craft a Major Dramatic Question. This is what drives a reader to turn the page if love of character and prose fail or don’t register immediately. What’s going to happen next? In thrillers, mysteries, etc., the MDQ is easy to pin down. Will Dan Brown’s stock professor character stop the pope from crushing the Sphinx with his giant hat? Will Nicolas Cage’s hair terrify the bad guy into submission before he crashes the plane into Alcatraz, with the Constitution in hand?

In more literary fiction, the MDQ becomes harder to suss out. In The Sun Also Rises, what’s the MDQ? Seriously, I defy you to give me a good one. What you’ll end up with is something like, “What will happen to Jake, to Jake and Brett, etc.,?” But that’s not the whole of the book. The play between Jake and Brett, while crucial in providing tension in some places, is half the book, tops. So what of the other half? In All the Pretty Horses, the same problem arises. “Will John Grady woo Alejandra?” Maybe, yeah, not bad. But he meets her nearly a hundred pages into the novel. So don’t be afraid to be at a loss for an MDQ. If you can break your book up into several, so much the better.

Before I sign off I want to stress two things. One: I put plot secondary for a reason. In literary fiction, I think today’s readers want to get to know characters more than they want to discern plot. So put your focus on lifelike, endlessly deep protagonists and antagonists. If you do well enough here, the reader will follow them to the dentist and back.

Two: Take everything I say with a grain of salt. Writing is not something that can be taught without flaw. It takes a certain amount of talent that I don’t think can be given by anything after birth, along with a lunatic dedication. Remember too that I’m writing this guide for the semi-literary to literary fiction crowd. If you’re not in that corner, play fast and loose with these guidelines.

Here’s a good link to Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy. Very valuable stuff, there. Smarter than me, surely.

Gray skies again in Riverside.  We’ve had a lot of rain, enough to make your cowboy hat-wearing protagonist get comically splashed by passing cars, and enough to make him thankful he brought his leather hat. (I’m like those old Batman action figures.  I come in Original, Rainproof, Snowproof, and “Jesus fuck, it’s 106 degrees and he’s still wearing jeans”.)

Helluva night last Friday, but that’s not what I’m here for.  I wanted to make you aware that I am now part of the editorial staff for CRATE Magazine, and we’ve got a call for submissions:

This is a recycled series from my old blog, but I thought it was useful enough to re-post.  I’ve tweaked it a little since it first went up.  But first, some Post-rock!

Lesson the first: Have Something to Say

When I enrolled in my first creative writing class at Wittenberg, I had only the vaguest conceptions of what my philosophies were re: writing. Toward the end of the semester and into my next class, and probably after that, I fought with my professor over whether or not a story has to have some deeper meaning, a message to go with the story. This message goes by a bunch of different names and has many variations. Thesis, moral, theme– but it boils down to the question: “So what?” What is the writer trying to tell the reader?

As I said, I fought with my professor over this. I was of the opinion that art for art’s sake was enough. The beauty of a story is worth its telling. Now I’m of another mind. But! It’s important for a writer to not, underline, go wrapping a novel around a theme. For this reason my first piece of advice is simple: Have something to say. Don’t go into a novel with nothing at all guiding you. Shelley said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, and since nobody reads poetry anymore(I’ve learned this is untrue.  I do!), writers need to take up this mantle. Make this idea, this moral, the seed or kernel of your work. Plant it and forget about it. But everything should spring forth from that point.

Some comical examples of morals:
The Sun Also Rises: War sucks. Getting your junk shot off sucks more.
A Farewell to Arms: War sucks.
For Whom the Bell Tolls: War sucks.
Long Way Home (My book): War sucks.
The Handmaid’s Tale: Men suck.
Blood Meridian: War is awesome. Not really.

In all seriousness. Whether you want to decry war, pick up the affairs of veterans, speak out against racial or sexual inequality, what have you– you need a moral. But don’t get caught up in it. The best books evoke these things organically*, and you may never even realize you’re getting these opinions disseminated to you. But this is where you start.  If you’ve got your characters and you’ve got a kickass first line– hold it.  What you do here is the difference between genre and literary fiction.  Well, partly.  If executed correctly, this kernel of justice, coupled with strong characters, will help whatever you write transcend genre.  And even if you write about space elves, you shouldn’t frown on a Nobel Prize because your space elves happened to eradicate moral relativism.  Or something.

*You’ll notice a particular word will be repeated throughout these posts, and that word is “organic”, or a form thereof.  Don’t get tired of it– I repeat it for a reason.

You wonder if you have something good to say, something better than usual because you’ve been quiet.  Time passes and the burden grows.  After a while it becomes hard to say anything at all.  Partly I’m silent because I think it’s the better course of action.  I don’t know if what I want to say would be said if things were different.  I want to share parts of my life with you because I know and adore most of you.  But whether or not it is applicable here–and you’ve convinced me, it is– will it cause harm?  I don’t know.  And so I take pause.

It’s been warm here, as always, and stepping off the plane weeks ago was almost laughable, it was so hot.  Noel drove me out of LA and I don’t know if I can convey the dread and resignation I felt at the sight of the yellowy sky and the dirty street signs.  We passed two signs for a tattoo expo and the ad pictured a busty woman with no tattoos and I laughed at that, at how false it was.  I’m no longer surprised that I don’t mind cities like I used to, living in this one and being in LA and in Portland.  Columbus was beautiful, snow-covered and deadly cold.  The people were wild and a kid tried to fight me and I stood right in front of him staring and telling him to remember who I was.  Minutes later he threw a chunk of pavement through the window of the house and I got cut a little on the glass and Christ, how alive that night was.  Ushering people out and hiding the contraband and the moment when she was caught up in the rush to leave and there was such a pull in her eyes and it may have been too perfect to happen but our hands met as she backed away.  Days later I found her on the street in the cold and she took me to a bar and we talked for hours.  And just a handful of hours before I had to leave she called and said she was coming, and she found me, and we sat before the fireplace and eventually we moved to the couch and laid down and for an hour I wanted to kiss her and could only brush our cheeks together.  We fell asleep and woke each other up a few times and finally I kissed her, and eventually we slept again.  I regret that I didn’t tell her to warm her car up before going.  I regret not having those few minutes and what they might have held.

And then here, in the dark, with storms approaching and lined up for the week.  Gray skies look so much worse out here.    New laptop because the old broke, money I don’t have spent on something I have to have.  I wrote a prose poem that went away from where I wanted but I think is good.  Too close to really write about it, now.  Though I want to, and I think she deserves it.  65k into the third novel.  40k or so to go. 2,213 miles from where I want to be.  Less if she drives out to meet me, again.  A little gesture, a little kindness.  I haven’t been exposed to something like that in a long time.

Well, there you go, dammit.  I managed to shut up about myself for a couple posts, at least.

Edit:  Wasn’t quite clear enough re: kindness.  A great many people are good to me, and there are a few I probably don’t appreciate enough.  I meant a particular brand and a particular reception of kindness.

I’d been recommended John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing several months ago, and had heard rumblings of it before then.  The biggest selling point for me was that it had been described as an ancestor to McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.  I grabbed a copy at Powell’s while I was in Portland and it sat on my shelf until winter break.

Butcher’s Crossing is set in 1870, and centers on Will Andrews’ search for the ineffable and ultimately untameable wildness inherent in the American landscape and in, John Williams’ seems to posit, most Americans.  Andrews leaves Harvard to seek this spirit out, coming to Butcher’s Crossing, Kansas.  Having a decent amount of money, Andrews gets hooked up with a veteran buffalo hunter named Miller.  Miller had, years ago, found an undiscovered valley in Colorado that was almost completely inaccessible, and in which a veritable sea of buffalo live.  Now with the buffalo nearly extinct, Miller uses Andrews’ means to assemble a team and the two set out with a skinner and moderately insane ox-driver for the valley he found long ago.

Williams’ book has quite a lot in common with Melville’s Moby-Dick.  Andrews is an easy descendant of Ishmael, and Miller is quite clearly Ahab.  Miller’s dedication to the hunt, his arrogance and ignorance, ends up trapping the hunters in the valley for the winter.  Shy of 300 pages, Butcher’s Crossing is not a particularly big book.  Williams spends quite a lot of time with the set up and leaves himself about 200 pages for the execution.  The actual hunting and the whopping six months spent in the mountains take up a comparatively little space for being the point of the novel.  Where Andrews is supposed to develop, where we’re supposed to be in, dirt-level, with these men, Williams gives us an all too brief glimpse and moves us on.  This contrasts strongly against Melville, who, some would argue, throws the reader in too deep.

I argue that the greatest short work of fiction ever told will not match up to the greatest long work.  I’m not about to claim titles for those positions, but I’ll say that Butcher’s Crossing and Moby-Dick have similar premises, dissimilar lengths, and dissimilar places in the literary canon.  Williams has written a forgettable story because the reader is not submerged in it.  Butcher’s Crossing is easily a book of another hundred pages than what was written.  The author flies over six crucial months and skims the slaughter of thousands of buffalo.  It’s this sort of detail and depth, even repetition, to a degree, that imprint themselves upon a reader’s mind and make the story live on.  I had to look up Miller’s name, and I finished the book about two weeks ago.

To bring things full circle, Blood Meridian is not a very big book, but there isn’t a moment in it that’s really skimmed over unnecessarily.  McCarthy spends 4 pages introducing us to the Kid and his backstory, throwing us immediately into action and spending the rest of the book in dizzying detail until he again scoops us up through time in a few pages and sets us down at the end.  Williams manages the opposite.  By cutting through the middle, racing past the changes in these men (and letting Andrews state the changes rather than reveal them) Williams undercuts his ending, which I think would have been excellent had we spent proper time in the events before.  The disorientation and frustration the men experience on their return is on the brink of being powerful, but ultimately the reader has been distanced, and the ending falls short.

While Googling, I found out that Joe Penhall, screenwriter for The Road, is actually adapting Butcher’s Crossing into a screenplay. I happened to catch The Road a little over a week ago.  Pretty good.  I teared up a few times, which is strange for anyone who knows my reaction to the book.  Apparently I’ve grown enough to relate in the past few years.

In other news, I read Brian Hart’s debut novel, Then Came the Evening, a little while ago, and am currently powering through Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling, which I am enjoying immensely.  I think I’ll try for a true review of the former.  Will let you know if that comes out anywhere.  Chauffeur won the race by 3000 words, as I got a little too tied up with some craziness over break that I might let you in on sometime.  My novel currently stands at over 60k, and I just finished a rewrite of the beginning of the first novel.  Great to see how much my characters have matured over time.  I think that’s it.

Here are the highlights of my latest writing playlist, named “Samuel”, after the character over whom my tight-lipped third person limited-omniscient narrat(or)-camera hovers for the latter half of my third novel.  Included in this list, culled from well over one hundred songs, are the powerhouse tracks that really influence me.  I’ll explain why for each.  Come, take a tour of my soul.  Or something.

1. California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade ~ The Decemberists. Making Samuel’s playlist was a challenge at first, because he’s a relatively new character, and other playlists have focused more on tone and content of writing, rather than the personality of a character.  Once I got near the POV switch I began splitting the extant playlist for the novel in two, one for Samuel and one for Sam’s father, David.  I came to realize eventually that what I was trying to contain in the playlist didn’t need contained at all.  A kid is scattered, pulling himself together anew daily, finding and losing his voice constantly.  With that in mind, I set out to make this playlist contain multitudes but more importantly weaker voices.  This Decemberists track achieves quite a lot.  It’s anthemic, it sets a strong tone, and yet very clearly it’s for the more tremulous among us.  A huge thank you to The Tall Brunette for introducing me to this song.
2. The Black Crow ~ Songs: Ohia. This is as dark as things get.  This novel more than any other is marked by death–slightly odd, considering the subject matter of the others.  When I listen to this song I can’t see anything for the iridescent feather-black in my eyes, and its desperation is perfect for both Sam and David, characters who feel helpless to change the world around them.
3. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) ~ Arcade Fire. As made clear by the award-worthy preview of Where the Wild Things Are, Arcade Fire’s Funeral is an album for youth.  Every note hums with the weight and significance all events have when you’re younger.  Running away seems possible.  If you could walk as far as the horizon what was behind you would no longer be there.
4. 16, Maybe Less ~ Iron & Wine and Calexico. Another youthful song that speaks to the mythic, ethereal presence our earlier years have on our lives.  Where Arcade Fire brings snow to mind, this song is deep green, trees and vines and cut grass, a song of summer.
5. Crosshair Chapel ~ Knife in the Water. This is a band few people have heard of, and I can’t sing their praises loud enough.  Excellent stuff.  Soothing, menacing, entrancing.  Like staring into the eyes of a snake.  Crosshair Chapel in particular has an apocalyptic feel to it that’s mirrored in my work.  Sam is a very perceptive kid, and he sees things are going wrong everywhere you look, and it colors his views.
6. Bottom of the World ~ Tom Waits. The world seen through the broken lens of Tom Waits’ head.  There are enough bridges for everyone to sleep under, and just enough beans and barrel fires. Sam will dream of this sort of existence from time to time, but of course he hasn’t been knocked around like the narrator in this song has.  He doesn’t know what’s out there.
7. New Doomsdays ~ Mimicking Birds. Another dark song.  I imagine this floating through my head at the bottom of a well.  This song is probably too mature for Samuel, but it hints at a depth to his character that he’ll grow into.

I thought of adding in a few of my postrock picks, but the explanations would be boring: “makes me think of the end of the world”, for every one.  And the postrock is all in another playlist anyway, for the less-human moments in the book.  I tried to make my mentions at least somewhat lesser known, and I hope I’ve exposed some of you to something new.  Next up I’ll talk a little about Butcher’s Crossing and maybe a book I just picked up, a debut novel from Brian Hart called Then Came the Evening.

I’ve thought a time or two about quitting this.  I don’t need to sing to you, to string words together that aren’t half as good as what I could put down elsewhere, to tell you the story of my life as though its saying was worth the breath.  I don’t know that it is.  I don’t know that it ever was.  There are plenty of others who do it better than I.  My mind has never been focused that way.  Time is better spent elsewhere.

Last night I did the right thing.  I didn’t before, and that cost me.  I didn’t know that it would and maybe it shouldn’t have, but that’s not the point.  I did the right thing last night.  It was not a transformative experience.  It was hard in a dull way.  But that’s probably how it should be.  If it were an easy thing everyone would do it, and looking outside you can see that isn’t what’s happening.  I wasn’t relieved when it was over.  I wasn’t happy or proud.

I feel as stony as my friends joke that I am.  I don’t feel bad.  I don’t feel particularly good.  I feel pulled in different directions but all of them are away.  I feel encumbered.  I want to be rid of things.  What I want leaves and what I have is unimportant.  I want to wear my soul thin from walking.  I want to barely feel myself except in the thinnest boundaries; my skin against the wind, my feet against the ground, my eyes against the sun.  I want to open my mouth wide and forget how to speak.  I want to invent a language with no verbs.  I want to stand so still I become a monument.

This was never meant to be such a diary as it became.  It was supposed to have a tinge of that, but mainly to be about writing.  I’ll be trying to refocus.  Will discuss John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing and talk about music, playlists, and their influence on my writing next time.

It has been a hell of a couple days.  My interweb waves come to you from stolen wifi at my old house.  I traveled across the country and brought some west-coast sickness with me.  That’s right, Ohio, I’m diversifying your immune systems.  You’ll thank me later.

Let’s backtrack a little.  The house in Riverside has been empty since Monday.  I helped my fellow Ohioan move out for most of the day and was paid in food.  Found out I’m stronger than I thought–was pulling a bookcase out of the van when the housemate asked if I needed help, and I just slung it up and took it around, said, “apparently not”.  All of this being undercut by the cold that fell on me hours after and has been an annoyance since.  Thanks for all the food, Kelly.  I ate most of it already.

I made sure I had everything packed Wednesday, cleaned things up a little.  Noel drove me to my reading in LA, at Avenue 50.  The Splinter Generation folks put together an excellent event, I thought.  There was beer and wine and a little food.  Kate Durbin, who graduated a few years ahead of my entrance to Riverside, read, and was very good.  Lisbeth Prifogle read this, and I read “My Wakeup”, making the prose readings very war-centric.  To pat myself on the back, at the end of the evening I went up to Lisbeth and shook her hand, thanked her for serving.  She thanked me for serving, too.  I told her I hadn’t.  There were some musicians, and some poetry read by Scott Miller, who’s the poetry editor for Splinter.  Some great, fun stuff from him.

Nico showed, with some friends.  He proved to be every bit as cool as expected.  He fed me waffles and we played Geometry Wars.  We went out to a bar called Footsies and had whiskey, met up with some of the heads of Splinter and one of the bands.  Talked a little lit.  It was a great time.  We headed back to his place after and Nico played his guitar for I don’t know how long, just fiddling, and it was really soothing.  The man is skilled.  We went up on his roof and looked at the lights of town, saw a surprising number of stars.  He also exposed me to This Will Destroy You.

We listened to them while heading to LAX.  Probably the most stirring and fitting music for leaving a place like California.  All the lights and the buildings, the curves of the 101.

Most of the rest is a blur.  I slept a wink or two on the plane, got delayed in Denver, caught about an hour of sleep there, and flew to Columbus.  Sick flying, stress, no sleep.  Weird looking out my old window.  A little strange seeing bare trees.  It’ll be good being here in my old room.  I’m writing a story that’s nearly non-fiction.

Go submit something to Splinter.  More later.