Losing Words

In the past few days, I've lost over twelve-hundred words. This pains me, because I'm such a slow writer. A single paragraph is a small victory; a page, a large one.

I realized I had to combine two chapters and, in doing so, erase about four pages. Those words are cut and pasted into another word document, but for now they don't exist and probably won't exist in this book or future books.

* le sigh *

On a brighter note, I had a great birthday. Friday I went out to a movie with my mom, and that night to a Japanese restaurant with a bunch of my friends. Sunday I went over to my grandma's and had lunch with her, my dad and brothers. And the best news of the day, after months of searching and going on interviews, my brother got a job! It's full-time, with benefits! He'd been one of those long-term unemployed after losing his job at the airport early in 2010. Very happy for him.

A woman’s murder upends the lives of her daughter and best friend...

Last summer, as I was getting started with my book, I skimmed a lot of "How to " articles. "How to write a novel." "How to create believable characters." "How to plot." And for the most part, the articles told me nothing I didn't already know either from school or experience. Most spoke in general terms about the elements that work together to create a dynamic novel. More than the "How to" articles, I got more help from writers on the web talking about their own experience. How did they deal with problems? How did they stay motivated?

The one exception for me was Randy Ingermanson's article about the "Snowflake Method". He provides a framework for developing a novel but encourages writers to figure out what works best for them. Start small, he says.

First, take an hour to come up with a tag for your novel: a one-sentence, fifteen-word description. It's the main idea for your book. The crux. You're thinking about the whole picture, without worrying about the thousands of details that will fill it in. He recommends looking at the New York Times Bestseller list for examples, such as Jennifer Weiner's "Then Came You": This timely tale delves into women's lives, with themes of class and entitlement, surrogacy and donorship. I think only established writers like Weiner can use the word "themes" in their tag. For "Before I Go to Sleep," by S. J. Watson: A woman's life is complicated by the fact that her memories disappear every time she falls asleep.

(The title of this post is my initial attempt at a short hook. Suggestions for improvement are welcome. I just like the word "upends" :)

Next, take an hour to write a paragraph-long summary of your novel. Obviously, details are going to be left out, but it forces you to think about the most important part(s) of your story.

The third step is to write for each of your main characters their name, storyline (one sentence), motivation, conflict, and epiphany. Then, for each of those characters, develop your one-sentence storyline into a paragraph.

Step four, turn your one-paragraph summary into a whole page. This requires you to think more about the different acts of your story and fill in the most important details.

Ingermanson's process goes on to describe steps five through eight. He suggests writing page-long description of each character. But until I got a sense of their voices and personality on paper, I didn't want to over think them. He also suggests creating an Excel spreadsheet of the scenes. However, that was too structured for me. I knew once I had the basic framework, and could imagine the piece as something that told a complete story over 300 pages, I was ready to begin.

Looking back at my notes from last summer, I see that I haven't strayed much from my initial outline. But the lines between those dots I'm connecting have gone in very unexpected directions.

"...the next time you turn on the TV and see yourself called 'overpaid'..."

If you haven't seen it already, please check out Matt Damon's impassioned defense of teachers at a Save Our Schools (SOS) rally.



To loud cheers, he says, "I don’t know where I would be today if my teachers’ job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test. If their very survival as teachers was based on whether I actually fell in love with the process of learning but rather if I could fill in the right bubble on a test."

Bums, Bums, all of 'em Bums

The past few mornings I've woken up with my stomach knotted over these stupid debt talks. I'm angry at how out of touch Washington is. I'm angry at the Congress. I'm angry that our president couldn't get a better deal even when public opinion is on his side. I'm angry that I'm wasting energy on this.

But this is where writing helps. At the end of August, I'll begin a new term of Women Writing for (a) Change. My previous three terms were filled with women of different backgrounds, writing for different purposes. Some wrote as therapy. It became a safe place to explore ideas and feelings. Others wrote to express themselves. Still others wrote because they enjoyed it. For most, I'm sure, it was a combination of those factors.

A few of us were working toward the completion of larger pieces; the class provided the support and encouragement to keep writing each week. To always have something new to share. When I took my first class, I had the draft of a chapter and a rough outline. Today, I'm more than halfway finished and feel the end in sight.

This next term I'm taking a "Mastery" class. We'll meet every other week, and I think each "student" is working on a longer piece. Also, it's co-ed. It will be interesting to see how that affects the dynamics of the class.

I've missed having that community this summer, I think more than I anticipated. To have those two-and-a-half hours blocked off where I have permission to focus solely on writing and on myself is indeed a luxury. It replenishes like nothing else.

Head-banging

I feel like banging my head against a wall. No one outside of Washington cares about the debt and the politicking going on. The rest of us care about the deficit only insofar as it affects our nation's stability. We care more about the lack of jobs, the lack of pay increases and benefits. We care about education. We care about our neighbors and family, struggling to get by.

Meanwhile, I write.

Confessions of a Former TV Addict

Some time around age nine, television supplanted books as my main diversion. I was finished with "The Babysitters' Club," "Sweet Valley High" and "The Secret Garden." In their place was "Thundercats," "Gummi Bears," and "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." During summers, I watched "Another World" and "Days of Our Lives" (only the latter soap opera is still on; it's amazing how little has changed).

We didn't have cable, so my options were limited to the five or six over-air channels, but I memorized the programming on each of those stations. I even knew what was playing in Dayton, which was usually staticky, but came in handy when a Reds game was preempting my shows (this was long before I was a hardcore baseball fan).

Through junior high and high school, I wasn't a social creature; rather than my classmates, I hung out with Brenda, Dylan, and the gang from Beverly Hills: 90210 on Wednesday nights. I could easily watch four hours a night, doing my homework during commercials.

Luckily, I weaned myself off of heavy television-viewing during college; now, I mostly watch it streaming, over Netflix (we're currently on the second season of 30 Rock), just a half-hour a day, or Sundays at my grandma's, where we watch the Reds, some cable news, and HGTV.

Sometimes I think about all those lost hours. I could have read a couple hundred novels--or perhaps written two.

Review: "A Visit from the Goon Squad"

I just finished Jennifer Egan's marvelous "A Visit from the Goon Squad," which won the 2011 Pulitzer prize for fiction. Like 2009 winner "Olive Kitteridge," Egan's book is made up of interconnected short stories that go backward and forward through time ("Time's a goon,"more than one character says.)

At the center of the novel are Bennie, a music producer, and his assistant Sasha. We see Bennie as a teenager during the height of San Francisco's punk scene, and later, as an old man, trying for one last success. We see Sasha, as a kleptomaniac 35-year old, as well as a nineteen-year old runaway. We also see, much more deeply than expected, the host of characters that populate their lives, that have influenced them and been influenced by them.

In fact, most of what we learn about Sasha and Bennie is indirect; these two characters are on the periphery as their friends, wives, and mentors tell the story. Each chapter is told in a different character's point of view (sometimes first person, third person, one in second-person, and another through power-point presentation slides).

As strong as the first chapter was, it took me a while to get drawn in to Egan's book. I didn't always feel compelled to move on to the next chapter. But once I began to see the connections between the characters and understand what Egan was doing, a momentum carried me straight to the end. The writing is sharp and the novel holds together less as a series of interrelated short stories and more as a complete novel with something to say about our lives.