July 25, 2013–Just a couple of news items. If you’re a poet and have not yet heard about it, here’s a link to the Poetry Society of New York’s\u00a0Poetry Festival<\/span><\/a><\/span>, happening this weekend. \u00a0 Second item:\u00a0Terrible Minds<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0on doin’ it wrong. \u00a0If you’ve had a frustrating writing week, maybe these insensitive words of advice will get you to lighten up.<\/p>\n Other writers may challenge me on this–many consider revision, for instance, to be the hardest part of writing–but in my experience, the greatest obstacle to finishing a book-length writing project is nailing down a decent first draft. By “decent,” I don’t necessarily mean “polished,” but complete, in the sense of having a beginning, middle and end, and representing at least the boundaries, if not the living fullness, of the world you are trying to build.<\/p>\n I had the opportunity in the last year or so to connect with five published authors on the process, and will present their insight in a series of five blog posts.<\/p>\n You begin without writing. Your simmering, creative primordial soup sublimates into the elements of story. Your muse offers sparks, whiffs, even dazzling displays, but she rarely speaks in sentences\u2014that\u2019s your job. In this non-writing stage, you assemble the raw materials for alchemically transforming inspiration into story.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll carry around a detail or an idea with me for years,\u201d says Lauren Groff, \u201cand one day that idea will interact with something that I read, and explode into a different story.\u201d<\/p>\n Arcadia<\/i>, Lauren\u2019s second novel, started where motherhood, a move to a new town, and a deluge of grim media events unsettled Lauren\u2019s life. News of escalating war in the Middle East and the U.S. peak oil phenomenon, even the release of Cormac McCarthy\u2019s The Road<\/i>, seemed to foretell apocalypse. It made for a \u201cdark place in my life, and it took me four years to write my way out of that place.\u201d<\/p>\n Pre-writing, Lauren simply sought to escape her emotional downward spiral. \u201cI researched happiness, and people who tried really hard to be happy,\u201d she says. \u201cPeople who go outside of the mainstream and try to create a better world.<\/p>\n \u201cI visited a number of former intentional communities\u2026 I did a lot of talking, and a lot of walking around\u2026 I talked to as many people as I possibly could, without a notebook, without a recording device\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cWriting a novel is exercising the imagination, and exercising sympathy.\u201d<\/p>\n Lauren\u2019s longing for community and her real-life efforts to start over set the stage for Arcadia<\/i>. Observing her own son and her own second pregnancy, she began musing about a fictional child, a depressed mother. \u201cI wanted to write as close as possible to the heart,\u201d she says. \u201cI would never say that writing a novel is therapy. But there are elements of struggle in the book.\u201d<\/p>\n The non-writing aspect of writing infuses your day-to-day perspective. \u201cThings will come to you\u2026 Those moments, in your sleep, in the shower, pushing the grocery cart, those are the moments that give you what you need\u2026 When you start noticing, everything calls for your attention. When you open up that part in your body, or in your mind, where you\u2019re asking for the world to tell you what you need for this story, it will tell you\u2026 deeply, repetitively. There will be words you\u2019ve never seen before that will come at you\u2026 three or four times in a day.\u201d<\/p>\n Your creative self is opening a new conversation with the world, forming a unique library of image, emotion, and language\u2014the vocabulary of your story. When you have taken in enough to begin seeing interesting patterns on the wind, you take up your pen.<\/p>\n **And for a little extra mojo**:\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Stephen King says that story is a found thing, like a fossil. The germ for his novel Misery<\/i> came during a catnap on an airplane. J.K. Rowling famously claims that Harry Potter \u201cstrolled\u201d into her head, \u201cfully formed.\u201d<\/p>\n While you can\u2019t idly wait for inspiration, accept that the initial work of any book-length piece takes place off the page: an irresistible image, a scribbled phrase, a spate of intense research. Many authors carry ideas in their heads, little black books, or hard drives, long before beginning to write.<\/p>\n Max Ellendale always keeps a little black \u201cidea\u201d book in her pocket. When an idea seems ready, it \u201cgets its own notebook.\u201d<\/p>\n Emmy Laybourne hardly writes at all during what she calls the \u201cconception stage.\u201d \u201cI walk a lot, I think about it and let it grow. Inside myself, I start to feel another being that has its own heart, its own volition, its own little world. At some point, the book begins. The focus becomes, well, you\u2019d better sit down and write it! Because the words will stop.\u201d<\/p>\n Joanna Clapps Herman describes her new, barely-conscious ideas as \u201cthe strangest creatures. I love how inchoate they are. First there is a flitting of images, bits of language. At some point there are a few sessions of intense writing, where I begin to get very excited with what I am trying to say. A flood of language, ideas, images\u2026 I just ride that flood, try to keep up with it and not talk back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat seems to work for me,\u201d agrees James King, \u201cis to, first of all, spend a lot of time thinking about the story and the characters. Then, I pretty much jump in with a first chapter to see how it \u2018feels.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Over weeks or months, related images appear in your jottings. Word-patterns emerge. You decide to commit to the work. You finally begin your first draft.<\/p>\n Coming Next Time: Part 2, Wordsmithing By Any Means Necessary, with James King<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Except where otherwise noted, all quoted material from James King (Bill Warrington’s Last Chance, <\/em>New York: Viking, 2010), Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14<\/em>: Sky on Fire<\/em>, New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2013), Max Ellendale (Glyph<\/em>, Breathless Press, 2012), and Joanna Clapps Herman (The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America<\/em>, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011)\u00a0is from personal interviews and emails with the author, March-June, 2012.<\/p>\n Except where noted, all quoted material from Lauren Groff (Arcadia<\/em>, New York: Voice, 2012)\u00a0is from the author\u2019s transcript of Ms. Groff\u2019s seminar at the New York Writer\u2019s Institute, State University of New York at Albany, March 27, 2012. \u201cLauren Groff on Writing and Arcadia\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Subtropics: The Literary Magazine from the University of Florida<\/i>, \u201cInterview with Lauren Groff,\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span> www.english.ufl.edu\/subtropics\/Groff_interview.html, quoted in \u201cLauren Groff on Writing and Arcadia.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft<\/i>, (New York: Pocket Books, 2002)<\/p>\n\u00a0Writing Advice: First Drafts, Part 1<\/h1>\n
Before Words: Underneath\u00a0Arcadia, <\/em>with Lauren Groff<\/h2>\n
References:\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n